1. Website History

Do you have an existing site? If so what is domain name? (web address)

Do you want a new site, development or refreshing of an existing site?

Do you currently use any website statistical tools?

Do you currently have any social media accounts associated with your website/business? (Eg. Twitter, Facebook etc)

2. Your Visitors

Do you have an idea of who will be visiting your site?

Are they the same as your current offline customers?

If not, think about your desired or typical customer to the website? What do they want from your website?

Think about the goals of the website or indeed each page or section? Are they coming to find out information, be entertained, subscribing to a membership/newsletter, making a purchase, reading research, contributing to a conversation etc…

3. Website – the new one

Is the site more about information being ‘pushed to’ the customer (a brochure site), or more about having a two-way conversation with customers (content driven and interactive?)

Is having a good ranking on Google important to you and your business?

Does the site need social media links?

Does the site need a blog? Would it benefit from having a blog?

Do you need to be able to edit the content of the site yourself?

What is the approximate size of the site, ie. how many pages do you need? Do you need sections or categories?  (Often drawing a site-map on a scrap of paper or in something like Word or PowerPoint can help with this).

Do you need ecommerce on the site (the ability for customers to purchase from you online)?

Are you able to put together your own website copy?  Can you prepare the words and provide the pictures/photos for the pages or do these need to be created and/or outsourced?

Do you have a logo (it is usually very important to keep branding consistent across all marketing/customer channels)?

Have you seen other websites/competitors perhaps that you like the look of? Or don’t like the look of?

Is there any particular functionality that you’d like the site to have, like image galleries, rotating images/slideshows, twitter feeds and so on?

4. Small Print

Do you have any deadlines for your website project? When would you like the new website to be launched?

Do you have budget for the site? The budget will need to at least allow for the design and build of the site, the domain name and web hosting, and ongoing maintenance.

Does the site need any legal references, eg. terms and conditions, privacy policy, disclaimers and so forth?

A website is a big investment so it’s worth getting it right the first time!

Why should you have one? A Facebook business page is a fantastic tool for business because it places your company right at the heart of the world’s most popular social network, it will help your business connect and engage with customers, meet new ones and will help spread your business message via the friend network. Plus the search engines love them.

Similar to a personal profile page, you’ll be able to post status updates on your wall telling your ‘fans’ about developments in your service/product offering, provide insight into the people behind the ‘brand’, engage in conversation and light banter.  You’ll be able to post company information, links to websites, pages and blogs, post pictures and videos, ask questions via discussions and announce events.  It’s like having your very own mobile broadcast vehicle that zips around the world.  Best of all because your Facebook business page is ‘opt-in’ your group of fans will be dedicated to your cause.

So how do you go about setting one up?

The first thing to get your head around is that any Facebook business page needs to be created within a personal Facebook profile page.

As Susan Payton in her Mashable post says ‘Facebook Pages are different than profiles. You have a profile for you, Jane Doe, but your business can’t have a profile — it can have a Page. A Page is a place to house all the pertinent information about your company.’

And initially the person that ‘own’ the profile page is the person that administrates it. It’s a good idea at this point to consider carefully who should take this role.  For those of us with small businesses that is an easy decision to make as it’s normally just ‘us’ but for a larger company some thought must be given to who will control the profile page.

So to get started…

1. If you haven’t already, join and register with Facebook at www.facebook.com.

2. Once logged in scroll to the very bottom of the page and on the bottom navigation menu click on ‘Advertising’.

3. Then click on the Pages button near the top.

4. Then click on the Create a Page green button.

5. Fill in the form, selecting the options that best suit your business.  Please make sure that you’re not in violation of any Facebook terms or policies, click on the link to read if necessary. Press Create Page when ready.

6. You’ve done all the hard work now you can add information to your page.  If you click on ‘Edit Information’ you’ll be able to add basic and detailed information about your company, like websites, company overview (perhaps copy and paste some information from your own website). Post a welcome to our business page message in your status, perhaps mention what your intentions are with the page.  Write something in the little text box to the left-hand side, think of it as your calling card so make it engaging and appealing.  Click on the little + button on the main navigation and add the menu tabs for photos, links, events and so forth, utilise whatever suits your business.

