18 Really Cool Atlanta Business People To Follow On Twitter
Posted by Brian in Social Media, Twitter on March 1, 2010
I’m sure everyone has heard about Twitter by now, even if you have lived under the proverbial rock for the past few years. If you’re just starting out on Twitter, don’t worry — you’re not alone.
Twitter is a great tool to keep your finger on the pulse of the Atlanta business world, and connect with interesting people who share similar goals to your own. There are hundreds of tips and strategies and ways to use the service for business purposes, but I won’t delve into that discussion in this post.
The Mission
The goal was to find some great people in and around the Atlanta area that were involved with the community, and had a passion for business. I can’t say I was surprised at the results; growing up in the Atlanta area taught me that there’s no shortage of talent here, but I did manage to discover some people that I wasn’t already familiar with. Some of these people could be considered “competitors” of Optimize Atlanta because their businesses offer similar services, but all of them contribute good, informative content for business owners, and therefore could not be left out.
I’d like to mention that there are many other interesting and talented entrepreneurs in Atlanta, but these 18 people really stuck out to me because they are consistently tweeting solid, useful content for other business owners.
New to Twitter? Follow These Atlanta Business People To Get A Head Start
Julie Squires – CEO of Softscribe, a digital marketing company that helps businesses drive traffic in the green tourism and hospitality industries.
Desiree Scales – CEO of Bella Web Design, a successful Atlanta web design and marketing firm. She’s also a professional speaker and teaches social media strategies, has an informative podcast, and I’ve found she has a good sense of humor, thankfully.
Taryn Pisaneschi – Passionate about social media and relationship marketing. Keynote speaker at events around the country, blogger, and a snowboarder! Cool chick
Kellye Crane – Founder of SoloPRPro.com and #solopr chat, PR and branding consultant for businesses and professionals, “but not the smarmy kind.” I love that distinction, there is a difference.
Stephanie Beckham – Interactive Idea Strategist at Brainjocks, which is a snazzy way to say she creates cool websites. She’s also a .NET, CMS (content management system), and eCommerce web developer, and she likes twizzlers — alot.
Alexa Ellis – Focuses on interactive website design, development, and marketing at Aqua Blue Marketing. Blogs and tweets great tips on SEO, PPC, and all things marketing on the web.
Carol Flammer – Author of Social Media For Home Builders: It’s Easier Than You Think. Also a social media and PR consultant at mrelevance, which is a web marketing firm that focuses on the construction industry.
Kristen McKenna – Field Marketing Manager at Silverpop. I don’t know much about Kristen other than she consistently tweets useful information that everyone with a web presence should read.
ATDC – The Advanced Technology Development Center is a startup company incubator and entrepreneurial hub. They are focused on helping Georgia’s technology entrepreneurs accelerate the startup process and become successful companies. A fantastic resource for early stage tech companies, located in Technology Square in Midtown. The ATDC has already facilitated the growth of numerous companies that have become wildly successful.
Scott Burkett – COO of Starpound Technologies, member of the StartupLounge Team, and also operates a fantastic blog. Very involved and passionate about Atlanta startups and businesses, especially in the technology related fields. Also, he’s the only other human being other than myself that uses the word pontificate, which I think is especially cool.
Ignition Alley – A coworking space for Atlanta’s entrepreneurs, freelancers, consultants, developers, marketers, and just about anybody else that needs a place to work outside of their home. They do a great job of creating a community by allowing all of these individuals to come together for collaboration on projects, and by hosting events and gatherings for their members.
Sanjay Parekh – A serial entrepreneur whose latest project is Startup Riot, an annual event in which startup companies, and larger companies looking for partnerships, can meet with and pitch a variety of investors, network, and search for talent. Sanjay has a focus on technology, and stays involved with the Atlanta business community through monthly newsletters and group events. Learn how to properly pronounce his name here, in case you run into him sometime.
Anne Simons – Another member of the StartupLounge Team. Anne runs a great blog over at brandeo that covers branding news, ideas, and discussions for everything from teleporters to Tiger Woods.
Cathy Iconis – Dedicated to becoming a source for small business advice in Atlanta. Cathy blogs about a myriad of topics related to operating a business. Her blog also features Atlanta area small business owners and their stories.
Jeff Brathwaite – Founder of 2TheNextLevel, Jeff’s focus is to help solopreneurs and small businesses use “web 2.0” technologies to become more successful. He gets extra points for titling his latest (at the time of this writing) blog post “Facebook Intervention.”
