Red Humpy

Thousands of small business owners are ready to try using the free online tools that they hear so much about, but are often overwhelmed with the plethora of possibilities. Over and over again, I read stories online about someone who is a bit nervous about dipping their foot into the ocean of social media, and even with my own clients, there are many who need extra assistance in getting started.

Here is a simple step to take to enter into the online world of social media: get found.

Before you can start communicating and interacting with your online community, your business needs to be able to get found. A well-optimized website can help you get found, but this is not enough any more.  Just as we would begin to interact with our new neighbors and join local community groups when we open a storefront in a new town, joining an online community means getting yourself out there and getting found. Thankfully, there are free tools on most of the major search engines’ local listing services to give businesses an online presence.

In an an article by Melih Oztalay posted on the Search Engine Journal, Oztalay explains the evolution of online local business listings.  ”Local business listings started with a basic business directory on the Internet going back over a decade,” he says. “The process has evolved and matured as social media and mobile devices allowed consumers to start using these interactive yellow pages to post their reviews as well as use them to locate a business, product or service in their local area.  There are over 60 local business listing websites on the Internet in five different categories.  They include the search engines, social communities, 411 websites (aka yellow page type websites), GPS websites and the age old business directory.”

In an article on Devcourt Media’s website, Mobile Marketing Watch reports that one-third of all google searches via the mobile web platform pertain to some aspect of the searcher’s local environment.

If I’ve convinced you that your first social media baby steps can be performed by making sure you can get found locally, here are some places to start.

Where to get found locally online:

• Google Places
  Although your business may already appear in Google’s Places from being found by the search engine, it is wise to take control of your own Google place listing by first searching to see if you are there, and if not, claim your business. During the signup process, you provide your business phone number and a Google computer will call and give you a pin number to enter to verify that you are the owner of the business. Once you are signed up, you can see the number of times your business was clicked on with real-time results on the Places page.

  Originally called Google’s “Local Business Center”, the Place Pages were renamed by Google  in April of 2010 to reflect the trend of people connecting with their local businesses and finding places online. According to the Google website, the Places page will provide services to businesses such as “helping a company verify and supplement business information including hours of operation, photos, videos, coupons and product information; provide a way to communicate with customers; and give businesses new insights that enable it to make smart decisions.”

  Google’s own statistics claim that one out of five searches on Google are related to a user’s location, and very often people are looking for local businesses. With such a high number of local searches taking place, claiming your business in Google Places is a smart move.

• Bing Local Listing Center
  Bing is Microsoft’s search engine and the site has their own local listing service. If you visit Bing.com/local, you can see a directory of the local businesses that have already signed up. It appears that Bing is even more strict than Google when it comes to making sure that it is only the correct business contact that is signing up for a local listing. Their extra verification measures ensure that someone else cannot create a local listing in your name and use it to drive traffic to their own business site.

  A June 14 article in the San Francisco Chronicle shows that after only one year, the Bing search engine is steadily gaining momentum. Bing is also reported to have used pricey product placement on television by paying for characters on the show “Gossip Girl” to say the words “Bing it,” to compete with the verb usage of the term “Google it.” With more people starting to use Bing, and with statistics that show it is popular with users 55 or older,  it is a good place to make sure your business is listed online. 

•  Yahoo! Local
  The main Yahoo! Local page has a nice directory listing, as well as a prominent page of reviews of local businesses. This is a good place to search for your own business first and see if there have been any reviews posted. At the bottom left of the main page, in tiny print, is a link to Add a Business. The Yahoo! Local form to add a business is the shortest and most concise of the three I have discussed and doesn’t seem to have any type of verification to confirm that the person creating the business listing is indeed the business owner.

  Echoing the trend of entering into local markets with social media, a May, 2010 article at PaidContent.org talks about Yahoo’s efforts to partner with companies that can help them extend their local reach, such as a possible partnership with Nokia to utilize smartphone owners, a search engine collaboration with Microsoft’s Bing, and even direct mail services to local ad markets.

