Social Media and Local Searches For Businesses Made Easy

www.SmallBizInternetMarketing.com.au 1
LOCAL SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Put your business on the cutting edge.
David: In this session, what we’re going to talk about is local search and social media as
well. So we’re going to break this into two components. Local search, I’m talking about
Google Maps and things like that. It’s probably only recently over the past couple of years
that it’s really popped up and started to play a really pivotal piece in the whole SEO game.
This is mainly because the map appears right up at the top and it pushes all of the organic
listings down. I think the way things are going at the moment as well, everything is shifting
to be more local. Everybody is looking for localized search. And it is all the rage, especially
with the way mobile phones are now picking up the internet and all that type of thing. It’s
important that we get this right.
Google Places
What I’m going to show you here, using
Google Places, it used to be called Google
Local but they recently changed it to
Google Places. I want to take you through
the process for how we get our listings
right up the top and give you some
examples as well. It’s in prime position as I talked about. I have got a tape. I might just
show you quickly a video just to explain a little bit more just so you know exactly what it is.
[Google Places video]
That’s just a little bit of an idea of what it is that we’re going to try and do. I’ll just jump
over to Google. And the first thing that I wanted to show you, this one, again, is one of my
clients and we started to work with him. And I’ll show you how to correctly optimize your
Google Local listing to make sure it comes up the top. Whenever someone puts in these
geographic targets, suburbs and things like that with a particular industry, that’s when you
see the map pop up.
Because it’s such a new addition to Google search, there’s still not a huge amount known
about it as to how exactly the algorithm works and a few things like that. There are a few
things that we do know, and that’s what I want to take you through, and also show you
how we can claim our listing and how we’ve got up the top.

As you can see it’s also pushing down the organic listing as well. That’s our client with an
indented listing as well. Here’s one for you. Heather. Heather’s website as well comes up in
position number one.
These niches are, as I talked about before, when you’re dealing with local business, ISO
consultants isn’t going to be getting a huge number of traffic searches. Yet it’s so highly
targeted, Heather said she probably hasn’t been busier and she’s getting enquiries for work
that clearly must have come from the SEO work that we’ve done because it’s for services
that she hasn’t previously been targeting. That whole idea of when you’re working in the
local space, it’s quite easy.
Now, I think when we got this up, once we got you in Google Maps and did a little bit of
off page optimization, in less than two weeks she’s already seeing some fantastic results.
The importance of getting your business listed in here if you have a physical location is
paramount.
Getting down to business
What I want to talk through now is the way
we actually go about claiming this listing.
I’ll use this as an example, an owner
verified listing. What I’m going to look for
here, Google Places, they must have some
sort of deal with the Yellow Pages because
I think Pete and I talked about this, they pull a lot of data automatically from the Yellow
Pages and you’ll see listings appear in Google Maps that are pulled clearly from the Yellow
Pages. There is no real owner verification. There is no real customization from it.
So if your business is appearing like that, I’m going to try and see if I can find you an
example just so you know what to target. What I’m looking through these different pages
is all of them are saying owner verified up here. Sometimes if you come in and the data has
been pulled from Yellow Pages, you’ll get an option to verify your listing. Usually if it says
verifiers and owner, you click that link if your business or whatever is listed there. It’ll take
you through to the Google Places area where we get a chance to claim the listing and then
we go through all the optimization to make sure it comes up correctly.
While that loads, I might as well get another page loading as well. You can just go to
Google Places because if you don’t find your business listing there, then you can also go
ahead and add a business as well. It doesn’t need to be there.

