Yellow Dog Consulting

Sales & Marketing Consulting for solo-preneurs.

How Do You Get Found Online?

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IMG_2820Lately as I’ve been talking to clients, I’ve seen an increased request to get found online. But where do you start? Yes you can hire SEO firms to work with you on this, and depending on what you do that might be a great idea. But if you’re a small business owner like me, it may not be in the budget. So where do you start? Here’s what I suggest to my clients:

  1. Setup Your Google Business Page – First things first, start with the big guns. Make sure to completely fill out your profile and add photos and your logo! I also have my blog posts automatically posted to my page so that it’s regularly updated. That way people know I’m alive and kicking, and by people, I mean the Google bots.
  2. Setup Bing Places – Why? Because we live in the Northwest and people actually use Bing. Bing Places is great because you can set it up and forget about it.
  3. Depending on your industry I recommend a few other options: Yelp, Angie’s List, and Houzz are three of the most popular.

There’s a ton or sites out there you can choose from but making sure that the main places that people are finding you are claimed and your profiles are completely filled out is the key. Here’s three resources that I use and recommend for clients:

  1. Moz Local – this website tells you all the spots you’re found online and what’s missing.
  2. Google Analytics – if you have your analytics setup then you can see each month where your traffic is coming from. If I see a new referral source to my site I make sure that my profile is filled out on that site to increase my chance of being found.
  3. Odd Dog Media – my friends over at Odd Dog Media are a great web development and local SEO firm. If you need a company, they’re it. But if you don’t have the budget, they wrote up this awesome and simple guide to Local SEO.

Questions? That’s what I’m here for!

Your 5 Minute Social Media Challenge

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Social-media-stormLast week I was meeting with a non-profit I’ve done some work with. I had tweeted about meeting with them and someone responded to the tweet that the organization looked cool. They are. And I asked who’s managing the social media. They have been growing pretty quickly and the responsibilities have shifted. Which is fine! The development person said that it’s a goal to ramp it up in Q3. which is a GREAT plan. But in the mean time – I gave them a challenge:

5 Minutes a Day on Social Media.

I’m not asking you to jump on and interact but here’s what I want you to do:

  1. Identify all your business social media accounts and make sure you have the login info
  2. Schedule 5 minutes a day to check each account
  3. Respond, retweet, repost, like people who are talking about you, or to you. Make sure you’re engaging with those who are engaging with you. (caveat: beware of spammers – we can have that conversation if you’re not sure)

What you DON’T want is to have someone talking crap about your organization and you’re not checking it to see what’s gone on. I also encouraged the development person to have “mentions” sent as an email to their account. This saves you from having to go in either.

My first suggestion with social media is to only setup what you WANT and feel you can and should use for your business. What makes sense to you, where is your target marketing hanging out online, etc. My second suggestion is, if you’ve already signed up and are overwhelmed so haven’t done anything, first things first, jump online and make sure you are paying attention to who’s talking to you. Once you have that routine in place, we’ll talk about getting you active online again.

What do you think? Is this manageable? Does is stress you out? You can do it while you’re waiting to pick up your kid from school, or while you’re waiting for your barista to make your latte, or while getting ready for work (teeth brushing leaves one free hand for posting…)