  Lem Lloyd is Yahoo’s VP of chanel sales and explains, “All media companies are putting a focus on local ad spend, which still remains largely untapped.” Lloyd goes on to say that, “Local represents half of all the $250 billion marketing spend in the U.S., but only a fraction is online.

So there you have it – three places to get your business listed for free online. Once a listing is up and running, plan on checking in periodically to see if you are getting traffic or if customers have left reviews. Interacting and communicating with customers who took time to comment or rate your business is a good idea, especially if a review is negative. Business owners should make a practice of searching the web for mentions of their business to keep track of references and reviews. Google Alerts is a great tool for managing this. 

Creating an online presence begins with getting found, and getting found locally is a good place to start.

Have you had a positive or negative experience with having your business listed in a search engine directory? I’d like to hear about it! Please feel free to comment.

When I explain to a client the idea of location-based social media using a smartphone and ‘checking in’, the common question I get is “why?”

In an urban area, where smartphones are as common as car keys, the use of sites such as Foursquare and now Google’s SCVNGR are a great way to engage an audience and give them an incentive to visit your place of business. If you are a business owner and your target market carries a smartphone, the free advertising you get using these geolocation services can be worth the small amount of time it takes to set up your account. And even in rural towns , where smartphones are not as common, marketing to a niche audience can give you an edge over your competitors.

More than a game

Foursquare markets itself as a way for you and your friends to explore a city. Users check in at locations and earn points and special badges for discovering things at each location. People can leave tips (information, not money!)  in locations for others to find, such as the best spot to sit to hear the live music, or their favorite item on a menu. The manager of the Radio Shack in Pagosa Springs, Colorado offers a free movie rental once a month to Foursquare users who check in and mention it to a clerk.

From a business owner’s perspective, it took Justin Dermody, the manager at Radio Shack , less than 5 minutes to create the Foursquare business location and create an incentive for people to stop in the store. When the droves of tourists hit our town this summer, carrying their smart phones and starting to hear about this new social media tool, they will see the local Radio Shack listed as a location and are presented with an opportunity to visit the store for a freebie. From five minutes of social media to a customer in your door – that’s good advertising.

Foursquare users compete for the prestige of being mayor of a location by logging in the most check-ins, garnering badges and discounts at the locations that participate. Although the number of  Foursquare users is still small relative to the larger social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, thousands are signing up every day to participate in this new game/interaction.

A smartphone scavenger hunt!

SCVNGR, pronounced ‘scavenger’, is another geo-location social media site that was conceived by Princeton freshman Seth Priebatsch in 2008. Now the company’s Chief Executive Officer, Priebatsch’s idea was to create a product trail as a game that hovers between the physical and online world. Initially intended as a business model for enterprises, SCVNGR has recently closed deals with car maker Tesla, as well as Warner Bros., the New York Times and two major sports teams. In addition to going places, earning points and unlocking badges, SCVNGR players scan QR codes, take pictures and solve riddles. The social media game is another way for businesses to encourage interaction with their audience, with the intent of turning those players into customers.

According to their website, SCVNGR touts itself as “a game about doing challenges at places,” and with Google developers now at their side, the game might very well become a valuable social media tool for business looking to tap into their smartphone consumers. SCVNGR is currently only available on iPhone and Android phones, but is expecting service with Blackberry to come online soon.

Don’t scoff at free

For many business owners, hearing about social media games on smartphones will still be as strange as Twitter was when it was launched. But don’t underestimate the reach of these free tools that take little time to set up and are easy for consumers to use. With the number of smartphone users rising, and people seeking out great deals, the establishments that offer a 2 for 1 special for checking in on Foursquare will garner business from their competitors that are not in the game.

For more information about SCVNGR and Google, read the article by Laurie Sullivan at MediaPost Publications.