Claim your listing or add a new one
The first thing that you’ll do is claim your listing as I talked about. If your listing is there or
not, you can click that link or you can add a new one. So if you don’t find your business,
you can add a new one and then you just follow through. It’s at Places. If you just search
Places, it will come up.
Best claimed with your domain e-mail
The couple of rules of thumb that I recommend that you do: firstly, it’s a good idea when
you do claim your listing to make sure that the e-mail that you enter in should be the e-
mail of the domain name that you’re trying to rank for. This is something that a lot of
people miss. What Google is looking at doing by grabbing this extra information, it wants
to really verify that yes, this is you, this is your listing.
You can imagine what it would be like if your competitor was there and you jumped in,
claimed his listing. So they want to make 100 percent sure. Everything that we can do to
make sure that we further verify the listing is going to weigh in our favor. So what I’m
talking about there, if we were claiming Melbourne SEO Services, it would be
dave@melbourneseoservices. That’s the e-mail address you’d register.
Company name: no funny business
The next thing, when you enter in your company name as well, don’t use any funny
business. We did things early on where we tried to heavily load our keyword that we
wanted to come up for into that title. Google got wise to that and said, no, we really don’t
like that game. We want your business to be listed as you would find it on your letterhead.
So again that’s another one of those benefits as to why we tried to incorporate Melbourne
SEO Services into our name because we get to use our name as well for things like Google
Places. There are a whole lot of factors that come into play here. Depending on how it’s
done, I think they just don’t want anything to look too spammy.
If we have a look at Heather’s website, we did sneak some extra keywords in here. We put
in ISC and we also put in ISO consultants. This causes it to come up for that keyword but
it’s got to feel a little bit like a company name. For this one, this is doing quite well because
it’s in a less competitive landscape. If it’s in a really competitive landscape, you’ll slightly
need to tweak it without trying to stuff too many keywords in there.

Real address: can be hidden later
The next thing when you enter in your Google Places listing, make sure you put your real
physical address in. That’s important; you can hide it at a later stage. Let’s say you’re a
mobile mechanic and you don’t really have a physical address. Then you can hide it later if
you don’t want them coming around to your house or whatever. So put your real address
in and it’s all got to do with that verification. The big thing early on is they want to make
you tick all of Google’s boxes so they say, yes, this is a listing we can trust and verify.
Use their approved categories + keywords
Then you select the categories that you want to get assigned to. When you type in
categories, it will pre-populate the categories for you. It’s a good idea to use their pre-
populated categories first. Let’s say it’s physio. You’d start typing in physio, rather like, you
know when you’re on Google and you start typing a word and it does all the predictive text
as to what it thinks you’re trying to type in? The same thing happens in Google Places. It’s
a good idea as you’re adding these listings to use some of those pre-approved Google
categories. You can add some additional ones in there, but it’s always good to start off by
using those categories.
Question: Not so much a question. When you type in something in Google and you do get
those dropdown boxes, that’s a great way to find keywords for yourself.
David: Yes, it is. Yes, because it’s Google telling you what it is that it thinks are the most
relevant keywords. That’s good insight there. So those categories, you want to make sure
that once you’ve loaded in the main categories that Google suggests, I think you get to
choose about six or seven different categories. Maybe choose between three and four
categories that Google suggests, but then also load in some of your keywords in there as
well into some of the other categories.
Hours, photos, videos, additional notes
Then you get to enter in some additional information. You get to enter in your hours,
photos of the business, videos. You can embed in YouTube videos and additional notes.
What we’re looking at doing here is adding as much content in there because you want to
show Google, yes, we’re managing this listing. It also looks good from a user perspective if
someone clicks on it to find out more about your business, and they get a nice little photo,
and they get some extra little videos and that type of thing. You want to make sure you fill
out that detail as much as you can.

