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3 Critical Practices For Creating New Business On The Web

January 13, 2011 By

1) Publish Quality Content

Your website’s content is what connects your users to your products and services. While search engines use a huge array of complicated algorithms to rank websites and create meaningful, relevant connections with users, it’s important to remember that their focus is constant. Effectively connecting people with the content they’re looking for. The internet is a sweeping network of real people with real needs and priorities, and appealing to your customers – not using cheap tricks meant to play search engine’s algorithms – is the real path to success.

It’s vastly important that your content is as clear, concise and as readable as possible if you’re looking to grasp an audience long enough to inspire some interest and create sales. As a vendor, it’s your duty to provide products or services that people are willing to pay for, and to communicate effectively with those people about the benefits of your offerings. There are certainly steps that can be taken to ensure your website is properly ranked and parsed by the various search engines, but first and foremost you need clear content that pushes your selling points into the forefront of users’ minds.

Using direct, no nonsense language, selecting clear, easy to read fonts, and applying meaningful formatting that brings attention to important bits of information within your website are the basic tenets of publishing quality content.

2) Use the tools available to you:

While publishing quality content should definitely be your first priority, the SEO “tricks” like keyword counts, META tags, and inbound links are an important part of your overall visibility on the web.
Ensuring that your website reflects its content accurately to the automated “spiders” – programs which catalog web content – is a necessary part of gaining search engine ranking. Working with a results-oriented, straightforward SEO professional can help to bring your website to the surface of the internet, giving your potential customers a better chance of reading your content and making a purchasing decision.

It’s important to remember that while configuring your website to be cataloged properly with the web’s search engines is a critical step, it won’t help if your potential customers aren’t interested in your content. Using the tools available to you – keyword configuration, META tags, inbound links and the like – can be incredibly helpful, but you must first publish quality content.

3) Ask your customers for help:

Satisfied customers beget satisfied customers. Asking your happy customers to mention your services on their website or blog can help to push you to the forefront of the competition. Word of mouth works on the internet about the same that it works in real life – it’s simply one of the best ways to create new business. And truly satisfied customers are more willing to help promote your services than you might think.

Offering discounts on future purchases or other incentives is a great way to get your customers to lend you a hand. A simple “25% off for mentioning us on your blog!” can really work wonders.

Filed Under: SEO Blog, Small Business Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

5 Ways to Ensure Your Social Media Efforts Don’t Bomb

May 29, 2010 By

After signing up for all the popular social media sites, you set up your profile, make everything look just how you want it, and display all the right information. Days, weeks, and months go by, and that flood of traffic never shows up… what went wrong?? Is social media a spoof?

The answer to that question is no; however, it’ll be just as good as a “spoof” if all you do is sign up, set up your profile, pop-in every once in a while, and simply expect your web presence to be known. Social media can be an incredibly powerful force to drive traffic, clients, and customers to your business… but it takes work. The good news is, the “work” can often be enjoyable if you tackle it with the right mindset.

Below are five steps that, if followed on a regular basis and with a positive attitude, can shoot the results you get from your social media efforts through the roof.

1. Dedicate Some Time to Your Social Media Campaign

Social media is effective, but it really can’t be automated. You need to find a way to incorporate it into your schedule on a regular (preferably daily) basis. Once you grow a loyal following that’s large enough, you might be able to put a little less effort on your social media activities, but you’ll never be able to do nothing and get the results you want from it.

2. Don’t Forget About YOUR Audience

Whether it’s friends, connections, or followers (all depending on which social media channel you’re using), you need to focus a certain amount of your energy on those who have taken the first step and followed/friended you. Don’t just focus on getting more, more, and more all the time. Make a concerted effort to also focus on those who have already given you a chance.

If you never make an effort to communicate or be there for your real friends, how long will they remain your friend? Not very long I’m guessing. The same applies in social media. Remember, you’re dealing with real people. Don’t throw away your efforts by constantly trying to build upwards; take some time to build inwards every now and then.

3. Don’t Treat Them Like You Paid For Them

When you pay for advertising, depending on how much you’re spending and the market you’re targeting, you can have reasonable expectations as to what kind of results you’re going to get. However, social media is a different ball-park. You didn’t pay for those who followed you… they made that decision themselves, and they can withdraw it even easier.