I’ve been reading a lot of blog articles about Foursquare lately, and I even setup an account to see how it works.  My little town of Pagosa Springs wasn’t listed anywhere on the site so I created a few local tips that I could think of so I could get my town listed.

When I visited the site 4 days later, there was a new business listed: the local cellular phone retail store. I have many business clients in town, so I added one of them as a venue to see how easy it was to set up. I listed my favorite fly fishing shop and a tip on how great the flies are that the piscatorial proprietor ties.

Adding a venue was a piece of cake and now Pagosa Springs has two listings on Foursquare. It will be interesting to check back in another month to see what new businesses have been added, or if any have been added at all. Foursquare users with a profile photo and the most check-ins at a specific venue can become mayor of that location. But people can’t become the mayor until they have a Foursquare business to become mayor of. Until more business set up shop on Foursquare, or more customers add venues themselves, not a lot can happen.

**UPDATE: A day after I wrote this post, I went to the local Radio Shack store where the manager told me he was the mayor of that location, as well as several other locations in Pagosa Springs. When I use Foursquare on my smart phone, many locations show up, but on my home computer, I have found no way to browse the venues in my area. Is this feature missing, or am I just not finding it? The only way I can find a venue is to know the business name and type it in search, and it has to have been added as a venue to have it appear in search results.

It will be interesting to see if the home computer version of Foursquare will add more features to use before  I leave my house, rather than just offer tips and a list of locations on my smartphone. But as it stand now, it seems that Foursquare is mainly aimed as a tool for smartphone users who use it while they are out and about, doing check-ins and finding tips at each venue that can lead to discounts. I did find out that I can get a free video once a month when I check in at Radio Shack, so as a customer, using it has already paid off.

All hype, or the start of the next big thing?

A recent article by Caroline McCarthy discusses the hype surrounding Foursquare’s location-based social media tool. She reminds all of us about the  letdown that many users of  Second Life (a virtual world with virtual characters but real advertising and real money) encountered when it failed to meet expectations of hype. Her article also raises an issue about the niche that Foursquare has by being mainly aimed at urban residents who own smartphones and want to connect with other people in their area.

But since I just wrote a post about the importance of businesses finding a niche to be successful, this Foursquare phenomenon (or lack thereof) deserves a closer look. In a non-urban area, such as the town of Pagosa Springs, Colorado, what can a business do with Foursquare?

Here are some ideas that I would encourage a business to try:

1. First, join Foursquare and add your business as a venue. It’s free!
2. Post a sign near the counter that lets customers know you are using Foursquare.
3. Offer specials to people who show you that they checked in with Foursquare on their phone. The specials could be discounts, free stuff, drawing entries, etc.
4. Advertise your Foursquare discounts in the store or on your print ads: “Free coffee for every 6 Foursquare check ins”
5. Provide a handout with your name on it that explains what Foursquare is and how your customers can get involved and win prizes.
6. For your venue Mayors, offer some kind of special service – like free coffee, buy one get one free specials, etc.
7. Arrange a check-in party or gathering to see how many Foursquare users you can get to check-in at one time. If you meet your goal, everyone involved gets prizes or coupons.

Okay, some of these ideas may be cheesy and have been done in many other ways, but Foursquare is free and if you spend a little time on promotion, your customers will be the ones doing a lot of promotion in return. According to Foursquare’s business site, the company “aims to encourage people to explore their neighborhoods and then reward people for doing so.” The more people that your business can encourage to use Foursquare, the more your network is communicating and interacting, which is what social media is all about. Get creative and see who decides to try it.

More fun than hopscotch?

Whether the Foursquare idea of making a game out of location-based social media will end up catching on is yet to be determined. In a small rural town, maybe less than half of your customers even own a smart phone. But as with the other social media tools available, it is free except for your time. Try experimenting to see what works. If you own a business where your customers spend time waiting for a service, for an appointment, or for their food to arrive, you can encourage interaction by piquing their interest about Foursquare and having them check-in.

