Social Media–I don’t even know where to start with this blog entry. 聽 This is a new way of marketing and networking that has EXPLODED. 聽I never use all caps for a word, but there is no other way to describe social media and its power.

Myspace started out as one of the first premier social media websites. 聽It blew up over night. 聽Myspace was the perfect place to stay connected with your friends through a common website. 聽No more emailing each other, or chat rooms. 聽It took being “social” to new levels on the internet. 聽As fast paced as Myspace became, there as a lack of organizing your social groups. 聽There was no common feature to send messages to just one set of friends, or be able to create a business account and link it with your personal one. 聽With that lack of functionality, facebook was born.

Facebook has taken over the Myspace world. 聽With an much easier-to-use layout, group creating abilities…it trumped the big name that started the social media聽phenomenon. 聽Myspace began to see sharp drops in user numbers, while facebook could not believe the amount of new users created daily it was seeing.

Here is a great Youtube clip that was created to show how popular social media has become. 聽It is baring the influence for the next generation of human interaction.

Internet marketing is more than just some links on a couple of web pages. 聽It has become a way of life. 聽Make sure that your Phoenix internet marketing strategies are consulted by a professional that knows how to attack your聽target聽market.

Tue, Oct, 2011 @ 8:03 am
Tags: facebook, myspace, phoenix social media company, Social Media
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It is very clear that SEO has some muddy ideas floating around.聽 Let us take just few paragraphs to clear up some of the SEO Agency confusion points you might run into between different Agencies here in Phoenix.

Local Phoenix Web Marketing vs National Web Marketing

Often the case for seo clutter is the lack of understanding between local SEO and National SEO.聽 Search engines operate by showing you the most relevant information possible to your search terms.聽 If you search for fitness trainer, you’ll see afaa.com pop up as number one.聽 Why? You have no interest in Aerobics Association of America? I didn’t think so… but the Google engine sure thought it was applicable to you.聽 This is because their content on their website is formatted around the terms “fitness trainer” and gets a ton of traffic.

So how can we find a local version?聽 Well, we just need to add “Phoenix” in front of our search, and bam…local results.聽 This is important because if you are a personal fitness trainer located in Phoenix, you shouldn’t be spending your time trying to rank your website for national search terms.聽 Although the numbers look very convincing to rank nationally, it won’t help your business.聽 You personally can’t fly all over the country for each client.

Take a look at the Phoenix SEO Agency proposal.聽 Are you paying for a bunch of national ranking that won’t get your business anywhere, or are you ranking locally.聽 Rank local first!

Social Media: Bust or Brilliant?

I have written several times about social media and the power behind it.聽 I am not a fan so much of small businesses spending outrageous amounts of time on Twitter.聽 It can become the biggest bust of time.聽 However, facebook seems to have a more powerful local feel.聽 Take the time to automate your facebook posts to link on your twitter account.聽 This is a good way of killing two birds with one stone.

If you are looking for a Phoenix SEO Agency or Social Media Agency, feel free to contact us at Local Work Marketing to give you some free advice.聽 Our phone number is 602.283.5684.

Tue, Oct, 2011 @ 10:37 pm
Tags: bust vs brilliant, phoenix seo agency, phoenix web marketing, seo, seo agency, Social Media, web marketing
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How To Benefit From Social Media as a Small Business

Social media can be overwhelming to say the least.聽 At first glance you will find yourself getting a headache trying to understand the jargon, the platforms, while still finding time to answer your cell phone.聽 Social media when done correctly can be very effective, but when done wrong, it鈥檚 simply just a big waste of time.聽 Below we will outline how to utilize social media effectively as a small business without the headache and wasted time.

Social media is the technology and tools people use to communicate easily via the internet or with mobile phones.聽 The most popular social media platforms are built for quick messages and chat through services like Twitter and Facebook.聽 A blog on a website is considered social media because you are able to interact with people through a comments board after the article.聽聽 Customer review sites such as Yelp.com and bookmarking sites like Delicious.com offer specific interaction between fans to rate and promote their favorites.

