AMERICAN FORK, Utah – March 14, 2012 – OrangeSoda Inc. today announced the release of Blend, a new advertising product for local businesses. Blend is a mix of SEO (search engine optimization), PPC (pay-per-click advertising), Maps Optimization, dedicated account support, a first-page guarantee, and a mobile-friendly website starting at $475/mo.

“We took a mix of all the things that make online marketing great and put them in one place,” said Todd Crofts, VP of Product and Marketing for OrangeSoda. “We made a mix of advertising products that do more when combined than they ever could have done by themselves.”

OrangeSoda’s simplified product comes after five years of serving small- and medium-sized businesses with online marketing services including SEO (search engine optimization), PPC (pay-per-click), Maps Optimization and their branded mobile-friendly websites called Microsites. “We believe that businesses want online marketing to be simple, and that’s what we’ve made it. We’ve created the simplest way for businesses to get online and start marketing themselves,” said Mark Delorey, Director of Research and Development. “Blend takes the guesswork out of online marketing. It gives business owners access to an industry expert who will take care of the marketing and help business owners strategize about how to best find more customers. It’s a full-service solution.”

Unlike most online advertising services and Yellow Pages advertising, Blend is focused not only on placement but on promising and producing meaningful results. “Blend has been engineered from the ground up with one question in mind: How do we deliver more new customers to our advertisers? Blend is the answer to that question,” said Delorey.

About OrangeSoda
Founded in 2006, OrangeSoda offers online marketing to local businesses with a unique blend of intelligent service and simple technology. By harmonizing services that cover the entire search engine results page, OrangeSoda provides the best return on investment. By using insider knowledge of how people use the Internet and how local businesses work, OrangeSoda always targets the right customers for clients. By integrating services and technology, OrangeSoda makes it easy for partners to provide Internet marketing services to their customers.

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What Is “Panda”?

Panda is software used by Google to help filter out content that may lack significant substance. It is called the Panda “update” because the filter only runs periodically. Each time it runs, all content Google knows about is resifted. Improved content escapes the filter; poor content gets caught again.

Benefits to the Panda Update

The Panda Update helps to improve the user experience by displaying content in the search results that is most relevant to each search made by the user. This gives the user exactly what they are looking for on their first search.

What changes have been made to search and what is included in Panda 3.3?

You can read the full official release from Google here. Here are a few highlights from Google’s blog post:

• Panda update: This launch refreshes data in the Panda system, making it more accurate and more sensitive to recent changes on the web.
• Link evaluation: We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean, and understandable.
• Improvements to ranking for local search results: [launch codename “Venice”] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.
• Improved local results: We launched a new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably. Now we’re better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.
• Data refresh for related searches signal: [launch codename “Chicago,” project codename “Related Search”] One of the many signals we look at to generate the “Searches related to” section is the queries users type in succession. If users very often search for [apple] right after [banana], that’s a sign the two might be related. This update refreshes the model we use to generate these refinements, leading to more relevant queries to try.
• Improvements to freshness: [launch codename “iotfreshweb,” project codename “Freshness”] We’ve applied new signals which help us surface fresh content in our results even more quickly than before.
• Improvements to English spell correction: [launch codename “Kamehameha”] This change improves spelling correction quality in English, especially for rare queries, by making one of our scoring functions more accurate.

How will OrangeSoda clients potentially be affected?

As with all Panda Updates we will see a fluctuation in some rankings. Most of these rankings will be on a national level. We will also see some change with our local, geo-targeted campaigns as well, but according to this Panda release the positive changes should outweigh the negative when it comes to local searches.

What are we doing/will we do to mitigate and respond to the effect the update can have on our clients?

