Website Marketing - Surefire Design

The Google Local Business Centre is now Google Places.

* If you don’t have a free Google account, sign up for one first! Or log in to your business Google Account, Gmail Account or Google+ Account.
* Browse to the Google Places sign up page http://www.google.com/local/add/analyticsSplashPage
* Click on ‘Add new business’
* Select New Zealand and put in your phone number. This way you can see if there is existing information on your business.
* If you have existing information, click on edit, otherwise click on Add a new listing.
* Add all your business information. Profile, hours, payment method, hours of opening, correct map location, upload images.
* On submit you will be given the choice of how you want to validate your listing.

Post real time updates and check out your dashboard for performance.

Mention Google and most people think of the Search Engine.
Some people may also think of Gmail, and others might even think of the Google operating system Android that is appearing on smart phones, tablets and other devices.

Dig a little deeper and you realise they do quite a lot more than that.
Google has a suite of online applications specifically designed to help businesses. You can take a look at them all here http://www.google.co.nz/services/

Here are three that caught my eye.

Google Places - Formally called Local Business Centre and recently revamped and updated. Not only mark your business on the map for Google Map searches, but provide business information, post offers and live updates and check out your performance dashboard.

Google Site Search - Put a Google search box on your website and enable visitors to search just your site. Powered off Google search results.

Google Friend Connect - Interestingly this looks like a social network literally on your website. I’m struggling to think exactly what kind of business website this is appropriate for! But there may be something interesting in the Social Gadgets they mention.

To get access to these applications, you need to sign up for a free Google Account here http://www.google.co.nz/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=27439

If you have a Gmail or Google+ account, you already have access!

Putting a YouTube video into a page on your website using the Surefire Design content management system isn’t particularly difficult, but you need to take a little care…

Sign up for a free YouTube account at http://www.youtube.com/create_account, and follow their instructions to upload your clip.

Then browse to your clip in YouTube. You will see (for all clips on YouTube) there is a button for Share, and then Embed.
Click on this and it will show the code that we want to copy and paste into the editor.
Select the code in the Embed box and copy.

1. Open your website page in the WebStart editor.
2. In the spot where you want to put the video, type something you will recognise when we start looking through the code… personally I type *******.
3. Then click on the ‘Source’ button on the toolbar. This will show you the actual html code for the page.
4. VERY CAREFULLY look through the html code for the ******* you typed. Delete the ******* and making sure the cursor is in the right place, right click and select paste. This will drop in the code you copied from YouTube.
5. Press the ‘Source’ button again to get back to the usual view. You should see the video embedded in the content now! If it isn’t… do NOT save the page. Go out and start again.

These days options abound for creating videos, ranging from affordable professional clips to home made from your phone or digital camera.

Uploading to YouTube and embedding these clips onto your website are almost straight forward.
So the question is ‘does video fit in your business?’.

If you are looking for inspiration, here are some ideas for how video might be used on your website.
* Testimonials. Real clients saying real things about your service or product provide an air of credibility.
* Promotions. Tell your clients about what’s new in your products or services.
* Existing content, such as TV adverts, interviews and news items. Make the most of this valuable marketing material and put it on your site.
* Products. One of our clients shows his beautiful hand made swamp kauri guitars shimmering in the light. http://www.christiandruery.com/kauri-guitar-video.php
* Introduction. Introducing your company to new clients.
* Education. Short how-to clips on how to use products are very popular.
* SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Yes you read that right. Your videos can even contribute to your SEO campaign through their keywords and descriptions you add when uploading them to YouTube.