Idea: Using Social for Local?

I was in Knoxville this week for a presentation to the local Association of Legal Administrators. I couldn’t help to think I’d see Bill Dance, TV fishing personality, walking around the University of Tennessee campus (just a few blocks away) with his signature hat. No such luck.

During the presentation, a number of questions arose about pay-per-click, how websites are optimized and what works best for client development. One of the things I recommended was to create local business profiles, on places like Google Local, Superpages, etc.

Unfortunately, we ran out of time, and didn’t get to my series of slides on social marketing. I had an idea I wanted to share: could you use social for local? Since all major search engines included social media elements for just about any given search, I thought there might be an angle lawyers and other professional service providers could take. I came up with the following rule and super simple plan:

Rule
Never alter your Name, Address or Phone number (NAP) from platform to platform. It’s hard enough to rank for popular phrases, why complicate things?

Plan

• Create local profiles on Google Local, Yahoo Local and Best of the Web. Be consistent with your NAP!
• Once you sign up on Twitter, occasionally tweet your NAP. And while you’re at it, make sure your Name, Address and Phone Number are listed clearly on all social media profile pages.
• Add your social media profiles as links on your local profiles. Couldn’t hurt.

What do you think? This three step plan is easy to implement, and should pay dividends down the road.

• Linda Glasgow, of Lewis King — thank you for the opportunity to speak!
• Marsha Wilson, the executive director of the Knoxville Bar Association
• Marc Upchurch, of Kramer Rayson, LLP
• David Kristy, an attorney with Butler, Vines & Babb, PLLC
• Randall Miller, Executive Director of Woolf, McClane
• Pam McMahan of Wimberly Lawson

Photo credit by robhoward.