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Local Is Local Is Local

Question: Have you gotten your business on Facebook, and put deals up on Google Places and FourSquare?

What’s FourSquare? Facebook – for a business? !!

The basic answer to “Why?” is…The world is becoming more socially connected. If your customers enjoy the service or food or clothing you sell, they’ll let their friends know. This can and DOES lead to more business for you.

FourSquare – Your customers can “check in” when they walk into your store or shop. Their friends see that update. (Think about this for a minute or two – it’s profoundly socially powerful.) You can automatically enable a discount the first time a customer does check in, or every 5th or 8th time they check in. (Wow, right? !!)

Facebook – Nope! It is not just like Friendster or Myspace. It’s grown up AMAZINGLY! They now have Business Pages. Business should NOT be done on a personal profile. (Meaning, I am http://facebook.com/tim.junck – and I need to keep any business talk low-key there. But build a “Fan Page”, which is meant for business use, and you’re off to the races.)

The power is – people can “like” your business page. Again, think about having 250 or 950 people that like your business when a new person arrives to view your page. And Facebook will tell them how many of THEIR friends like your page.

So if you visit a business page for a restaurant, and 17 of your friends like the page (implying that they like the business, the food, the experience) you are likely to not overthink the situation – you’ll be likely to go eat at that restaurant.

And do you know about Google Places? Your business probably exists there, whether you have visited their site or not. Again, what information is over there about your business? Add photos, encourage customers to fill out a review, and put a coupon on there and you’ll get much more positive results from your listing on that site.

(And do you know that Google loves to display Google Places listings that are “filled in” and kept current? It’s a quick way to appear HIGH on a google search results page.)

If you have a “local” business, what do you think about these topics? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Ping has a couple great photos up on one of those “stock photo” sites. She was all excited – she’d just sold a copy of one of her photos. (Well – the site sold it for her. She just uploaded her photos.) Check out Ping’s photos here.

After I’d looked at all two of her photos, she started telling me about a cousin in New Zealand who’s quite a photography buff. Cuz FoTog! I commented that all she really needs to do now is promote her photos like crazy. And she asked – how could she do that? After looking at her cousin’s photos, the conversation changed to what this BUSY person in New Zealand could do to promote his stuff.

Well, now. That’s an interesting question. Let me give 5 or 10 quick ideas…

• Put links to your photos into your Yahoo Messenger, Facebook, Direct Matches, gmail status, on your Facebook “what are you doing now”, mention it in twitter, etc.
• Send an email to 100 friends and ask them what they think of your photo. (Some of those people will send your photo link to other people…people you do NOT know.)
• Get on your Internet Radio Show and talk about your photos.
• Put up a lens about your photos on Squidoo.
• Create a snazzy music video of your photos. (I create these for people – it’s a paid service. Read on for Why It’s a GREAT Idea.)
• Place sexy photo video, with rocking music and YOUR photo URL up on YouTube.
• Put your YouTube video in a Video Squeeze Box and have it pop up on your Blog.
• Or maybe you NEED a blog. To have me set one up, go to my Contact Me page.
• Find 8 or 20 or 75 Facebook applications where you can have other people vote on your photos. Link them over to your photo collection.
• Use your photo in your profile, and join some forums or comment on some blogs.
• Use your photo in your profile when you join MyBlogLog and list your blog.

Well, those were my quick ideas. The one I hope some people will like is creating the Music Video out of photos so you have a jazzy, snazzy, sexy video to add to YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, your blog, your video squeeze popup box and so many other places.

Cheers,

Tim

The Helpful Geek

In short, a Geeky Marketer is someone with techie skills, or sales and marketing skills, that others do not possess. Like a CPA (certified public accountant) or an architect, Geeky Marketers have skills that other people can learn – but they often choose not to learn. Instead, people recognize the need to have a Geeky Marketer on their team, or to handle a particular piece of a project.

Can I Assist You?

Geeky Marketers spend a portion of their time doing work for others. As a sort of “Internet Mechanic” we can get your website “guts” sorted out, fit various pieces and plugins and programs together, and slap on a salespage, squeeze page, “buy now” buttons – and maybe a membership site to deliver a product or a webinar series to your new customers.

My Target Market – Is This You?

My target market have a handful of characteristics that set them apart from the rest of humanity. Here’s a few of those important characteristics.

1. They want to use a website in running a business. Maybe they want to have a website be their store, and to run a mostly virtual business.
2. They either don’t know how to… (build a website, collect electronic payments, automagically deliver purchases to their customers, send out follow-up messages of value and interest to those customers to drive further sales, etc.)… Or they choose not to do these things themselves.In other words, they know enough about their business so they can make more than $100 hourly “doing what they do”. And since I charge less than $100 hourly for my work, they save money paying me to do their “web mechanic” tasks.
3. Without some guidance they may fall victim to the marketing of training for Internet folk. There will always be people willing to train us to the level of a Master’s Degree in topics we should not delve into at all.
4. They speak English or Spanish comfortably, and find my American and Castellano workable.
5. They do want to delegate some aspects of their business, either for a specific “job” or on a long-term basis.
6. They have funds available to invest in this web business building exercise. Either they are putting up the funds themselves, or they have a successful business and can allocate funds from that business for these expenses.

Problems I Can Solve For My Target Audience

These things fall into two categories. One is, “Advising a client on what should be done, based on my learning and experience”. The second is, “Getting things done, based on my knowledge and experience.” I guess to add a third – avoiding the desire to do things perfectly, to learn everything and the resulting lack of accomplishment that can create.

(I’ve done that enough personally for both myself and my clients; I can share the tales with you and save you months or years of precious time.)

1. Get the basics set up – a blog or a website, a “contact us” form and follow-up emails, something configured for sale, and maybe a secure way to deliver an information product after a sale is made.
2. Drawing up some plans that “get the job done” without a lot of complications. Breaking down the “perfect outcome” into smaller pieces, then attacking each of those pieces to build the eventual solution is a very good way to proceed.
3. Coaching the customer through creating sales videos, pricing an offer, and making it available.
4. Keeping the focus on things that truly matter, versus getting caught up in “make-work”. (Build a List of Targets Prospects; Make Them An Offer; Deliver Their Purchase. Then improve on and repeat those processes that are working.)
5. Handling the background tasks. For example, distributing articles and videos; setting up teleseminars and webinars and notifying attendees, along with getting the recordings out to everyone after the event. Or making sure full website and database backups are taken regularly.
6. Finding and selecting solutions, organizing projects and managing them to successful completion. (More and more, I prefer to shortcut this and just get clients to use things that have worked for one of us previously. Learning time isn’t usually bring in revenue; we need to be marketing, NOT building systems all the time.)
7. For the advanced customer, I can take a set of tasks and get them done. This can include complex tasks like putting in an entire Shopping Cart with Membership and Affiliate system sales process, with upsells and email capture and affiliate payouts.

Drop Me  A Line

How does that sound to you? If it makes you pause, I’d suggest you contact me and suggest a time that we can get together on Skype or a telephone call to discuss your needs, and how I will be able to assist you.