The Inbound Marketing Blog

The Pegasus News picked up my story about CoHabitat.

Dallas developers, designers, webprenuers & bloggers meet for Who’s Who holiday party in Uptown. Get the story on which Dallas online elite made the event and the games they played.
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This is a recent guest post I wrote for a friend covering an event we both attended. She is trying to grow a Downtown Dallas job, business networking & restaurant review blog. Get the full story with photos on www.SupportBigD.com.  Reputable online Dallas news source Pegasusnews.com also reprinted my story.

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CoHabitat, a shared working space environment for start-ups, individuals and small companies, threw a holiday party with appetizers, games, drinks, dancing, and several of the Who’s Who of Dallas online media in attendance.

The location of the party was a historical house, located off of Thomas Street in Uptown, Dallas. During the workweek this house facilitates creative ideas and a social working atmosphere by bringing together businesses and freelancers who would normally be working from home alone. For a ridiculously low monthly rental fee, you can have your own office. After the workday ends this house becomes the perfect location for get-togethers, parties, and a relaxed less formal meeting-of-the-minds.

The folks at CoHabitat are a very open group and anyone with a Facebook account could have found the event and attended, much like all their events. As the saying goes like attracts like, and just because there is an open party with a kegerator doesn’t mean every frat boy and his dog would show up. Even at the parties, there is a lot of networking and techie-talk similar to Dallas Geekmeet only younger, more hip, to those networking veterans familiar with the Dallas scene.

[Inter]Networking in Dallas

I attended CoHabitat’s Thanksgiving party in November and their crawfish boil in March, both of which were a blast, especially the boil. In my experience, I can say these have been some of the best events for meeting other industry pros. I would not say it’s the best environment for finding business prospects if you are a sales person, but great for finding business partners and collaborators if you already have projects needing special expertise or would like to launch new ones using the fresh ideas and skills of a savvy group of potential partners.

Bev Garvin of the Dallas Interactive firm Urban Interact and Neil Lemons, myself, of Inbound Marketing Blog were in attendance. I met several iPhone application developers, designers, and database architects, many of which are already making a living with their own projects or getting close. There are those who are less technically savvy, more on the marketing, account, and social media side, like myself, which have always been made to feel welcome. Read full story & see pictures of Dallas tech party on SupportBigD.com.

Recently, I’ve been guest blogging on a couple of friends’ websites, neglecting to add timely original content to my own. This is not necessarily bad in the long run and I’ll tell you why in a moment. In an effort to practice what I preach and carve out a truly successful news and information site, I took some time to reflect, study success, and take a big bite of reality.

Personal Branding Verses Niche News & Info
For awhile now I’ve been torn between growing this blog as a travel journal about adventures and traveling in Texas, or using it for its original purpose, personal branding and displaying my expertise. I just couldn’t seem to bring it in perfect balance like Couch Surfing Ori. Recently, I changed the title back to industry-oriented phrasing from Texas Travel Journal to The Inbound [Marketing ] Blog. One reason, two success stories of citizen journalists I know were based on the premise of hyper local information relevant to people in a particular city (in this case Dallas). I thought I would focus mine on Texas travel. Then I realized two things:

1) I don’t travel that much.
2) With online niches, it’s better to be deep than wide.

I wanted this site to be bigger than life, but I was riding the fence too long. I did not want to wait until the domain TexasTravelJournal.com was allowed out of the sandbox, so I promoted it, but redirected the site to my vanity URL which had already been established. I’m not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I just need to separate the two and work on them separately. For now I will cover more topics affecting bloggers, online marketers, and business owners.

Dry cleaners, auto mechanics, accounting firms, moving companies, restaurants, doctors, law firms, and other brick (click) and mortar businesses win and lose new customers every day before the potential customer even picks up the phone. This decision is based solely on past and current customers’ opinions he or she read has online. With so many businesses to choose from, being number one on Google is nearly never the only deciding credibility or trust factor. You’re dealing with an educated customer who does his/her research and does not care what you have to say about your business. They do care what others like him or her have to say. When friends and family aren’t readily available to ask for recommendations, where else can people turn, but the local online community? Welcome to the new word-of-mouth (mouse) marketing. When faced with too many choices, others rely on the “social proof” of what others think. Online reviews are a perfect example. Where are potential customers finding these reviews? The truth is, all over the Internet. There are 1000s of local business review sites and directories, you say? Don’t worry, there are a handful that matter more than the rest combined.

Since a potential customer’s initial search still starts with keywords on a search engine using a service-oriented keyword followed or preceded by the city in which they’re searching (ex: BMW mechanic Dallas). You should first pay attention to the truly important ones already showing up in Google, Yahoo!, and MSN for your keywords. Below are six of the major review and business listing sites which hold weight and have huge online presence. Learn the six biggies.

1. Google Local Business Listings (The “10 Pack”)

You can get your business listed on Google’s map and show up directly on the search results by registering at the Google Local Business Center www.google.com/local/add Describe your business with location info, services, hours of operation and business website link. After you have a listing, your goal is get reviews. If you let Google find your business first, you’ll be rewarded with better placement on the map. Much like Google would rather find your website on its own through links rather than search engine submission, Google Maps will trust and more than likely post reviews from other review sites before submitting or modifying your listing. Often, the Google Local Listing bot will scour the Internet for other reviews sites already touting your company’s offerings and experiences, so start building profiles on some of the other sites first and you’ll already have a diversity of amazing reviews before you expand. Another backdoor is getting your business listed on the BBB’s website or InfoUSA.com to ensure your Google Local presence. Reviews are by far the #1 one factor in achieving top placement in the alphanumeric listing of the Google Local Business Listings/Map Listings. Make sure the reviews are real though. Having keywords in your business name and a complete profile also helps. Get started at the Google Local Business Center. Read the rest of this entry »