Verify your listing - phone / mailer
The final stage, once you pre-populate all these things, it’s quite easy. As soon as you click
that button I was talking about, a screen pops up where it asks you to enter in all of this
information. Then you just need to verify your listing. The way that they do that, you can
either select by phone or by mailer. So if it’s by phone, you need to select a phone number
that you have handy because they’ll call straightaway. They’ll give you a four-digit pin, and
then you head back over to Google Places and enter that four-digit pin in.
So you just want to make sure, don’t have it go through, as some companies, you call them
up and it’s those call systems and they’re like big trees. And you need to press one to do
this, press two to do that. If you’ve got one of those services, it’s probably best to do a
mailer, but I like using the phone where possible because it means you’ll get verified
straightaway.
Here’s the listing for the dentist. And I just want to go in
and show you. This is what it looks like when you verify
your listing. This is the information I was talking about.
So you select your country. I talked about using your
company name. Make sure you use the real address.
Make sure you use the e-mail address associated with the domain name. Enter your
domain name in, then your description. This is an area where you can drop some keywords
in but don’t be overly spammy. It’s like writing a meta description. It’s a little bit of a sales
point.
So you want to make sure that you use some good copywriting in there. Looking for a
Dentist in South Yarra, Toorak, Prahran or Windsor area? They’re some of the areas we’re
trying to target. Then it moves into: the dentist, Melbourne offers the complete dental care
etc. So you get 200 words. You might as well try and make use of that area as best as you
can. Put your primary product and services in there as well. So what is it that you’re
offering?

Google Places algorithm
Underneath are the categories I was talking
about. These ones will pre-populate as you
write. So some of these ones, cosmetic
dentist, emergency dentistry, a few of
those ones are going to be the ones that it
pre-populated for me. Then when you look
at some of these other ones, these are some other things, like wisdom teeth. It’s probably
not going to be a category, yet we want to put it in there because, again, the algorithm for
Google Places is still so much in its infancy. We don’t know exactly what’s playing a role.
We just make sure that we follow these rules of thumb that I’m giving you now.
Address/ service areas
Then you can select the area in which you service.
You can either have it, if you select an area, you can
select a radius similar to what Pete was doing in
AdWords, very similar. And you can select, here’s the
area that I work with. You’d hope by targeting, this is
just me jumping to conclusions, I’m thinking in my
head, like Matt Cutts would, the main guy over at Google, I’m thinking if I further articulate
and define who my target market is, what’s Google’s ultimate goal? Google wants to serve
the best and most relevant information to the user who is searching.
The more that I can narrow that search and tell Google, here is exactly the type of person
that I’m looking for, that will end up being a better match. So my mind says it’s probably a
good idea to have that Map selected, which I’ll go back and do at a later stage. You can
enter your details in there for when you’re open and that type of thing, and what sort of
cash that you do accept, uploading the videos like I talked about and some images. It gives
you an example of the way it’s going to look over on the right-hand side. That’s what it
looks like from the back end.
I see this as a huge opportunity. I mean you could almost make a business out of
contacting businesses and saying, your Google Places hasn’t been updated. You don’t have
a Google listing. I’ll charge you $500 or $1,000 to enter it in for you, and you just do what I
said. There’s a little business model in itself. You can have that one for free.

This is what it looks like on the inside for the actual user who visits it and they’ve gone
more information. See the importance of having a good image because that’s what attracts
the eye and I’ve really tried to fill it out. There’s even a little testimonial from David. He likes
going to his dentist. I’ll talk about some of the different characteristics that I think are taken
into consideration when they’re calculating what’s going to come up first.
You know the video that we watched right at the start? There are few other cool things as
well in there. Like in the back end, you get access to a whole lot of different analytics that
are different from Google Analytics because it’s specific to the Map. So it’s a really good
place to try and dive in there.
Coupons
You can add things like notes and coupons, coupon specials. So someone who searches
you on your iPhone and searches on Google Maps, they go, dentist South Yarra. Then they
pull up the information and go more. And there is like a little offer and you can target
specifically to mobile people. You can say, you’re probably reading this on your iPhone. I
thought I’ll put together a special offer for iPhone users. Come in to the dentist and get
two for one off your next teeth whitening, or something like that.
As far as the way the algorithm works, here’s what I do know. The address obviously is
important because Google wants to make sure that it is serving up the business that’s
relevant in that particular area. That’s what Google Places is all about. So it will depend on
where your business is located and, as Pete was talking about, the IP address, where you’re
located when you run that search. Also the address plus the service areas, like I was talking
about, is important. You can set 15k out of Melbourne CBD which was that little map that
we were talking about.
Data must match Yellow Pages, Yelp and TripAdvisor
The other thing is you want to make sure that the data that you enter into Google Places
matches all of the other data you have out on the web about you as well. Make sure that
Yellow Pages listings, Yelp listings, if you’re on TripAdvisor, if you’re a motel or a hotel or
something like that, make sure that the information that is outside on the web elsewhere,
matches your Google listing. If it’s not, go out and see if you can update it because they’ve
come out and said that is one of the things.

