It’s Your Business Survey Launches Today to Capture New Insight into the Dana Point Business Community

DANA POINT, Calif. – On the heels of its nationally recognized program, Hide It, Lock It or Lose It, the City of Dana Point, in conjunction with the Dana Point Chamber of Commerce and Dana Point Police Services, is pleased to launch It’s Your Business, an initiative created by the newly formed Dana Point Business Services Team. It’s Your Business aims to identify the needs of the local business community, address those needs in a timely and professional manner, take action to best serve businesses, and prepare for the future through proactive and ongoing dialogue.

It’s Your Business kicks off today with an initial survey asking local businesses for feedback. The survey will shed light on what businesses feel is going well, and in what areas there are opportunities for enhanced services. The team is committed to responding and taking action on the survey responses to make the Dana Point the best it can be for businesses.

“We recognize that Dana Point businesses have a voice and we want to hear from you,” said Mark Levy, Chief of Police Services, City of Dana Point. “This initiative started with a focus on business safety, and quickly grew into a comprehensive program designed to meet the needs of our local business community. The responses to the survey are just the first step in the process of fostering an ideal working environment.”

From networking or noise levels to code enforcement or business safety, no concern or compliment is too big or too small. The deadline for the It’s Your Business survey is Wednesday, November 9, 2011, but businesses are encouraged to submit their responses as soon as possible so the team can get to work on taking action. All businesses that participate will receive a response.

More information and the full It’s Your Business survey is available at www.itsyourdpbusiness.com. The Dana Point Business Services Team will also be making personal connections with the local business community over the next few months at networking events, office visits and through email communication. Businesses interested in learning more about It’s Your Business and obtaining a hard copy survey may contact Christy Teague at the City of Dana Point – (949) 248-3519; Cassie Levine at Dana Point Police Services – (949) 248-3581; or Laura Ouimet at the Chamber of Commerce – (949) 496-1555. Businesses can join in on the conversation on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itsyourdpbiz and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Its-Your-Business-Dana-Point/232728180098505?sk=wall.

About the Dana Point Business Services Team:

The Dana Point Business Services Team is an alliance comprised of the City of Dana Point, the Dana Point Chamber of Commerce and Dana Point Police Services. The team is launching It’s Your Business, a program to evaluate the needs of local businesses in order to better serve them and foster their success. For more information, visit www.itsyourdpbusiness.com.

For a snapshot of all of Orange County’s cities, please visit OrangeCountyResource Guide.com

Orange County Advertiser is pleased to offer this selection brought to you by Capstone studios, Inc.

Capstone Studios Inc. is a small marketing and design agency in Irvine, CA. They work hard so you can rest easy; knowing your goals are understood and followed through using data-backed strategies for brilliant, award-winning results.

As kids, we all had some favorite bedtime story. Maybe these stories were told while camping in the backyard, at elementary school during recess, or in our cute child-sized beds. But we all remember one.

Source: ClickZ, 5 Ways to Integrate Stories Into Your Social Media Marketing, Aug 2010

Jo-Anne Redwood, Principal
jar@capstonestudios.com

Capstone Studios, Inc.
1 Technology
One Technology Business Center
Building Letter i, Suite #801
Irvine, CA 92618
www.capstonestudios.com

Today, Orange County Advertiser welcomes guest blogger, Adam Zepeda from the High Five Agency.

It’s safe to say that most businesses today have a website that lets their prospective customers come to for reference, general information, products, shopping, leisure and more. It’s also likely that from having a website for your business you’ve come across the phrase Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is the process of multiple jobs, the accumulation of ethical strategies that help to influence the outcome of search queries.

Having a website is great, but what good is a website that can’t be found. It may seem crazy to hear but not every site out there on the web is a blog or has content that is updated frequently. Many business websites are relatively static and only change when adding new product or a new service is being offered.

The problem with this kind of website is that Google begins to realize that you have not been updating pages or content thus making the realization and assumption that you may not care for your site or deem it as important as other websites being updated regularly for similar keywords. The websites that get updated regularly tend to be blog sites leaving your static business website to drown in search from opinion lead blog sites.

So how do you get your website updates indexed in Google quickly? Google Reader is a great way to get your website crawled by Google more frequently by simply including a feed url from your static website into the subscription box. This subscription requires Google to return to your site in search of updates. How often should you expect Google to come back to your site? If using Google Reader, your site will generally be visited every 24 hours by Google, in some cases more.

It’s important to know that Google Reader should not be a single determining factor in your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy but more of a means to assist your SEO and draw in some potential movement to help achieve a better ranking in the Google search.

