Web Savvy Marketers Ideas, Thoughts & Tips

The Concept of Collaboration

February 12, 2009

Contributed by Rahna Barthelmess, Chief Marketing Strategist, Beacon Marketing

Anyone who has ever participated in a brainstorming event or worked on the high school dance committee knows this very simple truth, that two heads are always better than one. The contributors to this blog have started this discussion because they believe that collaboration is one of the Top Ten Secrets of Digital Branding. Each of us feels that 1+1+1+1 really does equal so much more than four. Collaboration is a cornerstone to the digital world, underpinning such mastermind concepts as Wikipedia, that captures the world’s collective definition of all things and Amazon’s “ratings and recommendations” for music, movies, books and more.

As a Marketing Strategist, it’s my job to guide my clients in the development of the best, most business-building strategies available. Collaboration is one strategy we always employ when developing massively successful marketing plans. The tactics we use to execute those strategies are multitudinous. Blogs, wikis, forums, message boards, rating systems all work to foster that collaboration. And the beautiful thing about the digital world is that these many tools automate the collaboration process, which means that the collaboration process can go on…even when you are not there.

This blog is an example of one such automated tool. Blogs are a place where you can start a conversation and have anyone jump in at any time of the day or night. It provides a forum for listening to your consumers, an avenue for inspiration, and a way to connect with others who have similar interests, ideas, and investigations that they are undertaking.

We hope you will participate in our discussions here at this blog. Our aim is to provide inspiration and practical advice on a variety of web-related topics. All of the contributors of this blog have been involved with the web since its inception and have gained a great deal of expertise about how to market something on-line. So what is your question? Tell us what you want to know. In the meantime, we’ll share some of our wisdom and pose questions about contemporary marketing issues. Share your thoughts with us! We’re eager to engage in conversation with you!

So here’s a question for today: While you’re reading this, ask yourself, “What am I doing to engage with my customers? Who can I collaborate with to supercharge my customer’s business and my own business?” Here are some idea starters:

Ajacent categories: What else does my customer need that relates to my product or service, but does not directly compete with me?

“Add-ons:” Are there other services or product enhancements that could provide partnership opportunities?

Distribution Opportunities: Perhaps there are retailers or distributors that deliver your product or service to the end user that you could collaborate with.

Passionate Consumers: There may be concentrated enthusiast groups that you could work with to deliver even more powerful consumer experiences.

Employees: Are there some highly customer-oriented employees that you could tap into for even greater delivery of customer engagement and satisfaction?

These are just a few of the examples of collaboration that may inspire a new delivery mechanism for you, a new section of your website, or a new product opportunity. Let us know what has worked for you (and what hasn’t!). We want to know.

Ten-Point Web Content Evaluation

January 31, 2009

Is your Web site an effective marketing tool?

The New Year is a perfect time to evaluate the effectiveness of your Web content. Use this checklist to review your written content on these ten important points:

Does the content clearly and honestly describe your product or service?

Have you presented your core message concisely and effectively?

Do you use meaningful page titles, sub-headings, and other techniques that help visitors find what they’re looking for as they scan the page?

Are your Web pages viewable in a couple of screen views, without too much scrolling down?

Does each page have a strong call to action?

Are there key words and phrases that help potential customers find you through a search engine?

Do you review your site statistics to see what page visitors enter on, what page they leave from, and whether or not they take any action?

Does the content match the design in terms of tone and personality?

Is the type in a size, style, and color that make it accessible to the widest possible audience?

Is your content free of grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors?

If you’re not sure whether your current Web content is clear, easily “scannable” by the visitor’s eye, and truly descriptive of your product and services, take advantage of our evaluation and consultation services.

10-Point Search Engine Optimization Checklist

January 9, 2009 Carolyn Griswold

Can your potential customers find you when they do an Internet search? In other words, is your web site optimized for search engine indexing? Use this checklist to evaluate your web site for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Have you developed a key word list that contains words and phrases that describe your product or service?
Does each page on your web site have a keyword-rich page title that accurately describes the content on that page?
Does each page on your web site have a meta description tag that clearly describes the content on that page in one or two sentences?
Do you use keywords within the content on your pages?
Do you use keyword-rich alt tags for each image on every page?
Do you use keywords in text links on your site?
Do you update your site on a regular basis?
Do you take advantage of industry- or regional-specific on-line directories to list your business, with a link to your web site?
Do you use on-line PR services to submit articles related to your business that link to your web site?
Do you have a blog, or participate in forums, blogs or on-line business networking services like Linked In, Facebook or Plaxo?

