Why aren't more people calling me when I'm ranking on the first page of Google! Here's one big reason why.

"The internet is just not for me and my business!  Plain and simple.  I spent all this money to get on the first page of Google and I'm not getting any meaningful business.  Whoever came up with this idea that you have to be at the top of the search engines is just nuts!"  

How many of you have heard this?  Better yet.  How many of you have said this?  Could it be true?  Well, Ron, everyone has told me that where people go for information is on the internet.  The Yellow Pages are a thing of the past.  We know that.  I don't want to spend a fortune on radio, tv or a billboard.  So if that's the case and the internet is where everyone goes why am I not getting more inquiries for my products/services?  This has become a popular question and a very good one that deserves a good answer.

Now I could on and on with all the technical reasons why you're not getting results (bad website, poor content, etc.) but when all is said and done there is one simple answer that can make all the difference in the world.   2 words.  MOBILE WEBSITE.

What do you mean, Ron?  People can still find me searching through their phones.  I still show up on page one of Google.  Oh really.  You mean that website with microscopic print that even with a magnifying glass you can't read?  Is that the site you want me to browse around on?  And let's say for argument sake I do.  I can't navigate through the site because every time I try to go to another page the darn link is so small I press something else on the site.  Darn it!  This is just too frustrating. I'm outta here!

Folks you think I'm kidding but for those of you who have smartphones don't tell me you've never experienced that.  And in this day and age with so many options to choose from I'm not going to waste a lot of time on a site I can't navigate around on.  Let's face it.  People are impatient and we want simple!  How many of you have actually paid more for a product through a mobile device even though you knew there was another site where you could buy that same product from and for cheaper but it just wasn't convenient?  Folks, it happens.  And with the experts forecasting that in the next few years over 80% of all goods/services are going to be purchased through mobile devices you better get on board or you're going to be left behind!

10 Ways to use Twitter to Market your business

Note:  This is a blog I read but it's so good I wanted to share on my website.

Twitter is an excellent internet marketing tool when used correctly. These 10 ways to use Twitter will help you get the results you are looking for. It will take some time to build up your followers so don’t look at Twitter as a quick fix.

1. The best way to gain followers on Twitter is by sharing information that is valuable and/or entertaining. If you send your followers to crappy articles they will unfollow you or just ignore your posts altogether.  Either way you lose.  

2. Another way to use Twitter is by using hashtags to get your tweets seen by more people. I need to do a better job of this. But you also have the other extreme of an entire tweet being nothing but hashtags.

See how the most popular people you follow use hashtags.

3. Twitter can be great way to get traffic to your blog or website. I share links to my blog everyday. The key is you just can’t send tweets that always send people to your blog or website.

Mix it up. Send readers to articles on other sites and blogs.

Find things to tweet about other than just your niche every now and then.

4. Reply to as many tweets of people that follow you as you can. If they ask you a question be sure to follow up. Reply to the tweets of popular Twitter users. If you reply with something interesting and others read it you can pick up additional followers.

5. Some business people connect their Twitter account to their LinkedIn account. I have not personally done that. I like to keep my stuff separate.

I don’t want everything I put Twitter to show up on LinkedIn or vice versa. Just me being such a private person. I don’t connect Twitter to Facebook either for the same reason. You have to decide how you want to do this.

6. I touched on this a little bit earlier but always respond to anyone that responds to your messages. I check the connect tab to see if anyone has responded to my tweets at least once a day.

I am also looking to see who retweeted my tweets. I try to send a thank you to as many as I can. That way hopefully they will retweet some more of my stuff. Having your tweets retweeted is a great way to gain a few followers.

7. You want to make it clear to everyone that you are a real person. You can do this by following up and retweeting. Also you can use Twitter to let people know about seminars and workshops that are happening online and offline.

8. Don’t always be about business on Twitter. Check Google News to see if there are some interesting things to let your followers know about. Quotes are always good. Everyone likes quotes.

I do book reviews on my blog and I will take interesting quotes from the books and use them on Twitter.

9. Don’t go crazy tweeting. I will unfollow someone in a heartbeat that sends out 10 tweets in a minute or two. Usually these are promoting 10 different products. It’s crazy, don’t do that.

I can’t give you the correct number to send out each day because there is not one. But 10 tweets in a minute is not the way to do it.

For one thing you want as many people as possible to see your tweets. The best way to do this is to space your tweets out. People are using Twitter at different times of the day.

10. One last tool to that I have started using lately is Just Retweet. There is a free and paid version JustRetweet. Doesn’t matter which one you use. You can get people to retweet your tweets based on a points system. You can get points by retweeting other people’s tweets or you can buy points.

Just go check it out. I have picked up lots of new followers since I started using it. But don’t retweet crazy stuff just to get points.

There are probably many other ways to use Twitter that I have missed. There are a ton of paid tools you can use. I have about 15,000 followers and I got most of them the old fashioned way, one at a time.

Following others… Putting out good tweets…Getting them to follow me from my blog…retweeting other tweets… getting other people to retweet me, etc.

