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Andrew Stickel

Your Own Website Is The Key To Internet Success

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The Internet is active! New platforms launch weekly. Users are always finding new and innovative approaches. Small business owners and the professionals who work in small firms or as solo practitioners always feel like they’re lagging behind and hustling to get up-to-speed. It’s no game; it’s a serious competition you can easily lose.

You have to be on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Flickr, LinkedIn, YouTube, and somewhere new next week. In the panic to be all over the Internet with plenty of hyperlinks, one simple basic is sometimes overlooked. You really must have your own multi-page website, and it needs to carry pertinent, appealing content that’s updated at least weekly if not daily.

Listed here are some tips and reasons to keep and maintain your own website:

  • Keep the ownership of your domain’s name and website. Avoid any contracts that leave your domain and website under the control of another party. You can let someone else manage and run your site, but do not let them own it.
  • Do not redirect your website’s visitors to other sites. Sure, use Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks aggressively to generate traffic to your site, but not from it. Redirecting visitors to another site is giving your customers to someone else.
  • Your domain and website is your brand; you control it. You decide how you will be presented. Facebook and every other site is someone else’s brand, under their control.
  • Remember when AOL was “the Internet”? Or more recently, MySpace? Don’t tie your future to any site that you don’t direct. Don’t split your profits; other sites will either forbid sales or grab a percentage. And at your own site, you keep full control over your SEO, how search engines find you, and what your keywords are.
  • You, and not some other website’s attorneys, want to define Terms of Service. Especially if your work touches on anything that might be considered controversy, you might log in one morning to find that your account’s been deleted. Don’t let that happen.
  • At your own website you can test new technologies as they emerge. You can decide on whether to have a blog, real-time streaming video, or podcasting. Your website, not another’s, should be the headquarters of your online operations.

With these tips in mind, you’ll be in control of your online future, and there’s no time like the present to review your site or to start building it. If you’re starting from scratch, you may need to hire a webmaster or a social marketing firm that offers full website construction, maintenance, and marketing help. Plenty of help is available, but the time to act is now.

Cures For Feeling Neglected

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In spite of your striving, your social media efforts just aren’t connecting with people. You’re not getting replies or even “likes,” and your number of followers has been stuck for weeks. It can be tough to identify the problem, but these are some of the reasons that businesses find themselves being neglected online.

1. You may not be updating as much as you should. Constantly update accounts, share information, talk to others, and be part of the online community. If it’s hard to find the time, make it part of your schedule, or delegate the task to a social media marketing firm.
2. Or you may be updating too much. Don’t post five updates a day; you’ll overexpose yourself and make it a burden for others to keep up. Look at how often others update. What works for them? Don’t be afraid to experiment, and don’t hesitate to discuss the question with other business and marketing people.
3. You may not be responsive enough. The key word in social media is “social.” Take the time to answer questions. Provide useful details, links, and recommendations. Find the people who are discussing your business and hop into the mix. If you aren’t responding, people feel they’re being ignored, and some really will take it personally.
4. Don’t always be selling. It can actually alienate customers. Keep it low-key. Let them get to know the person behind the brand. When Bill Gates delivers a speech about higher education, he’s not selling anything, but he’s still marketing for Microsoft. When people feel they’ve built a personal connection with you, they’re more interested in what you have to say.
5. You may not be offering real value. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with personal or tweets or posts (see #4 above), your goal is to create a framework for your sales and marketing. Offer promotions and discounts, surveys, superior customer service, and superlative content. You want consumers to look forward to the useful info, the practical tip, or the great bargain that you’ll be offering next.
6. Promote your web presence. Make sure people actually do know that you’re on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Customers aren’t going to find you without a little push in your direction.

Attracting And Keeping Your Audience

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It goes without saying that your blog posts should cover the topics that your audience finds the most interesting. If you’re looking for ideas and you’re unsure what topics are popular, or if you’re unsure about how to find out, here are some tips for keeping your current readers and for attracting new ones:

Follow the Leaders – What are people reading? Find the blog posts that are achieving high readerships for the leaders in your field or industry. Scan through their Twitter and Facebook feeds for the posts and topics that draw the most readers and receive the most likes.

Just Ask Your Readers – Solicit feedback. Ask readers what topics interest them the most, but be specific. Compile a short list of topics and ask your readers to pick from the list. Solicit their comments too; find out why readers are more concerned with some topics than with others.

Determine What’s Already Working – Facebook Insights can tell you how well your individual Facebook posts perform. When you find your most successful posts scan over them. What elements do your successful posts have in common? What distinguishes your successful posts from the unsuccessful ones? For Twitter, Sprout Social is a useful tool for determining which of your tweets have the most success.

Keep narrowing your focus – When you’ve determined what topics interest your readers, write extensively on those topics. Then determine which of those posts have drawn the most readers, and write more about the specific topics that those posts discuss.

Grammar and spelling count – Probably no blog is perfect. Occasionally a misspelled word or a typographical error will slide past even the best writers, editors, proofreaders, and webmasters. But consistently poor writing and multiple spelling mistakes will drive away your readers. Many professionals and small business owners hire a ghostwriter or a social marketing firm to provide their blog’s readers with high-quality writing and attention-grabbing ideas and topics.

You Can’t Avoid Youtube

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In the last three years, marketers have taken a significantly increased interest in YouTube. Until about 2010, YouTube was rarely seen as a marketing tool, but with the current explosion in social media and social marketing, people are taking another look, and they like what they see.

