The Client
Trilogy Events is an Orange County based Promotion company that has featured events with artists such as Skrillex, Morgan Page, Porter Robinson, and Wolfgang Gartner. They provide concierge services and all inclusive, exclusive club access to some of the hottest DJs on the west coast. “At Trilogy Events, your vision is our vision; linked with customer service, creativity, and a good time.”

The Project
Trilogy events had first started to secure bigger names in talent to headline at their events when they came to me needing to brand their company online and start building a community of followers. We worked together to design and develop online branding that would blend with their print media that they had been using to promote events.

The Features
Wordpress Blog
Twitter Feed
Mailing List
Youtube Gallery
Events
RSS Feed

The Client
Vinita is a rising star signed under AMG (Artest Media Group) owned by the Los Angeles Laker’s own Metta World Peace. In early 2012, Vinita released her single, “Take Me For One Night” ft. Mann (“Buzzin” ft. 50 Cent) which was a huge success on the UK and Bermuda radio charts. Geared to take off in 2013 with her single “Whatchu Want” (available on iTunes and Amazon), her current project is a Remix E.P. from DJs around the world.”

The Project
I met Vinita when she was first starting out in the business and helped her to brand and create her artist website where she could build her following to promote her shows and records. Vinita needed to be able to update her loyal fans in her blog as well as archive media from her tours and appearances.

The Features
Wordpress Blog
Twitter Feed
Gallery
Soundcloud
RSS Feed

The Client
New Mongolian BBQ is a staple restaurant in Northern California: ”New Mongolian BBQ is located in the heart of Downtown Mountain View, California. Our restaurant has been serving the area since 1973″

The Project
New Mongolian BBQ, formerly Colonel Lee’s was going through a full re-branding and marketing effort to create more online visibility to attract new customers while keep true to their original brand which has been a family name in the Mountain View area since the 1970s. I worked with the owners to develop a the new logo and menu style website design that they are using today.

The Features
Wordpress Blog
Menu
Gallery
Yelp Badge Integration
RSS Feed
Site Search

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So What is SEO?  How can my website show up on the first page of Google for the best keywords and get real targeted visitors?

For any businesses growing an online presence, getting on the first page for your most converting keywords or phrases is the most crucial step in getting organic traffic. Search Engine Optimization or SEO is not magic. There is no secret to showing up first. It takes time and lots of effectively written content for Google to find you and display you on the first page.

What are the best keywords to get the best traffic?

Targeting the most effective keywords is what will really make or break your Search Engine Optimization Campaign. When planning your campaign, make sure that ample time is spent planning and researching which keywords would be most effective to convert visitors to your site into sales.  After all, the lesson we’re learning after traffic exchanges is that it is not always about the quantity of traffic, it’s the quality.  Building a targeted online marketing campaign will help you reach out to your specific type of customer online.  As a business owner, think to yourself: what types of words would my customers search for when specifically looking for my products? Try to think of phrases that people may search for like “show up on the first page of google.”  You would be surprised how many visits you could get per day on that type of long tail keyword.

Ask me how this applies to your business! Still don’t believe me?  Here’s an example:

JayDChang.com | Los Angeles Internet Business Consultant
I’ll use my website to explain. SEO for this site is focused on business consulting services in Los Angeles. The most popular Keyword for my website that returns the highest volume of traffic is Consulting with over 6 Million results. While the keyword may not be particularly competitive, there are major players on the first page of google for the word consulting, so I don’t even consider it in my internet marketing campaigns. Trying to rank above Deloitte, McKinsey, and Wikipedia’s Consulting article to show up before the fold would not be worth the amount of effort it would require to rank for that term and realistically while it may generate a large volume of traffic, most of the people searching for Consulting probably aren’t looking for my specific service. This is why, for my target clients, consulting is too broad of a term. In order to be most effective with targeted online marketing you need to focus on Long Tail Keywords more specific to your product or service. These keywords are integral to hire conversion rates for visitors on your sites. Its simple logic, if 1 in 10,000 searches for the keyword consultant is a targeted lead that becomes a client, every 1 out of 50 visitors for the targeted keyword Internet Business Consulting becomes a client.  While the latter will not get as much search volume, it will get me targeted visitors more likely to be interested in my services rather than other types of consulting.

