Welcome to the Local Advertising Journal! Local advertising is something that should never be pondered but proactively pursued in every way possible. Many small local and medium sized local businesses are really starting to pursue the local advertising space that online has to offer. This blog was designed for those businesses that were not too sure where to actually start their local advertising and wanted to learn as much as they could by themselves before they decided to outsource all their local advertising efforts.

Below are some of the categories that could help you with your business:

Advertising Books – At some point in time you might want to read some books on the ins and outs of local advertising and how it can help your business. We have outlined some of the best for you.

City Search – City Search is a great tool for a local business looking to get a bit more exposure. This section describes how you can use it accurately to build your business.

Google Local – Google local is a very powerful marketing tool when used correctly holds many online marketing advantages.

Local Live Search – Local live search is a great way to keep an eye out on what your competition is doing online.

Local Mobile Marketing – Mobile marketing is a way to get across to your audience that is always on the go. This form of marketing will become even more important as more cell phone providers build smart phones.

Local Online Advertising – Local online advertising comes in many different shapes and colors so it will be important to study up and learn just how each of them could impact your business.

Local Pay Per Click – Local pay per click advertising could be a very important aspect of your business. Often times just a little knowledge is needed to get this effort working just right for your business.

Local Search Engine Optimization – Local SEO will as important as your left arm. We cover some of the basics on how you can do it yourself and start getting some traffic coming to your website.

Local Social Networking – Local social networking will play a vital role in many local businesses. Never has it been easier to tap someone on the shoulder to let them know your business is around.

Superpages.com – Super pages should be included in all local online marketing campaigns. The exposure alone could get your phone ringing.

Yahoo Local - Yahoo local is an important role for any campaign. Not only for the exposure but also for the links contained within the Yahoo! Local profiles.

YellowPages – Yellow Pages are one of those things that should be relevant in every local marketing campaign. This section outlines some of the different approaches that can be taken using this effort.

Are you a local business that is looking for a way to be found online? or possibly you have a lot to say about your industry? If you haven’t launched a company blog yet you should really do so. A blog can give your business or company a local voice to be heard. There is no set way that you must use a blog it can be entirely customized to your style of business.

many businesses use blogs in a variety of different ways. If you target local business you can write about anything and everything local to drive traffic and gain visibilty. if you are a local business put yourself in the shoes of your audience. Lets say you are a boutique selling womens shoes and you have a blog on your stores website. try to think about what it is that those women would like to read about. Don’t get scared to even write about competitors. If you are confident about your business you won’t have a problem. Let’s say you write about an event going on at a nearby competitors store. You have a good chance of pulling away a customer that typically shops at your competitor. Maybe they haven’t heard about your shop before and while they where searching for your competitor they found your business and plan on visiting it. Not syaing you should be promoting your competition non-stop but a little here and there can pull in some of that business and it also sends an important message, a message that says you are confident about your business that you are not scared to mention your competitor.

Too many small business owners feel that their business might not be big enough to really need a strong promotional video teaching the community about their business or brand. This couldn’t be further from the truth. A promotional video to help market your business does not have to be very expensive. You do not have to hire a film crew and expensive actors. A short video promoting your business can be done very quickly with websites like Animoto that allow you to create your own slide show type of of promo video that can be done very quickly and easily to help with your local advertising.

All you really need is a short 45 second slide show video to help express the important points surrounding your business. You don’t have to be s highly skilled videographer to complete this project either.  Once your video is cimpleted to it accurately displays your businesses message you can then use any of the top video sharing websites to help promote your business. If you have a website for your business the first thing you need to do is put your video on your site for everyone to see. Once you have your video some quick searches to find out the best online video sharing websites. Launching your video online in as many places as possible will be important to get internet traffic to find you. Posting your video live on websites like YouTube and Vimeo are just a given but to really get people to find out about your business you will want to launch your video on sites like Viddler and Dailymotion. There are lots of great video sharing websites that if posted with well thought out video titles. Your video titles should always have elements of targeted keywords in order top get those videos ranking when people search. Your goal is not just to make the video but to also promote it.

If you own a local business with absolutely no need to venture into nation wide traffic than why would you target national keywords? If you have a local business which requires local foot traffic for business you should be targeting localized keywords on your website for local advertising efforts. Often times you can only get your hands on so many localized keywords.

You are better off starting to incorporate as many local terms as possible into your website. Using surround towns, zip codes and cities is a way you will get anybody search for anything to your websites. If you do not have enough keywords being used in your local area for what you offer you will just have to get close enough. You never know when people might start using variations on your geographic area. If you conduct keyword research and find that only a few keywords exists it is OK to start implementing variations of where your business is located. If you have ruled out the idea of competing on a national level and localized keywords are a bit scarce try utilizing variations of all boroughs and counties and surrounding towns with what you offer. It is better than just leaving things blank because than you can guarantee no visitors to your website. SEO should not be the end all be all. If you own a local business you should not put all your eggs in one basket by hoping to grow your business and drive foot traffic to your location strictly through search engine optimization efforts. It is important to utilize everything you can online. Search engine marketing comes in many different flavors such as social media marketing and press release marketing to just name a few. Utilizing blogs by posting comments with links left behind to your business is one great way to get some newly found traffic to your website.