10-Point Web Site Trust Evaluation

January 8, 2009 Carolyn Griswold

Establishing trust with clients who make contact via your web site is vital to its viability as an important component of your business. Make sure your web site provides the information people need to feel comfortable doing business with you. Remember, in the virtual web world, people don’t have the cues they might use in a brick and mortar business to decide whether they should risk doing business with you; so it’s extremely important to provide information that will assure customers that it’s safe to do business with your company on-line.

Take advantage of this checklist to evaluate your web site’s trust factor and determine if you need to make any changes or upgrades.

Is it easy for people to find the information they need? Is the site organized and is navigation clear and easy to use?
Does your web site look polished, clean, current and professional?
Is the web site free of technical errors?
Are images used effectively to present your message? Are they sized properly with the correct screen resolution (do they load fast and appear crisp and clear)?
Does your web site’s design reflect your company’s personality and appeal to your target market?
Are your business policies—including return, privacy and shipping policies—clearly stated and easy to find on your web site?
Do you make it easy for people to know how to contact your company via email, phone or mail?
Are you effectively using video or on-line sales presentations to demonstrate your product or service?
Do you provide support information on-line such as customer forums, live chat, product manuals or service tips so people are assured they’ll have support once they’ve made a purchase?
Is your e-commerce checkout process secure and easy to use? Do you offer payment options—credit cards, PayPal, Google checkout or other payment terms?

Search Engine Rank Less Important in 2009?

December 22, 2008 Carolyn Griswold

With the goal of making search engine results more relevant to users, Google continues to work on new methods to provide personalized results. Users will have the opportunity to rank their own results and add comments when logged into their Google account.

What does this mean for SEO? Strategies should focus less on attaining top rank but should focus on enticing the consumer to the site. Once there, the website should clearly present the material the user will need to take the action the site owner desires. Focus needs to be on:

Writing good page titles, accurate yet enticing
Write a good meta description
Clear, action oriented content that clearly presents your message and invites users to take action.

Ban “Click Here”! Use keywords in links!

December 11, 2008 Carolyn Griswold

One easy way to use keywords in your website is to use them in your links. Too often I see content concluded with “click here for more information”. That’s just a wasted opportunity where a keyword phrase should be used.

So, if you find yourself writing “click here” … STOP! Use a keyword instead.

FAQ: What can I do to make my site appear on the first page of search engine results for this set of terms?

December 11, 2008 Carolyn Griswold

Search engine optimization is an art and a science and there are many things you can do in addition to what was done during the site build to continue to improve your search engine ranking. But keep in mind that SEO is an ongoing process and it can take time to get ranked and stay on the first page of a Search Engine.

Since search engines are trying to provide the most relevant search results to their clients, the best thing you can to do to improve your chance of ranking well is to build a content-rich, well organized website that is kept current with updated information.

Recommendations for keeping content fresh:

Use a blog or user forum to make it easy to post new information and to encourage user participation
Remove pages with outdated content, or pages without content.
Use video – (customers and search engines like it)

Often you’ll notice that the sites that are coming up at the top of the SE list are directory sites. They have a distinct advantage over an individual or small business site because in addition to having fresh content that is updated regularly, they provide multiple resources for someone searching – thus the SE’s consider them the most relevant result to the search.

Things you should do:

Research your keyword phrases to determine the best terms to use and regularly add keyword rich content to the website.
Ensure that keywords are used in page titles, meta tags, content and content headings.
Get listed on appropriate online directories (professional directories, yellow pages, chambers of commerce, etc.)
Submit press releases to online PR services
Set-up a Google Adwords or other PPC program
Review your site statistics or a program like Google Analytics to analyze what is working – what pages people are landing on and where they go once they get there. Make adjustments based on analysis
Maximize your virtual network with professional networking sites like Linked In or Plaxo
Participate on professional forums and offer your expertise
Include privacy policy and terms of use pages on your site

Things to avoid:

Pop-up windows
Dead links
Identical content posted in duplicate locations
Overuse of Flash

Resources:

How to build and use a keyword list

December 4, 2008 Carolyn Griswold

Keywords are the building blocks to a well-built website. They should determine the navigation structure to the website, the content of the site and if used wisely will have a positive impact in how well your website is ranked by search engines and more importantly will lead qualified prospects to your websites.