Mike Schinkel – Organizer for the Atlanta Web Marketers Meetup, and the Atlanta SEO Meetup, partner in Ignition Alley, and is involved in numerous other activities designed to help small to mid sized businesses and their owners.
TMNinja – Time Management Ninja’s mantra is “Winning the battle against wasted time, disorganization, clutter, and all other things evil.” They also have a blog jam-packed with great tips for busy people to stay organized. Very useful stuff.
Elizabeth Baskin – CEO of Tribe, which boasts a client list like no other, including companies like Chick-fil-a, Home Depot, Coca-Cola, UPS, and Porsche. She has written several succesful books, including Run Your Business Like A Girl, and Hell Yes! Two Little Words For A Simpler Happier Life. She’s also created a deck of cards to help entrepreneurs launch their own businesses step-by-step called Start Your Own Company, which I think is an incredibly cool idea (not that she needs my approval). Elizabeth manages her own blog, Life-Sized Business which has some really great content.
As I stated earlier, there are tons more really great people to connect with in Atlanta, but I tried to focus this list on the people who are consistently talking about tips and strategies that you can apply to your business.
You can get the full list all at once from Listorious if you’d like, or feel free to check them out individually.
I hope this is helpful to those that are new to Twitter and would like to jumpstart their experience, and also to those who may be using twitter but needed some local ATLiens to follow.
You can also follow me @BrianCriswell for a variety of business tips, news, rants, jokes, and sports related exclamations!
Optimize Atlanta is not a partner or affiliate of any of the organizations or people listed in this post.
5 Ridiculously Easy Things You Can Do Today To Improve Your Google Local Search Listing
With the ever-increasing popularity of local search, it’s highly important for businesses to do everything they can to be found within their own communities online. Landscapers, roofing companies, bake shops, doctors, lawyers, scooter dealerships, and wacky inflatable arm-flailing tube man retailers, along with countless others, are all types of businesses whose target market is their local area. The following tips will help your customers find you on the web — even if you don’t have a website yet! (Amazing, I know)
Google’s Local Business Listing algorithm is very much different from the traditional search algorithm. What this means is, your local listing rank does not depend entirely on your website rank. For example, take a look at this:
Notice the first local search result for “italian restaurant atlanta” is Alfredo’s, but the first and second organic search results are totally different.
While reading this article, some of you may find yourselves saying, “This is common sense type stuff”, and you’re right — it is! But the fact is, you wouldn’t believe how many businesses don’t have these simple things taken care of on their listings.
By using these tips, you will improve your local business listing in the eyes of your customers, and simultaneously improve your rankings.
1. Claim your business!
The first thing you have to do is find (or create if you can’t find) your Google Local Business Listing. This is one of the most significant things you can do to help your local search presence.
Open a new tab in your browser, go to Google Maps and search for the name of your business and the city/state where your business is located. When you find it, click on the “more info” link next to the title. In the top right corner of the listing, you’ll see another link that says, “Business owner?”. Click that link and follow the instruction on the page to claim that business as your own. You can also verify the information at this point, such as the address, phone number, etc… which bring us to the next tip.
2. List your local telephone number and not an 800 number.
It’s important to list the local telephone number for your business as the main contact number. Not only do your customers really like this, but Google likes it too.
Some businesses may be using call tracking services as a way to maximize their advertising ROI; this can be a good idea when dealing with traditional mediums, but can be detrimental to your online presence. (For a more technically in-depth read on call tracking and local SEO, check out David Mihm’s article over on SearchEngineLand)
Thankfully, there are other effective ways to track calls. Optimize Atlanta, along with the majority of the search marketing industry, recommends making sure the receptionist is asking every caller “How did you hear about us?”, and logging the information. It’s a bit old-fashioned, but it gets the job done.
*Note: The same local contact number that you’re using for the local business listing should also be used everywhere else on the web.
3. Make sure all information matches everywhere on the web, and is correct.
This is critically important for local SEO. All of your contact information on the web must match the contact information on your site, and your local business listing. For organic SEO purposes, links are vitally important to ranking well in search engine results pages (SERPS). For local SEO, citations are vitally important. Citations are essentially any mention of your business + contact information on the web. Making sure all of your citations are correct will not only boost the ranking of your local business listing, but it will also make it easier for your customers to find you in places other than your site, such as directories.
