For example, have you ever stopped to consider the actual meanings behind those often repeated old sayings?

You’ve got to be cruel to be kind. No you haven’t! It’s perfectly fine to be kind to people, without the cruelty. You will find it works a lot better too.

A man’s best friend is his dog. Really? Not his wife, his children, his parents or siblings… his dog. I know a lot of men who own dogs, I know none who would choose it over their children.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too! Every cake you have ever eaten, you bought or were given first. You had the cake, you ate the cake, because cakes are made to be eaten.

Critical thinking

Just as people repeat these old sayings every day without giving them much thought, people often apply ideas to their business, which they have failed to give enough critical thought to.

I have lost count of the times I have heard people say; “We have always done it like this.” as a way to justify why they do, what they do. Now, if they have always done something a certain way, because they have looked for better ways to do it, and failed, that’s fine. But to keep on doing something ONLY because of familiarity, makes little commercial sense.

It does us all good, to regularly review the processes within our business. In fact, it’s hard to make meaningful, ongoing progress, without constantly seeking to improve.

http://jimsmarketingblog.com/2011/11/17/no-you-do-not-have-to-be-cruel-to-be-kind/

The ability, some might say attempt, to multitask is a curse of sorts. While working on ten things at once may seem efficient, each of those things gets roughly 10% of our greatness while we’re doing it.

That may actually be fine for, say, deleting emails, but is that enough for writing a note to a client, creating an action plan for a product launch or determining the fee you plan to charge for a project? Probably not.

Attention is one of our scarcest resources these days and guarding it in a way that allows us to work with intention requires the ability to remain present and mindful in the midst of the storm raging all around us. (Otherwise known as your business)

In fact, it not only requires us to be as present as possible for the daily tasks we tackle, it also requires us to be continually mindful of where we are going and why we are going there and that requires a process of its own.

Planned Mindfulness

It’s one thing to conduct annual strategic planning sessions and quite another to live the intention of those sessions after the white boards are erased.

I believe that you need to create a daily routine that involves revisiting your greatest goals and objectives and developing what I’ve come to call a passion mantra that upon seeing, hearing or reading energizes you and snaps you back into a state of mindfulness.

Creating your passion mantra may require time sitting and writing about what matters most to you, what drives you, what motivates you, what scares you and what excites you, but if you can create a simple statement that helps hold you accountable for what you intend to do, you’ll have a tool that consistently inspires right action and keeps you out of the act of wallowing in self-pity and doubt.

I’ve shared my own personal passion mantra before and I’ll share it here, but know that these are merely words and their real power if the feeling I attach to them.

My mantra is: My life is an amazing adventure; my business is an amazing adventure.

Witness Your Thoughts

Another habit that you may need to form in order to work steadily towards the intention of your business is to actually start to pay attention to your thoughts and reactions throughout the day.

Frankly, this can be exhausting work, but if you can begin to step back and analyze how your mind unconsciously processes everything that happens throughout the day, you might start to get a glimpse into some of the negative and limiting ways we view things as either good or bad.

The problem with most of reactions to things is they don’t always serve our overall objectives. If your intention is to be a business that provides incredible value by helping your customers achieve their goals, you’ll find that giving more than you take is the surest path to success. However, if your first thought in most relationships is what’s in it for me, or I’ve got to watch my back, you’ve got some powerful forces working against you.

How we view things is simply a choice, but that choice can become so ingrained that we no longer even make it, it simply occurs out of habit. When we start to slow down and observe these choices as they are happening, we gain the power to make or not make them in accordance with our driving intention.

Present Actfullness

Our intentions drive our thoughts and our thoughts form our actions. That’s what makes planning, goal setting and mindful thinking so powerful. However, there are armies lined up and waiting to derail you from your path to success – some come in the form of your own thoughts and others come in the form of an evil printer that won’t work as advertised.

In addition to witnessing how your thoughts create and form your reality, you must develop habits that help you change your physical state and bring it intentionally into being present along with your thoughts.