If you can blast a paid ad to a market and get results from it, don’t expect your social media audience to respond the same way. People aren’t just numbers, and the sooner you realize that, the sooner you’ll get better results from your social media efforts. Treat your audience like you earned them… because you did.

4. Listen to Your Followers

Being active on social media doesn’t mean that you need to be the one always sending, posting, submitting, etc. in hopes that a certain percentage of your following responds to what you’re outputting. You also need to listen and be open to what others are outputting. Be genuinely interested in what others in your niche are saying and presenting.

If you can make your audience feel important, you’ll be easier to trust… which makes YOU more important. The best way to do that is to simply be receptive to what your audience is putting “out there” and respond to it accordingly.

5. Don’t Give Up

Almost everyone faces a point where they feel like they are in an upward battle to get any kind of return on their social media efforts. Your connections seem to be stagnant, and growth seems menial if not negative at times. Just keep at it and you’ll pull through! Normally during these stagnant times, if you take a moment to review your efforts you can usually identify what the problem is.

Perhaps you haven’t been dedicating as much time to it as you should. Or maybe you need to take some time to focus a little more inwards, or something else you’ve yet to identify. There’s always room for optimization, and sometimes that’s all it takes to get you over the hill.

The bottom line is, if you want results from your social media campaigns, you need to earn it by continuing to be active without expecting anything. Once you figure out your personal strategy, learn to incorporate it into some kind of schedule and follow the five things I described on a regular basis, you’ll quickly realize why there’s such a craze around social media: it works, as long as you do.

Filed Under: Featured, Social Media Blog Tagged With: , , , ,

Use Social Media as a Supplement, Not a Means to an End, You still need your website

May 29, 2010 By

So you’ve heard about the social media craze and are ready to focus some of your business resources on a new social media campaign before deciding to make the full-move online huh? Well, you may want to think twice if you plan on making social media the primary vehicle to bring your business online.

But why? Isn’t social media “the thing” nowadays? Well, in many ways, YES, but there still are some things you need to be aware of…

With social media sites such as Ning suddenly switching to a paid service, Utterz going out of business, and Facebook constantly having privacy issues, you can easily begin to see that social media should by no means be the backbone in which your online campaign is supported.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t take advantage of social media, because you should, but you need something besides social media channels if you want to successfully bring your business online.

Having One Central Location on the Web

There are dozens of social media channels you can use to promote your business online, and the number is growing, so which one do you focus on? The answer: whichever you want, as long as you point them all to one central location: your website.

As dreadful as that may sound, especially since a growing number of businesses are using social media as an excuse to NOT have a website, the first place you need to be is YOUR online home. Not Facebook’s, not Twitter’s… but yours, no exceptions. You need a home before you start renting office space. And that’s essentially what your website vs. your social media channels are. Your website is your business’ online home, and social media channels are merely rented space (albeit free rental space).

 

So the bottom line is, create a website before going the social media route, because that’s what people are going to be looking for once you make a positive impression/connection with them on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or any other social media website.

What to Include on Your Website

If your social media efforts are there to create connections, build trust, and show your potential client base WHO you are and what your business is about, then your website needs to provide straight-forward information on what your business can do for them.

As a bare minimum, your website needs to include the following items:

  • Professional design to give your visitors a good impression.
  • Friendly, informative introduction on your homepage.
  • Description of your services, and the BENEFITS of your services.
  • Contact information; as much as you can provide.

Of course, depending on the nature of your business, you may need more or less than that, but the above list should give you some general guidelines to follow.

Maximizing Your Social Media Efforts

First and foremost, explore the different social media options you have out there (the options are vast; Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, LinkedIn, the list goes on) and choose ONE. You need to get the hang of using social media to benefit your business before you expand into multiple channels.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a business homepage that has icons for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and a plethora of other services only to visit them and see that they aren’t even mildly active on a single one!

Don’t spread yourself too thin by signing up for every social media channel you can find. That’s not going to do you any good. What WILL benefit you is if you get the hang of ONE, build up your presence, your network, connections, and establish a good following of people who know and trust you. Then and ONLY then should you consider expanding to other social media channels.

This may seem counterintuitive, especially when you see everyone else putting themselves on every known social media site, but I guarantee your results will be much better than theirs. It’s MUCH better to have one strong machine working for you than to have a handful of smaller ones doing absolutely nothing but sitting there.

