Why is My Website Traffic Declining?

August 31, 2016

Possible Causes and How to Identify Them

You’re looking at your organic search traffic in Google Analytics and you don’t like what you see, there’s probably no need to panic. But you should take action. First, you need to determine what’s behind the website traffic drop.

Website and Analytics Changes

Have you added elements that Google frowns on?

These elements could be inbound links coming from dodgy sources, keyword stuffed copy, sneaky redirects, hidden text or links, duplicate content from other sites or content with little value. If your traffic loss coincides with a drop in your SERP (search engine results page) ranking, check your Manual Actions report to see if Google is penalizing you for violating its webmaster quality guidelines.

There may be an element you don’t even know about, including hacked content, user generated spam or other security problems. Check Google Webmaster Tools for security issues, fix them, and submit your site to Google for reconsideration.

Are new pages cannibalizing the old pages?

You might have added new pages with URLs that are too similar to those you’re already using. For example, you had a page called www.mybusiness.com/products/gizmo-fix, and now you’ve added a page called www.mybusiness.com/news/fix-my-gizmo. Those pages are competing with each other, not supporting each other. Result: they both receive lower SERP placement.

Rather than adding pages on the fly as the need or opportunity arises, you should have a pre-planned content strategy that prevents this confusion from happening.

Have you restructured the site or migrated it to a new domain?

This will cause a temporary decline in traffic as Google has to crawl and index all your pages over again from scratch. You don’t need to do anything to fix this, just wait a couple of weeks and see if traffic returns to normal. However, make sure you have the 301 redirect function in place for all the old URLs.

Is your content being indexed correctly?

There could be any number of reasons why Google isn’t indexing your pages.

You accidentally added a no-index tag to the wrong page or directory
You accidentally clicked “Remove URL” in Google Webmaster Tools
You set an incorrect preference for URLs parameters

To see if indexing is the issue, search Google for your page URLs. If they don’t show up on the SERP, they’re not indexed. You can also check your Google Webmaster Tools index status report for a decrease in the total number of indexed URLs for your site.

Is the loss a mirage caused by changing your website traffic analysis?

Have you recently adjusted your Google Analytics settings to exclude search engine bots and spiders from the traffic count? If so, you may still be getting the same number of human visitors, it just looks like less.

You can tell if visitors are bots, not real people, by their behavior while on site. When the page gets high traffic but very low time on the page and low conversion rate, you’ve probably got a bot.

Did you set it and forget it?

When was the last time you updated your website with new content? Google algorithms give preference to sites that regularly add fresh or updated text, images, videos, links and/or user comments. Stagnant sites are perceived as having less value to users, and ranked accordingly.

All the above factors could affect your website’s SEO (search engine optimization), which would prevent potential visitors from finding you. Once you’ve eliminated those possibilities, it’s time to look beyond your website for causes of the traffic slowdown.

Search Engine Changes

Are paid ads pushing your website further down the SERP?

You may have noticed recently that Google no longer has paid URL placements in a right hand sidebar. That’s because they’ve all been moved to either the top or bottom of the page. There can be as many as four of these paid placements above, and another four below, the organic (unpaid) results, which means that only the very top ranked websites are visible to searchers on page one. Less visibility = less traffic.

Has Google changed its SEO algorithms?

If your organic search traffic drops immediately followed by an update, it’s a good bet this is the problem. Recent updates have focused on two areas of concern: content and incoming links. Google is constantly raising its bar to reward quality and relevance, and push spammers out of the picture.

Although it means more work in the short term to get your website up to the new standards, it will benefit you in the long run by filtering out irrelevant results and allowing the quality traffic to find you more easily.

And finally, you must consider the possibility that your declining numbers are related to market conditions, not any specific actions that can be easily remedied.

Marketplace Changes

Are seasonal or economic conditions affecting traffic?

If your decline in traffic corresponds with a general decline in relevant searches, there may not be much you can do about it, except take comfort in the fact that your competitors are probably suffering as much as you are.

Another possibility is that you’re unfairly comparing current numbers to a previous period when traffic was inflated by a specific promotional campaign, busy season or other market factor such as an unusually hot summer if you sell air conditioners.

Is your target customer affected by your or others’ actions?

If you’ve begun going after a different demographic, chances are you’re alienating your existing pool of potential customers. For example, if you’re IKEA and you introduce high-priced designer furniture, you’ll drive away your budget-conscious customers. Check Google search data for your SERP position since the start of the decline. A stable ranking while traffic falls means you’re not losing visibility, your customers are losing interest.

