Check it out and, better yet, submit your latest articles for inclusion to the directory.

Small Business Marketing Article Directory

Monday, the Federal Trade Commission issued an 81 page document entitled “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising” requiring bloggers who write testimonials about products to disclose gifts or payments they receive. So if a company sends you a product, you will be scrutinized by the government, regardless whether you were asked to post a review or not. Whether it be free review copies of books, trips to resorts, payments, tshirts, doesn’t matter. Per the gov – you better disclose it or, as the Washington Post reports, you’ll be fined up to $11,000 per incident.

Seems pretty cut and dry, right?  No grey areas at all.  How about the blogger who has extoled the virtues of a certain graphics design application for quite some time.  Suddenly, said company sends him a free copy of their latest release and he writes a review of it. He didn’t ask for the copy, would have bought it anyway, and reviewed it.  Still need to be disclosed?  I have no idea to be honest.

There are also now liability guidelines with respect to bloggers making unsubstantiated claims about products that they are endorsing and the responsiblity of the product maker to “police” their bloggers.  The FTC said that they would consider “reasonable effort” on the part of the advertiser to keep the endorsers in line.  So, I guess if you have “endorsers” making wild claims there may be some cause for concern there.  I’d hope any prudent business person wouldn’t need the FTC to tell them to be concerned about that but really, if I want to run my business into the ground at lightning speed it should be my perogative.

I am stifling a “rant” as best I can here in an effort to be helpful to any small business owners who may be using blogs for their marketing efforts.  I really have to make one glaring, ridiculous, point on this whole matter though.  If you are a small business that is giving away products or services in return for endorsements, perhaps a shift to conventional media (newspapers, magazines) may be in order.  Here’s why:

The FTC holds no authority to regulate speech unless it is classified as “commercial speech”.  Therefore, in order to assert it’s jurisdiction over bloggers, it simply redefined their activities as “commercial speech”.   “Traditional Media”, ie- newspapers, magazines, etc., are not classified as such and, per the FTC “have a legacy of editorial independence.”  Per the FTC guidelines, in these cases, “knowing whether the media entity that published the review paid for the item in question would not affect the weight consumers give to the reviewer’s statements.”   Huh?

So, because the FTC thinks consumers trust newspapers and magazines, it’s not necessary for them to be transparent.  However, bloggers are iffy(I knew it!) and thus need to put themselves above suspicion. When criticized and pressed, an agency official told CNET, “As a practical matter, we don’t have the resources to look at 500,000 blogs.  Right now, we’re trying to focus on education.”

I for one am always comforted when a government agency grants itself new powers but promises to use them only sparingly and judiciously.  Last I checked this was still a free market society only now not only are consumers hurt — as product recommendations from other consumers are made scarcer, but free speech itself is chilled as individuals become less willing to put virtual pen to virtual paper out of fear that they may violate some obscure federal edict.

PS – I was recently given a used Dale Carnegie book that I am considering reading.  Should I actually read it and then decide to mention it, I’ll make sure to give credit. Or wait, do I credit Mr. Carnegie or the person that gave me the book?  Or what if the knowledge garnered from the book makes me some money? Um, nevermind. I’m not going to read it. It’s not worth it.

Fact is, over 75% of searches for information on local businesses & services occur online, over 85% of those searchers contact the business in some form and of those more and 60% purchase goods or services from that business. Now, big companies don’t care as much about this. Think about it. If I want to go to Walmart, I either know where it is already or I type in www.walmart.com in the url window and hit “enter”. But wouldn’t it be fantastic if when a potential customer is looking for your goods or services, YOU come up first in the search results?

This isn’t about paid advertising, ie- PPC or “Sponsored Results”. That’s a quick, yet costly, way to get exposure for your website. Have you heard of the “10 Box” or “10 Pack”? If yes, you’re way ahead of the game. If not, it’s Google’s Local Map Listing results (See Above Pic). These are keyword and geographically pulled listings that you can position your business to show up for. Note, however, that the “10 Box” is only triggered to show up for certain keywords in each category and those are the ones that you will want to optimize your site and your listing for.  Also note:  the searcher doesn’t necessarily even have to enter in a city, town or zip code with their search terms.  Google knows where they are based on their IP address (scary, I know) and is assuming that they are looking for a business or service close by.

Aside from massive amounts of exposure, there are many reasons why you want to give Local Search some serious attention:

User experience – For the most part, consumer’s fingers are no longer “doing the walking” through an actual Yellow Pages book. They are, however, furiously zipping across their keyboards searching, researching and critiquing businesses before ever picking up the phone to call or stepping outside to get in their car. They want to see you on the map, read a review, and maybe even see a photo of the business. Trust me, if they can’t find you to do this, they yell “Next” and move on. This is the experience of today’s user and you need to be a part of it whether you want to or not.

