In our work, we assist a number of local B2B and B2C companies with their overall search health. When one has to compete with several businesses for the top result under, say, “Virginia Beach home improvement” or “Norfolk real estate agent,” it can turn into a virtual fist fight. One can optimize specific keywords on the main site, blog and tweet and distribute articles linked back to the main URL, and you will see some improvement – how you fare on page one, however, depends on a number of factors. In addition to all this work, we strongly suggest taking advantage of local business listings.

Whether you have a physical retail location, or a headquarters for your online concern, it’s important to have your information confirmed with sites like the Google Local Business Center, Yahoo Local Listings, Yelp.com for services and UrbanSpoon and the like for restaurants. While you might find on certain sites your listing is available – but needs only to be “claimed” by an owner or manager – taking the time to manage and enhance your listing can boost your visibility in search results. With review-based social networks, you have the added advantage of blended search paradigms to have your optimized listing called up, and regular monitoring of such pages can assist with mediocre or negative reviews, and hopefully establish your business as one that is concerned and ready to listen to consumers and clients.

Dress Up Your Profile

With Google Local Business and Yelp, for example, one can add photographs of the business to give customers a better idea of what to expect. Google Local also allows you to set up coupons as incentive, while through other social networks you can advertise specials as people find your pages. Have visitors print your page for a discount, for example, turning your network into a coupon itself.

Taking control of your online business profiles lets you clarify hours of operation, address and phone, and web URLs. The more you monitor your pages, too, you can get on top of bad feedback and soothe any raw nerves in a timely manner that gets noticed, not only by the plantiff but others who view your profile.

Direct People to Your Profiles

You might wonder how useful it is to direct visitors to these social and search profiles rather than your main site or blog. Fact is, should these pages show up in search before your official sites, potential customers and clients will see that information first. If you know there are people ready to praise your work and products, encourage them to visit these profiles and post their opinions. they more made available gives newcomers a basis for trying your services.

Once you have control of your name online, you can move into controlling the success of your business.

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with social media optimization and travel social media services. Clients include Gainesville hotels, European hotels, and Virginia web design firms.

It’s not unusual for a writer to keep a notebook near at all times, even in the age of technology and nifty handheld gadgets. For the prolific blogger who relies on the frequent production of content to build high search relevancy and a strong social media following, the temptation to remain glued to the computer is strong. Especially if you’re always brimming with ideas and topics to write, you want to get everything down and scheduled so interest in your business remains solid. Eventually, though, you’ll be called upon to go out to dinner, board a plane, or perhaps go to church.

While your pastor may frown upon your tweeting during his sermons, that nifty handheld gadget can be a godsend (pardon the pun) in the downtime away from your desk. Knowing which apps to use to enhance your marketing on the go can help you keep a creative focus and foster ideas when you’re unable to fully apply them at work.

The advantage to composing notes and ideas on your BlackBerry, Android, or iPhone is that – unlike the tried and true pad and pen – each has the ability to upload content to some kind of blog client or social network. Facebook and Tumblr allow users to update with ease, and there are several Twitter clients for reading and posting quick missives. For longer pieces, however, and news that must meet a schedule, there are specialized apps available to increase your productivity as you travel. Some are free, others are not, and not all are yet available across all phone platforms. Yet, if you have the means to try them all, you just may find you can go outside once in a while and seek deeper inspiration for your business interests.

Think Now, Tweet Later – You remember that Seinfeld episode where George is driving away from a meeting after being zinged by a co-worker, and only when he’s far removed from the situation does he think of a good comeback? How often does that moment define us? The ideas pop into our heads at the most inopportune times – if George had Twitter access he might be okay, the rest of us can take advantage of the Birdhouse App. Working on a similar premise as the IPhone’s Notes Application, Birdhouse is set up to store tweets for later use. You may have business news that can’t be released until a certain time – Birdhouse stores your information and helps you fit the 140 character limit. Once your tweets are ready to move beyond the draft stage, you can publish from multiple accounts and email yourself a backup copy. For the business that relies on Twitter to impart information, this is a handy tool that eliminates other apps that don’t publish directly. (iPhone, $1.99 – website)

Blog On – While Wordpress and Tumblr have proprietary apps for users to update as they please, those who remain faithful to Blogger, Movable Type, and other platforms may find it more of a challenge to blog on the road. If you’re the hardcore type with multiple blogs over different platforms, you’ll want an app that accesses more than one to make your life easier. BlogPress supports multiple brands and allows you to publish with ease – whether you use Blogger, Wordpress, TypePad, or even LiveJournal, this app provides a one-stop forum for your updates. (iPhone, $2.99 – website)

Sho- Your Social Side – Where BlogPress provides multi-blog platform capabilities, Sho-Zu can turn you into a social media machine wherever you are. This handy application lets you update Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, and a host of other social sites. You can even FTP material to any server! With support for multiple phone platforms, this app is worth the investment if you find you travel often and still need to stay online. (multiple, free to $4.99 depending on phone – website)

You never know when inspiration for a good article or marketing campaign will strike. Before you reach for that cocktail napkin to jot down notes, however, try an app that connects you to where your message needs to go. The Internet is 24/7, and these applications can keep your brand visible at all times.