Adam Zepeda
http://theh5agency.com

This is third in a series on how businesses can utilize facebook for marketing/advertising. We began by looking at facebook pages. Then we moved on to looking at groups. Finally today, we look at a comparision between pages and groups

The Similarities:

Both groups and pages offer the ability to create discussions as well the ability to post photos, videos. Both have walls on which to post. Both allow you to create events. Both require you to manually remove posts as an administrator if something does not meet your standards or purpose for the page. Messaging members is available on both.

The Differences:

Groups :
Can send messages to member’s inbox inviting them to events or alerting them to something of importance

Easier to send mass invitations to join.

Facebook Pages:

Visitor statistics (insights) – free, regular, detailed updates on the growth of the page are provided.

Fan pages are visible to unregistered people and are thus indexed, but to interact with the page, the user must be a Facebook member.

Allows the addition of extra applications – to view available applications, visit http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/apps/directory.php

Actions are documented – If a fan of your page takes action on it, such as writing on your wall or posting a video, their actions will be documented on the news feeds of their personal pages. Their friends will see the news feeds and if curious, check out your page – giving you more exposure

Offer vanity URLs

Facebook Page or Group?

So which is better to promote your business, group or page? Generally speaking, pages are better especially if you want to interact with your fans/customers without having them connected to your personal profile. But the common denominator for both groups and pages, is the need to update regularly, keep your audience engaged and offer something of value.

For more on how to utilize social media, click HERE.

Lately, the most popular question is, “Are you on Facebook?” Mark Zuckerberg, Founder of Facebook, launched his networking site as a means to connect with friends at Harvard. Little did he know the incredibly popular Facebook would reach nearly 200 million users, with a million new members joining each week in the U.S. alone. So it should come as no surprise that the ability to use Facebook as a business tool wouldn’t be far behind its application to stay in touch with friends.

Are you ready to utilize Facebook as a way to establish a presence for your business, product, or brand? Start by establishing a Fan Page or Group . This week, let’s look at fan pages.

Getting Started:

Name your Page – be sure to choose a name your customers will recognize.

Upload photos – A logo or storefront works well. This helps your page to be easily recognizable as the business or product you are featuring. Make sure the image is still clear when reduced to thumbnail size.

Add basic information to the group or fan page such as links to company site, newsletter subscription information and newsletter archives. Then go back and add more detailed information such as brand or product information, photos of your products and helpful links.

Make the content engaging: Post upcoming events including webinars, conferences and other programs where you or someone from your company will be present. Add helpful information and answers to questions on a regular basis.

Once created, use the “suggest to friends” button to begin to build your fan base. More fans increase interactions and more interactions increase News Feed. Facebook will accelerate the rate at which unknown entities become popular, and it will also fortify the position of those who are already recognized highly among users. All businesses and brands have the potential for exponential distribution if they can engage users.

Other helpful tidbits taken from Facebook Help Center for Fan Pages:
“Facebook allows page administrators to build merchandising, ticketing, and download applications, or to use those provided by 3rd party developers. On the canvas pages of these applications, they may choose to run paid 3rd party advertising pursuant to the Platform Terms of Service. The off-network website of any artist, business, or brand may be linked prominently on any Page, so traffic can be directed to an external monetizing site”

“Powerful reporting and insight tools are provided free to Page Administrators. On a cumulative and week-over-week basis, these granular reports will measure reach (e.g., impressions, clicks), viral impact (e.g., fan adds), responder insights (e.g., gender and age), and engagement (e.g., video plays and wall posts) of visitors to the Page. One advantage of using the applications designed by Facebook is the ability to receive these free, regular, detailed updates on the growth of the page.”

“Your Pages will be publicly viewable, so people searching for a particular artist or company on the Internet will find the Page’s Facebook presence and be able to view that Page’s photo and basic information. In order to view a Page in its entirety, become a fan of a Page, and engage with a Page, the individual must join Facebook.”

Fan pages offer you the chance to be creative and show your personality. Best of all, they are an incredibly effective way to do viral marketing.

To create a fan page, go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

For more on how to utilize social media, click HERE.

Next week, we will look at Facebook Groups and how to use them for business purposes.

Welcome Express welcomes Guest Blogger, Mitch Devine.
Mitch creates marketing messages for businesses of all shapes and sizes. Some of his main categories of experience include automotive, fast food, health care, insurance, real estate, technology and utilities.
Mitch writes words to fit innumerable commercial media formats including Web sites, email, print, collateral, radio (including voice-overs), TV, interactive multimedia, direct mail, outdoor, and point of purchase. Everything from gas pump videos to bar coasters.

If you’ve got something to sell, Mitch can help you say it well. (Rhyming optional.)

Your brand name is usually the first impression customers will have.

