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.

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.

Top goals of social media marketing

With social media websites you can spread the word about your business much more effectively than any flyer or business card can. Top goals you can achieve by employing social media marketing for your website include the following:

Website traffic and user behavior

You can use social media sites to search for your target market demographic. Not all social media sites will have the people you want to target as potential customers. For example, although MySpace may have more members compared to Facebook, you’d likely find more homebuyers on the latter. You can also use social media sites to get information about which websites your target demographic visits more often.

Conversion and sales tracking

When more people go to your site from your social media profile, you can convert some of the traffic you gain into sales. As your profile grows more popular, you can expect more people to visit your business site and convert more click traffic into actual sales for your business.

Page views and ad exposure

Putting interesting and useful content on your profile page encourages people to look at it. Increasing page views of your profile improve the chances more people will go to your business website to learn more about what you do. You can also arrange with some social media sites to buy ad space featuring your business.

Growing brand awareness

A soft value you can’t measure directly, things like being active and linking with more people on social media sites as well as mentioning your business at the appropriate moments and in the appropriate places can help increase recall of your personal or company brand.

Creating a positive brand value and keeping it there

Anything you put on your profile page remains available for everyone to see for as long as you keep it there. Likewise, comments or messages for you left by people expressing their satisfaction with your work or business will stay viewable as well. You can establish yourself as an expert in your niche, and positive feedback from other members of the social network will serve as proof.

Business development and broader customer reach

Social media sites create both broad and niche online communities. By socially interacting with other members of the community, you can reach more potential clients and customers.

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.

Internet users have gotten more sophisticated and online business owners have gone more wary of unsolicited emails asking for a link exchange. Getting good links from other sites used to be so simple: you either buy them or request for link exchange from other websites with decent PR. Over the years, buying links and link exchanges have lost their value. Now, “link baiting” holds the key to getting valuable one-way links to your website.

Photo credit: HurleyGurley

Link baiting uses quality content to attract other webmasters and bloggers to link back to your site as a resource. You need to find that magic formula to get people to think of your content as useful, interesting, or worth linking to.

The type of link bait content that you publish depends on the theme of your website. You cannot publish content related to pet grooming if your blog is attached to your real estate website, unless you make your “pet grooming” article an invaluable resource to your target clients who have pets. Bloggers who run personal blogs get the most benefit from link baiting methods because they have the absolute freedom to write anything. Business bloggers, on the other hand, have to put their blog’s theme in mind, as well as their company’s reputation before they even decide to publish a blog entry.

1. Be the first to report a particular news or story in your industry

Subscribe to news alerts or RSS feeds of news reports in your industry. Be on the lookout for news on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites because they provide real-time updates. To make your news report unique, do not be afraid to share what you think or feel about the news.

You should also watch out for press releases from major companies. Subscribe to feeds from press release sites, such as PR Web and PR News Wire. These sites classify news release feeds by category or industry. You can subscribe to these feeds using Yahoo, Google, Netvibes, or any feed reader you prefer.

2. Discuss a well-documented controversy in your industry

A controversy involving a company or someone famous in your industry catches the public’s attention. Discuss the controversy as objectively as you could, especially when the controversy involves a competitor.

When writing a business blog, tread lightly through the mud. What you write in the name of your company may be mistaken as your company’s official statement. Include a disclaimer in your article to shield your company from backlash or harsh criticisms.

Make sure your manager knows what you intend to publish on your blog. There are times — especially when blogging about sensitive issues — when you need to involve them in your blogging activities. Update them of the type of information that you include in your blog entries so there will not be any surprises later on.

Even when you are writing your personal blog, you still need to practice caution in your blog posts. When you are heavily associated with a company, your words have more credibility than what other people say.

3. Provide your readers some useful and comprehensive information

People often save, bookmark, share, and rate useful content. Some content that attract these types of actions from readers are ultimate lists, comprehensive guides, and how-to articles. Social bookmarking sites contribute to your site’s value as an authoritative source and help increase your TrustRank.