Ask me how to implement these techniques in your online marketing campaign today!

How To Get Social Media Followers To Share Your Message

A Social Media presence just doesn’t work if people aren’t interested in what you have to say.  Not only do they have to be interested, but they must also be included to spread the word about what you have to say to other people in their network. It’s important to get social media followers to share your advertising and messages in order to get a wider range of customers in your internet marketing campaign.

• Offer an incentive for sharing in the form of discounts. The more people who share a promotion, the lower the price will go. Oscar Mayer did this with the taste-a-monial marketing campaign with success.
• Make it part of a lifestyle. If your customers can relate to one another and share tips for using your product on your page, you are probably going to get a lot more shares. After a while, it will turn into a community.
• Give them something exclusive in return for sharing. The music industry offered free song downloads to fans who promoted their ads. Offering a free advice booklet, diet tip email list, or doing your own “share to reveal” deal is an excellent way to get more shares.
• Engage your customers with social media. You can get people talking by asking them questions. The more questions that you ask, the more likely it is that people who want to give their two cents will share the opportunity.
• Give your most loyal fans a special pampering. The super loyal brand ambassadors need to be kept loyal. Some companies create YouTube channels for them, others offer them free events, and even more offer them special discounts that can only be used by them.
• Make a difference with your shares. Offer to donate a small sum to an organization for every person that shares your ads. Some companies have gotten over 30,000 likes with these shares.
• Let them choose the discount. If your customers want a promotion to happen, let them spread it for a deeper discount. The more that they promote it, the cheaper that their books become.
• Recognize the most loyal fans and reward them. Some social media tools allow you to give badges of recognition to superfans. Give them badges if possible, and also give them bonus discounts in order to keep them sharing your material. Some companies actually RATE their fans as a way to encourage loyalty.

Need help applying these techniques to your business?  Contact me!

Local Internet Marketing Tips for Location Based Social Media Apps

Today, reaching local customers through internet marketing is a must for almost any business. In order to reach customers in your area, you need to get the best traffic and get the leads that you need from the internet, you need to have all the advantages you can get in the internet marketing world. Looking to increase traffic without increasing spending?

You need to learn the different platforms. People use Location Based Social Media games like Foursquare, Yelp, Google Latitude, Loopt, and Facebook Places to “check in” to somewhere when they arrive at a location. These social media apps allow people to leave tips that are specific to locations, as well as hold competitions. Make sure to take advantage of any deals offered, especially if you are a bar! Most of these networks are available on all smart phones like iPhones and Android phones. Download and use them to get “feel” for what your competitors are already doing in your market.

You need to establish a solid internet presence, ideally before your competitors do. Sign up with Google Places, Yelp, and Facebook before you do anything else. Facebook and Google Places are the main ways that people learn about companies on the internet. Have a Twitter feed that is regularly updated for people to learn what your company is doing. Make sure that you added all the correct information on to each profile. However, be aware that to a new visitor, a Social media profile that has not been updated for months can deter a potential customer from reaching out to you.  Creating social media accounts is a serious time commitment that requires understanding what and how to create discussions that will interest visitors to ultimately purchase your products.

Before you do anything, figure out your local marketing goal. What exactly are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to get new customers, or are you trying to find ways to keep in touch with your older customers? Building customer loyalty is also a good goal to keep in mind. The goals that you have determine the steps that you take, and the approaches for each goal are shockingly different. Don’t aimlessly market your goods; no one will pay attention to you if you don’t have a purpose.

