Group items tagged

1 - Claim or Create a Google Places Page

2 - Verify Your Google Places Page

3 - Optimize Your Places Page

Within three months, his blog made it to the first page of Google when the phrase "Malibu real estate" was searched. Daily page views started to rise until he was averaging 300 a day. On days when a news aggregator picked up one of his posts, page views soared to as many as 8,000. But clicks aren't commission checks. The first phone call from someone reading the blog arrived within a year, and business soon followed. His most expensive listing or sale came last year from a Malibu resident. "She enjoyed reading my blog and wanted me to list her house at $14 million," Gardner said. The 14,000-square-foot Italian villa sits on 20 ocean-view acres. A Seattle-based blog reader recently gave Gardner the listing on her $8.5 million Malibu house. Another, Mark DiPaola, found an ocean-view home site in Malibu last year through Gardner. "When I started looking for an agent I went to Google and typed in 'Malibu Realtor,'" said DiPaola, the chief executive of CheckPoints, a mobile app that rewards shoppers. "The first or second time I saw the blog it was clear he knew the market."

Although only 22% of local merchants say they have used Facebook Ads, nearly two-thirds of those who have done so (64.9%) say they would use the service again

65.7% of surveyed local merchants say they use Facebook for marketing.

ease of use (66.5%), followed by the flexibility to pause and restart campaigns as needed (64.8%).

Set up some Google Alerts to see what’s being said about you online.

discuss tips for hiring a great cater and give your visitors ideas on how caterers price events. Discuss trends in the industry, and you can also provide ideas for what works best for different event types.

Your blog is also a great place to post photos and recaps of successful events.

Facebook Places is the most popular check-in mechanism, with 52 percent of respondents using it.

Only 18 percent of check-ins were using Foursquare and 12 percent were via Google Latitude.About 31 percent of consumers check-in at least once a day and 21 percent do so a few times per day.The most popular places to check in are home (52 percent), at a restaurant (50 percent), at a store (40 percent) or at work (39 percent).

Twenty-nine percent of respondents said they use them to pass time, 22 percent to publicize their location to friends or to locate friends (10 percent).

1. 93% of adult US Internet users are on Facebook. (source: BlogHer, April 2011) 2. One out of every eight minutes online is spent on Facebook. (source: ComScore, February 2011) 3. The average Facebook user spends more than 11 hours per month on Facebook. (sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, June 2010 & Facebook Press Room, 2011) 4. Facebook is overtaking Google and Yahoo in total time spent online. (source: ComScore, August 2011) 5. Facebook has become the top choice for social sign-in. (source: Janrain, April 2011) 6. Facebook has become the preferred way to share content online, second only to email—for now. (source: Chadwick Martin Bailey, September 2010) 7. The average number of "likes" per post on a brand's Facebook page is 54. The average number of comments per post is 9. (source: Visibli, April 2011) 8. More than half of B2B marketers agree that Facebook is an effective marketing tool. (source: Outsell, December 2009) 9. More than half of small businesses agree that Facebook is beneficial to their business. (source: Ad-ology, November 2010) 10. More than 1/3 of marketers say Facebook is "critical" or "important" to their business. (source: HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing Report 2011) 11. The number of marketers who say Facebook is critical or important to their business has increased 83% in two years. (source: HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing Report 2011) 12. 67% of B2C and 41% of B2B companies that use Facebook for marketing have acquired a customer through this channel. (source: HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing Report 2011)

By 2012, 20% of all search engine queries will be via a mobile device

200 million Facebook users access the social network via their mobile

1. Ensure a Mobile Optimized Website