Are you a local business that is starting to loose steam with your local advertising efforts? If you haven’t noticed everything that we once knew about business is changing. The landscape of conducting business is shifting. In which direction nobody really knows but it is changing and for those of you who are still hesitant to jumping into the social landscape with websites like Facebook you might find yourself with even more hardships than ever before.

Facebook should not scare you as a business. There are many different ways to approach this website. It is important to know that it doesn’t matter whether you are a mid size company or small local business local advertising and marketing using Facebook is very important. if you have this idea that Facebook is just a fad it doesn’t matter. Even if that fad last a little while, it is a little while you can become visible. You do not have to become an expert in Facebook in the first week you use it. It is ok to take it slow. It is not OK to ignore it entirely. Launching a Facebook fan page allows your audience a place to meet other customers, clients and friends who either use your product or service. Once you start building up fans on your Facebook fan page you can then send out notes that everyone sees as your business. One terrific way to bring in new traffic to your business and your website. Leaving messages on your Facebook fan page is one great way to stay on your audiences radar. Building awareness and traffic to your website requires creating multiple streams of traffic effort. Neglecting Facebook will not lead to anything but missed out potential new business. Don’t stress about if it scares. One thing at a time. Start by just setting up a personal profile catered towards your business. Include an album for pictures of your business, store logos what ever you use to promote and conduct your business. Then set up Facebook fan page for your business and do the same. It is one of many areas you should be creating pathways to your website in order to grow your business online.

How do you promote your business online? Do you even have a website? If not, why? If you are like many smaller local businesses you might have seen the doors to your business just not opening as much as they used. How much competition do you have? Have you taken the time to see what they are doing online so that you can keep up with them?

It is important to analyze your competition’s efforts online. if you have not taken your business online yet you need to stop waiting and get to it. We understand that the reality of venturing into the unknown can be very daunting.  For a business to really survive and flourish they must adapt with times and embrace change. Take a step back and learn as much as you can about what types of online marketing exist. It can be something simple like search for your competitors company names to see what websites their information is sitting in. Do you live in an area where their are any colleges? reach out to your local colleges and see if you can get an intern or a college student part time to help you get your business off the ground in the online space. Local internet marketing will be a must as time moves forward. Newspapers and phone books are increasingly growing less in traction and use. Start by analyzing what your competition is doing if you are truly confused on where to begin. It will at the bare minimum give you a benchmark or starting point. As you attempt to launch some of the various profiles and efforts you find your competition doing you will gain an understanding on what kind of approach you should be taking for your online marketing approach. Once you really get going you will have a much better understanding of things work. If you absolutely need to learn it yourself just take things slow. Learn one thing at a time. You most likely have heard the names of some of the more popular online sites like Twitter and Facebook. Create an account at one website and take your time and learn how to use it. Once you have done that you can then move onto the next.

For all of you local business owners who not yet decided to venture into the online space you are only hurting yourself and your business. For many years maybe you where right, the internet wasn’t a place for you to get business. Things are different now. More and more smaller local businesses are taking a firm stance with local advertising, local online marketing, including your competition. How would you like to loose business to your competition  down the street? Most likely you already are. More and more people are turning towards the internet to find what they need. Everything from finding a cleaner to drop their clothing off to plumbers and pizza. If you are not visible in the search engines you could be taking the initial steps to shutting the doors to your business for good.

Here are some important factors to remember when tackling local advertising and local online marketing:

1. Search Engines Heavily Trafficked: Phonebooks are on their way out and local listings online for your business are in. More and more people are turning towards Google maps, Yahoo local and MSN foer all their local searching needs. Many new phones come equipped with some of these prgrams as default settings so how do you expect for people looking for items locally to finding.

2. Build Business with High Rankings: It takes a bit more than just launching a website these days. You will want to work yourwebsite so you can achieve high rankings in the search engines for what you offer. If you offer Pizza’s in NYC your goal is to be visible in search engines for when people use “pizza’s in NYC” to find what they need.

3. If you Need Help Hire Someone: if you are not to sure how to find your way around the internet it is important to hire someone that understands what they are doing. It might seem easy at first to  accomplish everything on your own but if you are in a competitive space online it will truly require an advanced approach coupled with an aggresive link building campaign in order to become visible.

