Did you know that it’s possible to see what people are saying about you on the internet?  There are a number of automated tools that will allow you to monitor your name, your company, and other words related to your brand.

If you are in sales or you own a business, monitoring your reputation is crucial.  People are talking about you online, whether you like it or not.  You need to be aware of what’s being said.

There are a few things you can do to set up an automatic monitor that lets you know whenever anyone talks about you online.

iGoogle – Awesome free monitoring dashboard

my iGoogle dashboard for Netbiz

iGoogle is a property that doesn’t get quite the love that it deserves.  While a personalized dashboard is something that the average consumer doesn’t really care about, a customized dashboard that allows you to easily drag & drop tools is extremely useful as a free tool.

We’re going to use this as your reputation monitoring home page.  If you don’t have one yet, go to iGoogle.com and create an account (it will link to any existing Google Account you have like Gmail or Google Calendar).  The default dashboard comes with a bunch of junk that you don’t want, like games & a calendar.  Delete the items that you don’t want by clicking on the little down arrow on the top right of each little biz.

Adding reputation feeds.  On the right side of the page, click on ‘Add Stuff.’  On the next page you’ll be given a bunch of pre-made widgets to add.  Ignore those.  On the left side of the page, below the categories, there’s a link that says ‘Add Feed or Gadget.’

Remember where that is.  We’re going to come back to it.

Next, I’ll go over some automated tools that will track your information.

Google Alerts

Google has a service that monitors news sites, blogs, and a host of other websites and will notify you when anyone mentions whatever words you have set up the monitoring service to listen to.  Go to Google.com/alerts and put your name in for the search terms.  If you have a really common name like John Smith, you might want to add an identifier, like the city you live in or what you do (ex. John Smith Realtor Crossville).  Make sure you put the name in quotes when you do the search so that it doesn’t return people with similar names.  It should look something like this:

“Cor Huff”

“Cory Huff” Blogger

“Cory Huff” Portland

The next screen is where you manage your alerts.  Next to your newly created alert, click ‘Edit’ and change the ‘Deliver To’ column from email to feed.  After that’s done, right click on the little orange icon and copy the link.  Paste that link into the Add Feed or Gadget space in your iGoogle page.

Go back to the iGoogle page home. You should see a little box showing the most recent three notifications.  You can mouse over them to get the full text.

Repeat this same process with the name of your company, the name of key executives, trademarks, and anything else you want to monitor.  Tip: Do the same thing with your competitors.  Knowing what the Interweb has to say about your competitors is enlightening.  You can also do it with important customers, vendors, suppliers, etc, etc….

Tweetbeep

There are several different Twitter monitoring services.  I choose to use Tweetbeep.

Tweetbeep can be set up to send you a daily email with a list of all the mentions of your defined brand on Twitter.  Using the same search terms that you defined above, set up a Tweetbeep alert.

You can also set up Tweetbeep as an RSS feed and add it to your iGoogle homepage just like we did with Google Alerts.  That way you have all of them set up in one place.

Why monitor Twitter?

Twitter is a real time conversation between thousands of people in a public forum.  Even if YOU don’t use Twitter, your customers do.  If you don’t monitor these conversations, it can become a huge headache.  Just ask Johnson & Johnson about the Motrin Moms fiasco.

On the other hand, you can also be proactively grateful when people say appreciative things about you.  If someone says that you rock, you can give them a very public virtual high five – which lets them and everybody else watching know that you are participating in the digital community and that you care what happens.

]]> http://www.sparkplugging.com/sparkplug-ceo/how-to-find-out-what-people-saying-about-you-online/feed/ 6 http://www.sparkplugging.com/sparkplug-ceo/making-local-search-work-harder-for-your-small-business/ http://www.sparkplugging.com/sparkplug-ceo/making-local-search-work-harder-for-your-small-business/#comments Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:03:05 +0000 Cory Huff http://www.sparkplugging.com/sparkplug-ceo/?p=2634

Most Sparkplugging readers are…well, small.  Call it consultant, micro-business, or whatever you like.  Freelancers are small businesses that can benefit from a very small amount of business.  Today I’d like to show you how to snag some highly targeted web traffic that will get you some great business – and it’s something you should be able to accomplish by yourself within a few hours.

My last post was on getting yourself added to the Google Local Business Directory.  Today I want to focus on how to expand that local presence.