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with social media optimization and travel social media services. Clients include Gainesville hotels, European hotels, and Virginia web design firms.

As a writer, you may fear the inevitable wall, that moment when you feel you have exhausted your idea repository and aren’t sure what to write for your website or blog. You know it’s important to keep your online presence relevant and fresh in order to maintain high readership – with certain fields, there is always something new to explore. If your business is slow to offer innovations and new events, however, it’s possible to spend more time staring at the monitor screen than filling it.

Whether writing non-fiction or a story, everything begins with an idea, a question that needs to be answered, or a “what if” scenario burning to be played out. If ever you find it a challenge to crank out a minimum of 300 words designed to promote your products and services you may wish to employ a few writing exercises designed to stimulate your brain and turn one uncertain sentence into a flowing narrative rich in key phrases to help readers find you via search. Here are a few I recommend, which have worked in different situations and may be applied to any topic:

Top Five: This is a good topic especially for retailers or those in the mechanical or technical trade. Ultimately, no matter what you do for a living, you will be asked about the top products or devices in your field. Contractors swear by specific brands of windows and plumbing, and boutique owners may recommend certain designers for formal events. Think about a topic related to your business where at least five brands compete for your and your clientele’s attention, then compare and contrast.

How To: The simple how-to article works to establish you as an authority in your field. If you sell goods, draft step by step instructions on how to use them, and if you offer services – labor or clerical – you can offer tips on handling certain issues without necessarily giving away the store.

I Remember…: Do certain products or services you offer tie in to a specific memory? Does what you do know require more advanced work and equipment than in years past? Take readers on a trip down memory lane and provide a history for your company in the process.

Anti-Top  Five: For every top five products and paradigms, there is advice on what not to buy and how not to do things. Offers readers the consequences of the wrong decisions and products for the work you provide, and you may find this strengthens your authority.

Worst Case Scenario: If troubleshooting constitutes a good part of your business, nip those frequent calls for assistance with a series of articles designed to help readers face different challenges.

Once you’ve exhausted these ideas, keep brainstorming. Check the daily news wires and set up keyword alerts for your e-mail to lead you to related blogs and sites. Sometimes it takes only word to spark an idea, be sure you search well for it.

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with social media optimization and travel social media services. Clients include Gainesville hotels, European hotels, and Virginia web design firms.

You can write for miles, you can post links to funny videos on your Facebook page, and you can tweet until your online voice gives out…it’s great to have the ability to easily produce content, but none it means much unless you know for certain people are processing it. What good does it do to have 500+ Twitter followers or a thousand fans on Facebook if none of them are regularly checking your content?

Where success in social media is concerned, we tend to gauge the effectiveness of updates by how often posts are “retweeted” or shared across over platforms. How often people “Digg” your articles or link to your YouTube depends on overall interest – did you produce something thought-provoking or funny? You may be encouraged to see numbers increase every time you check your social profiles, but when it comes to your blog you have analytics and, more importantly, comments. When you post, do people have to something to say about it? Does what you write move people to want to share their opinions? If not, there’s a chance you aren’t blogging correctly.

Are there rules to proper blogging? Not really. The beauty of blogging comes in the freedom allowed the writer – you can share as much or as little information as you wish, enhance your entries with photos or video embeds, and even creative hypertext that guides readers to relevant spots on the Internet. As a blogger, you can also monetize your material with affiliate or point of sale links to products and services. The more you blog, the greater the opportunity to reach people interested in your topic, though the one thing that will keep readers returning to your blog is active engagement. Don’t just blog at visitors, but to them.

Ask Questions: If the purpose of your weblog is to establish yourself as an authority in your field, you might at first be reluctant to entertain opposing views. While some may find debates daunting, encouraging readers to answer to questions you pose can make for good interaction, which in turn may lead readers to share these only discussions via social media.

Accept Criticism: In a perfect world, everybody agrees with what we have to say, and everything we say is correct. Not so online – it seems the Internet was made to create controversy, and nobody is immune to negative feedback. Rather than take a curt remark on your comment wall personally and ignite a flame war, take a deep breath and examine why a reader would disagree with you, or criticize your company, product, or service. The temptation to erase bad history is tempting, but you’ll be the bigger person if you let these comments remain and accept them with grace.

Remain Topical: Part of maintaining online popularity involves looking for content that is…well, popular. It’s a challenge to raise your voice and talk about your business when people are more interested in sharing viral videos and pictures of funny-looking cats. You might wish to experiment with levity in your blogs and social profiles – join ‘em instead of beat ‘em by sharing popular content, and test reader response. If you can find a way to integrate what is popular and maintain relevance to your topics, all the better.

Above All Else, Ask! Never fear that asking questions of others will diminish your authority. The only way to grow is to learn, and engaging people online can snowball into full-fledged conversations that keep people visiting your profiles. What have you done recently to help blog comments skyrocket? How do you engage social friends and fans to keep talking? Feel free to share your ideas here.

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with social media optimization and travel social media services. Clients include Gainesville hotels, European hotels, and Virginia web design firms.

