Google Places is a great way to promote your businesses online presence. It works well even if you don’t have a website. Business owners can have a listing on Google’s local database. So when potential customers search for you on Google.com or Google Maps they also see your ad.

Your business name, location, hours of operation and phone number displays on Google Maps. Potential customers searching for something else may find your business, too. You can also provide additional features like photos, videos and coupons so your business can really stand out on the map. You can great stats as well and best of all it’s completely free.

Put Your Business On Google Places

Sometimes I do my best thinking while out for my daily walks, sometimes it’s just silly stuff. Today there’s an old expression running through my head. I used to hear it quite a bit in my past lives, but I don’t much anymore, “People buy from people”.

It’s probably because so much shopping is automated these days that people don’t expect a personal relationship when they’re buying things, I know I don’t. It always surprises me when I feel a personal experience from a business I interact with online.

I think one of the best things you can offer your website visitors is a clear idea of who you are and what you can do for them. I’m a one man shop so it’s easy to be the face of me. The face of a company can also be many people, provided they’re all consistently delivering the same message. More important is listening to their customers and sharing what they are hearing with the rest of the group. Everyone needs to be on the same page so it’s important to meet regularly to discuss what they are hearing and what would be the best way to help the customer.

In my business everyone’s thirteen year old niece or nephew can build them a website. I would like to think that I’m better than most of them, but I will admit there are probably some that are better than me. So it’s my job to let my customers get to know me and give them confidence that I will offer them a better value.

A cup of coffee together is my preferred method, but it could be a phone conversation, email or text. Not every business can take their customers out for coffee and danish. Your visitors really just want to know they have been heard, that you are concerned about what they want. Any solution you offer them, as long as it tries to address their needs lets them know you’ve listened and is almost always better than offering them nothing at all.

Make sure you give your visitors an easy way to talk to you and really listen to what they say. That’s the best way to let your customers know that you’re a good value for them.

It seems that whenever I speak to people about websites they are always more concerned with traffic and how to get more visitors than anything else. It doesn’t seem to matter that if their site looks bad or is not very user friendly, any traffic that they do get will probably leave right away.

I suppose it’s my job to make sure that my sites look good and work well, but there’s still that tricky part of turning your visitors into fans of your site and customers of your business.

I was reading an article on my local newspaper’s site this morning about a Pittsburgh company that seems to be doing just that. ModCloth is a clothing company that’s promoting their business in a very non-traditional way. They’re still spending on promotion, when I Googled their name I did see they are paying for clicks, but the newspaper article pointed out they’re doing much more. They’re actively listening to their customers, asking them what they want and for the most part giving them what they ask for.

They’re allowing their visitors to vote on items they want to see in stock, help name and describe products and suggest styling tips. They have ModStylists to guide customers and give advice from how to accessorize to what to wear to an event. It’s a really good lesson for anyone promoting almost anything.

Online fashion seller ModCloth finds social commerce strategy a good fit

Matt Cutts who is one of the faces of Google recently gave a great interview to The WordPress Podcast with lots of good tips on how to properly promote your site.

This is about an hour long, but well worth a listen. The beginning is a bit tech-ish, but hang in there it gets good.

http://wp-community.org/2010/07/20/google-matt-cutts-wordpress/

I like to aimlessly wonder around the web. They used to call it Web Surfing. I’ll follow any number of things that strike my fancy. The other day I was on LinkedIn, looking at the other peoples blogs.

I stopped at a couple and read a post or two. I even registered and commented on one. I like to comment on the posts that I like. Comments are good for your blog.

Then I came on one that just stopped me in my tracks.

This blog had a fairly recent last post where they apologized for not posting much and they promised to do better. I would just write more and forget the apology, but not a big deal. Let’s hope they do.

The rest of the post went on and on about how they didn’t like to write, it was too hard to have perfect grammar, the sun was in their eyes. OK the sun excuse wasn’t there, but I probably won’t return to this site.

Here’s the deal with blogs, if you don’t want to write, don’t have one. A stale blog is worse than none at all.

If you want to have one, just write something, then write more. The wining may have been worse than nothing, but maybe not. Anyway, write what you like, about what you like and don’t worry at all about perfect grammar.

Nothing is better to promote your site. If you are lucky enough to have good comments, even better. Listen to your commenters and reply to good ones.

We all need good sales leads. I write many posts about networking, but there’s always much more.

This is a really good post on MediaPost’s Performance Insider blog I like

Four Ways to Increase Qualified Leads

Just back from the beach and I feel great! It was a wonderful week, it only rained Wednesday (late at night). That’s perfect weather two years in a row. We stayed in the same house as last year, maybe that’s it. First time to stay in the same house twice since the mid 90′s.

I never usually post things while I’m gone, but before I left I asked several people what they thought about posting pictures on facebook, Twitter, etc. As you might expect everyone said that it was not a good idea. Some were more vigorous than others.

The people that did post their memories live as they happened seemed to also feel that it probably wasn’t safe, but the benefits outweighed the risks.

I’m not sure. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Enjoy the photos

No crowds

Avon, NC pier

Kite flying in Nags Head from the drive in

Avon, NC pier

Gentle waves

Many great beaches

Even less people this year than normal

Some great views from my bike rides

Some great views from my bike rides

Cool seashell

Kayaks for exploring the Pamlico Sound

Nothing to do, but float

A few good sunsets

A few good sunsets

Kite surfing

A great week!

I read today on Mashable that Wendy’s is going to try some social media promotions for it’s Frosty product. I think that this is a really good idea and even if it doesn’t work as well as they hope it should give them a valuable road map for future promotions.

I’ve always believed that the best of these kind of things are not intentionally produced, but that doesn’t mean they don’t work at all. If Wendy’s will let this one go where it’s fans want to take it they may find out this kind of promotion can really help them.

Wendy’s Frosty Gets a Social Media Infusion

Update 5-27 Wendy’s found me and Is following me on Twitter pretty good start.

Eyeflow pointed me to this post by toprankblog.com

It’s great advice for promoting your website. I’m recommending that everyone read it.

7 Essential SEO Tips for Small Businesses

On of the most often asked questions to me about SEO is how do you choose what keywords to use when writing a page.

Stoney deGeyter has a great explanation of how you should choose keywords
If you have ever wondered how to determine the best words for optimizing your traffic, you should read it.

I’ve written about writing keywords before, but Stoney says it better than I ever did.

How to Optimize a Single Web Page For Over 15 Keywords and Get Ranked On All of Them