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Using Social Networks for Business Networking

Doug Williams @ 6:58 am

This blog entry was posted on May 31, 2011.

Business networking is a time honored method of growing your business. You can use business oriented social networking to deepen relationships and form closer bonds. Online Networking is a concept that connects people together on a global social media community. Social networking has expanded our opportunities to meet and interact from our local neighborhood to the international scene.

10 business oriented social networks

  1. Biznik: Biznik is a business networking site that has the unique feature of publishing articles by the members. This is an online community of entrepreneurs and small businesses.
  2. Ecademy: A social network for business people. Ecademy provides networking opportunities through a combination of online and offline events. Create contacts and share knowledge.
  3. Entrepreneur Connect : The social network for entrepreneurs and small business owners. Participates in groups include starting a business to women entrepreneurs.
  4. LinkedIn : A business oriented social networking site. With over 100 million registered users worldwide. Members interact in discussion topics on LinkedIn Answers and a large searchable directory.
  5. Networking for Professionals: Business networking for owners, network marketers and managers looking to expand their client base. Combines online business networking and real-life events.
  6. Plaxo: An online address book and social networking service. This allows you to keep up contacts even as they move jobs.
  7. Ryze: A free social networking website designed to link business professionals, particularly new entrepreneurs. The site claims to have over 500,000 members worldwide.
  8. StartupNation: a community focused on starting up and growing businesses. They provide an exchange of ideas between entrepreneurs and aspiring business owners.
  9. Young Entrepreneur : An online forum based website for entrepreneurs worldwide. A great resource for start-up CEOs, founders, aspiring entrepreneurs, mentors and investors.
  10. Ziggs: Similar to LinkedIn. Create a professional online presence for yourself and increase your online visibility. An online brand management resource.

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Filed under: Social Media Marketing



Should You Ever Fire Your Customer?

Doug Williams @ 6:08 am

This blog entry was posted on May 27, 2011.

I think many businesses don’t value their customers enough. Customers are a precious resource that needs to be treasured. I will be the first to admit that there are some customers that you do need to get rid of. There are those that are plain toxic to deal with. Then there are those that won’t or can’t pay you. Many times patience and persistence can turn these into good customers.

There is another group. Those that take more of your time than you can justify for what you are being paid. What about these? Rather than fire these customers, consider raising your price.

Raising Price Rather Than Saying No

I go back to a time early in my career over 30 years ago. I worked for an aluminum sporting goods company. The owner of this company was also a great mentor to me. His philosophy was to increase the price rather than turn away a customer. Here is the story.

They did precision tube drawing for outside firms on the same equipment that produced the aluminum products. An aerospace company brought in a job for us to do every year. This was tight tolerance stainless steel precision work that was used in military projects.

Many of the employees and managers complained because the jobs were difficult to do and the company lost money every time. They wanted the owner to “fire the customer”. Instead the owner went back to the customer and told them the price would be double on the next order.

The next year, the customer came back and ordered again. We produced the order. We then doubled the price again.

The next year the customer came back. We doubled the price.

Again the customer came back. By this time the job was highly profitable. The customer was happy because the price they paid us was only a small fraction of their overall cost. Quality and precision was more important than price.

With increased revenue we developed new and better methods to produce this product even easier. This new process allowed the company to develop a new line of products that had a better performance.

The lesson I learned was to increase prices if capacity was scarce or a type of job was too difficult. It is better to have a customer not order from you due to price than for you to refuse to do business with someone. Many times your own prices may have been set too low and that is not the fault of your customer.

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Filed under: Business Consulting



SEO is a Continuous Process, Not a One Time Event

Doug Williams @ 6:28 am

This blog entry was posted on May 24, 2011.

Building up your online business takes effort and you are working on it all the time. SEO is the same way. You need to always keep working on it. SEO is a continual process, not a one time event. If you want a top ranking, you will need to always be working on and investing in your website

The SEO process can be technical and have many possible steps. It is easier to break the SEO process into four major steps.

Evaluate: Start by evaluating your goals and objectives. Do you want more visitors, leads or sales? Then look at the website itself. How well is it optimized? Are there any visible defects? Look at the site architecture. How competitive is the market? How strong is the competition? Establish metrics to show your progress and success.

Plan: Do keyword research. Select the best keywords based on relevance, search volume and level of competition. Apply these keywords to a page plan. Now you create strategies on how you will best optimize your website. This may mean structural changes, content growth strategy, link building or social media optimization.

Optimize: This is applying the strategies and appropriate keywords from the planning stage. This will include optimizing the actual web pages. Do link building and other off page optimization methods. Add regular keyword rich content to your website in the form of new pages, articles or blog postings are great content growth methods.

Measure: Look at your Google Analytics data for visits, bounce rate and time visitors spend on your website. Look at search engine rankings on Google and Bing. What conversions is your website producing in the form of leads, sales, etc. Then prepare this into a monthly report for the client.

