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Social Media Questions That Business Owners Ask

Michael Cohn — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 10:00:00 +0000

As a business owner, it isn’t necessarily easy to decide which social media channels work best for your business. There is so much information from which to choose and each one offers different innovative features. You need to choose wisely.

At this point, you are an active participant in social media. Before you can actually make any kind of decision, you need to research what is available thoroughly so that you can make the best choices for your business. Cost will most likely not be an issue. When it comes to investment and social media, it isn’t about the money that you will need to spend. Rather, it is about the time and effort that you will need to put into your social media activities so that it pays off for your business and allows you to achieve greater success than ever.

There are some common questions that occur to business owners regarding social media.

If I don’t have a location, how can I successfully use location-based marketing?

Location-based marketing tools, such as Foursquare, Gowalla, etc, are designed to enable people to find the best spots in close proximity to where they are. Brick-and-mortar businesses take advantage of this opportunity by offering promotions that are specific to their venues. When a prospective or existing customer checks in to a particular business on their mobile device, they will immediately see whichever promotions are currently available to them. There are many different ways to use location-based services and it is challenging to businesses that only exist online. However, it is far from impossible and there are definitely plenty of opportunities out there. You just need to be as creative as possible. For example, an effective approach if you have a blog or website is to leave tips in venues that are related to the content that you are offering. Another effective way to get involved with location-based marketing is by connecting with apps (applications) that act as advertisements to users in specific locations.

Will group buying be good for my business?

Group buying is a practice that a lot of business owners have been getting involved with. Group buying is when a large number of consumers get really good deals by buying products and/or services together. Several websites, such as Groupon, BuyWithMe, and LivingSocial, are good examples of this and have been very successful so far. Websites for group buying have the potential to earn people a lot of money in a short amount of time. Before you can make an informed decision about group buying for your business, you should make sure that you are aware of all of the positives and negatives. Then you can decide. Another positive aspect of group buying is that because there are so many consumers involved, it allows you to increase your list of new prospective customers. One thing that you should keep in mind as the business owner is your brand’s reputation. It is critical that the group-buying website is a good fit with your branding and your target audience.

Will I be able to start a blog if I don’t have any technical acumen?

You definitely don’t have to be a computer genius to start a blog. You can start with the simplest blog platform. If you don’t feel that it is working for you the way that you would like it to, you can hire someone to make it work for you. If your goal is to create some simple pages (such as an About Us page and a Contact Us page), and update your blog posts at regular intervals, there are several tools that you can use to accomplish this (such as Tumblr). Several simple themes for small businesses are available and the tool is easy to use. Once you have created your pages, updating your blog is a matter of inputting your new blog post, typing in a few descriptive tags, and publishing the article.

How do I make sure that my company’s social media pages are optimized?

At the hear of search engine optimization (SEO) is content. First and foremost, you need to make sure that your social media profiles are all complete and that the URLs that you have chosen have your business’s name incorporated. If you choose a certain URL and it isn’t available, you can modify the URL somewhat. However, be careful to keep it as close to your company name as possible. Once you have established the URL, make sure that the following elements are filled in: biography, products, location, mission, etc. Make sure that you include back links on all of your other pages. The more numerous your back links, the higher your rankings will be on the search engine pages. Maker sure that you are consistent about updating the information that you feel is important to share with others. Make sure to keep your target audience in mind regarding the type of information that you are sharing.

Why hasn’t the number of people who follow my business through social media increased?

There are many possible reasons why your following might not be increasing. There are several things that you should examine if that is the case.

Is your messaging too promotional?
Does your messaging speak about how great you and your business are instead of telling the other person what you can do for him or her?
Are you coming across as a salesperson?

If any of these apply to you, you may be making people feel discouraged rather than encouraged without even realizing it. The goal is to get as many high-quality followers as possible and you need to make sure that you interact with people in the most appropriate and sensitive manner possible.