Get reviews
Getting reviews, obviously I think reviews must play a part. The more reviews you can get,
good positive reviews obviously that shows that it is a more relevant business and that’s
what Google wants to display.
Add posts to your places
I think the other thing as well, if you show Google that you’re actively managing your
Google local listing or your Google Places listing. If I was Google and I knew that the user
was actively managing it, I’d think, yes, that’s probably someone who I’d want to put up
higher because it’s a more educated business who’s working on it. So you can jump in
there and you can add posts and you can add coupons as well.
We used to talk about why blogs ranked so well. One of the early theories as to why blogs
ranked so well is because there is regular content being added and it’s fresh. Google likes
fresh content. That is the idea. So that being the case, how do we add fresh content to our
Google Places listing, which is what I was talking about before? We add reviews and
comments and those types of things.
Testing getting links
The other thing that we’re testing, and this is just because we’ve got the budget and the
ability to test, is we’re testing now what happens when you start driving links to your
specific Google Places page. Just like you’d build up a mini authority site, how about we try
and build up our local listing as a mini authority by dragging or shooting links back to that
site as well.
Any questions on Google Places? It’s still pretty early days?
Question: Just at the end of the listing, Google associates other websites with your listing.
Do you know what I mean?
David: So you can see more about this place. What it’s going to be looking for is any data
across the web that is referencing that particular business. So it’s not pulling your
competitors in. I know the MHS, Melbourne High Old Boys’ Association, Jonathan, the
dentist, is an old boy. So they’ve picked up and said, oh, there’s a link here. So that’s why
there is that particular listing but it’s supposed to be relative to your business.
Question: You can’t submit links. That is basically their thing.
David: That’s their thing. Like I said, this is still early days and if you jump in and do this for
businesses, it’s a quick way to shoot to the top of the search engines. When you think

about it, it’s right at the top. When you think about usability, where does your eye go when
you land on Google? If you land on Google, as Pete was talking about, usability, he was
talking about your eye goes to the top left hand corner. That’s where your eye is going to
go first. Having that map right at the top is going to get the lion’s share of that traffic.
Question: So Google is amazing really, isn’t it? I haven’t just realized that by the way.
We all spend a lot of time in Google. My first question is, do you think we’ll have
the same conversation in five and 10 years’ time? And I don’t expect you to know
the answer but I’d like your point of view. I’m very active on Twitter. Twitter is almost
replacing Google for me in some aspects. If I need something I’ll ask and I trust that
response in my TweetFeed more than I trust Google’s response. I highly trust Google’s
response. I think it’s just fascinating seeing what Google is doing with Places. That’s
brilliant. What’s your view on where it’s going?
David: I can comment on that quite well because there is a really good book called
Socialnomics. If you haven’t read it, it’s definitely worth reading. I interviewed the author a
little while ago, it’s on my blog davidjenyns.com, Erik Qualman. And it’s free to download.
In that particular interview, he talked about this idea of this whole social space merging
with search and people jumping over to things like Facebook. Now, Facebook’s traffic has
overtaken Google. His thoughts are, in the future, people will rely more on what it is their
friends have to say about a particular product or service that you’re looking for, rather than
searching on Google.
Let’s say I’m about to go on a trip with my girlfriend to Malta in a few weeks. And if I’m
looking for accommodation in Malta, if I type that into Facebook and see a review that Pete
did on TripAdvisor that says, I stayed here in Malta. It was a fantastic place and I really
enjoyed myself. That immediately becomes instantly more important to me because I trust
Pete as opposed to some random Google.
Pete: A big thing that Facebook has just recently done which has opened up the API a little
bit, without getting too technical, they’ve changed the like buttons. Has everyone who
uses Facebook seen the like buttons? That’s going to have a huge impact on the web in
terms of how things are going to interrelate in that I think very shortly, and not in five
years time but in 18 months’ time, I’ll be searching dentist on Facebook to see Facebook
Pages. It’ll show a little list, my friends who have liked dentists. I’ll be using that as my
referral as opposed to trusting Google because it is that exact thing that Dave said.

