Category: Content

Meeting with a past client over lunch recently, our conversation spent some time discussing what was happening with his new business launch and the website development he had his nephew do on his behalf. Learning that there was no blog at all included in the website delivery, I reacted strongly with disappointment and disbelief.

As a past client, in the Business Coaching side of my vocational life, the best practices for web development, website publishing, and social media marketing were discussed. Sharing the value and importance of the RSS Feed a blog offers, the updated content strategy followed, all offer enormous benefits for online advertising and internet marketing.

Young nephew suggested a blog wasn’t required at this stage. At OMC Social, it is an essential ingredient to the social media marketing strategy and business development goals for online marketing. New fresh content, the ability to share that content, and extend one’s business to an audience has to keep them interested. As a major side-benefit, Google Search loves fresh content, and the better written per Search Engine Optimization and Keyword Research practices, the influence upon website ranking is powerful.

So, my soapbox today says to get a blog on your website domain, and use it religiously, faithfully, and in engaging and creative ways to draw your website visitors in to engage you more. Additionally, benefit from the Search Engine benefits, and social media promotions that create more and more influence as you remain faithful to the best practices for online engagement and content development.

You’ll be glad you did. Your domain is your best asset for increasing website visitor traffic. The blog channel is one of the best website tools. Add one now.

Getting traffic to your website is and should be a top concern for anyone with, or planning to create, a website. No matter what community online I spend time interacting with, the common question of how to get more traffic to your website is raised. It makes perfect sense.

The whole purpose of the website is to inform customers, and to create relationships with new customers. You’ll notice it states: Create relationships with new customers, and NOT get new customers. Those days are gone, and social media is a driving force restoring best practices that focus upon building relationships with people, as people. Along this journey into social media, there were many marketers who used this effectively with poor practices that result in damaged relationships. This article focuses upon the outcomes of this journey, and re-establishes the tried and true considerations for maintaining and promoting a website.

Blogging

Content is still King. Keywords are a must for organic search engine traffic, and for improving ranking for the correct keywords. Adding fresh content regularly through blogging is the easiest method, whether the blog be identified as a Press Release, a Blog, a Journal, or a News channel for your website and company. These tools are easily adapted to suit your professional and personal needs.

Keywords

Keywords are the foundation from which your content is built, and if you are starting a website, an important consideration to include when purchasing a domain name. Vanity names are cute, keyword rich domains find traffic faster. Thinking like your consumer or target audience, your keyword considerations come from the perspective of them using search, rather than only focusing upon what you offer.

Link-Building

Understanding keywords, and content, effective link-building can be achieved to greater effectiveness. Many sites exist for bookmarking, sharing links, and social media that rank very high in search engines. Adding your links with titles and or descriptions rich with your keywords helps create more highly effective back-links which will get scored by search engines. These campaigns create traffic, help build page rank, and improve your search engine optimization efforts.

Social Media

Social Media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and hosts of niche-specific sites, are tremendous assets in your marketing for your website. People build relationship connections, and begin and/or nurture relationships on social media websites. Conversations occur back and forth, links are shared, information is added to conversation, and recommendations are made. Look to serve others, help them, and build a foundation that earns respect. When information leading back to your site is shared, more influence from your efforts is felt through increased traffic.

Email Marketing

Marketing is not sales, marketing is sharing information that is useful to your audience. Your audience signs up to receive news from you about your company, and about your industry. Their interest requires thoughtful sharing of information that retains their loyalty, and keeps your brand present and recognized with a sense of loyalty or appreciation. Offering tips, insights, informative articles, videos, and statistics, there are many options available to you that earn respect, and create traffic. Emails should always be brief, with an enticing link back to your website to further satisfy their curiosity.

Link in the Signature

How often do you email others, either creating a fresh email, or responding to something? A surprising number of people with websites to promote do send emails without including their website link with their signature in the email. Many email programs offer a setting to automatically add a signature with every email. Don’t be spammy, but do put your basic contact details with your web-link. You would print it on a business card and letterhead, so why not your email signature?

Don’t Stop

The most disappointing result I experience with any client comes about as they complete their website implementation and they decide that this is all they need. You have just invested capital of time and money into developing a marketing channel. I deliberately choose the word channel to draw your attention to the fact that today’s technology on the web is interactive; a broadcast medium. You won’t sit day after day in front of a television watching the same re-run. Your website needs a marketing budget and strategy that develops this kind of broadcasting ability.

Getting it Right

Is there such a thing? Time has taught me that it is the process, not the outcome, that generates the most leverage in life, business, and creativity. Taking the principles shared thus far, understand that there is no better time to start than right now! So it costs money, and you may have a limited budget. Starting where you are, and building up month after month, goals will be realized. Don’t wait for all the conditions to be right, all the budget to be identified, all the designs and content in place. Early launches and using the technology and principles shared, the intelligent feedback received and observed provides valuable direction to the process of building, launching, and managing growing websites.

Feedback

As with this website, welcoming feedback is advantageous to most website owners. It stimulates conversations that can better inform you about your audience or market area. Make it easy for your website visitors to interact and connect with you, and do provide links to your other online distribution channels such as your Fan Page on Facebook, a Twitter profile you’ve got running, or some other social media profile.

And what about your feedback? After reading this post, what questions remain? Use the comment form to post your question, or share other useful advice you’ve learned with your own website.

Many conversations these days pertain to what the website is for, where the web is going, whether the same strategies from five years ago hold true today. Before the buzzword social media and web 2.0, everyone knew the importance of a list and having regular email communication to their clients and audience. In larger organizations, the web and email may have had much less prominence, as they opted for the traditional print media channels for the client / audience communication.

Today, so much more is possible directly online.

Any business can start small and scale up to meet the needs of a growing business. First and foremost, this must be pointed out. In that same vein of thinking, this list of ideas starts with the beginning entrepreneur in mind, and evolves toward a sophisticated internet site for the business, complete with its own social engagement functionality tied in, and an employee intranet behind a secure login.

• Basic Page: Static home page introducing a new business, complete with an embedded YouTube video, and a newsletter sign-up box.What this achieves is minimal, although for some entrepreneurs and products, extraordinary things have happened. At the very least, you have created a landing page with some brief interesting content, with a call-to-action that invites them to sign-up for more information. Ideally, you will send them a Whitepaper or Free Report as a token of appreciation.
• Basic Site: Home Page ~ About / Information Page ~ Products / Services Page ~ Contact ~ BlogAt the very least, when you add more to your website and ready to take on the web role more seriously, you want to fill out the information pages with more detail. The About / Information page is not one to be neglected anymore either. With the number of scam artists on the web as well, people are also looking to confirm your identity. Any and all information you add, personalizes the relationship to the web visitor. Speak to the audience that will resonate with you.
  
  
• The Blog is a key feature to be nurtured on an ongoing basis. Blogging daily is a major plus for search engines, and continually improving your ranking. People hear this all the time. While this holds truth, blogging daily isn’t a reality for most, and not really going to have such a significant impact when reduced to once or twice a week. It’s when you don’t blog at all that it really hurts you. Regularly updated content ensures the search engines are always coming to your site and indexing its pages, thus improving chances of searches landing on your website.
  
  
• Member Sites: These allow visitors to the website to sign-up, become members, and participate in an online community. When done well, this results in significant opportunities for responding to the market / audience, building loyalty, gaining product insights, and increasing a market-share potential through simple relationship development — not management.
  
  
• Intranet Sites: These allow companies to extend the social engagement, knowledge share, and employee development across wider regions, improving company performance, business intelligence and process or product improvements through well executed intranet site plans.

These summary points are all about websites intended for one purpose:

Engage Your Audience!