This is the easy part. Develop routines that require you to stop your work hourly and do ten pushups or take a lap around your office building. Fill up a jug of water and empty it hourly. Take a fifteen-minute afternoon nap. Write a handwritten thank you note several times a day.

What you do physically isn’t as important as the act of stopping and bringing your awareness back into the room by removing your attention from all the tasking at hand. I find that the simplest of planned physical mindfulness, even intentional breathing has the power to center me.

Present for Customers

So, really the point of all of this mindfulness is to help you build a better business that delivers value to world and less stress to you in the process, but the practical side is that it will allow you to be present for your customers and that will pay off immediately.

We all like to think we have our customers needs and desires in mind at all times, but quite often we get caught up in attempts to appear to have all the answers, in stating our case rather than listening, or in feigning care when our real motivation is the sale.

You can’t be fully present in every client interaction, but occasionally, maybe systematically, you need to look your clients in the eye, in a way that lets them feel you are listening, and ask them how you could help them more – and then shut up and listen without judgment. My guess is you will find this incredibly rewarding.

Present for Staff

In the midst of the day-to-day rush of projects, tasks, questions and actions the real development of the people that work all around you can get lost.

Meetings are scheduled and conducted with to dos and takeaways in mind and are often seen mostly as something in the way of getting your real work done.

Again, you can’t be fully mindful in every interaction with your staff, but in order to create an environment where your people can participate in the fulfillment of the organization’s objectives, you must provide a way for them to be heard as well.

Once a week, put 30 minutes on your calendar with everyone that reports to you and make them own the agenda. There may be times when several agenda items revolve around projects, but there will be times when you simply listen to what they really want out of life and how you can help them get there – and I believe that may be one of the most rewarding gifts you can participate in giving.

So, this being present stuff isn’t for the timid, but if you’ve ever come home and night and couldn’t really tell your spouse what you did all day that made you so busy, there’s a pretty good bet you need to dig into this a bit.

And find it rewarding at the same time

The ability, some might say attempt, to multitask is a curse of sorts. While working on ten things at once may seem efficient, each of those things gets roughly 10% of our greatness while we’re doing it.

That may actually be fine for, say, deleting emails, but is that enough for writing a note to a client, creating an action plan for a product launch or determining the fee you plan to charge for a project? Probably not.

Attention is one of our scarcest resources these days and guarding it in a way that allows us to work with intention requires the ability to remain present and mindful in the midst of the storm raging all around us. (Otherwise known as your business)

In fact, it not only requires us to be as present as possible for the daily tasks we tackle, it also requires us to be continually mindful of where we are going and why we are going there and that requires a process of its own.

Planned Mindfulness

It’s one thing to conduct annual strategic planning sessions and quite another to live the intention of those sessions after the white boards are erased.

I believe that you need to create a daily routine that involves revisiting your greatest goals and objectives and developing what I’ve come to call a passion mantra that upon seeing, hearing or reading energizes you and snaps you back into a state of mindfulness.

Creating your passion mantra may require time sitting and writing about what matters most to you, what drives you, what motivates you, what scares you and what excites you, but if you can create a simple statement that helps hold you accountable for what you intend to do, you’ll have a tool that consistently inspires right action and keeps you out of the act of wallowing in self-pity and doubt.

I’ve shared my own personal passion mantra before and I’ll share it here, but know that these are merely words and their real power if the feeling I attach to them.

My mantra is: My life is an amazing adventure; my business is an amazing adventure.

Witness Your Thoughts

Another habit that you may need to form in order to work steadily towards the intention of your business is to actually start to pay attention to your thoughts and reactions throughout the day.

Frankly, this can be exhausting work, but if you can begin to step back and analyze how your mind unconsciously processes everything that happens throughout the day, you might start to get a glimpse into some of the negative and limiting ways we view things as either good or bad.