Conclusion

The questions that have been discussed here are very important and very basic. They are questions that are on many business owners’ minds and if you take the advice that is given here, you will strengthen your social media savvy and your efforts will pay off. The result will be greater success for your business.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

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What to Ask During a Website Assessment

Michael Cohn — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 09:00:00 +0000

Many people have a website. Fewer understand if their website is actually effective. Having it assessed to answer that question is an excellent idea. It is important to be prepared for the assessment with intuitive and effective questions.

Every website is a little different than the next one. They are all unique because the objective for each one is slightly different. The quality of the website must be as high as possible in order to win over the competition. With the volume being so great, yours really must stand out and be remembered by others so that they return to you over and over again. If you don’t achieve that, you won’t be able to generate the traffic that you need in order to bring more leads, customers and business. It is never enough merely to have your website built. Once it exists, you must be meticulous and consistent about having it maintained so that the quality constantly lives up to your standards.

Before you have your website assessed, there are a number of different features that will be looked at. The questions that you begin to ask should bring you valuable and accurate information so that the assessment is most effective.

Is it easy to navigate your website?
Is your website aesthetically pleasing to others?
Is your website useful to other people?
Do you have top-quality content on your website?
Do your web pages load very quickly?
Is your content appropriate for your target audience?
Can your visitors contact the administrators of your website if they wish to do so?
Do all areas of your website function properly and effectively?
Will your website hold up against competition online?
Does your website show up in the top of the search engine results page (SERP)?
Does your website adhere to World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) guidelines?
What is the conversion rate for your website?
Which code is being used when building the website?

You need to think about your website as a business tool. When you are building your strategy, It is just as important to massage, cultivate, and grow your website as it is to cultivate the rest of your strategy. Always remember what a tremendous asset it is and will be for your business. It is a critical part of what you are trying to accomplish professionally.

Conclusion

If any of the answers that were given to any of the questions above were not satisfactory, there is work to be done on your website. The first step is your assessment, which should be done by a person who performs website assessments for a living. The assessment should turn up problem areas before any recommendations can be made. Several tools will probably be used to make the assessment. The tools should include Google Analytics (or some other analytics tool) as well as other online assessment tools. The more effective the assessment, the stronger your website. The stronger your website, the better your chances of increasing your business.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let's have coffee.

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Establishing Your Web Presence Without a Website

Michael Cohn — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 09:00:00 +0000

You are just launching a brand new business. Nowadays, a web presence is not just about a website. While a website is a component of a web presence, significant results can be achieved by other means.

Editorial Note: After reading this article, some of our readers were confused regarding the definition of a web presence and the difference between a web presence and a website. To clairfy this confusion, please read the article What is an Online Presence before continuing to read this article.

You may think that you are in a pickle if you don’t have a website for your business but you would be wrong. You can do many other things online that will help you to build a robust online presence without actually have a website. If you are able to have both, all the better. However, it is not black and white. There are several shades of gray when it comes to our online world.

Online social media profiles

The first thing that you should do is to set up profiles (which won’t cost you any money) on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Remember that it is important for you to completely fill in all of the details in your profiles (including a photo) so that other people will be able to connect with you on a human level.

Business cards

You will need new business cards for your new business. There are several services that will allow you to create online business cards for free. Some of these services are businesscardland.com, and businesscardstar.com.

Launching a blog

Having a blog is an incredibly lucrative and effective tool to increase your online exposure and reputation. Many blog services are free, such as WordPress.com and Blogger.com (which is owned by Google). You can use their generic template or you can purchase a fancier template at minimal cost. If you feel that it important to establish the aesthetics of your brand from the very beginning, you may want to consider investing in the decorative template.

What it means to have a web presence

For businesses nowadays, having a web presence is conceptually similar to being listed in the phone book in the past. People who are searching have an expectation that they will learn basic information about whichever companies they come across. Whenever a person gets a referral to a business, their natural reaction is to look up that business online. Everyone needs to have an online presence.

