We thought this was interesting. The national survey conducted by Cision and Don Bates of The George Washington University’s Master’s Degree Program in Strategic Public Relations found that 89% of journalists are using blogs, 65% are using Social Networking Sites, and 52% are using Microblogging Sites to find newsworthy content. Reliability, however, is one of the biggest concerns with these online sources. Read the full report.

“I really enjoyed the Webinar. It was very informative and well done” – Susan Black-Beth, CFE, Director of Franchising at Super Wash, Inc.

In the first in the series titled, Localized Online Marketing: Winning Over the “Locals”, Elements’ CEO and online marketing expert, Jeremy LaDuque, teaches how to create a local presence for every franchise location in order to improve local search engine rankings, reduce pay-per-click advertising, and ensure brand consistency. Webinar will take place on Friday, February 19, 2010 at 10:00 AM PST. http://elementslocal.com/register

There are 10 Billion unique searches done each month on various search engines and it’s estimated that over 57% of those are for local businesses. Google alone has over a Half Billion unique Local Searches per month. The bottom line is that over 50% of people find what they want through local search.

Online Local Marketing
For most businesses the majority of their customers are local, especially if you are a brick and mortar business, a local service provider or a restaurant. Even with the internet the majority of purchases are still made within 30 miles of home. So it is critical to be found for as many pertinent local searches as possible.
What this means is you want to be found under as many combinations of words as you can, locally. For example, you want to come up in search engines for both “San Jose CA Plumber” as well as “Bay Area Plumber”. The more keywords that relate to your local area the better.

The Challenge for Franchise Marketers
Franchise systems have the particular challenge of showing up local because it’s difficult to have unique websites for each location. Typical solutions franchises implement include such things are micropages (http://franchisename.com/franchisee.html), sub-domains (http://franchisee.franchisename.com) and local websites (http://franchiseename.com).

A branded local website, such as http://pdromaha.com for a Paul Davis Restoration franchise in Omaha, NE, can deliver significant local search impact. The image below shows the results for both Maps and Organic search that a branded local website can deliver.

A turn of a new decade invokes a reflection of trends from the past ten years, while stirring up curiosity as to what’s in store for the next ten. We couldn’t agree more with these 5 recommendations for online marketing in the new decade from Borrell Associates, a research and consulting firm that tracks and analyzes advertising and marketing trends:

1. Identify and copy the fastest-growing companies. The gap is widening between the “get it” and “doesn’t get it” companies. The ones who get it are growing fast. Watch – and copy – what they’re selling and how they sell.

2. Partner with someone. Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft and other tech companies are all hungry for local growth. So are local media companies that are partnering. The fastest-growing revenue streams are likely to come from partnership deals in 2010.

3. Use the Internet as a utility to tap faster-growing “non-advertising” marketing dollars. The amount spent on traditional advertising may be in perpetual decline. Monitor this trend, and start helping businesses where they’re spending more dollars – on the “non-advertising” side – including social networking, search engine optimization, promotions, rebates, contest and coupons.

4. Keep your hands on the wheel with mobile advertising. Mobile is the new disruptor, and absolutely worth experimenting with. But don’t over-commit resources. Like the Web 10 years ago, it will take several years for local advertisers to warm up to mobile en masse.

5. Capitalize on the transformation to video. Consumer comfort levels with Web-based video are high, and local advertisers are likely to follow in much larger numbers next year – not only buying up pre-roll commercials, but also buying longer “infomercial” type video embedded within online directories and inside banner ads.

Do you know what words get retweeted the most? Do you know which post titles get clicked on the most? How about what to include or exclude from your profile bio to gain more followers?

There are hundreds of webinars out there on the topic of social media; however, it is very difficult to find a webinar that is more of “how to” rather than a “what is” when it comes to social media. That’s why we’ve developed a webinar that really demostrates how to implement a successful social media strategy. Please keep in mind, this webinar is NOT simply an introduction to the concept of social media, but rather a step by step guide with tricks and tips, do’s and don’ts, and lots of resources to help simplify your social media plan.

Date: Friday, December 18, 2009
Time: 10:00am PST
Register here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/896729841