• OrangeSoda has always used a great linking strategy that is in line with the Panda Updates.
• Each account manager will continue to monitor their clients (especially the national campaigns) to be proactive on any negative rank changes.
• Clients should be aware of the two things that can help their on-page SEO:
  • Correct spelling and grammar are crucial. Google is getting smarter and knows if content is quality or not.
  • Fresh content is a key ingredient to on site SEO. If the clients do not have a blog section on their website, they should create one that is kept up to date. Google loves fresh content. Websites that continue to provide solid content will not be negatively affected by these updates.
• OrangeSoda subscribes to the theory of “Themed Keywords.” These are keywords that are very similar to each other all working in one campaign. This helps to build the authority around that specific topic and will continue to be a good strategy through future Panda Updates.

What is a QR Code?

QR codes (Quick Response codes) are like traditional barcodes, but on steroids. Traditional barcodes can only hold about 10–20 characters and information is read by a scanner in a linear, vertical format.

QR codes, on the other hand, store information like a traditional barcode in a vertical format, but also add information that is stored and read horizontally. This 2nd dimension is called a 2D matrix bar code. Because information is now stored horizontally and vertically, it gives QR codes the capability to store a larger number of characters than traditional bar codes: 4, 296 alphanumeric or 7,089 numeric characters, to be exact.[i]

Any information that is stored on the 2D matrix appears as a square filled with black and white square dots.[ii] For the most part, to take advantage of QR codes, you have to download an app that reads the code, unless your phone comes with one. Some interesting statistics about QR codes are 52 percent of people have heard of or seen QR codes, and 28 percent have actually scanned them. iPhone customers  lead the other OS platforms, Android and Blackberry, in actually scanning QR codes, with iPhone users at 68 percent, Android at  26 percent and Blackberry at only 4 percent[iii]. Some of the major brands that have incorporated QR codes in their advertisements include Google, Audi, Ford, Pepsi, Starbucks, Ralph Lauren, McDonald’s, Best Buy, Dryers, Crest, Redbox and Taco Bell.

Starbucks is already using QR codes

Starbucks has already started to utilize QR codes in an interesting way. In March 2010, Starbucks introduced their Starbucks Card Mobile iPhone app. Greg Kumparak of MobileCrunch explains how it works: “The entire concept is pretty simple: punch in your Starbucks Card info, verify some details, and BAM! The iPhone app becomes the gift card, presenting a secure QR code for the Barista to scan when it comes time to pay up.”[iv] There are many things QR codes have been used for including, branding campaigns, art work, T-shirts, coupons, and other creating things companies have come up with.

One interesting thing that Google started doing with QR codes in 2009 was something they incorporated in a campaign called Favorite Places on Google. Google blogged a question which read, “What if you could decide where to shop, eat or hang out, with a little help from local Google users?” To answer this question they sent over 100,000 window decals to local businesses in the U.S. (which included OrangeSoda.com). These local businesses had been heavily searched on Google and/or Google Maps.  The window decals indicated that the certain location was one of the Favorite Places on Google. The decal included a QR code that could be scanned. These QR codes took the scanner to the business’s place page, reviews, coupons, and enabled the scanner to “star” the business as a place they want to remember in the future.[v] A great info graphic that explains a little of the history of QR codes can be found here.

Generating your own QR codes

There are lots of free tools to generate your own QR codes, goo.gl is a pretty good one because it works as a url shortner at the same time and will track statistics, like how often a QR code is scanned. We take away a few points because the QR code interface is a little unruly =, while goo.gl creates creates QR codes automatically it can be a pain to try to get them the right size. So we recommend using goo.gl or another url shortner in conjunction with a QR code generator like this one. This way you can get nice, usable QR codes, with tracking.

Happy scanning!

[i] http://socialwayne.com/2011/03/05/infographic-qrcodes-statistics/

[ii] http://mobithinking.com/mobile-barcode-guide

[iii] http://mashable.com/2011/03/04/qr-codes-infographic/

[iv] http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/03/30/starbucks-now-letting-you-pay-for-your-coffee-fix-via-iphone-in-1000-target-stores/

[v] http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/explore-whole-new-way-to-window-shop.html

Think of a cork board that has notes, products you want to buy, or inspiration. This is the online version. People post pictures or video of things they love (called pins). Other people can follow them and add them to virtual pinboards (pinning).