The problem with most of reactions to things is they don’t always serve our overall objectives. If your intention is to be a business that provides incredible value by helping your customers achieve their goals, you’ll find that giving more than you take is the surest path to success. However, if your first thought in most relationships is what’s in it for me, or I’ve got to watch my back, you’ve got some powerful forces working against you.

How we view things is simply a choice, but that choice can become so ingrained that we no longer even make it, it simply occurs out of habit. When we start to slow down and observe these choices as they are happening, we gain the power to make or not make them in accordance with our driving intention.

Present Actfullness

Our intentions drive our thoughts and our thoughts form our actions. That’s what makes planning, goal setting and mindful thinking so powerful. However, there are armies lined up and waiting to derail you from your path to success – some come in the form of your own thoughts and others come in the form of an evil printer that won’t work as advertised.

In addition to witnessing how your thoughts create and form your reality, you must develop habits that help you change your physical state and bring it intentionally into being present along with your thoughts.

This is the easy part. Develop routines that require you to stop your work hourly and do ten pushups or take a lap around your office building. Fill up a jug of water and empty it hourly. Take a fifteen-minute afternoon nap. Write a handwritten thank you note several times a day.

What you do physically isn’t as important as the act of stopping and bringing your awareness back into the room by removing your attention from all the tasking at hand. I find that the simplest of planned physical mindfulness, even intentional breathing has the power to center me.

Present for Customers

So, really the point of all of this mindfulness is to help you build a better business that delivers value to world and less stress to you in the process, but the practical side is that it will allow you to be present for your customers and that will pay off immediately.

We all like to think we have our customers needs and desires in mind at all times, but quite often we get caught up in attempts to appear to have all the answers, in stating our case rather than listening, or in feigning care when our real motivation is the sale.

You can’t be fully present in every client interaction, but occasionally, maybe systematically, you need to look your clients in the eye, in a way that lets them feel you are listening, and ask them how you could help them more – and then shut up and listen without judgment. My guess is you will find this incredibly rewarding.

Present for Staff

In the midst of the day-to-day rush of projects, tasks, questions and actions the real development of the people that work all around you can get lost.

Meetings are scheduled and conducted with to dos and takeaways in mind and are often seen mostly as something in the way of getting your real work done.

Again, you can’t be fully mindful in every interaction with your staff, but in order to create an environment where your people can participate in the fulfillment of the organization’s objectives, you must provide a way for them to be heard as well.

Once a week, put 30 minutes on your calendar with everyone that reports to you and make them own the agenda. There may be times when several agenda items revolve around projects, but there will be times when you simply listen to what they really want out of life and how you can help them get there – and I believe that may be one of the most rewarding gifts you can participate in giving.

So, this being present stuff isn’t for the timid, but if you’ve ever come home and night and couldn’t really tell your spouse what you did all day that made you so busy, there’s a pretty good bet you need to dig into this a bit.

http://www.smallbusinessnewz.com/topnews/2011/11/15/how-to-be-present-for-your-business

I spent a lot of time walking around the centre of London today.  It’s an area I knew like the back of my hand, before I left to live in the countryside, a decade ago.  Today, I felt like a tourist, in the city where I was born and raised. 

It was a perfect, powerful example of the unstoppable nature of change.

In my experience, we have just 2 options, when it comes to dealing with change:

1. We can embrace change and work with it, so that the direction of change is predominantly positive and progressive.
2. We can cling onto the past or at least try to, so that we become a victim of change.  A dinosaur, if you will.

The trouble with change

The status quo is comfortable.  It may not be productive, progressive or exciting, but it is comfortable.  However, I believe that business owners today are experiencing a period, where the pace of change is faster than ever before and it’s still accelerating.  Clinging onto the status quo is no longer a realistic option; if indeed it ever was!

Unless we want to see our client / customer base leave us for more agile competitors, we need to remain relevant.  That means keeping an open mind to new ideas and new opportunities. It means avoiding change just for the sake of change, but accepting that as with life, business is a journey and not a destination.

http://jimsmarketingblog.com/2011/11/07/a-change-for-the-better/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+JimsMarketingBlog+%28Jims+Marketing+Blog%29

Is Google giving you the RESPECT you deserve? Comment here.

