A couple of weeks ago I referenced David Mihm’s top 20 most important factors for making your local listing work. I talked about how proper category placement could boost your business listing’s presence, number of clicks to your website, product purchases and so forth. With the third most important factor out of the way, I figured I would leap over the second and go straight for the top dog of them all: Claim Your Local Listing. And I’m not just talking about Google, Yahoo and Bing. I’m talking about the syndicated online directories such as CitySearch, Info USA, Localeze, etc.

Don’t be fooled by the fact that some of these directories seem a little barren with how much information you’re allowed to add. Sites like Info USA act as a data pool for other online directories to fish out phone numbers, addresses and the actual business name itself. So then what happens if an old phone number or address hasn’t been updated? The other directories will simply hold those numbers until they’re changed, and quite frankly, that’s just not going to end well. Get in there immediately and change your old habits before customers think you’ve gone out of business!

Okay, now that you’ve done that, it’s time to search for that pretty little icon: “Are You The Business Owner?” Even if you update your listing on Yellow Pages with new products, more phone numbers and other cool tidbits of info, you still have a 30 day grace period before they go live. During that time, you could be vulnerable to competitors jumping in and dropping misleading data bombs. They could simply create a bundle of nearly identical listings that have a few changes here or there to the point your customers would have no idea which one’s relevant.

So where’s the love? It’s right in front of you. Or maybe it’s perched up in the right hand corner of the listing. Or maybe some directories like to make you jump through a couple hoops before you get there. Wherever it is, just know that a little security lies inside that simple claim. Once you enter that realm, you wait for that calming robot voice to give you a PIN number, tell you everything’s going to be just fine, and before you know it, the listing’s officially in your hands.

And now that it’s there, how does your listing stay on top? Well, with a little SEO touch, a few photos and other enhancing tools, your page can come off smelling like authenticated roses just waiting to be touched.

We are consumers, always buying and selling something. Lately, I have participated in a number of webinars and sadly the format is often the same — here’s a small piece of information and my gigantic sales pitch. Now get out your credit cards, folks.

I’m not that kind of buyer and I put a great deal of effort into not being that kind of salesperson. I need a more personal approach, the seller needs to know at least a little bit about me and/or my business and how I might benefit from their offering. But more than that, I need them to share their knowledge with me. Give me some insight, give me something that actually helps me to make an educated decision for myself. I attended your webinar because I had an interest in your topic/product/whatever. I was there to learn.

Let’s say you are a company that sells roller skates. You know that roller derby has become really popular over the last several years and you want to sell directly to teams. You decide to host a webinar for rookie skaters that teaches them about proper skate maintenance. The webinar reviews the parts of a skate, discusses how to clean your wheels and bearings and general information that is completely foreign to new skaters, because frankly they are just trying to not get knocked down. What the webinar doesn’t do is hit them over the head with buying your skates, your products. You are teaching them how to care for skates, period, doesn’t matter what type of skates. During my brief foray into derby there was a company called Sin City Skates that did a nice job of providing education and supporting our league. We bought from them regularly.

Sharing your knowledge doesn’t make you vulnerable as a company, it makes you stronger.

So, what do you have to teach your customer?

Squidoo! Before you click off thinking you’ve been duped into a bogus sushi search, let me crazily rant for a bit about the wonders of having your small business marketing behind the reigns of a Squidoo page, or to be exact, a Lens. With Squidoo skyrocketing onto the social media scene, there are plenty of reasons to join the ranks.

Not only is Squidoo an extremely streamlined, user-friendly model, it’s on par with having the ultimate Facebook fan page minus the “Which Sesame Street Character Are You” quiz. Oh, and there’s the whole sales-worthy aspect tied into your Lens. With that, your small business marketing has yet another avenue to cross over to. Not only can you build your online profile up, but your business interests have more exposure through blogs, photos and quality links to help drive traffic to your actual website. And with so much creative freedom afforded to any Lens, you can make the page as big or bland as you see fit.

So, with the basic gist of a Lens down, let’s talk about how to better update your page once it’s live and in color. Here are a few examples your small business marketing scheme could employ to keep the end goal fresh and engaging.

1. List-O-Rama: Let’s say you sell a variety of teas. You could create a bunch of “Top Ten” list covering many topics. For instance, a “Top Ten Reasons Tea Promotes a Healthy Diet” list could spark curiosity and make readers want more.
2. Links, links, and more links: From one Lens to another, links bring in more readers.
3. Efficient Keywords: Filling your Lens with important keyword tails can produce traffic to your Squidoo page and, if geo-targeted, can help increase page ranks with not just the search engines, but Squidoo as well.
4. Up-to-Date Blogging: Because sharing is caring. Write a blog about any new changes to your business. Write about how you came up for the name of your company. Better yet, mix it up every now and then by writing about something other than your business. Write about why Coco Puffs cereal is better than Coco Pebbles. However you do it, bring a fresh voice to your Lens.

