I recently ran across this wonderful illustration:

It’s funny because it’s true! How many times have you seen these same posters for one movie or another? But you know what? With a single glance, you instantly know lots of information about the movie & whether it’s something you’d like to learn more about. Wouldn’t it be awesome to be able to leverage that same idea for your business? Imagine a potential customer having the same instant recognition when they visit your website, for example, so you can capture their attention and encourage them to learn more about what you do or sell. (more…)

There are LOADS of companies you can hire who make grandiose promises about site hits and where you’ll land in Google search results.

Some of those companies use “Black Hat” (ie: negative) techniques which can get you blacklisted by search engines – effectively the opposite of what you’re looking for. So how do you know who is reputable? What’s the best way forward?

Here are some tips:

• If you get an email from a company you’ve never heard of promising something too good to be true, it IS too good to be true. If it was that easy to have huge success, EVERYONE would be hugely successful. Also, if that company was as good as they say, they probably wouldn’t have to reach out to you out of the blue to drum up business. You’ll want a recommendation from someone you know, or at least a company that has great reviews on which you can follow up.
• It’s possible to get your site on the front page of Google, or visited by thousands of “people” but are these relevant metrics? If you’re on the front page of Google for a term that few people search for, that’s not particularly valuable. For example, if you’re a new author, being on the front page for your name might not give you much bang for your buck, but being on the front page for the book genre would be excellent. And if you have a massive increase in site traffic, but it’s not turning into sales or repeat traffic because the site visitors were mislead, that’s not helpful. Ask whatever company you work with to explain what they’ll do, and if it’s easy for you to understand that’s a good sign. If they spit out a bunch of gobbledygook and act like it’s over your head, they’re not who you want to work with.
• What does success actually look like? Ideally, this translates to sales of your product or service, but you need to define what you want to get out of a relationship with a search marketing firm and make sure you’re on the same page as them. Make sure you can measure results with whomever you’ll be hiring with a relevant metric for you.
• Design your site for PEOPLE not for search engines. Don’t fill your site with content just to attract search engines, and don’t listen to any firm that tells you this is a good idea. Not only will this result in a poor user experience, but search engines are smart enough to figure out if you’ve packed your site with keywords rather than actual content.
• If other sites will link back to your site, make sure they’re quality and relevant. Having links back to your site (especially from popular sites) is a great way to boost your ranking, but be discriminating. It’s not worth it to exchange links with sites that aren’t relevant to your business or where the content is questionable.
• It’s about communicating, not broadcasting. It’s about relationships with relevant, real people. Whatever path your web marketing will take it’s not something you do once and forget about. It’s also not about the old-school method of broadcasting how awesome your company is and expecting people to come knocking. Any valid modern method will involve cultivating and communicating content that’s relevant, helpful, and starts a conversation. This means you want to be involved — you want to be a part of the conversation with your existing or potential customers — not only so that relationship can turn into business, but also so that there’s not a disconnect between the way your marketing firm is representing your company and the way you want your company represented. In the best case you have complete faith in your marketing firm to handle your outreach relationships, but even then you’ll want to be part of the conversation.

Because I live in Portland, Oregon one type of project I regularly work on is for local Portland small businesses like Classic Sash & Door. I love working on local projects because helping great companies in my home town succeed also helps me & my community. And something nice about small business websites (regardless of where you’re located) is that good ones act as a 24/7 sales person working for you on the internet.

Simply, your goals (online and off) as a small business owner are to raise positive awareness of your services/products and increase the number of people who contact you and then hire you, or purchase your product(s).

On the internet, this means the desired result is being on the front page of Google results for your search terms, but also strategic placement of links to your site in places that list services contextually (eg: Angie’s List).

So how do you achieve this holy grail of searchability and being listed in the right place? Here are some pointers… (more…)

With so much competition for attention, how do you make sure your website rises above to make a great first impression? More than anything else, making strategic decisions for your brand by asking the right questions will ensure that decisions about design or messaging are made with your overall goals in mind. The result being not only the lasting impression you’re looking for, but cohesion between your company values and the website that represents them.

