Is Your Business on Foursquare Yet?

Posted in: Social Media Marketing by Gale Thomas on July 8, 2010 | No Comments

Good news for small business owners! The popular location-based social networking website, Fourquare, plans to expand its reach of deals and offers in rural areas, as announced on their blog. That means deal-seekers don’t have to travel far and wide to major cities just to enjoy what participating establishments has to offer.

Small-town business owners can certainly take advantage of this service to grow their customer base and increase their social media exposure. For more information on how Foursquare can help you, visit Foursquare.

Why Use Social Media to Market Your Business

Posted in: Blog, Social Media Marketing by Althea Tan on July 1, 2010 | No Comments

You might wonder why you should go to the trouble of visiting different social media websites, filling out almost-repetitive registration forms and profile information and creating user home pages. You probably already have your own website, right? You have an email address. Your business cards include your email address and website URL. You have a physical network of people to whom you can get the word out. Why bother with social media at all?

With the Internet so expansive, your website is still a very small needle in a humongous haystack of online content. Sure, you might have heard about search engine optimization (SEO) and have included a few important keywords on your site. But unless you know how to employ hardcore SEO techniques, you probably haven’t moved up on the list of the popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing, and your business cards only go as far as you’re able to hand them out. Read more…

How People Find Your Local Business Online

Posted in: Blog, Local Search Marketing by Althea Tan on June 29, 2010 | No Comments

Times have changes on how people search for businesses and other local information. Phonebooks and Yellow Pages are now a thing of the past. Most people turn to the Internet to search for a local business in their area. If you wonder how people find your business online, watch this video.

How Your Business Can Benefit From Blogging

Posted in: Blog, Blogging by Althea Tan on May 28, 2010 | No Comments

Blogging has been steadily rising in importance since its inception a decade ago. Back then, blogs were no more than static pages constantly updated by the blogger by editing the HTML code. WordPress and Blogger were not available to make the blogger’s work easier.

Now, blogging has become a common activity — thanks to new technology that made it easier for bloggers to create mini sites of their own, complete with pages for a business blog, an ‘about’ section, a contact form, and even a mini directory of links to other web pages.

Is there a market for your business blog?

In a 2008 study by eMarketer, the number of U.S. bloggers will increase more or less 2 million every year. As this number increases, so will the number of blog readers. By 2013, the number of blog readers is set to increase by 10%.

Having a business blog in your corporate marketing strategy can be very beneficial for both the company and its customers. The blog serves as an online public relations medium for corporate news, press releases, and even personal messages from the company’s executives.

More than that, a business blog maintains a well-balanced relationship between the company and its customers: it serves as the avenue for the company to answer questions, assist new clients, and address complaints from customers. Constant communication between company and its consumers brings out issues early on. This gives the company time to fix the problem and avert a possible PR disaster. Read more…

How to Set Up the Perfect Blog for Your Business

Posted in: Blog, Blogging by Althea Tan on May 17, 2010 | 1 Comment

There is a coffee shop in the East Bay that I like to go to, almost every week. I met so many people there from all walks of life and we usually end up talking about what we do for a living. One lady, who just embarked on business blogging, asked me, “How can create a perfect business blog and get as many people to read it?” I decided to address that question on today’s blog entry.

For many businesses, a perfect business blog should be a turnkey solution for customer relations and public relations management: it should have all the bangs and whistle and should work in favor of the company’s interests.

It should be obvious to anyone that this describes a general concept a perfect business blog but it does not specify how the business blog becomes perfect for the company. The following steps should clarify that, and share substantial advice for executives who blog:

Choosing the CMS and website design

First, a business blog should be easy to maintain for people who have some degree of technical skills, but are not computer experts. The availability of free WordPress themes as well as the increasing number of web design agencies that focus on WordPress website development make this possible.

Pre-packaged themes for CMS like WordPress makes setting up the perfect business blog easy for all types of bloggers. These themes come with plugins and additional features to ensure your business blog functions well, even with little technical maintenance.

However, a perfect business blog needs more than a good theme and a great site design. Your customers read your blog to find something of value, and that means it needs to pack some useful information. Read more…

10 Tips in Using Client Testimonials to Attract More Business

Posted in: Blog, Online Reputation Management by Althea Tan on May 14, 2010 | 2 Comments

Placing customer testimonials in key areas of your website can be a powerful aspect of your Internet marketing strategy. These testimonials provide the answers before the question even comes to your target audience’s mind. In fact, that is the objective of client testimonials: to break down objections, fear, and skepticism against your product or service. By simply putting your testimonials on your website, you keep your audience engaged and possibly influence them to purchase your product, hire your services or simply hit that “contact us” button to request for more information.

We had a client who didn’t know what to do with their glowing positive reviews on a third party peer review website. They missed out on a huge sales potential by not including these reviews in their offline marketing materials. After consulting with our team, they since learned to value each positive review and embed them in their online and offline marketing campaigns.

For sure there are thousands of business owners out there who don’t know how to build their credibility by simply asking for testimonials or feedback from their clients. If you haven’t thought of using this powerful marketing strategy, feel free to refer to these tips: Read more…

Alfalfa Media @ Web 2.0 Expo SF 2010

Posted in: Blog by Althea Tan on May 9, 2010 | No Comments

The Alfalfa Media SEO, link building and web design teams are jazzed about all the things we heard and saw at the Web 2.0 Expo SF 2010. HTML5 and CSS3 will set a new standard in website interactivity and functionality.

Check out our photos from Web 2.0 Expo SF 2010.

New custom links feature for your Google Maps profile

Posted in: Blog, Social Media Marketing by Althea Tan on April 30, 2010 | No Comments

Businesses can now add custom social media links to their Google Places profiles. This new feature allows business owners to add their social network pages such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and other social media pages.

Previously, Google only allowed businesses to display one link that best represents their business.

See how this business added custom links to their profile: