Be Prepared & Claim Your Business Listing!

June 6, 2016 | Shannan Dushane

In a perfect digital world of electronic data and internet that is accessible anytime anywhere, where everyone is honest and there is no identify issues of profiles and online businesses you wouldn’t have to worry. But in our reality there are hundreds of thousands of individuals that impersonate people and business’ just because they can, those fraudulent actions will continue to conquer business pages every day until you do something. If your company is not responsive and claim their online listings and profiles, it could happen to them. Plus, directory sites help your rankings on the search engines and who doesn’t love that.

The first step in this process is to develop your strategy by assigning a team or individual the daunting task. Depending on how large your company is, will determine the amount of individual’s it will take to do the task correctly.  This is not a dream job, but is one of the most important and necessary one for a company not to overlook. This is a multiple step process so create your team accordingly.  This will set your starting line, make sure this person is a motivated individual and can be a blood hound on the internet, be intuitive to know where and how to look, and someone who won’t give up easily.  They will need organization skills as well as great follow-up skills in the case of reclaiming a listing someone took already.

Secondly, you will want to develop a timeline of goals and what you want to accomplish, and update this regularly with sites you’ve found, claimed, unclaimed, new accounts created and whatever else you find out on the world wide web.

Next, your team will start by completing a search of the businesses name, always include misspellings, different variations of the business name such as Inc, LLC, shortened name, abbreviations, subsidiary’s, DBA’s, and look for location differences as well. Just remember to never end your search with one search engine, you will want to look at all options such as the big dogs of search engines Bing, MSN, Google, Yahoo, and Ask, to obtain the most comprehensive list of possible online profiles you can find and claim.

So now what, your company has found and claimed and/or created all of these online presences, what do you do with them now? The most important thing your business can do is monthly management; keep all of your online accounts up-to-date with correct business information, hours, address, phone for your customers. If your hours change or you move, don’t forget about your online presence this needs to keep up with you. You don’t need upset customers showing up to your old place of business or come when you are closed – you will probably lose their business.

If you do find your business profile online but it has already been claimed, you will need to contact the customer service for that platform (Facebook, google+, etc.) to start the claiming process for that listing. Sometimes it is as simple as having proof of tax id and sending it to them on company letterhead from the president of the company or with your LLC or INC paperwork. It solely depends on the platform the online presence is on.

You might be on the other side of the fence and cannot find any online listings for you to claim, that’s great, but you still are not out of the woods. Without proper online presence your chance of being found is limited. You will want to strategize on what accounts to create according to your business locations, geography and demographics of your audience.

The last thought today is make sure to keep track of all business usernames, custom url’s, passwords, emails associated with the account, when account was created and who is managing the account. I’ve been using KeePass Password Safe database (keepass.info) for 10 years and it’s free so bonus for your business. You can install on desktop or a flash drive for convenience.

Happy Marketing!

Shannan DuShane is an independent blogger, marketing specialist and graphic designer in the Grand Rapids area. She is a social media specialist, marketing enthusiast, and network fanatic. Feel free to connect with Shannan on Twitter,Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+ FourSquare  Instagram

How Many Connections Should I Have on Social Media?

May 12, 2016 | Shannan K. DuShane

We all know that our goals on social media are based on having large networks of connections, but it does takes a lot of time to keep up with your connections and make your business relationship go a step further if you are looking for the revenue side of the connection.  A common question that I get on a weekly basis is “how many connections should I make per week on my social media channels?” the answer is quite simple; it is however many you can manage to connect with on a professional business level. The worst thing you can do is leave potential connections hanging. 

If you feel comfortable with 50+ new connections per week that’s great, but you need to have the time to post to their feed, or retweet a past post that possibly went viral or just send a direct message to them letting them know you are not a bot and you are here to connect and make business relationships.  A direct message could be as simple as, “Hello, I look forward to connecting with you, my twitter handle is @Spectrum_net if you have any questions please feel free to connect with me.” Just lay it out there and put it in their hands for the first round, no pressure, just causal conversation, they are more likely to acknowledge your presence and hashtag you back a thank you for following. From there it is up to you to keep the business relationship up and regularly bond with your connections in order to make the most of your time and possible revenue you are seeking.

Shannan DuShane is an independent blogger, marketing specialist and graphic designer in the Grand Rapids area. She is a social media specialist, marketing enthusiast, and network fanatic. Feel free to connect with Shannan on Twitter,Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+ FourSquare  Instagram

Be Healthy….Be Social

June 2, 2016 updated from August 16, 2012 post | Shannan DuShane

Every day you get up, have your caffeine or in my case a red bull and while you’re getting ready for work, the morning routine involves checking your mobile phone for updates in-between the hustle of the morning. You are on your email, social sites, and anything else you have in your phone while you were sleeping. You drive to work and get to the office and the first act of the day is to login to your Facebook, or Twitter account while eating donuts supplied by the office and coffee that is way too cold.  That’s awesome you are utilizing social media platforms, but what if you could use the internet for good and be healthy in your ways too.  Unless you are a hobbit and never leave your house, most people do not realize that social media is healthy and can be just as healthy as jogging every day in your local park.  We humans thrive on human contact, sometimes we don’t want it but we most definitely need it and can’t live without it.

Many people don’t know that being social is one of the healthiest acts that you can do for yourself.  I’m not talking about spending 6-8 hours on a computer, and that is all you do is pretend to be someone you are not, creating a profile on every different social media platform, and posting pictures of your family reunions.  What you want to utilize is the search, network, group and company features that get information out there to the public and get noticed via social media platforms.  Being social can be seen two ways and needs to be utilized the same two ways, take advantage of the events, forums, groups and networking to find places you want to visit and events you want to attend, do not just sit at the computer and “like” pages and groups and think it is the same thing.

Back in the early 2000’s when social media came bursting out to the public eye, it was instantly a success to the consumer, Facebook was introduced in 2004, Twitter in 2006 and the earliest LinkedIn in 2002, as well as Photobucket, and Flickr in the early 2000’s and the late comer Instagram in 2010, the internet was never the same.  With what the internet can offer us today we began to throw away those old heavy phone books and paper directories.  You cannot write real time experiences in a paper backed book and have any interaction with your focused target group of consumers, there was no way to measure visits, your ranking or anything like we have in the abilities we have today in order to keep a target market on our radars.  The fact that there are now to many to count social platforms of all types on the internet from blogs, micro-blogging, social networks from Match.com to Facebook.com, internet forums, wiki’s and podcasting, I could go on forever; there is no reason you can’t find a group or event that could get you out of the house.  

So here are just some tips for having a healthy social media addition (yes it’s an addiction and the first step is to admit it)

1.       If you are going to sit at a computer for a length of time eat health and drink a lot of water! Pick up a bag of carrots instead of chips and a cheese stick instead of Milky Way.

2.       For each social media platform, you are on you have a unique following, take time and get to know each one and what they do.  If you don’t have a ton of time, give yourself the time to just direct message them and let them know you are there to network and connect. The initial meeting cold have amazing opportunity with networking you never knew about.

3.       When you are at your desk, sit up straight, don’t crunch over you will be asking for chest and back problems.  Get a back wedge if you need help getting straight.  Lean back with shoulders up the computers screen should be a minimum of an arm’s length away.

4.       Shoulder rolls, when you are crunching over your desk, sometimes your shoulders crunch with them, if you regularly do shoulder rolls/stretches this will help keep the tension down and keep you loosened up and relaxed.

5.       Your monitor or monitors these days, if you are looking down for any length of time this can lead to neck and eye issues, the top of your monitor should be eye height to avoid health issues.  You can buy a wall mount or monitor risers to help aid this process. I found a double riser for two monitors that are adjustable for $45 on Amazon.

6.       Blink. This sounds strange but it is proven that people that use computers blink less so their eyes get dry and leads to eye problem in the future. 

7.       Make sure you are in a position where your wrists are relaxed and not strained, invest in a good wrist gel pad, this will help avoid carpal tunnel in the future. I bought mine at Best Buy for $20. You should keep your mouse close to you and hold it lightly you don’t need a death grip on it to work and this will lessen the chance of getting carpal tunnel.

8.       Sit on an exercise ball (my favorite) This is a great way to keep posture, movement, control and blood flow, and you can get them anywhere for around $30

9.       For every hour you are online try and stand up and stretch or just move around everyone needs a sanity break when you are on the computer for 8-12 hours, or on your lunch take a power walk to get your body going.  A body at rest stays at rest while a body in motion stays in motion.

10.   Lastly, if you love to listen to music as much as me, good news, it is proven to keep your body moving, your brain charged up and awake and mental status more alert. So pick your favorite playlist and get to working.

Shannan DuShane is an independent blogger, marketing specialist and graphic designer in the Grand Rapids area. She is a social media specialist, marketing enthusiast, and network fanatic. Feel free to connect with Shannan on Twitter,Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+ FourSquare  Instagram