Here are a few tips on how to get the most out of your profiles:

Fill out your profiles completely
Filling out a local profile shouldn’t stop with your address, phone and URL. Many local profiles, Google and Yelp included, allow you to add all kinds of information about your business. Whether you want to include payment options or pictures of your business, you should take advantage of every field offered by the local directory. Customers are more likely to click to your site or visit your location if they have all the information they may need right there on your profile.

Monitor your reputation
Now that you’ve claimed your location, you can use this to monitor your online reputation. With local profiles ranking so well, you’ll want to be sure that your business is maintaining a positive reputation online. While one or two negative reviews amongst many good reviews won’t hurt your business, many unaddressed negative reviews could prove to be very detrimental to your business.

Update, Update, Update
Did you just launch a new menu item? Maybe you changed your store hours to cater to a late-night crowd. Either way, these are very important pieces of information. Especially as many people turn to mobile devices for information, you’ll want to make sure you keep the most up-to-date information on your local profile. This way the information is easy for your customers to find, which makes your business more accessible. If you leave your profile unchanged for too long, it won’t look good in the eyes of search engines.

Add a coupon
Want to get an idea about just how much traffic your local profile gets? Add a coupon! As easy as adding pictures, videos and information about your business, you can add coupons to a lot of local profiles. Not only will your client see all the information they need, but they’ll be able to find a coupon without visiting your website! For a lot of people performing mobile searches, a coupon could be the decision maker.

When you. Have active local profiles, not only are they likely to rank better, but you can expect a higher percentage of clicks coming from these profiles. Also, since you’ve provided so much information already, you’re likely to see a Lowe. Bounce rate from traffic coming through local profiles. And, of course, you will always get business directly from these listings from people who never even visits your website.

How have you found success using local profiles? Do you have any local SEO strategies that you’d like to share?

By implementing a consistent search engine optimization campaign you can make sure your website is appearing organically within the search results whenever your future customers are searching for you online. Additionally, hitting your busy season with an aggressive pay-per-click marketing campaign will allow you to see your business hit new heights.

Consistent Search Engine Optimization
Building an optimized website is just the beginning for any SEO campaign. Staying consistent with an SEO campaign requires monitoring your analytics, continued link building efforts, blogging and more. Keeping updated, fresh content while organically building your back link index will help you continue to rise in the search results and see an increase in traffic. Having high rankings when traffic volumes peak allows you to drive that traffic directly to your website.

Hard-hitting PPC
When your busy season rolls around, bumping up your PPC budget can help you in a number of ways. First, you’ll be able to build brand awareness by the increased number of impressions your ads will have. Second, by increasing your budget, you’ll have a better edge on your competition for paid traffic. Lastly, you make more money!

Increased Conversions
When it comes to increasing conversions, this is when it’s beneficial to have a synergized search strategy. An in depth look at both the website’s analytics and the adwords analytics, the search team can see areas of your site where conversions could be improved. More conversions means more customers and more customers means a healthier bottom line.

So while you’re mapping out your black Friday route and adding to your Christmas lists, make sure you take some time to think about what you’re doing to take advantage of this coming holiday season for your own business.

There is an inevitable increase in the amount of people using smart phones and some of these phones enable you to download free applications (iPhone). We all love Angry Birds and apps that do random crazy things for free, so we download them and keep them sitting in our phones until we have nothing to do or have no source of entertainment.

What’s not doing so hot: advertising that comes directly with the app. Ads that come before the game can be played are immediately disregarded because, let’s be honest, we all just want to get to the game. The ad only creates a sort of annoyance and invasion of privacy that we have to deal with.

This placement of ads is inefficient and typically as successful as they could be. It’s a common pet peeve, rather. The phone is our own “place.” We see advertisements everywhere, but our phone is our privacy, unless we’re going online.

In-game advertising is also not working very well. These ads usually unnoticed because, well, it’s common sense: our attention is 100% on the game.  In terms of the trend of mobile advertising, a more acceptable type of ad is mobile coupons, or any form of getting deals on certain products that we want.

It has been predicted that the Internet will have 5 billion users in 2020.

Everything is becoming more online, more virtual, and more sophisticated in technology.  Less print, more digital.  This generation is up and going, always moving at a fast pace; the people growing up in this time have acquired a taste for social media and have developed skills for it.

What I’ve found is that ads linked to social media sites and trendy companies/sites tend to stick. Facebook allows ad agencies to use your information from your profile; this way, the swanky ads on the side of your Facebook page let you check out products similar to your interests, as well as your friends’. They’ve caught my eye several times and I’ve voluntarily clicked on these ads to get more information. It’s the fact that they’ve analyzed our likings and set alike products aside to show us that makes the ad that more appealing to us. Content will always matter.

Pop-ups are annoying and closed without a second glance. Sure, we notice them, but they’re too up-in-our faces. We see them, but don’t look at them. Ads that come up before Youtube or Hulu videos are sometimes bothersome, but it’s something we as consumers have to deal with. Our wanting to watch the video or movie dominates our reluctance with the ad that comes before it, so we take the ad in as well.

Spending is going up, way up.  The agency and marketer execs are saying that in order to maintain their high level of successes in their campaigns, the cost of spending is going to increase.  With this raise comes optimism, though.  They are also confident that with this raise in ad dollars and spending comes more planned out and efficient campaigns.  So more money gets you better numbers and more hits, that’s how it should be right?

What’s interesting is that the execs are saying that the majority of the spending will go towards their ‘old-school’ media.  Television and cable will have their spending increased, so will newspapers and magazines, the oldest of the ‘old-school’ media.  At least someone is trying to save them.

On the bright side, digital marketing isn’t due for price change anytime soon.  The confidence in digital media is still high.  Execs believe that these types of media will still be the leader in advertising and marketing initiatives, online strategies included.  Although they aren’t planning on rising digital spending, they aren’t planning on lowering them either.  Because the confidence in the successes of digital media, the prices will stay consistent.

Is this their way of pushing more people to digital marketing?  With digital media comes more traceable clicks and conversations, easier to track and measure ROI and a much bigger target audience.  In a word: easier.

Everyday millions of people use mobile phones, computers and Internet to find what they need.   With these measurable statistics readily accessible to these digital media initiatives, why not use them?  Besides, who wants to wait for a hard copy survey to come back via snail mail when, with one click of a button, you can see just who is looking at you and what they are looking for?

’11 points of #nonsense for the new year

1. 2011 is the year of Mobile. Wait, I thought that was supposed to be 2010, or was it 2009? No, certainly it was 2008; must have been 2007, the year of the first iPhone. #confused
2. Social Media begins to dominate customer service. As in-store customer service continues to decline, Social Media customer service will allow brands friendly, efficient ways to assist the customer without the long wait of an 800 number or the inconvenience of driving to the store. More brands will adapt the “Comcast model” and allow followers to see complaints by others, because the real story is how the brand solves it. Ok, this is a true story: I recently called customer service for a major computer manufacturer and was greeted by a guy with an accent like Apu from the Simpsons, who started off by saying, “Thank you for calling ____, this is Peter Parker, how can I help you?” I starting laughing so hard I forgot what I was calling about. #spiderman
3. #Hashtags will become part of everyday writing. People will use #hashtags to emphasize subjects, thoughts and events, even in offline writing. In a completely unrelated story, @BillClinton will declare “#hashtag” the greatest word ever. #stonedpimpxprez
4. Those willing to push the limits of creative and technology will be rewarded. Those who are doing the same thing they’ve been doing since 2009 will disappear. You know who you are! #buhbye
5. Honolulu will concede the Obama Library to Chicago in order to pursue a Dog the Bounty Hunter Library. #randyjacksonlikesyourname
6. Apple will release the iControlU, a chip that is implanted in the brain allowing users to instantly listen to any song or watch any video with a simple press of the temple. Unfortunately, reception issues will force users to wrap their head with oversized rubberbands. VGA output also proves to be rather tricky. #jobsarmy
7. Somewhere, some teen-aged boy will be beaten to a pulp by an angry middle-aged man for using the words #epicfail. With any luck, it will be Justin Beiber. #ohpleaseibegyou
8. Speaking of luck (this is more of a wish than a prediction), any chance Andrew Luck falls to #Jacksonville in the April draft? Here’s the prediction part: If David Garrard or Jack Del Rio are part of the Jaguars organization come September, the Jags will lose at least one fan. #falconsbandwagon
9. And speaking of #epicfail, @SethMacFarlane, (in Lois’ voice) Really? I had to watch Journey to the North Pole again just to get the bad taste out of my mouth from It’s a Trap. But, the failures are few and far between which is what makes #FamilyGuy the best show on TV. No real prediction here, just upset over the wasted $2.99 iTunes download. #bringClevelandbacktoQuahog
10. Online shoppers will become full of Gilt… and Ideeli… and HauteLook… and Rue La La. Brands and retailers will further monetize the trend with brand-specific “private” flash sales within their own sites. I would say my wife is addicted to flash sales, but the truth is, I have the Gilt Groupe, HauteLook and Rue La La apps on my iPad. #guiltypleasure
11. A whole bunch of exciting announcements will come from @RMM_Online. Follow us on @Twitter and @LinkedIn to learn more #video #backenddata #newwebsite #growingteam #bonusesforbloggers

