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The term viral marketing, though sometimes negatively viewed as cousin to the evil computer virus, has created its own niche on the online marketing world. At its core, viral marketing simply means creating a marketing idea that viewers will pass along to their friends and contacts, creating far-reaching potential for exposure. By taking advantage of social networks and media, businesses can spread their message using word of mouth with the goal of reaching far more viewers than possible otherwise.

Creating a Viral Message

Successful viral marketing depends on two key principles. The first is crafting a message that people will want to share. Your message needs to resonate with viewers and give people a reason to pass it along. Most marketing campaigns that have gone viral included one or more of the following elements:

• Humor
• Giveaways or freebies
• Controversy—political or otherwise
• Appeal to basic desires
• Ego boost
• Useful service or resource

Think about the chain emails that come to your inbox, probably on a daily basis. If you’re the type to pass things along, there’s probably a certain category of messages that capture your attention and entice you to send them to friends. Political messages, comic strips, funny videos, 101 uses for vinegar—all of these appeal to a niche group that will be most likely to share them with others. In order to create a successful viral marketing campaign, you’ll need to determine what will be the most likely to appeal to your target audience and capitalize on that appeal to help disperse your message.

Getting the Message Out

The second principle for a successful viral marketing campaign is creating exposure in the right circles. If you want your message to catch on, you’ve got to make sure the right people see it. Social media outlets like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, websites like Digg and StumbleUpon, and well-known bloggers all provide outlets for your message to be seen. Make use of communities that already exist such as your email contact list or your Facebook group to propagate your marketing idea and you’ll be well on your way to exponential growth. If your content resonates with your target audience, you’ve won half the battle. The other half will be won for you as readers hit the forward button on their email messages, post links on blogs and Facebook pages, and send out Tweets.

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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

Social media has become the new bandwagon for businesses hoping to generate new sales leads. If you don’t have a Facebook page and a Twitter account, you may as well not exist in the minds of a large portion of your intended audience. For many, it’s just not worth the trouble of having to visit individual sites to check out sales promotions and blog posts. Instead, they want to hop on Facebook and see all the latest news collected neatly for them in their inboxes. But social media isn’t just convenient for consumers. It’s also a powerful tool for businesses to incorporate into their overall marketing strategies.

The Positives

Social media provides potential access to an audience of millions at the touch of a button. Want to build your contact list so more people see sales ads and promotional items? Host an ipod giveaway on Facebook and watch your list of contacts balloon. Social media also gives companies an opportunity to find out what customers really think about their products and services. By listening in on forum conversations and post comments, they can get an inside look at how people view the company and can then take steps to address those concerns.

The Negatives

The social media sphere isn’t all roses for businesses, however. The very thing that makes social media appealing to consumers—the ability to hear real life opinions and experiences with a particular company—can quickly destroy a company’s reputation if a negative experience becomes public. The potential for companies to lose control over marketing messages means that they need a strategy for addressing problems and concerns immediately in order to allay fears.

Putting it together

Remember the Domino’s pizza nightmare? It’s an excellent demonstration of how quickly word can spread in the social media environment. With nearly a million views of a disgruntled employee’s damaging video on the first day it was posted, Domino’s immediately had a marketing crisis to deal with. But the good news is that companies can use that same power to build brand loyalty and address concerns as they arise. Companies like Dell Computers have mastered the art of meeting people where they are and tactfully addressing concerns in a way that garners customer loyalty without engendering feelings of distrust or frustration. Stepping into social media conversations allows you to address specific concerns and needs at the customer’s level, especially when done in a way that doesn’t come across as a sales pitch, but rather as a genuine effort to provide benefit.

Social media will find you whether you have a strategy in place or not. People are already talking about you in blogs, on their Facebook pages, over their Twitter accounts, and in forums. By taking the initiative to define parameters of conversation, you can guide those conversations toward a positive interaction with your company and set yourself up to be viewed as a trusted entity rather than scary corporation.

Are you using a social media strategy in your business? Have you seen businesses that excel with their social media strategy? What about businesses that fail miserably? Share in the comments!

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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

In today’s business world, it can be very easy to ruin a company’s reputation. Sometimes all it takes is one scandal, but sometimes all it takes is one slanderous comment. That is why it is even more important than ever that companies focus on online reputation management.