What you’ll need:

• A website.
• Access to your website’s code, or at least the back end visual editor.  If you don’t make any changes to your website, you’ll need the person who makes those changes.
• Internet Access

Most freelancers work in competitive niches like writing, real estate, or consulting of some sort.  For this example I want to use the real estate industry to show how you can find buyers.

First, let’s do a little research. Do you know what people who are looking for your goods & services type into search engines?  Google will tell you, for free.  Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal# and use the free keyword tool to get an idea.  Start by typing in what you sell or provide. In this case, I’ll start with ‘Real Estate.’  I get this result.

Notice that at the top it shows me the average number of searches for the terms ‘real estate’ and ‘real estates.’  These are the exact matches for what I was searching for.  The neat thing is that lower down it also gives me a huge list of thing that Google says people also type when searching for real estate.  Wouldn’t you love to be found on the first page of Google when someone searches those things?  The big national real estate franchises like Remax, Coldwell Banker and others certainly love it.

Again, you can do this with any industry. Try it again with ‘counseling,’ ‘copy writing,’ ‘graphic design’ or whatever it is that you do.  The Keyword Tool will generate a list of keywords that relate to your industry.

Now, the next part that I am going to show you really only works for small markets where the competition is not too fierce, but it should work for many of you.  If you live in Los Angeles, NYC, or another major metro, you’ll need to do more than just this, but this is a good start.

Do the search again, but add a geo targeted qualifier to it.  That simply means add a city or zip code.  I picked a small town in Tennessee called Crossville (population 10,433).

Notice that the numbers drop dramatically?  It means its far less competitve.  If you could show up on the first page of 5000+ searches and get around 5 – 10% of those people to click through to your site, would you be happy?  I thought so.

Your next step is store those keywords you want to target.  You can click add next to all of them and it will generate a list on the right which you can then download as a text file or as a .csv (Excel) file.  You can also just write them down if you want to target just the top few.

Now you want to add these keywords to your website.  On your Home, About and Contact page, put in a few sentences about how you are a real estate agent that specializes in the Crossville area, and then rearrange that sentence in a few different ways.  Make sure that each page has different content.  A good example could be:

Cory Huff is a Crossville Real Estate Agent with over 10 years experience helping buyers locate homes for sale in Crossville, Lake Holiday, and Woodlawn.  Located at the intersection of Interstate 40 and State Highway 127, Crossville, Tennessee is a beautiful city that is growing like crazy and we have new real estate deals on beautiful homes and land for sale in the Crossville area.

You know your market, so write for your own customers, but you get the idea.  Google loves this local search stuff, and in a small market this can often be enough to get you the traffic you need.

Further ideas:

• Create a blog that you update once a week with posts about the local real estate market.  Make sure you put these keywords in the title and at the top of the posts.  For example, you might do a blog post about how Obama’s recent tax credits will affect the homes for sale in your current market, and lead with the title, “Homes for Sale under Obama’s Tax Plan.”
• If you’ve added yourself to the Google Local Business Directory, go back and add some of these keywords to your listing in the description and categories sections.
• Get other websites to link to your site using your keywords as the anchor text like I do here with my blog, TheAbundantArtist.com, which contains posts on the best day jobs for actors.

It will take a few weeks to a couple of months for you to start to see results from this work, but it’s well worth it when you start getting phone calls!  Please bookmark this post and come back after you start seeing results, and let us know how it works out for you!

Cory Huff, Sparkplugging.com intern, works as a blogger & social media guy for Netbiz.com, a company focused on search engine marketing for small businesses.  He’s also a trained actor and writes about the intersection of money & art at TheAbundantArtist.com.

Google has recently made some changes to the interface of their local business directory that will allow you to take full advantage of local search.  Let’s take a look at how you can make it work for you.

You’ve always been able to add yourself to the Local Business Directory by visiting http://www.google.com/local/add.  Click on add new listing and you’ll get this screen.

Be sure to fill out every single field.  Every little piece has an influence on whether you show up when people look for you.  The description field should be filled with your products, services, and the areas you service.  You get 200 characters, you should use them all.

On the next screen you’ll be given the option to claim an already existing listing.  If one of those listings is you, make sure you claim that listing so you can update the info.  If none of them are you, choose add listing.

