I sent a friend an email about his business. I thought I'd share the contents, since it applies to virtually any business with a door, hours, a phone, or a retail storefront. If you own a business, you neglect the internet at your peril. Your competitors are online, or will be as soon as someone convinces them to do so. Your customers are definitely online. Most people are! And, many of us use smart phones.

Google Places has many features you should understand and utilize. Presently, Google accounts for most non social media search results and contributes substantially to organic traffic. Registering your business with Google Places is free.

Google Places has changed a bit, and any retailer should take note. In the example screen captures, I search for restaurants in my home town by searching "restaurants cullman, al." Then I search for a specific BBQ restaurant I like in town by searching for "johnny's bbq cullman, al."

Google has a business listing feature, any local enterprise should use immediately. It shows up when folks search for a business name or keyword associated (strongly) with your business. You can list your business at Google using their online listing feature.

Google services provide several social media destinations, like Picasa, Google Reader, Orkut, YouTube and services like Blogger, Gmail and Google Docs. Many people find themselves stuck with an old primary email address associated with Google or perhaps several accounts assocaited with several email addresses wanting to funnel these services into one single account. Google does not make this easy.

You can not simply conflate your accounts. You can, however, change the associated email addresses and delete duplicate accounts.