There you have it. And hey, if a certain holiday rolls around, you can even play around with the borders. Being in the spirit of things, here’s a festive example. There are many more interesting Squidoo tools to play around with…it’s just a matter of you getting there first.

My Thoughts on 2010 Design Colors: Don’t be afraid of it. We ran through the “Green” era with large amounts of earth tones and soft warm colors. Mainly, following the trend of “Goin’ Green” that came upon us is still running strong; it’s just that the overall design colors need to be refreshed. Now that the “New Fad Smell” is fading away, you no longer have to brand yourself with Mother Nature’s color pallet to be considered a green and environmentally-aware company. Now, there’s a void left by the burnt-out earth tones that have bombarded people. Try making a change by using bold design colors to help bring a level of calm and happiness.

(Your Email/Customer Relationship, that is.)

When you’re creating your company’s email campaigns, it’s crucial that your branding stays consistent. Your customers will immediately recognize your company and what you stand for when you incorporate your logo, colors, and typefaces throughout your email campaigns, which will allow them to jump to the meat of the message.

As with anything that’s repetitive though, it’s easy to get boring. An example? Not to point fingers, but I signed up last month for the retail store Ann Taylor’s newsletters, and I’m already deleting them from my inbox without opening. I harbor no grudge; it’s just that I know what I’ll see when I open the email, and they give away everything in their subject line. Below are three emails where the company uses the exact same layout (one large picture with some text) – there’s no fire! My relationship with Taylor’s emails has fizzled like a bad marriage, and I’m looking elsewhere for my eye candy.

So how do you add the spunk back to your emails? Using multiple templates is a great way to spice up your campaigns, because it’ll switch things up. Try one large picture one week, and then add multiple columns the next. Use different fonts, and at least change the color or weight occasionally. It’s easy to have fun when you create your emails, and your newly-found energy for the campaigns will transfer to your customers. They will appreciate the effort, and your relationship will regain that old spark.

Welcome to the first installment of this Wordpress How To series.

So why would you choose Wordpress as content management system? Because it’s one of the most versatile and supported open source content management systems available today.

Wordpress traces its history to 2003 as a replacement for a now defunct blogging platform know as b2. So I know what your thinking, “Blogging platform? I don’t want a blog, I want a website to tell people about my business. I also want a storefront to sell items.” See I told you I knew what you were thinking. Bear with me.

Although the roots of Wordpress are founded in a blogging platform (and it still is the best platform for blogging out there) it’s also evolved into so much more. The modern Wordpress is a full fledged site management system with a list of over 8,488 plugins available to help you add functionality to your site. And if for some reason you can’t find the exact functionality you want, Wordpress has a built in API so any one of a large stable of independent developers can build that functionality for you.

“But I know what a Wordpress site looks like, and they look like blogs.” Are you sure? Does this look like a Wordpress site to you? How about this one? Did you notice each one also had ecommerce functionality built in? Certainly a Wordpress site can look like a blog, it can also look like a store, or a landing page, or any other type of site you can think of.

This is accomplished by themes. You can think of a theme as what the world sees when they visit your website. The window to your content. Their are theme showcases for you to browse, and several theme repositories with a nice selection of premade selections for you. Oh, and a Wordpress developer can make a theme from any design your own designer may come up with.

Need more convincing? Ask and you shall receive. Leave a comment and I’ll be sure to answer any question you may have.

Join us next week for part II: How To Install Wordpress.

I moved into a new neighborhood recently and am still getting used to all the noises outside my window. There is a train in the distance, a woman laughing loudly to a mans muffled joke and the buzz of a helicopter flying a bit too close. It’s funny how you can become used to these things and they almost become part of being home. I find that I often can’t sleep without those sounds when I’m away.

It’s noisy out there and just as noisy in here as I sit down to write a blog, scan Twitter and check out Facebook and Flickr. But again, I’m used to the noise. I expect it.

There was an article on TechCrunch recently comparing the current online social sphere to the noise and spam that was once the search landscape. “The online social landscape today sort of feels to me like search did in 1999. It’s a mess, but we don’t complain much about it because we don’t know there’s a better way.”

I don’t know about you, but I need a better way. I am mentally exhausted after weeding through all that content, spread across so many sites, to find those few pieces of information that are actually useful and add some value to my day.

