Google Plus Optimization – The B24 Group Chicago

Why Optimize Your Google+ Local Listing?

Google+ Local is not being used enough by local businesses in their marketing strategies. But things are starting to change! Google+ Local is starting to come around and actually compete with Facebook as the main social network for local businesses. Why you ask? Local business websites employing the "+1 Button" build their website traffic by 350 percent and more than 925,000 users sign up Google+ each day! Add in all the functions that a Gmail account provides along with huge local ranking and search engine benefits and now we are talking about a social media site that is worth your time to set up your local business presence.

Here's How to Optimize Your Google+ Local listing for Your Business

You've got to create your own Google+ profile and also a Google+ business page. Here are some Google+ Local optimization tips.

1. Create Your Google+ Profile at https://plus.google.com – Fill your entire profile out. Put some thought into this. Add interesting and engaging photos and also make sure you connect to your other social media profiles like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
2. Connect to your websites – you want add your main business website to your profile.
3. Create your business page here: http://www.google.com/+/business/
4. Add your main information – Like what time you open and close, contact information, business descriptions, categories and locations. Fill out everything they ask for.
5. Start posting to your page – Post your articles, videos and blog posts. They will be almost instantly ranked in the search engines along with many other SEO advantages. You can post on your Google+ profile, the possibilities are endless.
6. Take Advantage of the Direct Connect feature – This Google+ tool lets people to add you to circles when they find you in search. Kind of like a Facebook “Like”.
7. USE Google+ Hangouts – A Google+ Hangout is basically like a video chat or webinar. Google+ streams your webinar, records it, then emails you the recording. You can have your prospects watch in real time or upload your webinar or video to your YouTube channel or even just post it on your website. Video training, advice or product demos work great for this.

Google+ Local is going to help your business immensely. For more strategies and a great infographic on Google+ see this post on CopyBlogger.

Small Business Marketing Tips – The B24 Group

How to Successfully Market Your Small Business

Small business marketing (SMB) is not for the faint of heart, you definitely have to get in the arena and fight like Russel Crowe in Gladiator more than ever. Marketing your small business means consistently performing a few marketing actions and performing them well. Competition is tough today, you've got to get all you can from your online presence.

Here are 6 major small business marketing tips that will help you destroy your competition!

1. Build a Marketing Plan – If you don't plan, you are planning to fail. Build a detailed, to the point small business marketing plan that lays out each of your marketing systems and what you need to implement each day or week. For instance on Tuesday, my plan says I'm sending out 4 posts to all my social media websites. On Friday, I'm scheduled to send a video update to all my customers and a direct mail post card goes out to my prospect list.
2. Video Marketing - Recent research has proven video happens to be FIFTY times more likely to rank on page number one of Google than any other kind of web page!  Start your video marketing now! The small business video market remains relatively non-competitive & using a simple video to market your business should get you a lot of Google traffic in addition to authority. It will also help to build a relationship and trust faster with your prospects and we all know that people like to do business with companies they know, like and trust.
3. Start a Mailing List – The majority of small  businesses we work with have initially made the mistake of failing to collect prospect and client information, including emails and mailing addresses. Email is nowhere near dead. MarketingProfs.com shows that email marketing results in an average ROI of $40 for each $1 spent, blowing away weak banner ads as well as keyword ads that return just around $17 per $1. Don't ignore email marketing. Don't ignore direct mail either but thats a topic for another article.
4. Social Media Marketing – Yes, its not just for posting political rants or pictures of your food! Social media can be a huge source of traffic for your website and new clients. MediaBistro.com says that ninety-one percent of consistent social media marketers obtain an increase in their website traffic from their social media campaigns and seventy-nine percent are getting higher quality leads.
5. Be Mobile - Optimize your website for mobile phones. Let me say that again. Make sure you have a mobile optimized website. More than fifty percent of all internet searches are now coming from some type of mobile phone or tablet. Microsoft says that mobile internet searching is going to take over desktop internet searching by 2014. Getting your website optimized for mobile will improve your reach and capture impulse buyers.
6. Build Your Reputation - It doesn't matter how good your seo or online ranking is, if you have a bad reputation or even no reputation online prospects probably aren't going to select you to do business with anyways. With all these ranking and review sites out there where clients can go and post a star rating and review about your business online, it is imperative that you have a strategy to consistently generate positive, 5 start online reviews and testimonials. IMPERATIVE! People are more likely to believe what others say about you than what you say about yourself. And no reputation is almost as bad as a bad reputation because prospects are probably going to go to a competitor who has a few good reviews rather than a business with no reviews or bad reviews. Create a system and start collecting reviews. Or use our review generation system.

