12-Sep-2011 
Admin
Using social media to move local placements is VERY easy! All you have to do is the same you’d do for national placements except do it within the researched confines of your target location!
We have a new reseller in a major market and with the VERY first post in his Blikini platform we hit #2 for a VERY powerful Social Media Outsourcing term in the organic results in less than 4 days! That’s right under 4 days on the first post in a brand new domain and with very few inbound links and only 20% of them from traditional sources like forums and blogs. The trick is in defining your target market and then doing the research to make sure the promotion you do is in LOCAL social media communities.
You need to make sure and cover your basics such as making sure you have a verifiable local address and phone number, existing place page doesn’t hurt and maps is killer BUT you don’t really HAVE to have them and you can still place in the organics even with strong competition. Social media comments from like minded humans are powerful stuff these days!
Of course if you don’t have a local presence you can always rent physical addresses and get local numbers to open satellite locations and grab the place pages as well as start targeting specific markets in local cities, suburbs and specific neighborhoods. You can also target statewide placements by posting your shipping policy and service areas.
Also, by registering your business location at foursquare if you are a local business, and having people check-in and being the mayor by maximum check-ins can give your business a real boost.
Then there are several local search and info services that all give good link and each usually has it’s own little interactive voting/rating program. Local.Yahoo, True Local, City Guide etc. are all great links to get and each will have a review system in place that can dramatically improve e your reputation and your bottom line!
It is true that you can do things like rent a mail forwarding service giving you a local address and always get a re-directed phone # from that target location BUT we’re talking social media here and that puts a whole nail in the old spam coffin. One person could easily bring down your reputation empire with a single post exposing you as scam artist. It may seem cheaper to try to grab local market share by cheating but I strongly urge you to consider the long term costs of doing it that way. Its not that much more to get a small office or even rent a desk, (that has been popular overseas for a long time and is certainly catching on in the states now), and hire an answering service so you can actually service that location.
BUT as always with social media seo the key is to engage humans that fit within your target demographics and get them to post a link to you from their social media home page. When you can accomplish that you will find, as we have, that organic placements start coming like it’s 1999!
Peach Y'all
Bob Massa, CEO Search,King, LLC
Proud Parent of Blikini - the Social Media Management Machine
Social Media Marketing and Management
2 comments:
Social media is helping SEO campaigns a lot these days. Local social media SEO is a pretty new concept to me. I agree with your insights Bob. I must say it’s a great informative post.
Local social media in terms of seo is incredibly powerful. With a brand new domain and only 12 social links and NOTHING ELSE IN TERMS OF LINKS! We hit top 7 positions for 5 out of 7 target terms within 4 days! Our client has picked up two new clients this week already!
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