Yes.

Facebook, at the time of this post, has over 500,000,000 (half a billion) users, half of those users login daily. I’ve even heard buzz that Facebook now receives more daily searches than Google. As a business, you can’t ignore this opportunity.

Facebook has a great application called Pages or “Fan Pages” or “Like Pages”. Whatever you call it , it’s all the same thing… a profile on Facebook that allows fans to post comments, allows you the business to share current projects, promotions, portfolios, share information about your business with all who choose to follow you.

A Facebook page gives your business exposure that it wouldn’t receive otherwise. When a fan posts on your page or shares content from you page, each and every one of their friends are exposed to your business brand and name. This is a powerful and low cost way to build your brand!

A Facebook fan page can be integrated with your blog and other social media accounts such as Twitter, so that information can be shared across multiple media at once!
As a business owner, you can think of a Facebook page as an interactive website for your business… a place where you can interact with fans in real time. Facebook pages are also indexed by the search engines and will show up in searches, as well!

You can create more than one page for your business. For example, if you have a single product or service that you provide, you can create a fan page to promote that brand. However, having multiple fan pages, means more work. You then have to maintain and monitor more than one page.

Trumpet Marketing Group provides custom Facebook page creation and other social media marketing services. For our clients looking for a Facebook page, we customize a welcome page to match the companies branding and logo and create a mini website on Facebook for you business. We also integrate Facebook and Twitter on your website to further promote your social media activities.

How do I get my business listed in Google Places?

First, search Google using your business name. If you see your business places page listed, you will see a small thumbnail next to your listing in the search results or a red tear drop next to your name alongside a Google Map.     If you haven’t already, you will have a chance to claim you business listing.   This is typically a slow process as in most cases Google will need to send a postcard with a verification code in order to activate or give you access to your places listing.  This is to prove that you are associated with the address on the listing.

Here are some of the features of a Google Places Listing:

• Designate Your Business Service areas: If your business travels to serve clients or customers, Google lets you select the geographic areas your business serves.   If your business does not have a storefront or an office location, you can make your business  address private.
• Photos. Google allows you to upload photos of your work, products, logo etc.
• Business categories. Google allows you to list your business in up to five business categories.
• Store Hours. Post your business store hours
• Reviews.   You clients can post a review of your services.
• Video.  If your business has videos, you can add your company video(s) to your listing

Google continues to add functionality  and emphasis to its Google Places listings.   For do it yourselfers, Google provide online help for Google Places.

Trumpet Marketing Group, LLC helps clients with website design, search engine marketing and promotion.  We help clients set up and optimize their Google Places. As Google places more emphasis on places listings in search results, it becomes a critical piece of any businesses online marketing strategy!  Aside from Google Places, other search engines like Bing & Yahoo offer similar opportunities to promote business through local listings and maps.

The nature of the Internet and emergence of social media provides a unique, level playing field for businesses of all sizes to compete.

To take advantage of what the web has to offer, there are a number of things small businesses can do.

Website

All businesses need a website, a static location where they can send potential clients to learn more about their products and services.  The website should contain compelling photos of completed work, products or other photos that promote the business’s product or service.   We the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies and social media, it has become quite easy for businesses to create a website… in some cases for little or no cost.

But just creating a website is not enough.  Search engines account for at least eighty percent of most websites’ traffic.  For this reason, a website needs to be created with visitors in mind, as well as search engine robots.   First, your visitors need to be provided with a simple interface and easy navigation.  Visitors should be able to quickly and easily locate the information they are looking for. The site should have a design that’s easy on the eyes and entices the visitor to stay and learn more.   Aside from the user experience, the search engines also need to be able to index your website and effectively crawl ALL pages.

Basically, an inviting and professional design, easy navigation, useful content and search engine optimized HTML pages are the recipe to a successful website.  Employ these core requirements and a  website can provide a valuable, and in some cases, a primary source of client leads.

Search Engine Optimization

Is your website getting traffic?  Does it rank with the search engines?  You may have a beautiful, state of the art website and get no traffic.   If you find that your site isn’t producing leads or getting adequate traffic, here are a few things to make sure your website itself is developed so that search engines can see it and index it properly.

Make sure it’s not created solely by graphics, Flash or JavaScript. The search engines index text. Period.  They can’t read a Flash animation or a graphic.   Alt tags help, but where possible include a decent amount of text on each page.

Make sure you or your developer understands the appropriate use of HTML tags and meta tags. These alone can make or break the success of your website.  I’ve seen websites go from page five of search results to page one, simply by properly formatting HTML tags such as IMG and META tags.

Relevant Content. Make sure your website’s content is relevant.  Create a separate page for each product or service you provide and be sure to provide adequate content, photos, etc to support the service or product being promoted.

Easy navigation. Always, always provide a simple interface for individuals to navigate through your website.  This also helps the search engines better index it, too.

There are many, many other technical, behind-the-scenes, coding that can be done to further tweak the online optimization. However, those are beyond the scope of this article.   Be sure to discuss with your developer or content management provider what is happening behind the scenes to help boost your onsite optimization.

External Links

Just optimizing your website won’t get you ranked well in the search engines.  One thing that search engines use to determine how they rank your site in search results is how many incoming links a website has.   It’s important to get links in.    Simply exchanging links doesn’t work well anymore. Search engines actually detect reciprocal links and discount them.

Where can I get links into my Maryland business website?

There a number of ways to get one-way links into your website.   Some great ways include:

Web Directory Submissions. We directories most always allow you to add a link back to your website. Do a quick search for your business type or service type in Google. Make sure you use your city or state in the search term.  Chances are on the first 2-3 pages of results, there are web directories.   These are a great place to add your business and/or website! Some are free and some charge a fee.  There’s typically an “add your business” link somewhere on the page. Simply fill out the forms they provide.  Give yourself a good description and any supporting information.  Typically the more information you can provide, the better your results.

Google Places. If you don’t add your business anywhere, make sure it’s in Google Places.   Google places are those listings that show up right next to a map at the top of search results.   Google typically shows the map when someone types in a geographic search, such as “Rockville, MD Attorney”.  If you build out a great profile on Google places and have clients post comments there, you can do quite well.  NOTE:

Bing & Yahoo Local listings.  Just like Google Places, Bing and Yahoo also have Local business listings. Make sure you build a profile on all of them!

Local Directories. Local directories provide perhaps the best and most relevant links back to your website. In Maryland, there are a number of local directories.    Below is a very brief list.   You can find others by search Google for “Maryland business directory” or “Baltimore business directory”.

Some local business directories include:

• marylandbusinessdirectory.com
• searchmaryland.com
• marylanddirectory.org
• marylandbiz.com
• portaltomaryland.com
• marylandinfo.com

Other great ways to get links is through press releases, articles and social networking/bookmarking sites.  These take a great deal of explanation, so I’ll save them for the next article.

Summary.

A good website design, search engine optimized pages, useful content and inbound links are an essential start for any company looking to promote their products and services online.   Some of the requirements for building and promoting a Maryland website can be a bit technical. There are excellent tools for do-it-yourselfers that handle most of the backend optimization.  However,  to ensure you’re getting the most from your website and online marketing, it’s  advised to seek assistance from a Maryland web designer or Internet Marketing consultant.

Laurie Williams is an Internet Marketing consultant helping business get started and promoted online.  Laurie is the co-founder of Trumpet Marketing Group, LLC, a Maryland website design, graphic design and search engine marketing company. Laurie has been involved in promoting and branding businesses online for fourteen years.