Names carry a lot of connotations for various reasons, mostly because of the actions of previous people who had those same names. Notice how not many people name their kids Judas, Ahab or Adolph anymore.

When you hear the name Medusa, what comes to mind first?

Chances are, if you’re familiar with the Medusa of Greek mythology, you don’t think of beautiful hair. More likely, you think of snakes for hair. That’s why it was odd to see a hair salon named Medusa while driving around the other day.

According to myth, Medusa was a monster, one of three sister-creatures called Gorgons, who lived on a remote island. Medusa had snakes for hair and was so hideous that anyone who looked directly at her would literally turn to stone. Ovid’s version of the tale says she was a beautiful maiden until she offended the goddess Athena, who transformed her into the monster. Either way, she’s known as the ugliest thing in all of mythology. (But now fugly is the new pretty, so maybe the name makes sense for a salon.)

Medusa was beheaded by the Greek hero Perseus, who looked at the Gorgon’s reflection in his shield to avoid being turned to stone. Perseus then used the head as a weapon before giving it to the goddess Athena, who affixed it to her shield.

So why name a hair salon after Medusa?

Granted, I’m not exactly the target audience for the hair extensions or coloring offered by Medusa, so I called the salon to find out. Unfortunately, the person who answered didn’t really know. She thought it had something to do with being near the sea. (I learned Greek mythology in fourth grade; evidently it’s no longer part of public school curriculum.)

This Medusa Salon in Huntington Beach isn’t part of a chain or franchise, but it’s not the only hair salon using the name. There are quite a few other Medusa hair salons scattered around the country. This is not meant to knock any of them. I’m sure they’re all quite capable stylists who do beautiful work.

How to get a head in business.

Just speculating here, but maybe the rationale is that you come in with unruly snake-like hair that gets tamed by the time you leave. (As long as you don’t leave without your head.)

I suppose it’s only an odd name for a beauty salon if you’re a big Greek mythology buff or Clash of the Titans nerd like me who knows the backstory.

Obviously, first impressions are important. But in the case of the Medusa Salon, playing against type by using a memorable name can also help you stand apart.

Ultimately, the name and image of your brand comes from more than just history or past associations. It’s built gradually over time through the cumulative results of your interactions with customers.

By the way, Nike was also a Greek goddess, the personification of victory, but that connotation is no longer as well-known as the footwear/apparel company.

What’s your take?

Take a look at Mitch’s other fascinating posts at http://lovehateadvertising.wordpress.com/

We recently saw an intriguing question on Google Answers

“How many advertising messages (from all media sources) is the average American exposed to on a daily basis?”

Here are some of the answers received:

“The average American is exposed to 247 commercial messages each day.”
Consumer Reports Website- http://bit.ly/bReYw4

“If you’re like most consumers, you have been the target of intrusive marketing and a constant barrage of irrelevant advertising messages. The average American sees over 3,000 advertising messages a day. If you fill out a warranty card, get divorced, buy a home, get listed in a school directory, enter a sweepstakes, purchase an item from a catalog, file an insurance claim, or perform a myriad of other everyday activities, some company somewhere makes a record of this fact and sells it to marketers for profit.”
Superprofile Website http://bit.ly/akfKeL

Wow! The average American sees over 3,000 advertising messages a day?? Maybe not…

“This statistic is only used for “hype” purposes, usually to portray advertising as some kind of social evil. When considering these silly numbers, it is best to stop and think: a person is usually only awake for about 1000 minutes per day. If they did nothing else but look at or listen to advertising, it would take every minute of the day to generate 3,000 exposures. A number around 500 might be a reasonable extreme, again counting as exposure all the out-of-home media passed, and small space ads in newspapers and magazines, even thought there may be no notice taken at all.”

The Guru tends to go along with one of the best accepted estimates, that there are about 245 ad exposures daily, 108 from TV, 34 radio and 112 print. The higher estimates probably include all marketing exposure including being in the vicinity of product labels or actual products with trademarks visible, such as your car, computer, fax, phone, shirt, pencil, paper towel in the bathroom, etc. Just think, if we were really exposed to 3000 advertising messages per day, at an average of just 10 seconds apiece (accounting for radio :60′s and brief exposure to billboards), these exposures would consume 8.33 hours out of our 16 waking hours per day.” The Advertising Media Inter-Center Website http://bit.ly/bjYbJP

But regardless of whether the number is 245 or 3,000, it is clear that today’s businesses are competing for consumer attention. Let Welcome Express help. We can ensure that your message reaches out to 32,000 newcomers and pre-move south Orange County families. Your ad will appear in 4 different and highly visible areas including the home page of the Orange County Resource Guide.com and Home at Last magazine, Newcomer Directory and Relocation Guide. If you are looking for reasonably priced dynamic online and in print advertising, then look to www.OrangeCountyResourceGuide.com/TMD.html

Cinda Baxter writes in her blog, “always upward: blog” about the power of “supporting local business in small, easily consumable bites” by keeping our money local. In other words, with more businesses losing their leases every day, we can make a big difference by making a small change in our shopping habits.