Small business interaction with social media is an important way to dialogue with customers and show transparency and desire for customer care.聽聽 You can easily monitor trends and what people are saying about specific services or products.聽 If you were a towing company, you might want to watch Twitter for messages using the words, broken down. In an instant you can offer your services and show your concern to help out a situation.聽 You get a new customer and when they excitedly talk about your kindness to all of their Twitter fans, you become the hero of the day.

Simply monitor what people are saying on social sites.聽 To track what people are saying, set up a Google Alert on your company name, or use some Twitter platforms like Tweetdeck to give you real time notifications.

The number one waste of time on social media is spent promoting to the wrong audience.聽 Anyone can get 鈥渇ans鈥� on Facebook or a bunch of 鈥渇ollowers鈥� on twitter.聽 Ask yourself if they truly are you ideal audience.聽 If you market more to business owners, Linkedin might work better.聽 It offers you direct contact with specific positions inside of companies.

Find your audience and interact!聽 The key is getting involved.聽 Answer questions, ask questions鈥ffer opinions.聽 When you show you care, people will want to get involved.聽 Engaging your prospects in social media can build your credibility and reach more customers.

Whatever form of social media you choose, try to add to it on a regular basis.聽 New content brings visitors back and shows transparency to new visitors.聽 Keep up the positive buzz about who you are and what you offer.

Thu, Apr, 2011 @ 11:25 pm
Tags: facebook, google alert, linkedin, seo, Social Media, Twitter
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There are only a couple days left in 2010 really I can鈥檛 believe how fast the year has gone, it seems like ever year I say the same thing but this year flew by. One of the reasons I think that the year has gone by so fast is because of all the things that are going on everyday. Generally I wake up turn on ESPN and watch my morning sports. So then after a long commute to work I generally will first go over and feed the fish. We have an awesome 75-gallon fish tank in the office that I love its great to chill and watch them for a few minutes everyday. Then I鈥檒l go and check my e-mail and respond to a couple of them and make sure everything is going good. Normally I will next check Twitter to see what鈥檚 trending, what new people are following me then maybe follow them back if I think its worth seeing what they have to tweet. Then a quick check in on 4 Square because I like to be the mayor of the place where I work. Then a quick check on Facebook, I used to check it all the time but lately it seems like the same people are posting pictures of their kids, or somebody is complaining about how the barista in the Starbucks was rude or whatever, and of course somebody trying to sound philosophical saying something like have you thanked the universe today? Uuggh please stop this or we are no longer friends virtually or not! But something has changed for me on Facebook and that is that now I am a fan or friends with lots of interesting people and companies that are doing amazing, creative things and I love to see what they are doing. So I have put together a list of people and companies that I think are doing great and I think are worthy of getting some praise. Call it my people / companies that I think are cool list.

The first company / website that came to my mind was Mashable.com. I really love this website because it keeps me up with what is going on in my industry social media. They always have great articles and posts and get info on the latest social media news and rumors. There is so much on this website that you can literally spend hours on it and not get bored. I follow them on Twitter and Facebook and can really seem to get enough of what they have to say. Big up鈥檚 to Mashable.com.

I really like v3im.com because of Shelly Kramer. She is really active on Twitter and I always seem to learn something from her tweets and she will chat with you if you hit her up. She did a really great tweet chat a couple weeks ago on influence and who you consider top influencers and I really like participating in it and learning from all the people who were virtually there conversing about the subject.

After that I would have to say that I love to read redheadwriting.com, it is such a blunt and funny website because of the red head named Erika Napoletano. This lady is funny there really isn鈥檛 any way to put I love her sense of humor, writing style and one day when I really got stuck and couldn鈥檛 think of a thing to say I read her article called 鈥淪tuck鈥� and it helped get my creative juices flowing. I also love the link she has to become friends with her on Facebook, so I put it here its the bees knees.

