Foursquare + Google Maps = FourWhere

by Mike Barlow on March 11, 2010

Small business owners should bookmark this handy little tool.
Fourwhere.com places all foursquare tips and comments onto a google map so that you can monitor what is being said about your shop, your neighborhood, partners, competitors, or any other geographical location in the foursquare system….
New location-based social search tool FourWhere shows Foursquare tips and comments using [...]

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The cool video that Maria built…

by Mike Barlow on February 26, 2010

Maria Marriott of Executive Mortgage (Roseville) just started a series on cool local businesses for her newsletter.  We were honored that she selected the Trailmix.Net Old Sacramento Store to lead off…
You can watch the video here

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How Fast Does Your Website Load?

February 7, 2010

Are you losing customers because your website isn’t loading fast enough?  Some experts claim that up to 75% of your audience will not return to websites that take longer than four seconds to load.
So how fast does your site load?  Use this free tool from Pingdom to find out.
Read more: Your Website Design Should Load in 4 Seconds! | Hobo

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How to Geotag Pages For Local SEO

February 6, 2010

At a recent Sacramento Successful Thinkers meetup Robert Velarde made the suggestion to geotag any photos associated with your business in Flickr.
This was a snap (thanks for the tip Robert!), but we have other photos on blogs and in other places besides flickr. I was wondering how to geotag photos on my own pages.
I [...]

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Get a Beanheads Coffee Badge

February 5, 2010

Beanheads brews the best coffee in Sacramento.  Why not support them and Sacramento small business by decorating your blog with a Beanheads Coffee Badge:

Use This Code to Put an Awesome Beanheads Coffee Badge On Your Blog:

dp.SyntaxHighlighter.ClipboardSwf = ‘http://www.mikebarlow.me/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-code-snippet/js/clipboard.swf’;
dp.SyntaxHighlighter.HighlightAll(‘code’);

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Foursquare for the Brick and Mortar Business

February 5, 2010

Foursquare is a location based social networking platform that some analysts believe has expanded 3x to 4x in the last few months.
So what is it?  Foursquare is a game that encourages people to explore their neighborhoods and then rewards people for doing so.
Marketing Profs had a great article today about how a brick and [...]

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Look To Your Business Problems for Blog Content Angles

February 5, 2010

Note:  the following post is the cliff’s notes version of a presentation that I gave to about 50 members of the Arden-Arcade Successful Thinkers group in Sacramento, CA in January of 2010.
When people talk about content generation it has almost become a cliché statement that web content producers need to generate material that is 1) [...]

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The McGuffin: A Tool That Can Help You Create Compelling Blog Content

February 3, 2010

The McGuffin is a writing device used in fiction, but it can help you create compelling content in your business blog too:
The McGuffin has a cool job: to keep the plot, character, or situation rolling along. It draws us into the story and drives the action. The McGuffin is often an object of high value, which [...]

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Optimize your Business Blog with A Signature on Each Post

February 2, 2010

James Chartrand wrote an interesting post over at copyblogger the other day that makes the argument that if you are blogging for business, it’s easy to lapse into a habit of blogging and forgetting to direct the reader to your product or service.
Very often, people don’t see what’s obvious to you. You know you’re blogging [...]

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