Online reputation management is when a company assesses all of the information available online about their brand, service, product, or company. An important part of managing your online reputation is also having a plan for dealing with any negative comments that you might find about your company.

You may find that your competitors are trying to smear your company’s name or product in a variety of backhanded ways. They could do this through comments on blogs, through posting ghost blogs, or through creating websites that complain about your company. Previous customers can also be a problem. Sometimes all it takes is one bad experience for customers to decide that you are not a reputable business and they may decide to warn everyone else not to do business with you either.

You also may find problems with other companies’ bad reputations. If they have a similar name or website address or if your companies share the same initials, people might confuse your company with theirs. Online reputation management is very important in these circumstances to keep your company name clear.

How do you improve your online reputation? Ranking high on search engines and advertising on various respectable websites are two good ways. You need to make sure that people see plenty of positive information about your company when they search for it and not just negative information. Regularly updating content on your company website can be a great way to do this. It is also important to have articles and press releases written about your company. Try to gather up as much free publicity for your company as you can. Set up product or service reviews with various high ranking blogs. Make a Facebook or Twitter page for your company and offer people an incentive like a discount to like your page. Uploading promotional videos to YouTube and Google videos is also a good idea.

But how do you monitor your online reputation to make sure that it is not being damaged? Google Alerts will notify you with new Google results using your company or product name and positive or negative keyword phrases that you choose to have them search for. You can search Twitter to see if your company has been mentioned in tweets. Trackur and Brandseye are both services that monitor all the aspects of social media and keeps you informed. Knowing what others are saying about you on the internet gives you the opportunity to smooth over the bad and highlight the good.

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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

Favorable product reviews are very important in order to have a successful business. Today’s consumers are not stupid, and they are tired of wasting money on useless products. They realize that businesses often do not live up to their advertising claims. So instead of listening to the ads that they see around them, more and more consumers are turning to product and service reviews on the internet to help them decide what they will buy.

Consumers want to know if your product is going to break easily or if there is a similar product that is better. You want them to stay on your website until they purchase your product, not leave it quickly to find other products or more information. Having product reviews on your website will give it the advantage over other websites with similar products by influencing the consumer and improving your conversion rates.

Having testimonials from happy customers on your website will help you to improve conversion rates. Customers want to know that your business has a reliable product or service and they appreciate seeing the feedback from other satisfied customers. Make it clear that you welcome the feedback of your customers and encourage your best customers to go online and post a product or service review. Many companies offer discount coupons to customers in exchange for their feedback. Customer reviews of your products can be spread throughout your website to attract the most attention and improve conversion rates. Besides having a specific page for these reviews, place some reviews on landing pages and even on the shopping cart pages to keep the satisfaction of your customers and the quality of your product in the consumer’s mind as they look through your website.

However, companies should be concerned with more than customer testimonials on their websites. Consumers know that some companies do not hesitate to post fake customer reviews in order to put their product in the best light possible. This is why it is important for products to be reviewed on blogs and newspaper articles. These sources give customers more objective feedback and make them feel more comfortable with their purchasing decision. Take full advantage of any product reviews that you receive in blogs and newspapers. Linking to these reviews or quoting the reviews on your website can be a great way to improve conversion rates.

Customers want to know that they will be happy with your product or service. If your business website provides them with this assurance, they will purchase your product and your conversion rate will soar.

Be sure and subscribe for the latest web marketing strategies and updates!

Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

Many business owners know that Google Local Business Center is a great way for companies to reach potential customers. Google recently changed the name of this center to Google Places. The basic set up of Google Local Business Center has not changed, but there are several new features. Google Places has made improvements to their customer help by providing updated guides, information on new features, and more contact information for people having problems with the site. They are also offering webinars and a help forum.

Even if you don’t have a website for your small business, you can still use Google Local Business Center to help promote your business on the internet by claiming a listing. Listings provide basic information about businesses such as location, opening hours, reviews, payment methods, and special offers. Adding pictures and video of your business are also good options to increase your listing’s advertising power. Update as much of the information as you can in order to make your business stand out from the other companies that have very little information. It is very simple to claim your listing and to create one if one doesn’t exist yet. Just open a Google account and enter in the basic information of your business. Then you need to verify that you are the business owner and your listing will be posted.

