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Don’t Forget to Track and Save Your Reviews

August 7, 2013 by Carmen Rane Hudson

There’s a big problem with Google reviews. They disappear.

Sometimes, they disappear even if you’re doing everything right. And sometimes Google does strange things with them, like the review pop-up thing that they seem to be experimenting with right now.

But reviews are an asset. That means you need to have some system in place that allows you to hang on to them.

So how do you avoid trusting the fate of your reviews to Google? You’re going to need a plan.

Sign Up for Alerts

You need to be notified as soon as someone leaves a review, because you need to give yourself a shot at seeing it before it disappears.

Once I’d have told you to sign up for Google Alerts. But, of course, that service is going away. Talkwalker Alerts appears to be a viable alternative.

Once you’ve spotted a new review you should save a copy of it before anything can happen to it. Keep the copy in a folder on your computer, and it’s there if you need it.

Now You can Use Lost Reviews

Now, when a review disappears, you have some recourse. You can either use the review to appeal Google’s decision or you can post it on your own website as a testimonial.

You’ll want to make sure the review is really gone without recourse before you choose the latter course of action. Otherwise you’re turning the review into duplicate content, which means Google won’t restore it. But if you’ve tried everything you can think of and the review is not coming back you might as well not let that bit of social proof go to waste.

As a point of customer service it might not be a bad idea to call that customer if you know who he is, saying, “Thanks so much for leaving us such great feedback. Listen, Google can be really aggressive about reviews, and for whatever reason they deleted yours. But I saved a copy. May I use it on my website instead?” This also lets customers know where to go looking for their reviews so that they don’t feel like you did something to get rid of it (which they sometimes do, when they see that Google has “eaten” their review).

There’s another reason for doing this as well. How will you know if a review disappears if you don’t have some record of the reviews that you have received?

This post in the Catalyst E-Local Marketing forum covered tricks for locating lost Google reviews. And when the post first came out it worked.

It may still work, but Google changes all the time. And I, at least, could not make it work when I tried it again very recently. This is what gave me the notion that saving your own reviews was probably a little bit more reliable.

I have also read about reviews that just disappeared. As in, Google lost them, for no particular reason whatsoever.

To me, that’s an argument for taking some sort of control over those reviews the moment that you get them. Why waste the social proof?

One Veterinarian’s Approach to Successful Email Marketing

August 5, 2013 by Carmen Rane Hudson

On the Internet, a lot of the advice about email marketing is aimed at people who are engaged in e-commerce. A high percentage of those people are selling digital products that can be sold to anyone in the world. And a large percentage of those digital products revolve around Internet marketing.

That means a lot of the strategies that are getting taught simply don’t work well for local small business owners. Fortunately, there are good examples out there which will help you decide how to craft your own successful email marketing campaign without offering discounts or sales every month.

Cross Veterinary Clinic in Grand Blanc, MI provides one such example.

How They Collect Addresses

Cross simply asks for e-mail addresses when you fill out your pet’s registration form.

Now, whether or not this is a good practice for building your e-mail list depends upon how the email is used. If they were sending out a monthly newsletter, for example, it would have been better to use the standard “sign-up form, double opt-in” technique that many people use.

But that’s not what they’re doing, as you’ll soon see.

Personalized to the Nth Degree

You see, I only hear from Cross at very specific times.

At each pet’s birthday. They address each of my cats by name and remind me that it might be a good time for an annual check-up.
To confirm appointments.
To remind me that it’s time for certain immunizations.

There was a link to opt out of receiving emails in every email, but I never saw the need to click it.

Their strategy meant that I only heard from them once or twice a year, but that little bit of contact was enough to keep me engaged with them and loyal to them until I moved too far away to use them any longer.

And, as you can see, I have good memories about them even now.

Takeaways for Your Business

Of course, the Cross Veterinary model may not be perfect for your business. Every business is different, and you have make sure customers are okay with the way that you are using their email address.