The SEO process then starts all over again. We evaluate the results, plan changes, implement the optimization and then measure results.

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Filed under: SEO Strategies



How to Write an About-Us Page For Your Business

Doug Williams @ 5:25 am

This blog entry was posted on May 20, 2011.

This is the website page that humanizes your business. Your About-Us page is there to build trust and credibility. Visitors want to know the business or the person behind the website. They want to know to know your story. They want to know how long you have been in business. They want to know if they should trust you.

This is the job of your About-Us page.

Importance: How often do visitors read the about-us page? Based on analytics data of our clients, 2-35% of visitors will go to this page. It really depends on your type business. If you have a strong brand and your business is well known, fewer people will view it. Ecommerce sites tend to have a lower number of visitors reading the about-us. Attorney websites, physician websites and weight loss websites have the highest viewing rate at 25-35%.

What to include: These pages should help people learn more about who you are, what you do, and why they can trust you. The about-us area for a website can be a single page or a section of pages, depending on your website.

Describe how you are different and better than your competition. Introduce your key staff members with a “meet the staff” page. Share your company philosophies, awards and certifications. If you have important affiliations, this is the page to include them.

Tell when your company was founded and how long you have been serving your industry. People enjoy reading the story on how a company got started and what led the founder to launch the business.

The About us page should be concise and easy to read. Its main purpose is to build trust with your visitor. People want to feel safe and secure before they buy from you or even provide you their email address.

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Filed under: Web Usability



7 Web Strategies for Startup Businesses

Doug Williams @ 5:06 am

This blog entry was posted on May 17, 2011.

Recessions may create unemployment, but they also create opportunity. New businesses are being started by those that have lost their jobs. The web is where most new businesses are investing their marketing dollars to attract new customers.

How can a new start-up business best lever the power of the Internet?

  1. Strategy: This is your “who, what why” for your marketing. Decide who are you trying to market to? How do they make their buying decision? What are you marketing and how is that different and better than what your competition offers? Why should they buy from you? If you know the answers to these questions, you are ready to create a “focused” marketing campaign.
  2. Branding: Choose a domain and business name that matches. This makes your business name more memorable. The domain should be a .COM. Over 73% of all domain names in the US are .COM. To appear credible, you need a .COM.
  3. Website: Put up a website that gives your business a credible image, The look and feel should be consistent with your industry. Your website needs to answer the questions your potential customers are searching for. Put yourself in your visitor’s shoes. Why did they come to your website? They came looking for answers. You should supply these answers.
  4. Mobile: Your website needs to render well on cell phones, smartphones and ipads. Test out your site. You may need to display a mobile version of your site when it is being accessed by a mobile device. This is easy to do if you have a knowledgeable web company building your site.
  5. Google Places: These listings are free for any business that has an actual physical location. These are the 7 Google Map listings that appear when doing a search for local businesses. More on how to create a Google Places listing.
  6. Local SEO: Apply local SEO to your website so it will come up quickly when someone does a search for you on Google. Usually this means optimizing your website for your “city + a broad keyword phrase”. More on how to optimize your website for local search.
  7. Social Media: FaceBook is and will continue to be the #1 social networking website on the web. According to Alexa, it is the #2 most visited website in the World (after Google). The impact of this is that any business engaged in social media marketing, should have a presence on Facebook.

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Filed under: Business Consulting,Internet Marketing



How to Create a Free Google Places Listing for Your Business

Doug Williams @ 6:14 am

This blog entry was posted on May 13, 2011.

These are the 7 Google Map listings that appear when doing a search for local businesses. According to Google, 97% of consumers search for local businesses online. Listings are free for any business that has an actual physical location that they publish. Only businesses that make in-person contact with customers qualify for a Google Places listing.

Google Places Business Listings are optimized for smartphones. If your current website is not smartphone optimized then this is the perfect free tool for mobile visibility.

Google Places listings will appear in addition to your normal website listings. You can see an example of this in the image below (green boxes). Best of all, your business listing is free. Go to Google Places to get started on your business listing.

How to complete your Places Listing

  1. Business Name: This should be your legal business name. Avoid trying to use extra keywords here.
  2. Business Location: Use your actual physical address. Do not use PO Boxes. Do not create multiple
    listings if you service multiple areas from one location. Instead designate service areas.
  3. Phone: Use a local phone number that connects to your business location. Avoid using toll free numbers.
  4. Website: Provide only one website that best services your location.
  5. Categories: You can select up to 5 categories that best describes what your business is. Start by selecting the best categories from the drop down. You can use your own keyword driven categories, but try them first by doing a Google search followed by your city to make sure a map listing will appear for that keyword.
  6. Description: Use the description fields to include additional information about your listing. It is OK to use keywords here. You can do the same with the custom attribute field.