7. If you click on the ‘edit page’ link on the left-hand side menu, you’ll be taken to the settings for your page and this is where you can set permissions on who can post what.  Click the little pencil to get to the edit menu’s for each of the options.

8. When you are ready, click on the Publish this Page button to make it go live – the TELL people about it (see consideration 4 below).

Other considerations:

• To log back into your Facebook business page (when you want to update it), first login to the profile you used to set up the page.  Then look to the bottom of the browser window and click on the little green and blue F icon on the Applications Menu, this will take you to Ads and Pages, where you will click on Pages, then View Page.  And off you go.

• A very useful application to have is Memorable Web Addresses, look on the page settings page (see point 7 above) for applications, click link and browse the applications. You’re looking for a Facebook Business Application and this particular one allows you to have an easy to remember personalised web address for your Facebook business page. There are plenty of other applications that you can append to your page, just make sure they add value to your audience.

• On the settings page, you can add other administrators.

• You aren’t able to ‘share the page’ with all of your friends directly however you could post the link on your blog, link to it on your website, put the link in your email signature, post it on twitter and your personal Facebook status, mention it in client email mailshots – just tell people about it and if you keep it relevant, professional and updated people will come.

Examples of businesses using Facebook business pages

The New York Times

STA Travel

Wiggly Wigglers

Innocent Drinks

Spencer & Young Artists

katproductions (me) – http://companies.to/katproductions/

It may appear a little daunting at first to set up your Facebook business page especially when in this day and age we’re so used to getting something instantly at a click of a button but will be so worth it for your business!

Other useful sources of related information for Facebook business pages:

http://www.davechaffey.com/blog/online-pr/using-facebook-for-marketing-10-company-examples/

http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages

http://feedfront.com/archives/article002156

http://mashable.com/2009/09/22/facebook-pages-guide/

http://mashable.com/category/facebook/

Introducing Guest Blogger Rhian Lonergan-White from dare to know Ltd, a North Lincolnshire based multi-disciplinary creative services agency.

Design is an integral part of a professional-looking business, but you may not want to invest in outsourcing the work. If you have decided to DIY design and don’t know where to start, these ten tips should help you on your way.

1. Get to know your printer. A good printer can tell you the most cost-effective way to print, advise on paper weight, resolution and colour management. They will also tell you what format they can print, something you need to know way before you even get started on your design project.
2. Get more than one printing quote. Printing prices and quality vary massively from printer to printer and most expensive does not mean best quality or service, so always shop around before you decide.
3. Buy Books. There are some great books available for ‘Non-designers’ who want to design their own promotional literature. Learn simple rules that if you follow your designs will vastly improve, so invest in some books and take time to learn.
4. Collect stuff. If you find yourself in front of a leaflet stand, close your eyes, open them and take the first leaflet that you notice. Chances are, this will be well designed. If you keep a box full of designs you like and you think are good, these will help improve your designs and provide inspiration.
5. Ask people what they think. Always get a second opinion on what you have designed. You might have missed something important or may not be getting the right message across with your use of colour, fonts or images.
6. Use good software. Adobe InDesign is what I use to do Graphic Design and I wouldn’t recommend using anything else. However, it is not cheap. But, you get what you pay for and it is an invaluable tool in producing professional design.
7. Avoid Clipart. How often I have seen a poster draped in Clipart and avoided the event advertised simply as a result of this. Clipart is often used by design novices and makes the design look like it has been designed by a novice. Avoid at all costs!
8. No image is better than a bad image. Too many times have I seen designs with poor images, pixelated and inappropriate to the context of the design. You can easily tell when someone has sourced a low quality image off the internet and plonked it into a layout. It makes you look bad. If in doubt, take it out.
9. Be consistent. Find a design style that is appropriate for your business and stick to it. Consistency is vital in creating the right image.
10. Be Bold, show personality. Don’t be afraid to use striking colours or abstract images in your design. There’s nothing less inspiring than a brochure full of pictures of people in suits sitting round tables.

Feel free to contact Rhian of dare to know ltd if you need any help or guidance.