On the next screen you get to add yourself to Google’s categories.  Instead of being able to type in your categories, you have to pick from Google’s pre-determined categories.  Try to fill all five spots, but don’t put yourself into categories that having nothing to do with your business.  That’s spam and Google may penalize you in the rankings for cheating.  Fill out the rest of the listings and make sure you add pictures and videos.  The more you add, the better off you are.  If you can add videos of you doing your work or talking about your work, even better.  (extra hint: also post these videos on Youtube and your own website)

Now, after you’ve submitted, you have some more work to do (it’s worth it, I promise).  After you hit submit you’ll get a screen that will show you the status of your listing.  In some cases, your listing may be flagged for manual review by a Google employee.  If that’s the case it may take a few extra days for your listing to appear.  There’s nothing you can do to make it run faster, so just sit tight.

After your listing status says Active, you’ll start seeing activity like how many impressions (the number of times your local listing appeared in a search result) and actions (the number of times someone clicked on your listing, requested driving directions to your place, or clicked through to your website).  You can view more detail by clicking on View Report.

Do More

• Make sure you have a strong website that contains lots of local information about your company and your surroundings, like driving directions to your business, local companies you’ve worked with, and local events where you can be found.
• Links to your website from local authority sites are awesome.  Chamber of Commerce, college & university links, and other local sites can help your search rankings improve.
• Get reviewed.  Ask your happy customers to review you on relevant review sites.  For example, a Bed and Breakfast might ask customers to review them on CitySearch.com, TravelGuide.com, or other travel sites.

There can be a lot to finding your local search market.  Let us know in the comments below what kind of questions you might have!

Cory Huff is the blogging & social media specialist for Netbiz.com, an internet marketing firm in Portland, Oregon and one of our very own Sparkplugging Interns!  You can follow him on Twitter at @AGoodHusband

While Mashable was able to play with Google Wave and put out a fantastic review, there is still a lot left to be developed in the interface, and a few features that many have clamored for are yet to be implemented. So, it’s a bit premature to say exactly how small business will benefit from Google Wave, but I want to hear from you, readers, how you would implement this potentially game changing platform.

Most successful freelancers and small businesses depend on collaboration to get their work done. Whether it’s collaboration with their clients, suppliers, vendors, or other relationships, collaboration on a global scale is key.

If Wave works like it is supposed to then it will be a better version of IM, email, presentation software, and document sharing all rolled into one platform. Imagine being able to do all of those things without any need to purchase expensive software and have multiple things running on your computer at the same time.

If you don’t want to read the reviews that are out there, here’s a short list of Wave’s key features:

1. Collaborative editing. Any part of the communication can be edited by anyone participating in the wave.
2. Extensions. Applications and software robots can be built that will add functionality to your Wave.
3. Drag & Drop file uploads. Drag that video, picture, or important file and drop it into the wave which will then instantaneously share it with everyone involved in the conversation.
4. Embedding. Wave can be embedded as part of your existing website and add new communication features to your site.
5. Playback. Rewind and watch any editing or communicating that happened. Now you know what order it happened in, just in case you were confused.
6. Open source. Free, and able to be changed however you’d like.

So, as small business owners & entrepreneurs, I’m curious to hear how all of you would use Google Wave.

• What ideas come to mind?
• What problems does it help you solve?
• What problems can you solve for others by using this solution?

Leave your answers in the comments below.  We look foward to seeing your thoughts!

For further study:  Read more reviews on Techcrunch, CNET, and the Google I/O Wave release video

When Kelly asked us to create a list of our favorite posts from Sparkplugging, I realized I’d have to do some digging.  I’ve been a reader since December 2007 and I’ve gained a lot of helpful inspiration from Sparkplugging.  Here’s my pick of three favorite Sparkplugging posts.

The Rebranding of eMoms post.  Wendy did a fantastic job doing the research on her rebrand.  I know that she went through a lot of struggles while deciding what new direction to take her network.  I like this post because she links to the other areas where she outsourced to Twitter and her existing readers to get ideas on where her customers would like her to go – if more businesses would do this, fewer would fail when they try to change directions.

I miss Derek Semmler.  His post on helping guys buy gifts for wives was not only funny, but spot on.  Many writers try to overcomplicate or over research a how to article, but Derek wisely kept it simple just by reminding us of two things: Ask, and Listen.

