Quiz 2

1. In your own words, describe THREE (3) ways in which businesses can gain benefit from using social
media monitoring tools.
(6 marks)

Answer:
Student answer may vary

a. Can monitor customer behaviors, trend and patent.

b. Can listen and respond to product feedback, questions, and complaints on social media

(4 marks)

2. Search is important for business. It is where the customer finds the product or services offered by your
company. Choose One (1) company and suggest TWO (2) search methods for the company. Describe how
the search method benefits the company in marketing its products and services.

Answer:
 Enterprise search—finding information within your organization
 Recommendation engines—presenting information to users without requiring them to conduct
an active search
 Search engine marketing (SEM)—getting found by consumers on the Web
 Web search—finding crucial business information online
 Popular examples of search engines are Google, Yahoo!, and MSN

ENTREPRENEURS
The 5 Most Effective Search Techniques For Local Businesses
Neil PatelFormer Contributor
I cover entrepreneurship, conversion optimization, marketing and sales
Mar 23, 2015,10:00am EDT
This article is more than 7 years old.
Most local business owners know a thing or two about optimizing their business for search. They’re
aware of SEO. They know the importance of positive reviews. They’ve heard of NAP.

But there’s still a lot of confusions.

Why is there so much confusion? One reason is that local search techniques are always changing. What
worked a month ago might not work today. Another reason is that some techniques are useful for some
types of local businesses, but not for others.

A single article from me won’t end all the confusion, nor dispel all the myths. What I can do is give you five
of the best search optimization techniques that will help your local businesses get more traffic, gain more
customers, and grow.

1. Verify your listing in Google+.

If you want to maximize mobile search results, you’ll need to make sure that you verify your local
business on Google+.

This is a fairly simple process. Here’s the basic framework

Create a local Google+ page for your business.

Verify your business. Most businesses receive a postcard for validation, but some business are able to
verify by phone. If you have a business with more than ten branches, you can obtain bulk verification.
Once you’ve done that, you should build out your My Business with as much detail as possible. More is
better.

2. Make sure that your citations (NAP) are consistent everywhere.

A citation is “a mention of a business name in close proximity to its address, phone number, or both”
(definition source). If you want your business to have local ranking, then you need to make sure that your
citations are consistent everywhere on the web.

A citation consists of the business Name, Address, and Phone number, thus the NAP acronym. Make sure
that you find every listing of your business NAP online and make sure it is consistent. Any variation — a
single changed digit in a phone or the use of a street abbreviation — could throw off NAP consistency.

For example, if you list your business as being on Main St. in one location andMain Street in another
online location, then you’ve lost consistency. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s real.

For businesses that have had name changes, phone number changes, or location changes, achieving NAP
consistency is even more challenging.

3. Build out your local profiles.

Experts in local SEO tell us that “place page signals” alone are responsible for 19.6% of of the ranking
signals for local businesses.

What are place page signals? Places pages are sites like Yelp, Foursquare, or MerchantCircle that provide
listings and/or review of local business. Signals from these pages include rankings or check-ins, which can
enhance the local business’s search visibility.

What this means practically is that your local business needs the strongest possible presence on local
directories such as the following, adapted from Hubspot’s list of 50 local business directories. Click on any
of the listings below to access the corresponding site.

Google
Bing
Yahoo!
Facebook
Yelp
Foursquare
MerchantCircle
LinkedIn
YellowPages.com
Whitepages
Yellowbook
CitySearch
Mapquest
Biznik
Local.com
ThinkLocal
Manta
Depending on the nature of your business — a restaurant, for example — you can use other local
directories such as Urbanspoon.

4. Maximize your local Facebook page.

It’s no secret that Facebook has declined as the social media platform of choice for brands. Forrester’s
Nate Elliott bluntly declared, “Facebook has finally killed organic reach.” The stats back up his jeremiad.
According to Ogilvy, “Facebook posts reached just 2% of their fans,” and “Only .07% of top brands’
Facebook fans interact with each of their posts.”
So, does this mean the end of Facebook as a marketing channel?

Not at all. Even though the timeline/organic reach model is at its nadir, Facebook yet holds sway as a local
search powerhouse.

Here’s why. Local Facebook pages have five times the reach, eight times the engagement level, and 40
times the overall impact of a business brand page according to MomentFeed.

Local pages are superior to a traditional brand page, partly because the algorithm doesn’t weed them out,
and partly because they serve as a major source of local search information.

Facebook is the second-most used mobile app for local search. Local businesses use Facebook as their de
facto website, and users in turn use Facebook as their de facto search engine. This pro quid pro
relationship means that Facebook is the local business owner’s friend when it comes to local search.

Although the power of Facebook’s Places Directory has yet to be explored and expanded upon, we have
the current power of Facebook as a local search engine. Neglect it at your peril.

5. Earn positive reviews.

It’s ironic that the most influential local ranking factor has little to do with your business name, address,
phone number, website, citations, links, or any of the other conventional search fixtures.

What is the most influential local ranking factor? Positive customer reviews.

According to local search expert Jayson DeMers, “The three biggest factors in local listings appear to be
the number of citations, the number of reviews... and how positive the reviews are overall.” In other
words, well over half of the search factors depend on the presence and positivity of user reviews.

This brings up the million dollar question. How do you get positive reviews?

Again, irony surfaces. Such a question is outside the scope of search optimization, as it is ordinarily
defined. There is no legitimate let alone ethical way in which marketers can manipulate positive reviews
in order to garner higher local search success. Positive reviews are something that only willing and
satisfied users can provide.

Notice how I stated my point: “Earn positive reviews.” Operative word: “earn.” That’s your first clue. The
review system is far from perfect. Business owners and clients alike will be frustrated by results and
rankings. In spite of it all, you must run a great business in order to get great reviews.

Conclusion

Local search isn’t your typical SEO bag of tricks. There’s a new brew of search optimization, and it has less
to do with search and more to do with business strategy.

The marketing industry is less segmented than we’d like to think. In theory, we have neatly divided
compartments — paid ads, organic search, branding, public relations, organic search and conversion
optimization. In reality, we have a mashup of all the disciplines working as an interconnected whole to
benefit the business.

Even though the five techniques in this article will enhance a local business’s search potential, the real
power of excelling in search is to excel at business as a whole.