The Marketing Success Secret: Make Sure Your Marketing Systems Grow Your Business and Don't Market Alone!

Very few people can successfully market and run their business at the same time, especially in the highly competitive arena of internet marketing. Research and learn from the best you can afford and hire the very best marketing systems and outsourcing team you can find. Make sure the small business marketing systems you use are actually growing your business as well. It will pay off handsomely in the long run!

LinkedIn Marketing Tips

LinkedIn Marketing Tips: If You're Not Using LinkedIn for Business Marketing, You're Crazy.

We like to refer to LinkedIn as the Rodney Dangerfield of social media! It gets no respect, even with over 200 million members. Its in the same weight class as Facebook and Twitter but the mainstream media completely ignores it. However when it comes to marketing your business, it has the drop on Facebook, Twitter and the other social media monsters. Because on Twitter and Facebook you'll be more likely to find political rants by crazy uncles, cat photo humor and what I ate for breakfast statuses, on LinkedIn its strictly business.

Here's are some LinkedIn Marketing Tips from the Smart Money

LinkedIn has more than 1.3 million active small-business owners. This is how and why they use it:

1. Increase traffic to your website: A little-known secret is that Google LOVES LinkedIn; when you establish a LinkedIn presence, you’ll become more visible in the search engines. More clicks to your website equals more customers!
2. Referral Generation: LinkedIn has a built in referral and endorsement generator. When a customer, client or patient endorses you or recommends you, everybody in your entire network sees it in their activity feed. People are more likely to believe what others say about you than what you say about yourself, so this is one of the BEST ways to get more business.
3. Discovering great talent: With business growth, you'll probably have to acquire more employees. LinkedIn is the BEST place to find new talent for your team.
4. Sharing your wins: Good marketing includes showing your success. Prospects like to do business with winners. Plus with over two million C-level executives on LinkedIn, you may find some influential new friends.
5. Event promotion: The LinkedIn event tab is amazing! You're able to get the word out and generate enthusiasm about your events or sales.
6. Answer YOUR questions: LinkedIn's a honey hole of business operation tips from some of the savviest business minds in the world. In LinkedIn Groups, you'll find more than two thousand groups focused on small and local business topics.
7. Getting funding and partnering up: LinkedIn is THE networker’s heaven. It doesn't matter if you need a bit of capital, a new accountant or even a new business partner, you will not find a better source than LinkedIn.

Create your personal profile at Linkedin.com then you can create a LinkedIn page for your business at: http://www.linkedin.com/company/add/show

Click on this link here for a short article and video that will show you how to optimize your LinkedIn profile

Pinterest Marketing Strategy for Your Business

Pin for Profit: Why Your Business Needs to Use Pinterest

Yeah yeah yeah. Your business doesn't have time for another social network. I'd be doing you a great disservice if I didn’t tell you about Pinterest, because this image centered social network  is an incredible place for your business to:

• Connect with prospects and customers
• Drive people to your website
• Spread word of mouth marketing
• Generate real sales

Here's why this image centered social network is worth your time and is an extremely effective marketing strategy.

Less trash talk, more positivity!

While the focus on sites like Facebook and Twitter seems to be on day-to-day living, Pinterest users share their hobbies & interests—fitness, fashion, art, food, sports, architecture, recipes, what have you—with other people who like the same. This is what Copyblogger contributor Beth Hayden had to say about Pinterest: “Pinterest is visually appealing, positive, and unlike Facebook, there isn’t any whining.”

