So here I share some of their Internet marketing predictions for 2012, along with my thoughts of what they mean to you, the small business owner (because after all, that’s really what you should care about.)

Google+ will continue to grow but…

Still haven’t tried Google+? You’re not alone. Many experts, like Susan Payton in a post on Small Business Trends  say it’s picking up momentum but is not even close to matching Facebook in terms of users.

What this means to you: Now that brands can have their own account, it’s really not something you can afford to ignore just yet. If you already have your bases covered on Facebook and Twitter and have built up followings, devote  time to Google+. (See its connection to SEO trends below.) But if you are new to social media, you are probably better off sticking with Facebook or Twitter for now (unless you know for sure your target audience is a Google+ audience – then focus your time there.)

Google appeared to make a much more public push for Google+ then it ever seemed to do for Google Buzz or Google Wave  (which while not exactly like Google+ were aimed at sharing content.) Both Google Buzz and Google Wave will be no more in 2012. So even Google can get it very very wrong. That is why you should be cautious before jumping wholesale onto the bandwagon.

However, Google is the reigning king of search engines and it is expected that Google+ will have impact on search rankings. So if you do nothing else with Google+, do add the Google+ button to your sites and blog posts. Doing this encourages your visitors to “plus one” something even if you aren’t active on the network.

Understanding “social search” and seeking to connect with influencers will gain in importance

Accoriding to Sam Fiorella in his post “Trend Currents: Social Media in 2012“, Social Search will make “Influencer Outreach” the No. 1 activity for brand marketers.

…search engines will push relevant content from our personal engagements, not our Web sites to the top of search results. ….the impact of Social Search will dramatically change the focus of marketing. It’s no longer about relevant content but identifying and influencing people that can help you to “ENGAGE” your target customers in social engagements.

While consistent sharing of content will get you more followers (see research by Dan Zarrella of Hubspot), Sam’s point dovetails with the idea that not all followers are equal. Some are more equal than others and you should find those that share, those that share a lot. Google and Bing are paying attention to the “sharegraph”, if you will, of content. So focus on sharing yes, but also focus on finding influencers to notice you.

Buzzword of 2012:  SoLoMo for “Social, Local, Mobile”

According to an article by Outspoken Media’s Lisa Barone, “The year 2011 saw a 400 percent increase in the number of mobile searches, with 74 percent of people using their mobile phones to search while running errands.”

What this means to you: All the experts say mobile is hot, this is the year of mobile, etc.. Okay, I think we’ve heard this one before, but this year, if you’re a business that depends on local customers, it’s time to take the prediction seriously. This can mean making sure you have a mobile app (especially if you are restaurant, nightclub or other entertainment venue), making sure you enable the mobile listing in your Bing Local account, and use check-in deals to encourage people to share where they are with their social networks.

And while you are getting your mobile on, you should be making sure your local listings are in order. Here at Juicy, we’ve seen clients make great strides in their business, simply by paying attention to their visibility on local listings. Ranking for local searches is only going to get more difficult, so jump on this now. It’s the easiest of all tactics to get started with in Internet Marketing.

So where does the social come in? The listings are one thing, but getting people to talk about you is something else. Reviews are one of the single biggest factors people use when making a buying decision. (Barone cites a Nielsen study that shows “that 63% of social media users list ‘consumer ratings’ as their preferred source for getting information about a business, product or service.”) Reviews are also a ranking factor for Google Places. Get customers to give you reviews.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) predictions

We all have our gurus and mine for SEO is Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz. I share with you 3 of his 8 Predictions for SEO in 2012:

Prediction 1:  SEO without social media will become a relic of the past

Prediction 2: Google will make it very hard to do great SEO without using Google+

SEO will rely even more heavily on social media signals. The integration of Facebook results in BING and (at one time Twitter in Google) was only the beginning. Google, with it’s 80% plus share of search traffic in the US, has made it clear that it will not only show you your own social network results in the total list of organic results, but will use the social cache of an item in its ranking algorithm. Many in the biz think this is Google’s way of pushing Google+.

What this means to you: If you are depending on search to deliver the goods in your internet marketing plan, you need to ramp up the social and get started with Google+, especially if you are in a market that is already highly active in social media – think restaurants, specialty/boutique stores, salons, gyms, etc. But as we mentioned above, don’t do this at the expense of Facebook and Twitter.

Prediction 3: Google Will Finally Take Stronger Action Against Manipulative Link Spam

Over 2011, a lot of sites lost rankings in Google because of what is known as “Panda updates” which are in simple terms changes to Google’s algorithms. The main target of these updates: sites that engage in link spam or low quality, junk links.

What this means to you: If someone comes a knockin’ saying they can get you to rank #1 for a highly competitive keyword in a few months, run. If someone says they can guarantee you 100 links to your site in a few days, run. Link building the right way, that is getting quality, relevant links is hard work. Relevant links from quality sites to your site is what you need, not links from pornography sites or “blogs” that are nothing more than spun articles in bad English. This has always been true. Now it’s just more true.

Okay here’s a few of my own (and even if they don’t come true, they are still good advice.)

Prediction #1: Small businesses and start-ups that talk to customers like they are people and not just the means to a “bottom line end,” will win customers over those businesses that stick to the old-school corporate-speak way of communication. If you are using words like “leverage,” “value proposition,” “world-class,” or “exceed expectations”—stop. If you have mission statements and a list of corporate values on your website, delete those pages. Seriously. With our new social media-ized culture, people feel a little more personal with the business they choose to work with. Be that personal business.

Prediction #2: Small businesses will get more used to using social media as a way to enhance, not replace regular networking. How many people do you network with on a regular basis that you are not LinkedIn to or following on Twitter? Small businesses need each other for referrals. That’s why you network. Why not extend that networking online? Why not form a small group of online network buddies where you are particularly attuned to sharing each others’ content? See where I’m going with this? (You can read more on this subject in Supercharge Your Business Development.)

Okay, now go out there and make 2012 a great year for your business!

As a business owner, I understand the value that traditional networking and personal relationships bring to the business development process. No less than half of our new clients at Juicy Results come from referrals form current clients and others in my professional network. I’ve been at it for over ten years!

One thing I’ve noticed in others is how they subconsciously separate their networking efforts from any kind of Internet marketing activities we introduce them to. One exception to this is how quickly everybody is racing to Facebook and LinkedIn to grow their contact list. But, as an isolated tactic, this alone isn’t going to supercharge your business development efforts; just lightly compliment them.

I want to inspire you to use a number of Internet marketing methods to truly supercharge your business development and personal networking with this post.

Make sure you have something to say

First things first: successfully translating networking activity—such as conferences, events, groups and just sitting down for coffee—into real business requires you to have a clear and compelling message about what you do. We’ve all met too many lawyers, too many financial planners and even too many whatever-you-do to remember much about you after just one meeting. However, a clear, differentiated message about what you do and why I should care is your silver bullet in winning referrals from your network.

This is so important that if you do not have your message crystallized, spend time doing it now rather than reading the rest of this article!

When people find you online, you need to make sure your message is front and center. That means your website, LinkedIn profile (both yours and your company’s) and all other trails that lead to you should be clear, consistent, professional and focused. People will Google you, so make sure you know what the first page of Google looks like when you put your name or company name in the search engines.

You must be managing your reputation online.

Reinforce your position with helpful content

Just like in-person networking, you want to add value before you try to ask for value. You can provide value to your contacts with relevant information and answers to their problems. Useful introductions and recommendations are another great way to add value to your network—more on that later.

To use the strategies in this article you need compelling content about your product, service, destination, company or whatever you are selling. This blog post is an example of useful marketing content, as are social media posts, YouTube videos, newsletters, website content—it all counts. Engage the people who stumble upon your profile or website and show them how you can help them or why they should visit or contact you.

And trust me, creating compelling content that will win you new customers isn’t as hard as you think. You just have to start. This content will serve you in all your Internet marketing activity (search engine optimization, social media, email, etc) in addition to your personal networking efforts.

There is one shortcut: while custom content that is specific to your business will be the most effective, many of the following strategies can work with links to well-selected content on the web written by others. You probably already have a number of PDFs or blog posts that you can share with your potential customers. Use ‘em!

Now that your Internet presence is in shape and you’ve got some content to work with, let’s discuss a few ways to get your message in front of new potential clients and partners to generate some real business.

High impact follow ups

My favorite way to integrate Internet marketing with networking is with a high impact, helpful follow up after any meeting.

Here’s an example: Let’s say you’re an attorney who specializes in estate planning. You have a great networking meeting with a financial planner and discuss how you might refer business to each other. During the meeting process you naturally educate each other on your backgrounds, services and opportunities to introduce clients to each other. One thing you might mention is that a perfect referral for you is someone who is about to have their first child because this is the time people might reflect on their living will and other affairs. Pretty typical networking conversation.

But, imagine if your follow up email to this financial planner included a simple, well designed checklist in PDF format called “Five Easy and Important Things to Secure Your Children’s Future.” At the bottom, of course, is a short line about who you are along with your contact info. Of course, the checklist would mention a few things that would benefit from estate planning. That is a powerful tool to solidify the referral opportunity and enable that financial planner to refer you lots of business.

Once you begin writing blog posts regularly, you’ll find an abundance of opportunities to send a relevant and useful piece of information to new contacts.

This solidifies everything you told them in person and will dramatically increase the chances that the person will remember you when a need arises. This is crucial when you meet a dozen or more people at a networking event. Remember your discussions, and select the right information to send them. Make sure to add them on LinkedIn, and follow up a week later and ask if the information was helpful.

Targeting the right people

For most people, the first thing that comes to mind when you mention networking online is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a great way to connect and stay in touch with your professional network, but it’s an even greater way to meet new contacts online.

If you have a very specific client based on age, industry, position or location, you should take a look at the premium targeting tools on LinkedIn. You can generate lists of contacts and reach out. Notice that I say “reach out” and not spam—it’s an important differentiation.

Many times in business we’re looking for a specific business partnership with a key supplier, client, potential employer or employee. There is a good chance whomever you want to meet is on LinkedIn. Find that person’s profile via the search box and find your shared connections. You’re looking for a personal introduction here, by seeing who he/she knows that you may be able to contact via your network. This is a real life version of the Kevin Bacon game, but it works.

I like to write a very concise paragraph about why I need to meet this person and what I am hoping to accomplish. Keep that goal small, favoring a quick call or an email address over mentioning that you want them to hire you or do business with you. This makes it easy for your mutual contact to simply forward along that note with the introduction.

This potential contact will likely Google you or at least check out your profile, so be sure that you’ve done the above homework first!

After you finally get in touch with your target, remember to make a high impact follow up and add them directly to your network.

Imagine if you did this once per week? You’d develop a very powerful network of your own in no time.

Attracting the right people en masse

Attracting perfect customers online is all about content and, fortunately, you now have that. When people are searching for solutions to their problems or are interested in new things, they are hungry for information. They want to see photos and read reviews of that new restaurant in town before visiting or they want to see how an attorney might handle their business contract dispute before calling her.

When you think about it, this is what made the web so powerful in the early days. You could think of something to do or buy at 2am in the morning, log on and learn all about it (remember “logging on?”). This kind of instant access is something we completely take for granted today, but it’s center to the search process.

Remember that people use the Internet AND their personal and professional networks to find answers to their problems. Make sure all of these paths lead to you!

This is why you are going to spend time creating articles, videos and worksheets for potential customers. Then you’re going to broadcast them on your social media channels, in your newsletter and on your website. Make sure your family, friends, associates and networking partners are aware of this information, and ask them to share it as well. If it’s quality stuff, they’ll be proud to do so.

Occasionally, you may even post some of this professional content on your personal Facebook page to remind your friends and family what you do.

Remember to be strategic about what you share; it should be valuable to others and reinforce your areas of expertise. Nobody likes spam or noise.

If you do this consistently over time I guarantee perfect clients will find their way to your front door.

