Xsell Business Consulting

Google+ Local takes another step forward!

miked — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 17:47:28 +0000

Last Friday was an important step in the conversion of Google Places pages into the Google+ Local pages. The video below contains important details.

Google and Your Business Forum Wrapup – August 3, 2012

What happened to Google Places?

miked — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 23:04:16 +0000

As a business owner, you can still use Google Places to manage your business. As a user, you can now rate, review and upload photos through our new local search experience, Google+ Local.

Google+ Local is a new destination for all your reviews, plus much more. You’ll get personalized recommendations, see what your friends are up to, and help others find great places. You can also get deeper insights into locations from Zagat’s expressive 30-point scoring scale and Zagat’s summaries of user reviews, and even make reservations with OpenTable directly from a business’s Google+ page. Learn more about Google+ Local

If you previously wrote reviews or uploaded photos in Google Places, all of your old Google Places reviews and photos are currently public but attributed to, “A Google user.” If you want to attribute these reviews and photos to your Google+ name, all you need to do is migrate your old Google Places reviews and photos to Google+ Local. At that time, you can choose which content to make public and attributed to your Google+ name, and which content to make private. Private reviews and photos will not appear publicly across Google, but you can view or delete your content by clicking on My Places in Google Maps, and selecting Rated from the More menu.

By Google Local Support

Advantages of Social Networking: Drives Traffic to Your Website

miked — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 18:42:00 +0000

Social media is a big part of most good marketing plans these days and it has a number of great advantages. Reaching people in the network of their choice is fundamental and delivering relevant content is a must. While sharing information through a social network is great, ultimately you will be in the best position if you bring people back into your website.

Facebook currently has over 600 million accounts and Twitter has more than 225 million accounts. Don’t expect these social networks to go away anytime soon, but it is possible that they will experience a decline eventually just as Myspace has. These media markets should be used to grow your business and your business controls your website, but not the social markets. Because the social media sites are not under your control, it is essential to get people back to your website.

Your website is your main Internet presence and the social media networks are just another way to reach potential and existing customers. Go to where the people are and reach them on their terms, whether it is Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or whatever. Engage people and then bring them back to your website where you create the terms. Use social networks to drive traffic to your website.

When you have visitors to your website you can collect data that you control such as contact information. It would be very unfortunate to spend years building connections in a social network, only to have that information lost because of factors out of your control. Your website is under your control and that leaves you in the strongest position possible.