As I’ve been developing out my blog and my business service offering over the last few days I realized that there are two components to my strategy and I almost focused on the wrong one. All the other blogs I’ve written so far are correct and technically accurate. People of solid business minds who know this stuff will argue over different aspects or strategies for the best traffic placement how much value LongTail key words have, or how to use local Search. Used effectively any strategy will drive business. Here’s the thing, technical strategies are cold and have no feeling. The whole reason why it’s difficult to do business in a small community neighborhood now is because there is no neighborhood, at least not in Marietta ga. The square in Marietta is nice and does get some main street traffic but what if you own a business over where I live in East Cobb. Johnson’s ferry is basically a highway and main street doesn’t exist.

I remember as a kid my first job after caddying one round was helping at our neighborhood fish store. On Tuesday’s and Thursday’s  we would get a truck in from the Jersey Shore. I lived in Clarks Summit, Pa a small town suburb of Scranton PA. It was a beautiful area to grow up in. We were close to the Poconos and had an amazing fall leaf season. We also had a main street. The fish shore was on it. So I’d go in early meet the truck and start unloading. David the owner and I hustled all morning unloading the truck. Of course he decided he had to go in and start filleting the salmon as soon as the scallop bags were about to come of the truck. Anyway after I finished with the truck I had a few different jobs from helping out in the Kitchen to steaming crabs to cleaning the place up and occasionally, once I finished everything else they would let me work up at the counter.

Well every time a customer came in I knew who they were. I said hi and I always made recommendations about what we had gotten in that day. It was a small town, a neighborhood,  and I had grown up there,  everybody knew me and David loved having me there. He once told me that having me upfront was the best marketing he ever did. That was because we were a small neighborhood and everyone knew everyone.

Today there is no such thing as a small neighborhood. Or is there? Is there a neighborhood and main street? Social media is bringing back Main street believe it or not. The neat thing about this main street is doesn’t just have to be in your local postal code and a lot of businesses have taken advantage of the global reach but how can a small business who really does only need to reach the local community participate in this social net working field?

The key is finding and building that neighborhood. Most of the way’s to build the neighborhood are easy and free but they take effort and some time. Using Facebook, LinkedIn, twitter, and blogging you can develop community. If no other business owners in the same community then connect with them. On your blog write something of value about what they do and who they are. Help bring them business from your customer base in the Neighborhood and let them help bring you business from their customer base. Soon your neighbors in the community will be talking about both of you and how great you are to all of their neighbors.

If you own a small business in the East Cobb,  Marietta, or Roswell community I can help you find and participate on your main street via the internet and help you drive business while helping to build the Neighborhood online and off.

Offerings like the neighborhood co-op news letter will help you create the Main Street feel. Don’t forget to join twitter and subscribe to the @metzgerbusiness\mariettausers list. This list currently has 83 users that are located in Marietta inclusive of East Cobb. I promise the list will grow quickly. This list is set up and a free resource to anyone who follows it. This is an 83 person network dying to be tapped. I’ll be setting up a Roswell list and greater Atlanta area list as well.

If you don’t yet know how to make these social networks act as a neighborhood main street for your business, lets sit down and talk. I’ll help you develop you social media strategy so that your business has prime real estate on Main Street and you’ll feel good about helping your neighbors too.

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While we haven’t yet covered social media in the Web Marketing strategy for small local business I had a good case study occur recently.

My friend Bill William is a business broker here in East Cobb. He owns a Murphy’s business brokers franchise. He has networked locally for at least the last two years which is as long as I’ve known him and he also uses LinkedIn. Bill was offered an excellent opportunity to sell a franchise locally and he wanted to let folks know about the opportunity. Bill reached out to his network of folks via email and through LinkedIn. Bill even offered an incentive if you help bring in an offer. Bill did a great job at reaching out to his network. Because Bill reached out and because I like what he is doing and where he is trying to go with social media related to his small business I wanted to dedicate a post to Bill’s offering. Oh and by the way I don’t know enough about the franchise to know if it would compete with my offerings on the site. If you are interested in the business  offering will you please let Bill know you found the opportunity through me.

Business Outline:
The franchisor is the leading local internet search and advertising medium in the U.K. and plans to be the same in the U.S.A.
Business promotional spending is rapidly moving away from print to the internet.  The internet dollars are migrating to Local Geo-Targeted platforms and permission based marketing.
The franchisor offers a full suite of internet deployed products and services for small to medium sized businesses.

Financial Requirements:
Total Investment Range: $335,000 to $605,000.
Liquid Requirement: $500,000 – $750,000
Net Worth:  $750,000 – $1,000,000+

Services:
Custom website development
Hosted outbound marketing tools
Networking and training events
Regional TV & Radio marketing

Candidate Profile:
Sales & Marketing management experience
B2B/Advertising sales experience a plus
Intangible product sales
Determined to build a big business
Willing to operate “hands on” business as pilot and model

Value Proposition
High margin, recurring revenue in a protected territory
Up to 80% gross margin on advertising products
85% historical client retention rate
88% of consumers search the internet prior to making the spending decision

Whats more is the franchisor makes earning claims in their documentation. This is a huge opportunity for the right person or group who wants an easy way to enter the internet market.

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In this series of blogs I will be examining the various social media strategies and the social media tools that support them. I’ll be examining companies that are using the strategies, looking at why a particular strategy might have been chosen and discussing the success of the strategy. All of these companies and strategies are marketing/PR campaigns.

My goal is to write a case study for each of the social media tools and explain what strategies were applied to make the tool successful for the company applying the tool and strategy.

Here are the Social Media Tools we’ll examine.
Blogging
Bookmarking/tagging
Content Aggregation
Crowdsourcing
Microblogginng
Mashups
Online video
Photo Sharing
Podcasting
Social Networks ie. Facebook, Linkedin
VIrtual Worlds
Widgets
Wikis

I’m going to pick companies that have successfully applied these tools and attempt to define and explain the strategies they have applied. Since I want to be impartial I’ll pick the companies from a list that was compiled by Peter Kim in September 2008 of Social Media Examples. The list contains over 300 companies and the tools they are applying. You can find the article here A List of Social Media Marketing Examples.

Look for the first case study early next week.

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Today I wanted to discuss a technique that almost guarantees fist page search results when someone is searching for your name. This strategy is very valuable for individuals involved in sales.

Search for Kevin Metzger

To test the strategy I had to do a search for my name and as you can see I come up in 5 places on the first page of Google although none of the results go directly to my blog sites. The first result that is related to me is video results. I have some videos posted to YouTube so I come up when the user clicks on that page. The next site that shows me is a network that I maintain a profile on and sometime blog at. Then there is LinkedIn my radio show profile page and finally you see a picture of me at the very bottom of the search page. This picture and profile was created 2 minutes before I did this search. It was done on the Google Profile page and this is a very valuable tool.

If a searcher chooses to click on my profile they now have access to both my blog’s, my twitter profile page, my LinkedIn profile page, and my Facebook profile page. They can also see a personal bio I put together and some limited information about me. Here is a quick look at the profile page.

Kevin Metzger profile page

This page took 5 minutes to create and put me on Google’s front page with my picture in no time. If you think anyone will ever search for you and you want to be found. Then this is a simple strategy that you must follow to guarantee your spot on Google’s fist page. You can create your profile at Google Profiles. It’s as simple as filling out a form and following directions.

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