There are a number of tools online to help you determine seed keywords based on your products or services, but the first step you should take when developing your initial list is to brainstorm. Make a list of terms that you think your clients, customers or prospects might use to find a company that offers your product or solution.

It’s possible, in fact likely, that you may be too close to your topic. It’s wise to seek the advice of someone not familiar with your product to find out what terms they would use to find the solution you are providing. There is a website called seedkeywords.com that can help facilitate that process.

It’s also a good idea to step away from the computer and go to the library. Find your topic in the library and see the different phrases that are used to reference your topic. Better yet, ask a reference librarian what terms real people use to ask about a topic.

Once you have an initial list of keywords, you’ll want to develop a secondary and tertiary set of keywords. For example, as I revamp my own website, the table below might be similar to this partial list of my keywords.

Primary	Secondary	Tertiary
web development	web design	custom web designs, small business websites, html / CSS coding, ?custom web design solutions, website packages,?build your own website, web design tools, web designer, web developer, html editor, domain registration, web hosting
	E-commerce websites	Shopping carts, online store, online shopping cart, merchant accounts, e-commerce security, SSL, build your own shopping cart
	website applications?	blogs, wordpress, bulletin board, forum, knowledgebase, membership directory, custom applications, content management systems
Internet services	E-mail	POP mail accounts, webmail, email defense, spam filters, e-mail marketing
	internet marketing	Search Engine Optimization, SEO, email marketing, RSS feeds, PPC, SERP, pay per click programs, google adwords programs,

As you can see by laying out the keywords in primary, secondary and tertiary columns it can help you determine the architecture or navigational structure of the website. Additionally it will help you to focus on the terms you need to include in your content to make it easy for people visiting your site and for search engine bots to determine the services or products that you are offering on your website. The easier you make it for people and bots to know what you’re talking about, the easier it will be to get targeted customers to your website and to improve your bottom line.

Writing for the web: A format that optimizes content for scannability and searchability

September 11, 2008 Carolyn Griswold

Writing for a website requires a different style than you may be used to when writing for “print” materials. Website visitors have notoriously short attention spans so you must provide information to them in an easy to read “scannable” format.

Additionally, each page of a website needs to be able to stand on it’s own as site visitors do not always enter the website from the home page nor does they view the pages in a specific order.

The following format is a good way to increase the reader’s scannability of a page and with a little keyword research it can be a good start to optimizing for search engines too.

Heading (include keyword phrases for SEO)

Introduction also known as the “deck” (1-2 sentences defining what you’re going to talk about using keyword phrases for SEO). Your introduction should simply define one concept which you will futher define using a bulleted list. Any sub-concepts should be in a similiar format so people can easily drill down to the info they seek.

Bullets supporting concept defined in heading and “deck”

(list of elements supporting the introduction – again using keyword phrases)

Repeat format with next concept or sub-concept.

This method makes it easy for users to scan a page quickly and know if they have an interest. Certainly you can deviate from this concept when the content warrants. For example, you may want to add more narrative and you might not always be able to use bullets (however in most cases you can). But in general using the heading, deck, bullets format is a good way to get your material across to an online audience.

Remember as you prepare your website content that usability and searchability are not exclusive from each other. A well-written website that provides information to your site visitors in a clear, easy-to-scan format is likely to be easily indexed by search engines too.

More about SEO (it’s not a magic bullet) coming soon…

Self-help for your website

September 11, 2008 Carolyn Griswold

When I started cgwebhelp in 1999 my goal was to provide web services to small businesses that would help them navigate their online marketing efforts. These services included:

web design
web site maintenance
web hosting
search engine optimization (SEO)

I still provide all these services but in the process of doing so, I often find myself in the role of website “mentor” or teacher. There’s alot to making a website work…it’s more than good design, great content and SEO. It’s a constant process of tweaking and updating. It’s understanding what tools are available and how to use them on your website to improve the bottom line in your business.

As I come across new ideas, or find myself explaining how things work to a client, I will try to use this space to post ideas and concepts so all my clients and business associates can use this space as a resource.