Customize your marketing campaign. Different apps and different services are able to be customized in different ways. Adding detailed descriptions and images to your Facebook page is a good start, but also consider creating a completely branded Facebook Page for your business that reflects your company website.  Integrate your Twitter account into your social media outlets so that short frequent updates you make there are syndicated around your entire social media presence. On Foursquare, you can create To-Do lists that get your customers to explore your store (or bar, or restaurant) in a new way.

Add promotions that are social-media friendly. Many successful companies will have “secret sales” that are only advertised through Twitter. Others will integrate sales and discounts through apps like Foursquare. You can offer 10% discounts every time that a customer checks in with Facebook Places, FourSquare or Yelp. Digital punch cards instead of traditional business card shaped loyalty cards are also becoming more and more common. Your Business Listings will also be great for adding time guidelines, major discounts for first time users, and anything else you can think of to get creative with your marketing.

Track your progress. You cannot know how well you’re doing without some analytics tools. Facebook and FourSquare both have analytics tools that can show you how to improve your campaign.  Google Analytics can also provide great analytics tools for you to use if the tracking code has been installed on your website.

Avoid the mistakes that other companies are making. Be constantly aware of what your competitors are doing in their social media; both good and bad.  It sounds simple, but if you see a company running a failing campaign, then you probably shouldn’t try to duplicate the campaign.  Don’t leave fake reviews. It’s easy to spot and can even potentially expose you to legal risk. Using poorly designed ads is a great way to make your marketing campaign fall flat. Monitoring activity is a must, and yet many companies forget to check how they are doing in this area.  Instead of trying to fake reviews, think of creative ways to reach out to your existing customer base and motivate them to leave you a few kind words.

Engage with your customers on a personal level. Use social media for social purposes. Talk to your customers, ask them for input, and provide content that you know that they’ll enjoy. Anything from advice columns, to jokes relating to your product, to polls and surveys show that you actually care about what your customers think. Chatting one on one with your customers also adds a special touch.

Adapt, adapt, adapt. You can’t expect to get comfortable with one type of campaign and not expect the need to change. Social media is an ever-evolving realm of marketing that is just as fluid as word of mouth. What’s hot one day won’t be the next. Change your marketing campaign along with the patterns of the market. Location based social media is the newest trend. The next trend might be totally different. It’s difficult to tell what to expect next.

Contact Me for help getting started with these listings.

Use Google Boost to show up on Google Maps

Google Boost is a new way to advertise using Google, without all the high expenses and frills that come with Adwords. This inexpensive, local advertising channel is a perfect way to get small businesses the attention that they so often need in order to succeed. This is a great option for business owners who want to advertise for specific keywords. It’s a pay-per-click advertising program that allows you to set your budget and target qualified visitors that are more likely to become your customers.

Having Google Boost will give your Google Places Local Business Listing that extra “Boost” it needs to be found online.  It’s a great introductory low cost advertising channel to complement your internet marketing campaign. Google Boost ads will get your page more views because with extra advertisements

Google says the top benefits of using Google Boost are:

• Getting more local customers to your Google Place page and your Website.
• You only have to Pay when people click on your advertisement.
• The Ads are simple to create from your Google Places in minutes.
• There is no on going management of the ads. Google Boost places the ads for you.
• View how well your ads are performing right from your Google Places dashboard.

Perhaps the biggest advantage to using Google Boost is the price. Getting targeted pay-per-click advertisement that is inexpensive is difficult to find. Google Boost is an ideal purchase for small businesses that want to get a good internet marketing campaign started, but don’t have the time or funding to get involved with more advanced platforms. This also makes it a perfect way to “sample” Google’s advertising capabilities in order to decide whether other services are worth the money.

While Google Boost will give your Places Business Listing more visibility, it’s important to note that it will not actually improve your website’s ranking on Google.  This could would lead to an unfair advantage in the Map Business Listings, and rankings would go to the highest bidder instead of the most qualified companies. After all, if people cannot find what they are really searching for, Google Search will lose its popularity.

