Social Networking for Businesses – DO

• Post regularly, an empty page will not generate any interest.
• Keep what you say relevant and interesting.
• Don’t leave comments unanswered, respond in a timely manner, after all the idea is to engage with your customers.
• Complete the profile page and include a photo of yourself or a company logo.
• Join in relevant conversations, don’t just wait for people to talk to you.
• Use your real name whenever possible.
• Ask for other peoples’ opinions on products or services.
• Keep your posts positive.
• Keep things professional but with a personal touch.
• Give back. Social media is a two-way street. Give as much as you get.
• Ask people questions to get a conversation started.

Social Networking for Businesses – DON’T

• Leave your accounts untouched for weeks on end.
• Post about irrelevant things, like what you had for dinner last night.
• Post every single news item / report / product etc. Pick out the most interesting stuff.
• Be aggressive towards somebody else even if they are offensive to you.
• Direct sell with every post, this will very quickly alienate your followers. The odd subtle post or exclusive promotion say every 1 in 20 posts is OK.
• Use offensive language, a bad reputation can spread quickly.
• Allow your blog to be spammed by others promoting themselves. Check your comments regularly and keep them free of spammers.
• Ignore follower’s comments. If you are lucky enough to get too many to reply to individually, try and acknowledge them with a blanket rsponse.
• Post factually incorrect stuff, at some point you will be found out.

Most people use Google when searching for local businesses, so you want to make sure your company stands out. According to Google, nearly three quarters of all online activity is related to looking for local content.

It’s fairly painless to set up your listing, and maintaining your Places account should be added to your list of things to do on a regular basis.

Adding a listing takes just three steps. They are:

• Submit your information, from basic contact information to photos and video.
• Verify your listing by phone or postcard.
• Wait for your listing to appear on Google.

To create your business’s Places page, Google will crawl the Web and try and find information about your business from a variety of other websites including Yellow Pages and other directory sites.

Once you have set up your listing, it’s important to fill out all relevant information, including hours of operation, payment options, categories, and additional details. The more information you have, the more prominent your Places ranking will become. Aim to have a 100% completed profile, it’s unlikely you will feature in the top seven business listings if you don’t.

Don’t forget the basics — like a company phone number. Google Places is predominantly about a phone number and that phone number has to be a local phone number, and be shown on your website in a format that the Google spider can see. So, make sure the phone number on your website is in text format.

Inbound links are links from pages on external sites linking back to your site. Inbound links can bring new users to your site, and when the links are given freely, they’re also a positive signal to the search engines about the importance of your site.

Before talking about how to get these links, a warning about link trading or reciprocal linking. These links have very little value. Quality is definately much better than quantity as far as links are concerned. The value of a few quality inbound links will far outweigh that of hundreds of reciprocal links.

Whatever you do avoid link farms at all costs. Link Farms are groups of websites that each link to every other site in the group. Don’t be tempted by automated programs (or people) that promise to get you hundreds of links. The links are very likely to be of poor quality and will probably be irrelevant. The search engines may even penalise your site for trying to outwit their algorithm. In fact, Google could even ban your site. Build inbound links the right way and your site will, over time, gain credibility with the search engines.

Quality links often come naturally to sites with engaging content or that offer a unique service.

Write Quality Content – Search engines love sites that produce fresh content. Write compelling articles for your site and if you have a blog write frequent, good quality posts. Write for people and not for search engines and avoid filling up your articles with nothing but keyword phrases. Try to write high quality content that people will want to read and link to. If you have a blog and a separate website don’t forget that you can also cross-link your blog posts and website content.

Get Some Publicity – This is a great way way to get inbound links. First you need to have an unusual or interesting story or some ingenious product or service. Then work out who you are aiming at – local or national press, specialist or trade magazines. If you are fortunate enough to have a story that gets national media coverage, that can lead to some very high quality links to your website.

Write Guest Posts - There are many blogs and content sites that are looking for people to write articles and blog posts for them. Writing a guest post on another site’s blog is a great way to generate quality inbound links to your website. In addition, it helps establish you as an expert in your field.

Social Media – Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google + and LinkedIn have a role to play. It is a good idea to publish any new page on your blog or website on one or more of these platforms. If you have a solid fan / followers base you should be able to get traffic from these and other social media sites. But that is not the only reason why link building on these websites is important. Although you will get direct traffic, there is another benefit. There is a part of the search engine’s algorithm which considers the number of social media mentions your site gets. The more mentions your site gets, the better your rankings.

Of course, writing a blog takes time and effort but remember that search engines love blogs as they are a source of fresh, up to date content. Once you have your blog up and running it can help with providing content for social network sites. For example, your blog could post direct onto your Facebook page and you could alert your followers on Twitter to new content.

If you find yourself staring at the screen wondering what to write about, there are a few ideas below. The best thing to do is to mix up the type of posts you write, it adds variety for your readers, which makes for a more interesting read. Above all write about what you know best.

Ideas for blog posts.