New competition may be taking some traffic that would have come to you before. This is bad enough, but when your own resellers start outranking you, it’s adding insult to injury. The good news: reseller cannibalization will probably only affect website traffic, not your revenues.

B2C or B2B on Social Media? Think H2H

August 24, 2016

Even B2B Companies Benefit from Interacting Like Humans

Many business-to-business companies still think social media marketing is not terribly important for them. After all, they reason, their customers are corporate decision makers who don’t have much time or desire to hang out on Facebook.

So Why Should B2B Do Social Media Marketing?

The short answer is: because if you don’t, you’ll be left behind. For the past several years there’s been a strong trend towards utilizing social media marketing to build brand, connect with sales leads and recruit employees. The numbers don’t lie:

93% of B2B content marketing plans include social media
76% of B2B marketers say they’ll produce more content in 2016 than 2015
51% of B2B marketers will increase their content budget in the next 12 months

Source: Content Marketing Institute

How Should B2B Do Social Media?

The two most common mistakes B2B organizations make in their social media posts are: (1) being too promotional and (2) being too corporate. In the first, self-serving sales messaging turns off readers. In the second, a dehumanized corporate voice fails to make a connection with readers.

The current buzzword for social media marketing is H2H: human to human. Even in the arena of fact — not emotion — based purchase decisions, personal relationships can still make the difference in closing the deal. Social media is today’s golden opportunity to initiate and maintain those relationships, on a wider scale than was ever before possible.

Be an Educator

We’re not saying you should completely abandon your brand voice and engage in tactics that would only work on a consumer audience, such as cute pictures of the CEO’s pet. (Unless your company distributes pet products and is named after said pet; then it would be an engaging, humanizing, yet relevant post.)

One of the most effective ways to generate quality leads is to provide quality content that educates the reader and positions you as a thought leader in your industry. According to an International Data Group study, 89% of IT buyers prefer to receive educational (rather than promotional) content from their social media.

Use already existing resources or create new ones, such as product demonstration videos and white papers, to demonstrate your value as a business partner. An extreme example of educational B2B marketing content is American Express, which has created its own social media forum, OPEN, where small businesses can tap a huge knowledge bank and connect with the community.

Put On a Human Face

It’s all to easy for a corporate entity to be perceived as a heartless, soulless robot. A great way to counteract that is with photos of employees, either on the job or pursuing their own interests. Oracle did a memorable job of showcasing the company’s philanthropy through images of its caring, committed employees.

B2B marketing-Intel capitalized on a trend that had already gone viral, the #ILookLikeAnEngineer movement, to demonstrate the gender diversity of its corporate culture.

Make It a Two-Way Conversation

Thanks to the Internet, buyers have more opportunity to learn about you and your company before the first contact, through both your own content and reviews of you from other buyers. So responding quickly and consistently to both new business requests and comments from current/former customers is now critical.

Even General Electric, which receives tens of thousands of comments, makes an effort to develop engaging and informative discussions. The result has been a sizeable community of participants who see GE as a human brand.

Equally important to starting the conversation on social media is enabling prospects to take the next step. Make sure all your social media pages display a clear, functional path to your contact information.

Use Partner Amplification

If coming up with so much new content seems daunting, you can always share what your partners are posting. These partners could be your internal staff or businesses you work with on a regular basis. As an added bonus, they’ll return the favor on their own social media pages, thus expanding your reach into new pools of prospective customers.

Steps to Success

Now that we’ve given you a few reasons why you should be using social media marketing, and a few ways to develop effective content for B2B readers, let’s quickly go over the steps you’ll take to get your social media program up and running.

Determine your goals. Your B2B marketing priorities might be lead generation, sales conversions, brand awareness, website traffic or customer retention. These priorities will then guide your decisions on how, when and where to establish your social media presence.

Define your content strategy. The type(s) of content you choose to post on social media should be based on your goals. If you’re mission is brand building, your content will most often be thought leadership blogs. If you’re looking to develop a community of regular customers and visitors, you’ll feature more interactive discussions or problem solving posts.

Plan your tactics. Select the platforms that make sense for your business. The “big 8” are (in order of usage by B2B marketing): LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, SlideShare, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Google+. Plan which types of content will go on each platform (i.e. videos go on YouTube). And make a definite schedule for adding new content: every day, once a week, etc.

Commit the resources. Assuming that someone already on staff can implement your social media schedule whenever they have a few minutes to spare is a guaranteed fail. We bet it takes less than a month for that person to not have a few minutes; and once your consistency breaks down, you’ve lost serious ground.

