Welcome to 2011. I don't know if you finish all of your New Year's resolutions yet but I've got one I'd like to add to your list that won't be that hard. In fact if you come back and visit this blog all year all help keep you on track with just a couple hours each month. This resolution has the potential to double your business in the next 12 months. Don't you think that's worth a couple hours a month?
All through 2010, there were two common threads missing from just about every business I talked with. Even those few businesses that we found which were focused on their primary core strength we still found these two threads missing. So I want you to make a resolution for 2011 to fix this for your business. Of the nearly 43,000,000 registered brick-and-mortar businesses in the United States, nearly half don't even have a website. And believe it or not this is not one of those threads. For most of the businesses that don't have a website, they can probably continue to live for years without a regular website if they don't want to.
The more amazing number is that less than 2% have claimed their space on the Internet, and only half of them have bothered to do anything more than claiming their space. Now you're probably wondering how you claim space on the Internet. The truth is there are several ways that you should think about the one much more important than the others. To begin with if your company name is already taken or something close, you should register it. This can be done for less than $20 per year and it prevents somebody else from stealing your business by using your name.
We had a client last year who had someone put up a spoof website using his name. Believe me when I tell you that the stuff posted was not flattering. We had to buy the website and take it down in order to help the customer move forward. For $20 a year you don't want that to happen.
But this isn't what I'm talking about, what I'm talking about is claiming your space on the Internet and the world of mobile and maps. All of this can be done for free and you don't even need a website.
The resolution that I would like to add to your list and I want you to say out loud right now is this:
I will claim my businesses place on the Internet web of maps and mobile. I will make one update and one addition each month until the end of the year. If I don't have time to do this I will pay someone to do this because it is important that I do this.
They are probably still a little foggy on what I mean by this, so I will start the new year off by giving you the first where to go. When I say tip, I'm not talking about some little tidbit of information that is totally useless. I am giving you the exact same steps that we use for our clients and our Mobile Connect Marketingtm program. This is probably the single most important task you will need to accomplish in order to weave this thread to the fabric of your businesses marketing program.
After you do this, you're going to find that it was amazingly easy to do. It is a three-step task if you don't have a Google Gmail account already. Google will allow you to do this without a Gmail account however we find that they are much friendlier in their system works better if you have a Google Gmail account.
I know that I made you read a lot in order to do this, and this is pretty simple, but like I said, less than 2% of the businesses in the US have done this and it is FREE.
Step One. - if you don’t have a Google account is to go to www.google.com/gmail and get a Gmail Account.
Step Three. – Find your business and fill out your place page completely. Here is a link to ours so you can see all of the information that should be there. You want to make sure the three keywords that people would use to describe your business are in the categories and the description. If you have pictures of your location, people and customers post a couple. If you have a logo, post it like we did.
That is it, when you complete this you have moved up to the top 3% of all businesses in America on the internet. If you want to do more right away, our complete workbook is available here.
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