• Feature a product, service, employee or customer – if you write about a person more often than not they will promote your post for you.
• Answer customer questions – what are the most common things people ask you about your products or services, others probably want to know the same things.
• Compile industry information – everyone has good ideas. A great way to put together a powerful post is to compile popular statistics, images, and videos into one article that summarises the information for your readers.
• News about your business - when people are reading your website, they are probably curious as to what your business is up to.
• How to – show someone how to do something, people love to learn things.
• Think beyond text – text is great, but it doesn’t have to be the only type of blog content you offer. Think about other types of content. For example you could create a blog post with pictures taken at an industry trade show (make sure you name any individuals as they might link back to your post).
• Seek out guest authors - ask other people write for you. Think about experts and leaders in your industry and ask them to contribute a guest article for your blog. You’ll find that many people are willing to this for free in order to gain exposure to a new audience and generate a link or two back to their own blogs or websites.
• Make lists – coming up with new blog posts is often a function of framing ideas in the correct way. Think of common  issues in the form of lists. Lists can be how-to, best-of, etc., but often serve as a catalyst for coming up with a fresh angle for a common topic.
• Review books – provide your own twist on what others have to say about your industry or sector. Read some recent books and then write reviews about them and indicate who might enjoy reading them. If you are feeling adventurous you could maybe produce some video reviews.
• News – think like a newspaper reporter. Has something happened recently that has had an impact on your industry? Summarise the news and explain what it means for your industry. As well as keeping your readers up to date, breaking news regularly will help to improve your search listings. Part of the search engine’s algorithm gives value to sites that are regularly among the first to discuss particular stories or subjects.

• Quick and easy to start - you could create a Facebook page in less than an hour or get a blog started in a few days.
• Generally low cost or free - you can get started in social media and blogging for very little or no money. Definately one of the most cost-effective methods of reaching your customers and prospects.
• Instant interactivity - blogs and social media can give you nearly instant market feedback – good or bad. This can be through the comments on your blog; or reviews and other comments left on Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media channels.
• They can help your search engine profile - many people start their purchasing process by using a search engine. Social Networks and Blogs make it more likely that your prospects will find you online when they are searching. It’s also worth noting that Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter also generate lots of search results via their own search. Your business needs an account or profile to stand a chance of appearing in those searches.
• Your competitors are probably there already - thousands of companies large and small are ramping up their social media efforts from large corporations to small neighborhood shops. Conversations are already happening about your industry, your company, your competitors and your customers.
• Great way to share case studies - your main site can only say so much without becoming too busy.  Having a blog on your site allows you to neatly organise information, and lets you have lots of space for those case studies you would like to include on your website. Case studies are a very powerful way to showcase your company’s work.
• They can help to build a subscriber base - use your blog to build a subscriber base of current, past and potential clients as well as professionals in your industry and complimentary industries.

Content - is very important. Make sure you have text on all your important pages, then make sure it is good quality text consisting of your targeted keywords and phrases spread naturally throughout the copy. Always write your content for the human reader, and never write content just for the purpose of achieving search engine rankings.

Domain Hosting  - where your site is hosted is very important from a speed point of view, and this also has a bearing on your search engine rankings. Ask your hosting company where their servers are located. If your business is based in the UK use a reputable hosting company based in the UK. It’s not a good idea to use the cheapest hosting, this rarely performs well.

URL Structure - Load up your site in a browser and look at the address bar. Are your URL structures clean? There should not be any random strings of characters at the end of your URL, like this example: www.yoursite.co.uk/title/bit0213/. Much better would be something like www.yoursite.co.uk/title-page/.

Internal Link Structure – make sure your inner pages are linked correctly. Visitors should have easy pathways connecting your other pages from every page of your website. Make sure the code of your website is verified and keep Flash and JavaScript to a minimum, if you can. Essentially make sure the site is clean, easy to use and interlinked to help the user experience.

Trust – do you at least have a telephone number listed on your website? Search Engines like to see trust factors on websites so anything you can add that could help build trust for your audience will benefit your rankings. We always recommend having your phone number on each page of your website. Make it easy for people to do business with you, it all starts with establishing trust and that starts with contact information on your website.

Keywords and Phrases - make sure your website is optimised using your keywords and phrases. This means using alt tags for images, meta page information, headings and existing content at the very least. Remember to naturally optimise your website based on the content of each page.

Bounce Rate – although bounce rate might not seem important, if a search engine sees that nobody stays on your website for more than a few seconds before they leave this could affect your ranking over time. Make changes to get visitors engaged with your website. Simple things, like video, newsletter sign up, call to actions, etc. will all help improve your bounce rate over time. Make sure you have proper tracking on your website, such as Google analytics, so you can measure this.

Outbound links – make sure the websites that you link to are 100% relevant to your business and industry. If you sell toys but you are linking to a site that sells shoes that is not very relevant and over time could really impact your rankings.

Inbound Links – The key here is don’t buy or exchange links. Market and promote your business online to build visitors to your website over time. If you do, then the relevant links will follow!