Tips for BloggersOne of the most difficult parts of blogging is actually getting started. You might ask yourself: “What do I have to say?” “Is it really that important?” “Who will actually read what I write?” The answers to these questions will never be revealed . . . if you don’t start blogging.

We’ve all heard about the benefits of generating fresh content that search engines love, link-worthy posts that get shared across the Web, and brand interaction that can only happen in the blogosphere . . . but what about coming up with ideas and writing good posts? Here are 10 tips to help make your first foray into blogging successful:

  1. Select appropriate topics. You can take a different perspective or provide better information than other blogs in your industry. Think about what topics a reader would find interesting, useful, or relevant about your industry. Don’t make your blog a sales pitch. Write about topics that can help your readers—such as various ways to use your product—or that can educate them about your industry. Use the opportunity to connect with your readers by showing that you know what you’re talking about when it comes to your industry.

    Don’t risk your reputation by posting controversial, personal, or hostile content—unless that’s part of your brand. The blog may be one of the first interactions a customer has with you. Make the interaction count by establishing trust and credibility through engaging or useful content.

  2. Consider length and style. It’s best to limit your entries to 150–250 words, as most Internet readers tend to skim. If your topic requires a more in-depth treatment, you can go beyond 250 words. Keep in mind that you can stretch a complicated topic across several posts, rather than stuffing it all into one entry.

    Most blog posts tend to be conversational and informal in tone, although certain industries may need to be more technical or informational. Just remember to give your posts personality. Think of your blog as a lobby for your brand. It has to feel welcoming and approachable, while still being able to convey all of the useful information visitors need.

  3. Format effectively. Because most online readers skim, format your post to make it easier to read. Break up text by using paragraphs, subheadings, quotations, bullet points, lists, images, video, or other elements to organize your information in a way that makes it easy and accessible for your readers. Be creative!

  4. Write engaging headlines. The headline is one of the most important pieces of a blog post. Just like your storefront attracts customers into your shop, a good headline will draw your visitors in. When writing headlines, remember not to shout at or market to readers. Instead, give them something short, sweet, and engaging. Entice them. Use active voice.

  5. Use links responsibly. Don’t use more than a few links in a blog post; otherwise, your post will appear like spam. Instead, link when necessary, and when it’s relevant to what you’re writing about. Try not to use the phrase “click here” as the anchor text when linking. Instead, use keywords that are relevant to your brand. That makes a link more understandable, and it can also help with search engine rankings.

  6. Include images. Images can make your post more attractive and—because they break up the text—easier to read. Include images that complement what you’re talking about in your post. Also, don’t forget to use image alt tags to provide search engines with information about the content of the images.

  7. Be consistent. Daily updates are ideal. When you post less than once a week, you risk losing your readers. Establish a posting schedule so that you keep the fresh content coming. The worst thing you could do is start blogging and then go missing. It becomes embarrassing when a reader comes to your blog only to find the last update is months old. If a company doesn’t care enough to update its blog regularly, what does that say about how it values its readers (or customers)?

  8. Proofread, edit, proofread again. There’s nothing worse than reading a blog post riddled with grammatical and spelling errors. It’s frustrating for the reader, and it looks unprofessional. Take time to proofread, edit, and proofread again.

  9. Respond to feedback. Blogs can be an excellent customer service tool because they create a more informal environment for customers to voice their thoughts or concerns. Be sure to take the time to respond and interact accordingly.

  10. Stay committed. Finally, stay committed to your blog. Make the effort to update regularly, develop good content, and be a thought leader in your industry. Practice writing. Read more. Comment and interact on other blogs in your industry. By being committed to making your blog successful, you’re already taking the first step toward having a blog that helps your brand, and ultimately, your business.

This article appeared in the January/February 2010 issue of eBiz Insider, the magazine for eCommerce professionals from Web.com.

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SEO and Your CompetitionFor a small business website owner, one of the challenges of online marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) is that your competitors may also know how to get found on search engines. In fact, they may have been employing SEO tricks for years, and they may be enjoying a top spot on engines like Google™, Bing™, and Yahoo!®. Conversely, you may have had great success with SEO in the past, but then you found your site losing placement on the search engines because other people in your field have learned how to make their own sites jump over yours.

So how do you compete in SEO when everyone else is doing it too?

For one thing . . . you have to be smarter. Lots of people only know a few basic facts about SEO, and some are using outdated techniques. Search engines are always changing the way they read and index websites, and you can use this fact to your advantage. If you take the time to learn what search engines are looking for today, you can overtake people who have held onto top spots for years. If you can’t do SEO yourself, you can look to companies like Web.com for professional advice and implementation.

Second . . . you should build a site that search engines want to see. Your website design should have easy-to-follow links that take visitors (and search engines) from the homepage to all the other pages on your site. Your site should have a hierarchy that lets search engines understand the difference between important category pages and less critical detail pages. On top of that, you should have links from other relevant websites that reference your own site. Google and Bing use these links as an endorsement of your site’s content, and most top-ranking websites will use several methods to acquire high-value links.

Third . . . you should be offering value on your site that isn’t present or obvious on other websites. Many of the most popular sites on the Internet have been able to avoid complex link acquisition work because they’ve become well known for their content or tools. Mint.com became a $140 million company in 2 years by offering personal financial tools for users. Part of its search engine success can be attributed to the financial, awards, and news sites that have linked to it. Although your site may not have such a dramatic success story, if you can help people figure something out—by building a cost calculator onto your website, for example—you might even have the competition linking to your Web pages.

At Web.com Search Agency, we have clients who compete with other companies that either have in-house SEO talent or have hired a competing agency to produce search engine results. It usually isn’t hard to tell when other sites on search engines are using SEO, because their sites are well presented and they have a clear pattern of valuable links from other websites.

As a small business website owner, you can still compete on this playing field by ensuring that your own site follows basic SEO principles. By adding value to your website, or giving potential customers something they can’t see somewhere else (such as a price list, a how-to guide, or the towns and communities in your service area), you’ll be providing the search engines with content while you make life easier for users. As you build your online reputation, you should expect not only better search engine rankings, but also an increased level of trust in your website and business.

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Web Design LessonsWeb.com has a long history—dating back to the late 1990s—of helping small businesses promote themselves on the Web. In 1999, for example, Bill Clinton was president, most of the world dialed up to the Internet, and people used search engines like Lycos® and HotBot. Although technologies have changed and players have come and gone, we’ve learned that some elements of Web marketing remain the same.