Facebook is another excellent social media channel that will help you to effectively build your online presence. The misconception that Facebook is only for reporting what you ate for breakfast, which movie you saw last night with your boyfriend, and about connecting with a friend who was in your high school and with whom you haven’t spoken in 25 years is much less present than it was.

Facebook is an extremely effective social media tool for business. You can set up a Facebook fan page for your business and you can start to build relationships with people who you can help professionally and who can help you professionally. Of course, always remember that you need to keep it completely professional. You can use the Facebook page for the personal side. You will definitely want to keep your business contacts separate from you persona contacts.

Word-of-mouth and online presence

As a business owner, your business will become more and more successful because you offer high-quality products and services and your clients tell their friends who tell their friends who tell their friends. You don’t need a website for “word-of-mouth” marketing. However, you do need to furnish people with a way to reach you (maybe even more than one way).

The importance of a website

Undoubtedly, website’s are an important part of any business but they are certainly not the be all and end all of businesses today. They work very effectively side by side with other types of online presences. One of the big differences between a website and online presence is the existence of fresh content vs static content. The content on websites is not changing on a regular basis. In fact, it only changes when a professional intentionally changes it. Other elements of an online presence, on the other hand, is constantly changing and evolving.

Conclusion

In this day and age of advanced technology, there are so many ways for a business to become successful online. It is important not to discount one approach for the sake of another. There is certainly enough room for several approaches to successfully work together to enable businesses to achieve tremendous success. Make sure that you take full advantage of all that is offered.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let’s have coffee.

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Having a Web Presence With Personality

Michael Cohn — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 09:00:00 +0000

As a business person, you must have a web presence that attracts other people to your business offerings and to your branding. If they aren’t attracted, they won’t go further to find out anything about you and you won’t succeed.

The first statement that you need to make (whether it is verbal or nonverbal) is that you are human, just like your prospective clients, and that you relate to them on a human level. It is a well-established fact that business success is all about building and maintaining relationships. If people can’t relate to you on a human level, there will be no relationship between you. One of the main attributes that will make you stand out among all of your competitors is that you care about your prospects’ wants and needs and that you consider it your responsibility to solve their problems.

The challenge of adding personality to your web presence

It doesn’t actually take a great deal of effort to add personality to your web presence. Your personality must come through in order for people to connect with you, on any level. You need to give others the opportunity to get to know you. If they don’t know you, there will be nothing driving them to choose you over someone else when it comes time to buying what you are selling. When you try to connect with people, you need to try to get them to give you some information that will establish the relationship between you. That has to work both ways. You must also give them something to relate to from you.

At times, it is difficult to come up with the perfect icebreaker to get the ball rolling. If your business is small, it will probably be easier than if you have a large company. However, it is certainly not impossible. A great way to break the ice is to get the other person to smile or laugh. You can use humor or perhaps, a heartfelt story that showcases your sensitivity as a person and as an organization. You can also break the ice through creative and interesting content that you share with other people.

Whatever you choose to share, make sure that it is unique and interesting. Others will remember your personality and will want to hear more about what you are doing. People are very interested to know that you are very good at what you do but at the same time, they also want to feel comfortable about doing business with you. Expressing to others that you are passionate about what you do and that you genuinely care about other people and want to give them what they need will be a tremendous attraction when it comes to deciding about whether or not to buy what you are selling. Your strong, positive feelings about what you are offering must come through in your communications with your visitors. Remember that if you can convince them to buy your products and/or services, you will be opening a door to many more selling opportunities.

The effect of having a personality in your web presence

When people are researching you and your business, they tend to find out about you and your company and what you stand for before they look into your products and/or services. A big mistake that many business owners make is that they don’t make the “About Us” page different than their products’ page. The “About Us” section must really grab the visitor and make them want to delve more deeply into what the person and his/her business is all about.