Don’t forget that sometimes getting in on the ground floor can help bring attention to your business. With all the internet buzz surrounding Foursquare, there are many people viewing the site to check it out. They can poke around a location, see your business listed and know that you are involved and promoting specials for Foursquare users. If there are a 20 restaurants in your area to choose from and only 5 are listed on Foursquare and sound exciting, chances are that one of them just gained another customer. 

Foursquare is free, easy to use, and leaves room for creative freedom. Have some fun and try a promotion for your business. I’d love to hear about the response you get.

 First, a disclaimer: I am not a soccer mom. I am, however, a track mom, a cross-country mom, a Daisy mom, etc. None of my three kids play soccer, but I am that mom that shows up on field trips and attends numerous after-school and weekend events that go along with having school-age kids.

That being said, I finally decided to jump into the world of smart phones earlier this year. I am the type who, after lengthy research, chooses a phone that I keep for years. (I  had two cell phones in the last 5 years.) When my two year contract is up, I am inundated with offers to upgrade and sent phenomenal deals on a new phone. What usually convinces me to upgrade is the need for a new battery! After almost three years with the same phone, the battery is the weak point and needs to be charged every evening. But when I price a decent battery (NOT a cheap aftermarket one that gets hot and doesn’t last) the battery alone is more than the offer of a brand new phone with cutting-edge technology.

But what exactly IS this cutting edge technology, why do I need it, and why should I consider paying an extra $30 per month to use these new Smart Phone services?

In 2009, my sister in Denver bought the iPhone. It was sleek and pretty and did a lot, but she basically used it for making calls and getting on the internet once in a while. Where I live, an AT&T contract is unavailable and if you go out of the area to purchase one, the service is spotty. When I saw advertisements for the new Android operating system that was released late last year, I was excited. I drooled for the Motorola Droid because having an actual keyboard, rather than a touch screen one, was important to me. I loved my Samsung SCH-U740 and its unique design that flipped open like a normal phone and also horizontally to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard.

But my excitement over the Motorola Droid was short-lived when I got to play with a friend’s and I realized it was just too big and bulky for my little purse. It was heavy – a ‘man phone’ I call it, but it had a lot of great features that I knew were practical for me. For instance: Google Sky. I am an amateur astronomer and enjoy learning about the constellations, how they move in the sky, where the planets are, and being able to identify what it is I’m looking at. I live in the mountains and the skies are dark, really dark, and there are a lot of stars to look at. With the Google Sky app, you can hold the phone up to a portion of the sky that you are looking at and the device uses your GPS coordinates and knows which direction you are holding the phone, revealing a detailed and accurate depiction of the night sky right in front of your eyes. Now that I have had it for a while, I use it to test myself. Is that Cassiopeia? Is that bright star really a planet? Is it Mars?

Another app that I was shown at the Verizon store was a barcode scanner. The rep said he doesn’t show it much to the customers in the retail electronics part of the store because it is a powerful shopper’s tool. Basically, you use the phone’s camera and the barcode app to scan a product barcode. Immediately, you are connected to the internet with a list of product reviews and prices so you become a savvy shopper. Pretty cool, but I haven’t used it yet.

I had an advantage when picking out my smartphone because I tutor clients with their electronic devices. I like electronics and technology and am good at figuring things out. I was able to help clients set up iPhones, Blackberries of different models, LG’s, Samsungs and other phones that had touch screens. Some were frustrating, some were intuitive, but none was perfect.

A rep at another Verizon store told me about the Droid Eris, made by a company called HTC. I hadn’t heard of the phone, but was interested because it had the Android operating system on it. The first thing that appealed to me was the size and weight. It is more of a ‘girl phone’ than the Motorola Droid. The touch screen is the best I have tried, and having seven screens (the Motorola Droid has just 3) that I can customize with my apps to make them accessible is one of the best parts of the phone.

