Some Things Change, and Some Things Don’t
I am working a presentation for a group of HVAC distributors in New Orleans in April. Having spent 11 years in the industry, I feel comfortable talking about how to apply what I know about marketing to their challenges.
But I have been away for a few years, and thought it would be helpful to see what others have been writing and discussing. What I found is that although it seems things are moving very quickly, much of what I am telling my small business clients today, others have been saving for quite awhile.
For example: In 2003 David Squires wrote n article for the ACH&R News about how to make your websites more efficient. Interestingly seven years later, we still see much of the same issues we saw then. Text heavy and product heavy sites which miss what is really important to the consumer; How well you solve the client’s problem?
Check out David’s list of 12 ways to improve your site and see if you agree with me, that while some things do change, others remain, very much the same!
Roundpeg Goes Green
Over the past month, the Roundpeg team has been working with Mr. Tom Barrett on a new site for his company, Green Water Infrastructure. GWI is on the cutting edge of sustainable technology, and helps communities save money by 
developing efficient water conservation systems. Needless today, it was very exciting working with Tom on the website.
Mr. Barrett has a wealth of information on green technology and as a sought-after public speaker, knows how to effectively communicate ideas. One our challenges was to find ways to organize the information, and present the content in a way that would allow Tom to engage the visitors to his site. Rather than simply uploading Powerpoint presentations, we took select sides and asked Tom to write blog posts on specific topics. This allowed us to add some strong visuals to his blog, and break up the content into manageable pieces.
Tom had lots of exciting visual aids from his time spent giving presentations on the subject We were able to leverage those tools to provide context to the abstract concepts of economic conservation. We had the opportunity to work with a variety some of our favorite tools, as well as a few new ones during the site construction.
To increase engagement, we offered visitors the opportunity to download the entire presentation, using if they provide their email, allowing Tom to being building an email list of individuals interested in sustainable technology. To collect this information, we used the form-building tool Formspring. The tool allows us to build robust, useful forms on a website with a few simple clicks.
One of our favorite discoveries during the site construction was Slideshare. The service allows someone to upload a presentation and instantly creates a sleek, professional slideshow. What’s more, Slideshare allows you to easily embed any of your uploaded slideshows to your website.
We also found MobileMe to be extremely helpful as we transferred large files back and forth.
One of the biggest lessons I learned building this site was how many free and inexpensive tools are available to help small businesses look bigger.
Make sure to check out the new Green Water Infrastructure website when you get the chance!
Roundpeg On-Line Education for Small Business Owners
Most small business owners will admit they have a lot to learn about business planning, marketing, web design, social media, pr and networking. However, with the day in, day out challenges of running a business, there isn’t really time to take off for a seminar. And when you do, there is always so much information to digest and act upon.
I know this is true, because I run a small business.
So I have developed a series of FREE on-line courses on Marketing, Business Planning, Web design, and PR/Social Media Each program includes emails, blog posts, worksheets and the occasional podcast or video.
One Theme or Many?
About three weeks ago I wrote a post entitled Small Business Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Small Business Marketing. In it I compared different strategies of driving traffic to your web site.
One strategy is to stay focused on a specific theme. I decided to give this concept a try. So from Feb. 7 – Feb 23 (With the exception of a special post on Valentines Day) I wrote about business planning every day.
The results are mostly positive.
- I have a great library of content to share with clients and prospects.
- I saw an improvement on my placement on searches for key words such as ”small business planning Indianapolis” and “business plan Indianapolis”
- Lots of cross traffic between related posts, so this improved my time on site statistics
- Increase in registrations for my Business Plan eCourse and my Business Plan Seminar
The one downside? My overall traffic numbers were down slightly. What this seems to indicate is one of several things
- Maybe I picked the wrong topic to use as my central core. Perhaps there isn’t as large a population among my readers who are interested in business planning as I hoped. However, the cross traffic does indicate there is a solid niche so planning needs to stay as part of the mix. To test the topic theory, I may try another string of related posts, on a different topic.
- My readers like diversity. So if I want to continue to expand my readership, perhaps I need to continue to diversify my offerings to appeal to a wider range of interests among small business owners.
- Maybe, my readers missed the different voices of my team. Since each of the team; Jay, Michelle, Allison and Taylor each have a different perspective and following, bringing back more of their ideas may drive our numbers more than a single key word. And while I am at it, I may look for a few more guest posts as well.
So look for a few more experiments over the next few weeks and give me some feedback on what you think will get more readers engaged.
Build a Better Website in Seven Weeks
These days, a website is an integral part oft he marketing plan for every small business! You probably have one, but is your website doing it’s job? Is it representing your brand, attracting visitors, and converting those visitors to qualified prospects or even customers.
Do you know how your website stacks up against your competitors and do you have a plan to improve?
To help small business owners answer these questions, and many more, we are launching a FREE even week program designed to help you build a better website.
Interested? Simply fill out the form below to get started.
This is part of our FREE On-Line Education Program. When you finish this class, we will send you a link to the others in the program as well.
Got Back Up?
Today’s guest post is from Heid, theCEO of ProVim. They are our web host, not just for Roundpeg, but every website we build for our clients. More than anything else, we work with them because of their service. Things don’t go wrong with websites often, but when they do, I am glad we work with Provim!