But there are still some “universal” takeaways.

You don’t have to talk to customers every week to make your email marketing successful.
Being super-personal works.
Mass e-mails, like monthly newsletters, could make less of an impact than one good personal e-mail.
You don’t have to give up on automation in order to be personal. I’m sure once the pet’s name and birthday were entered into the computer an auto-responder took care of the rest.
Don’t hit “send” unless you know the e-mail is really relevant to your customer.

How does your small business use e-mail marketing? Let me know in the comments below!

Blog Round-Up for the Week of July 29, 2013

August 2, 2013 by Carmen Rane Hudson

This week I’ve got 8 posts to share with you, and they sort of cover a broad range of topics.

I’m not really presenting them in any particular order other than “the order they’re on in my notebook!” So please don’t read anything into that.

1. 4 Reasons Why You Might Not Need a Content Marketing Plan

A nice post from over at the Content Marketing Institute. There are actually some businesses that shouldn’t blog.

Odds that your business is one of them? Close to pretty much zero. The post will help you decide which category your business is in, however.

2. Why Relying on Organic Traffic Alone is a Risky Business

This one is from the Search Engine Journal. Of course SEO is important, but let’s face it, Google changes its mind a lot.

So having a marketing mix is a very, very good idea. The post outlines several different avenues that you can try.

3. Checklist for Your Business Website

This one is from the Small Business Survival blog. Make sure your website isn’t missing any of this vital information! These are simple, basic items, but people do forget.

4. 10 Surprising Social Media Statistics That Might Make You Rethink Your Social Strategy

This is some useful demographic information about who is using social media and why. Learning about it might help you refine your strategy, especially if you are marketing to an older audience. You might be surprised by what you see!

5. 5 Signs That You are Over-Selling on Social Media

This one is from Hashtags.org. Of course you’re on Social Media because you are hoping to get customers. It’s just dreadfully easy to get it wrong, to go overboard, or to over-sell. This article will help you avoid some important pitfalls.

6. Comparison Between Manual Citation Building and Yext

If you are thinking about trying to take some shortcuts on your citation building then read this post first.

Truthfully, you should probably never rely on an automated service to do anything for you on the Internet. It usually winds up causing more problems than it solves.

7. Hashtags: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

This one is from Rival IQ.

I have been stressing the need to use hashtags as a way to get followers that does not rely on following people to attract their attention. Again, however, it is very easy to go overboard. This post will help you navigate some pitfalls.

8. 86 Revealing Charts from the 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report

This was one big Granddaddy of a post, one that tells you just about anything you want to know about whether or not inbound content marketing is a good fit for your business. It will also tell you why you need to be engaging in this kind of marketing.

And that’s it! See everyone next week.

How Location Specific Pages Can Help Your Business

August 1, 2013 by Carmen Rane Hudson

I was catching up with my reading over at Search Engine Journal and I came across this post: Post Penguin 2.0 Local SEO Strategies for Small Business.

A lot of people groan at every Google update. Many believe that each update makes it harder for the little guy to get found.

This may be true…for internet-only businesses and blogs.

But as the article points out, a local small business has gained a significant competitive advantage in Google. “For example, a local coffee shop has no chance at ranking for a keyword like ‘coffee,’ but Google appears to be ranking local businesses more importantly in this new update.”

Of course, Travis and I have spent a ton of time talking about different ways that you can rank on Google+ Local.

But the article mentioned a specific technique, one that we’ve never talked about on our blog but that we’ve offered to our clients for some time now: creating location-specific landing pages.

You see, you can only have one Google+ Local listing, and that listing needs to be for the town that houses your legal, physical address. I covered this in a guest post over at Blogging Painters.

In that post I told readers that they should not worry about the fact that they’re not supposed to create a separate Google+ Local listing for every single city in their service area. Why? Because you can always talk about those cities on your blog. Eventually, you can rank for that city + your service organically. It’s not that hard, cause your competition isn’t doing anything like this.