Now this next one shouldn鈥檛 really come as a surprise but I am going to talk about them anyway because they really know what they are doing and that is seomoz.com. To me they are completely one of the biggest names in the SEO game and so they get a shout here. The last article I saw that I really liked from them was called The SEO Tool of the Future and it talked about how SEO鈥檚 are always trying to figure about Googles algorithms and what can be done to get better rankings. Then they talked about what they find to be the most effective things to do, they know what they are talking about. They create great graphics and really tell the story about how and why you should do something SEO related, thanks seomoz.com!

There are also just some blogs that I like to read and one that I recently discovered was Rawutah.com. Its all about a guy named Jake who is learning how to grow his own food in his yard and how he does it and all the advantages that growing your own food can bring. He really is an inspiring guy and he is doing a great job with his social media efforts.

There is another blog that I really like called Howtoprovo.com. I lived in Provo for a while and they way that this guy talks its like he is reading my mind half the time. From the 7 Deadly Sins of Provo, to the letter to the guy wearing skinny jeans at BYU, to local places to eat Howtoprovo.com is top notch writing in my book.

Another site that I really like for social media advice and tips is Socialmouths.com. They have tons of information on the world of social media and it has helped me reading through all their stuff way too much to understand for the newbie in a day but worth checking out for sure.

Well these are my list of great websites and people who are making a differnce in the world. I hope that one day I can be as influential and creative as these people, companies, and websites but until then all I can do is work hard and stock them as hard as possible.

Thu, Dec, 2010 @ 12:16 am
Tags: 2010 social media, seo, Social Media, social media influencers
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There is major shift right now in corporate America. Making a sufficient profit is tougher than ever. This economy has made acquiring clients and bringing in cash flow difficult. There are ways to adapt to this environment, but you have to be the first one to recognize it and be willing to change with it. Recognizing and doing are two different things. Here is a list of 3 things you MUST DO to adapt with the new trends of business going forward.

1. Expand on the internet- Bill Gates said, 鈥渂y the end of 2002, there will be only two kinds of businesses: those with an Internet presence, and those with no business at all.鈥� Gates continues to state, 鈥淧erhaps this is overstating the case, but an effective Web site is becoming an integral part of business today.”

Making your website visible on the internet is vital. It is not good enough to just have a website; you need to make it visible. There are now more than 4 billion web pages on the World Wide Web, with the internet doubling every 100 days. How do you expect your clients to find you unless you make the effort to be found? Content on your website is the secret to getting found. Put together a great content strategy based on your consumer鈥檚 behavior. 聽Take the time to write articles and content about what consumers have questions to, why this, why you, how to, where to start鈥tc.

2. Identify Your Brand. How many times do we see a red circle with a red dot in the middle and think of Target? If you are like me, every time. Take a look at your brand. Are you using it consistently on letterheads, invoices, business cards, marketing pieces? Take the time to build a brand. Once you have identified a logo and a mission statement, you can start building your brand equity. Shout it from the rooftops. Take 90 days and visit as many networking functions as you can find to tell the world of your brand. Build that reputation and you have a higher ROI on any marketing efforts you have going forward.

3. Upgrade Your Customer Service. With social media booming, the internet ruling, and mobile media flourishing, every company is more transparent than ever. If you have one unhappy customer, they can share that ONE experience to the world with a click of a button. Take a look at your customer service strategy. It is not enough anymore to make your customers satisfied. Make them ecstatic to work with you. Take the reverse roll of business transparency and play it to your benefit. Create incentives for clients to boast of their relationship with their new favorite company. This will lead to more customers as they hear people raving of your positive energy. Make your company contagious by solidifying a customer service that builds your customer satisfaction.

I guarantee if you implement these strategies aggressively, you will see a change in your business.聽 This economy has taken down a lot of companies.聽 You have a choice.聽 Will you stick to your old ways and be yet another victim of these hard times, or will you DO something? You鈥檝e got the 3 best strategies laid out here, now use them. 聽If you need help with your local internet marketing, make sure to leave a comment in the box below. 聽Make sure to ask any questions relating to SEO, Social Media or even a PPC campaign.

Wed, Sep, 2010 @ 12:30 am
Tags: internet marketing, marketing, ppc, seo, Social Media
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