Chamber promotes good online presence

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In an ever-changing world, with new technological advances coming out nearly everyday, it’s important for businesses to be in the know on how to best promote their business.

Whether its an updated website, or how to get the most reviews, business owners need to know how to best market themselves, and that’s why the East Meadow Chamber of Commerce had Brian LeDonne from PS Digital LI, an internet marketing service, come down to speak to business owners at its monthly meeting on March 1.

“There are people out there that do know what’s available to them, but there are some that don’t,” James Skinner Jr., chamber president, said. “Especially with the older generation, back then it was word of mouth, that’s how you mostly got business, or the Yellow Pages, but it’s a lot different now.”

LeDonne dove right into his presentation and talked about the five critical elements that go into building a solid digital presence foundation. The importance of having a logo and creating brand awareness, claiming, optimizing, and managing your Google Business Profile, building a mobile-optimized, lead-generating website, using Google ads to stimulate growth within a business, and generating, and obtaining positive reviews, are the five main keys of having a good digital business footprint.

“It’s changing so frequently,” Skinner Jr., said. “If you don’t have somebody that’s on top of it, and know what’s changing and what’s upcoming like (LeDonne), then you’re going to get left behind.”

LeDonne started by searching the East Meadow Chamber of Commerce on Google to see what it looked like when it came up. From there, he searched up other East Meadow businesses to see what their Google profile looked like. A few businesses were top notch, while others admitted they theirs could be better.

East Meadow businesses Inspect-It 1st Property Inspections, the Krug Team at Century 21 American Homes, and A&C Pest Management for example, have stellar digital presences. Inspect-It 1st has five stars and more than 450 reviews, the Krug Team has five 5.0 stars and 41 Google reviews, and A&C Pest Management has 401 Google reviews, and 4.9 stars, which LeDonne said he thinks might be better than a 5.0.

“The reason why I always say this is because sometimes when you look at a bunch of reviews with a five star average, you’re like I don’t know something seems a little sketchy,” LeDonne said. “4.9, you guys bleed, you guys are real.”

What makes a good Google presence, he said, is having all of the prompts filled out including phone number, address, and website. Another important aspect is having reviews, and replying to them.

“You should do it amongst each other,” LeDonne said. “You could give your professional opinion and all of you know each other very will, so it’s a great starting point.”

Skinner Jr. said that it took A&C Pest Management a long time and a lot of work to get where it is now. “It’s not something that’s just going to happen overnight, that’s for sure,” he said. “You have to stay on top of it. There’s some companies that go ahead and they get reviews and they get a lot of bad reviews, and they don’t stay on top it, so that’s probably one of the key points.”

LeDonne told chamber members that if they wanted help getting control of their Google business that he would help them claim and verify their business, and mobile optimize it for them for free.