Also, don’t assume that any junior employee who happens to have social media experience will know your brand’s voice and protect your company’s reputation online. That’s another reason why your social media strategy should be planned and written down for everyone involved to see.

Higher Education Reaches New Heights with Smarter Web Design

August 23, 2016

Higher education reaches the heights of web design.

The sole focus of HEP (Higher Education Publications) is to maintain the most current database of all the accredited schools, colleges and universities in the nation. That’s a tall order, especially when that database needs to list all current personnel, accreditations and major news stories for over 5,400 schools, 91,800 administrators and 22,600 accreditations. And it needs to be easily searchable, too. ACS web design to the rescue.

Used by hiring companies, marketers and journalists worldwide.

Essentially, anyone needing to inquire about an accredited school will be using this site. So will marketers wanting to push their goods to universities and journalists verifying information. HEP’s stellar reputation depends on their ability to main accurate records. So the web design needed to help people quickly find information on accredited institutions. HEP’s tagline is Authoritative, Timely, Accurate. It was our job to ensure that they could deliver on that brand promise.

Now about those web databases.

HEP’s current website contained a very robust database that efficiently organized information so that it could be pulled up in nanoseconds. They call it hedConnect. This database is the equivalent of the Higher Education Directory^® already published by HEP and contains all the same information. It is instantly searchable by subscribers and features 109 specific categories that allow users to drill down to exactly the information they need. Nothing else like it in the higher ed industry exists. Our job was to develop a front end website that would help promote this useful tool.

Getting subscribers.

To encourage visitors to subscribe to the database, we put the trial offer and subscription rates front and center, and highlighted the most popular package. This way no one has to dig around for information on how to access the database, and those familiar with the print directory can order and get right to searching.

All the news fit to post.

Another useful component of HEP’s website is the news section. This blog compiles news stories about accredited institutions from around the country. They are free to see without a subscription. And while they appear in date order, the news posts are searchable, offering a handy tool to journalists and others who want to read the latest stories on a particular school.

The web design doesn’t stop here.

We built the HEP site to be uber useful. In addition to the database, portal and news section, visitors can request quotes for data extracts, research accrediting bodies, view state education agencies and more. Our web design made the HEP the online resource for higher ed information.

How to Increase E-Commerce Sales with SEO

August 17, 2016

Enable Your Web Store Platform to Bring in the Business

So you bought an “SEO friendly” E-commerce platform and believe it’s all taken care of for you. Unfortunately, no. All this claim means is that they’ve made it easy for YOU to implement the SEO elements that will drive your website to the top of your prospective customers’ search engine results page. But if you don’t know how search engine criteria work, you could add all the elements and still get it all wrong.

1. Content: Sidestep the Pitfalls

Avoid duplicate content within your site.
When Google and other search engines detect the same descriptive copy on multiple pages, it rings their alarm bells, since this is a characteristic of junk sites. However, it’s also a characteristic of retailers who carry multiple SKUs of the same item. Obviously, you can’t write a different description for every size and color of a particular area rug. But you can enable other elements on the page, such as customer reviews or a sidebar of suggested products.

Avoid duplicate content from manufacturers.
Some E-commerce sites just post whatever they receive from their vendors. Since other stores, as well as the manufacturer itself, are doing the same thing, Google will perceive this as plagiarized content. If you don’t have time to rewrite everything, the next best solution is to write a unique lead-in sentence with a reason to buy: how this product solves a problem or satisfies an emotional need of the customer.

Avoid no content.
The wrong answer to tip #1 is to simply remove the descriptions from all except the category page. Both Google and your customers won’t like landing on a page that has little but a picture and tells them nothing useful.

2. Product: Maximize the Potential

Add or improve category pages.
This is the next place Google will look after the home page. Fill these pages with interesting, unique content and links to the product pages within the category. Even if you’re a niche business, think how you could subdivide your merchandise into categories. For example, if you sell engagement rings, they could be subdivided by style (traditional, contemporary), carat, price or setting metal; which would also benefit shoppers by filtering for products they’re most interested in.

Don’t take down or hide out-of-stock product pages.
Those pages are still beneficial to your SEO strategy. For customer convenience, add a message with the expected date the item will be back in stock, and offer suggestions for similar products they might like to buy instead. You may also want to consider taking back orders.

Optimize new products.
Popular products that have been around for a while are pretty much guaranteed to be found and indexed by search engines. Get the same fast results for a new item by introducing it on your home page, category page and on related product pages, all with links to the item’s product page.