Good luck!

4 Reasons why being at the top of the search engines does not mean new customers

We're all conditioned to being told that our company has to be on page one of the search engines or  we're wasting our money.  And don't get me wrong I totally believe you need to be there if you're going to take your business seriously; but what if you're there and you're not seeing new customers as a result of that.  What's going on?  I spent all that money and NOTHING!  Well let's examine a few key reasons why that could be happening.

1.  Your website is awful!

You have misspelled words, outdated content, broken links and just poorly done.  Folks, you may be the best at what you do and people may flock to check you out but if this is what they see how serious are they going to take you?  And if they're not taking you serious why should they?  If you're not going to put a little effort and money in the most powerful marketing piece you have don't expect results.  We're in a new age and people look at websites for information.

2.  Too much time goes by before you call them back!

Ok you've got them.  They're calling or emailing you wanting to know more about your product or service but you wait 3 or 4 days before you get back to them.  I know for many of you this sounds crazy but it happens.  And for those of you who use the excuse "Well we've just been so busy I haven't had a chance to return calls or emails" don't expect much growth for your business.  That is about as poor of an excuse as you can give a potential customer.  If you're that busy HIRE SOMEONE!  Come on people!  We're not going to wait that long just because you're at the top of the search engines, the BBB gives you an A plus rating and Uncle Fred says you're the best.  There are other options out there that will call me back that day and here's a little secret.  They're just as good as you are.

3.  Not using social media at all!

Well, Ron, I just don't have time for that and I'm doing fine without it.  Sound familiar?  Nowadays people will go a little further to check you out than just your website.  They'll look at your Facebook page to see what others are saying.  They'll look at your Link'd In profile to see how well your connected and how many recommendations are there.  And if you're not using these simple and free tools a few minutes a day your competitors will eventually crush you.  Even Walmart and McDonalds use these tools.  Is your business bigger and better than these giants?  5 to 10 minutes a day and watch what happens.

4.  Bad Reviews!

"Now wait a minute, Ron, there's nothing I can do about that!"  There's not?  This is where engaging your customers with social media or writing a blog can really be helpful.  Folks, we're all going to have upset customers that may write bad reviews; buy you know what.  We can respond to that nasty post on our Facebook page.  We can respond to that bad Tweet.  The internet has made it much easier to respond to negative criticism and you better use it.  Calling an upset customer is still a great idea but don't neglect the other part of that.  Just remember, if they wrote a negative post about your business but you called them and resolved it the hundreds of people that saw that post don't know that.

There you have it.  Sounds simple but you'd be surprised how many businesses don't follow these simple tips.  And if you don't it can and probably will come back and you bite you.  So embrace the new age and use these tools.  They'll help you far more than they'll hurt you if you use them right.

Some pretty cool success stories we helped with

Hope everyone doesn't mind if we toot our horn a little this week and share a few success stories.  Sometimes it's nice to hear some positive stories rather than just "here is some important tips to help your business".  Don't get me wrong we at Moneynet Marketing blog about that to but at the same time we like to spotlight some of our customers as well.

First, one of our customers that offers wheelchair transportation has been so successful in their business and their marketing strategy that they've been able to top the local search engines for wheelchair transportation.  This particular company has grown to now have more than 50 vans offering wheelchair transportation through all of central VA and are now expanding to other areas.  Combine that with the fact that they didn't have to do the "pay for click" strategy with our solution and this is truly a great success story.  Way to go Van Go!

Second,  one of our new customers has a unique business that is hitting the ground running and poised for big things.  Of all things they build bunkers.  Yep.  You heard me.  They build bunkers.  That's their business!  Just goes to show that there's a market out there for just about everything.  In any case we were able to get them all the tools they needed for their internet marketing strategy at an investment that they didn't think was possible.  Everything from SEO  to mobile to email marketing we helped them get.  I can't wait to see where this company goes!

Finally, one of Richmond's premier movers who've been in business for 18 years and done very well but haven't taken their business to the next level like they wanted to acquired one of our solutions  and now have all the tools they need to move to that next level.  Combine that with the fact that the owner of this business knows his industry better than everyone and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they dominate the state of the VA in the moving industry.  That's his goal and we're going to help him get there.

So that concludes my horn tooting for the week.   I hope you didn't us sharing this but I know I like to see success stories as well so I hope you enjoyed these.  Have a great week.

The Crawlers Rise!

The Crawlers Rise

We don't want to startle you with talk of a robot uprising or anything, but there's a highly intelligent technological presence right under your nose...one that's getting smarter and smarter all the time.

Yes, we're talking about the search crawlers.  As programmers develop progressively more intricate and refined algorithms, businesses must step up their SEO optimization to secure their place in the search rankings. Obviously, it's a complex process; that's why SEO has become an industry unto itself in recent years (and why we've added scalable SEO services as an add-on to our solution!). We can look at the crawlers from two different camps: the creative side, and the technical side.