YouTube now draws over a billion unique visitors monthly and piles up more than 6 billion hours of viewing each month, representing a 50% increase just since summer 2012. Uploads to YouTube now total more than 100 hours of video every minute, 24 hours a day. The 18-to-34 age group watches YouTube more than they watch any cable TV network. YouTube gives you the ability to visually demonstrate your product or service, and it lets you look your potential customers in the eye; that makes it a uniquely valuable way to connect with consumers. With more than a billion smartphone users in the world now, you can use YouTube to reach potential customers anywhere they may be.

YouTube combines several of the best elements of other marketing approaches. Obviously, it lets you demonstrate visually how to use a product, but it also lets you provide advice and answer questions (like a blog) and conduct interviews (like a podcast). You’ll want to use your blog, along with Facebook and Twitter, to encourage your audience to subscribe to your YouTube channel. Monitor your subscriptions, likes and comments to get a feel for what’s working with your audience.

Popular songs open with a “hook” to grab listeners; on YouTube, you’ll want to use some kind of “teaser” at the top to hold a viewer’s attention. Use charts and slides sparingly; you primarily want some kind of live action or talking head. If you offer nothing but slides, your audience will realize that you’re probably using nothing but Windows Movie Maker to create your videos, and you’ll lose viewers quickly. Make sure the lighting is good and that any participants in the video are reasonably attractive; you don’t have to be Brad Pitt or Megan Fox, but make sure there’s nothing that critical viewers might find fault with.

If you feel really lost when it comes to video, consider hiring outside help like a videographer or a social marketing company. YouTube is such a great resource, you really can’t afford not to use it.

Handling Customer Complaints

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It’s amazing but true. Some of the companies that spend the most resources and effort on social media are also companies that provide the least satisfying customer service. A company may have the most informative website, a well-written blog, and great Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn pages, yet just try sometime returning an item or receiving a reimbursement. When customers have a positive view of your business, it’s a big, extra benefit. When you’re viewed negatively, word is going to get around – eventually.

How can you be certain that your customer service stands up to scrutiny? Try these four tips:

Listen. Know what your customers thinking and offer them solutions. When you hear a problem, determine to resolve it. If you can, offer slight variations on a theme, at least offering options to those who may not benefit from your original service or product. You can’t please everyone, but pleasing the majority of your customers is a realistic goal you can achieve.

Interact. Is there a contact form on your website? Does your newsletter include a “suggestions” link? How else can you know what customers are thinking? Interacting with your customers is imperative. Knowing what they want is the only path to success.

Satisfy. Customer satisfaction will result in customer loyalty. If a customer has a problem, how you deal with it defines who you are. Don’t ignore a grievance, even if the customer is wrong. Instead, be professional, offer sympathy, and find a way to resolve the matter. Work to avoid the same trouble in the future.

Share. The suggestions above assume that you’re gathering data. You’re learning things about your customers. Use that knowledge, and see where else it can be applied. Do your sales people need more information? Should your content writer use different terms? Does your legal department need to publish more disclaimers? If you’re paying attention, your customers can tell you the answers, so make it as easy for them as possible.

There will always be times when you can’t please a customer. It’s a simple, unavoidable fact of life. But your other customers are watching, so make sure your responses are always reasonable and professional. Forget your blog, website, and Facebook page; it’s your responses to your customers that define, more than anything else, who you really are.

Don’t Forget E-Mail

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E-mail has been around since marketers started using computers. We’re so used to it, we sometimes forget about it, and we don’t expect it to change. But that’s wrong. Some of the most successful marketers are rediscovering email and taking advantage of the special benefits it now offers.

On any particular day, a customer may or may not visit your website, your blog, or your Facebook page; but with few exceptions, customers check e-mail every day. The statistics are literally astounding. Currently in the world, 3.3 billion e-mail accounts are active. Of Americans age 12 and over who are active online, 94 percent cite email as a regular activity.

Among adult Americans, 58 percent check their e-mail first thing in the morning. And customers prefer e-mail; an impressive 77 percent of consumers prefer to receive marketing communications through e-mail. Email is the number one source of marketing information in every demographic group, including even the texting-and-TV-obsessed 15-24 age demographic.

Marketers aren’t abandoning email; they’re looking at ways to improve and tweak it as a marketing tool. Earlier this year, 64 percent of companies surveyed indicated that their investment in e-mail marketing would increase in 2013.

Constant Contact and MailChimp are two of the most popular e-mail platforms. They provide marketers with a wealth of analytics and statistics for improving your email campaigns and results. It is impossible to manage an e-mail marketing campaign through regular Outlook, Gmail, or web-based email programs.

You can’t even tell if your e-mails are being read! Both Constant Contact and MailChimp tell you exactly who opens your emails, what they respond to, and whether or not your emails are being clicked or forwarded. This data lets you fine-tune content and delivery so that your next emails are read by the maximum number of potential clients.

MailChimp and Constant Contact also offer attractive, customizable templates, and they both include sharing features for social media sites. With MailChimp or Constant Contact, your e-mails become like posts and tweets – seamless, sharable content that encourages your customers to promote your products for you.

Keep these three ideas in mind as you create your e-mails:

1. Reach the the right people. Target your audience by using an email solution that’s simple to customize and manage (like MailChimp or Constant Contact);
2. Say the right things. Don’t hesitate to hire a talented social marketing firm to write and design your e-mails;
3. Improve, improve, improve. Test to learn what works and throw out what doesn’t. As you explore and experiment with Constant Contact or MailChimp, you’ll find a variety of features to help you.