We all shop. It’s a part of daily life and there is power in your shopping habits. Instead of going into neighboring cities, or even counties let’s choose to patronize those businesses in our own community.

Why?

•Keep money in our community: Significantly more money re-circulates locally when purchases are made at locally owned, rather than nationally owned businesses.
•Buy what you want, not what someone wants you to buy. Community businesses are going to stock their stores based upon the needs of their community. Let them know what you want and they will have the motivation to please their neighbors.
•Put your taxes to good use
•Support community groups – Our local businesses are the ones who sponsor our youth sports teams and donate to our auctions.
•Create more good jobs – there are city mottos based upon the theme of live, work, and play in the same city in which you live. Not having a commute is definitely a “plus”

This list is by no means exhaustive. What other reasons can you think of?

Now on the flip side of this concept, how can you, the Orange County Business Owner reach the patrons in your neighborhood. Welcome Express is “home plate” for new residents who are ready to touch base with their current surroundings. In addition to welcoming newcomers with a package of valuable welcome gifts from local businesses, we provide an online directory containing tools and resources – a mini yellow pages for newcomers. Take a look!

Orange County Business Owners, have you received your Census questionnaire yet? It shouldn’t be long now until you can take part in this historic event and be counted. Make your voice heard!

The U.S. Constitution requires a national census every 10 years and has been conducted each decade since 1790. It includes everyone living in the United States, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. All people, all ages, races, ethnic groups, citizens and non-citizens participate. Hundreds of thousands of temporary jobs are created across the nation.

Now, as a business owner, how does the census affect you? The data obtained by the census guides local decision makers such as your city council. It enables them to make sound decisions as to where to build new roads, hospitals, schools, etc. Robert M. Groves, Director of the United States Census Bureau, states, “Just like we can’t survive without roads and bridges, the country doesn’t function well without an updated Census to distribute funds to areas that most need them and to support community decisions about their own future.” Businesses can use census data to locate supermarkets, shopping centers, new housing, and other neighborhood services. Knowing your community will assist you in making sound decisions on how to meet the needs of your customers.

So when you receive your questionnaire, take the time to complete it in a timely fashion. Don’t worry about sharing personal information as the Census Bureau ensures that they don’t release or share information that identifies individual respondents or their households. And while important at the local level or for the local business owner, the census data also determines how many seats each state will have in the U.S. House of Representatives. For more information on the U.S. Census, visit www.census.gov/2010census

7th Annual Orange County Chamber ‘Mega’ Business Expo/Mixer Event Set For March 24, 2010 at OC Fair & Event Center

Networking Event Of The Season – Orange County’s Largest Mixer® VII Unites Local Businesses, City Chambers, Business Groups

Considered by many as the most heralded business mixer/expo of the year, Orange County’s Largest Mixer® VII returns to Orange County to set the standard for all other networking events to follow.

“Now in its 7th successful year, the Mixer has grown to represent a powerful meeting of Orange County area chambers of commerce and local businesses representing hundreds of industries and companies in Southern California,” said Dave Linden, producer of Orange County’s Largest Mixer®. “Each year, as the event grows, I take the most pleasure out of the fact that we have created a forum for chambers and members of the business community to come together for a productive evening of meeting new contacts – that’s where I conceived these events to be and I think we have succeeded.”

Scheduled for Wednesday, March 24, 2010 from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., the event will be held at the OC Fair & Event Center, 88 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa, CA 92626. A $20 admission fee gives attendees the opportunity to view more than 300 exhibitors and network with thousands of local “influentials” on the cutting edge of Orange County’s business elite. In total, the 2009 event drew more than 3000 participants. Designed to be part expo and part business social event, Orange County’s Largest Mixer® accomplishes both by providing an “open feel” on the exhibitor floor along with conversational areas for casual one-on-one discussions with existing contacts or building new relationships.

“I have attended Orange County’s Largest Mixer® since the beginning and each year I gain new prospects for membership, as well as new friends in the business community,” commented Linda Martin, Vice President of Membership for the Huntington Beach Chamber of Commerce. “Also, above the social aspect, this event has put me in contact with other local chamber executives, and for that fact alone, the event is invaluable.”

For a complete list of exhibitors and sponsors, please visit http://www.ocmixer.com or call 949-338-8338 for further information.