There are a variety of things that can happen to cause your information to be wrong, such as:
- You’ve recently changed offices
- You have a new phone number
- The name of your business has changed
- Another business has a very similar name to yours
- You share a building with another business (suites, co-ops, etc)
- You’re a newer business, but the previous tenant also had a business at the same location
- Human error
This list could go on and on. The important thing is, it can be fixed.
If you have a unique business name, it will be easier to find all of the places that mention you online; you can simply do a search for your business name and scroll through the results, clicking and updating any incorrect addresses or phone numbers. Look for directories such as Yellowpages, Superpages, Yelp, Citysearch, and any other online directory that might have your business listed. Also look for Chamber of Commerce listings, Meetups, and any other organization or group you might be a member of. Make sure the name of the business, address, and phone number match exactly on all of them.
If your business has a more common name, you might have to manually check the sites listed above, along with any other sites that you can think of who may be promoting your business.
4. Take the time to make sure your listing is in the proper category
Another thing you can do to appease your customers and Google is list your business in the appropriate category. I’ve seen car dealerships listed as repair shops, community banks listed as mortgage brokers, and so on. It’s true that the dealership probably has a repair shop, and the community bank undoubtedly handles mortgages, but that is only a portion of their business. Make sure your listing highlights all the main products and services your business provides. Spend a little time creating a really solid listing.
5. Ask your customers to give you feedback
How do your customers perceive you? Are they happy with their service? Would they recommend you to their friends and family members?
It’s easy to find out, just ask them to give their feedback online. They don’t even have to go to your site or listing, Google aggregates reviews from all over the place and imports them directly into your local business listing for all to see. You could even offer some incentive for posting reviews, such as 10% off the next purchase, or a free draft beer with the next slice of pizza.
The bottom line is, potential customers love to see reviews. It’s easy to get a good idea about a business by reading what other people have experienced already; it builds trust and manages expectations. If I read 4 great reviews about a specific pizza bar, I’d feel pretty confident that I could go into that pizza bar and get great food and service, and maybe a free beer. The same thing goes for law firms, fitness clubs, and any other business that serves the public. It’s the modern day testimonial, but you know that it’s (usually) not a fake.
The key to remember about reviews is that it’s the volume of reviews that counts more than the content. Your goal should be to get as many reviews as possible from your customers. Now with that being said, you don’t want more bad reviews than good ones, so make sure you’re taking care of your customers. This also gives you the opportunity to improve your service by reading suggestions and recommendations from the very people who use it. That’s invaluable information.
CASE STUDY: Optimize Atlanta’s Law Firm SEO Campaign Propels Martin Law Offices’ Web Traffic By 1,533%!
Posted by Brian in Case Studies on November 20, 2009
The Law Offices of T Michael Martin have been providing elite legal services to the south metro Atlanta area for almost thirty years. Mike Martin, a well respected member of a myriad of law organizations, also has served as Municipal Court Judge for over twenty years. Experience counts for everything in the courtroom, and Mike has defended jury trial cases numbering in the hundreds, with more than a dozen of them being cases where the State sought the death penalty. He has yet to have a client executed.
Clearly this Fayetteville Lawyer provides a level of service that clients would clamor for. Any person in need of credible, reliable legal representation deserves to know that the services of this firm are available to them. Up until recently however, the firm’s website couldn’t be found anywhere in search engine results pages, where a vast majority of potential clients were looking.
A high-quality search engine optimization campaign was sorely needed, and fortunately Optimize Atlanta fit the bill.
After only 3 short weeks, the Martin Law Offices website was ranking on the first page of Google’s search results for a majority of the terms targeted by the law firm SEO campaign. Needless to say, the firm was elated. Even the Optimize Atlanta Team was shocked at how quickly the program generated these kind of results for such a competitive market. The firm’s website traffic skyrocketed 1,533% within the first month!
Now, only into the second month, traffic continues to multiply and the firm has already booked clients that found them online via search. Perhaps the greatest thing about this particular campaign is the fact that it has just begun. With ongoing search engine optimization efforts, the probability for future success is remarkable, and The Law Offices of T Michael Martin will continue to get quality visitors who are in need of their services.