Everyone at RMM wishes you a happy and healthy 2011!

As long as you have a phone number attached to your Facebook account (which I’m wary of for personal accounts, but fine with for business accounts), a text message with the word “opt” sent to 32665 will provide a temporary password that expires in 20 minutes and is good for only one login. If you frequent busy wifi networks (airports, libraries, universities, etc), you’ll definitely want to utilize this feature. Keeping passwords safe on unsecured networks is paramount to protecting your social identity.

Since I mostly deal with my personal page on Facebook, I’m most excited about the other feature that Facebook has released, but this has great implications for your clients’ accounts as well. If you visit your Account Settings page, under Account Security, you can view all the places you are currently logged into Facebook. Then, you can remotely log off. This may be one of the simplest features Facebook could add, but, in my opinion, one of the most useful. Think about the potential impact: had to respond to an urgent Facebook message and left yourself logged in at the Apple Store? Hop online and log off, from anywhere. Phone gets stolen? Don’t let some stranger facebooking your friends (or worse, fans) add to the burden of a missing phone. Simply sign on from anywhere and log off from that session.

So how does this affect your client’s business? If both features are utilized properly, you can save your clients a great deal of stress and take these preventative steps to assist with online reputation management. A hacked account can lead to countless problems: spam messages sent to all fans, incorrect/offensive content posted, deactivated account and more. It doesn’t take much to unlike a business, and nothing will entice users to do that more quickly than a hacker posting something bad.

The content in and of itself isn’t the main problem though. When somebody hacks your account, you lose your customers’ trust, threaten their online security and show weakness in your own. Facebookers want to feel safe and protected on Facebook. If your client’s account shows security weaknesses, unliking that account will help users feel safer with what they click in their newsfeed. At the same time, offensive and irrelevant content posted by a third-party (maybe a hacker, maybe the guy who found your client’s phone and thought an offensive joke would make for a good update) will clutter your fans’ newsfeeds. It’s easy to unlike a page or hide the clutter from your newsfeed that you don’t like or find offensive/irrelevant and, therefore, silencing that business. Even if the user doesn’t unlike or hide your client’s business from their newsfeed, they won’t likely be trusting anything posted on that page for a while. Especially if a spammer posts a bad link, users will be very wary about clicking on a shortened URL anytime soon after.

So what can you do for your client, or how can you direct them to protect their Facebook accounts? If you’re going on vacation, you’d make sure you’d locked all your doors and windows and that you didn’t have a spare key lying somewhere a burglar could find it. If you’re halfway to the airport and didn’t remember if you closed the garage door or not, you’d call a neighbor to have them check. Your client’s Facebook page should be treated with the same preventative measures as your home, especially now that Facebook has made it tremendously easier. Remembering to log out and then utilizing the new features from Facebook can be immensely beneficial.

First, always log off when you’re done with Facebook. It may be a pain to log in again and again, but it’s significantly easier than redoing all your Social Media efforts after a hacker has deactivated your account.

Second, utilize the temporary password if you aren’t in the most secure of locations. If you aren’t 100% sure that the network you’re on is secure, and that all users on that network are trustworthy, be safe, not sorry, and text Facebook for a temporary password. Storing the number in your phone can make this a very quick step to protect yourself.

Finally, if you aren’t sure if you logged off from a certain location, hop on Facebook and check. Its quick to find out if you’re logged in somewhere and log out remotely. When I checked this feature for the first time, I found that I was still logged in on four different devices, when I should have only been logged in to two. You might be surprised where and how often you or your clients forget to log out of their accounts.