Optimize product pictures and videos.
Use the highest quality photography you possibly can; this not only pays off in more sales, it also increases the likelihood that the image will be shared on social media websites such as Pinterest. Since Google likes to see inbound links, it’s also an SEO bonus. Also, make sure the image file name, alt text and caption are short and keyword oriented so that Google gives them the attention they deserve.

Suggest related products.
A sidebar of “you may be interested in” items on each product page can improve your SEO as well as drive additional sales. Just be sure that those suggestions really are relevant for the user (based on your meta data), in stock and properly linked to their own product pages.

3. Build: User-Friendly Equals SEO-Friendly

Streamline your link architecture.
Customers aren’t the only ones who love a user-friendly website: Google does too. They should be able to navigate easily up and down between category, subcategory and product pages. Include breadcrumbs on every page that help the user track back to higher levels.

Build for responsiveness.
Did you know that 40% of users will abandon a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load? And did you know that 4 out of 5 consumers use a smartphone to shop? Two excellent reasons why your e-commerce site must be (a) fast and (b) responsive to mobile device screens. If it’s not, an update is in order ASAP.

Make page URLs search friendly.
Giving Google a clue what the page is about can almost instantly boost your ranking. Keep it simple for maximum effectiveness, include your most important keyword, but don’t cram in multiple keywords (AKA keyword stuffing). A good, clear URL structure would look like this:

com
com/category/
com/category/product-name

SEO your internal site search.
Not all missed sales opportunities are caused by a low Google ranking. Take some time to optimize your own search engine. Use tools to see what keywords people are using to search within your site, and how often they’re finding what they looked for. If they misspell a word or use a variant phrase you haven’t ranked, do they get a “no results” response? Adjust your meta data until this never happens.

4. Users: Put Them to Work for You

Enable user generated content.
You already know that allowing customers to share their opinions is like having an unpaid sales force. But did you know it’s also great for SEO? Google prefers websites that are constantly adding fresh content. So why not let your community of users do that for you too?

Link your social media sites to product pages.
Additional proof of your value can be added through posts from Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. Building these inbound links is a smart SEO strategy as well.

Use your internal search data for external results.
Analyzing the behavior of site visitors can lead to insights on how you can improve your keyword performance with Google. This information might also give you ideas for featuring the most popular products and adding new ones.

5. Process: Stay Relevant

Accept that E-commerce SEO is never done.
This last one is not really a tip, but it’s perhaps the most important piece of advice we can give you. Just as your marketplace and competitors constantly evolve, so must your website’s SEO tactics to keep that results page placement right where you want it. Schedule periodic performance evaluations and use that information to plan and execute the necessary adjustments.

Child Care Aware of America

August 15, 2016

When web design has a greater purpose.

We love designing highly functioning and attractive websites for our breadth of clients. Occasionally though, an organization will ask us to help them better their online presence for the greater good— that’s what happened when Child Care Aware of America walked through our doors. This is an organization singularly dedicated to helping every family in America find and afford quality childcare. That’s a lofty goal. They were eager to extend their reach online and needed not one, but two websites:

A corporate site that conveyed the organization’s purpose and achievements.
A secondary site for a division that is funded by the Office of Child Care and offers more direct support.

Tight Deadline. Firm Budget. No Problem.

They needed web design done quickly, expertly and within their strict budgetary constraints —and these were not simple sites. They called for locator tools that pulled information from different databases across all 50 states as well as 508 compliancy. They also needed to be multi-lingual. We looked at their requirements and thought again about the greater good we would be doing. Taking on this project for Child Care Aware was truly a no brainer.

Website design when information is critical.

All websites convey information, some more visually than others. But for some sites, the information that needs to be made available to visitors is vast. Child Care Aware’s content was low on pictures and big on that killer of no-bouncing: words. Our web design needed to organize the content in a way that would be palatable to visitors—most of whom do not want to encounter pages of endless paragraphs. So we arranged the information accordingly. When you visit both usa.childcareaware.org and childcareaware.org, you’ll note that the text is peppered with pictures of smiling kids—who doesn’t love that? The images, along with the color scheme, make the site feel welcoming. Plus information is presented in digestible nuggets with links to more. When you glance at the navigation, you can easily see how robust and content heavy this site actually is. Conveying information in a manner that visitors won’t ignore is just good web design.

Nationwide resources at a click.