The days where you can merely sign up and be discovered on social media sites are long gone; you must be regularly active or your social media efforts will be wasted.

Funnel Into Your Website

Once you’ve found a social media channel you want to pursue, you need to set your profile up to funnel your interested prospects to your website. Your social profile should not be the end of their journey; your goal is to drive as many people as you can to your website FROM your profile pages.

The best way to do this is to make sure your main description encourages people to visit your website. You can even add a subscribe form to your profile’s sidebar (depending on what service you use) along with an incentive to generate email leads (which in-turn will drive even more people to your website).

Then, you just need to focus on being a genuine, helpful member of the community and naturally people who visit your profile and want to know more about what you have to offer will end up on your website. However, if you do NOT have a website, there are lots of other distractions that will keep people away from your business… even if they were interested in finding out more.

Social Moods and Mindsets

When people are browsing around Facebook (for example), they aren’t in the mood to pick up the phone and call about your service, because they aren’t on Facebook to FIND your business.

However, you CAN peak their interest by properly networking with them and funneling them to your website. And as a side benefit, your website also has the opportunity to be linked to from other websites, and even getting picked up by search engines which will result in even more traffic and potential clients for your business.

The bottom line is, if you want to take your business online, make your website it’s first stop above any social media channel and you won’t have to worry about what social network is going out of business next.

Filed Under: Social Media Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

YouTube Marketing Works

January 11, 2010 By

There are three reasons why a business might decide to use YouTube as part of their overall search engine optimization strategy:

  1. Popular YouTube videos appear at the top of Google search results pages alongside standard website listings so it’s quite easy to understand that if you have a popular video in YouTube, titled with your relevant keywords, then it could get you an extra spot in Google search results alongside your main website. The downside is that this traffic will go straight to YouTube so you have the job of ensuring that the video viewer knows your website address and decides to go and visit it for more information. In a way this isn’t an SEO benefit to your site, more a way of grabbing an extra position and keeping a competitor off of the search results.
  2. If you create several videos and your own keyword branded YouTube channel to house them all, then you can benefit from the placement of a back-link to your main website on your channel page. However, creating YouTube videos just for the benefit of an extra back link to help your search engine optimization probably isn’t a good use of your time and money unless you know you can create a fantastically popular video channel that everybody will link to – and boost the channel’s Google PageRank score.
  3. Google likes YouTube embedded videos in content – don’t ask me why this is, but Google seems to give web pages that hold embedded video content a higher position in the results. Bizarrely this means that you don’t need to create the video but simply embed useful videos that you find relevant to your audience into your website. Of the three reasons for using YouTube with SEO in mind, this is probably the most effective and requires the least amount of effort. Of course the ideal is to combine all three ideas and embed your own YouTube videos into your web pages.

Optimizing your videos within YouTube itself is something quite different but does impact on ‘1’ above – since only a popular video makes its way into the Google results. Therefore you need to consider the following factors when uploading a new video:

  1. Make your video informative, interesting and snappy ( 5 minutes or less).
  2. Give it an optimized title (using your target search terms and website name) e.g. How to save money on car rentals – car-rentals.co.uk.
  3. Optimize your video description. Include keyword based informative content in the description (more info) of your video and link to your website from it – ideally do this in the first line – to appear in the main YouTube descriptor.
  4. Ensure that your keyword tags are relevant and contain most of the search terms you used in your title and description. As with SEO try and avoid keyword stuffing.
  5. On your main website aim to create hyperlinks to your YouTube video URL containing keyword-rich anchor text.
  6. Watermark the video with your URL and use an interesting freeze frame shot.
  7. Create and customize your own YouTube channel using search terms to create a keyword friendly URL. Consider the creation of multiple channels for multiple niches.
  8. YouTube’s internal site search factors in other rules including the video’s rating, total views, how many times the video has been favorite. The age of the video is also a factor because new videos tend to appear more highly to keep YouTube looking fresh.
  9. Ask all your friends to vote and view your video, share it on your Facebook profile page to help with video ranking.
  10. Post your videos towards the end of the week, weekends are YouTube’s busiest days (for a B2C audience anyway).
Filed Under: SEO Blog Tagged With: , , , , , ,