You can also provide a review or comparison of products, websites, or services of third-party providers in your industry. For example, if you have a car accessory shop online, then make a comparison between the newest models of cars from major manufacturers. Point out the kinds of accessories the new models have, and what aftermarket accessories customers can use to customize their cars.

If you write for a brand or a company, your useful content has more authority and credibility than other sources. Aside from writing articles, you can also publish informative slides and how-to videos that your readers can share and embed on their own blogs or sites.

Do not make them downloadable unless you are using them as bait for lead generation. Instead, publish these images, videos and slides under the CC Attribution License, which requests a link back to your site in exchange for the use of your content.

4. Entertain your readers very well

Humor is a good way to catch attention and build rapport with your readers. Share jokes and funny anecdotes about people in your business. For example, if you are a travel agent, you can share funny stories about travelers losing their luggage and or anecdotes on dealing with confused clients.

You can also publish podcasts of interviews with CEOs and business leaders, and even video ads of your products. Infomercials and infographics are also good content to take advantage of for attracting links.

5. Make your content mashable and usable

By making your content mashable through your feed, you allow other people to publish your content at their blogs and websites. Make sure links to your site exist in every post that they republish.

Aside from feeds, blog tools, widgets and plugins, include a link back to your site in every widget or plugin that people download and install at their site or blog.

Lastly, set up a funnel system for broadcasting your content in major social media sites. Place Share This, TweetMeme or Facebook Like buttons in every post. If you have a WordPress blog or site, then use a plugin to manage these buttons.

You can also use Ping.fm to publish simultaneously the title and link of your newest blog post as updates to Twitter, Facebook, hi5, Linkedin, Friendfeed, and Plurk. If you have hundreds of followers and contacts at these sites, and they see your updates, then they will likely re-post, re-tweet or share them with their friends and followers, too.

The goal for attracting links to your website is to create buzz around your website. As more conversations spring up around your business blog, the higher the chances of people sharing your blog posts with their friends, colleagues, and even relatives. They will be busy bookmarking, saving, rating, commenting, tweeting, re-tweeting, re-posting and sharing your links.

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.

How do you know who your blog readers are?

The eMarketer statistics, and parallel studies done by PEW Internet and American Life Project (January 2009) and Universal McCann (April 2008), presented only the numbers of bloggers and blog readers. The statistics failed to identify the demographics of blog readers, i.e., sex, income levels, and marital status.

Fortunately, the popular blog network, Technorati, also publishes its own State of the Blogosphere (STOB) report, which includes the kind of demographics businesses love to see. According to its 2009 SOTB report, two-thirds of bloggers are male with 60% between 18 and 44 years of age. The majority of them are more affluent and educated than the general population.

If these are the types of readers in the entire blogosphere, expect the quality of blog readers that you may have. Knowing the statistics is valuable when you run a business blog.

For a general idea of who your blog readers are, you can turn to services like Blog Reader Project, which helps you identify the demographics of your readers through a survey and track them whenever they visit your blog. Another equally valuable tool is Demographics Prediction Tool from Microsoft AdCenter Labs.

Although at first you may have doubts on how a business blog can benefit your company in the end, do not hesitate to take the opportunity to reach out to your customers. Blogs are now part of the social media culture and are rich sources of information that you can use in strategic planning as well as avenues to reconnect with your customers.

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.

What you should blog about

The perfect business blog does not talk about your company, product, or service, day in, day out. Instead, it talks about what your customers want to know, for example, if you own a company that sells pet supplies online, featuring very product your company sells in your business blog is shamelessly tacky, unless you create an online catalogue.

A perfect business blog should dispense useful tips and general information about your company’s industry. Using the previous example, the ideal blog for a pet supplies online store shares tips on animal health, discusses behavioral training for pets, and gives out medical advice on the right pet nutrition.

Space your blog posts in a week instead of posting in spurts. If you do not have the luxury of time to write one blog post each day or every other day, then schedule the posts. This leaves you more time to focus on other aspects of blogging.