Why is Pinterest so good for business marketing?

To begin, Pinterest is popular. Very popular. Just a year ago, in a 5 month time frame, Pinterest aquired over 10 million members.  Just about overnight Pinterest turned into a HUGE driver of traffic to websites. Picture this: Pinterest sends more traffic to websites than Google, YouTube & LinkedIn—combined! One more fact: the members love Pinterest. They can’t stop using  it. Pinterest is highly addictive. ComScore data says Pinterest members average eighty nine minutes every month on the site & Google users average only about three minutes each month.

So should you use it?

Why should your business use Pinterest? It’s easy. For one, Pinterest happens to be a non-threatening way to find possible customers who like what you like! The "built-in" permission this creates helps your business nurture new relationships with prospects in your target market. Second, Pinterest is a brilliant site to feature your services or products, keep in your prospects mind and grow a “tribe” of like-minded pinners. Go sign up for an account today. Literally any business could easily make Pinterest work for them.

Pinterest Marketing Strategy for Business 

*Sign up at business.pinterest.com

*Put out cool content for pinners to pin. Pin info-graphics, checklists, tutorials or "how to's", videos from YouTube

*Make sure your content or images link back to your website

*Create cool info-graphics at www.infogr.am

*Put text on your images using picmonkey.com

*Add a "Pin It" button to your website

Facebook Fan Page SEO & Optimization

Facebook fan page seo and optimization. You only have to do this once, so do it! Properly "SEO" or ptimize your Facebook fan page. Just follow the simple steps below and you'll have a powerful Facebook fan page that gets picked up by search engines like Google and gets you more customers, clients and patients.

STEP ONE: Name your Facebook fan page- Make sure to try to include at least one of your main keywords into your Facebook fan page name. You don't want your name to be too spammy or too generic. In other words, you don't want to have a generic Facebook fan page name like "Marketing" and you don't want a spammy page name like "Marketing, video marketing. internet marketing and mobile marketing secrets". Google gives the most power to the first word of your Facebook fan page name.

STEP TWO: Use your main keywords in your Facebook page. Go to "edit page" then click on "update info". Here you'll be able to add in some of your main keywords to your page. Add keywords to your title, description, about us and other areas as well. If you are a local business make sure to add your address and phone number to your page as well.

STEP THREE: Choose a personal Facebook fan page URL- Once your page has at least 25 Facebook "likes" you will be able to name your URL. For example, you can find our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/b24group
ALERT: You'll only be able to name your page once, so make it count! Its best if you can include one of your main keywords into your url. We made our name a couple years ago before we had knowledge in this area otherwise we would have added one of our main keywords to it as well.

STEP FOUR: Backlink your Facebook page. All things being equal, just like your website, the more backlinks your Facebook fan page has the higher it will rank in the search engines. Make sure you link to your fan page from your blogs, websites and twitter account. If you want more backlinks to your Facebook page, we offer a Facebook page backlink package for $150. Give us a call at 312-244-3742 to set it up.

STEP FIVE: Optimize Facebook status updates. When you make a post on your fan page, include the links to your website (if any) first then remember that the first 18 or so characters of your post are what people are going to see on their Facebook walls so make sure what you say is enticing.

EXTRA CREDIT: Always offer value to your audience when you post. You want at least 4 value posts to 1 offer post. Otherwise you're just annoying noise to your audience. The more value you offer, the more "likes" and "shares" you'll receive and the higher your posts will rank. Also sometimes its a pain to post to your blog then your Facebook fan page then post to your Twitter account etc...To streamline this process, use a free tool like Hootsuite.