Got Back Up?
Every once in a while we’ll get a call from a customer frantically describing that they accidentally just deleted their website (with no backup
in hand). Thankfully, for these customers, we’ve had backups of their sites. In the event that the abominable happens, backups serve to be a
safety net for your valuable digital resources.
How many times have you lost an important document or photo due to a hard drive crash, software error, or usb flash drive failure? I’m sure it’s
happened at least once in your life, right? Events like this teach us the importance of personal data backups. However, even with the knowledge
gained from these horrible events, it can still be easy to blank on making a backup. This is why backing up a website at the server level is important,
and is something we do with every site hosted.
Animoto – Cool Image Display
At Rounpdeg we are always looking for new tools to add features to the websites we design for clients. The criteria:
- Easy to use – Even though our skill set has grown and we can usually figure out how something works, we won’t use plugins and features which are not easy to use. Why? Because most of our small business clients come to us for web sites which they can maintain. It doesn’t do any good to end up with a simple website, with the most interesting feature something we can not edit
- Free is great! But not all our tools are free. We often try free versions, and if they add value, we will upgrade, and offer our clients the opportunity to use our subscription, or get one of their own
- Compatible with Wordpress. We stopped designing traditional static websites two years ago, and have never looked back. The plugins have to work flawlessly with Wordpress, or we won’t work with them.
So in our quest for new and cool plugins, I have one I think is going to be a favorite. It is called Animoto. It converts simple photos to a cool interactive slide show. Check out the video I did with images of my husband’s art.
The thing I liked best, was how quickly I was able to put this together. Of course I am hooked, and will probably pay for the upgrade so I can create longer videos, and even some without the Animoto logo. But in the meantime, this is really cool!
Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.
Great Web Copy Begins with a Word
Everyone wants the key to success. The one right way to do something. Unfortunately when it comes to web design, like many other marketing strategies, there is no one right answer. Especially when you are working to please multiple audiences.
One of the great challenges of web design is creating a site which serves the needs of the search engines and the real people who visit your site, and hopefully buy something along the way. How do you find a balance between the needs of these two very different audiences?
Your task is to develop content which is interesting and eye catching to your visitors, and informative for search engines.
Search engines like lots of copy, containing key words, repeatedly if possible. Your readers, with serious attention deficit want you to get to the point quickly. One strategy is to start with the very best phrases.
I use the keyword tool from Google Ad Words as a starting point for word selection in my copy. I simply type a phrase I believe clients will use when looking for a particular type of business and the tool generates a list of alternative phrases. It will also rank how often these phrases have been used in recent searches.
Example:
I tested ”small business marketing” and found the term ”marketing strategy” was searched significantly more often. I found it was used an average 201,000 times a month. I also noticed ”small business ideas”, a phrase I have never deliberately used, is searched more than 20,000 times a month. This is not the most popular phrase, but it has a steady following. I am going to try to adjust my copy to add it to the mix!
The Lesson
Researching key words will give you a great foundation for your copy. Be sure you don’t create copy which overuses the terms like this: Small business marketing strategy should include novel ideas for small business owners, which expand their current small business marketing activities. Search engines will love it, but your readers ( the people who buy from you) won’t!
Creating a productive website does not require more flash or more pictures. A great website requires simple navigation and great content.
Local HVAC Company Gets Web Face Lift
With a little help from Roundpeg, Make it Mowery has relaunched their website – www.makeitmowery.com.
The new website provides visitors with a more organized view of their wide product and service line. The addition of a blog offers visitors information on new trends as well as the ability to see what other consumers say about their experience with Mowery.
“Mowery is well known in the local community because we’ve been in business for 40 years,” says owner Chip Cochran. “While we wanted a fresher look, we did not want to reinvent ourselves so completely that our customers did not recognize us.”
An additional benefit of the redesign was the migration to a Wordpress Platform. With the installation of the “All in One” plugin, the site is performing well on search engines and the members of the Mowery staff can keep the content fresh with small, regular updates.
To learn more about Make it Mowery and to see the new website please visit: www.makeitmowery.com.
It’s Time to Move Forward – Always
Written by Neil Chaggar
“Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.”
I didn’t fully understand the quote when I read it but half-way through writing this blog post, I knew exactly what it meant. I came to the conclusion that most things change overtime, including technologies, economies, businesses, even people. What’s important is moving forward and adapting to those changes.
Over the course of my internship, I gained the knowledge that there’s always ways and opportunities to do things not only differently but better and faster. For example, Lorraine decided in addition to writing blog posts, she wanted to reach her audience through another medium called Podcasting. Though we started from scratch, we learned enough about it for Lorraine to now create weekly podcasts episodes.
Another technological change we’ve recently come across is CoolIris. This modern tool has the potential to change the way we display media such as pictures and videos on our websites. Though we’ve played around with the software only for a short period of time, we look forward to many innovative ideas and features it’ll present us with in the future.
So as I end my internship here at Roundpeg and say farewell to my boss and my co-workers, I’d like to remind you all to keep moving forward, always have room for improvement and try new things in life.
Neil C.
And if you have enjoyed Neil’s post’s here be sure to check out his personal blog as he continues to see his next assignment. http://neilchaggar.wordpress.com