I think it’s coming very quickly. I know digg.com, which is an online news aggregator, is
doing something very similar. They’re changing their entire site structure very shortly and
it’s in beta at the moment with it. You can log into your Digg account and see what your
friends and your followers are liking on the web as opposed to just everybody. You have
your own mini results page of what are your friends liking and what are your friends
looking at. I think that’s going to be very tied into search too, so I don’t know how Google
is going to deal with that. Their attempt was Google Buzz which they didn’t do very well
with.
But I think if there is some sort of way that Google can actually harness people’s Google
accounts and somehow they track your click throughs or somehow they track a sort of like
thing. I think eventually Facebook and Google are going to get into bed together very
quickly and share that data across because they’re doing it with Twitter to a certain extent.
I think they’re going to share that data.
Question: Just a question for both of you. How have you found how Google ranks are
affected by putting the Facebook like buttons on the pages? No difference?
David: At the moment, Google doesn’t have access to that information, so it’s not really
having any impact. But I think the long-term implications, whether or not they end up
getting together, I can see, as Pete was saying, I think it will play a bigger and bigger role.
Pete: I’m not sure if I’ve interpreted the question properly but I don’t think Google is
actually going to penalize you for putting Facebook like buttons on there. They’re not that
much of archenemies that they’re going to say, because you’re supporting Facebook work,
we’re going to slap you, or spam you, or throw you in a black box.
Question: I entered my like buttons on the first of May when that whole May Day thing
happened with Google and Market Samurai would no longer recognize anything from
Google. So maybe it was just a coincidence. But I put it up. I disappeared off the front page
and panicked and took it off again. I’ve taken them off and didn’t put them back on again.
David: The reason, I’d say, it’s probably just a coincidence. Again, coming back to what is
Google’s objective, Google’s objective is to provide the best user experience. If they ended
up taking out some of the biggest sites that added like, that would harm their results. And
then I’m not going to want to search Google because you’re not serving up the results that
I’m looking for.

Web 2.0, the way I see it
I’ll just talk briefly about Web 2.0 and the way
that I see it. It does depend on the client. When
a client comes to us, you need to think about
who your target market is. If my target market
and my avatar, my ideal client, is a 60-year-old
person because I’m targeting to retirement
villages or something like that, you need to think about understanding who that is. I think
we talked last time, Jason, your target market may be a really good match for using Web
2.0 properties like Twitter and Facebook and so on.
It’s not suitable for every business in my opinion. The good thing is, though, you get to meet
clients where they are. We talked about, as Tim was saying, he’s now over on Twitter and
he’s looking for data over there. So it’s meeting the client where they are. The problem is at
the moment, and it is that age-old debate, how do you analyze the return on investment for
the time spent? It can just be a big black hole where you go there and you find yourself
reading other people’s Twitter streams and navigating around Facebook to see what
friends are doing and that type of thing. It can be quite a time drain.
You need to definitely shift into that space if your target market is over there because the
real thing, and I suppose this comes from a little bit of inspiration from Gary Vaynerchuck
and if you haven’t Googled him, make sure you put that down as a name of someone to
look at. He talks about the idea of just showing the customer and client that you care. So
it’s engaging with them. It’s opening up the levels of communication between you and
them, and it’s building that relationship. So from that point of view, I think it’s definitely
worth doing. He’s got a great book, ‘Crush It!’
The other thing as well with the Web 2.0 material, you need that ongoing maintenance and
management and that type of thing. You can’t just put up a Twitter page and then let it sit
there and hope that you’re going to get 100,000 followers overnight. I talked about using it
more productively. This is all in terms of using it for local business.
The people who attended the previous workshop know I have a different stance when I’m
building my own personal brand. But building a brand for local business, use it for engaging
with clients, keeping them informed about what’s going on and keeping them up with industry
news, pretty much just showing that you’re on the cutting edge.

