The Pedestal Group

Putting our clients where they belong

Own the Information On Line About You

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You have got to own the information on line about you – or someone else will. That is definitely the bottom line for any small business. Right now, go to Google and Yahoo or Bing (same search technology) and do a search for both you and your company. If the top results are not YOU, you have a brand problem.

As you are working your message, there will be many times people catch part of it. That might be your company but not your location, your name but not your comany, etc. If that person wants to buy, they are going to go to their favorite search engine and try to find you. Even if they are holding your business card or material, they may want to go out and search for you to see what comes up. It is vital you know what they will find and control it as much as possible.

The easiest way to own the information is to spend three hours building your profiles. And yes, this does take time the first time you set everything up. So what do you set up?

Facebook – Facebook is up to you – many people prefer to separate their business profiles from their personal (myself included) but having the profile means you get found more often.

Google Profiles – these are great and we’ve talked about them before. You set up a profile for yourself and they are almost always first page results on a Google search.

Google Local Business – Another great tool, this is a business listing with your information.

Jigsaw – A directory of business contacts. By enterng your contact details you will get to download a name of someone you wanted to find!

LinkedIn – Set up both an individual profile and your business profile. Fill them out COMPLETELY. Your LinkedIn profile is a marketing tool so write to help answer why YOU are uniquely qualified to help your customers.

Naymz – This is the same as Plaxo. Use the same information and help get more connections.

Plaxo – Much of the information you post on LinkedIn can be used on Plaxo as well. Plaxo does a nice job to make sure your profile comes up high on search engines.

Spoke – A directory of business contacts. Again, be sure your information is correct.

Wink – Wink is a social network search engine and building a profile will help users find you.

Yelp – Yelp is a local business listing service that allows users to post reviews. If you do business locally, getting those recommendations can be gold. But you need to be listed first!

ZoomInfo – ZoomInfo has just added a company profile section so you can own both. Be sure to claim your personal information and make sure it is accurate.

There are many more places you can choose to list, but doing these will ensure when someone finds you, they are finding YOU and not information someone else put up about you. Owning your information is the first step to managing your on-line brand.

Social Media – why and where

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Lately I have gotten a lot of questions about social media, where to be and why. So I thought I would hit the highlights here. And off we go!
LinkedIn – LinkedIn is a must in my opinion. Being out there so you can be found and find others is critical no matter what your business. I recommend getting your profile to at least 80% and joining a group or two that are relevant. Some of the people I have met in the groups are truly facinating!
Plaxo – I like Plaxo for the search engine optimization benefits but haven’t gotten as involved there as I do on LinkedIn. One extra feature I do like on Plaxo is they send you reminders of your connections birthdays.
Naymz – This one is also good for SEO but I haven’t found it really useful on a day to day basis. Definitely not a replacement for LinkedIn.
Ryze – Have not been impressed AT ALL. I found the people there have been weird and the site very unresponsive.

There are other places you need to list your business / profile so that you can be found.
Google business – Google offers businesses the ability to post a local business listing. These listings are guaranteed to show up on the first page of results for a Google search for your company so clients will always be able to find you.
Google profiles – Google also offers profiles of individuals and those are guaranteed first page results as well.
Wink – wink.com is a site that is trying to summarize people’s profiles on social media. It is a good idea to own your profile.
ZoomInfo – ZoomInfo currently allows you to claim your individual profile and say in the near future you will be able to claim a business profile as well. Be sure to set those up!

There are many other services out there under the social media header, but these are the primary places I recommend all businesses list under. While I personally like Twitter and use it to stay on top of trends, I still do not recommend it as a business-generating tool.

I hope this helps and if there are other sources you like, let me know and I’ll update the post!

I am NOT a social media expert!

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Every day in one of the blogs I read or somewhere on Twitter is a new article complaining about all the “social media experts” out there. There are evaluation tools, ways to discredit people, and scores of others telling you to talk to them. Fine. That’s not the point. I have never claimed to be a social media expert – that would be crazy. There are too many tools, options, approaches and ideas to try to master. What I can do is talk about how social media works with a marketing campaign to target specific audiences. And that’s the key – when you develop your marketing plan (and yes, you should have a well-thought-out plan), you should include specific areas of social media. NOT all of them!

The way I identify what makes sense for you is to first discuss who are your target customers or “buyer personas” as David Meerman Scott calls them. Who are we trying to find that is the right person for YOU to contact? Why exactly are they the right person? And these descriptions aren’t for general consumption. I would never post them on a blog because some of the ways we describe people may not sound flattering. If you are bad with people who are sheep, we aren’t going to look for followers. We’ll look for leaders. But we certainly aren’t going to build a marketing message saying “no sheep need apply” because people don’t think of themselves that way.

Next, we’ll find out where those people are. I mean, there is no point it trying to reach neurosurgeons through an on-line game. Just like you wouldn’t use a healthcare magazine to find a programmer to work on a manufacturing app. That sounds pretty obvious, but when it comes to social media, it seems like EVERYONE is EVERYWHERE. The reality is they just aren’t. And there are ways to identify the right venue.

Finally, we’re going to determine the right vehicle. Again, you wouldn’t advertise on a billboard to attract subway riders so use the same logic for how to communicate. Many of my clients need information that is more thorough than a blog entry or post somewhere and they like to print things so I write a newsletter. I am sure there are some clients that keep each copy and print it when they need to read an article again. There are others that read it on the screen and others that don’t read it at all (some on purpose, some who intend to get to it and don’t). That’s fine – I have other ways of getting to them as well. Most of the time it is by PHONE. My favorite social media tool, by the way.

So I am not claiming to be an expert so please don’t lump me in that category. I am just a person trying to help you market your business as effectively as possible.