Promoting your business blog

The perfect business blog needs to take another step in its birthing process. You already chose the right blogging platform and committed to blogging weekly. (Or, you can also hire an experienced blogger to write blog posts based on your notes and outline.) What’s the next step? By this time, no one yet knows you have a blog. This is the perfect time to let the cat out of the bag.

Promoting a business blog takes a little more time and effort on your part. One area of blog promotion involves creating accounts on popular social networks, like Facebook and Twitter. Setting up ‘Share’ buttons for these sites, and other bookmarking sites, helps spread the news about your business blog. One particular social media plugin that I find extremely useful is Share This. You can see it in action at the bottom of this blog entry.

Another aspect of blog marketing focuses on driving traffic to your site through thousands of links strategically placed on other sites. These links feed value and authority to your business blog, and consequently, push your visibility in the search engine results.

This may sound like a lot of work and you may not be willing to spend most of your time tinkering and optimizing your business blog. Delegating this to someone else takes the additional workload off your shoulders. You may hire a freelance blogger and pay on a per post basis or assign another employee to take care of the blog. That person could already be in your company’s IT or PR department.

Three key areas to focus on

Choosing the CMS and site design will affect the size of the budget for the blog. The right content for your blog needs either hiring a new employee or assigning someone from the IT department. Promoting the blog needs another important decision to make, and that is whether you should hire someone else or assign another.

Setting up the perfect business blog takes more steps than mentioned here, but these are the three key areas that need the most attention and the authority to make the right decisions for the blog.

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:

1. Testimonials are essentially anecdotal evidence. Preserve whatever your clients said about your company or your services, and however they said it, for authenticity. Your clients’ testimonials should reflect their natural expressions — including slang words and local expressions.

2. Do not over-edit the testimonial. Correct the wrong spellings, but allow mistakes in grammar. Using ellipses is normal to indicate pauses, while avoiding the excessive use of exclamation marks.

3. Provide the client’s name, location and job title for credibility. Someone with a professional background and lives in the same area as your target audience (if your business is location-centric) is more believable in the eyes of your potential customers.

4. Place as many types of testimonials as possible. Gather testimonials from different types of people of varying ages, gender, and location, especially if your have a wider business scope than your city. Potential leads relate more to people of the same age, gender or location as they are.

5. Place testimonials in every marketing copy you have, and not just on your website. Use them in articles, direct marketing emails, and press releases, and even in offline materials, such as brochures, posters, and print ads.

You can also place them on a separate area at your site or you can weave them into the text of any article, blog post or squeeze page. Make sure the testimonials are immediately visible at your site so potential leads read them a few seconds after they arrived.

6. Be strategic in placing your testimonials on your website. Testimonials act like lubrication in people’s minds: they prepare the way for your marketing message to influence your audience’s mind. Additionally, the more relevant your testimonials are to the marketing copy of your homepage or landing pages, the more powerful your marketing message will be. For example, if your copy discusses the product’s benefits, then strategically place a testimonial that praise your products enthusiastically. Emphasize the good and the positive in the testimonials by typing them in bold or italics.

7. Ask your clients the right questions in order to get the right content in your testimonials. Clients appreciate direct-to-the point questions that also allow them freedom to express the positive and negative points of your products or services. Take the positive ones and use them in your testimonials, and take note of the negative ones as bases to improve your products or services.

8. Prepare your customer survey questions well and ask clients to answer immediately following an after sales checkup or after you complete your project for them. Ask them at their happiest or giddiest moments because they will be most motivated to give you a great testimonial during that time.

9. Include a photo with the text of your clients’ testimonials. Better yet, use videos or audio recordings for greater impact and stronger credibility. Once other people have seen that the testimonials came from real people, they will trust you more.

10. A much more effective testimonial is something served up from credible third-party sites, such as review sites or blogs. Reviews from peer review websites, such as Yelp, can more powerfully influence people to seek out your product or service than ordinary customers can.

These tips are just a few of many techniques that you can use in order to build you business credibility. Although these tips focused more on using client testimonials on your website to attract more leads, the same techniques work well in other marketing media, such as posters, print ads and TV ads.

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.

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: