Are You Attractive?
As I get ready to head out to BlogIndiana, where I will get to hang out with some of Indy’s top bloggers, (and some of my favorite people) I can’t help but think about why I like these folks on and off line.
When it comes to attraction on or off-line, what makes someone attractive? The next time you go to a party look around the room. Interesting, confident people are usually the center of attention.
How does this translate to your on-line presence? Write interesting content and share it with confidence. Get the conversation started with a simple post on Twitter, Facebook or Linked in to let your followers know you have something new to share. Then let your readers find you.
It is frustrating when you write a good post and no one comes to read it. (I have written hundreds of unread posts.) How do you deal with the lack of response? Hint: Don’t email a link to everyone you know. Simply write another good post. With enough good content on your website, the readers will come.
And one final thought, in addition to interesting people, the other very popular folks at any party are the good listeners. So spend some time listening as well by asking good questions.
Who are the most attractive people you know?
Email, Email and More Email
While social media is all the rage, and everyone wants to follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook, and link up on Linkedin, I still believe there is a place for email in your marketing mix.
Email is an important part of your overall internet marketing campaign and as a small business owner, it is a simple and affordable way to stay in touch. Over the last few months I have written several posts abut ways to improve your email. If you have missed any of them be sure to check out:
- Still a Place for Email - This is a compliation of some of my favorite tips on ways to make your email more productive.
- Don’t Torture Your Prospects - Email is wonderful, easy and cheap, but it can also be annoying if you overuse it.
- Marketing Drip Campaigns - Small focused campaigns are a great way to stay in touch with your clients.
Want to learn more? Sign up for our email newsletter!
Taking SEO Into Your Own Hands
Every once in a while, we get a client who doesn’t just talk about wanting the best ranked website in their field, they are committed to going the extra mile to stand head and shoulders above their competitors. Dr. Jeff Yoder of Meridian Chiropractic is one of those clients. Dr. Yoder understands the importance of measuring each and every marketing effort he puts forth when trying to reach clients.
When we build sites in WordPress, we do several things to improve the overall search rankings of a site. We use All-In-One SEO to title pages. We work with the clients to develop a list of key words to be used in their posts. And then, after we build the site we train our clients how to manage their sites. Once complete, the responsibility is theirs to continue creating fresh, relevant content to maximize their SEO efforts. It’s important that clients create new blog posts and use the tools we give them to put their websites in the best position to be successful.
Often, our clients adopt a set it and forget it attitude. However, Dr. Yoder has continued to challenge us to find additional ways to help increase his visibility on the keywords he wants to build his SEO strategy around.
He caters to busy professionals who need a chiropractor located in downtown Indianapolis. For him, the words “Indianapolis chiropractor“, “downtown chiropractor“, and “Meridian Chiropractic” are keywords Dr. Yoder wants his site strongly associated with.
Dr. Yoder has been tracking his progress from obscurity to visibility on search engines. He has seen progress and we now as he continues to ad fresh content and optimize each new post for search engines, his rankings will continue to improve.
We always love when clients take an active role in their marketing success. It’s that drive that separates most successful business owners from the pack.
The Challenge is On…
As a business plan consultant, I routinely talk to small business owners about creating actionable goals. To achieve these specific and measurable targets you need to do more than just talk about them. You need to have a plan in place and actually measure your progress as you move toward the goal. It really helps if you share the goal with others.
So, I am following my own advice! At Roundpeg, we have a goal. We want to have 1,000 fans of our Facebook Fan page by Aug 1. I laid out the challenge to my team at our staff meeting on Tuesday. Together we came up with plan, which included inviting friends, developing a custom landing page, and an incentive. If we reach 1,000 fans by Aug 1, we will have a company pool party on Friday, Aug 6.
We are tracking our progress, studying which activities have the greatest impact, and updating our score daily. While it is not the only thing we are working on ( that would be crazy) everyone knows where we are against the goal, and every member of the team is playing a role.
Interns Dan and Heather collaborated on our new Welcome Page. DJ TBreezy ( alias Taylor Brough) has the most Facebook friends, so he is in charge of personal invites. Jay, Allison and Kelly are working on keeping the conversation going on Twitter and Facebook. When Emily returns from vacation, she will be in charge of widening the PR circle.
And the good news… it’s working! On Tuesday morning we had 86 fans. just a few minutes ago I checked and we have 222 fans. We still have a long way to go, but we have a plan, a common direction, and a way of measuring the success of our actions.
While this is a great study in goal setting, you may wonder, does it have a business application. The answer is yes! I have been researching Facebook as a tool for small business and there are some compelling reasons to get serious about Facebook. While I personally prefer Twitter, I am seeing more and more postive information about Facebook, if it is used correctly:
- Studies show the average value of a Facebook fan is $139
- More than 90% of the business owners responding to our survey have a Facebook profile
- About 50% consider it their primary social media tool.
So we will be on Facebook. Look for us there! Become a fan, check out our blog posts, photos and contests. But don’t forget to come back here as well.
Cashing In with E-Commerce
As a company, we have deliberately avoided websites which included an e-commerce requirement . While we do several things really well, website storefronts are tedious, time consuming, and clunky in WordPress. At Roundpeg we pride ourselves n the simplicity we provide our clients with the maintenance of their website, and typical e-commerce functionality never fit in that wheelhouse…
…until now.
Recently, we discovered a new plugin which has answered our e-commerce prayers. Ecwid allows us to build an easy, professional-looking web-shopping experience on your site. By signing up for a (free) Ecwid account, you can load products into a virtual store and simply plug the store into anyweb page, including one designed in WordPress.