Get your Google Places Business Listing to show up in the “7-Pack” – The Top 7 Map listings shown on the first page of Google.

Believe it or not, most local businesses haven’t even considered adding their services to Google Places, despite 97% of people using Google as their new form of the Yellow Pages. An estimated 90% of all small businesses have yet to claim their Google Places spot. Considering how much traffic and sales Google Places helps create every day, this is a very surprising number. If you’re looking for a competitive advantage over other local businesses, it may be time to start optimizing your Google Places page.

Google also has been known to give special attention to the first seven listings of any local business niche. These 7 slots are often called the “7 Pack” due to the prominent position that they receive. The top slot will receive over 40% of all clicks that is directed towards a certain niche. The second slot gets around 15% of the traffic. Few people ever venture past the first page, so it’s crucial to get your Google Places listing in the top seven slots as soon as possible.

Haven’t created your Google Places Local business listing? Get Started!

The first and primary step of any presence on the internet is to establish the best keywords and phrases and your customers will be using to find you.  You need to Optimize your Listing’s Content.  Is your listing 100% full?  Does it target the best phrases that your customers would use to look for you?  For me, it was probably something like Local Marketing or Google Places Consultant.  Use those phrases and words in your written content to ensure you can be found for those phrases. After you’ve optimized your listing content you’re ready for more advanced strategies.

Submit your Google Places link (or your business) to local directories. Try to submit them to as many of these as possible. Using the Universal Business Listings Service is a great way to save time and effort when submitting information to local directories. It’s absolutely crucial to make sure that all the information stays constant. Your company name, address, website, email, phone number, and more all have to be identical in order to get the most search engine prevalence. Some savvy engineers also will take the time and the effort to reverse engineer their competitors’ listings to discover which directories they should subscribe to.

Get plenty of external links to your site. External links are a main element of search engine optimization, and shouldn’t be ignored. You should have a goal to create 20 to 50 links for each listing. It’s possible to hire others to create external links to your site in order to boost your listing’s ranking. Places like YouTube, Facebook, and Flickr can be used for this purpose. Create content, tag your keywords, and add a link to your Google Places site.

Need Help?  Ask me for a free consultation on local internet marketing strategies for your business!

Get as many reviews as possible. Reviews aren’t just a search engine optimization tool; they are how customers build trust with your company before they even set foot inside of your store. If you’ve got testimonials from your existing customers it will be a great opportunity to reach out to them and ask them to re-list the review on your new location.  It won’t take them but a minute and you can email them the link to your listing so they don’t even need to find it.

Contact me to find out how to get more reviews from your customers!

How to optimize your website for local listings to drive traffic to your website.

Small businesses all over the country often overlook one of the easiest ways to get more leads, and more traffic directed towards their sites. Using local listings is a great way to optimize your site for search engines, while also gaining the attention of customers that live in your area. The best part about using local listings is that it only takes several days to see great results. Looking to get more exposure in your local scene? Keep reading to find out how!

Optimize your Google Places listing. Making sure that your Google Places listing is at 100% capacity will bring it to the highest possible places on the search engine. This is especially important since Google is the leading search engine, and has a layout that specifically caters to local businesses. This has been a huge help for local businesses that don’t have the money to afford special search engine optimization services. Getting that prime search real estate is important for several reasons – you will get more reviews, and more people will want to buy your goods.

Understand how Google  indexes sites, and optimize your homepage for the best possible results. Google crawls the webpage and indexes information on it for future searches. It’s important to add business keywords that match your company’s identity. Some of these include your company name, address, and phone number. Title tags that include geographic information, as well as services that are provided should all be included in your company’s home page. The more keywords, the better.

