If you’re a local or regional business looking to advertise on the cheap, you probably use social media. Most everyone is on Facebook, but does your company have a Twitter? If not, you’re missing out on one of the most powerful and reliable social media marketing tools that enables you to expand your brand and build a community.

Twitter is often overlooked by local and regional businesses, but it’s truly a useful tool. Not only can you advertise to your existing customers, you can find new ones and even create opportunities out of thin air. Once you see all that Twitter is capable of, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it!

Wikimotive has written a limited-edition eBook called ‘Twitter Tips For Local Marketing’. This eBook is a step-by-step guide to understanding and mastering the use of local Twitter, giving you an affordable and easy method for increasing exposure and finding opportunities.

eBooks—for those who are unfamiliar—are short, downloadable booklets that exist in digital PDF form. In ours, you’ll learn:

• The principals of Twitter
• How to build a Twitter profile
• What to Tweet about
• How to find and capitalize on sales opportunities
• How to get the best possible community response

If you want to know how to use Twitter for your business, or if you already use it and just want to make sure you’re following best practices, then you’re in luck!  Follow this link to get your free copy of our eBook.

Although recently we have decided to focus our social media marketing efforts away from Google+ they do still have some valuable things to offer. Google+ Local, which used to be Places, is a very valuable resource for any business. The idea is that you create a listing and your listing will appear next to local, relevant search results.

If you’ve been following our Google+ abandon ship, you’ll probably notice right away that you need a Google+ page in order to create a Google+ Local listing. Unfortunately this is a tactic that Google is using to get more people to sign up for their social network. The up side is that you can gain another top spot in local search results if you optimize well.

Results are plotted on a map and listed with their address, average review score, and phone number. Also if you hover over a listing you get even more details like hours, a brief description, and some photos if you’ve uploaded any.

Google+ Local is especially valuable in mobile search as well. Review scores are displayed prominently and there are 3 easy buttons which allow the user to either call, get directions, or visit your website. Mobile users tend to be more actionable when compared to desktop users. Mobile search queries are often about getting some quick information before making a buying decision. For example which restaurant near here has the best seafood, or which Chevy dealership has the best reviews.

When creating your listing you need to remember a few important rules. First, you should always do your best to make your listing stand out. Unique photos, extra information, promotions, and fresh content will go a long way.

Optimization is key here as well, you want your listing to show up for the right search terms. Use a few of your most important keywords in the description section and make sure not to just toss them in there, you’re writing for the customer first and foremost.

Lastly, reviews are extremely important as well. Encourage your customers to write reviews on your Local listing. Listings with positive ratings (25/30 and up) are much more likely to catch the attention of the user and bring them to your store.

Original article about Google+ Local posted on Wikimotive's blog under the title Why You Should Be On Google+ Local.

When it comes to Marketing using Facebook, are you focusing on quality or quantity? It’s easy to fall into a rut when you’re posting daily, but it’s important that the quality of your posts doesn’t drop off. I’m sure you already know that quality is important, but did you realize that even ONE bad post can ruin your Facebook readership? It’s not hyperbole; a recent study conducted by FastCompany.com (in partnership with PageLever.com) proves that no bad post goes unpunished.

The study shows how people react when they don’t like a post (not including people who take no action). The least common reaction is a fan unliking you, this is bad but at least you’ll notice the dip in Likes and can adjust accordingly. The runner-up is hiding your post; again this is bad, but it’s just one post. Now here comes the problem. The single most common action a user will take when they don’t like your post is…

Drumroll please?

HIDING ALL YOUR POSTS!

That’s right. The most common reaction to not liking a single post is hiding all your future posts. This means that even though your readership does not ostensibly change, you’re not actually reaching any of those people.
So what does this mean? If we can’t take our Likes at face value, what is our metric?

Engagement.

Engagement must be the metric for Facebook success moving forwards. Facebook makes it easy to track likes and shares, so pay attention. Find out what content is spreading the farthest and replicate it. Not only will this ensure that your content is being seen, it will guarantee an audience that truly LIKES your brand.

Original article about measuring Facebook success posted on Wikimotive's blog under the title Likes May Lie: Finding New Metrics.

Facebook has hit another incredible milestone yesterday; the social network now has over a billion active monthly users. Did you read that right? That’s a BILLION with a B. Every single month. Marketing using Facebook can potentially reach more people than any other media outlet ever.

Zuckerberg kept it low key, simply publishing the following on his Facebook Newsroom:

“This morning, there are more than one billion people using Facebook actively each month. If you’re reading this: thank you for giving me and my little team the honor of serving you. Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life. I am committed to working every day to make Facebook better for you, and hopefully together one day we will be able to connect the rest of the world too.”

With one billion users a month, can we finally ALL agree that Facebook is a marketing necessity? At this point, if you’re not on Facebook, it’s not because you don’t see the worth.

It’s because you’re lazy…and maybe a little afraid.

You’re lazy because it’s another thing to add to your plate. You’ve been safely ignoring it, telling yourself it wasn’t important enough to merit some of your precious time. That’s simply not true. If you don’t want to handle it, then hire someone to do it for you, but don’t tell yourself it’s not important. A billion monthly users say differently.

