Over the past 10 days, we’ve gone over various reasons why you should be online. Here are just a few reasons. We hope that you’ve benefitted from some of the posts. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or concerns.

• Reduce or virtually eliminate customer service inquiries by providing easily accessible information.

• Gain effective intelligence on why people are coming to your site, and what they plan on accomplishing.

• Use online surveys to determine which products are preferred and why.

• Create commercials that can reach millions of people for less than $1000 by leveraging the power of online media.

• Increase sales using online transactions.

• Automate powerful marketing functions using a host of inexpensive or free online services and solutions.

• Dramatically raise your visibility in core demographics; many young people have never opened a phone book in their lives – if you aren’t online, you don’t exist

• Engage your audience. Figure out what they are looking for, why they are interested, and how you can help, so that they remain customers for life.

1. Visit http://www.google.com/local

2. Click on ‘Put your business on Google Maps.’

3. Complete your business profile. After hitting next, you can also provide operating information, such as business category, operating hours, methods of payments, photos, and videos.

4. Google will then verify business information by phone or via postal mail.

Setting up a Google Profile for your business gives you access to the Google Local Business Center that is linked to your Google Analytics account. The Business Center gives you access to the following vital information:

· How many people requested driving directions to your business and from what towns.

· How many times your Google listing was displayed.

· How many times people clicked on your Google listing. You can also access the Google Local Business Center by going to http://www.google.com/local/add

If you have not already done so, create a ‘Press’ page on your website. This page should contain the following components:

1. Brief information about your company and products with a link to the detailed ‘About’ and ‘Product’ pages.

2. High-resolution images and logos that members of the press may use for their publication.

3. Contact information, including the designated employee responsible for managing communications at your company, their phone number, email address, and cell-phone number.

Once you have created your ‘Press’ page, start adding news releases in reverse chronological order. If you publish numerous press releases in a single year, organize them by month or product. You should link to complete press release text on your own website, but it adds a tremendous amount of credibility if you also link to published press releases on external sites, such as PRLog, or news outlets which have covered your stories.

Online advertising can be purchased in micro-increments and you can pinpoint, with reasonable accuracy, who is viewing and reacting to your ads. In this section, we are going to discuss the two most popular forms of web advertising – search and display advertising.

Search: Buying and displaying ads next to search results is called search advertising. In this scenario, you purchase keywords and phrases that relate to your product. When a user initiates a search based on those terms, your ad is presented alongside search results. Since most search engines sell ads based on the CPC method, you only pay when a user clicks on an ad.

Display: Unlike search advertising, display advertising is shown alongside content other than search results. For display advertising, most sites use a CPM model, meaning you are charged based on the number of times your ad is displayed.

Many companies are afraid of blogging for different reasons. However, a frequently published blog can be one of the most valuable assets for any corporation. It can help you increase visibility. And, it can be an excellent PR tool. So, how does a blog help?

- It allows you to communicate with your customers, vendors, and peers.
- It allows you to distribute company-focused content at a very low cost.
- It allows you to establish an outlet for praising your employees.
- It allows your customers to have another touch point.

While blogging involves multiple components, it all comes down to writing and visibility. Make sure that you continue to write and publish on a frequent basis. And, don’t just use your blog for promotional reasons. Doing so will result in limited readership.

In the digital space, you want to spend as much time as possible interacting with your clients. It is also important to remember that your new virtual friends and contacts can be anywhere in the world and not necessarily in the same geographical area as your company.

Unless you have a staff that’s working 24/7, this isn’t always possible. Fortunately, Twitter makes it easy to communicate with people — even when you’re not working. The following tools help you schedule automatic announcements via Twitter. Please note that this should only used for ‘broadcast’ purposes. If a customer or partner asks you a question via Twitter, make sure you do not use generic responses. It is also critical that you respond to Tweets (Twitter messages) as soon as possible.

Su.pr: Great for generating traffic towards your link.
HootSuite: Great for managing multiple accounts.

Social media is an essential part of your digital media presence. It will help you establish a following in locations where your (potential) customer base is already active. To setup a Facebook page, read the following post in it’s entirety.

To setup a Twitter profile:

1. Go to www.twitter.com

2. Click on ‘Sign up now.’

3. Complete your profile. Make sure that you select a username that represents your business accurately.

4. Once you’ve signed-up, click on Settings and edit your Picture and Design. While these have little importance in gaining subscribers, it is important to have consistent branding across the board.

5. After you’ve customized your profile, visit search.twitter.com and look for people that are discussing topics that interest you.

We’ll explore Twitter in greater detail in the following posts, but it’s important to have an active account before we can start using it for marketing and promotional purposes.

Follow us on Twitter!

In the last post, we discussed the importance of email marketing. In this post, we’re going to briefly list a few ways in which you can generate email subscribers.

• Do a product giveaway.
• Provide information.
• Hold a contest.

Each of these methods will help you get email subscribers. In order to do so, promote your landing page, where people learn about the offer and if interested, sign-up for more information. Once they sign-up, make sure that you deliver on your promise.

While this sounds easy on the surface, it’s essential to promote your landing page to the right audience. The quality of your audience source will directly influence the quality of your email list. It’s also important that you use a double opt-in process for building email leads. This will help deter spammers and others that are simply interested in receiving free products.

With the introduction of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc., it may appear that email marketing is no longer relevant. However, that’s far from the truth. Email marketing is more relevant today than ever.

Why?

Because it is information that people elect to receive. For example, when you purchase a product from an online store, you’re often added to their email list. This allows you to receive discounts and coupon codes. If you’re not interested, you can simply opt-out.

But, at the end of the day — you’re receiving information that is relevant to you. And, people do the same thing. If your website doesn’t have a ’sign-up for more information’ form, you need to do it now.

1. Visit www.aweber.com and sign-up for an account.

2. Go through Aweber’s tutorials and videos to familiarize yourself with creating a list and automated messages.

3. Determine what sort of information your website visitors maybe interested in and make sure that this information is in a presentable format.

4. Once you’re list is created, create a webform that you can embed on your website.

5. Embed the form on your website.

One of the first steps in setting up a digital brand is to establish a website. Unless you have a big budget or have access to technical staff, you should start small, evaluate your situation and upgrade if necessary.

There are many do-it-yourself (DIY) solutions. However, the easiest one of them is Squarespace. For less than $15 a month, you can run a comprehensive website and blog.

Here’s how to get started:

1. Visit www.squarespace.com

2. Sign-up for Pro account. While signing up, use coupon code DMBIZ for 10% off.

3. Go to www.godaddy.com and get a domain name. Make sure that your order doesn’t exceed $10/year for a .COM domain.

4. Go through the tutorials at http://manual.squarespace.com and start building your website.