Keywords are absolutely essential when using Google Local Business Center. Customers who are searching for your business’s products and services are going to use certain terms in search engines. You want your business to be one of the first ones named so it will attract the most attention, and the way to do this is through search engine optimization (SEO). You need to have a a listing that is optimized for keywords so that the search engines will rank it higher than other websites with less optimized descriptions.

After you’ve set up your listing at Google Places, move on to Yahoo!, Bing, Yelp, and Yellow Pages. Once you have all of these in place, be sure and ask your clients for reviews! Link them to your places page and make it as easy as possible for them to do. If you’re able to offer some type of a reward for doing so, even better! A keyword optimized listing that has several reviews will go a long ways towards improving your ranking in the localized results.

Need help with this? Visit www.googlemaplisting.com and SEORCHERS will be able to manage this listing for you at an affordable $50/mo.

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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

Google first noticed that it had a speed problem back in 2001, when immediate news about the September 11^th attacks could not be found on the search engine. In those days Google updated its index only once every 30 days, making it impossible for searchers to find current news. The realization of the magnitude of this problem spurred the creation first of Google News (which quickly became a household name), and now Google Caffeine, an application that updates the Google index every few seconds.

Making its Mark on the Internet

Google was not the first to think of this innovation. For years Bing has offered more real time search results. And since the rivalry between these two search engines is no secret it seems safe to say that Google must have been motivated (at least in part) by its counterpart’s success. In any case, the novelty of having updated news by the second will certainly increase Google’s already unquestioned popularity.

The Future of Search

Since Google Caffeine now updates news postings, blogs, and articles every few seconds, waiting for information has become a thing of the past. No more will you sit in front of your computer frustrated that this morning’s “big story” is inaccessible this afternoon. Any articles or blog posts added to a website should almost instantaneously appear on the web.

On the flip side of this shiny coin, the importance of updated information on websites will now become more critical than ever before. With news being updated by the second, sites that do not regularly post will quickly fall behind. The pace of the internet has gone to light speed, and sites will either have to get on board or jump ship.

SEO Upset?

With the onset of Google Caffeine the search engine has synchronized its results with its global ranking. Since these changes could disadvantage local sites, they have created some concern that the new searching system will cause page ranking to plummet. However, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) writers are determined to use the changes to their advantage. Learning the new system is the key. As long as prominent sites continue to utilize skilled web marketing it is unlikely that their page ranking will suffer.

With Google Caffeine, this search engine has joined the wave of the future. Meeting its competitors full-steam-ahead, Google is once again declaring to the world that it is a force to be reckoned with.

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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

One of the most common mistakes made by web designers is the failure to present a clear call to action to viewers. A call to action asks the viewer to act on what he has seen or read and shows him how to do so. Your website may have excellent design, content, and graphics and it may be SEO optimized to draw in the greatest number of viewers, but without a clear call to action, your hard work will not produce the results you’re looking for. Pay attention to these aspects when creating your call to action:

• Placement

There should be a call to action after every major component of your website. That means each article, each video, and each product page should have a link inviting the viewer to sign up for a newsletter, make a purchase, send in a donation, or schedule an appointment. Don’t put too many calls to action on a single page, however. Multiple links requesting action in close proximity to one another can leave the viewer confused and even cause them to leave your site for one that’s easier to navigate.

• Visibility

Since your homepage is the most visited page of your website, its call to action should be prominently displayed, allowing the viewer to see immediately where to click in order to take the next step. Make sure the viewer doesn’t have to scroll down in order to see the call to action button and use techniques such as color contrast, large size, and surrounding white space to draw the reader’s eye. Don’t hide the call to action in a list of similar looking links or place it only within the body of an article.

• Content

Your call to action should clearly state what you’re asking the viewer to do. Use active words such as “Buy Now,” “Donate Today,” “Sign Up for Our Newsletter,” or “Schedule an Appointment.” Avoid vague statements such as “Click Here” which leave a reader wondering what he’s clicking on. Also, don’t create links that automatically sign a viewer up for an email without his knowledge. Doing so will create frustration with your company and drive away potential customers.

• Effectiveness

Test your call to action buttons regularly to make sure they work. Using analytics tools will give you an idea of what people look at on your site and which links they click on. If your call to action isn’t producing the desired effect, change one of the aspects above or consult a web designer who can give your ideas on optimizing your strategy.

Your call to action is one of the most important features of your website. Without it, you’ll lose customers who become frustrated with their inability to take the action you’re encouraging. By contrast, a well-written call to action can increase conversion rates by several percentage points and will ensure that the effort you’ve put into designing an effective website pays off.