Because the mission of Child Care Aware is to provide families with quality childcare resources, the websites needed to feature locator tools that allowed visitors to pull up information for their individual state agencies. Families can search for local Child Care Resource and Referral agencies by state, zip code, county and specific address. Creating this seamless functionally was fairly difficult. But we prefer to do the hard work needed to make searching features easy for web browsers.

Website Design that accommodate everyone.

When working with federal and non-profit agencies, there are added steps to building a successful website. One of these is ensuring that the website design is 508 compliant. 508 compliancy refers to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that requires federal agencies to provide software and website accessibility to people with disabilities. These requirements include things like highlighted links and buttons that describe what they lead to rather than stating vague calls-to-action like learn more. After studying all the ins and outs, we are proud to announce that both of the childcare aware website designs are 508 compliant.

Multi-lingual sites for a multi-language audience.

Our clients translated the content for us (phew), but we were tasked with creating multi-lingual sites to expand access. The way these sites work is that the website pops up in the language the browser has been set to—a pretty neat feature. Visitors don’t have to rely on browser translators. The words come up magically in their own language.

The greater good feels good.

Now that both usa.childcareaware.org and childcareaware.org are both up and running, we are thrilled at how smoothly they function, and at the small role we’ve played in helping families across the country satisfy their childcare needs.

Restaurant Web Design that Really Sizzles

August 10, 2016

Restaurants have always relied heavily on word-of-mouth to keep a steady stream of hungry customers. In the digital age, word-of-mouth has suddenly become word-of-Internet, with the almighty Google churning up the most popular restaurants for people seeking a good meal. To gain popularity online, your website’s appearance needs to pique searchers’ interests. Smart restaurant web design is key to winning the search rankings game and convincing browsers try your place.

A lot of restaurants and franchises are required to run their website on a specific limiting CMS platform that only lets you do so much and don’t optimize very well for maximum organic traffic. It is a wise move to fully customize your website to maximize its performance in the market. Restaurants can utilize their websites for online orders, menu updates, weekly specials, and much more. Once you have the site live, work on local SEO to maximize “near me” visibility in which the search crawlers line up your name / address / phone number / URL across the entire web.

Key Ingredients for Restaurant Web Design.

At ACS Creative Services, we’ve had the pleasure of creating powerful Internet brands for many of Baltimore, Charleston and Washington D.C. local eateries. Two of these were even featured on Diners, Drive Ins and Dives—a huge boon for them. We’ve become particularly adept at restaurant website design geared toward the restaurant industry, and helping restaurant owners lure customers with an online presence that whets their appetites.

Below are a few insights into what makes restaurant website design successful.

1. Imagery can make or break your restaurant website design.

It cannot be stressed enough that high quality images of your signature dishes go a long way toward promoting your restaurant online. The premise here is simple: If the food looks good, people will want to try it. Take this website we created for Coyote Grille.

The steak is front and center by design—and it looks mighty tasty. It’s flanked by perfectly cooked shrimp and vibrant greens. The headline reinforces the idea that the food here is great. Then the location right below sends you grabbing for your keys and out to dinner. This site doesn’t rely heavily on images. In fact, there are only three—but they are three good ones. If you can’t afford a whole lot of professional food photography, then get one amazing shot of your best dish. A good web designer will know how to maximize that image. That’s essentially what we did for the Coyote Grille.

2. Your site should feel like your restaurant.

A hopping, casual diner should have a website with complementary colors and type. Likewise, the most romantic steakhouse in Washington DC requires a website that evokes the same ambiance. Take The Prime Rib’s site. The dramatic use of black and silver perfectly evokes the experience of sharing an exquisite filet mignon and rich cabernet with your loved one. Color is reserved for the food images only in order to highlight the excellent preparation of the dishes. Consumers who visit this site quickly understand the kind of restaurant it is—which is exactly what you want from your restaurant website.

3. Tout your accolades.

If Guy Fieri and Vice President Biden think your diner is the bomb, then that should be duly noted right on the homepage. We took of advantage of Metro 29’s notoriety by putting pictures of Vice President Biden and Guy Fieri up front and center—along with a series of food images that will make your mouth water. The Guy Fieri callout links to video from the episode—so you can hear all the great things Guy has to say about Metro 29. And because it is such a popular place, we added a news section that features a gallery of famous patrons. Consumers like to go where the famous go. Metro 29’s restaurant’s website lets everyone know it’s got the stamp of approval from some pretty hefty palates. Check it out here.

