Our offices are located in New Hope, Pennsylvania, which is a small town along the Delaware River in Bucks County, PA. New Hope and its sister town of Lambertville, NJ are a center for dining, theater, art, music, and shopping. Dozens of bed and breakfasts host out of town guests throughout the year, and daytrippers from Philadelphia to New York City and all points in between visit the area to take in a meal, browse the unique gift and antique shops, or experience the many outdoor activities that our area is known for—especially on weekends.
With the recent good news that New Hope retail vacancies have dropped, and with the revitalization of the Bucks County Playhouse underway, we thought it was a perfect time to remind our neighboring businesses of some free ways you can get yourself more exposure.
1. Google Places
If you haven’t claimed and updated your Google Places page, bookmark this article and go do it right now. Make sure your information is accurate and try to make the listing as robust as you can. While you’re at it, create a coupon offer for visitors of your Places page.
2. Bing and Yahoo Local Listings
Similar to a Google Places listing, you should also create a listing for your business that will display on Bing and one for Yahoo.
3. Yelp
We love Yelp.com — it is a great network and offers some nice free business tools that you can leverage as part of your free account. Get yourself a free business listing on Yelp and then check out how their offers and other tools can work for you.
4. Press Releases
Write a press release about a new product, service, or other announcement and submit it to all of the local media outlets. For a wider reach, submit your release through a service like PRweb (there is a fee for this, but they have very reasonable rates for the exposure you get).
5. Social Media
Twitter and Facebook are great tools for businesses when used correctly. If you have not claimed your space on those two social networks, do it today. Then evaluate how you might use them effectively to participate socially with potential customers. The object here is to participate by offering helpful information to others in your network and sharing content that your followers will find interesting and will be likely to share with their friends and followers. Google Plus is another good site to check out to see if it’s a good fit for you. We’re really into Pinterest lately too. This new social sharing site is addictive and fun. Sign up for a free account and start “pinning” images and watch as your friends share them like wildfire.
6. Page Titles and Descriptions
When it comes to getting found online, simply having a gorgeous website is not enough. First you need good text content. Then you need well written page titles and descriptions for every page on your site. This process is part art and part science. You need to first understand the types of search terms people are likely to use to look for a business like yours. Then you need to craft page titles and descriptions that target those terms.
7. Link Building
One way to help increase site traffic and give your site more credibility when it comes to search engine indexing is to have other sites linking to your site. Be careful here… you don’t want any ol’ site linking to you. The best inbound links are those that come from sites that are related to your site’s content. Ask other businesses that offer services that complement yours for a link exchange (you link to their site and they link to yours). Free and paid directories for your type of industry are also a great source of inbound links. For example, if you are a bed and breakfast, get yourself listed in as many of the popular online B&B directories as you can.
8. Blogging
One great way to create regular content on your website is to start a blog. You can keep your current customers updated about what’s been going on within your company, provide commentary on current events as they pertain to your products or services, or simply provide free, helpful information and tips to your customers. The best company blogs are updated frequently and provide good information that their current and potential customers will find useful.
All of these tactics are free and can help you increase exposure online. You’ll just need to invest your time to set them up and in some cases, generate content. If you don’t have the time or technical skill to go it alone, we’re here to help.