One of the best ways to generate a lot of traffic to your website and increase your SERP rankings is to engage in linkbait.  Wendy’s post calling for a crowdsourcing project is a fantastic example of this.  It resulted in 52 comments and dozens of links back to Sparkplugging, as well as mentions on several dozen more blogs around the Internet.  Great job Wendy!

Follow Cory on Twitter: @aGoodHusband

Bing has been all over the news since Microsoft announced its launch last week.  They’ve also done quite the commercial blitz.  Rumor has it that Microsoft has earmarked more than $80 Million for marketing their new search engine.

As a small business owner or freelancer, why should you care?

That’s a pretty tough question.

Google has made itself hella useful for business.  Since getting your company’s website to show up on the Google search results means more business for you, business owners love Google.  Can getting your website to show up on Bing help your business?

As of December of 2008, Google had a market share of over 63%.  Yahoo was at 16%, and Microsoft’s Live Search was at 9%.  Bing replaces Live search, so we can assume that Bing is starting with a 9% market share.  When you are looking at where to spend your resources, it seems like a better idea to put your efforts into the big G.

On the other hand, you may feel it’s worth it to conquer one tiny search engine.  Here are some ways you might benefit:

• Bing seems to be heavily weighted towards Domain Name relevance. One client company that I work with had four of its sub-domains show up on the first page of the results, where on Google the first page of the results show several negative reviews of the company.

• Microsoft pulled a fast one and made Bing the default search of Internet Explorer 6.  About 20% of people still use IE6. Note: this was a mistake and Microsoft is working on fixing it.
• Watch it and wait.  By many accounts, Bing doesn’t suck.  The search results are relevant, and if enough people are willing to give it a try, Bing might become a place where you’ll hope your customers find you.  From the Techcrunch Comments section:

I am curious to know how many Sparkplugging readers spend time on search engine marketing.  Let us know in the comments whether you engage in SEO or paid search tactics for your freelancing or small business work.

Oh, and let us know what you think of Bing.

Cory Huff is best known online for AgoodHusband.net.  He also works for an internet marketing firm that specializes in Search Engine Marketing.  Cory hopes to leverage the Sparkplugging internship to help performers and artists make money using the internet.

Follow Cory on Twitter: @aGoodHusband

For beginning online marketers it’s an introduction to the necessary tactics to get the online exposure you’re seeking.  Brandon and Shayne are experienced marketers and those with a strong marketing background will recognize their expertise in the fundamentals of marketing at work here.

As a business owner these concepts are incredibly important to at least be familiar with.  Many business owners make the mistake of pawning their web marketing efforts off on their web guy.  Online Marketing Inside Out helps you understand that web marketing is not an IT function, but a fundamental marketing decision.  The book provides a way to get an overview and start a plan.

For experienced online marketers the book reads like a checklist of important things to remember.  It’s a technical manual that covers the bare bones and allows you to be creative and fill in the rest.  The only thing that I was hoping for was an entire chapter dedicated to viral marketing.  The authors touch on the subject and give some general advice, but choose to approach viral marketing from the standpoint of how content can sometimes go viral.

I highly recommend Online Marketing Inside Out as a reference point for people who want to get started with their online marketing efforts and for experienced marketers who might need a solid checklist to compare their existing campaigns against.

Sparkplugging received a review copy of this resource.

This is a review of a low cost special report for freelancers written by our intern, Cory Huff.  Sparkplugging has not been paid to write this review but can earn commissions on sales made through our referral link.

Lexi Rodrigo’s Website Secrets is a great little guide for freelancers.  I spend most of my day consulting with clients about how to improve their online marketing, and the number one problem for small business owners and freelancers is that they are acting on bad information and they don’t have time to figure out on their own what works.

Over 50% of small businesses still do not have a website.  If you know you need a website, or a website upgrade, or are wondering if you need one, but don’t quite know how to get started, Website Secrets has everything you need.

While Website Secrets doesn’t go very deep into any one aspect of web design or marketing, there is no need for a cash strapped freelancer or small business owner to pay for an expensive web developer.  There is no magic bullet, but Lexi shows you how to use tools available for free online to create a site that will explain who you are, what you do, attract customers from the search engines, and do it all in a way that requires no technical skill, only time.