Is your site showing up in search results for its targeted keywords? If not, maybe you’re not effectively using these keywords. Google is on to keyword stuffing, and content that is purely written for search. Do not over-saturate your content with keywords you wish to rank for. That said, you can use them as they make sense without compromising the flow of your content. Think titles, image labels (alt tags/title tags/captions), etc. It doesn’t hurt to keep this stuff in mind as you produce content. Just don’t do it in a way that compromises the quality of your page.

Sitelinks

Is Google showing site links for your site when it appears in search results?

Sitelinks

Right now, sitelinks are automated, but Google says it may incorproate webmaster input in the future. Frankly, I’d be very surprised if they didn’t. Still, there are best practices you can follow. “ For example, for your site’s internal links, make sure you use anchor text and alt text that’s informative, compact, and avoids repetition,” Google says.

If Google is showing sitelinks for your site, but you don’t like the ones they’ve chosen to display, you can demote URLs to let Google know which ones you don’t think are appropriate. To do this, go to Webmaster Tools, click the site, and go to “sitelinks” under “site configuration”. In the “For this search result” box, complete the URL you don’t want to appear as a sitelink. In the “demote this sitelink URL” box, complete the URL of the one you don’t want to appear. Note that it might take Google a while to reflect this in search results.

The Algorithm Updates

It’s not just about what Google has done in terms of algorithm updates. It’s about what you should be doing. But perhaps you have been hit by recent algorithm tweaks. If Panda, for example, hit your site, then drastic changes may be needed. Google considers your site to be of low quality. Perhaps a site redesign is in order. Google has a whole list of questions you should be asking yourself about your site in terms of quality.

Included on that list is “Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content.” Google said last week that it is testing algorithms that look more at this factor above the fold. Be prepared for that.

Google also just listed ten of its most recent algorithm changes.

Google Is Listening.

If you think you’ve done everything you need to do to make your site Panda-friendly, and Google is still not giving you the RESPECT you think you deserve, then let them know. The company insists that it is listening. Go to this thread and make your voice heard. Last week, they even said they have an Excel sheet of about 500 sites from this thread (at least, I assume this is the thread they were referring to). There is a person responsible for false positives, they said. You may have a legitimate beef, and Google, at least to some extent, recognizes this.

Are You Expecting Google To Be Perfect?

Google isn’t perfect. They know this. In fact, they make this point themselves all the time It’s why they constantly tweak their algorithm. They’re not launching all of these updates just to mess with webmasters. Google makes over 500 changes to its algorithm over a year’s time. They’re trying to improve the quality of their search results. It’s not in Google’s best interest to return results to users that aren’t helpful. They don’t want to send people to Bing, which is marketing its search engine much more heavily than Google. Whether you think the quality of Google’s results have gotten better or not, this is their goal. Google considers Panda a “positive change across all of its known measurements,” by the way. I’m sure some of you disagree.

What Are Your Competitors Doing Right?

Still, you might see lesser competitors ranking above you in search results, and that can be very frustrating. For some reason, Google is giving them more RESPECT. Do you think it’s going to do you any good to just sit back and complain though? It’s your responsibility to analyze your competition. Look at the page that is ranking above yours. Are there some things about that content or page that they are doing better than you? Richer content? A cleaner design? Google has over 200 signals. Keep this in mind. Look for anything positive about that page, and then look at yours and compare and contrast.

Ultimately, it’s about Google seeking to rank sites on every topic imaginable by a using a combination of at least three big factors to determine relevancy: quality, authority and recency. Sites can rank above you based on how Google is ranking the importance of these three factors at the moment a search is done. If something is in the news, and your site has an up-to-the-minute article on the topic, you might rank above sites with more authority for a while. Your goal as a webmaster should be to become an authority on a specific topic. Get people to link to you. Create author pages, if you are a publisher, and utilize authorship markup.

