The social media phenomenon has become a maze of sites wanting your profile and contact information. The good thing is that a business can eventually be found in dozens of ways on the internet. The bad part is that you are probably going to have all this information sold and re-sold, and email spam is only going to get worse. Our first bit of advice is to go to Google's Gmail or Yahoo, and get yourself an extra email to use on all these profiles. You want something that you can check every day...even 2-3 times a day. But you also want an email that handles spam easily and in volume.

Why Bother With Social Media?

As the question used to be "Why have a website?" now you wonder why it's important to participate in social marketing. There are several reasons:

Having your business listed on Google Maps/Businesses can actually be more effective than regular search rankings! When is that? It's when you are in the Local Business Results box that appears with many search phrases.

When you search for "plumbers Myrtle Beach, SC" in Google, this is what you see:

Note the businesses listed in the "Local" results at the top. These are businesses that have Google Local or Map pages. If you don't have one, you won't be on there. Getting in those top 7 results is not a certain science...but if you fill your page out in extra detail, include the right keywords, include photos, and GET REVIEWS from other people, you shuold be able to be there. Chances are, customers searching for your type of services will not look past those local results. So you can see how important it is to get your business listed on Google Maps! Here's our Myrtle Beach Web Design listing.

Yahoo has almost the exact same setup, called Yahoo Local. You'll find us listed here as for Web Design. Bing has a similar business listing section.

Other important pages to create a profile on are:
• Superpages.com
• YellowPages.com
• Insider Pages.com
• Merchant circle.com
• Manta.com