Well, location-specific landing pages are another way to use this strategy. But you have to create them the right way.

Fortunately, there are only 3 rules.

No Duplicate Content

It’s going to be tempting for you to repeat your home page copy on your location-specific landing page. You might feel as though it’s okay since you’ll be changing the city name.

But it’s not. And Google will lower your rankings rather than raising them if you do. Every landing page’s copy must be unique if you want this technique to work.

The Content Must Be Useful

This is not easy to do. Not on a location landing page.

It will require you to think outside of the box. A simple sales page will not get the job done either.

Instead, you have to think about location-specific information that your customers care about.

A cab company might take the time to talk about popular destinations in that city. A company that does water damage restoration might talk about weather data as it relates to local flood conditions. You might also add city and county emergency resources such as links to emergency shelters, emergency phone numbers, and links to evacuation maps.

It can take a lot of time to figure out which local information is both genuinely useful and genuinely relevant to what you do. And it has to achieve both things.

Don’t Try to Do Too Many

Choose about 6 secondary markets that you want to target. It’s going to be all but impossible to be really unique with too many more.

Ignore your smallest markets. They know they’re small, so they’re probably searching nearby cities anyway.

What are your thoughts on location-specific landing pages? Will you be using them for your business? Let me know in the comments below!

10 Ways to Come Up with Ideas for Blog Content

July 31, 2013 by Carmen Rane Hudson

I know that it’s not always easy to come up with ideas for blog content, especially if you’re committed to a regular blogging schedule. That’s one of the reasons why I did my “29 Blog Topic Ideas for Roofers” post.

However, you have to keep right on writing. So when you get stuck, it pays to have some good tricks up your sleeve.

1. See What Others are Doing

Sometimes it pays to lift up your head and look around. Read some other blogs in your industry. Take a look around your social media accounts to see what people are talking about.

Obviously you don’t want to copy anything, but you can certainly put your own take on whatever people are talking about. This also gives you the opportunity to curate great content.

2.Answer Customer Questions

Your customers are an awesome source of blog posts. They are handing you topic ideas every time they ask a question.

You can turn to unusual questions. You can turn to those same, tired 30 questions that your staff answers every week. Each is an awesome opportunity to build a blog post that customers really care about.

You know they care about it, cause they keep asking about it. Talk about a winner!

Try to jot down customer questions as they arrive for a week or two. This will give you a handy topic list that you can consult later.

3. Look for Unanswered Questions in Blog Comments

As you look around at other people’s blogs you’ll start to see some unanswered questions. This usually happens with comments that appear after the first 10 or 20 comments.

By this point, the blog owner has usually moved on to answering comments about other posts, which means he or she will probably not get around to answering the question. This means you can answer it yourself, both in the comments in short form and on your blog in long form.

Again, you’ll know it’s content customers care about because someone actually took the time to ask the question in the first place.

4. Check Your Analytics

Google Analytics is a great place to pick up content ideas. You just have to know where to look.

First, look at the search terms that people are using to get to your site. Many will be typed in the form of questions.

Often, you won’t have a post that specifically answers those questions. Craft one!

Second, look at your most popular posts. If people really liked certain posts that tells you that they’d like to see more of the same. There may even be more to say about the topics that you addressed in the original post, which means you can do a follow-up post which gives readers even more information.

5. Recap Your Greatest Hits

Sooner or later a bunch of new people are going to show up on your blog that have no idea what’s come before. Every once and awhile it doesn’t hurt to put together a post which shows them some of the posts you’d like them to see.

Obviously you don’t want to do this every single month, but it’s a great strategy if you’re really hard up for content.

6. Review a Product

Obviously you’re not an affiliate marketing blog, so you don’t necessarily need to make the post a “review” at all. Just talk about a product that matters to your industry.