It is very important for you to share important aspects of who you are with your visitors. Adding personality to what you share with your visitors does not have a great deal of risk involved but the payoff may be huge. It will immediately make you stand out from your competition. In your “About Us” section, you should have information that is above and beyond your products and/or services. If you don’t feel comfortable about sharing personal information, you need to come up with other pieces of information that will draw them to you, such as your expressing your happiness when your customers are excited about what they have bought from you. Another good enticement is if you describe your level of service to your customers.

Conclusion

Personality in your web presence should be the equivalent of personality in your bricks and mortar store, if you had one of those. In other words, the second a client (or potential client) connects with you, they need to have a positive reaction to what you are telling them. If that doesn’t happen, they won’t stay. You need to entice them enough to really want to stay.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team and don’t forget to “like” our Facebook page.

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Is Your Domain Incarcerated?

Michael Cohn — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 09:00:00 +0000

You may very well be under the impression that you are the sole owner of your domain name. Are you absolutely sure that you are? Your domain name should be yours alone and it is extremely important to your business.

It is very important that you know as much as possible about your domain. You should know exactly where it is registered. You should also know who it is registered with. The sad truth is that many people don’t know anything about their domain at all.

What is a domain name?

Your domain name is the most important identifier of your website. If you don’t have a domain name, people will not be able to find all of the great content that you are publishing on the Internet. Your content is at the heart of your business. A good analogy is if someone were to steal the number off of your house. If that were to happen, in order to ensure that you were protected from that occurring again, you would install an alarm or take some other protective measure that would deter anyone from doing that to you.

When it comes to your domain, the concept is the same. If you bought your domain name and took care of registering it yourself through a hosting company, such as GoDaddy or HostGator, you can feel secure in the fact that no harm will come to it and that nobody can touch it. In that case, there is a guarantee that only you own your domain. If anyone else tries to touch your domain, the hosting company will send you a warning, alerting you to the fact.

On the other hand, if you didn’t go that route and you got someone else to set up your web presence (they promised you that they would take care of everything), there is a very good possibility that when they registered your domain, they supplied the hosting company with their business information instead of yours. What commonly occurs after that is that they make you a prisoner to their web hosting company. If you hire someone whose prices sound too good to be true, they will probably take advantage of you in some other way—maybe through the hosting of your domain. The expenses surrounding hosting your domain should not be expensive at all. If you are quoted a high price, something is wrong.

The reality is that the domain name belongs to the person whose information is in WHOIS (a searchable database that is maintained by the registrar that contains information about domain names as well as the contacts that are associated with them). It doesn’t matter who actually paid for the domain. Anyone who wants to know can contact WHOIS and request information about any domain name, which server the domain name is on, where it is registered, and even when it will expire and thus become available to someone else to buy.

Here are some tips to ensure that only you are the registered, legal owner of all of your domain names.

Only buy your domain name from a hosting provider if you are sure that your domain name will be placed in WHOIS.
Beware of people who offer you a free domain name with their hosting package.
Always check out your domain name on WHOIS before you purchase a website.
Check out the legitimacy by searching for them on WHOIS. Search for the date of creation of the domain. This will let you know how long that particular company has been in business under that domain.
Register your domain for a longer period of time rather than a shorter one, if possible.

Conclusion

Having a domain over which you have absolutely no control because someone else has done everything for you and has given all of their business information to the hosting company instead of your information is very dangerous. Never allow anyone else to take control over what is yours. If you find that you are in that situation, try to get out of it as soon as possible. Even if it means that you will need to register a new name with one of the reliable and legitimate hosting companies, do it. It will definitely be worth it to be able to have the control.

Just to reiterate, regarding your rights, if you are paying money for your web presence, make sure that you own the website, own the domain, own the copyright, own the analytics data, own all other data, own the content, and are able to move the contents to any hosting company of your choosing whenever you like.

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Leveraging the Web Presence of Your Business

Michael Cohn — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 09:00:00 +0000

Your business, no matter what you do, must have a web presence today. However, the inane presence of your business on social media channels is not enough. You must learn what to do and what not to do to succeed.