4. If you have a story, share it.

The owners of The Tortilla Café have been running successful businesses since 1983—as a family. Consumers love personal interest stories. They love to help family businesses. If this is part of your story as well, then your restaurant web design should reflect that. On The Tortilla café website, the tab for Our Story is second, and the blurb includes pictures of the owners. This creates an intimate portrait that brings readers into their lives—and into their restaurants. When you add a very appealing and vibrant design that maximizes the color yellow to hint at the cultural fare, you’ve hit a homerun. Throw in Guy Fieri (The Tortilla Café was also featured on his show) and you’ve got a grand slam.

5. Make your restaurant website easy to navigate.

This is true of all websites, but especially important for restaurants. People searching for a place to eat online want to understand what kind of restaurant your have, what you serve and where you are. These things should be immediately clear. Good restaurant website design is delicious images and great content, but it is also more than that. Great restaurant design should create a culinary journey that starts with your best dish and ends at your best table.

Transform your restaurant website design into a powerful, customer-luring tool. Make a reservation with ACS Creative Services.

Facebook Locations Features Boost SEO

August 3, 2016

To better help companies increase their social media exposure, Facebook Locations feature is designed specifically for businesses with multiple locations. These companies can link their individual store pages to the corporate Facebook page and, more significantly, feed content to all from the main page. Since in the game of Google rankings online content is king, Facebook’s Locations provides businesses with a savvy tool for efficiently proliferating content. Here are a few of the pros and cons.

Pro: One Facebook page to rule them all.

With Facebook Locations, each individual store Facebook page takes on the branding of the main corporate page. This means the main image and favicon remain the same across all the company’s pages. Any content posted to the main Facebook page is also fed to the individual store pages. So if corporate posts information about a company wide promotion, every store Facebook page will have the same information appear in its newsfeed. This saves each busy store owner much social media posting time.

Pro: Protect your brand.

Managing your company’s brand and presence across social media is a gargantuan task. Because individual Facebook pages get their branding from the corporate page, pages are consistent across Facebook. No need to worry about rogue logos and other content that violates brand standards. This is critical in a time when even a small social media faux pas can be very costly.

Pro: Individual store Facebook pages still retain likes.

However, Facebook understands that each location needs to promote itself among its local customers. So Facebook likes are exclusive to each individual page. Corporate might have 500 likes, store A might have 50, and store B might have 1000. Facebook likes are not aggregated. Each individual store has the opportunity to cultivate its own likes and post content relevant to its locale. Likewise, a negative comment on one location’s page will not show up on the corporate feed or on any of the other store’s Facebook feeds. This makes Facebook Locations a smart tool for both the corporate entity and individual location owners and managers.

Con: New store pages will have 0 initial likes.

Facebook Locations will link all your company Facebook pages. But if you have to add new ones, those locations will launch Facebook pages with 0 likes—which means the individual store owner will have to start garnering Likes ASAP. This can create extra work at the beginning. However, the long-term benefits of building an individual location’s presence on Facebook while receiving corporate content support far outweigh the initial investment in social media campaigning.

Pro: Facebook will set up Locations for you.

In fact, you can’t set it up yourself. You have to apply for the feature to be added to your Facebook account. And not just any account. To get started, you need a Facebook business account. From the Facebook business account settings, you contact Facebook Support. A friendly customer service rep will either live chat with you or call you back—whichever you prefer. Facebook will then email you links to templates you fill out with all your locations and relevant information. About a week later, your locations will be all set up. You’ll also have a Locations tab under your account settings from which you can easily add and delete locations. Once Locations is set up, you can manage it yourself—though customer support is always available when questions arise.

Dunkin is doing it.

Major corporations are trying out this new Facebook feature to control branding across multiple Facebook presences. Dunkin Donuts relies heavily on Facebook Locations to manage social content for its thousands of locations. Check out the corporate FB page and look for your local franchise. Note how the branding is controlled, but local managers can still infuse neighborhood driven content.
We put Facebook Locations into action, too.

At ACS Creative, we walk the SEO walk, implementing new tools for ourselves before suggesting them to our clients. So we contacted Facebook and asked them to set up Facebook Locations for ACS’s multiple offices in Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina. We can verify that this step was very easy and that the customer service reps at Facebook responded quickly. ACS is now implementing Facebook Locations.

You can visit and like our corporate page here.

Then visit and like and our locations in:

So far so good.

The pros outweigh the cons.

Though we had to create new Facebook pages for our individual locations and start at zero likes, each individual manager can now more effectively target their FB page to local clients while benefitting from a constant stream of content put out from our corporate office. It is too soon for us to gauge effectiveness, but we suspect that Facebook Locations will be a boon to many businesses.