Is Google Getting It Right?

http://www.webpronews.com/is-google-giving-your-site-respect-2011-11

The top end of the scale: Attracting attention and earning interest

This is rare and is based around doing work that matters.  It’s about standing out for all the right reasons, so people want to follow you, subscribe to your blog or newsletter or connect with you at events.  It’s about a commitment to delivering value.  It’s about applying your craft, rather than being generic.  It’s about understanding the importance of permission.

When this approach is applied correctly, the results are amazing.  In my case, they were life changing.

The butt end of the scale: Pestering people for their attention & irritating the crap out of them

This is a common approach and is based around interrupting people, without permission, to push a message at them that they never asked for.  We see it every day in our email inbox, on our voice mail and across our social networking accounts.  It’s all about pestering people.  It’s the approach that says it’s fine to piss off 999 people with unsolicited junk, if 1 person clicks through.

In summary

You can’t expect to get top end results, using a butt end strategy!

This is because the way we attract the interest of others has a massive impact, on how they feel about us.  For example, if you walk up to people in the street and poke them in the chest, you WILL get their attention – But you don’t need that kind of attention!

http://jimsmarketingblog.com/2011/11/15/dont-expect-top-end-results-using-a-butt-end-strategy/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+JimsMarketingBlog+%28Jims+Marketing+Blog%29

What should Google be doing to improve search and advertising?

The two major events that kicked off all of these topics were the launch (after months of waiting) of Google+ Pages for businesses, products and brands, and the PubCon event in Las Vegaas, where Google’s Matt Cutts and Amit Signhal spoke about search.

If you’re looking for tips on effectively using your Google+ Page, read this. If you’re looking for how to just set one up, read this. This piece discusses setting the Page up with your AdWords campaigns.

On the PubCon front, the most noteworthy piece of news was that Google is testing algorithms that determine how much content vs. ads are above the fold on a page. Expect this to be an increasingly significant factor in Google rankings. It raises a lot of questions though, and we discussed here.

About that those raters…

Also at PubCon, Cutts reportedly discussed that recently leaked raters handbook. WebmasterWorld user Tedster paraphrased :

Webmasters tend to put a slightly skewed angle on this. The quality raters are actually rating a SERP (that is, a particular algo configuration) as a quality control measure for the algo team. Their ratings do not directly change rankings- but they hep the algo team see if the algo worked as planned or not.

Also, note that this document is not for the spam team. They also have a training document and use human quality raters – but that document has never been leaked.

Morris Rosenthal, who had sites impacted by the Panda update shared some inteteresting thoughts in relation to that.

Page Speed

Prior to PubCon, Cutts also tweeted out a video discussing how Google determines Page Speed:

He says it really only affects the rankings in about one out of a hundred searches, and it’s really only a big issue for about one in a thousand sites. This is pretty interesting considering the emphasis Google has placed on this element over the past year or two.

Transparency and Communication

There were plenty of other takeaways from the Google PubCon Q&A that are worth noting. In a nutshell, Googlebot is getting smarter and better at determining what types of content reside on a page, and at the same time, Google (at least according to Google) is getting better at transparency and communication with webmasters.

Specifically, they said they intend to be more transparent about algorithm updates and announce them as they go (as we’ve already seen them do with the Panda and Freshness updates).

They also gave a few pieces of advice, such as suggesting you tell Google when you publish content using email alerts and seting up pubsubhubbub in Webmaster Tools to help them better see that you publish the content before scrapers scrape it. Also, they emphasized that doorway pages are a bad idea.

Did you know…

A couple of facts they shared: Google has spam fighters in 40 languages and keeps an excel sheet of 500 sties from a thread in the Google Webmaster Help Forum where webmasters report Panda issues (presumably the one discussed here).