Adding value to your network

The result of your networking activity will be a large audience, each of which is an opportunity to connect on any given day. Review your LinkedIn or Facebook (or internal CRM) on a regular basis—daily if possible—and find someone you haven’t connected with in a while. Ask yourself: How can I help this person today?  Have you met someone recently whom you can refer to them? Maybe you can surprise this person by leaving a nice recommendation on their LinkedIn account or make a public Facebook update letting everyone know about their product or service. Trust me, this is a powerful gesture when it comes out of the blue and is sure to reengage that contact!

Starting today, review your list regularly and find long lost contacts to introduce to others, give business to or promote.

Remaining visible

The exciting and tricky thing about marketing is that you never know when someone can use your product service. It may be today, next week or seven years from now. This is why consistent, quality and regular contact with your network is important. The Internet has made this easier than ever. Here are ways to keep your message in front of your network:

• Email newsletter
• Facebook fan page and account
• LinkedIn updates
• Twitter
• Blog
• Press releases

You’re looking for the sweet spot: stay top of mind, but don’t over expose your network to the point where they tune you out. Find new and compelling ways to package your message.

Get Started!

Hopefully this article has inspired a mindset of blending your personal networking efforts with your Internet marketing. Here’s your action plan:

1) Crystallize your marketing message. Who are you, what do you do, who can you help and what is unique about you?
2) Standardize your web presence with that message.
3) Create or identify useful and relevant content for your market related to what you do.
4) Build your network online.
5) Get your network involved and share that valuable content.
6) Make meaningful connections with those contacts via phone or in-person and use high impact follow ups.
7) Reengage with long lost contacts regularly.
Stay in front of your network and keep your message front and center.

Let us know if you have additional networking ideas in the comments below.

And yet I try to every time. I am a contrarian by nature, a devil’s advocate if you will. I only jump on the bandwagons that I feel will take me to a destination I want to go.

So I had some conflicting emotions about an article I read called: A Human- vs. Customer-Centric Approach to Marketing.

Basically for years we’ve been drilling into companies the idea that you have to sell to customers in ways that makes sense to them. You have to build sites structured around client needs, not your company’s organizational structure and the president’s pet projects. Okay, we know all that. Now we are being told that we have to think of customers as humans. Hmm…what were they before? But I get the point: you need to look at customers as individuals, irrational and impulsive. If you sell to other companies, you need to sell to the people in those companies.

There are a lot of points to think over in this article. Here are just a few:

“Consumer-oriented brands’ only meaningful metric is how much merchandise they move, and consumers tie their status to how much of a scarce resource they consume,” writes Mike Bonifer in his GameChangers. “The model is unsustainable. It is a zero-sum game. If we keep playing it, we are like arsonists watching our own homes burn.”

Events such as 9-11, the massive economic downturn of the past decade, …and the devastating earthquake in Japan earlier this year, have led people to seek out more meaningful, authentic connections with one another and with brands.

So are business owners supposed to use some warm and fuzzy metric to determine if they are now winning in the marketplace? Do people really want a meaningful, authentic connection with their favorite brand of toilet paper? No. But as a business owner, in whatever you do via marketing in general or internet marketing in particular, the main takeaway is this: the people you sell to are human and you can not take any assumption you have made about them for granted including how they will respond to your carefully branded image or cleverly written copy.

If you don’t want to read the article, here are the main actionable points it suggests are part of this new paradigm of marketing with a HUMAN-centric approach coupled with how we at Juicy think a small business can make them actionable:

Point 1: Instead of imagery, a company should focus on utility in its communications.

What this means to the small business: stop spending precious time and money fretting about the particular banner image on your new site or the its shade of blue. Spend your resources instead on SAYING something worthwhile and HELPFUL in your site copy.

Point 2: Instead of being concerned about perception, a brand is better suited to define its purpose.

What this means to a small business: stop trying to appeal to everyone under the sun. Define who you are and what you do and seek the market (ahem, people) who like/want/need you for that. Tell the rest: see ya!

Point 3: Instead of complexity and massive content generation, focus on simplicity and context when engaging in dialogue.

What this means to a small business: don’t overwhelm your prospects with the 101 things your company/product/service does and don’t spam tweet/email/facebook post. Start with the simple “how do you solve their pain point/need/hope/desire” and lead them to more info if and when they want it.