If you are like many small business owners right now you would like to see your door swinging open a bit more than usual. The economic crunch has cause many shoppers to hold on to their money a bit more tightly than usual. What many small local business owners don’t realize is that there is a great deal of local advertising that can be done online for free they just require some time and effort to get them done. Here are some quick and easy ways you can start to gain exposure online without spending any money, assuming you have a website.

1. Blog Commenting: Get online and research all the various blogs that your audience might be on reading. Chances are there are some blogs that focus on a local audience right near your business. By reading these blogs and leaving educated comments with a link on various blog posts you can become visible online to your audience almost immediately.

2. Local Profiles: Google, Yahoo and MSN all have local search engines dedicated towards helping small businesses like yourself gaining exposure online. These local search engines have slowly taken the steam out of phone books and will eventually halt all phone book printing as more and more people use the internet to search online.

3. Social Networking: Firing up a Facebook page and a Myspace page will be crucial. All social networking websites allow you to break things down to a local level by reaching out to people by geographical location. For all those local business owners that feel that the social networking websites are a waste of time need to strongly reconsider those thoughts.

4. Email Marketing: Although some email providers offer a free account for the first 100 emails provided after that email marketing is still relatively low in cost assuming you don’t have 50,000 emails to upload. Many local business will not have to worry about that many just yet. A quick and very effective way to get in front of your customers and create some repeat business. Just don’t spam people and don’t go buying huge on targeted lists. Build your list by asking your customers and offering a submission form on your website.

5. Online Publicity: Write a press release announcing your business or website and choose one of the many different free PR distribution services available. Also get on the websites of all your local newspapers and submit your press release. It is not guaranteed they will take it but they might just publish it if they need to fill a story somewhere last minute. It doesn’t hurt to try it.

If you have started performing search engine optimization efforts for your online business but want to add something to the mix for you local advertising efforts to gain some traction try researching some local blogs that your audience might be on. For example if you own a restaurant in Boston try finding all the various blogs and foodie related discussion boards and message boards and become active on these sites.

This will give you exposure for your business or restaurant fairly quickly. By isolating all the relevant blogs you can put together a solid blog commenting campaign for your business. One thing that you have to remember is to always leave well written and educated comments on these blogs so you are not flagged as a spammer. Blogs are amazing tools for business and communication and your local business could generate great traffic to your website if you use them correctly. Sticking to the example of the restaurant if you target foodie type blogs at first this will give you great experience on how to target other blogs. You have to put yourself in the mindset of your audience. Ask yourself, what type of blogs would they visit? If your business is near a high traffic tourist area than travel blogs might also be a good place to comment and leave your link behind. Someone visiting the area could plan around a time when they might want to eat at your restaurant. The more you can think how your audience thinks the more likely you can find a way to be visible in front of them. Even if you have not had experience marketing your business online and have only done offline same principals still apply.

Have you been sitting around wondering if you should start a company profile on Twitter yet? You can clearly see that a great deal of your targeted audience is on there communicating with each other. So what are you waiting for? Twitter is not some big scary giant you have to just dive in and try it as part of your local advertising and local marketing strategy.

Many companies large and small are still testing the waters with Twitter. Some still have no clue how to utilize it to grow their business and some have spent countless hours refining their approach to find one that works. Twitter is something you must simply dive into and just start using until you find the approach that works best for your business. Local advertising comes in many different shapes and sizes and there no rules books to how you should spread the good word about your store, brand or whatever it might be that you are selling. The fact is that Twitter is very large and powerful marketing tool. If you don’t find a way or the time to apply it to your business model now chances are your competition will.

Twitter is not just for the large companies. Targeting a smaller local community with Twitter is very easily done. Getting on the site and trying various approaches will initially be the name of the game in order to find a way to use it. it will be important to try out different approaches to see how they will fit into your overall business strategy and local advertising and marketing campaigns.

If you are a local business that makes a living of selling products or providing a service than you know that budgets are tight and most businesses are being very careful they way they spend any marketing dollars right now. Most businesses are avoiding anything that has a long term goal on it but it is important to not avoid it entirely. There are many ways you can market your business or yourself online that only cost you time. If you have a business that has seen the door swinging open much less than usually than a few hours per week to brand your self online really should be a problem. Now is not the time to roll over and take a hit, it is survival of the fittest and only the best will be left standing when the dust settles. Here are a few ways to keep your branding moving forward.

1. LinkedIn: If you are an accountant, web designer or any type of service related business LinkedIn is a website dedicated towards business minded professionals can meet and network right from the comfort of your computer. LinkedIn is filled with opportunities to be able to engage in conversations and discussions with other industry professionals that might be looking for what you offer.

2. Blog Commenting: Do some research online and find other industry related blogs that are regionally targeted to your specific area and start leaving some educated comments on blog posts to get web traffic over to your site.