There is a Market where I can download from thousands of free apps, and the better ones that are very useful are free. There are GPS programs that act like a pedometer when I go on walks and hikes and record my speed and distance, I can listen to Pandora internet radio in my car via a tape player adapter and customize my stations, which saves me from subscribing to XM satellite radio, and I can use Google Maps to get exact directions to my location via text or map directions. When I was visiting San Diego last month, I needed (yes, NEEDED) to find an In-N-Out location. I loaded the browser on my Eris, went to the In-N-Out page and pulled up their map of locations, found an address to type into Google Maps, and instantly I had directions to where I wanted to go. After a grilled cheese, fresh cut fries and delicious chocolate shake, the kids were as happy as I was!

One of my most used features is the Visual Voice mail that Verizon offers.  (See my Voice Mail Made Easier post.) Having the ability to see my voice mail organized by caller and being able to play them in any order I want, while pausing and skipping to any part of the message, is a huge timesaver and avoids the dread I used to feel when having to check a dozen messages after a busy afternoon.

And one final thought: when I was still on the fence about spending the extra money each month to have the smartphone, a main reason was because I work online all day and didn’t want to get a device to keep me on the internet more. But one of my colleagues told me that her Blackberry saved her computer time because she could accomplish many tasks like checking and replying to emails or looking something up without gettting lost in all the other distractions that occur when you get on your computer.

She was right, and now I keep my laptop closed much more because I can simply check my Eris to see if my client okayed a design and know I can get back to them during business hours. Sweet.

This mom is very happy with her smartphone purchase. And the best part is – it was free! (Free after rebate, certain restrictions apply. Void where prohibited…)

There are some days that I get so many voice mail messages that my head spins. By 10 a.m., I will have eight messages. In between clients, I check the messages and return phone calls, and during that time I will have five more messages. By the end of the day, I’ll have another half dozen notifications and just turn off my phone and pretend they’re not there.

My business involves meeting with clients and setting up computer systems, troubleshooting software issues, tutoring a client on how to use a new program, or consulting with a business owner on their website and social media. Fielding phone calls is a part of my job, but I take no pleasure is trying to keep up with the messages on busy days.

I tried using the Visual Voice Mail that came installed on my Droid Eris smart phone through Verizon, and I loved the features. When a message was received, I could pull up a list of calls along with their caller ID’s. I could play an individual message in any order I received, which comes in handy when I want to hear a message from an important client with a current project and not have to listen through the other chit chat messages.

The $2.99 per month that Verizon charges for the service is well worth it. It integrates nicely into my phone and the layout and ease of use gets top marks. The negative, though, was that the volume of the voice messages was excessively quiet. No matter how high I turned up every volume setting I could find, the volume of the message was almost too hard to hear. On speakerphone, it was even worse.

I poked around message boards and found a few other recent posts from users who were having the same issue, but there didn’t seem to be any solutions. Several posts, however, mentioned a similar service that was offered free through YouMail. I was hesitant to use a free service, but there were many mentions of the site from users who had good results and I decided to give it a try.

The service works in much the same way as Verizon’s Visual Voice Mail, but instead of working with the system voicemail, unanswered calls are forwarded to a number that allows YouMail to field the calls. If I’m at my computer, I can go to my YouMail page, see who has called, and play my messages online.  And just as on Verizon’s service, users can also set up custom greetings for each caller.

The YouMail interface on my Eris isn’t as sleek as the Verizon program, and one of the things that bugs me is that I have to press Menu and then delete to remove a message. With Visual Voice Mail, there was a trash can icon that I could click to do this. Not a big deal, and maybe it will be added in a future version.

All in all, I’m happpy with the free YouMail program. I will use it for a few more weeks before I cancel my Visual Voice Mail subscription with Verizon. The biggest benefit of having my messages presented to me as a list is that I no longer have to sit through messages to get to the ones I want. I control my messages and can even archive or email any voice mail for future use. It has saved me a lot of headaches and I no longer dread it when I have a dozen voice mails to check.