Twitter
Do you have any other points with the way that
you think local business could use Twitter?
Pete: Look, I think, this is my personal perspective.
I think for local business, Twitter is not a great
thing. I think where it will work really well is where
you can actually do search streams based on the
country the tweets are coming from.
To give that a bit of a context, we were having a chat before in one of the breaks before
about for people like Telstra and Medibank Private and some of these big companies that
are basically Australia-based brands. So they can actually target and search Twitter for
anytime that Telstra is mentioned or the Commonwealth Bank is mentioned. They get in
that conversation and make sure it’s not negative and be responsive and so on. That’s
where I think Twitter works really well.
For small niche businesses like masseuses and so on, you can definitely get on there and
look for terms about back pain and say, oh, here’s a quick idea and tip. But that’s not
actually going to be seen by people in the Australian area. It’s not the best ROI of your time.
I think once you can actually start going to the search results part of Twitter and actually
target a stream for back pain or dentist or whatever it may be, or keywords that only come
from Australian Twitters and then interact with those people, that’s where it will get really
powerful for small business.
I think where it can work well is just to build some market leadership. If you’re trying to
position yourself as a market leader in a particular space and you have 10,000, 20,000
followers on Twitter, and you’re talking about that and you’re starting the conversation
around the world, and you are engaging and being the thought leader in that space, you can
then get a lot of prestige and expert status from that. You’ll be interviewed on other
people’s blogs. You’ll be maybe asked to speak at the national physio workshop and so on.
Then if you put that back on your website, ‘speaking at recently and keynote speaker here’,
it’s going to give you more authority and expert status. So you can charge higher prices
and get increased conversions. As a direct ROI, I don’t think it’s the greatest thing yet.
Definitely for consumer material it is a bit different.

foursquare
David: Another thing definitely worth having a
look at, though, if you’re on local business, is an
app that’s popping up. It’s huge in the States,
it’s going to catch on here. It’s already starting
to catch on, called foursquare. Go ahead,
register your business there. It’s pretty easy.
Head over to foursquare.com. Get yourself an account. Search for your particular business.
If it hasn’t got a listing, create one. Then what you can actually do is, it’s one of these
location-based apps that are appearing on the phones. What people are doing, it’s all the
rage to check in somewhere, that’s what you do on foursquare.
If I’m down at the local pub, I might go ‘at the Corner Hotel’ and anyone who follows me
on Facebook sees I’ve got my foursquare filters straight into my Facebook. So you’ll see
sometimes it will pop-up, it’ll say, hey, Dave’s down at the Corner Hotel having a beer with
Tim or whatever the case may be. That’s how people are using it.
How do you use it as a local business? You can start to do things where you encourage
people to check in at your local business. The person who checks in the most ends up
getting mayor status, and you become mayor of a particular area. You might be mayor of
Bell City. You might be mayor of the dentist in South Yarra. You might be mayor of
whatever and once you claim your listing. You can give mayors special discounts. This works
extremely well if you’re in things like nightclubs or Starbucks.
Pete: It did really well in the US. You can basically go and check into a different Starbucks
location and the mayor of Starbucks gets half price Starbucks while they’re mayor. You log
in and show them your iPhone that you’re currently mayor of this particular location, and
you get half price Starbucks. It’s very competitive because people go back to the Starbucks
and check in again. And it’s all based on where you are. So I can’t be sitting here and say
I’m checking into Starbucks in San Diego. You have to actually be there in the right geo-
location and it’s all part of that.