Reach – The reach you get from being listed online, and then in local directories as well, is enormous. Now the data collected and managed online goes even further. Not only is Mobile local search gathering momentum with the iphone and similar devices, but you can often find businesses with your GPS as well. Imagine your business showing up on people’s GPS when they enter in a request for, say a nearby restaurant or florist. How cool is that? The idea is to have your listing ready to pop up anywhere and everywhere that people may be looking for it.

Ranking – This is just the basics. The more places that you are listed online and the more references there are to your site and your business, the better for your search ranking and your bottom line. The more popular, or higher ranking, sites that link to yours, the better for your rankings as well. Listings with Local Search Directories count as having popular relevant links to your website so you are really getting a double benefit there.

Submitting to Local Search Engines & Directories
Submitting to local search engines and directories is very time consuming but it’s important to note that there is some work involved before jumping into the submission process. It is crucial to identify your keywords and create some good copy on your website that will capture your target audience once you get them to your site. You will want an analysis of which keywords will pull up Google’s 10-Box in local search and then a determination of which of those keywords you want to optimize for. It is recommended that you enlist the services of a professional to consult with you on this process.

There are now dozens of places online to find local businesses, so knowing the best local directories for local search and how to submit to and get listed with all of these local search engines and directories is extremely important to today’s local business.  Below is a pretty comprehensive, although not complete, of local search directories:

As you can see UBL, Universal Business Listings, actually covers a lot of these so if you decide to undertake this yourself, they are a recommended service.  For just $30, you can have your listing included in many free and several paid local search directories but, keep in mind, it is an annual fee.  It’s still worth it to have the peace of mind and uniformity across all of the directories.

Today well over 10 BILLION unique searches are done monthly online  – Just in the U.S.!  Both Google and Yahoo have made some dramatic shifts in the past year in how they return search results and trends are geared toward Local Searches.  Mobile search is just now taking off and that has a huge local component to it as well.  If you’re a small to medium-sized business looking to make your footprint online, there’s no better time than now to get started.  In fact, things are moving so fast, that if you wait too long you may very well get left behind.  Don’t let that happen.

LinkedIn was actually launched back in 2003, but had a slow following until the recent popularity of social media sites for business.  With more than 46 million users worldwide, LinkedIn is most frequently used as a way of networking with business colleagues and potential employers and employees.  In the past it was considered bad form to use social sites such as MySpace or Facebook for business purposes.  I’d say there’s been a shift there, wouldn’t you agree?  If you have yet to be so bold: Go here to add your LinkedIn profile (or, if you prefer, your resume) to your Facebook page: http://apps.facebook.com/my-resume.

The main idea of LinkedIn is/was to connect business professionals with other business pros that they trust, have worked with or know personally. These connections are carefully maintained by the site to avoid spammers and friend gatherers by asking questions before making a connection with another person. It also helps connect your “6 degrees of separation” by joining groups of other like-minded professionals that you can network with.

LinkedIn for Business

But what about LinkedIn’s use for businesses?  Well, the big dogs have been on board for awhile now.  More than 40% of Fortune 100 companies pay to use the site to find talent among its 46 million members.  But it’s not just about finding talent, although let’s not ignore that completely.  Did you know that you have the opportunity to showcase your business on LinkedIn as well?  Yep, it’s true. The 46 million and growing members of this network can read all about you, your company, and the potentially mindblowing things that you can do for them, their business, their friend’s business…you get the point.  Go here to get started: and Select “Add a Company”.   Or you can go look at ours, here.  You can also pay for premium profiles and those are custom quotes apparently.

There are a lot of ways to use LinkedIn for business and, for the sake of brevity and not reinventing the wheel, here’s a fantastic article by Meryl Evan of Webworkerdaily called: 33 Ways to Use LinkedIn for Business.

Growth & Innovation - Look Out:

There is a “buzz” growing around LinkedIn.  I’m actually writing this because clients keep asking about it and figured it was time I looked into it a little deeper.  Speaking of “buzz”, this is cool:  LinkedIn has what called a Company Buzz application, which allows members to track what is said about a company on Twitter. The application is a filter for Twitter conversations based on search terms and can be customized by members, allowing them to see who is talking about a specific company and products.  The application shows Tweets, trends and top keywords.  Very nice way to track and consolidate what is being said about your biz.

As for growth, these number are just out today:  In Europe the network  just crossed the 11 million members barrier, which cements it’s position as the preferred professional online network in Europe and the rest of the world. Globally, a new professional signs up for LinkedIn every second. LinkedIn currently gets a million new members every two weeks. LinkedIn is a global network, operating in 200 countries and across 170 industries. The’’ve launched local language sites in France, Germany and Spain and there are more in the pipeline.