If you choose the appropriate tools and use them effectively and with the right goals in mind, your web presence will make a huge different in the success of your business. You need to identify your desired return on investment (ROI) up front and use the tools to achieve that particular goal. Of course, your ultimate goal is the same as the ultimate goal of all business owners—to convert as many followers (or prospects) as possible to paying customers.

Choose quality over quantity: When you engage through social media, you are building relationships. Building strong and significant relationships doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, nurturing and a great deal of effort. You will see that the effort is well worth what you will get in return. Those relationships will last for a very long time and you will be engaging with people whom you can count on and whom you can educate and be educated by. An extremely important principle when working toward turning your prospects into actual customers is WIIFM (What’s In It For Me). Your entire objective must be about solving the problems of the other people. Nobody is interested in how wonderful you and your business are. Their only concern is about what you can do for them to make their life and their business better.
Choose your social media channels carefully: The social networks of your choosing should be used as communication tools (one-on-one) with existing customers, prospects, journalists, etc.
Engage as much and as often as possible: Even though the desired end result when it comes to social media engagement is to sell your products and services, your direct goal is to build relationships. Nobody will buy anything from you if they don’t trust you and find you to be credible. It takes a great deal of engagement and a great deal of time to get other people to the point where they will buy from you. A great way to strengthen engagement with other people is by giving them valuable information in the form of newsletters or blog posts. Your prospects sign up for your newsletter or subscribe to your blog posts. That is a very important first step that your followers have taken. Eventually, the appropriate prospects will become your customers. Social media is a small but extremely important part of your overall marketing strategy.
Gently lead your followers to buying from you: Once you have built a strong relationship with your followers, you should feel comfortable about encouraging them to buy from you. At this point, there is mutual trust and respect. Make sure that you include your call-to-action in your communications, which will help to get them to connect with you even more.
Consider the purpose of social media as developing friendships, not as developing leads: When one of your online connections interacts with you, instead of simply thanking them, communicate with them more deeply and actually have a discussion with them. This will go a long way and serve you well. They will soon start to regard you as an expert and a person whom they wish to follow in order to learn more and more from you.
Make sure that what you are offering is something that they want to share with others: If you don’t offer people something that they need or want, they won’t come back to you. You need to make it clear to them that your purpose is to solve their problems. After you have developed the relationship and have given a great deal to them, if they still are not willing to buy from you, they are not the right customers for you.
Show your followers what they are missing: If you want to entice your followers to engage with you (and eventually buy from you), you need to tease them with enough information that will make them want more. Prove to them why they can’t possibly live without you and your business.
Encourage as many top-quality interactions as possible: Your interactions with others should be meaningful and fruitful. Relationships (if they are worth anything) take a lot of time and a lot of love. The stronger your relationships, the more the other people will be willing to share what you have with other people with whom they share a relationship. Before you know it, you will have gone viral!

Conclusion

It is so important to have a strong web presence and to really leverage it in the most effective manner for your business. The stronger your reputation online, the more people will flock to you and the greater your chances of increasing the success of your business in a really strong way. If your web presence is effective (which includes top-quality content), it will drive a high volume of traffic to your website and you can start to interact with more and more people.

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How Your Target Audience Sees Your Web Presence

Allan Berger — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 11:00:00 +0000

You may not be eBay or Amazon.com, but if you have a website, you’re in the business of selling online. Most companies rely on their web presence to build awareness of their products and services. In some ways, their sites function as brochures. But unlike a brochure, a website offers opportunities to share exciting news quickly and inexpensively. You may not accept orders and process credit card payments, but your website should be an effective sales and marketing tool.

Take a look at your site – does it reflect the value of your products and services in today’s economic environment? Consider the point of view of your target audiences. Targets typically include current customers, prospects, job seekers, and the press. Depending on your business, other targets may include suppliers, partners, former employees, and regulatory agencies.

Current customers – what have you done lately?