We’ve refined those best practices over the years . . . and we use them today for our do-it-for-me (DIFM) product offerings, where we start from scratch and build a Web presence for our small business customers. For many of them, this is their first Web presence, so we not only build and promote their site, but we also coach them on the best practices for marketing their business on the Internet. And we’ve applied those same principles to our most tenured clients, many of whom have been with us since the Clinton White House days.

Over the years, we’ve worked with hundreds of thousands of small businesses. And as a result, we’ve learned some valuable lessons that can help other small business owners launch their Web presence and succeed in the online marketplace. I’ve summarized three of those lessons here, and I think you’ll find the principles useful when you apply them to your own website activities.

  • Lesson #1 . . . At Web.com, we have great website designers and great Internet technologies, but we don’t know the ins and outs of our customers’ businesses. That’s why we interview them in detail to make sure that we gather the critical and relevant information we need to build their websites. We’ve learned that websites that are rich in content and convey that information in a way that excites or engages a visitor will win the most traffic. This pays dividends in terms of search engine rankings and in terms of visitors who come to your site “kicking the tires.”

    So be generous with good factual information about why you’re the best plumber, dentist, or candlestick maker on the Internet. We’ve learned that many of the most successful customers are the ones who convey their strengths in a way that convinces people to do business with them. Conversely, we see websites that may have superior offerings, but they garner less business because their website fails to communicate that strength, so they’re passed up for competitors who understand how to resonate with their website visitors.

    Conclusion for Lesson #1: Tell your whole story. Don’t be modest about conveying to potential customers why they should choose your business over your competition. Tell them what do you best, what you sell the most, how qualified your employees are, or why your customers love you and return to do business with you again and again.

  • Lesson #2 . . . As most small business owners know, it takes time to establish a competitive Web presence. And if you’re establishing yourself online for the first time, your site will be competing with businesses that have been doing many of the right things for years.

    With new websites coming online on an hourly basis, search engines like Google™ have to sift through all of the sites and determine which ones have done the best job and deserve to be on the first page of the search engine results page (or SERP). This is not an overnight process, and as much as we wish it were true, there is no such thing as a magic Google button that we can push to place a website on the first page of the search engine results.

    As I mentioned in Lesson #1, the first step you should take is to create a content-rich website that accurately reflects your products or services. Once your site is launched, the search engines will “acquaint” themselves with your site and determine the best initial ranking for it. Over time, if other websites place links to your site on their sites, your ranking should gradually improve. But again, this is not an instant process. Generally speaking, the highest ranking websites are usually the most tenured and trusted sites that Google has crawled over time and has recognized as well-built websites with natural links that appear on other websites.

    Conclusion for Lesson #2: Be patient. Over time, your website should attract more customers and gain higher search engine rankings as it matures and becomes a known and trusted source of information. The more competitive your business, the longer it can take to generate business, because you’re competing in a crowded space that most likely includes a pack of Internet-savvy marketers. The more competitive fields inevitably require more patience and work.

  • Lesson #3 . . . While many of our customers have been wildly successful when they market their own sites, we’ve found that a marketing relationship can benefit an online business by fast-tracking some of the early “hard-earned lessons” of self-marketing. We know how trying the economy can be on large and small businesses, and we know that many businesses are trying to accomplish more with less. Running a business is difficult under the best of circumstances, and it’s even harder when a business attempts to do everything on its own.

    Having an online marketing partner who can produce verifiable results and bring in needed customers (translated as “revenue”) can greatly benefit a small business that’s moving at full gallop and needs that additional edge to succeed. We’ve seen many small and large businesses falter, not because they had an inferior product or service, but because they lacked the marketing skills to attract enough business to grow and survive. A good Web marketing relationship should be one that measures your return on investment and produces bottom-line results. Measurements can include the number of website visitors, phone call inquiries, online store sales, or people walking through your door.

    Conclusion for Lesson #3: Find a good marketing relationship that will benefit your bottom line and free up your time and resources so that you can run your core business more effectively.

If you’d like to learn more about how our products and services can help your small business grow online, call our team in Jacksonville, Florida, at 1-800-GET-SITE. You can also visit our website design section to review our DIFM, do-it-yourself (DIY), and custom website offerings.

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Business Location for CustomersOn my way to work every day, I drive over a curved bridge. There are some very tall streetlights on this bridge, and there are some large blackbirds that like to perch on top of these lights . . . they often do so in pairs. I was admiring the birds as I started the ascent today . . . leading a pack of cars. Just as I reached the apex of the bridge and began the descent, a smaller blackbird hopped off the median ledge and landed right in the middle of the road.

I braked, as did the car next to me, thank goodness. “What are you doing, you goofball?” I said out loud. It made no sense for this bird to hop onto the road in front of a steady stream of oncoming traffic . . . there was nothing apparent in the road that might have interested him.

As I approached the bottom of the bridge, I noticed a policeman standing in some bushes and holding a laser device . . . he was tracking the speed of cars as they crossed . . . right at the point where a car would speed up because of the descent. I thought . . . glad I wasn’t speeding! . . . then I remembered the bird that hopped in my way.

Whether you believe in Divine Providence or happy coincidences, there is definitely a play of luck involved in our everyday lives. Luck often makes the difference between a smooth ride and a catastrophe. As I pondered luck after the play of events this morning, I thought about how highly successful people—no matter what their profession—nearly always make a reference to their “good luck.” Hard work and perseverance are of course also relevant, but luck is a significant factor.

Luck is the phenomenon of being in the right place at the right time. And luck is very important for any business. You may have thought more than once that one of your competitors “has all the luck.” So, you ask, how can your business get that lucky?

While luck seems to include elements of the “unseen,” there is a certain aspect of luck that is a known factor in the success of any business: being in the right place at the right time. Although we’ve heard the “location, location, location” cliché time and time again, I don’t think it can be emphasized enough. You need to be in the right place so your customers can find you when they need you. This applies to both your offline store and your advertising efforts—including your website.

In the offline world . . . you need to choose your location carefully. You need to study the demographics of the area and your potential competition. It’s always great to “get there first” and be the first business of your kind in a particular area . . . but if you don’t get there first, you need to develop a strategy that differentiates you from your competition.

In the online world . . . you need to be found where your customers are looking for you . . . in local directories and on Google™, Bing™, and other search engines. Many businesses attribute their success to their high search engine rankings or their effective pay-per-click campaigns. While getting on the first page of Google may often seem like “luck,” it’s actually based on science. So you need to find search engine scientists who can help you get there.