Let’s take a look at some of the more popular document sharing sites and how their functionality can work for you.

Smashwords.com – In just a few years of existence, Smashwords has become a force in electronic publishing. Partnered with major retailers Barnes and Noble and Fictionwise.com, and with close to half a billion words published, this site offers writers an appealing opportunity to expose their work to readers. Account holders (registration is free) may offer works for free or for a fee, with Smashwords taking a small percentage of the cut – authors receive 85% of net sales, a bounty compared to what traditional publishers take. Membership in their Premium program is contingent on following their publication guidelines.

Scribd.com – Launched in 2007, Scribd boasts over 10 million published documents from novice users, seasoned authors, and large corporations like O’Reilly Media and the Ford Motor Company. An account at Scribd gives you the option of uploading a document (PDF, MS Word Doc, and Power Point presentations) for free distribution or to sell. Once uploaded, Scribd’s tools allow you to embed documents into websites (branded readers are also available) or share via social media. There is no charge to use the service, for gratis or paid uploads.

Wattpad.com – Wattpad bills itself as the most popular eBook community, focusing on fiction and poetry although it does make room for academic works. With your free account, you can upload text files and ePub format. There is no paid model available at this time, though Wattpad offers the opportunity through a partnership with print on demand purveyor Lulu.com. Wattpad also offers a mobile version of their site, with an iPhone app.

Docstoc.com – Also founded in 2007, DocStoc allows users to distribute free and paid content, and in addition will let you integrate your Google Adsense information in your account. The more you upload to DocStoc, the better the opportunity for earning commission via your Adsense. DocStoc is geared mainly toward professional documents and non-fiction, novels and templates and PowerPoints are also found here. For companies, DocStoc provides a publisher partner program to increase your brand visibility, and permits embedding of works on other sites.

Issuu.com – This digital publisher claims 6 million visitors a month with 500 million uniques. The principle is the same as with the previous sites, and Issuu lists the likes of Penguin Group, Google, and Random House among its content providers. There are two tiers for membership: a free account for the purpose of sharing gratis documents, and a Pro plan of $19/month which allows accounts to sell books and other files. An Android app is available, with an iPhone/iTouch one pending, and companies interested in branding and customization can take advantage of Issuu’s developers’ tools.

A few things to remember if you decide to pursue social sharing via document sites as these: 1) It’s important to make sure your works are edited and polished before publication, as the files you present stand for your company and/or busines; and 2) Only distribute works for which you hold the rights/copyrights. While sites like Scribd and Wattpad and others provide excellent opportunities for file sharing and buzz via social networks, it’s not uncommon to see people use them for illegal book sharing, or piracy.

Do you have writing to share pertinent to your business? Whether you have one page or one hundred, you can increase your visibility and brand through social document sites.

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with social media writing and travel social media services. Clients include Gainesville hotels and Virginia Beach web design firms.

Experts may debate whether or not print is dead, but it can be agreed upon that digital production of books and documents won’t fade anytime soon. Amazon.com reported a record high for Kindle eBook sales late in 2009, while document sharing sites Wattpad and Scribd boast thousands of available works – everything from novels to dissertations to poetry and plays – for download to laptops and smart phone reader applications.

Amateur writers are not the only ones making use of this exposure, either. Scribd, for one, distributes works by major corporations and publishers, including Ford and Simon and Schuster. Recently, self-publishing platform Smashwords, which allows authors to make content available for sale or free, signed agreements to allow the works of registered users to be distributed to Barnes and Noble’s website. Not to be outdone, Amazon cooperates with authors directly to sell their books via their Kindle store.

Bottom line: if you have written something worth sharing, and wide distribution can benefit your business, it should be seriously considered. All you need to do, once the writing and editing is completed, is plan accordingly. As you ponder this type of marketing strategy, ask yourself these questions:

1) What can I write about my company/products/services that people may want to read?

What is your main line of business? If you work in construction, perhaps you have extensive original material on home repairs and tips that can be collected in a digital booklet and distributed. If you deal in antique, you can lend your expertise to a pricing guide or series of articles on properly buying and selling items. For everything you do, you can provide instructions and insight.

When you do prepare work for distribution, take care to make certain your work is original, with attributions to other sources made where needed, and that your website and business information is provided. Cover art is not necessary, but if you feel it would help readership you can easily find royalty-free artwork online to use.

2) How do I format my book/lets?

Common formats of electronic documents include HTML and PDF, which may be created easily through the proper software or freeware. Other formats, readable on proprietary readers like Kindle or Sony’s reader, can be translated through free publishing services like Smashwords.

3) Where do I offer my book/lets?

For marketing purposes, it is beneficial to make any complimentary digital downloads easily attainable. Offer the files on your site’s server, and take advantage of free distribution channels like Wattpad, Scribd, Smashwords, and similar sites. Advertise links on your blog and social profiles for maximum exposure.

Similar to article marketing, creating digital downloads can work to lend authoritative value to your brand and increase awareness of your business. As people turn more toward sharing free content via social media and smart phones, so you have the opportunity to raise exposure of your work, products and services.

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with social media writing and travel social media services. Clients include Gainesville hotels and Virginia web design companies.