You’re scared, because we’re all afraid of the unknown. Facebook represents a brand new age in marketing–the social age–and for all of us who didn’t grow up with it, it’s going to take some getting used to. All I’m asking is that you give it a chance. Many (maybe most) of you already have, but I’m talking to the holdouts here. Don’t be intimidated by social marketing on sites like Facebook. You’ve faced incredible marketing challenges in your life and you have overcome them.

Don’t be left behind by the one your 12-year-old niece checks before breakfast.

Original article about Facebook's milestone posted on Wikimotive's blog under the title Facebook Hits A Billion Monthly Users.

I think everyone can agree, at this point, that social media activity has a serious and measurable impact on search engine results. Search engines may use this social network information differently but no one can deny that it is having a significant effect on automotive SEO.

Let’s start with Facebook shares, all the way back in July 2011 Rand Fishkin did a study which found that there was a high degree of correlation between Facebook likes and higher search engine rankings. What he wrote says it better than I ever could “Pages that earn tweets + Facebook shares also correlate well with earning links, and send direct traffic on their own – ignoring these services at this point seems foolish.”

I’m going to switch over and talk about Bing for a moment. I know they’re not the popular topic but they are still gaining market share and could be somewhat relevant soon with the new advertising push and improvements to their product. Bing pulls directly from social sharing results to determine ranking on their SERPs. Bing calls this process “collective IQ” which sounds a little too dystopian sic-fi for my liking, but what it means is that things that are popular on Facebook in general, not just among your friends, will rank more prominently. So the better your reach on Facebook specifically the better Bing will rank you.

Social signals that search engines follow don’t always lead to a permanent result. This isn’t all bad though, what you can do is use social media to promote a landing page for a limited time promotion and receive a huge boost of traffic and exposure as well as an SEO boost while the promotion runs.

Social review sites like Yelp and Google Places tend to fall through the cracks when it comes to talking about Social, but those sites are social network, they are quite large and can have major impacts on your business. The major benefit to getting positive reviews on sites like this is better local search ranking. It is important to get positive reviews from authoritative or influential individuals.

SEO is all about achieving organic rankings that will last long term and drive relevant traffic to your site. Social media sharing is now another way to accomplish this goal other than link building and content creation. Why wouldn’t you jump all over this opportunity to drive more traffic, rank better in search, and at the same time increase brand awareness and brand loyalty. Social media is a no-brainer.

Original article about social media and SEO posted on Wikimotive's blog under the title The Real Impact Of Social Media On SEO.

How have you been optimizing your site for Google? If you’re still ranking well after this year’s barrage of updates, you must be doing something right, because Google is notoriously tough on cheaters. For Google there is a fine line between cheating and good small business SEO. The only trouble is that their definition of “cheating” is the only one that matters, and they’re making another algorithm update to crack down on certain sites.

Google employee Matt Cutts announced last week that the company is going to start lessening the value of exact match domains. Until the update, websites would get a boost in rankings if their site name matched the keywords being searched. This led to large groups of people using keyword spam for domain names instead of something more directly related to their company name.

If you’re current domain takes advantage of an exact match rankings boost, you don’t need to hit the panic button. They aren’t going to penalize anyone; they are just going to stop rewarding the behavior (which might amount to a penalty if it’s boost that’s keeping you on page one.)

It will be difficult for even Google to deduce which sites have keywords organically, and which are shoehorning them in for SEO purposes, but they have isolated at least one factor. One of the main factors that will be analyzed appears to be hyphens. One, maybe two, hyphens is normal in a site name, but when Google sees Keyword- Keyword-AdjectiveKeyword-keyword.com, they’ll likely assume it’s an exact match domain and not an organic name.

Again, if your domain falls into the exact match category, you likely have nothing to worry about. The update is specifically supposed to target exact match domains of low quality, but again, quality is entirely defined by Google, so it’s worth keeping an eye on until the dust settles.

Original article about exact match domains posted on Wikimotive's blog under the title Google Weakening Exact Match Domains.

Nearly 9 out of 10 small business owners are saying that social media has been helpful to their business. There are even more impressive stats in the same survey that seem almost low. In this article we’ll explain why social media marketing is so important.

These numbers are coming from a recent survey conducted jointly by Vocus and Duct Tape Marketing. The survey asked 400 decision makers at small and medium sized businesses about social media and it’s impact.

In the survey 29 percent said that social media “helped a great deal” and 58 percent said it “helped somewhat.” That is 87% hence our nearly 9 out of 10 figure. The thing is even though 87% percent of these people report social media making a difference in their business I think it could be higher. Based on the way these companies are using social media at the very least we could move those 58% from the “helped somewhat” category to the “helped a great deal” category.

The vast majority of businesses in this survey reported that they use social media mostly for self promotion and advertisement, and less than half of them are providing any service to their fans. This is not a winning strategy on social media. Businesses have to realize that social media is about being social and advertising is exactly the opposite of that. Handling customer service issues like complaints or bad review is a great start but it shouldn’t be all you’re focusing on either. We can’t stress this enough, good engage able content, and lots of it.