Keep your contact information visible on every site page. It’s important to display your name, address, and phone number on every website page that is associated with your business. This is because Google crawls the internet searching for names, addresses and phone numbers. The first site that you want to have when people search for your company’s name is your company’s site. By repeatedly using your name, address, and company number on your site’s pages, you are sending a signal to Google that this information pertains to your company.

Add title tags that contain keyword and geographic information. The only way to appear in both searches for your keywords, and in local searches is to have title tags that have many different keywords available to them. Although your homepage should have the best title tag of all, most SEO experts agree that having unique title tags for each page helps boost a page’s rank on Google.

Refer to your business, your services, and your location on other sites. Many business owners make the serious mistake of forgetting to use this trick to boost search engine results. Google does check to see if you actually do provide the services that you say you do, in the location that you do it. This is done by crawling different pages for information relevant to your business. The bigger the buzz you create about your company, the more likely it is that Google will send your website straight to the top of search engine results.

Get plenty of reviews for your local listing. Submit your company to sites like Yelp, InsiderPages, CitySearch, and YahooLocal. This has many major benefits to your company. First, it gives fans of your company a place to tell their great experiences. It also will help boost your company’s standing with Google’s search engine function. The best reason to add more review sites to your company’s listing is because there is no advertising like the words that come straight from a satisfied customer’s mouth. Google wants sites that are both relevant and verifiable. By getting your reviews on different sites, you are gaining credibility in the eyes of both future customers and Google’s search engine.

Besides missing out on one of the best free online marketing platforms out there today,  not claiming your business or checking your public listing can also be harmful to your online image.  To an extent even some younger generations of consumers today will expect your business to be available in detail on Google Maps or they would’t have a convenient place to find your contact information and business hours.

The world of internet marketing is extremely competitive, and people are recognizing Google Places business listings as one of the most remarkable marketing tools of the internet. Google search is one of the most popular ways local businesses are found on the net, and businesses’ sales have skyrocketed because of it. The only way to be accurately listed and found on the front of Google Maps is to claim your Google Places Listing.

Google receives about 12 billion searches per month, and 2.25 billion of those searches are going to be done by people who are looking for local businesses. That is a huge market to be able to access, and Google allows people to do that every day. The market alone is a very good reason to claim a Google Places listing.

However, the real beauty is that by verifying your business’s Google Places listing you will be able to describe every aspect of your business directly on the map that your customers are looking for you on. This means that you can place your business in the best light possible, describe your services, create promotions, and even show photos and videos of your services. It’s the ultimate advertising tool. The more that you describe your business, the more people get to see it.

Don’t get caught up by one of your competitors or a closed down neighbor.

There are many businesses with similar addresses and similar names. If these businesses are in competition with one another, claiming the Google Places listing can cripple (or triple) a business’s ability to get leads. Even if you don’t want to use Google Places as a marketing tool, it’s worth claiming your business’s name before someone else does. Having someone who is posing as your business can ruin your company’s chances at getting any leads. Don’t let this happen to you.

This is a completely true story, you can call my dentist in Los Angeles and ask them if this really happened.  A few months ago I was looking for a new dentist to get a routine cleaning done. I was referred to one right in my neighborhood and looked up it’s listing on Google maps. I was amazed to find that Google had marked the business as closed at the currently location. Having been referred here by someone who had visited recently, I knew it must have been an error. I called and set an appointment for that day and spoke with the owner about what I had found. It turns out, the office downstairs had closed their listing and because my dentist had not claimed his office in the building, both unit’s listings must have been marked as closed.  How scary is that?  Your business could potentially be listed as closed because one of your neighbors closed down and you are part of a small building that Google associates as one address.  The only way to ensure your listing is complete and accurate is to claim it yourself!

All that you have to do in order to claim your Google Places listing is to enter your business name and address, along with other basic information. As soon as you claim your business, no one can take it from you. It’s just that easy! The bottom line is that Google Places listings help your business get found online. Don’t be the last business to profit from this remarkable free tool.

Let me help you claim yours today!