On the creative side, you've got to contend with marketing content. Crawlers are developed with the purpose of helping users zero in on content that is most relevant for their specific needs - the better the crawlers are at that, the more loyal a user is to that particular search engine. So it's more important than ever for your current and prospective clients to keep their site content clean, clear, and high-quality! Keyword clutter could actually drive crawlers away, which is to say nothing of the simple fact that nobody likes visiting sites whose pages are so packed with content that they are overwhelming or confusing. Experts in the marketing game are discovering that, if nothing else, there is no benefit to sacrificing coherence and integrity for the sake of packing in as many search terms as possible. It's that same old elementary axiom that turns up so many times in life: Quality is more important than quantity.

But then there's the technical side of those search crawlers. See, crawlers have become clever enough that they can actually weed out sites with messy or superfluous code, thereby bumping them from their search rankings. SEO experts offer differing reasons for this, but if you ask us, everything seems to loop back to one simple rationale:disruptive code inhibits conversions. That's pretty much the opposite of everything we want to accomplish.

SEO Trends to look for in 2013

SEO Trends to look for in 2013

Social

Social has always played a role in SEO, but its influence on search engine page results is expected to increase in coming months. For a business, this means integrating social media into daily practices. Get “Likes” on Facebook. Go after “+1s” on Google. Stay active on Twitter and get those Retweets!  It also means creating content that people want to share, and that ties into the next SEO trend for 2013…

Quality

People don’t share cruddy content. Yes, everybody already knew that! But now the search engines are also “learning” to be more

discerning. Their algorithms are being adjusted to place higher-quality content above sites that employ archaic or spammy SEO techniques. This is good news for entrepreneurs…it means they can boost their results without having to learn complex SEO tactics.

Context

Search engines – Google in particular - now examine the context of keywords in your overall site. For example, let’s say you operate a site dedicated to donuts, and on this site, you feature one page about a different topic, like cosmetics. Google’s algorithm is getting savvy enough that it may skip over your donut site in favor of one that’s dedicated exclusively to cosmetics. It takes into account the content site-wide. The lesson is to be mindful of your site content and your message. Once you decide on your message, add the appropriate keywords across your site. Tie it all together in a way that makes sense.

Localization

It’s a big buzzword these days, and it gives SMBs like your clients a nice nudge above the competition! Localization’s taking over online marketing in general (check out some of the findings from the CMO Council to learn more), but it factors into SEO especially. Remember to use city- or neighborhood-centric keywords in blog posts, social updates and website content. Also advise your clients to make sure there’s a link to their site on Yelp and other business review sites.

Authority links

Okay, so links have always been valuable when it comes to SEO. But with all the emerging emphasis on context and content, people are beginning to realize how important outbound links are. We know inbound links are important to SEO – after all, that’s your traffic! But word on the SEO beat is that outbound links are starting to matter. So add links to sites with authority or credibility, like Wikipedia (see what we did there?).

We hope these up-and-coming SEO trends will help you and your clients prepare for 2013. And no matter what year it is, you can always count on Customer Care if you’ve got any questions!

Please don't do this if you want to succeed in growing your business with social media!

Have you ever been on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and other social media sites and you just want to scream because certain people are constantly throwing up all over you on why you should buy their products?  Post after post after post on "this is the greatest thing since frozen pizza."  Let me ask you a question.  How successful do you think that person's business is?  How many people have you met that do this consistently and successfully acquire and retain new customers?

Well I can tell you from experience that everyone I know that subscribes to this thought are both not successful and normally out of whatever business they're in in no time.  Why?  Quite simple.  It doesn't work!  Period!

There's an old saying that says "people love to buy but they hate to be sold."  How many times have you been to a store, a mall, car dealership, or whatever and you're constantly harassed by someone following you around saying "can I help you."  Now I know it's their job and most of them are on commission but come on folks.  We'll ask when we need help wouldn't you agree?

So why is it that people who detest salespeople who do that to us when we go out do that very same thing on the internet!  Is it because we think "well I'm not in front of them, Ron, so it's different."  Or "they don't have to read it."  Or "they can just ignore it."  Well you're right on all 3 counts.  I'm not in front of them.  And I don't have to read it and I can ignore it; but, what impression do I have of that person if I'm doing these 3 things.  Come on people!

Now, if I'm trying to earn your business wouldn't it be more powerful if I asked a question that prompted thought rather than pleading with someone to buy something.  Hmmmm.  

If I was selling cameras which method do you think gives me more credibility and a better chance at a new customer?  Method A:  "This great camera has all the features you want and I have the best price and all the other brands stink." Method B:  "What are the most important things you look for when purchasing a camera."

Who's being the salesperson and who's being the consultant?  Now let me say this.  I'm not saying never post something about a product or service.  It's perfectly fine to post something that says you have a great product, service or deal.

But remember what I said about people who love to buy but hate to be sold.  And the person that's informative about products/services and not trying to sell them are the ones who are rapidly growing and retaining new customers.   And the one who is constantly selling are the ones who we're blocking and unfriending.

So if you have a business and you're using social media to acquire new customers are you the one that people look forward to seeing their posts or are you the one that people are blocking?  Think about it.