Facebook has even created an option where you can receive e-mails if a new device (computer, mobile) logs into your account. This would give you time to respond immediately if an unauthorized device logged into your account. If you travel a lot, this isn’t a bad idea. The e-mails may be annoying at times – if you often log in from different devices – but much less annoying than apologizing to your fans for spam links filling their newsfeed.

Online reputation management can really make or break a business. While there is a lot that goes into maintaining a good reputation online, your time is better spent taking every precautionary measure you can and using your time to focus on improving. If you’re spending your time dealing with hacked accounts, you’ll spend your time fighting a bad reputation instead of spending time building a good reputation.

Do you think the new Facebook tools are going to be helpful? How else do you keep your Facebook accounts safe as part of your ORM?

Post Script: As I finished writing this post, Microsoft and Facebook have announced an Instant Personalization partnership. If you visit Bing in same browser window as Facebook, you’ll get an option to “accept” using Facebook data in your search. Major props to Facebook on opt-in rather than opt-out, though, and I’m only speculating, this was probably Microsoft’s idea, not Zuck’s. Either way, let me be the first to say, this will NOT kill SEO. It may, however, deepen the marriage between Social Media and SEO, which I think is a great thing.

As I was walking back to the table, I started thinking about how this is a lot like the online sales process: so many reps from all forms of online media trying to sell the inventory they have, but not necessarily the inventory that’s best for the client’s initiative. Not everything can be in black and white, and we need to be able to propose solutions that are in shades of gray. It’s our job as digital reps, especially multi-platform digital reps, to do more than sell. In many cases, we become the agency’s strategic partner. We know our solutions capabilities better than anyone and it’s our job deliver a well-conceived plan that can be justified through research and case studies. If it’s better shaken, why are so many reps pushing it stirred?

In a recent Media Post article, Woe The Digital Sale: Do You Know What You’re Selling?, Amy Auerbach wrote, “Agency buyers’ priorities are around client service, doing a good day’s work that ends earlier than 9 p.m., and having a life. Salespeople actually can contribute to all of those things… Help buyers manage their time by delivering RFP responses that are on-point and flawless. Over-communicate and provide extra research and rationale when you make recommendations.”  As digital reps, it is important to serve as an extension of the client’s team, and to not only create a partnership, but to be the “go-to” rep for ALL of their digital needs.

In today’s nearly over-saturated marketplace, buyers tend to stay with what they know works and people they trust. While building these relationships can take months, even years, losing them can be instant. One of the fastest ways to fall off of an RFP list or lose your preferred vendor status is to give the planner the “same ole, same ole” with each proposal. To be a successful AE, one must be part Brand Manager, part Media Planner and part Research Analyst. Those who can best embrace these roles will ultimately win the IO.

It is an extremely interesting and compelling presentation about Google’s fresh attempt to position itself as a one-stop shop for online display advertising. We know that they have been making inroads in all sorts of areas (Google Display Network, Google Ad Exchange, etc.) for some time, but this is the first time I have seen it packaged up so nicely and squarely targeted at advertisers, ad agencies, etc. Google does have the muscle to resolve a lot of the issues that plague our industry through integrating all of their solutions and makes a compelling case for using their platform.

What does this mean for all the rest of us? I think that remains to be seen, but it is clear that Google sees value in aggressively pursuing the dollars that are currently running through other ad networks. If they can do for display what they did for SEM by making it ultra-turnkey to flight display campaigns, it could change the way people are buying display advertising, even at the biggest shops.

That said, what Google has in technology, it lacks in customer service. We know this from the stories we hear from many of our clients. It is their ubiquity that makes it hard to provide a customer experience (not computer user experience) that many businesses and agencies need. Their hands are in almost every pot. Even some of their technologies acquisitions have been orphaned to focus on others (Doubleclick being the most relevant example here).

The other thing that Google doesn’t do is create brilliant advertising concepts. It’s one thing to own the network and develop tools to analyze success of online marketing campaigns from a metric perspective, but coming up with the idea that will affect consumers’ buying decisions is another. Admittedly that’s not Google’s business, but in the rapidly changing advertising marketplace, technological innovation is often confused with marketing insight. Good ad units, networks, and metrics do not a great marketing campaign make. They are simply the vehicles for the ideas that will turn heads and open pocketbooks.  What makes advertising work is the compelling, inspiring, revolutionary presentation of ideas that inform the way people see their own needs/wants/desires. This has nothing to do with technology. It has to do with creativity.