 

You may want to think about checking it out.

Anyway, the one’s I have made recently have not been malled by the YouTube police yet, but I also post on Vimeo just to be safe.  Here’s a video from a Consulting Challenge Conference that I attended in Las Vegas this past weekend.  Special thanks once again to Maria Gudelis with Wildhorse Performance Marketing and to all of the wonderful people that I’ve connected with over the past month.  What a group!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Anyway, in my “delving”, I ran across this video about Facebook Datacenters that is just so awesome that I had to share it.  I’ve actually watched it many times and I don’t generally do that.  Here are a few stats that are well over 6 months old so feel free to multiply them by some obscene number to get the current rates:

The company’s data centers store more than 40 billion photos, and users upload 40 million new photos each day – about 2,000 photos every second. Not surprisingly, the racks are packed. The facility is using a raised-floor design, with no containment but generous spacing between racks.  Facebook appears to be spending $20 million to $25 million a year for the data center space that houses its servers, according to an analysis of the company’s data center infrastructure.  Here’s the very cool video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Everyone knows what a banner ad is.  If not, spend a few minutes surfing around…AFTER you’ve read everything on my blog and my website.  Generally, the ads are constructed from images (JPEG, PNG, GIF), and employ animation and sometimes even sound (yuk) with the use of Javascript, Shockwave or Flash.  Banners are seen everywhere and are placed on websites per the permission of the site owner, who usually gets a small commission on sales generating from their clicks.  When a banner ad is displayed on a web page, it is called an “impression”.  When a viewer clicks on the banner and is transported to the advertiser’s website, that’s known as a “click-through”.  Click through rates (CTR) are calculated based on the clicks divided by the impressions.

Now that we have all of that out of the way, Click through rates (CTRs) on banner ads have fallen over time.  That’s a fact.  There are plenty of reasons why a banner ad may not be producing respectable CTRs, among them are:

It’s ugly, annoying, loud, too flashy, illegible, weak, boring, confusing, or has a link that goes to an error page.  Just to name a few.

But what about the notion that banner ads are passe’?  Old news?  Not necessarily!  A recent study from iProspect indicates that banner ads are actually generating traffic outside of just the CTRs.  When they surveyed internet users to determine what actions they took when viewing a display ad, nearly one third said they clicked on the ad.  BUT, 27% said they used a search engine to find the product, brand or company listed in the ad and another 21% said they typed the company web address into their browser and navigated to the site.  That’s not all.  Another 9% indicated that they investigated the product, brand or company through social media or message boards.  

The same study dug a little deeper and determined that, among those who saw the display ad and performed a related search at some point, 14% actually visited the site and purchased the product advertised.  Maybe not money in the pocket for the site owner sponsoring the banner ads but, as a business deciding where to place my advertising dollars, I don’t know that I’d write off banner ads just yet.

So, my 11-year old son and I were discussing social media last week because: a) he gets it, and b) it’s something I do that I can talk about with him that doesn’t make his eyes roll back in his head with boredom or indifference.  Specifically, we were talking about Twitter and Facebook and how Facebook has now overtaken MySpace as the #1 social networking site worldwide.  It was at this point that my son looked at me very seriously and said, “Mom, you should really stay away from MySpace.  I heard it’s gotten very ’porny’.”  After I stopped laughing, we had a long discussion about the word “porny” and concluded that it is indeed a word or, if it wasn’t one before, we are declaring it to be one now.

That has stuck with me all week because, well it’s hilarious but also because there’s so much truth to it.  I actually started noticing a lot of things on Twitter that just kind of flew by in the past, such as usernames with “xxx” in them and some provocative tweets and avatars.  Now I’m not naive, and I know that adult content is not new to internet marketing but I decided to do a little research on the social media angle.  As much as I could stomach anyway and still put a few useful facts out there.  Here’s what I found:

In large part, this is not being talked about in articles, blogs,or forums.  Or if it is, it’s on page 132 of Google search results.  I spent some time on this and there are quite a few articles out there discussing porn on MySpace but I really could find nothing within the last 12 months.  There was a recent article by Erick Qualman on Search Engine Watch titled 15 Social Media Maxims for Marketers in which he states that “Social media has overtaken pornography as the number one online activity, according to Hitwise data.”  Could it be that people are just getting their porn ON social media sites?  I do know that Facebook has member listing tags (FBML) for ages: 18-plus and 21-plus, that were perhaps set up to help with Facebook’s payment system but can also be used to target audiences for more ahem-”adult” content.