Is your website up to date and compelling? Existing customers will lose interest in a static website, and you will lose a marketing opportunity. Websites must change to reinforce the value of the business relationship.

A newsletter can direct customers to the site for exciting news on product launches or industry awards. Make your company newsletter accessible online or start an Email subscription list. Chances are your hosting company offers affordable, easy-to-use tools for maintaining a list and sending Email updates.
The changing seasons (tax time, holidays) are reliable sources of new content. The business calendar and market conditions provide relevant fodder for B2B-oriented firms.
Create a Q&A area where your company’s experts tackle issues of concern in your industry.
Check out your competitors’ sites. How can you top their content?

Your employees may be the best source of new ideas. Encourage them to brainstorm ways to reach and engage existing customers.

Prospects – what is so great about you?

To differentiate your business, you must communicate the unique value of your products and services. Recognize that the value changes over time, depending on the economy and competitors’ moves, among other factors.

Descriptions of products and services are marketing messages, not sacred scriptures, and should be updated regularly.
Create new case studies and testimonials. Touting last year’s achievements is dangerous if the technologies or methods used have become common or obsolete.

The Press – only recent news is fit to print

No news is bad news. If the “What’s New” section reads like last winter’s calendar, you project inertia. If you can’t commit to regular updates, you may be better off removing the news entirely.

View your website from your targets’ perspective, and you will discover new ideas for making your website an effective marketing tool that showcases a vibrant organization.

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What Is an Online Presence?

Michael Cohn — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 11:00:00 +0000

The terms web (or online) presence and website are often used interchangeably but they are very far from being the same thing. Web presence is the collective existence online of a company or individual. A website is one example.

Many businesses have websites with their branding and customized look and feel. There are millions of websites that range from simple and small to much more intricate and interactive. Everyone understands what a website is and what purpose it serves. So, what is an online presence and how do you go about establishing one for your business?

There is so much that can be a part of your web presence. An online presence is any existence of an individual or business that can be found via an online search. An example of an individual who is not active on the Internet but who has a online presence is one who is a member of an association that has a member directory listing online. Another example is an individual who only has a LinkedIn or Facebook profile. How do you leverage and enhance their existing web presence to boost their exposure and reputation and market themselves and/or their business online?

One way is to design and build a compelling website or a blog. Once the concept of the web presence has been established, it is time to start building it, including the all-important keywords that are essential to that market. Without keywords, the website will not be successful and will essentially stagnate. It is important to understand that it takes a lot more than a beautiful-looking website to cultivate the success of a particular business through its online presence. Another way is to capitalize on their existing web presence and enhance it with additional social media marketing interactions. A third option is a combination of the two.

Targeted keywords: Well-placed keywords are critical for both options. You might ask how you go about identifying the most effective keywords that will be recognized by the search engines and that will continually drive more and more online traffic to your web presence. Careful research is very important because finding the best keywords for your niche must be the absolute first thing that you do. That is your initial step in establishing your web presence.

Once you have built the foundation, you can begin to build your web presence. Of course, the information must be presented in a way that is visually appealing and compelling. However, there is a great deal more that goes into it. It is well beyond merely designing and creating a web presence. If the content in your online presence is presented correctly, the result could potentially be huge regarding your success at selling your products and/or services.

Web presence visitors: Once you have established your web presence, the next critical element is getting people to visit. The more traffic you are able to drive to your online presence, the better it will be for your business. Of course, this ties back to when you were choosing keywords and key phrases. If you have placed them effectively, the people will visit and visit often.

Capturing and converting leads: Your online presence has an important job to do. It needs to effectively capture leads (leads are people who have the potential of eventually becoming your clients). Once the leads have been captured, it is important to go through the conversion process in a manner that is appropriate and sensitive. An important part of the success of converting leads lies with the design of the web presence, the compelling nature of the content, the aesthetic appeal of the graphics, etc.

Interacting through social media: Having interaction with your online connections is extraordinarily important and it adds a deeper layer to the relationship that you will be establishing through your online presence. The more you interact with people, the more they will start to trust you and to find you to be credible and knowledgeable. You will start to understand how much the interaction contributes to the success of your business.