Point 4: Instead of messaging to your audience, seek to engage them in active participation.

What this means to a small business: don’t just send emails, post tweets, etc, throwing a bunch of stuff out there and hoping it sticks. Ask questions in your tweets and facebook posts, send customers surveys, survey people coming to your site, use sites like UserVoice or Get Satisfaction. Find out what people love or don’t love about your company/product/service. If your site includes an online application, a site like UserVoice, GetSatisfaction or even Zendesk is a MUST. Don’t forget to consider offline ways to garner participation. You may already be doing this so make sure you are collecting data from your efforts—data that you can make decisions from.

Point 5: Instead of focusing on corporate values, focus on human values.

This one is my favorite. What this means to a small business: Most customers don’t care about your “corporate mission.” Use that “about” page to engage people with your company not as a monolithic entity but as individual people who happen to work together. Give prospects an idea of what your company values as people and what it might be like to work with you. You’re not IBM, Apple or Exxon. Don’t hide your people.

Point 6: Instead of relying solely on rationality, be prepared to embrace irrationality.

What this means to a small business: One, you will NEVER be 100% certain ahead of time if a particular marketing effort is going to work or not even if it worked in the past. People are fickle. Two, don’t be surprised when your very obvious “buy here” button  doesn’t garner clicks. Sometimes you just can’t account for human behavior. This is why it’s pointless to spend hours agonizing over a color or image. Throw it up there and SEE if it works. If it doesn’t, change it. That’s the beauty of the web.

Have any thoughts on this? Anything you want to share about how your company is approaching marketing from a human-centric perspective?

In part I of Local Online Search, we outlined steps to get started checking the status of your local listings, what info you should have on hand to correct and beef them up and how to navigate what can often be a frustrating process.

In this post, we’ll discuss tips for listing optimization as well as go into a little more depth about how local search works.

Local search is personal

The first thing you have to understand: local search results will depend on location. Where the user is located or what location the user is interested in searching will be taken into account when the search engine or other local directory returns results.

Therefore you must accept the fact that just because you see your listing at the top of the results does not mean everyone does. That is how it is designed to work. Google especially, is smart and adept at presenting the search results it feels is most relevant to the searcher. Since Google is still numero uno for search, most of our examples will be based on it.

Location, location, location….determines results

What users see depends on where Google believes the user is located. It can auto detect the IP address of the user’s computer and determine the location that way or a user can set the location manually as seen in the image below:

Then of course, a user may actually type in a location they are interested in searching within. Note the differences in search results seen when searching for an auto insurance agent.

If I just search for “auto insurance agent,’ Google suspects but is not certain that I want agents in Boca Raton, FL (my default location).

If I add the words “Deerfield Beach” to my search, then Google knows for sure that I want agents near Deerfield Beach and returns those results in a tidy list at the top of the page.

Disclaimer: in both of the above examples, paid listings were removed at the top of the page for illustration purposes.

On Google Maps, consequent search results will also depend on previous searches during the same session.

Tips to optimize local listings

Now that you understand that smart search engines and user settings can affect what a user sees, it’s time to understand what you can control.

Local search seems to rely on local information that is consistent.

As of now, it appears that the more places your business is cited across the web, the more likely you are to rank closer to the top of the search results.

Keep your business address consistent. We have found that making sure every listing added or altered has the local address written exactly the same way can help the search engines and local directories to recognize with no uncertainty that yes, these two listings represent the same business. So for example, I would want to avoid having some listings show my city as “Delray” and some as “Delray Beach.” I would want them all to show my listings as “Delray Beach.” Certainly this is not a hard and fast rule and search engines are smart enough to recognize variations of a city name with the same zip code, but why take the chance? Likewise ensure the local information on your website is consistent with your listings.

Use a local phone number if possible. Area codes still designate locale so be sure to use the local phone number that matches up to your business address. Many listings allow for additional phone numbers, so you can usually include a toll free or alternate cell number as well. Just be sure it’s the local number that is primary for the listing.

