SoLoMo

by Anthony Burke

How to Promote Your Local Biz Using Social, Local and Mobile in Three Easy Steps

Why SoLoMo?• We are being digitised at a rapid pace

Why SoLoMo?• And so are local businesses…

SoLoMo Facts

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SoLoMo Facts

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SoLoMo Facts

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Go Local

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Begin with a Website - Your website is the destination not the journey!

First thing to do is to create a website for your local biz, which you will later use to:

1. Provide a URL when registering in online directories;2. Tie it to your social media accounts;3. Create a Google Places and a Bing Local listing;4. Provide for potential scaling of your small business in the future.

For unambiguous identification purposes include a crawlable company name – address – phone number somewhere on your website (for example, in the footer), so that it can be correctly associated with your other business profiles in the future.

Go Local & Befriend Local Data Providers

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Develop a presence on location-based networks like Foursquare

But, before you do it, you have to make sure they can associate your business name with an address and a phone number (what we refer to as NAP).

Get listed in major local business directories.

These are pretty much a must because they provide local business data for Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Google Places, Siri and a number of other services you can use to expose your local biz to online audiences.

It is important to start with these directories first since they are the bottom line.

Go Social

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Then create Facebook,Twitter, Pinterest, Foursquare and Google+ pages for your business

Now, promoting your business in these online venues is a whole different story. To get followers, you can offer points to your customers, encourage them to stay updated on deals and specials, and what not – just use your imagination.

To facilitate the act of following you on social networks, use QR codes so that your customers can just scan them and connect with you on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Search is now more social (Rockmelt, Bing and Google)

Go Mobile

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Go Mobile

SoLoMo - Remember

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Uniform NAP - Remember to provide the same name/address/phone number you’ve been providing for your other virtual venues this whole time.

Keywords - While creating your listings, use your niche keywords in the Description field, choose appropriate categories. It’s also important to use keywords in the title of the website associated with your business and somewhere in your webpage copy/ image alt text.

Citations,Citations & CitationsThe more directory listings and various mentions from across the Web that can be associated with your business, the higher it will show up in Google’s local search results.

Reviews and Ratings - The more reviews & ratings your business gets, the better it performs on Google Places. Google also estimates the general sentiment in those reviews and ratings, and takes it into account. I wouldn’t worry about that rankings-wise, but I would worry about it reputation-wise. Crappy reviews can turn potential customers off your biz.

Negative Comments – Work out and have a plan on how to deal with them

Tablet is the New PC

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Mo – Mobile headlines

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Any Remaining Questions?