How to Get More Local Business Using Blogging and Social Media

Social Media: The Power of Local Search Engine Marketing

Guest post contributed by Ryan Chaffin. This is Part 1 of a three-part series on The Power of Social Media. Please support Ryan by tweeting this post, sharing on Facebook and leaving him a reply in the comments!

Photo Credit: LA Wad (flickr)

This big thing we call the Internet machine is growing more and more complex by the hour.  Every day it seems there are more methods to increase the ability for serious marketers to get their messages out to serious readers. One of the most recent innovations for spreading the word about businesses and services is social media.

Those who harness the power of social media to get the word out about their businesses and services are those who are on the cutting edge of online marketing.

The Power of Social Media

Social media is a powerful tool that can be utilized by anyone, regardless of their resources.

The way to enhance the efforts of anyone who participates in social media methods for marketing is to harness the power of local search engine marketing.

This means that those who provide specific services or products should also include their geographical area they specialize in servicing to within their keyword phrases.

For instance, if you owned a company that cleans carpets and you were based in the capital of Minnesota, your keyword phrase should be “carpet cleaning Minneapolis”. This is how you can harness the power of local search engine marketing for social media.

Getting it Clear: Social Media & Search Engine Marketing

Ok, let’s back up a bit to make sure everyone understands what social media is and how to harness the power of local search engine marketing. Social media comes in several different forms including blogs, EzineArticles, forums, YouTube videos, Facebook and more. Many people utilize these social media tools to spread the word by posting informational articles, blogs, videos, updates, etc.

These tools can be powerful and have provided a whole new set of opportunities for marketers.

One way that marketers can harness the power of social media marketing is by participating in local search techniques. Local search engine marketing is a very successful way to utilize the social media marketing tools. Those who use local search engine marketing are those who specialize in a certain geographical area for their marketing.  This is where our example above comes in.

How to Do It

It’s simple, really. In order to harness the power of local search engine marketing via social media, you need to identify the specific geographic area you want to capitalize your marketing efforts in and incorporate the geographic name into your keyword phrases.

That is why as the example above shows, if your business specialized in carpet cleaning, you’d want to focus your social media efforts on the geographical area that you provide your services to. So instead of simply targeting the keyword phrase of ‘carpet cleaning’, you’ll want to throw in the local area with your keyword as well.

BizChickBlogs Note: Sooo easy yet sooo many local business owners completely miss the boat on this one! Essentially, you need to tell the search engines “where” you offer services. It’s not enough just to target graffiti clean up as a keyword phrase. You must include the location. Example: “Tucson graffiti clean up.”

If you target all parts of a region/state/country, it’s STILL a good idea to use the local search engine marketing strategy.

So remember as you write a blog post or publish an article to any social media platform, you’ll want to mention your local area in which you provide your services as part of your keyword phrase. This is what’s called local search engine marketing. This draws in readers who are searching for services in their local area. It therefore makes the crowd you are reaching out to far more relevant and likely to obtain your services.

Indeed, anyone who utilizes social media would do well to harness the power of local search engine marketing.

Your Turn – Has it paid off for you?

Have you been targeting certain local areas in your blogging, article marketing, or use of social media channels like YouTube? Has it paid off?

— Ryan Chaffin

Technorati Tags: Power of Social Media, search engine marketing

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