While their paid version has enhanced functinality, even the free plateform handles hundreds of products with ease, provides sales history by product or client in an easy to download format. With ECWID, we can offer our clients a robust eCommerce platform which they can manage with just a little training. The reuslt? We can better serve our existing clients, and work with clients we wouldn’t have considered in the past. And the more folks we can help, the better!
I highly recommend Ecwid to any WordPress developer looking to provide clients with the quickest, easiest, and most functional e-commerce storefront possible.
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.
Social Media 2010 – What is On the Horizon?
In the last year Social Media has gone from a Buzz to a Roar as niche applications like Twitter have gone mainstream. But will it burn out as fast? Or will it continue to change as new users join the conversations, taking the applications in new directions?
Writing for the Harvard Business, David Armano has identified several trends he believes will shape social media in the coming year. He says:
- Social media begins to look less social - With groups, lists and niche networks becoming more popular, networks could begin to feel more “exclusive. I love the new lists features in Twitter. It has allowed me to bring some order to my stream, and I may even begin to add more people to follow because I can manage when and where I see their content.
- Corporations look to scale - There are relatively few big companies that have scaled social initiatives beyond one-off marketing or communications initiatives.
- Social business becomes serious play - Relatively new networks such as Foursquare are touted for the focus on making networked activity local and mobile. I just started using Foursquare, and like it. I am not sure I am taking full advantage yet.
- Your company will have a social media policy (and it might actually be enforced) - If the company you work for doesn’t already have a social media policy in place with specific rules of engagement across multiple networks, it just might in the next year.
- Mobile becomes a social media lifeline - With approximately 70 percent of organizations banning social networks and, simultaneously, sales of smartphones on the rise, it’s likely that employees will seek to feed their social media addictions on their mobile devices
- Sharing no longer means e-mail - The New York Times iPhone application recently added sharing functionality which allows a user to easily broadcast an article across networks such as Facebook and Twitter. I think this is true, but David is a little late to the party on this one. I have been sharing actively for over a year using Google Reader. I rely on quite a few of my friends, to screen content and share their favorites as well.
What do you think? Has he identified the real game changers for next year? I am sure we will see much debate about this in the months to come; and a year from now, we can look back and see if he was on target.
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Event – Social Media Lunch and Learn – December 2.
Join me, Colin Clark, Michael Reynolds and Dave Anderson as we discuss these and other emerging social media trends at an informal session from 11:30 – 1 at the Fox and Hound on 82nd. The event is hosted by Pinpoint Multimedia. It is free to attend, but RSVP’s are requested.
Lunch and Learn with PinpointMultimedia
My good friend Dave Anderson has asked me to be part of his Lunch and Learn program next week. The topic is social media, and I will be sharing the panel with some of my favorite local social media experts; Colin Clark, Dave Anderson and Michael Reynolds.
The event will be from 11:30 – 1:00 on December 2nd, at the Fox and Hound on 82nd Street in the Castleton Area. There is no cost to attend the informal event, but RSVP’s are requested since space is limited.
Hope to see you there, for what is sure to be a lively conversation!
Tie Your Shoes
Today’s post is by our intern Neil:
Have you ever tried running in shoes without shoelaces? It is difficult, and risky as you can easily trip and fall on your face. 
Running your business website without taking advantage of SEO tools creates a similar scenario. While you are unlikely to be in danger of physical injury, the risk to your business is real. Without a solid focus on SEO, you will find yourself tripping and falling as you attempt to drive traffic and connect with potential prospects and clients.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) according to Wikapedia
is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results as opposed to search engine marketing (SEM) which deals with paid inclusion
There are many tools you can use to improve your position with search engines such as Google, Yahoo and BIN. Moving to the top of the search list means potential customers find you faster and easier compared to your competitors. This in turn will improve the quantity and quality of traffic to your website.
I have been researching SEO tools for the past few weeks and here are two of my favorites.
- Google Analytics which analyzes your web site’s performance by helping you understand what terms drive traffic, what information visitors search for when they arrive, and how long they stay. By looking at the data you can make adjustments in your site to improve your performance.
- Linkscape from SMOZ.org In the internet world you are judged by the company you keep. These relationships are measured in links. Using this tool you can discover who links to you and more interesting, who links to your competitors.
At Roundpeg we rely on these tools to help our clients rank higher on Search Engines and drive more traffic to their sites. Do you have a favorite SEO tool?
Neil out!
Shout Out to Vincent High School
This is a shout out to the students of Vincent High School of Milwaukee, Wisconsin! You may be wondering why I am doing a shout out to a group of students at a high school I never attended. The answer is simple: WEB STATS!
Last night, as I took a quick look at my web site statistics I was pleasantly surprised by the spike in traffic I experienced on Monday. At first I thought it was because of the guest post by Robby Slaughter (which by the way was really good), but it wasn’t. Instead, more than 50 people (which for my web site is quite a large number) viewed a post from my How to Write a Business Plan series – (Lesson One) which was written on September 4.
Who were these people? And where did they come from? A quick look at the referring information indicated they were coming from a website sponsored by Vincent High School of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The site itself is password protected (as school sites should be) so I am not sure exactly what the site said. My best guess, however is one of the teachers in the business department found my content and recommended it to his/her students.
The point of all of this is that you should be looking at your web stats to figure out what is driving traffic to your site. In this instance, I am flattered that a teacher in Milwaukee likes my content, but since she/he and the students aren’t my core audience, I probably won’t write more just for them. However, if this was a group of small business owners, I would be paying more attention to what they were reading, and trying to find ways to serve up more of the same.
What do your web stats tell you about your readers? With a simple plugs-in like WordPress.com Stats or the more comprehensive Google Analytics, there is much you can learn about your website. It is up to you what you do with the information.
And if you are a student from Vincent High, thanks for stopping by, feel free to post a comment, and then go do your homework!