It comes back to what we were saying before. The question is how this new search is going
to change. I don’t use foursquare. I find it a bit of a distraction personally. But for a lot of
people, if I’m in a new town in Sydney for example and I’ve got a lot of friends who are on
foursquare, I’d go on to foursquare and check where all my friends have been going to eat
in Sydney. You can go restaurants in Sydney, where have my friends been going and it will
show me the restaurants my friends go to and check into regularly. Scott’s the mayor of
this particular restaurant. He must go there once every three weeks or once every two
weeks. I’ll go there to eat. It’s that sort of search that is going to change the world.
Facebook Page
David: The final thing that I think we’re
going to talk about just in this bit is
Facebook. Pete’s probably had a little bit
more experience with the Facebook
Pages, so I don’t know if you just want to
give some insight.
Pete: I’ll talk about Facebook in a bit of a dual context, Facebook Pages and also a little bit
from a Facebook pay per click perspective. I won’t jump in and show you anything, we’ll
just talk about what’s possible. In the same way that Google AdWords runs adverts on
Google results pages, you’ve probably all seen the adverts in Facebook, those of you who
have Facebook accounts. You can actually do pay per click advertising inside Facebook.
You can do it in a very smart way.
Not only is it keyword-based like AdWords. So you say, I want to target my ad to people
who like Johnny Depp or who like this and like that based on keywords. You can also refine
that by very targeted demographics. So you can say, I want my ad to show for people who
are between 25 and 30 based in Melbourne who like the Essendon Football Club.
You can target ads specifically for those people. So it’s very effective from an advertising
perspective to actually go for keywords and demographics. You can get really refined in
the actual message market match. Not only can you get rid of a lot of wastage but when
you’re actually showing the ad, you can target it very tightly which is obviously going to
increase your click through rates and so on.

It’s all from a pay per click perspective as well. We’ve done a fair bit of testing on that sort
of thing in some strange niches that we operate in and it’s had success amazingly in some
spaces, then it’s just bombed in others. I think it just comes down to the fit of what
Facebook is.
Unlike AdWords, where people are going there to search for something, so people
obviously do look at the adverts on the page if they actually want to find information,
Facebook is that interruptive style of pay per click advertising in that no one goes to
Facebook for the ads. They go to Facebook for their friends and to see what their friends
are liking. and what colored socks they wore today, and what the dog is and random
things that happen on Facebook. So that works really well.
Where Facebook is going from a marketing perspective I think in a great way is the like
buttons and so on that we spoke about before. What you can do is tie them in together.
You can put like buttons on your website. So someone has a Facebook account and is
logged in and has a cookie on their computer and they come to your website. I like this
particular bakery or website, or whatever it might be, and that will actually show up on
their Facebook stream. So their friends will actually see that you liked something else. It’s a
great way to manufacture some viral marketing, which is really cool.
Facebook PPC
David: How did you go with the pay per clicks? I
know you did it for the MCG work.
Pete: Basically what we did with the MCG work we
recently launched that whole website I showed you
before, we did some pay per click work through
Facebook for that. Own a Piece of the MCG, pre-
register your interest.
We did a lot of different things. We tested around the football material: Essendon fans?
Want to Own a Piece of the MCG? Click through. That was very successful because
obviously I targeted the ad towards people who liked Essendon. At the time I only targeted
for Melbourne people, so obviously postage was included as part of my deal. I wanted to
be cheap and not pay for postage interstate. So I only targeted Victoria based people for
that particular launch on Facebook. It went really well.