Make your Places listing as complete as possible. Answer all Questions on the entry form. These include hours of operation and methods of payment. Upload images (up to 10) and videos (up to 5).

For more, see Google’s quality guidelines.

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Filed under: Local Search



How To Test Your Site Using Web Based Mobile Emulators

Doug Williams @ 5:11 am

This blog entry was posted on May 10, 2011.

How does your website look on a mobile phone or an iPad? You can quickly test how your site will look using one of these mobile emulators. These web based emulators will simulate a mobile browser environment. This gives you a quick and easy way to test your website.

Caution: These web based testing emulators only simulate a mobile browser environment. This should not replace testing on actual devices. Instead use this to give an initial look at how your site will look in various mobile environments. They are quick and easy to use. Each will give a different view of your website.

iPhone Simulator: TestiPhone.com is a web based browser emulator that will show how your website will look on an iPhone.

Opera Mini Simulator: Opera Mini is probably the most popular user-installable browser on mobile phones. It uses the Java ME platform and consequently requires that the mobile device be capable of running Java ME applications. Test your website the Opera Mini simulator.

dotMobi Mobile Phone Emulator: The dotmobi emulator allows you to test how your website will appear on the typical mobile phone. You can select a Sony K750 skin or a Nokia N70 skin for the emulation. This will allow you to see your website the way millions of your visitors will see it.

iPad Emulator: iPad Peek is a web based emulator that allows you to see how your website will be rendered on the iPad. They recommend that you view the simulation in Apple Safari or Google Chrome to give as accurate of simulation as possible.

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Filed under: Mobile Web



37 Things You Can Do With Your Website

Doug Williams @ 6:32 am

This blog entry was posted on May 6, 2011.

  1. Generate leads for your business.
  2. Sell a product or service online.
  3. Reach potential buyers 24/7.
  4. Receive payments (Bill Pay).
  5. Show examples of your work (portfolio).
  6. Take online applications for loans.
  7. Build up an email list.
  8. Have people sign-up for your specials and sales
  9. Sign people up for classes or seminars
  10. Put on a webinar
  11. Train people for job related certifications
  12. Publish a blog
  13. Create a RSS feed that people can subscribe to.
  14. Publish lists of books, favorite restaurants, etc.
  15. Host a forum where people can discuss specific topics.
  16. Publish an online magazine.
  17. Produce an online brochure (brochure website).
  18. Create a searchable database for almost anything (plants, repair parts, cars).
  19. Publish how to videos
  20. If you put on webinars, seminars or are a public speaker, include video segments on your site.
  21. Take reservations for your restaurant.
  22. Have patients book medical appointments.
  23. Display MLS homes for sale on your real estate website.
  24. Post employment opportunities with your company.
  25. Receive employment applications.
  26. Include a driving directions map to your business.
  27. Tell your company story on your About Us pages.
  28. Include a staff directory so clients can see who they are working with.
  29. Attract investors for your business
  30. Publish annual reports.
  31. Have a secure login area for clients.
  32. Take surveys.
  33. Encourage people to review your business.
  34. If you have multiple locations, include a page for each store or restaurant.
  35. Answer questions (FAQ) as part of your pre-sell process.
  36. Make your business look large and well established (even if you work out of your home).
  37. Make your business look engaged and focused in a market niche (even if you are a large multinational business).

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Filed under: Internet Marketing



The Power of Three in Web Marketing

Doug Williams @ 10:36 am

This blog entry was posted on May 3, 2011.

There is something simple and powerful about the number three. The human mind can easily comprehend three variations and keep them straight. People can easily make a choice when given three options. On your website, keep it as easy as 1-2-3.

Always try to limit your visitor’s decisions to a maximum of three.

Keep it simple: Present your products giving up to 3 options. Let’s suppose you have 17 different services that you can do for people. If you make them select from a field of 17, they will make no choice, and just leave. Instead group them into 3 bundles. This good, better, best makes the choice easy.

Make it Clear: You have just 3 seconds to convince a new visitor to stay and look around your website. Make your website messaging very clear as to what you do and what problems you can solve. Use the page headlines and navigation to communicate your offering. People are impatient and if they don’t instantly understand, they just leave.

Keep focused: What one thing do you want visitors to do when they come to your website? Call, sign-up or buy now? These are the actions you want them to take. One call to action is best, but don’t offer more than 3 choices. Otherwise they will make no choice and just leave.

Fewer steps: If you have a buying process or checkout, keep it to three steps or less. Really make it as easy as 1-2-3 to prevent frustration and process abandonment.

We see this power of 3 in marketing every day. Realtors will try and show 3 houses to allow a buyer to keep their options straight. Gas stations offer 3 grades of gasoline. Apply the power of three to your website marketing.

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Filed under: Internet Marketing