So what are these questions? Here’s a brief list to help get you started:

1. What’s unique about your company?
2. How would you briefly describe what your company does?
3. What’s your vision for your company’s future?
4. Who is your biggest competition?
5. Who is your target audience?
6. What’s the most important decision your customers make when it comes to choosing your company?
7. How do you think your company is perceived today, and what do you like and dislike about that?
8. Why do you want to have a new website, or have your current website redesigned?
9. Why will people visit your company’s website?
10. What do you want people to come away with after visiting your company’s website?

By answering these questions you’ll have lots of information to help inform the decisions you’ll make regarding your website, whether you’re building it yourself or hiring someone to do it for you. As you think about the messaging you’ll include on the site and how it will be designed, refer back to your answers to help guide your plans to make sure you’re serving your company well!

You’ve assembled a great team to build your new website: Congrats – that’s huge! Besides providing content & monitoring their progress, what should you be doing to help the site succeed? (more…)

Social Media! It’s everywhere! It’s on everyone’s mind! Everyone is talking about it!

Some of it is hype & some of it is truth. I often get asked to distinguish the two, and almost everyone wants to know the “magic formula” for social media advertising success. While there are certainly some things you can do to gain success, there is no magic bullet or single prescription. And that’s the beauty of it. Social media is about people and communities, and each one is different.

Here’s an interesting link that describes some effective, recent social media ad campaigns: http://mashable.com/2010/09/14/social-media-campaigns/

When you look through the projects discussed there, it’s easy to think “Well, of course Gap and Starbucks have great social media ad campaigns! But not all of us have the time and/or boku bucks it can take to run a killer social media campaign. What do *we* do?”

My advice: learn from the best & play to your strengths. If a company like Starbucks; a nameless, faceless international corporation, can create content that feels sincere and personal, just imagine what a small business can do! Small business employees are close to their product/service – they’re involved in multiple aspects of the company – the kind of stories and experiences they can bring to a social media campaign are priceless. Also consider how accessible a small business is – if I can login to Facebook and contact the founder of a company with a question and get a quick answer, that’s a level of service and access that leaves me wanting to participate again and again. You don’t need a huge graphics budget & you don’t need expert coding skills. If you need help to get your brand established, or a brief consult with an experienced professional to design a strategy for you, a small investment with a skilled web designer is all it takes to get you up and running.

If you’re considering creating a Facebook fan page, or already have one and want to improve it, here are five tips to help you get the most out of your efforts:

1. Consider a custom tab.  If your page’s Wall tab isn’t particularly active, or you’re not very well known, creating a custom tab allows you to craft a landing page that lets people get to know you.  Facebook allows you to set this custom tab as the landing tab for all non-fans.  Just like your website’s landing page(s) you want your custom tab to quickly impart what you’re all about, and have at least one call-to-action (eg: visit your website, sign up for your newsletter, purchase something).

2. Specifically ask people to “Like” the page.  It’s been shown that Facebook pages that specifically ask people to click the “Like” button are much more successful at acquiring fans.  Lets face it, there’s alot to look at on the average Facebook page – people are easily distracted by ads, or notifications, or even your content – so reminding them to “Like” you page in a clear way help you cut through the clutter.

3. Create a great Profile picture.  You have the opportunity across all tabs of your Facebook page to display a profile picture – don’t waste that opportunity!  This is basically advertising space – and while you don’t want it to read like a banner ad, you want to use that space to reinforce your brand.

4. Make sure to get the optimized URL.  Pages with more than 25 fans can get a shortened URL for their page.  Not only is this easier to remember, it’s easier to reference throughout the rest of your online & offline collateral.  To get the URL once you have 25 fans, visit http://www.facebook.com/username

5. Keep your page updated! You can have a great Facebook page design, with a custom tab and a killer profile pic, but if you’re not regularly checking in to participate in conversations with fans, or share interesting content, there’s little reason for people to ever visit your page again.  Your Facebook page is an opportunity to keep you and your business active in people’s memories – if they see an update in their feed from your page, they’re much more likely to visit and participate and pass it on.