The genius of Pinterest is that you can click on a pin and follow it to the source – including your web site or blog post.

Pinterest is one of the fastest growing web sites in the world with over 7 million visits a month.  According to research Pinterest is sending more traffic than Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn combined.

The majority of people on Pinterest are women between the ages of 25 and 44. These are the perfect demographic to reach. Women tend to be “social extroverts” who like to talk about brands online. Together they represent incredible buying power (many are moms who make buying decision for their families).  They have special enthusiasm for arts, recipes and crafts.

Pinterest is simple to figure out and can get you from the home page. It’s addicting. Because of this Pinterest is reaching a new demographic of people who may not spend much time on social networking web sites. Even your mom who can’t figure out how to use Facebook is on Pinterest.

Unlike a lot of social networks, Pinterest doesn’t require a lot of extra time or the upkeep of say, your Facebook page.

How can a small business profit from Pinterest? 3 Ways: traffic, branding and business.

1. Add your products to the site.

There is a section called “gifts” http://pinterest.com/gifts/ where you can add a price with a picture and link to your buy page for that product. Be aware that if you have an affiliate program, Pinterest may become an affiliate and therefore keep a cut of the sales they send you.

2. Start pin boards of things your audience will resonate with.

General Electric posts images of their present (machinery), past (historic photographs) and future (including new technologies). Online clothing company ModCloth pins fabric and dress ideas for their audience to give feedback on.

3. Ask your audience to participate.

Create a board with fun pictures of your staff. If you host an event, you can have participants (or speakers) send in pictures of themselves and links to their other social networking profiles. You can also host contests where people create a board and pin things they want. The winner wins a gift certificate or everything on their board.

4. Get content from your other social networks.

The best pins are funny, creative/unique, informative or gorgeous. Many times your fans on Facebook are already sharing pictures or video of themselves interacting with your business or products. Some of them may be perfect for pinning on Pinterest. Twitpics on Twitter could also be repinned. it can also be the other way around. You can also use content found on Pinterest on your blog, Facebook or Twitter profile.

5. Pimp (or pin) your own content.

While blantant self-promotion is discouraged, there’s nothing against starting a board featuring your own top blog posts, infographics or other content. If you have media mention, pin those in a newsroom board.

Here at OrangeSoda we walk our talk. We drank the Kool Aid (or soda). Follow OrangeSoda on Pinterest. And watch for my new book about Pinterest for business coming this Spring.

Is Pinterest is helping your business? Tell us about it in the comments.

“We’re getting 50 leads per month,” Drugmand says. “They’re solid leads. We’re finding that we’re able to close on these website- generated leads, probably on 75 [percent] to 80 percent of them, vs. 50 percent on a Yellow Page-generated lead. They’re definitely more qualified leads. So the 50 leads that we’re getting per month currently [are higher quality opposed to the pre-SEM] four or five a month.”

This case study is living proof that the landscape of the internet is changing. No longer are businesses who only sell physical products benefiting from the efforts of online marketing. Service based businesses are also experiencing the positive influence SEO has on generating high quality leads. For the full case study check out Target Marketing magazine.

[vimeo clip_id=17689870 title=1& byline=0& portrait=0 width=601 height=338]

Happy holidays, everyone.

Example #1—United Airlines and the viral YouTube video.

Back in 2009, David Carroll created a music video on YouTube with his fellow band members detailing the story of his unsuccessful attempt to get compensated by United Airlines for his pricey guitar that was broken by baggage handlers. After nine months of failed attempts, Carroll turned to social media to tell everyone else about his story—and it definitely worked. Within the first day, his video “United Breaks Guitars” got more than 150,000 views and today it has more than 10 million views.

