Now I have been eavesdropping around the office for a while now, and I’m a bit floored by what I heard the publisher tell a new bakery that called to advertise.

She told him to go set up a BubbleLife Connect account at www.bubblelife.com. You won’t believe what she said next. She told him that advertising doesn’t work until you set up the basic processes of marketing to get noticed by those you know, those you don’t know and by Google.

She said that by using BubbleLife Connect, he could write an article or announcement about his business and, with the click of a button, share it with Bubblelife readers, his personal Facebook account, his business Facebook, his Twitter account, his LinkedIn profile and his email list.

She explained to him that BubbleLife Connect gives him an online business listing—sort of like a mini website tucked under Bubblelife.com. She talked about some of the features and boy, was I getting overwhelmed. Here are the highlights:

• He only has to post once—with one password. Talk about a time saver!

• First, anything he posts—an article, announcement, promotion or calendar event—gets published to his directory page (think: business blog) so Google can find the posts and direct people to him.

• Secondly, he gets to pick where he wants to distribute (share) his news:

• BubbleLife—those he doesn’t know that are close to his business

• Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter—those he knows

• Email List—those he knows

She explained to him how to connect his social media from his BubbleLife Connect tools page (Settings>Setup>Link social and web accounts) and then told him to go ahead and set up reporting so he could monitor how well it was working (Settings>Setup>Setup social and web reports).

She even showed him how to import his emails in by looking on his tools page (Marketing>Email List>Import new members).

This guy was so happy that he could streamline his marketing that Saffie forgot to tell him about being able to schedule and automate his Facebook posts, tweets, LinkedIn posts and emails. She did remember to suggest that he get his customers to opt into SMS text coupons and showed him how to do that with BubbleLife Connect.  

Matt Cobb, who is the BubbleLife Connect guru, has been making training videos, and here is one that explains how to post an article to BubbleLife: How to Post a Story on BubbleLife

Saffie explained to the bakery guy that this would help him get some strong word-of-mouth marketing going because people could share his stuff. BubbleLife Connect is free and comes with 20 emails for email marketing. For $49 a month, you get 1,000 emails. If you need more, you can buy them for $10 per 1,000 emails.

As far as advertising, Saffie sent him to http://store.bubblelife.com and told him to look at the basic package that starts at $99 because he needs to consider advertising as branding to complement his content. Advertising is like placing billboards in the neighborhood, and he needs to do it consistently, so she told him to pick something he can afford instead of spending his whole advertising budget in a month.

After she got off the phone, she told the office peeps that traditional newspapers have failed local businesses by selling ads that don’t work and are too expensive for most businesses to do consistently. She says local businesses need a marketing process complemented with advertising that can be monitored for effectiveness. BubbleLIfe Connect can do that, even if they don’t buy BubbleLife advertising. It's local marketing tied up with a big red bow!

P.S. To check out some of the other spying shenanigans I've been up to in the BubbleLife office, click here.