So, how do you enhance your web presence?

The following are elements that will help you to improve your web presence:

A clear market definition
Understandable and appropriate keywords
Website and/or social media pages that are properly optimized for the search engines
A website and/or social media pages that are aesthetically appealing and properly organized so that any of your visitors immediately understand what your business offers
Complete social media profiles
A clear focus on your target connections and target market
A strategy on how to gain fans, followers and business connections
A strategy on how to promote yourself and/or your business and disseminate your marketing messages
Compelling content and effective calls-to-action
An effective social media marketing campaign for your business
A high volume of traffic on a consistent basis
Effective lead capture and conversion strategy

If you review this list and find that any of the concepts are missing, in all likelihood, you just have a website and not a web presence. With some adjustments, you can make your web presence more effective.

Conclusion

Now that the distinction between a website and a web presence has been carefully explained, you will be able to analyze what you have and what you need when it comes to your online exposure and reputation. Your web presence is an entire suite of online elements that should be used together to create a successful marketing campaign. The more you share of yourself and of your business, the stronger your presence will be and the greater your success and the success of your business will be.

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Tips for B2B Blogging

Carolyn Cohn — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 10:00:52 +0000

There are many businesses that understand the importance of blogging for their business but have a much more difficult time when it comes to actually sitting down and writing the article. In spite of that, most businesses have a blog.

The big question is how those companies manage their blog in addition to all of the other responsibilities that they have regarding their business. It is quite helpful to take a look at the blogs of some of the most successful companies in order to learn ways to improve the writing and the blog approach so that you become even more successful in your business.

Develop an Editorial calendar: If you create a map, so to speak, it will be a lot easier to accomplish the writing than if you are constantly pulling the topics and the writing out of your head as you go along. Having a calendar will help you focus on what you are doing over a long period of time and it will reduce a great deal of stress for you because everything will be organized.
Write compelling content: Of course, this is absolutely the first rule of thumb regarding writing. Nobody wants to read boring and unimaginative content. Turn the thinking around before you start writing and write about something that you would like to read. Offer information that would help you in some way if you were the reader. It is perfectly acceptable (and preferable) for you to put some of your personality into your writing. Other people will want to read what you have written.
Allow comments: Encourage your readers to leave as many comments as often as possible once you have posted a blog article. The comments are precisely what generates the content and keeps on generating it. When people leave comments, they are giving you honest and valuable feedback on what you are sharing with them. You will find that not all of the comments that you receive will be positive ones. Of course, it is important to show both sides. That will demonstrate how fair and impartial you are and how your main objective is to help other people professionally.
Communicate your blog policy to others: One of the main concerns when it comes to companies having a blog is about allowing their employees to have a public voice. That is why it is so important to have a policy. Your policy is a list of the rules of engagement for your employees and customers. It gives guidance to your employees about what is acceptable blogging behavior and what is unacceptable blogging behavior. The reason that it is good to share your policy with your customers is so that they know what they can expect when it comes to interacting with you online.
Empower your employees: You should empower your employees to blog about their valuable insights, intelligence and what is important to them. You may want to invite employees from different branches of your company to blog about what is going on in those particular branches. Their perspective is bound to be unique and valuable. You and your customers will find what they have to say interesting.
Include guest bloggers: There are so much valuable information out there and many people have interesting and unique things to say to others, which will help them in their own businesses. Guest bloggers bring a fresh and multidimensional perspective to what you already have and other people will be very interested to read what they have to say. If you use guest bloggers, you also have a great potential to increase your readership.
Where do your employees who do social media fit in your organization: It is very important to understand that employees whose job it is to work on social media should be considered an important part of your organization. A logical place to put them is in the sales department of your business. One thing that you should not do is to isolate them. They work most effectively and produce the most successful results when they are a part of everything.
Content: If you post blog articles speak more about your customers than about your products, you will attract more readers. As always, remember that your readers don’t really care how wonderful you and your products are. Their only concern is that you can solve their problems and help them to become a greater success in their own businesses.