3. Set up a MySpace and  Facebook Page: Yes I know that people talk about all the hype about these sites and many people are clueless how to use them but it is important you venture into this area real soon, like yesterday. These social networking powerhouses allow you to search regionally and by demographics so you can really isolate the type of customer you are looking and then try connecting with them.

4. Twitter: Now for someone who still is not sure how to set up a MySpace page Twitter might be a little difficult to understand but just realize that you need to be there. Just look at it as the fast moving forum discussion you will ever see. You can see thousands of little conversations and really chime in at any moment. Over time this will brand your business or your name depending on which direction you are taking on Twitter.

5. Your Website: Before you look at all this other stuff take a look at your website first. Do you have one? If not climb out from under the rock you have been sleeping under and build yourself a decent website. Get someone that knows what they are doing not one of your buddies who took a class five years ago. If you do have a site ask yourself when was the last time it was updated? If the last time it was updated was during the dot com boom you are probably due for a revamping of your website. People judge a book by it’s cover every you go. Personal branding is important so make sure your website is new, fresh and inviting.

If you own or operate a local business and are trying to come up with some new local advertising techniques or tips dig through any old commercials or videos you have created for you business that might be lying around dormant. If you do not have any promo videos for your store or business that are ways you can get these made online for a relatively low cost.

An account on YouTube can help drive some much needed foot traffic to your business. Online video has become an explosive marketing tool for any growing or established business in today’s unstable marketplace. By launching a store promo you can use keywords associated around your local business along with addresses and zip codes to allow your video to appear in search results. For example if you a florist in Boston you could create a video and use Boston florist related keywords when filling in your descriptions and titles for your video with the possibility of your video appearing high up in relevant search results. People enjoy watching videos and this could generate some search engine business for your.

There are other ways of promotion and link building efforts that can also be done to your online video to allow it to grow and climb which we can save for another time but for now just getting a video online for your business will be a great first start.

If you are a small town business local advertising on and offline will still be very important. More and more people are taking those clunky phone books and putting them in the trash. Does your local business have the potential to sell online as well?

If you have a business that could very well sell your products online why are you missing out on that opportunity? having local foot traffic is great but you could also move your product through a website online. Aside from just being visible online to your local community a website selling your products online could help you grow your business tremendously. With the emergence of portable internet devices like iPhones and PDA’s more people are searching online when they want to find something they want to purchase. What happens if what you sell starts to become competitive and all of a sudden you have multiple businesses offering the same products? At the very minimum your small town business should have a website in order to have a web presence of some kind. Are you a business that tries to collect email addresses from your customers? If you do then you should be executing an email marketing campaign and staying in touch with your audience. You could be emailing them new products and driving business also to the website and encourage some online purchasing as well.

Even if you are a small business in a small town you should have a web presence. You never know when you might want to start selling your products online and building your online community and following.

Businesses of all sizes need to be able to monitor their reputation online at real time. Whether you are a smaller local business or a large corporation your online reputation can quickly put a dent in incoming sales. With so many whistle blowing websites out there today making it very easy for angry clients, disgruntled employees and even competitors to be able to take a stab at your incoming revenue stream. These sites are very easily found and there are more of them growing everyday. StepRep allows for easy monitoring on all skill levels by using your Google log in to monitor your name. Sites like can Twitter can spread negative press at a rapid pace and programs like this allow you to catch it quickly.

StepRep is a new online reputation management tool designed to not only monitor your results but allow you to fight them from one central location. More and more people conduct almost all their research online and more and more are searching a companies name or personal name before conducting any business. If you have complaints under your name in search results this could send that potential client heading in the direction of your competition. StepRep takes things one step further by also monitoring the social profiles for any negative chatter. Often times by the time you catch wind of your negative press the damage has already been done. The longer you allow any negative press to anchor itself into a search result for your name the more difficult it will be to move down the road. StepRep allows 100% real time monitoring so you can quickly react and respond to any negative chatter associating your business.

When the times come where any business decides to participate in some local advertising and search engine optimization there are many areas where you can make your business visible. One of the first place you will want to have your business is Google maps. There are many other important areas but this one will be very important.

When creating your listing it is important to not rush and leave spaces blank. Fill in every possible field utilizing keywords in your title and your description. Now it is also important to not stuff your profiles with keywords. This should always be done tastefully and with Google’s guidelines or you could run the risk of getting banned from their system. There is nothing wrong with optimizing you profile so that you can be visible quickly for your targeted audience. When you ever you fill out any profiles where you want your local business to be visible it is always important to optimize your profiles. Using keywords and phrases sparingly in the profiles will increase your chances to be seen by who needs to see you. Local search engine optimization and marketing is now an important part of making any local business survive and grow. More and more shoppers are now visiting search engines to find all their local products. Phonebooks and newspapers will eventually not be the go to source to find local businesses. With almost all new mobile communication devices now internet ready it is even more important to be visible online. You might not think your business requires internet exposure but it most likley does.