Multiple business locations require multiple listings. If you have multiple places of business, you can have a listing for each address (P.O Boxes don’t count). Create a special location page for each office that includes the address and phone number just for that location. You might also include other information that is unique to that location such as the office staff, specific services or brands, nearby places of interest, etc. Tailor it to the location and consider pointing your local listing, especially a Google Places listing, to that page.

Optimize your local business listings even further

Make your company name count. If possible, include what you do within your company name. For example, we could list our company as Juicy Results or we could list it as Juicy Results Internet Marketing. We can do this because, we are indeed an Internet Marketing agency, our site is optimized for this term and we do not look like we are keyword stuffing. We would not want to list ourselves as Juicy Results Website Design, SEO and Internet Marketing Agency of Boca Raton. That looks like keyword stuffing. Google frowns on including location information in your business name unless it really is part of your legal business name.

Include keyword rich, helpful information in your company descriptions. Limited space means you should leave out the market-speak and only include copy about the services or products you provide—anything concrete that someone might search for. So in the case of Juicy Results, we might want to include keywords such as SEO, PPC and website design along with Internet marketing. It is helpful to repeat keywords used in your company name in the company description or list of services/products.

Include a photo(s) and reviews. We have seen first hand that at least with Google Places, it does matter. However, never submit reviews on your own behalf and never hire a company to submit fake reviews. Real clients must submit real review with real accounts. Yelp will find it suspicious if all of a sudden your business listing goes from zero to sixty with reviews. Be smart. If something you are about to do feels a little smarmy, then it probably is.

Analyze your listing competitors

First determine who your competitors truly are. Search like a real user, using  a mixture of keywords and location information. Do these searches both as a regular Google search and as a search directly through Google Maps. Instead of searching for your company name, pretend you don’t know who you are but are looking for your type of business within a certain geographical region. Do this enough, and you will probably see some of the same names floating to the top of the results.

Now, reverse engineer what your competitor is doing. Do they have more reviews, a better optimized company name, a video? What keywords do they have in their company descriptions?

Next, Google their name. Where are they getting links from? Everywhere an address and a company name match up is a vote of confidence to a local listing provider (especially Google) that the listing they have is accurate and relevant.

Finally, try to get links and listings in the same places as your competitor. Simple enough concept but we warn, it can be tedious and trying. When doing this though, remember to space out this “linkbuilding.” so that no red flags are raised in the search engines. We recommend attacking 5 or so a week.

Shortly after taking over Carolina’s position as marketing intern, I found myself ‘tweeting’ the current trends, writing press releases and even composing email campaigns for some of our clients. Tapping into our available technology resources (Digg,Twitter,Flickr) not only allows for  quick information access, but also creates a sense of community with others also engaged in social media. The best thing about it is that it doesn’t exclude anyone, so everyone gets invited to the party!

One of the duties handed over to me was to gain 1,000+ followers on Twitter. Much easier said than done! I must say though, of all Twitter resources available to help in my ‘tweeting’ ventures, Hootsuite has helped me most. I recommend it to anyone who is engaged in more than one social media website. Trust me, it will simplify your life more than you know.

Between attending school full-time and interning here at Juicy Results, I have the unique opportunity to analyze the method of communicating by means of technology. The Internet is changing the way we conduct our daily conversations. Rather than turning on the television or walking outside for the daily newspaper, I can be found checking my Facebook status on my iPhone while eating breakfast simultaneously. Like several others my age, I have fallen prey to modern technology and do not wish to be rescued.

One of the reasons I have fallen in love with this new way of communicating is simply because of the fact that it allows me, well as anyone else interested (even Grandma and Grandpa!), to hold the position of an Internet marketer. Like I said before, social networking does not discriminate, it allows for anyone and everyone (with computer access) to participate.

This low-barrier entrance to social media is definitely something that we, at Juicy Results, are taking full advantage of and you should too! The benefits largely outweigh the burdens. So what are you waiting for? Get the conversation started in cyberspace. Start ‘tweeting’, blogging, bookmarking, networking and soon you too will develop an online presence that will attract others to your undeniably charismatic uniqueness.
Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and add us to your Facebook family to catch Juicy Results’ updates and see what we’re up to.