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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

Online video marketing is one of the most effective and efficient ways to distribute your message to a wide audience without breaking your advertising budget. As the average web user’s attention span gets shorter and shorter, fewer people take the time to read long articles or pages full of text. Those same users, however, will easily spend one to two minutes watching a video that discusses the topic that interests them.

Most marketing videos receive the best exposure on a video sharing site like YouTube. YouTube attracts 60 million unique visitors each month, with some of those viewers spending 5 – 6 hours a day watching videos. As one of the top five most visited websites in the United States, YouTube offers a unique marketing landscape in which to present your message.

As you’re preparing to launch your video, keep in mind that in order for viewers to find you, you’ll need to determine what keywords will help your video reach the largest audience. Search engines can’t rate your video content, so your keywords will be included in your title and description. YouTube helps you generate keyword phrases by allowing you to input descriptive phrases, video id’s and demographics and then suggesting appropriate keywords for your video. You should also consider using Google Adwords and other SEO keyword research tools in order to make sure your video gets the highest level of exposure possible. Long tail keywords (4 – 6 word phrases that a viewer might type in to find a specific topic or product) can benefit you as well by capturing very specific search requests entered by viewers who are the most likely to be interested in the product or service you offer. With 15 hours of new video being posted to YouTube every minute, it’s essential that you put some thought and effort into enabling your video to be found by your target audience

When creating your video, put some thought into the content creation. It should look professional and provide a clear message that answers the question the viewer typed into the search box. Remember, viewers have short attention spans, so if your video doesn’t provide what they’re looking for in the first minute or two, you’ll lose them to a competitor.

Once your video is online, spread the word. Post your video link on message boards and on your website. Send it through email and ask friends and family to share it. Post it on your Facebook page and share it with your Twitter followers. The goal is to get the link in front of as many eyes as possible in order to drive traffic to your link and increase conversion rates. Keep the content fresh and the message clear, and you’ll be rewarded with increased sales and brand loyalty among potential customers from every walk of life.

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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.

Location based searches have changed the playing field for social media marketing and mobile marketing. The ability to tailor ads and search results to a user’s current location vastly increases response rates, meaning that companies receive greater ROI and that they can better understand their customer base, providing services that cater to the target audience’s needs and wants. Basically, if a mobile user on 5^th Avenue in New York wants to find a Thai restaurant, he can receive localized search results that not only show him what restaurants are nearby, but also which ones are currently offering coupons or specials.

Location based services don’t stop with search results. They can be used to track a user’s routines and preferences so that the ads that appear on his mobile device match his interests, increasing his likelihood of responding to those messages. In addition, the social networking giants are beginning to incorporate geo-location based messaging into their operations, meaning that users can see information such as where their friends posted from, where pictures were taken, and which of their friends might be posting nearby.

The ability to view a user’s location and to monitor his movements has some people concerned about privacy. That’s why companies such as Twitter require opt-in programs before enabling location based services on your mobile device. It’s left up to the individual whether he wants to give up his privacy in order to receive a service. Location gurus postulate that if the incentives are great enough (e.g., if people receive enough satisfaction from the advertising, subsidized calling plans and other services offered) then they will voluntarily allow their locations to be tracked. That’s good news for businesses that want to offer localized pricing and sales information to audiences. If your mobile activity indicates an interest in fashion, you’ll be able to find your favorite stores and see what sales are taking place, all from your mobile phone.

One of the biggest splashes in the LBS pond took place when Google recently received a patent for its location based advertising. The patent gives Google the corner on the market for a rapidly expanding service and could mean that other companies will be forced to curtail their geo-location based ads. However, strict patent enforcement could mean damage to Google’s overall reputation and costly legal battles. In any case, Google now has an advantage over its rivals and a reason to buy up small competitors.

We have only just begun to tap the potential of the geo-location based services. As the technology advances, users can expect to see new services becoming more and more tailored toward their preferences and greater ability to connect with friends in the same area.

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Justin McGill is a web marketing professional and runs a successful Small Business SEO Firm. He is the founder and CEO of SEORCHERS (read: [surch-ers]) - a local web marketing firm specializing in organic search engine optimization (SEO) with a focus on converting visitors into clients. He is available for SEO Consulting and now you can connect with him on Google+!.