Summary of Key Milestones:
- Ranked on first page of Google search results within 3 weeks
- Increased website traffic by 1,533% in the first month
- Already booking clients who found them online less than two months into campaign
Optimize Atlanta at Digital Marketing World
Posted by Sara in Company News, Events on September 21, 2009
While Brian’s been busy educating Atlanta’s business owners about search engine optimization (SEO), other members of the Optimize Atlanta team have been busy with SEO, search engine marketing (SEM), and other initiatives. The online marketing landscape is changing rapidly, especially with regards to social media; to ensure we can advise you on the latest and greatest for your digital marketing strategy, we recently attended the Fall 2009 Digital Marketing World conference.
Hosted by MarketingProfs, this “virtual conference” was unlike anything I’d attended before; although I regularly sit in on webinars regarding all things marketing, this was — I have to admit — very cool. Hosted online, the conference included almost everything you’d find at a “real world” conference, including tracks on marketing to businesses and consumers, exhibitor “booths,” networking lounges — even conference schwag! The online format also allowed for chat sessions on specific topics of interest for attendees and a greater level of interaction during each of the sessions with moderated Q&A toward the end of each session.
The keynote address was given by Tina Brown, a force to be reckoned with in the media world. Formerly editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, Brown now heads up the crew over at The Daily Beast, a great source for the latest in news, culture, and entertainment. Along with other speakers, Brown emphasized the importance of delivering the right content to the right audience at the right time. Other sessions focused on strategies and tactics for social media marketing, building customer loyalty online, and optimizing conversion rates for customers on your website through great landing pages, targeted testing, and nurturing online leads through the sales cycle.
I know I got a lot out of the B2C-track sessions I attended, and all reports are that the other sessions were great as well. Thanks to MarketingProfs for hosting such an innovative online event!
What Exactly is SEO?
This is not for the tech savvy. This is written for the small business owner that wants someone to answer the question “What exactly is SEO?” without having to use a technical jargon translator to decipher the code.
After speaking with several business owners recently in the Atlanta area, I realized that a good bit of you really wanted to understand SEO and online marketing better, but didn’t know exactly where to begin. This is my attempt to get you started down a path of learning, and if it helps even slightly shed a ray of sunlight on the cloudy subject that is SEO, then it was worth it.
SEO is a widely used abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization. That’s as technical as we’re going to get today, so don’t worry. What this means to you, the business owner, is that SEO is a way to get your website to show up when people are searching for products or services similar to what you offer. Often they will even be searching for exactly what your business offers, but if your website isn’t properly optimized, you likely won’t be found.
Modern search engines have changed our culture. (For more on this, read John Battelle’s “The Search”) People use search engines for everything. For example, let’s say you come home from work and you have a water leak in your basement. (It has happened to me) It’s far easier and much faster to google “Plumber Atlanta” than it is to pull out the phone book, find the yellow pages, flip to “P”, and sift through all the irrelevant other businesses that start with the letter “P”, finally find “plumber”, then…well you get the point.
Now most cell phones are even equipped with a full browser, or at the very least a basic search function. It’s how we find everything, from the latest electronic gadgets, to the newest Coach purse design, to the plumber that is available 24/7. The only caveat is, your site has to show up when someone searches for it.
That’s where SEO comes in.
Most people, when searching for something specific, typically won’t go beyond page 2 or 3 of their search results, so it’s important that your site ranks fairly well for your industry in your target market. Ideally you’d like to be on page one, because that’s where the vast majority of clicks occur. The organic search results here are highlighted. These are the first 3 results for the search term “shoes.”
SEO takes practice, and can take some time to get the results you want, especially if your business happens to be in a very competitive market. It’s better to think of it as an on-going process in which you are constantly learning, testing, and tweaking. There is, however, a good bit of bad information available on the subject, so you have to be careful about where your information comes from. Search engines will penalize you for using less than noble practices. It’s important to use the current best practices to make sure that the campaign will have the most impact, and also fall within the guidelines of preferred techniques for the major search engines.
Many business owners are finding that it’s far more beneficial to budget for making sure their websites are ranking well and getting good traffic than to budget for newspaper or magazine ads. The ROI is simply much better for online marketing campaigns because of the sheer volume of people that use the web. Think about how many searches are performed each and every day. Now compare that with the number of people that have time to read the newspaper everyday. Admittedly, I didn’t survey everyone for this article, but I can guarantee you that it’s not even close.
There is a plethora of different SEO techniques that can be used to improve your rankings and make your website easier to find. Just like with any other aspect of business, some techniques are harder to master than others, but anything that you can learn and implement will be a step in the right direction.
I encourage you to take some time to read and learn as much as you can about SEO and online marketing in general, and how it can help your business grow.