There is also the ability to do Facebook Pages too which we played around with through
this launch as well which gives you the ability to actually put a page up, a website
fundamentally or a profile page for a business on Facebook. People can comment on that.
It’s like a blog/Facebook Page so people can feel safe inside Facebook, and interact with
your business, and like your business and so on. So it’s worth considering. I think where it
works well is in the business to consumer-type spaces.
In the business-to-business work, where I play predominantly with the telco work, it
doesn’t really fit because Susie the receptionist is not going to go and like a company that
she bought a telephone system for her office for. So it’s not really great for us but a lot of
the business-to-consumer material. Like if you’re in wedding celebrant work, people would
like that sort of thing and there could be fit there for sure.
David: Yes, and I thought I’d show you, just recently
Ryan just here handles all of the work that we do over
at Flippa which is a website marketplace where you
can buy and sell websites. That’s a space that we’re
probably looking to shift into, I suppose trying to
become the Warren Buffett of the online world and buy websites and build them up and
then sell them. I’ll just show you, we purchased this domain. We got it for $2,100. It was
buying businesses online. That’s definitely a business model in itself. This is the website
that we bought.
This is an example of a Facebook Page. They’ve got a page set up and there is the little like
button that Pete was talking about. You can set up one like this for your business and you
can give offers and that type of thing. It all comes down to having a really clear picture of
who your avatar, your ideal client is and then making sure, are they in this space, is it even
worth creating, and then to determine whether or not it’s something that you’ll introduce.
You can jump in and when you’re the owner of this page. You get the ability to make a
whole lot of changes to it. I saw someone post this on Twitter. I can’t remember who it was
off the top of my head. I thought, yes, it kind of is the greatest swindle of all time, where
you’ll see a lot of people now using Facebook PPC. You can pay for those ads and then
driving the traffic to their Facebook Page. I thought, that’s genius. That’s like Facebook
basically saying, pay us money to drive traffic to our pages on our particular domain name.

Pete: One of the good things about having a Facebook Page is that if people go to your
Facebook Page and hit the like button, what can actually happen is when you post
something on your Facebook Page, it gets pushed straight through to their News Feed. So
basically you’re on Facebook looking between Sarah next door has just got dumped by her
boyfriend and Scott’s done something else in your Facebook stream. And suddenly, you’re
talking about your business in the middle of that stream and you can do that very
effectively, obviously for free, to people who like your Facebook Page. It’s good in that
regard. So I think that’s why people are doing pay per click to their Facebook Page. It’s to
do a list inside Facebook where it feels safe.
David: I’m not suggesting it’s a bad thing, more so Facebook, good on them. The types of
things that I’d look at putting in to Facebook Pages are things like testimonials. Video
consumption on Facebook. I read some stats a little while ago, the consumption of video
for people, you know from when you start, sometimes I might watch 20 seconds of a video
and then go away and I won’t finish it. When people watch video on Facebook the stats are
showing that they’re watching the videos for longer and they’re engaging with these videos
more.
So I would look at interacting and using, like Pete was saying, once they’ve liked you, if you
can get your target market to like you, then you’ll appear in their news stream for those of
you who are Facebook users. And then when you’re posting a testimonial or you’re posting,
Here’s Seven Tips on How to Reduce Your Lower Back Pain, that’ll appear in the people
who have liked you. But it’s not for every business.
Question: I was just going to talk about my own experience. I’ve had a Facebook up for just
over a month now, started doing pay-per-click advertising. I now have just over 800 like
fans on my Facebook. It’s now become the third biggest traffic driver to my site after the
pay-per-click ads.
David: What niche?
Question: Mixed media art, creating craftwork and arts. So what it’s doing, I’m getting
nearly 50 percent click through rate of those who click on the ad to those who hit the like
button. How many of that is converting to my mailing list, I’m not sure. But I’ve definitely
seen about a 30 percent increase in traffic to the site. It’s made a big difference.
David: When people get results, that’s good.

Question: I was just thinking about why they might watch the full video. Because on
Facebook, you’ve got these other things going on, like you might be chatting to four
people at once and the video might be playing in the background. Also you can’t really
measure Facebook at all, can you? If you do have a Facebook Page, it might sit there in
front of them. They might not bounce off it like a normal website quite as quickly because
they’ve got the chat going on and all that, and they might just sit in the background.
Pete: I think it comes down to mostly what I’ve read in the stats and so on, that people feel
more safe on Facebook, because of the enclosed environment. They don’t feel they’re
going to be hit with spam and pop-ups and other sorts of things, and they feel a lot safer
on that sort of website and that sort of community.
So they’re happy to interact a lot more on there and trust it a lot more than they do with
regular websites because they are sick of pop-ups and spam, and they trust Facebook.
That’s what a lot of it comes down to which is good, to ride those coat tails of trust. It’s
definitely worth doing.
David: Excellent. Right. We might wrap up that session and move into the next.

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