Conclusion

Business-to-business blogging holds a great deal of value. All business owners understand the importance of using a tool such as blogging to increase their business and to form and maintain important business relationships that will go on far into the future. The more information you share, the more people will be interested in what you are offering and will want to interact with you.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

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How to Make Your Website Work for You

Michael Cohn — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 10:00:09 +0000

You have a beautiful website with all of the features that it should have and content that is interesting and enticing. So, why don't you get website traffic? There could be many reasons, which will be explored here.

Websites that have static pages that are exactly the same over time (in some cases for many years) cease to be interesting to other people very quickly. Your ultimate goal as a business owner is to eventually get people to buy what you are selling. In order to do that, no matter what your products and/or services may be, you need to interact with the people who reach out to you and to build solid relationships with them. You also need to satisfy their needs. Your approach should always be WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?). In other words, what can you do to solve their problems?

One of the first rules of marketing is that it takes more than one contact to close a sale. The more costly the good or service, the more interaction you will need with the potential customer. With that in mind, you need to make sure that when you are designing your marketing plan, you allow for a series of action steps. If you incorporate those steps from the beginning into your marketing plan, you will start to see a good return on investment (ROI) from the time and effort that you devote to your online marketing.

There are several steps that you should follow so that your website starts to bring you business, which will, in turn, lead to sales. The acronym “AIDA” will help you to stay on track with this. It stands for attention, interest, desire and action.

Attention: Once a visitor to your website has arrived, you have 3 seconds to grab his or her attention. After that, the visitor will get bored and move on to someone else’s website. The content on your landing page should state some sort of offer or promise, which is clearly visible immediately. You don’t want to overwhelm the visitor with too many graphics because that will distract them from reading what you want them to know about you and your business. Additionally, graphics cause the page to load more slowly.
Interest: Now that you have the visitor’s attention, you need to find a way to keep him or her interested. Your immediate goal is to offer him or her information that will prevent him or her from clicking away from your website. An excellent approach is to present some problems (one of which will hopefully apply to your visitor) and offer solutions to those problems. Another possibility is to suggest an opportunity for the visitor; perhaps one that has never occurred to him or her before.
Desire: You have captured his interest and now it is time to create desire. You will be enticing and motivating him to take action of some kind.
Action: The first action is for the visitor to identify himself or herself, which includes some sort of contact information so that you can begin to have interactions and start to build a relationship. Your objective should be to get the visitor interested in something that you are offering free of charge.

This is your way into making money for your business through your website. To reiterate, your website must have some very important objectives: to acquire the visitor’s attention, to stir up interest, to create a desire and to get the visitor to take some action. Having the marketing aspect in mind before building the website is vitally important.

The action that the visitor will take will not cost any money. You just need a way to communicate with him and an Email address is usually the most effective an easiest way to do that.

Try to put yourself in the shoes of the visitor. If you were visiting a website, what would you want to see there? What would fulfill your needs?

Remember that if your visitor visits your website and he doesn’t leave you with any way to contact him, your website has not been successful. If you want your visitor to connect with you, tell him or her. Let your visitor know in clear and simple terms how much you want to interact with him or her and make it easy to reach out to you. There are many ways in which to successfully use your website. You just need to put those ways to work and you will start to enjoy more and more success for your business.

Conclusion

When you are about to design your business website, it is important to bear in mind how important the look and feel of it is. At the same time, it is critical that you do everything possible to make sure that it is effective at enticing visitors, once they are on your site, to want to delve more deeply and to reach out to you, which will eventually lead to their becoming your customers. Your website must be more than just an attractive online brochure. It must also be a tool that causes positive results for your business. You want to make it as easy as possible for your visitors to navigate around your website and to get a clear understanding of your offerings. You want them to want what you are offering.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team.

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