Freshness

While the “Freshness” update may have taken hold the prior week, SearchMetrics released a list of the top winners and losers in terms of search visibility. While there was no clear pattern to the types of sites negatively impacted by it, there were quite a few news sites on the winners list. That’s not to say all winners were sites of this nature. The top winner was actually Last.fm.

Advertising

There were several Google ad-related developments over the week. For one, Google announced that in the coming weeks, AdMob developers will be able to make their in-app inventory available on Google’s Ad Exchange).

The company announced that mobile site optimization is now a factor in mobile ads quality, as it rolls out to all advertisers. On the Google Mobile Ads Blog, product manager David Nachum wrote, “Ads that have mobile optimized landing pages will tend to perform better in AdWords — they will generally drive more mobile traffic at a lower cost.”

Then of course there is the ability to tie your AdWords campaigns to your Google+ page.

http://www.webpronews.com/google-search-and-advertising-news-you-don%E2%80%99t-want-to-miss-2011-11

I mean, if I were to read the information about you on your website, blog and social networks, what would I know about you?  Typically, people share very little of their uniqueness and instead, use generic drivel to describe who they are and what their business is all about.  They lack the kind of narrative that inspires people, then wonder why prospective clients aren’t motivated enough to contact them!

As your prospective client, I need you to show some passion.  Some energy.  Some creativity.  I need you to tell me what sets you apart from the thousands of others in your industry.  If you can’t do that, you will really struggle to attract clients; let alone high quality clients.

Keeping it human

Take a look at the areas of your marketing, where you describe who you are and what your business does.  Remove any references to “providing client focused solutions” or “strategic implementation.”  Talk to people like humans and tell them what value YOU and YOUR business bring, in real, quantifiable terms.

You see, if you don’t give people enough information about you and your business, you will have no outsiders.  That may sound like a good thing, until you realise that you can’t have insiders, without outsiders.  These insiders are the ones you need, in order to grow your business.

In short: The less you sound like everyone else, the easier you will find it to capture the marketplace’s attention and earn their custom.

http://jimsmarketingblog.com/2011/11/13/who-are-you-2/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+JimsMarketingBlog+%28Jims+Marketing+Blog%29

•     Find a tree
•     Talk to the tree.

Listen. Think. Respond.

When communicating with people, we need to use a very different approach.  Rather than talking to them (or at them), we need to speak with them.  This means listening, thinking and then responding.

It’s the difference between a conversation and a broadcast.

http://jimsmarketingblog.com/2011/11/13/do-you-talk-to-people-or-speak-with-people/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+JimsMarketingBlog+%28Jims+Marketing+Blog%29

What is the best business benefit of Google+ Pages? 

Google’s Christian Oestlien presented at ad:tech New York this week talking about some marketing issues Google is hoping to solve with Google+. These are:

1. Fragmented marketing
2. Recommendations that lack staying power
3. Comments, not conversations
4. Impersonal messages
5. Limited insights

The company considers Pages to be a place that Google has never had before, where you can connect with all of our customers and directly communicate with them. They are designed to foster customer recommendations that have staying power, since all of your +1’s can be tied together, across your site, your Page, your search results, and your search ads.

Circles, he said, provide brands with a way to deliver the right messages to the right people, as opposed to the same message to everybody. In terms of insights, he referred to the recently launched Ripples feature, which lets you track the social life of a post.

Now on to the tips. Here’s a bonus tip: You can search #pagetips on Google+ and get even more tips from people.

Google has its own “Google+ Your Business” page, which I’d recommend adding to your circles. Google’s Kristoffer Sorensen shares the following tips in a post on that:

1. Engage, engage, engage

“Google+ is about engaging with friends, family, colleagues, people who share your interests, and now customers, clients, and companies,” he says. “This is a great opportunity for you to share with your clients news, product launches, campaigns, and promotions. It’s also an awesome way for you to talk to your fans, learn about them and get feedback from them. In short, it’s a great opportunity for you to engage.”

He says to be responsive, don’t be afraid of negative comments, and post relevant, interesting content, but don’t spam your followers.

