Scout navigation marketing

Just a brief foray here into navigation marketing.  SCOUT, to be specific.
You know, when you get in the car and turn on the old GPS and attempt to find a local business, as I did online in an earlier post here. What actually happened on that cold February day was, I turned to the GPS on my phone to find local nurseries.  I found 6 of them in my local area. Following the mapping directions, I went to 4 of them and found NONE.  Yes, NON-EXISTENT.  That's a lot of wasted gas ya' know (I'm saying that in my very bad Irish accent 'ya nooooo'.)  Anyway, getting back to my original thoughts;  If companies would post information (marketing) about their businesses with the mapping software companies, I wouldn't have had to waste all that time and gas. And what a great, free promotional spot for their company!

For instance, SCOUT  is a Telenav company. This is one of the mapping software products that I have on my Samsung Galaxy S4.  Here are the first pages  that come up when I choose a particular local grocer that I love:

Notice with this screenshot there is a section for the address, phone number, how far away the store is located from me, and other basic information, and down below, we find "rating" and another for "map". But how would someone who has never experienced Fresh Market know what a wonderful store it is? Or how long it's been in business?  Or what types of products they carry? Or what their hours are?

Now, here is a screenshot for another Fresh Market not too much further away.  There's a section for "overview" here, and when I scroll down below (out of the screenshot) there are also sections for "hours", "rating", and "map". This is where The Fresh Market is giving information about their producst and services. They could even tell about their set specials here (Thursday little big meals, Fish Friday, you get the idea). This is FREE.
How do you update your listing, you ask?  Interestingly enough, Telenav populates these sections from yellowpages.com on a quarterly basis.  Either as a customer or a business owner, you can add information to this and have it updated.  It's really that simple.  What are you waiting for?  When you get done updating  your business, post it in the comments below and let me know who you are.

Have a fabulous week!

A bit of fun after tax day....

To celebrate my doneness with US income tax filing for the year 2013, I am including some funnies I found online to which some of you may be able to relate. I know I did.  Click on the links below the images to go to the original sites for more humor, or to find out more from the authors.  Please note, though, that I posted the "clean" ones.  Others on their sites may be suited only for adults, or may be offensive to some.  I say GO FOR  IT!

imFORZA

\

Mission Imbloggable

burnetts boards

Snitchim

Have a great week!

Build it and they will come? I think not.

It's a very rainy Monday here in Aiken and it's taking everything I have to keep on task.  I think this is the ultimate challenge of content marketing for my business.  Build it and they will come? I think not. I think it will take continuous and conscientious management and attention to detail. Not only in the products I sell, and managing my website (which is a lot of work in and of itself), but with the marketing of it. Sometimes it's hard to get up on Monday morning, knowing that I need to put out a blog post. Yeah, I've been thinking it up in my brain over the weekend, and maybe even wrote down a few notes on what I want to say, but that's not the same as actually sitting down and writing it and posting it out. I have made a commitment to myself to have it done and posted on Mondays, and I have to stick to it. Build it and they will come.  No. It takes self control, and persistence (of which I have much). And motivation.
Speaking of motivation, I have come across a website called TED TALKS. Unbelievably awesome, this site is unique in that it consists of videos of influential and thoughtful speakers. Their "talks" last 18 minutes or less.  My guess is that after 18 minutes, it becomes a speech, and it would become boring. These talks are not boring. Try it. You have over 1700 to choose from.

Have a great week!

The beginning of SEO

Search engines are programmed to rank websites according to their popularity or relevancy within  given search parameters.  If I want my website or blog to be available to readers and/or buyers within that framework, I have to share my website contents with search engines so they can find and recommend my site to others.  Well, I don't really have to SHARE it with them.  They'll find me. Then, when someone does a search for one of my products (or for me), they can find me by doing a basic search by Google, Bing, Yahoo, or others. This can be accomplished with a process called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  The search engines send out a crawler (Internet bot, if you will) to pick up bits of information from each website it can find.  The key, for me, as a seller, is that I need to make it super easy for these crawlers to get the right information; see that my site isn't Spam or just advertising.  It's great, and relevant, and should be put it out there high in the search engines so my "peeps" can find it.
What's important in getting my website or blog at the top of search engines, is how my website communicates and interacts with other websites and people. This includes linking to other relevant websites, social networking, reciprocal blogging or mentions, and real referrals from other sites.  It's also important to be able to communicate with other types of devices, such as tablets and mobile phones.  How easy is it to move around on my website?  Are the images so large that it takes too long to load the page?  If I'm concerned about loading speed (and we all should be), I can go to the Page Speed Analyzer here  to do an analysis of my website's speed.  This site will even tell me how I can correct the issues of slow page loads.
Got too much advertising on your page?  That will send you back down on the list.
And the number one thing to do to help  your content to get to the top of the list is to write and display GREAT CONTENT so people will go to it, read it, and tell their friends about it.  Yep, fantastic writing, images that awe, videos that go viral, and products that impress.
If you would like some more goodies on SEO, I recommend you first read the Google Webmaster Guidelines here..  Then, maybe a search on SEO is in order.

Have a great week!

You don't need to be an Internet Wizard to get more customers to your door.

Ok, so I know there is a true NEED to be online marketing, and I know that a website is important, and what possible networking sites I have available, so.....where do go from there?  I have not found anything *** ANYTHING *** yet, that cannot be explained by searching online.  I'm serious.  Try it. Open up a new screen and do a Google search for "how to start a website".  This is what I found:

About 5,150,000,000 results (0.70 seconds) 

Impressive, huh?  Depending on your location, and your search history, at the beginning of your search, you will see a few paid ads and then the actual search list is below that.  This is not going to be a quick process if you are doing it yourself (believe me on this). If you aren't ready for the education yourself, it might be best to hire someone to set up your web site.  No judgement here.  It's not for the faint of heart.  Or for those who don't have the time to do it themselves.  I just happen to have the type of brain that I HAVE to do it myself, even if I am not an Internet wizard.  Here are some other items to search for that I found was helpful:

content marketing

blogging

internet marketing

pinterest

google +

twitter

facebook
youtube
instagram
linkedin
storeboard

Whoa! Ok, that's enough for right now.  I can see this will be a work in process. The fact is....the information is out there.  Even in laymen's terms.  Let the learning begin!