Rhian Lonergan-White BA Hons graduated in 1999 from Liverpool John Moores University with a degree in TV production. She spent 5 years with the Oxford University museum, The Ashmolean, as an in-house graphic designer, where she was responsible for exhibition, book and front-of-house design. During this time Rhian was DJ-ing in Oxford, running her own club nights and designing many books and other assorted material for prestigious organisations such as The British Violin Making Association and The Association for Cultural Enterprise. She also held two successful graphic art exhibitions in Oxford.

Rhian moved to North Lincolnshire in 2007, setting up her multi-discipline creative services company, dare to know ltd. Her time is now divided between being commissioned for bespoke graphic art for businesses and individuals, graphic design projects, photography assignments and film production jobs. Rhian’s colourful style of graphic art has been described as ‘hyper-surreal and fantastical’, where the use of photographs to transcend the ordinary becomes ‘visual alchemy’, as described in The Journal, to create something truly unique. She also works as a creative workshop facilitator in all things creative and including podcasting, film-making and animation, as well as giving tutorials in creative software such as Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Final Cut Pro and all things ‘Mac’.

With dare to know, Rhian has enjoyed a very busy and successful first two years in business, with many workshop projects winning awards, most notably an animation won the Children’s section at the International Animation Film Festival in the Czech Republic in 2008.

“Help customers find you on Google Maps“

Many millions of businesses and people use Google and Google maps to find other businesses every day and Google through their online Local Business Centre’s allow you to add your business FREE to their listings.

That way, when someone is searching for a local business similar to yours, you might have a better chance in ranking well in their Google Map search. Often a search in Google’s general search engine will show a small map of the local area with pinpoints directing you to local businesses, and by doing this yours could be one of them.

Like they say, it’s easy and it’s free – so why not!

1. Go to www.google.com/local and click on ‘put your business on Google Maps’
2. Either login if you already have a Google account or ‘sign up now’ to register
3. To add a new listing, fill in your business information, including your email, website (if you have one) and up to five categories, add one at time, click on ‘add another category’ if you want to another more than one.
4. As well, you can input your operating hours, business payment options, up to 10 photographs, up to five video’s from a You Tube account, plus other additional details.
5. Click submit and you’re done! As easy as that.

If you have more than one business, you can manage all your listings within your Google account and update it whenever you want.

Plus having a Google account allows you access to many other fantastic Google applications like Google Alerts, Google Analytics and the Google Reader for keeping track of any blogs you are following.

I will have blog posts about these coming soon.

mailchimp.com email newsletter online service

Using email marketing, that is keeping in contact with your customers via email, is a great way to open communication channels and keep your business in the forefront of your customers’ minds.  If done well, it’s a really effective means to increase your brand/business exposure to those new and existing customers that might need your services now and in the future.

Email newsletters are perfect for promoting your products and services in a timely and appropriate fashion, letting customers know about any new offers/promotions/developments within your business, sharing customer feedback and testimonials, and just generally keeping your name out there.

Mailchimp is an excellent tool to help with your email marketing efforts.  It’s main benefits are:

• the creation of professional looking emails that work with all the different types of email clients such as Outlook, gmail, hotmail, AOL and so forth, as often these will visually render the same email differently, some will remove images, some will only show text, others are very strict about what constitutes spam. Mailchimp allows you to create emails using their own tried and tested email templates, or with a little knowledge you’re able to customise these to create something truly unique.
• awesome list management capabilities. Mailchimp allows you to manage as many contact lists as you need, letting you create lists on the fly, uploading existing customers lists or even putting special code onto your website so any new ‘newsletter’ join-ups are added automatically to the relevant Mailchimp list (that is providing you abide by the current opt-in contact list regulations that stipulate all contacts on a list have knowingly agreed to opt-in to receiving your email newsletters – Data Protection Act 1998). Mailchimp list management also allows for such things as automatic and recorded unsubscribes and list segmentation.
• A fully comprehensive report and tracking centre. Each campaign sent has it’s own set of reports to tell you how many and who opened your email, how many bounced, how many regarded your email as spam, when and where emails were opened, how many were forwarded using easy to read graphics with the ability to download as an Excel spreadsheet. And all against industry benchmarks. One tool that many of my clients have found very useful is the A/B split testing that helps determine the best practice for their email campaigns. It also allows for Google Analytics integration to better track website clicks.
• Many more features including data security and privacy, maximum deliverability and plenty of useful help and support.