United Airlines contacted Carroll within the first day of the video’s release to try and make things right; however, it did little to dissipate the major PR crises caused by this video. United Airlines learned a lot from this situation, and other businesses can too. Go the extra mile to provide customers with the service they are asking for or they will find another way to get your attention—potentially involving millions of other people in the process. Whether they use YouTube, blogs, Facebook, or Twitter to blast the information, one way or another, it could end up producing more negative perceptions of your business than you would ever want. So don’t take the chance—doing the right thing in the first place is always a better move than trying to repair the damage after it’s too late.

Example #2 – Southwest Airlines and the Weight Loss Blogger

While Southwest Airlines responded much faster in this situation than United Airlines did in the previous example, it still shows how even one negative situation can be brought to the attention of millions of people with the use of social media. Popular weight loss blogger, Kenlie Tiggeman, was about to board a return flight on Southwest Airlines when gate agents caused a scene in front of dozens of people about their weight making them unfit to fly. When asked about specific weight policies, the airline employees couldn’t give a straight answer that would back up their claims. Just like any clever blogger would do, Tiggeman started recording the incident on her cell phone and subsequently wrote about the incident on her blog. Soon after, the story was picked up by the mainstream media and was spread through CNN, MSNBC, CBS News New York, and others. Southwest did provide her with free flight vouchers soon after the incident, however, the airline still did get a bad wrap for the way their employees acted towards their customers.

So what can we learn from these two examples? Don’t ever assume that ignoring customers or treating them with less than they expect will make the problem go away. As we can see from both of these situations, the problem escalated to something bigger than these Airline companies every though they would. However, if an incident happens to arise, act quickly to make amends. One way or another, frustrated customers will find a way to get the service they’re looking for. So instead of letting social media become your business’s worst enemy with viral news, use it as a proactive tool to keep your customers satisfied in the first place.

Make It Valuable

Don’t just write content for the sake of getting a link. Write content that people will want to share with others in their social circle because it provides valuable information of some sort.  Don’t hesitate to ask the opinions of friends or colleagues to get ideas about what readers would be interested in hearing about.

Make It Relevant

Even if you have created potentially valuable content, it won’t mean much if it’s not relevant to the target audience you’re writing to. Before you reach out to bloggers for guest posts, make sure your topics are interesting and relevant to what their readers want to see. Don’t reach out to just any blog just because a lot of people follow it—do some research about some of their most popular topics to see if it fits with what you want to write about.

Use Authority

If there’s one thing you want to avoid when creating content for guest posts, it’s discrediting yourself. Whether writing in first person or not, be sure that your content always carries an authoritative voice for the topic you’re writing about. Don’t give readers a reason to ignore what you are writing about right off the bat. Always choose a topic that you have a broad knowledge base in and are confident in writing about.

Utilizing guest blog posting as a link building strategy can take some time to develop. It may take longer than you think to reach out to and build relationships with bloggers that are willing to use your guest post. However, persistence typically pays off in this arena, and you could end up with several high-quality, useful links.

Don’t jump on the bandwagon just because everyone else is.

I’m not saying you should rule out social media all together. But what I am saying is that before you join every social media outlet available, you have to consider your target audience. Instead of spreading your efforts across 10 different social media sites, chose a small number you can really monitor well. You also want to consider if your key audience is more likely to use one form of social media than the other. Because every business is so different, there’s really no right or wrong answer to which sites you choose as long as it’s an informed decision.

Don’t leave your social media sites abandoned.

Results from social media don’t just come by setting up a profile. It takes time, strategy, and effort to create social media campaigns that really make a difference for your business. If you know you don’t have the time or capacity to keep up with your social media sites, either hire someone who can or rethink your strategy. Consider this: If someone follows your site’s Twitter button to your profile and sees that you have two followers and no recent posts, they won’t have a very good first impression of your business. Contrast that with if they were to see that you had several hundred followers and had already tweeted several times that day. Updated and current profiles show your viewers that you care about customer interaction. Don’t make the mistake of detracting from your business’s credibility by leaving your social media sites untouched.