Web.com offers a number of products that can improve your visibility online, and we also have some of the top search scientists in the industry. You’ve probably read some of Patrick Hare’s articles on this blog. As part of the Web.com Search Agency team, he’s a veritable brain trust of search engine optimization (or SEO) knowledge. If you’d like some assistance in gaining your competitive edge on search engines, feel free to contact our team of professionals.

So . . . whether you were born under a lucky star or a starry night, taking the right steps for your business can greatly increase your chances for success. And if you take the steps to ensure that your location is optimal . . . then your customers will surely find you when the time is right.

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SEO and Sales SuccessPeople who are new to making sales online often miss peak online selling months, because of either a lack of preparation or a failure to understand online seasonality. When a site design project is held up or search engine optimization (SEO) initiatives are delayed, the resulting lack of search engine rankings and traffic can represent a huge opportunity cost. By understanding seasonality, and the time it takes search engines to respond to SEO, you can do a better job of scheduling projects . . . and making sure you have a “Plan B” if there are any delays.

Many of our customers use trend tracking to ensure that their search engine optimization campaigns will be in place during times of peak customer interest. Google™ has a free tool called Google Trends, which allows people to discover historical search traffic for top terms. Because search engine optimization takes weeks or months to take effect, it’s important to have most of the basic work implemented in advance of demand.

Search engines like Google generally take time to respond to SEO, especially if a site has not had any major changes for some time. This is because sites that have grown “stale” are not regularly visited by Google, so on-page changes can take some time to be discovered. At the same time, link building (which acts as an endorsement for your site and its content) needs to be indexed and factored into Google’s algorithm as well. Once these items are in place, Google still takes some time to apply its new information to the search results. With Google’s recent update (called the Google Caffeine update), many new pages get indexed faster . . . and established and trusted websites that add new pages are more likely to get priority.

From a budgeting standpoint, it’s important to have SEO and linking campaigns in place ahead of time. Because companies often budget on a fiscal-year basis, executives should be on board early on so they can sign off on an increased spend in the current fiscal year for sales expected in the year following.

If your site has yet to be launched, the advantages of a “soft launch” cannot be underestimated. Allowing a search engine to find your site (or several important pages) prior to its “grand opening” allows you to start the SEO clock early . . . and start pointing links at your website. While some people worry about getting too much traffic before the site is ready, a more common concern arises when a site launches and traffic takes several months to trickle in.

Like most other marketing and advertising budgets, SEO and link-building dollars have been cut back because of the slow economy. Some online companies have even gone out of business. From a competitive standpoint, this presents an advantage to companies that plan to stick it out. It’s now possible to move ahead of companies that were previously aggressive with their SEO and link building. Furthermore, companies that have closed up shop are going to be disappearing from the search engine rankings, so this could be one of the best times to start or improve your SEO projects.

Is your peak season happening right now? Although you can still get customer traffic, the cost can be higher. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising through Google AdWords and Microsoft® adCenter can get your content found within a few hours. During profitable times like the Christmas season, for example, PPC can be a very worthwhile source of site traffic. Nonetheless, PPC campaigns tend to work better once they’ve been running for a few weeks, because search engines use your click history to determine how relevant your site is compared to other advertisers. If you can improve your “quality score” with PPC engines over time, you may get better ad positions for a lower cost-per-click (CPC) than the advertiser who has an ad listed beneath yours.

For any online marketing project involving search engine optimization, executives and decision makers need to be patient in waiting for results, but quick when it comes to executing SEO. The inscrutable nature of search engine algorithms means that there is no easy answer for when SEO efforts will translate into first-page rankings.

Because the vast majority of positive website rankings increase at some point, an investment in SEO today may pay off next week, in six months, or a year from now . . . in ways that greatly exceed the return on investment. By understanding the “hurry up and wait” nature of the search engine rankings game, you can have your work in place while your competitors are still drawing up their project plans.

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Are you missing out on a huge potential market? Read Rieva Lesonsky’s post Target Market: How to Reach African American Consumers to learn more.

Speaking of niche markets, you know Hispanics are a huge part of the U.S. economy, but Are You Marketing to Hispanic Men? Read Rieva Lesonsky’s post to learn why you should be.

Is your business getting left behind by digital marketing? Be sure to check out 5 Key Digital Trends That Matter to to Your Business, by Rieva Lesonsky, so you don’t miss out.

Old-fashioned email marketing still matters, too. Read Monika Jansen’s post 7 Ways to Make Cold Emailing Work For You to power up your sales.

What really works on Facebook? Get it straight from the source in Monika Jansen’s post Facebook Says: These Are the Brand Strategies That Increase Engagement.

You’ve probably dealt with a difficult customer. Get help turning the situation around in Monika Jansen’s post How to Turn Difficult Customers Into Marketing Success Stories.

Things are looking up–but consumers aren’t yet ready to spend. Read Maria Valdez Haubrich’s post Economy Positive, But Consumers’ Outlook Still Negative to learn why.

How will your restaurant fare in 2013? Casual-Dining Trend Means Challenges and Opportunities for Restaurant Owners, by Karen Axelton, offers a look at what’s hot and how to profit from it.

Want to be memorable for the right reasons? Read Monika Jansen’s post 4 Lessons On How Customer Service Is Your Brand.

Women business owners are growing strong. Want proof? Read Rieva Lesonsky’s post More Women Business Owners Pass the $10M Mark.

Content marketing is a hot buzzword, but what about going one step beyond with content curation? Monika Jansen shows you how in 5 Reasons Content Curation Is Important to Your Marketing Strategy.

You know ecommerce is growing, but do you know how much? Etailers Rejoice: Ecommerce Spending Hits New Records by Maria Valdez Haubrich has the skinny.

Maybe Showrooming Isn’t as Scary as You Think. Read Karen Axelton’s post to find out the latest on this retail trend.

Want to know the hottest target markets for mobile marketing? Read Rieva Lesonsky’s posts Women Step Up as Mobile Users, Customers and Meet the Mobile Super-Shoppers.

B2B marketing is a world of its own. Get the latest on what works in that world in Monika Jansen’s post 4 B2B Marketing Blogs From People Who Walk the Walk.

Learn what a new Web.com study found about the outlook and attitudes of women business owners. Read Rieva Lesonsky’s The State of Women-Owned Businesses, 2013.

Good news for women entrepreneurs: Angel Capital May Get Easier for Women Business Owners to Find. Read Rieva Lesonsky’s post to learn more.

Do you want to keep on top of the latest small business marketing trends? Read Monika Jansen’s post 7 Marketing Trends That Benefit Small Businesses.

Wonder why your marketing efforts fall short? To see what you’re doing wrong, read Maria Valdez Haubrich’s post Marketers Are From Mars, Consumers Are From Venus.

Want to make more money? Who doesn’t? Read 6 Easy Ways to Boost Your Revenue This Year by Monika Jansen to get started.

Are you working harder and getting less done? The culprit could be multitasking. Read Rieva Lesonsky’s Is the Multitasking Myth Hurting Your Productivity?

Email’s an effective marketing tool, but are you using it right? Read Monika Jansen’s 7 Quick Fixes for Common Email Marketing Mistakes to find out.

Social shopping is the next big thing…or is it? Read Karen Axelton’s post Social Shopping Isn’t Taking Off Just Yet to get the scoop.

Curious about what Facebook’s Graph Search might mean for the future of business? Read Monika Jansen’s post 5 Ways Facebook’s Graph Search Could Help Your Social Media Marketing.

Are You a Victim of Nice Girl Syndrome? Read Rieva Lesonsky’s post to find out if you’re too nice for your own good.

Does your business website need a tuneup? Read Monika Jansen’s 6 Ways to Improve Your Website and Deliver the Information Your Customers Need.

No, it’s not too early to ask: Are You Ready for Holiday Retail 2013? Read Karen Axelton’s post to find out how online retailers are readying for bigger and better sales.

Then refresh yourself on the basics of ecommerce with Maria Valdez Haubrich’s post 7 Reasons Customers Buy (or Don’t Buy) From Your Business Website.

Is Your Family Really Supporting Your Business? From time to time, you need to take stock of whether your work-life balance is getting out of balance. Read Rieva Lesonsky’s post to learn more.

Boost your profile by writing an ebook. Read Monika Jansen’s 7 Tips for Creating Your First Marketing Ebook to learn how.

Are you trying–and failing–to land government contracts? Learn where to get help in Rieva Lesonsky’s post Women Business Owners Lose Out in Race for Government Contracts.

Content marketing is hot today–but how do you keep your content fresh? Start by reading Monika Jansen’s post 5 Keys to Creating Valuable Content.

Then check out Monika’s series, 7 New Ideas for Valuable B2B Blog Posts and 7 More New Ideas for Valuable B2B Blog Posts, to get inspiration.

Are you in the restaurant or food industry? You won’t want to miss Rieva Lesonsky’s post Americans’ Taste for Healthy Eating Continues.

Trying to improve your employees’ health? Get ideas in Get Up, Stand Up: Why Your Employees Should Stop Sitting Around by Maria Valdez Haubrich.

B2B Marketing Budgets Are on the Rise in 2013—Is Yours? Read Rieva Lesonsky’s post to see how your business measures up.

Can’t decide between suppliers? Read Karen Axelton’s How to Choose a Supplier for Your Small Business before you make your final choice.

What do luxury shoppers want today? Read Rieva Lesonsky’s Luxury Marketing Goes Digital to find out the secrets of marketing to luxury consumers.

A gift shop’s success is based on the visual aspect of what they do. People need to see the items to buy them. So how do you get them interested in your gifts when they’re not in the store, but without spending a lot of money on advertising?

There are three social media tools every gift shop owner can use to build interest and traffic to their stores.

Facebook

Start a Facebook page for your store, and invite your customers to like it. Then, communicate with them on a regular basis, but for more than just promoting your store’s items. Ask questions, like “what was the best gift you ever received?” or “what’s the funniest gift you ever gave?” to keep people coming back and interacting with your page. It will teach them to check out what you have to say on a regular basis.

Instagram

Instagram is a mobile app that lets you take photos, apply creative filters, and share them with your Instagram network, as well as Facebook. Take photos of some of the cool stuff in your store, especially as it comes in, and share it via Instagram.

Pinterest

Pinterest is another app that works on your laptop or your mobile phone. See a picture of something you like, and pin it to your “board.” While most people use it to pin pictures of things they find on the Internet, you can also use it to pin the Instagram photos you shared on Facebook. Pinterest is also a good way to take photos of stock items you’re thinking about bringing in to the store and asking your customers for their opinion.

A few days ago, we talked about using Tumblr as a way to promote your blog to your potential clientele. We wanted to delve into the new growth of Tumble-blogging, and how you can use it more fully.

Tumblr (no ‘E’) has been embraced especially by Generation Y who wanted something more informal and easier to use than a regular blog. While a regular blog is just as effective — if you have one, don’t abandon it — there’s something hipper and funner about a Tumblr blog.

The first thing to do is claim your Tumblr blog. Go to Tumblr.com, and set it up using your gallery name — StevesGallery.tumblr.com — and set the background theme the way you want it.

Next, download the Tumblr app to your mobile phone. Take a few minutes and familiarize yourself with how it works. It’s pretty easy. Just take a photo on your phone (or choose one from the gallery), type in some text, and upload it to your Tumblr blog. Unfortunately, you cannot send more than one photo at a time this way.

You can also email several photos and copy at once to your Tumblr blog. Each account is given its own special, secret email address. Put that in your phone’s address book. Then, when you take a series of photos, attach them all to an email to your Tumblr account, add in the text, and then send it off.

And of course, you can also upload a series of photos to your Picasa or Flickr account, and then copy the embed code for a slide show into your email and send that off, or just go to Tumblr.com on your laptop, and write the post like you would any other blog post.

Then promote the posts via your social network and use it to build both search engine traffic and foot traffic to your gallery.

Are you familiar with the term “mastermind group?” You may hear it called other things, but basically, it’s a group of people who are closely aligned to your business’ success and growth. These are people you meet with on a regular basis, so you can contribute to each others’ success.

A mastermind group can be built around a certain industry or niche, like residential real estate, which includes a Realtor, a mortgage broker, an attorney, a handyman, and anyone else who might be related to that specific niche.

The group could be built around a certain type of people, like small business owners or marketing directors. People who want to share new information and ideas with each other, so that they can take it back to their own jobs and do them better.

Or it can even be based on geography, like all the retail businesses in a particular neighborhood. While some of them may compete, they instead focus on the general health and prosperity of the neighborhood, and share ideas on how to run their businesses better.

The idea is to find people who share a common business goal and can work together without competing. They come together once a week or once a month to share knowledge, share ideas, and even share leads with each other.

The Realtor can refer new clients to the mortgage broker. The marketing directors can bounce ideas off each other, and give advice. A small theater and a restaurant can team up to sell special dinner-and-a-show packages.

Whatever you do with your mastermind group, leave yourself open to the possibility that some very creative and beneficial ideas can grow out of it.

We’ve talked about the importance of online social networking for the last several months, but we don’t want to ignore the importance of meeting people in person. This kind of networking is just as important to growing your business as online networking is.

Here are three benefits of doing real-world networking:

1. Networking events lets you meet more than one person at a time.

We like networking events where you get to meet a lot of people at once. Not only does it increase your odds of meeting people who can have a positive influence on your life, it lets you be more visible within your community. Your Chamber of Commerce, business networking groups, and even local industry groups are all places to network.

2. Read nonverbal cues, and learn about a person’s passions.

Sitting down and speaking with someone face-to-face lets you hear the excitement in their voice when they tell you about the things that excite them. It’s a bonus when that passion is their work. It helps you understand why they love what they do, and helps you make connections for them later on.

3. Create deeper relationships than you can online.

It doesn’t matter how well you get to know someone online, you will never have as deep a relationship as you can by talking to them in person. You need to see their face, hear their voice, and see their nonverbal communication to get to know them. You’re creating, in a loose sense of the word, a friendship, and you just can’t do that through a keyboa

Let’s say you own an ice cream parlor, along with three other parlors within a five mile radius. You can win a search any time someone looks for “ice cream shop” or “ice cream parlor” when they do a search while they’re in your city, or do a mobile search on their phone.

The biggest trick that will help you win this mobile search is registering your business on Google Places.

Claiming your Google Places spot does one very important thing for you: it tells other people how to find you on Google and on the maps. And if you’re the first ice cream parlor in your neighborhood to do it before your competitors, you appear higher in the search than the other ice cream shops.

Log in to your Google account with your Gmail address and password (register for one if you don’t have one yet), and then enter in the necessary information. You’ll enter your business address, hours of operation, methods of payment you accept, any photos and videos, and anything else you want customers to know (free parking, specialty flavors you offer, etc.).

While Google typically wants you to list a mailing address, home-based and mobile businesses can also participate. Just put in your home address, and when you get to the section on Service Areas, select “this business serves customers at their locations.” Google will hide your address from the map, which means you can maintain your home’s privacy, and/or avoid any confusion with customers who may want to find you in person.

Your web content is the thing that’s going to make or break your search engine optimization efforts.

In yesterday’s post, we started talking about how important content is, but we didn’t want to include it in the list of three blogging SEO tips. Not because it’s not important, but because it’s very important.

One thing Google wants now is high-quality content, and they ignore content that was poorly written.

In the past, content writers did everything they could to cram as many keywords into their copy, often at the expense of the writing quality. Now, bloggers need to focus on making their content the best it can be. The keywords should almost be an afterthought — not something you ignore completely, but don’t spend any more than five minutes on them.

Since Google looks at things like time on site (they assume people spend more time on a page reading well-written content), it makes more sense for you to focus on making each blog post or web page the very best it can be.

If that means hiring a professional, consider it money well-spent. If it means writing and rewriting until it’s just right, then take the time. And if it means having a couple of friends tell you what they really think of the writing, then steel yourself and ask them to look it over.

As long as the end result is well-written and interesting, people will read it. If it’s not, your web traffic and search rankings will suffer.

One online guerilla marketing tactic is to write blog posts and other content that capitalize on the hottest trends going on that day. But how do you practice this real-time communication and real-time marketing, and find out what’s going on locally, nationally, or even internationally as it’s happening, rather than after the fact?

Start with Hashtags.org, which keeps track of the different Twitter #hashtags. If people are talking about it, it’s on Hashtags.org. To see how popular a topic is, visit the site, and either look at the most popular topics on the front page, or do a specific search for a topic of your choice to see what kind of traffic it’s generating.

We also like TweetLevel, a Twitter monitoring and ranking tool. You can find people who are influential about a certain topic (which you found on Hashtags.org), and start interacting with them, or place them in a Twitter list so you can follow them more easily.

With this information, you can now create your own content — blog posts, tweets, videos, podcasts, you name it — and capitalize on the popularity of the subject. Write your post, then tweet out the URL, using the same hashtag.

Next, find the influential people who are talking about a particular topic, and respond to their comments and questions. Share your own content with them. They may share your stuff with their own networks, where it can be seen by tens of thousands of people. Do this often enough, and you can be recognized as a voice of authority within that field or topic as well, and become your own influencer.

In a previous blog post, I talked about how to use a blog to drive traffic to your ecommerce store where you sell
specialty sandwich cutters. But how do you know if it’s paying off?

With Google Analytics, the free analytical package that shows you your web traffic performance, you
can see what’s working and what’s not.

For example, let’s say you published your post on “Five Fun Sandwiches for Kids” on a Monday. By
Friday, you’ve sold 100 of your sandwich cutters. How can we find how many of those sales came as
a direct result of the blog post?

First, we check out the Google Analytics page, and see that the post has generated 1,000 visits this
week. We can see how long everyone spent on the page, where they came from, and even where
they went.

In our hypothetical case, of the 1,000 visitors, we can see:

  • 600 of them came from Facebook, 300 came from Twitter, and the other 100 came from a
    variety of other sources.
  • 80% of them spent 1 – 2 minutes on the page, 10% spent 5 minutes on the page, and 10% spent
    less than 1 minute.
  • 100 of them clicked a link that took them to another page on the website (we can even find out
    which page), 800 of them left as soon as they read the page, and 100 of them went straight to the
    sandwich cutter catalog page.

By switching over to the Google Analytics for the sandwich cutter page, we can see that 50 of our
visitors actually bought the $15 sandwich cutter.

Based on all this, we can determine that 1) our blog post resulted in 50 sales this week; 2) it
generated $750 in gross revenue; 3) it has a 5% sales rate.

Without Google Analytics, we would never know what a particular blog post, or even a week of
traffic, has done for our business.

There are several social media review networks and apps where people leave reviews about their favorite (and not-so-favorite) restaurants, businesses, doctors’ offices, and retail clothing stores. Sites like Yelp, Foursquare, UrbanSpoon, FoodSpotting, and OpenTable all encourage users to leave comments and reviews of the restaurants.

Back before we had social media, people would frequently complain when they were unhappy, but rarely give public compliments. These days, people are more willing to share when they’re pleased, and are more likely to leave positive reviews.

Restaurant owners can help encourage these reviews, and using them to their marketing advantage, by trying these quick tips:

  • Remind people to check in on Foursquare, and ask them to leave a tip about
    their favorite appetizer. If you have a free wifi network, name it [RESTAURANT NAME]
    _dont_forget_foursquare.
  • Hold a weekly or monthly contest where people send their Foursquare checkin as a tweet with a
    #hashtag with your restaurant name.
  • Leave a tablet tent that says “Love us? Hate us? Leave a Yelp comment” and a QR code that
    takes people right to your Yelp page.

That last tactic is a bit of a calculated risk, because you’re showing people the exact path they need to take to complain too. But if your staff is on their game, this won’t be a problem. And if people do complain, we’ll tell you how to fix the problem tomorrow.

Restaurants need to keep track of what’s being said about them, but it’s not enough to watch each
and every review site — at one count, we saw over 10 of them, and that didn’t include networks like
Twitter, Facebook, or anyone and everyone’s personal blogs.

You could spend all day online looking for mentions of you and your restaurant, and you’d still miss
them all.

That’s why we like Google Alerts as our brand watchdog.

The search giant indexes millions of websites a day, looking for any and all important keywords,
including yours. So why not put that to work for you?

Go to Google.com/alerts, and enter your
restaurant name. “Use quotes” around the name if it has more than one word; that tells Google to
find exactly that phrase. Otherwise, it returns all instances of all the words, regardless of where they
appear on the page.

Set the Result Types to Everything, How Often to Daily,
and How Many to All Results.

This way, you will receive a once-a-day email of any and every time someone mentions your
restaurant name in a blog post, news article, or restaurant review. Then you can respond accordingly,
either thanking the person for the compliment, or offering to fix any problems.

There are other tools to help keep track of your restaurant brand and name (i.e. setting up a search
column on your favorite Twitter client), but Google Alerts will save you time while still keeping a
watchful eye on your brand.

 

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If you’ve got a Facebook Page for your business (which is different from your personal profile), you’ll want to know how it’s performing, to make sure you’re getting the most out of it.

That’s where Facebook Insights comes in handy. It gives you some basic analytics to see how your page is doing in terms of visits and interactions. According to the Mashable.com’s Beginners Guide to Facebook Insights, there are two basic insights you want to look at:

  • User Insights: Total page Likes, or a number of fans, daily active users, new Likes/Unlikes, Like sources, demographics, page views and unique page views, tab views, external referrers, media consumption.
  • Interactions Insights: Daily story feedback (post Likes, post comments, per post impressions), daily page activity (mentions, discussions, reviews, wall posts, video posts).

    This tells you how your page is doing, whether people are visiting, which pieces of content they like the most, which ones they don’t like, and even what they share and tell other people about. And with things like external referrers and media consumption insights, you get to see what brought people to your page — was it a Google search or tweet? — as well as what they looked at, read, watched, or listened to.

    Keep in mind that these insights are all anonymous. You can’t see who came to your page, but you can see how many did. By seeing this kind of data, you can get a good idea of which parts of your content and conversation are doing well, and which parts aren’t. That lets you choose what to focus on and what to drop.

When you’re trying to find people worth following on Twitter, you don’t want to just follow everyone when you’re first starting out. I mean, you can, and there’s nothing wrong with it. But if you’re trying to save some time or reach the most number of people in the shortest time, you need to reach the most influential people in your city.

We like two tools in particular that can help you find those people, the people who can motivate people to new actions, to read or visit certain websites, and even to try your restaurant.

Twitter Grader is a tool that shows a person’s Twitter rank out of a possible 100%. Anyone who is above an 80 is pretty influential, and you’ll even see a lot of 99.7s and 99.8s. While this isn’t everyone in the city, it’s at least a good indicator of who’s doing Twitter right, and has the followers to show for it.

TwellowHood.com is a Twitter locator that groups people by looking at the location they put in their Twitter bio. To find influential people in your city, visit Twellowhood, drill down to it in the map, and then follow everyone who has more than 100 Twitter followers, but not over 20,000. We’re setting the bar very low, because the people with a few followers may be fairly influential, and the people with more than 20,000 may not pay much attention to you.

While there are other tools to do the same thing, we like these because they’re easy to use and fairly accurate.

If you’re new to social media marketing and you’re trying to promote your business, there are a number of books you can choose from to get you started. One book we’re partial to is Shama Kabani’s The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility, Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue.

The book is written for the social media marketing newbie, giving readers some basic insights into the different tools you can use — blogging, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, group coupon sites like Groupon, and video — and some of the best practices that will get you the traction you need for growing your own business.

We’ve found that a lot of small business people just don’t have the time or patience to sit down and learn how to start using social media at a high level. But the thing Shama’s book does very well is explain why it has to be done, and then finds the easiest ways to get you up and running as soon as possible.

Shama uses simple language and simple ideas to explain what may be seen as a complex and unwieldy marketing channel. If you’ve been letting social media marketing’s overwhelming size be a reason to stay out of it, what will happen when that becomes the biggest game in town and the only efficient way to reach your customers?

Hint: That day is already here. You’d better get started.

If you’ve been on the fence about whether social media marketing is right for your company, The Zen of Social Media Marketing may be one of the best books you can get.

A couple days ago, we talked about how you can promote your store with Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. Pinterest is a great way for people to share cool photos of things they have done, things they want, and even ideas for things they would like to do. We wanted to talk a little more about how you can use Pinterest successfully for your own gift shop.

We’ve seen food recipes, things to build, and things to buy. Pinterest is a good way for people to communicate simply and easily, and even use it to manage special events, like a wedding registry.

1. Start by growing your network.

Add people to your Pinterest network by following them. Since social media is based on reciprocity, people will follow you back. And as you re-pin and comment on their items, they’ll do the same for you (plus you may find some great stuff to bring into your store). If you already have a big Twitter or Facebook following, import those users into your network for a quick network boost.

2. Post photos of your best inventory online.

You can either use Instagram and share photos to your Facebook page or upload the photos to your Flickr or Picasa account, and then pin those. Create a board of “Cool Stuff In Our Store,” and let people know what you’re sharing.

3. Pin photos directly from your ecommerce store.

We talked about building an ecommerce store yesterday. If you actually have one, pin photos of your inventory. If someone clicks the photo to be taken back to the original source, which many people do, they will be taken right to your store’s page and that particular item. If they’re impulse buyers, you may get a sale out of it.

Twitter can be an invaluable tool for restaurants. They can use Twitter to communicate with fans and regulars, which will keep them coming back. Fans become regulars, regulars become evangelists. You need more of these people, and you can use Twitter to do it.

1. Get a Twitter handle for your restaurant’s name so that people know it’s you. @JaxBurgers is too generic, but your own name — @SteveSanderson — is too unknown. Pick the shortest possible name that people will still recognize: @PunchPizza, @Thr3eWiseMen, @BoogieBurger are all good examples.

2. Respond to people immediately. Whether they’re asking for directions, asking about the specials, or complaining about the service, respond immediately and publicly. Twitter is a great way to reach a lot of people easily, so even if you’re answering the same questions over and over, keep doing it. People will see it. And when people complain, if you can solve their problem, they’ll tell their friends you did, and people will see that too.

3. Ask fans to share photos, answer questions, or even help decide your next menu item. There are a couple of restaurants where I live that have asked their Twitter fans to vote between two different food items for their menu. It increases fan engagement, and their friends see that communication, which boosts word-of-mouth marketing.

One hint: When @replying to tweets, if your tweet starts with the @ symbol, only people who follow both of you will see it. But if you drop a space in front of the @, then everyone who follows you can see it.


One of the least expensive and most effective advertising tools you can use is Facebook. Unlike your other advertising options, Facebook advertising lets you reach exactly the people you want to reach for pennies per ad.
The great thing about Facebook advertising is you can specify exactly who sees your ad on their Facebook page. Unlike radio and TV advertising, Facebook lets you target a specific group of people, and is only seen by that group.
Facebook advertising lets you specify how much you want to pay per ad, and even lets you put a daily cap limit so you can stretch your budget further.
You get to choose who sees your ad, based on their demographics and their likes. For example, if most of your customers tend to be 20-somethings who live inside the city limits, you can target the ads specifically to them.
When you buy your ads, choose their age, gender, city, how much you’ll pay per click, and the daily cap limit — say, women between the ages of 25 – 35 who live in Miami, FL, with a click rate of $.50, and a cap rate of $30. Write the web copy, drop in an image, and launch it. Make changes every few days, and see which versions got more traffic.
Send ad viewers to your home page, or to a specal offer page of your choice.
Facebook advertising lets you reach potential visitors in a way no other medium can. Use it wisely and it can be one of the biggest traffic builders you’ve ever used.

This week, we’ve been talking about salons and spas, and how they can use social media to promote themselves. During our research, we found an interesting story about one particular salon that, with the help of a digital marketing agency, saw some impressive social media success.

Jocelyn Rimbey is a digital marketing manager with the Cyphers Agency, and helped the Robert Andrew Salon and Spa reach their audience with social media. We were so impressed with the results, which Jocelyn blogged about, we thought they were worth mentioning.

First, Robert Andrew had a reputation management issue to solve, namely a few negative online reviews, plus a former employee running their own personal smear campaign. Robert Andrew also needed to overcome a lack of awareness by most potential clients.

So Jocelyn’s agency created an Ambassador Program that asked long-time, loyal clients to share their love for Robert Andrew with their own social networks. By using Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, Robert Andrew received some excellent traffic, and more than 40 positive reviews to counter the negative ones.

Here are some of their wins:

  • Flickr Photo Views: 47,727
  • YouTube Video Views: 1,389
  • Facebook Page Views: 3,257
  • Twitter Post Views: 517
  • Review Site Posts & Views: 300
  • Online Forum Posts & Views: 333
  • Robert Andrew Blog Views: 168

Of course, it doesn’t take a digital agency to do all this; you do need to invest time into it. But the payoffs can be stellar, making social media one of the most cost-effective (and successful) marketing channels available.


Salons and spas that want to take advantage of social media’s popularity should look at these three tools as a way to promote their business online.

Pinterest

This is the sharing site that lets you show your friends, “I like this!” by pinning things you find online, or photos you take. Pin something to your board, and your Pinterest (and Facebook) friends will see it and repin it. It’s become a smash hit, especially among women, who make up anywhere from 58% to 97% of their total traffic, depending on who you talk to. Take photos of new products, new techniques, and even of your best work, and pin it. Ask your clients to do the same.

Instagram

Another photo sharing site, but this one is only of the photos you take; you won’t share things you find online. By applying some fun, artsy filters to the photos, you can take pictures of clients, your salon or spa’s new decor, or even after a fun day with friends. You can even encourage your clients to share photos of themselves on Instagram and Facebook, which you can then Like, or even pin to your Pinterest boards.

Yelp

Yelp is a review site where people can give reviews of restaurants, clothing stores, and — you guessed it — salons and spas. While you won’t be able to write reviews about your own place, keep an eye on your own entry to see what’s being said about you. Encourage clients to leave positive reviews, and if someone leaves a negative one, respond positively and publicly. Let others see you solve customer service issues.

The best way to grow your restaurant’s Twitter network is by following people who are likely to visit you. That means local people, not people who live in other states, not celebrities, not other companies. Here are three ways you can grow your restaurant’s Twitter network quickly.

1. Put your Twitter handle on your menu. Give people a 5% discount or free soft drink for following you and then tweeting a message with your handle in it. While that may seem like a premium cost, keep in mind that you’re not only getting a new follower, you’re getting word of mouth marketing out of it too. Some marketers would pay $5 apiece for a contact like that.

2. Follow people in your city. Use Twellowhood.com to find people in your area. Also, look for #hashtags about certain local events or festivals, and follow people who live in the area. Talk with them on Twitter after the festival as well, and invite them to your restaurant.

3. Follow who your competition follows. Go to the competition’s Twitter page, see who they’re following, and then follow them. You want to follow the people they are following, rather than the ones who are following them, because they’re (hopefully) following locals. But they can have all sorts of spam accounts following them, so you don’t want to bother with that. Also, don’t worry about following celebrity accounts and national brands. They won’t be patrons, so save your energy.

Home service pros rely on word of mouth for spreading the word about their business and reputation. Thanks to social media, that part of their job has become both easier and more difficult.

How so? For one thing, if you do a good job, people will tell their friends. When someone posts on Facebook that they’re looking for a home service pro, their friends will chime in with the name of “their guy.” And the new client will call up the professional given to them by the person they trust the most. On the other hand, it means if you do a bad job, they’ll tell their social networks as well.


So how can you manage your reputation to make sure your reputation is protected and people will call you?

1. Set Up a Google Alert for Your Name.

A Google alert can tell you whenever new occurrences of your name or company name are created, which saves you from having to check every day. Go to Google.com/alerts, set up new alerts for your terms.  You will receive emails on these terms on a daily basis, or as they appear — you can determine how frequently you want to be notified.

2. Respond Publicly and Positively to Any Complaints

If there are any complaints about you online, don’t argue, don’t fight back. Apologize and offer to fix it. You may have to swallow your pride, but when people see that you tried to make it better, they’ll know you’re focused on doing good work and keeping customers happy.

3. Post Testimonials to Your Website

Make sure you have a testimonials page on your website, then post any testimonials you receive. Site visitors will see how many happy customers you have and be more apt to trust you.

Pinterest is an online pin board where users share, or “pin,” photos of things they like, so their other friends can see them. You can organize your photos into different boards — things I want, organization, weight loss motivation, recipes to try, travel planning, childhood memories — and browse other people’s boards to get inspiration from them.

We’ve seen boards dedicated to fitness, home decorating, wedding planning, healthy eating, favorite desserts, skin care tips, you name it. Then, as the pinners are surfing the web, and they discover a photo of something they like, they pin it, add it to their appropriate board, and write a suitable description that explains what they liked about it.

There are a few cool things about Pinterest that make this more than just a bulletin board though. For one thing, whenever someone clicks your pinned photo, they’re taken to the original website where you found it, like, say, a book page at Amazon.com. (Idea: Create a birthday wish list board and pin the photos of items you want.)

Another possibility is to use Pinterest to promote items you sell. Pin photos to your salon or spa’s “Items We Carry” board, and put up the photos of new products. If you have an affiliate sales account (i.e. you sell someone’s product from someone else’s site, and get a commission), you can even post photos from those sites, and then sell those products.

Of course, you don’t want to post only sales photos. People come to social media to escape advertising, not be bombarded with it. Use your sales items sparingly, mixed in with your fun and interesting “pins.”

Even for doctors and dentists who don’t want to publicly join social media, we recommend that you at least give LinkedIn a try. LinkedIn is a professional network that lets people connect on a professional level, as compared to Facebook, which is all about personal connections.

Facebook lets you talk to family and friends, but LinkedIn lets you connect with colleagues, former med school classmates, and anyone else you interact with on a professional basis.

By connecting with colleagues, you also have access to their network as well. For example, if Dr. A is connected to Dr. B who is connected to Dr. C, Dr. A can ask for an introduction to, and make a connection with, Dr. C. This lets each person increase their network, which can lead to several interesting opportunities for the future.

There are even specific groups you can join, converse with other members, and exchange ideas and information with each other.

The Medical Doctor Network has over 12,000 members and is a very active discussion list, while the Doctor Jobs Portal is a place for doctors to find new positions. And the Doctor-Engineer Portal is for doctors and engineers who want to work together on new medical device projects. There’s even a Junior Doctor Forum – Australia & New Zealand, which is only for junior doctors in those two countries, or international doctors licensed to work in those two countries, and Doctor Jobs Down Under is for Aussie doctors looking for their own new jobs.

Even if you eschew all other forms of social media, try LinkedIn as a way to improve your professional development and growth, adding to your network of colleagues, and possibly taking your career in new directions you never even considered.

Instagram is a mobile app that applies different filters to photos you take on your digital phone, to make them look more artistic, more creative, or even 60 years old.

But it’s much more than that, it’s a community of photo sharers who not only want to express themselves creatively, but share the interesting things they encounter throughout their day.

As a salon or spa owner, you can harness that sharing, and increase the word-of-mouth marketing for your business by asking your clients to share their Instagram photos on your Facebook page. This will do two things for you: 1) It will get your clients to share information about your salon or spa with their friends, thus showing them some of the great benefits you offer; and, 2) It will provide content that your page members can comment on and interact with, which will bring them back on a regular basis.

So how do you get your clients to share their photos of your salon or spa? For one thing, just ask them. Make sure there’s some signage hanging that tells people you’re on Instagram (and to Like your Facebook page). Hold a photo of the week contest (winner gets a small prize). Offer to take photos while someone is getting a facial or in the middle of a cut. And take your own photos of clients and put them on your page (with their permission, of course).

Instagram is an instant content provider and conversation starter among your clients. Take advantage of its growing popularity.

Many medical practices — doctors’ offices, dental practices, emergency care, and even hospitals — are hesitant to join social media because they’re worried about what could possibly go wrong, especially around the areas of HIPAA and patient privacy. But they’re also worried about what kind of information they can share online. Here are four do’s and don’ts for medical practices to follow on social media, while steering clear of any potential problems.

1. Don’t reveal patient information.
Of course, and you already know this, but everyone in your office needs to know it. Doctors never revealed patient information when they got their first fax machine, their first email account, their first website. Social media is no different — follow the same rules and behaviors you do for the other technology.

2. Do share important health information
Sharing information from newspaper articles and health journals about the importance of exercise and good nutrition are always helpful. Articles on the importance of too much sun or not enough vitamin D are good. Anything you can do to help your patients stay well is worth sharing.

3. Don’t get too technical with your information.
Remember, you’re trying to find new patients, not impress other doctors. Your blog and Facebook page are not a suitable place to share the article you wrote for the medical journals, and it’s not really the place to engage in medical discussions with colleagues. Use a network like LinkedIn for those discussions.

4. Do limit your social media presence
A medical practice doesn’t need a wide social media footprint like, say, a digital marketing agency does. Stick with Facebook and Twitter, where most of your patients are anyway, and share the things that will be of interest to them.

When we talk to medical practitioners and practices, including hospitals, about social media the one concern we hear over and over is that they worry about potential HIPAA violations.

The short, almost flippant, answer is “you didn’t violate HIPAA when you got a fax machine, email, or a cell phone. Just do the same things you did when you weren’t violating HIPAA with that technology.”

And for the most part, that’s usually enough to keep you out of trouble. But there are still some important points that people don’t think about. So here are our recommendations for doing social media in an age of HIPAA.

  • You can’t acknowledge a patient’s compliments, because to do so would be to acknowledge that they were a patient. While it’s one thing if a person compliments you via Twitter, it’s another thing if that compliment shows up on your Facebook page. You should remove those, unless you can make the person anonymous (and you can’t).
  • The same is true for complaints. Unlike a restaurant, which can offer to fix a problem wherever a complaint is made, you can’t do that. Instead, develop a standard message where you urge any and all people to contact your office directly. And then remove the complaint from your page.
  • If you offer testimonials on your page, remove any and all identifying information. Refer to the patient by their initials, or at least first name and last initial. Never refer to any specific symptoms or ailments online.
  • Keep your personal and professional accounts separate. Don’t friend patients at all with your personal account. And try to encourage more than just patients to “Like” your practice page.

There are still some subtle nuances about HIPAA that confuse medical practitioners about what can and can’t be done. If you’re not sure, check with your compliance officer or another doctor for the answers to any questions you may have.

 

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