Original article about business social media posted on Wikimotive's blog under the title New Survey Shows 87% Percent of Businesses Say Social Media Helps.

It’s time for another Wikimotive Case Study. You may remember the last one we did on ThinkGeek.com. This time we want to talk about a fast food juggernaut that has served billions across the globe. We want to talk about a paragon of virtue to anyone who has ever been stumbling and starving at 1 am. We want to talk about the pioneers of such revolutionary ideas as Fourthmeal.

We want to talk about Taco Bell.

Specifically, we want to talk about Taco Bell’s Twitter account and their social media marketing. If you’re a company that deals with consumers in a large volume, Taco Bell should be the model for your own Twitter page. We know it’s hard to believe, so let us give you a quick overview of why they’re so great.

The Design: The taco empire nails the fundamental rules of Twitter design. Their page is artfully designed and immediately identifiable. Their profile photo is a stylized version of their logo, and is also instantly recognizable. Additionally, they include their current slogan and a link to their main website.

The Posts: Taco Bell handles posting well in a couple of ways. First, the unique posts they make are never to sales-oriented. They are usually funny, and take advantage of whatever hashtag is trending. Here are a couple examples:

#IfWeGoOutJustKnow my Taco Bell order by heart. #10ThingsIGetAlot “Do you sell bells?”

Secondly, they almost always include a picture with their Tweets, which has been shown to dramatically increase interaction.

The Interaction: Interaction with customers is where Taco Bell really shines. They have someone monitoring Twitter for posts that mention their name and products, and they come back with funny replies. Not only does this spread goodwill and brand awareness, it actually makes people post about them, hoping to get replied to, so that they show up on the brand’s page! Here are a couple examples they knocked out of the park:

User’s post: No one will take me to Taco Bell. My day is ruined. @TacoBell TB reply: Why, cruel world, why?
——–
User’s post: Selling my soul for Taco Bell

TB reply: That’s not necessary. Our food prices are very reasonable.

It may seem silly, but these little replies go a long way with people. Taco Bell just shows how you should user Twitter and other forms of social media. It’s not for a hard sell; it’s for humanizing your brand. It shows that you aren’t just a faceless business; you’re made up of people, people who care.

Original article about Taco Bell's social media marketing posted on Wikimotive's blog under the title Taco Bell: A Case Study

Everyone wants a more powerful search engine, and that includes the United States Government. As anyone who watched School House Rock knows, our law-making system can be fairly convoluted. That’s why this week the U.S. government is rolling out a new search engine to help the politically minded population research legislation being discussed in the House and Senate.

The old site, reverently named THOMAS (http://thomas.loc.gov/home/thomas.php) after Thomas Jefferson, is quickly becoming dated. As you can see, the search is broken up into a bunch of little criterion. This hails back to the old days of searching. The new site, Congress.Gov, is in its beta and already looks sleeker and more modern. Congress.gov takes it’s cues from today’s successful search engines (namely, Google) and allows you to search for anything you want in a single box. This streamlines things immensely and should make it easier for everyone from Senators to students to find the information they need.

The new site is also being designed from the ground up with our smartphone-based world in mind. It is being launched with full mobile site accessibility. It may seem obvious that ANY new website should have a mobile version, but this is the U.S. Government we’re talking about. It’s impressive that you don’t have to submit to a full cavity search before they let you get at the info.

No one can accuse the Government of moving quickly, but at least they are adapting. Business has driven the technology this far, and now one of the most important infrastructures in our country is able to take advantage of it. Now, let’s all be good patriots and give the new site a stress test before the election this November!

Original article about the congressional search engine posted on Wikimotive's blog under the title Congress Gets A New Search Engine.

Recently Facebook has made an announcement that they have begun developing and testing a mobile ad network. Interestingly they aren’t doing just an on-domain network, like they do now, where you can only buy ad space on Facebook. This ad network will be a real cross domain network. This new development could bring a whole new meaning to the phrase marketing using Facebook.

Facebook is working with a range of ad exchanges that deliver ads to both iOS and Android devices. Advertisers can still target using Facebook’s wide array of options such as age, location and interests. Facebook will either build their own or buy one of these exchanges and save themselves the trouble. Most people are speculating that this move will lead to Facebook eventually launching a complete ad network across all platforms.

Facebook’s exchange will be called FBX and will allow them to gather data and information on internet shoppers purchasing habits. Essentially FBX is a massive retargeting network that connects web cookies to Facebook’s internal databases. This kind of data will prove invaluable when the decide to launch a web ad network to compete with Adsense. The decision to start in mobile should also help them on Wall Street showing that they have their priorities straight after being criticized for focusing too much on the web.

This jump by Facebook, to selling their data rather than just their inventory, is putting them in a new competitive arena. They will now start to go head-to-head with companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft; companies who all have similar ad networks. Could we eventually see Facebook grow into a new internet powerhouse like Google? Only time will tell.

Original article about FBX posted on Wikimotive's blog under the title Facebook Making Bold Moves With A New Ad Network.