When they finally make their move as it seems they are now (look at the cover of Advertising Age), Google moves with such force that it seems like the entire playbook is being rewritten. We all know that it isn’t, but when a giant moves the ground definitely shakes. The best thing about giants for all of us little guys is that they can’t move or turn fast. That leaves lots of room for us to operate as the David to their Goliath (and we know who won that battle). We had best be ready to do what only we can do and do it better: serve our customers with excellence and help them cultivate the genius ideas that will help their businesses engage the marketplace. We can’t confuse what we do best with what the Googles of the world do best.

Then again, this could all just be a bunch of amazing advertising on Google’s part…

We’ve grown RMM from a five person shop in 2005 to a national company with fifty-seven employees in six states. I thought it would be valuable to share some of the keys that have propelled our growth over this time.

We’re big believers in process definition & continuous improvement. We’ve gone through almost everything we do as a company and have defined the process to ensure that we offer consistently high levels of customer service, including minimizing “dropped balls”. By clearly defining our procedures, everyone involved knows exactly what to expect from each other & we find that we can offer consistent excellence in running campaigns for customers. Defining procedures also helps us identify inefficiencies and continuously make changes to ensure maximum effectiveness. This has become critical as we run hundreds of client campaigns per month, and our growth is a testament to our teams’ ability to deliver excellence consistently.

Another key component of our process definition is employing the KISS principle.  I don’t mean dressing up like Gene Simmon’s band, but the adage “Keep It Simple, Stupid”. Online advertising involves lots of complexity; each of our display campaigns has over twenty steps from initiation to fulfillment across six different teams. There is a significant amount of work that goes into defining & refining procedures, but the bulk of the work really comes from keeping it simple: defining the mechanisms to simply handle the majority of cases, while allowing the flexibility or having exceptions for the edge cases. The hard work is to simplify a complex process.

We love automation. We use it not for the purpose of abstracting human contact & intelligence, but for mechanizing rote or routine tasks so our talented team members can focus their efforts on what they do best! We have found that investing in automation results in happier team members who are more productive and can offer more creative, “solution-oriented” responses to our advertising clients.

I’d love to hear more thoughts & ideas on how others are finding results by focusing on improving operations.

According to Nielsen’s Broadcast Season Universe Estimates, the number of television households in the US has grown from 111.4 million in 2007 to an estimated of $114.9 million by the end of 2010. The fact is that more people watching television than ever before.

Of course the growth of online video views has been explosive. According to July data from comScore, 178 million U.S. Internet users viewed online video content during the month and averaged 14.7 hours per viewer.

Content is still king when it comes to this convergence. The biggest difference is that much of what is being viewed is user generated content. YouTube has millions of channels, some with high production quality and with very low production quality. The millions of views generated by low budget content may surprise some. The one channel that comes to mind is Fred (aka Fred Figglehorn). This kid has been on YouTube for years. He gets millions of views for every video that he puts out and monetizes these views through the YouTube partnership program. I believe he’s now making a movie for Nickelodeon. We have already seen TV show start to increase distribution of content through sites like Hulu. You will start to a significant increase in web based user generated content being formatted and produced for TV.  Fred’s TV movie and shows TV shows like Web soup are just the beginning.

From a business perspective it just makes sense. If your self produced show/videos generate million of views online while drawing a certain demographic, then the TV folks already have an audience.

One of the advantages that web video has over TV is all of the real time metrics/interaction that can be tracked with advertisements.  There are several companies that are developing the same type of tracking capabilities for TV.

I’ m writing this blog entry while looking at my 32inch Apple monitor. I still prefer my 42 inch plasma for TV.  The biggest part of this E-volution will be when I’m writing my blog entry on the same screen that I watch the NFL.  In other words when TV/web surfers start using the same monitor for both that will be the biggest difference.

If you have any doubts about this convergence just think back the 1990′s. Remember dial up? Remember trying to watch a video using dial up? The very fastest modem at that time was 56kb. You often would have to wait at 20 to 30 minutes for a video to download. Things have changed at a rapid pace and unless of course the Mayan Calendar is correct, I have no doubt this convergence will happen in a big way.