Google owns YouTube so we’d expect YouTube to be pretty squeaky clean, right? Well, I think they try.  YouTube has some very strict terms of use (a few a surprise to me).   Children under the age of 13 are prohibited from using YouTube at all!  (My son will be thrilled).  20 hours worth of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute so, in large part, the rules against adult content are policed by the YouTube community who report said seedy videos,  which are apparently then swiftly removed.    However, that doesn’t stop LINKS to porn from being placed on YouTube.  In fact, a search on YouTube for “mini bucking bulls” (which are popular now…I know nothing about these things) will bring up a long list of links to porn sites.

Twitter is growing so rapidly that there are dozens of stories relating to the website and it’s uses daily, but only a few have touched on the growing “porn” element.  It’s really two-fold here.  First and foremost, many Twitter users are ticked that adult content is even being allowed to sully their Tweetdeck at all.  Second, and actually a little more important in my opinion, is the fact that Twitter accounts are being hacked by porn accounts who then spam unsuspecting followers with some surprising tweets.  This has happened multiple times in the last few months.    As nude photos and explicit messages bounce around Twitterspace, annoyed users are apt to Unfollow or just leave altogether and this is not a good prospect for an application with such networking and marketing promise.

Is there a solution here?  Well, having never successfully run a global social networking site myself, I have no idea.  It appears that the self-policing action that YouTube has in place works to an extent.  Did you know that they only have 70 employees?  It goes along with the whole Google concept of handing design and  ownership over to the users.  In the mean time, I don’t leave my social media accounts unattended or on autopilot.  That’s a mistake that I think far too many people are making these days.  Really, how is that being “social”?

Oh yeah, and I have a new word:  “porny”.  Ha!

Aside from that, I’d love comments, suggestions, corrections on my logic.   Thanks for reading!

The point here is that the use of these things could actually be affecting your bottom line.  chenry over at seomoz.org did a study and his results showed that, with CAPTCHA’s, there was an 88% reduction in SPAM but 159 FAILED CONVERSIONS!  Wow!  From a percentage standpoint, he showed that with the CAPTCHA on, there was a potential loss of 3.2% of conversions.  That could be a serious dent in sales at the price of getting rid of some SPAM.

It doesn’t have to be just black or white, however.  Instead of just flying naked with no SPAM protection, what other CAPTCHA alternatives are out there?  There are actually quite a few.  Some I have run across before and others are very novel ideas and, perhaps, worth a shot.   Here’s the list:

Non-Interactive Alternatives to CAPTCHA:

• Insert an input field that is invisible to the user.  By verifying that the field is empty you can detect human visitors.  You should probably insert the CSS in an external style sheet. You can also replace {visibility: hidden} with {display:none}. It also would be a good idea to change the name of the field as frequently as possible.  Here’s the code:

<input name="spam" type="text" style="visibility: hidden">

• You can use a hidden submit button and add a user button with Javascript.  A SPAM bot may click on the wrong button.  Here’s a sample:

<input type='submit' name='p' value='go' style='display:none'/>
<script language=\"JavaScript1.1\" type=\"text/javascript\">
document.write('<in' + 'put ty'+'pe=\"hid' + 'den\" na'+'me=\"acti'+'on\" va'+'lue=\"addme\">');
document.write('<input t'+'ype=\"sub'+'mit\" na'+ 'me=\"post\" value=\" $[Post] \" />');
</script>

Interactive Alternatives to CAPTCHA:

• Use logical puzzles such as “3 plus 2 = ….”, “How many wheels does a car have?”, etc.
• Use trivia such as “fire is not cold but ….”
• Present pictures of objects and ask visitors questions such as: “how many flowers are in this picture”, “is there a bird in the picture”. You could make this multiple choice.
• Present several pictures and have visitors click on a specific picture, for example the kitten. After the second/third attempt the message should be in the moderation cue.
• Make a “yes” and a “no” radio button and make “no” the default. Have visitors state that they are not spammers by selecting “yes”.
• Make an audio file that reads out loud the figures and have visitors type them in. Although this system helps the blind, it cripples the deaf.

So, there seems to be quite a few viable alternatives to using CAPTCHA that may be worth a try.  For those currently using CAPTCHA technology on any of their sites, it goes without saying that it’s not impenetrable.  There are circumvention techniques out there such as image recognition software, brute-force attacks, and just simply employing cheap human labor to process the tests. 

It really comes down to the neverending struggle for anyone doing business online and that is getting every single one of the good customers in and keeping all of the Spammers out.  There will always be that opportunity cost of the customers that you lose because of the safeguards that you implement.  Is 3.2% an acceptable loss of conversions for you?  It wouldn’t be for me.