Don’t forget that social media should be a conversation tool

Social media isn’t just about one-way communication. It’s about interacting with the people that like or follow your profile. Create content that encourages comments or feedback.  Make sure this interaction is mutually beneficial—give your viewers something in return for following you on social media. Whether it’s in the form of exclusive deals, promotions, or valuable content, your followers are more likely to share with their friends and followers if they find that content valuable themselves.

These are only a few tips that can help to jumpstart your social media presence. If you’re new to Social Media, don’t let it intimidate you. While any social media campaign takes time and effort to do well, the “return on engagement” will oftentimes turn out to be more beneficial to your business than you thought.

We’d like to point out some of the great people that made OrangeSoda what it is today. Our founders, Jay Bean, Chris Finken and Derek Miner have helped shape this place from day one. To all of the developers, SEO, and PPC professionals, sales people, and customer service that put in the extra efforts, worked late, and went the extra mile for customers, thank you.

Most of all we have to recognize our rockstar customers. Thank you so much for working with us—we are so excited about the future and how we can help each and every one of you have a successful business. You’ll find our Press Release after the break.

OrangeSoda Ranks in The Inc. 500 Business Awards

Online Marketing Company Recognized for Steady 4-year Growth

AMERICAN FORK, UTAH, August 23, 2011 — OrangeSoda, a leader in online marketing services for locally focused businesses, placed #360 in The Inc. 500 annual list of the fastest-growing private companies in the US.
In the past four years, OrangeSoda’s revenue has grown nearly 1000%. Jay Bean, CEO and founder of OrangeSoda, attributes the company’s growth to their personal approach to marketing. “Every one of our nearly 6,000 customers has an online marketing campaign built especially for their locality and business,” said Bean in an interview Wednesday. “I really believe that we make it easy for locally focused businesses to succeed online. All of our technology and service are centered on that idea. Our solutions for search, mobile, and social media are built specifically to drive new customers, not just traffic.”

OrangeSoda drives customers primarily by focusing on localizing marketing to a specific business. “98% of consumers search for information online but 93% of retail sales happen offline, in person1. We connect businesses with those consumers,” said Bean. “The online landscape is constantly changing and it’s just too much for most businesses to keep up with. We’re deeply honored to be in the Inc. 500 list, our team works hard to build unparalleled technology and service that keeps our clients ahead of the curve.”

The partner platform developed by OrangeSoda allows new and traditional media companies like news organizations, Yellow Page publishers, and small business aggregators to gain a competitive advantage by offering OrangeSoda’s online marketing products to their local business customers.

Jay Bean, CEO of OrangeSoda will be present at the 30th Annual Inc. 500|5000 Conference and Awards Ceremony to be held September 22–24, 2011 at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Washington, D.C. The Inc.500 | 5000 Conference and Awards Ceremony annual event produced by Inc. Magazine.

About The Inc. 500/5000 The Inc. 500 is an annual list of the 500 fastest-growing private companies in the U.S., introduced in 1982. The Inc. 5000 is an expansion of the Inc. 500, which ranks the country’s top 5000 fastest-growing, private companies and also features a special ranking of the top 10 percent of the list as the Inc. 500. The Inc. 5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth over a four-year period. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by the first week of the starting calendar year, and therefore able to show four full calendar years of sales. Additionally, they had to be U.S.-based, privately held, and independent—not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies—as of December 31 of the last year measured. Revenue in the initial year must have been at least $200,000, and revenue in the most recent year must have been at least $2 million. It was created in 1982 to celebrate the fastest growing private companies in America.

About OrangeSoda OrangeSoda, a leader in local online marketing solutions, has provided small business owners simple and cost effective solutions to connect with local consumers online since 2006. OrangeSoda helps companies succeed online by creating the right blend of search, mobile, social, and website solutions. OrangeSoda platform is used by thousands of SMBs directly and through select third party agencies and resellers including CityGrid Media, YPG, and Freedom Communications Inc. OrangeSoda is headquartered in American Fork, UT.

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1. http://www.orangesoda.com/blog/the-power-of-local-mobile-search-infographic/