The Psychology of Persuasion

One of the best books I've ever read, ahem besides my own book on how to invest in gold and silver, is the book called "Influence" by Robert Cialdini. This great psycological and marketing book details the triggers that automatically cause people to say "yes" to requests, the science of persuasion. People tend to use short cuts in their thinking to determine what the right thing to do is in a given situation. This books reveals the six universal short cuts that guide human behavior. Watch the video below to learn these short cuts, how to use them in your marketing and more importantly, how to block anyone from using them against you

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion Video

Write, Publish and Market Your Book on Amazon.com

So one of the services we offer here at The B24 Group is book creation and book marketing. A published book is one of the greatest and most effective marketing tools in your arsenal. Its like having "Dr." in front of your name. If you can show a prospect that you wrote a published book on whatever goods or services they're interested in, they immediately view you as the ultimate expert and instant trust and relationship develops. You achieve almost celebrity-like status in their eyes.

Well, we're experts at helping you write, publish and market your book on Amazon.com

Many of our book clients have gone on to have #1 best selling books on Amazon.com. The screen shot below shows our latest "student". The book we helped her create, publish and market called "Eating Clean in a Dirty World"  is currently the #1 most downloaded nonfiction book and the #6 most downloaded book on ALL of Amazon.com. Her 5 day book launch so far has generated 20395 downloads. Check out the picture below:

#1 Most Downloaded Nonfiction Book on Amazon

If you're interest in writing, publishing and marketing your book to the top of Amazon.com, give us a call at 312-244-3742 or shoot us an email by going to the "Contact Us" page at the top of our website. You'll have one of the most powerful marketing tools written, published and at the top of your category in less than a month.

LinkedIn Marketing Tips & LinkedIn SEO

For those of you with a LinkedIn profile, learning a few LinkedIn marketing tips and doing a little
LinkedIn profile optimization will pay off in the long run with new customers, clients or patients. So if you haven't yet set up your LinkedIn profile yet, head over to http://www.linkedin.com and set one up now. Go ahead. I'll wait.

In this short video training lesson, you'll learn how to optimize the skills and expertise section of your LinkedIn profile so that you'll be found on LinkedIn  by the people looking for your skills, expertise and services.

You can find the video above on Youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cldb4Ve5AqE

Social Proof: What Your Customers Say can Make or Break Your Business

In psyhchology there is a concept called social proof.
Social proof can be explained this way....People assume
the actions of other people are the correct behavior for
a given situation. If people see other people doing something
or saying something, they then register that as proof that
whatever the people they see doing or saying is valid.

Proportion of business started today that will fail is
between 70-90% -SCORE. 

In business, social proof can either make or break you. People
are simply more likely to believe what other people say about
than what you say about yourself.

One way you can harness the power of social proof is to start
consistently collecting and posting positive reviews about your
business from your clients, customers or patients. There are
many ways to do this but you want to make sure you're posting
these reviews both offline and online, in your business and on
actual online review sites like Google+.

Of course the most easy & effective way to generate positive social
proof consistently is to use our automated review generation
system but collecting and posting reviews manually will work fine
for social proof as well.

Without a system or encouragement, people are 12 times more likely to
leave a negative review about your business than a positive review. Read
that sentence again. Now start building social proof for your business.

Or someone else will.

Here is an article on how social proof, in the form of positive or
negative online reviews, can increase or decrease a restaurants
reservations by up to 40% on a typical night.

Gmail Productivity Hack | How to Streamline Your Inbox

So lately my Gmail inbox has been getting so
filled with emails that aren't that important
its taking me 30 minutes just to delete them
all. Sometimes I end up reading a few of them
and two hours later, I haven't gotten any work
done!

Some of these emails I want to read so I don't
want to unsubscribe from them. However, they
aren't essential to my work day and cause me
to lose focus on my daily goals. Sometimes I
end up reading a few of them and two hours later,
I haven't gotten any work done!

So if you don't actually need to read an email
immediately, if the email isn't absolutely essential
to your daily business and goals or if you don't
have to directly reply to the email, this lesson
will show you how to automatically redirect all your
non-essential emails into a folder that you can then
check in on once or twice a week.

Here's the Gmail productivity hack video: