Local Businesses Love Facebook Fan Pages

If you own a small business, and you’re on Facebook, do you have a business Fan Page?

My wild assumption is that if your Facebook friends will be open to becoming a fan of your business. And every time you update your Fan Page with some great business news, a limited-time offer, photos or videos, it will display on the News Feed of all your “fans.”

It isn’t JUST local businesses that can have Fan Pages, but it definitely is the largest category that does making up 17.6% of Fan Pages.

Fan Pages is really an easy way for a local business to reach out to a LOCAL audience.

According to research by eMarketer:

Engagement, interest and constant connection keep fans coming back to a company’s Facebook fan page, and local businesses can learn from these larger examples as they create and populate their own Facebook fan pages.

On the big company level, the largest Fan Page with over 26 million fans is the YouTube Fan Page, and the second largest is the Coca-Cola Fan Page. With Fan Pages, the ability to create and share is the same whether it’s a local business or Fortune 500 company.

2011 is Year of the Entrepreneur

Seeing as LocalTrifecta Internet Marketing is a small business, with a focus on helping other small businesses attract and convert more customers online, I think what the Canadian Youth Business Foundation (CYBF), Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), and Federal Government have done is wonderful.

In naming 2011 the Year of the Entrepreneur, I hope that this goes beyond the typical lip service, feel good type media announcement. Small business is the life blood of the Canadian economy, and it is the industrious, creative, and effort of business owners that drive this country.

As a past funding recipient from CYBF, I can assuredly say that it is a terrific organization that has a clear and organized mandate.

The following is taken from the joint press release sent out today:

As leaders in small business in Canada, CYBF and CFIB recognize that the country’s future depends on the continuing contributions of entrepreneurs. Small- to medium-sized businesses account for 98 per cent of all businesses across Canada, and with more than 19 per cent of owners plan to retire within the next five years, The Year of the Entrepreneur is a prime opportunity for Canada’s frontrunners to create entrepreneurial initiatives that will help move Canada into more prosperous times.

Read the official government press release on this.

Small Business Statistics in British Columbia

A number of months back, I was researching some statistics of small business in British Columbia.

I came across a very helpful email from Gary at Small Business BC, and I’ll share some of what he shared below.

Have a look at the Small Business Profile Study by BCSTATS:
http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/data/bus_stat/busind/sm_bus.asp
It states that in 2007-2008 there were 384,300 small businesses in BC.  58.3% of those were in the Mainland/Southwest region of BC.

City of Vancouver Statistics are harder to find.
Try:
http://www.metrovancouver.org/about/statistics/Pages/KeyFacts.aspx (for the GVRD)
You may try asking at the City of Vancouver (although I don’t know if they compile that info). You can find the number of business licenses issued at the metrovancouver site..but not by size of business.

You can also try Statistics Canada:
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/reference/refcentre-centreref/index-eng.htm
or BCSTATS:
http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/ds_email.asp
Small Business BC does not define what a small business is. We use the Provincial Government definition of any business with fewer than 50 employees. I don’t believe I have ever seen a definition of a "medium" sized business. It is either "Small" (50 or under employees) or "Small and Medium" (50 and under employees..same as "small") and "Large" (over 50 employees)

Twitter Ad Revenues Rising … BUT …

eMarketer forecasts that Twitter ad revenues will rise this year and next, from $45 million in 2010 to $150 million in 2011 to $250 million in 2012, BUT the one prevalent question is if Twitter has saturated the marketplace.

Can Twitter maintain the same stratospheric growth it has experienced in the past several years? Has it plateaued? The simplicity of Twitter is its inherent beauty, but it’s the visual, engaging element that has continued to feed Facebook’s growth.

Twitter seems to be growing most in spam-type accounts that people open up and fill with autotweets, program with auto retweets, etc, etc.

Overall ad revenues for the major social networks (MySpace isn’t a major any longer) are trending up. Twitter and Facebook to a lesser extent are in a race to grab as much market share as possible, before the next big thing appears on the scene.

SEO Tips from Google

The video is half a year old, but provides great insight by the Google Engineer (and prolific blogger) Matt Cutts and his team.

Google Alert Yourself!

Google rules the Internet. We all know that.

I have a love affair with many things Google. Now you know that.

One tool that I adopted over a year ago is Google Alerts.

Pick whatever keyword terms you want (the most obvious to start with is your name!), pick the frequency of when you’ll receive the updates and VOILA, magic to your email everyday. OR if you’re just not that popular then magic weekly … monthly … or  maybe never – which is what I’m sure some insane people would want .

So go Google Alert to your heart’s content.

The Critical Role Of Local SEO

Eric Enge of Search Engine Land recently made a very insightful blog entry regarding “What’s Next In The Evolution Of Local Search?“

In it he states:

The first thing we need to be clear on is that there are major differences between traditional SEO and Local SEO. A wholly different set of algorithms is in play here, and the type of work is quite different.

With Google increasing its focus on search queries with local intent, the importance of having a local SEO strategy is growing rapidly. Whether you are a national chain with lots of local brick and mortar stores, or the local laundromat, you need to play here.

The problem is that for a small local business, it is very hard to play effectively in this space. This is a trend that strongly favors the larger business that can invest in a significant Local SEO strategy, and can afford to re-invest every time there is an algorithm change.

In our experience the businesses we work with, even with a “marketing department”, are focused on more traditional forms of marketing and advertising. The knowledge a business needs to stay ahead of not just the local marketing opportunities but organic search AND pay per click creation and optimization takes a team of highly focused individuals.

At Local Trifecta our objective is to help small to medium brick and mortar businesses get all the benefits of a large corporate spend for a fraction of the price. We understand what it takes to leverage the full “Trifecta” of SEO, PPC, and Local and understand how critical it is to have all 3 components working together to accomplish the main objective of increasing revenue.