For example. Plumber. What’s your opinion on that Liquid Plumber stuff? Are there hidden pitfalls to using it? Is it pretty good for simple problems that don’t require your specialized attention? Is there a cheaper alternative?

This kind of thing makes for very popular posts in my experience. People buy stuff all the time. They want to know whether or not they’re getting ripped off or making a mistake.

7. Take Some Photographs

Most people are visual. They think in pictures and they’d rather not look at a big wall of text.

As a writer by vocation this is not a trait I particularly share. But I’ve learned to bow to the inevitable. 😉

It’s really easy to generate content this way.

8. Offer a Survey

Sometimes you just need to know what your customers are thinking. Put together a survey on something like Survey Monkey and post a link to it on your blog.

Share information about why you are doing the survey.

Later, you can share the results, what you thought about those results, and what, if anything, you plan on doing in response to the results.

9. Do a Blog Round-Up

I have to say that the blog round-up posts that I’ve been doing are more fun for me than just about any other post I do all week.

Once upon a time I didn’t like sharing other people’s content. I thought that they’d go read that other person’s blog and leave me to eat my lunch all by myself.

That hasn’t been the case. People appreciate useful content and they appreciate anyone who provides it.

Besides, I’m not an expert on everything. I’m never going to be able to run Local SEO experiments like a Mike Blumenthal or a Phil Rozek. That’s just not even the way that I think. The only way that I can help you benefit from those sorts of things is to share their work with you.

You’re not an expert on everything either.

10. Comment on Recent News

I absolutely adore Google News and Feed.ly. Why? Because sometimes the most interesting stuff out there is the brand new stuff, and this is how I figure out what the heck’s going on.

Sometimes you can just curate what’s new. And sometimes, you’ll have an entire opinion on what’s new.

For example. Electrician. There are scientists developing lamps made out of glowing algae to save energy. Is this technology feasible? Are there better solutions? What can homeowners get their hands on right now to save energy, since space age algae lamps aren’t available on the open market?

The Possibilities Are Endless

If you can talk about your business all day then you can blog about your business all week. While I certainly understand writer’s block (I actually had writer’s block for a good week before coming up with this very post) I also know that there are always more gems in the Idea Mine.

How do you come up with new content? Let me know in the comments below!

How Your Website Improves Small Business Radio Advertising

July 30, 2013 by Carmen Rane Hudson

Do you use radio to advertise your small business? If so, how do you structure your ads?

I can’t deny that small business radio ads stick with me when I hear them, especially if I am interested in the service that’s being offered. But I often notice that small businesses who use radio ads use it to promote the wrong thing.

What’s the wrong thing to promote on radio? Your phone number.

Think about it. Where are most people when they hear radio ads?

Yep, you got it. Most people are in their cars.

If you are driving at 70 mph in heavy traffic are you going to reach for a pen to write down a phone number? I sure hope not! So why assume that your prospects will?

I hope you’re not reaching for your cell phone in the hopes of storing the number either. That’s just as bad as texting and driving!

And people are not just going to remember a string of numbers no matter how many times you repeat those numbers. They are distracted. Something will catch their attention and the numbers will be wiped right out of their heads.

What is the right thing to promote on the radio? Your website URL.

You knew I was going to bring this back around to internet marketing eventually, right?

Yet I’m not saying this just because I love websites. I’m saying it because words are easier to remember than numbers are. Your web URL is likely to be a short phrase or even a single word. Say it 3 times in your ad and people will remember it long enough to visit it when they get home.

They may only remember your business name. That’s fine too.

Because what are they going to do if they only remember your business name? They’re going to Google it, so you’re in trouble if you don’t have a website but golden if you do.

You’ll still get the call, because what are you going to put on your website? Your phone number, of course.

And you won’t just list your phone number. You’ll surround it with lots of great content that will convince your prospect that you are absolutely the right person to do business with.

What, you don’t have a website yet? Time to get on it then!

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