So, what do we do?

How do you sift through the noise to find good information and make connections?

Still wondering why your local search page may be down on its luck? After reading a diagnostic chart surveying the successful factors for a page, there are plenty of ways to get back on your feet. Even though a few of them can seem straightforward, there’s a reason why they are at the top…some businesses keep missing those marks. For the time being, let’s focus on the 3rd most important factor: properly putting your business in the right category.

To better understand this, I need to go to Fantasy Island in search of a business starting from square one. How about…pets. Better yet, Pet Babysitters, Inc.! You’re an upstart company looking to corner the local pet-sitting market.

Now let’s get going to your first order of business: Google Local Listing Center. First and foremost, if you haven’t listed with Google, stop what you’re doing immediately and get your business on there! That’s one gigantic claim to leave dangling in the wind.

With that locked down, your next course of action is to scroll down to the categories. With a limit of 5 to choose from, you must carefully go through and choose the best possible categories for your business to show up in. Type as many words as you can to associate anything with pets, pet products, grooming services, etc. Depending on the variety of services your business possesses, being a pet babysitter can be narrowed into: “Dog Day Care”, “Pet Sitter”, “Dog Sitter”, “Pet Supply Store” and “Pet Groomer”. There are a few more that could be tagged along with it, but these are by far your strongest.

And while we’re at it, let’s go to the wonderful world of misguided pages! Here are a couple dreadful mistakes:

1. One and Done: Having one category or none at all is akin to putting blinders on. Simple as that.
2. Upon Further Review: You don’t look over your categories. For example, you were about to select “Dog Day Care” and instead you select the one above it, “Cremation Services”. Oops.

All in all, these errors can simply be avoided with a watchful eye. Making them as detailed as possible can ratchet up the percentage of clicks to your website. Rather than “just enough”, focus your thoughts on “not enough” and your doorbell may thank you for it later.

I recently came across a web application called Proposable that is focused on making the sales proposal process simple and trackable. We really like things that are simple and trackable ’round here so I thought I would check it out.

The application is geared towards the emailed proposal and is divided into three key components: creating the proposal, delivery, and analyzing feedback and analytics. The goal is to turn the standard email ‘this what we can do and what it will cost’ proposal into actionable data in real time.

The very simple and easy to use dashboard allows me to create fully branded, dynamic proposals that can even include video. Very cool. Templates are also available to plug and send as well, if you prefer.

After the proposal is created, the application will even help you send it off. The proposal is emailed and can be opened on the potential clients end and is viewed inside Proposable. This maintains all the time and effort you put into making it pretty and dynamic and avoids any mail server distortion or garbling. Not only can the recipient review your proposal, but they can also comment on it allowing for direct feedback. You are then able to communicate within the proposal back and forth. Now, for me I don’t know that I would address client questions or concerns this way, but it’s a great “safe” way for clients to pose questions and/or concerns that you might not hear face to face.

The goal of the application is speeder turn around with the end result being better, faster feedback from clients and hopefully, more sales.

Additionally, Proposable allows you to view the analytics on your proposals, including when it was opened, the total views and average time on page. You can even get notifications of these actions if you are so inclined. (Yeah, I admit I wanted to know when it was opened.)

So, overall, Proposable is an easy to use, paid-web application that could be really useful for the small business sales force. Try it out and share your thoughts.

* My little intro disclaimer:
Design is completely subjective and different industries have different needs based on their page architecture, level of involvement and amount of content. For example, a Portfolio site can be a little “crazier” because viewers have a higher level of involvement and will typically stay intrigued long enough to figure out the clever nuances. However, that’s not always the case. A recipe site, for example, needs to quickly deliver and satisfy the viewers intentions or lose them to another site that may have what they are looking for… So when I talk design trends its in a broad direction I feel 2010 will bring to website and design.

1. Large Headers

This is in many ways bringing back the dreaded splash page, which is an easy NO for websites today. But at least large headers server two purposes: one’s to inform and the other’s to capture a viewers attention easily without over-powering them. Content can be scary… Keep the length of normal content text less than 3 inches (it can be hard on the web because different resolutions will make text larger or smaller). text will tend to frighten people because they/we/I don’t like to read–we want info now and don’t want to work for it! As viewers land on your home page you don’t want to push them away, but rather keep them and hopefully convert them to a client in some fashion. These larger headers push the bulk of frightening text down on the page to make sure they know what you do. And while these large headers succeed in creating a soothing landing pad, they also make room for a nice tag line; letting them know they’re hot on the trail to finding an answer.

More to come >>>