2. Hangouts are awesome!

“As a brand and a business you should be thinking about how hangouts can add value to the way you communicate with your followers. You should also be thinking about who should be hosting them on your end – it’s a great opportunity for you to show the human face of your brand/company. Host them from your page by clicking the “Start a hangout” button on the right side of your home page.”

He suggests using Hangouts for product demos, customer service office hours, discussions with people in the company, sharing financial results, Q&A for product/service feedback, or tutorials/classes.

3. Manage your Circles

“Managed right, circles can be a great tool for ensuring that you get the right message to the right follower,” says Sorensen. “For example, a clothes brand might want to send one message to their fans interested in soccer and another to their fans interesting in running. It allows you as a brand to tailor your message and increase relevance in your messaging.”

He notes that Google is working on ways for users to manage Circles better, but in the meantime, he sugggests creating a post that you reshare regularly. “Have it say something like ‘we want to make sure we get the right messages to our fans, so +1 the comments below to let us know what circles you want to be part of,” he says. “Comment on your own post with a comment for each potential circle (for instance, football, soccer, running, tennis, dodgeball, and barrel rolling). People can then indicate what circle they want to be in by +1’ing that comment – you can follow up and add people to circles based on their choice”

The regular Google+ Page offers “5 cool tips you should know about Google+ Pages”. These include:

4.You can +1 a Page to show support or add them to your Circles.

5. No Google+ Page can follow you until you follow them.

6. Google+ Pages can’t even mention you unless you’re connected. “No +mention spam.”

7. Google+ Pages automatically unfollow you if you unfollow them.

8. You can find Google+ pages in Google Search

You can actually do this by just typing “+” and the Page’s name, so this should be a good way for users to easily find brand page.

9. Pay attention and responded accordingly.

10. Connect your Google+ Page to your AdWords campaigns

http://www.webpronews.com/10-google-page-tips-for-your-business-2011-11

Gift cards provide a convenient way for your loyal customers to spread the word about your business and their experience with you. Gift cards are also an impulse buy that you can keep close to your register, showcase in your window signage, or offer on your website or Facebook Company Page.

There are many ways your business can benefit from selling gift cards. Here are 5 ways for you to consider:

Tap into more sales for your business.

Customers who do business with you may not think of your business when they plan gifts for their friends, family, or coworkers. To let customers know that you offer the convenience of gift cards, make sure they’re prominently displayed when people visit your website or physical location. That visual reminder will increase impulse purchases—and help to plant the seed for future sales. And as research shows, gift card recipients typically spend 20% more than their gift card balance.

Make it easy for customers to promote your business.

When a customer chooses to give a gift card, they’re endorsing your business by telling their gift card recipient that they trust your business and like doing business with you. By offering gift cards, you make it easy for your customers to spread the word about your business to their network of friends and family.

Build your contact list for future promotions.

When recipients redeem their gift cards, make sure you’re capturing the contact information for those cardholders. You can use that information to send out future news items and promotions about your business. Just as gift cards help to drive new sales to your business, your contact list provides you with valuable information that can help you develop and maintain long-term customers.

Don’t think of gift cards as just gifts.

Another way to keep your business growing is to issue gift cards as part of your refund or return policy. That way, you ensure that customers come back to your business to spend those available funds.

Sell gift cards 24/7.

Although many businesses think they need a physical store or business to sell gift cards, that’s definitely not the case. You can offer gift cards for sale on your website and via your social media marketing efforts, such as your Facebook Company Page. And with more and more consumers researching businesses online and making online purchases, you can leverage your website presence and your social network to generate sales for your business 24/7.

Please note: You should spend time evaluating gift card programs and their associated fees to ensure that you find the right program that fits the needs and goals of your business.

To help small businesses tap into the lucrative gift card market, Web.com is offering a new gift card program as of October 3—just in time for the busy holiday season. Our program allows you to sell gift cards at your business location and on your website.

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