The best bit for small businesses is that it is free to use for up to lists of 500.  After that you simply go onto using one of their pay-monthly programmes or the pay-as-you-go plan where you purchase credits as and when you need them.

You can read more about www.mailchimp.com at their website.  Providing that you aren’t spamming customers with irrelevant and too frequent material and that your email content sends suitable and well-timed messages to customers who have opted-in to receive them, using an online service such as Mailchimp is a truly hassle-free way to start connecting with your customers and is superbly cost-effective.

You can find out more about email marketing here:

• http://www.mailchimp.com/resources/
• http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/layer?topicId=1073919418
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_marketing
• http://www.audettemedia.com/blog/email-marketing-tips/
• http://www.emailbrain.com/eb/resources.shtml

Good luck!

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is about more than having a good set of keywords on your website.  Backlinks are an absolutely vital way of letting the search engines know about your site, thus affecting your search engine rankings and sadly it’s something that many website owners are unaware of.

Backlinks, often referred to as inbound links, are links from another website back to yours.  For example, having my website address (URL) on this blog (see blogroll to the left) is providing an inbound link back to my own website at katproductions (as is this link).  The search engines use a website’s backlinks as one indication of its’ popularity and credibility which ultimately affects that website’s search engine ranking.

Many factors determine the value of backlinks to your website search engine ranking but the best backlinks come from other established websites that are relevant to your own industry and credible themselves. And it also helps if the page that your weblink is on has a good ‘PageRank‘.

“PageRank is a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page, used by the Google Internet search engine that assigns a numerical weighting…” to each webpage, it is what Google uses to determine the importance of your webpages. Wikipedia

The theory goes that having your backlink on a page with a high PageRank will give that link to your website a higher weighted value therefore helping push up your search engine rankings for that page. However, if that highly PageRanked page has many backlinks on it to other websites it can effectively dilute its value, almost like it has to share out the value of its PageRank amongst all the links on its’ page.  You can find out more about this here and here as it can get fairly complicated.

All we need to know is that another website’s PageRank can add value to your inbound link.

If you want to find out what the PageRank’s are for the pages on your site either install the Google PageRank toolbar onto your browser or try this tool, Whats my PageRank,  I can’t be sure exactly how accurate it is but for the sites I tested it seemed accurate enough.

How do I find out how many backlinks my website has?

Most search engines provide a method for determining the number of backlinks that your website has.  For instance on Google, try typing link:websitename.co.uk into the search box. Google seems to show much less backlinks than another search like Yahoo.  Try Yahoo’s Site Explorer by typing your web address, www.webname.co.uk into the field at the top, then click on the Explore URL button. This seems to show the largest number of backlinks back to your site.

If you’ve installed Google’s PageRank toolbar and click on the PageRank icon while on any webpage, then select BackLinks from the drop down menu, it will show you Google’s list of backlinks for that page.

Another nice little online tool is Backlink Watch. This tells you how many backlinks your site has, what the anchor text is on each backlink, and how many other external links (to other pages or websites) there are on that particular webpage. Speaking of anchor text, this is the text that the link is behind, the most commonly used anchor text for a link is ‘click here’.  If you do a search for the words ‘click here’ it will show you all the websites that use this anchor text.  It doesn’t mean anything to anyone but shows you the power of having keyword driven anchor text.  So for example, if possible rather than have someone put ‘click here for katproductions’, see if it can be ‘click here for web design services from katproductions’. That way your backlink is working hardest for you.

It’s true you can pay to have backlinks created for your website. Although, I would be wary about anyone offering to get your business hundreds of backlinks in a short period of time.  The worst case scenario is that your web address ends up on hundreds of purpose built ‘link farms’ that the search engines don’t like and potentially your website could be penalised for, that is to have your search engine rankings severly compromised or worse still totally removed.

However, in saying that there are many good search engine optimisation companies around who will create a backlinking strategy for your business and who have dedicated staff finding suitable and valuable backlinks for your website.  It seems that the search engines value a more organic growth of backlinks and are likely to be suspicious if your backlinks increase hugely and suddenly overnight.

How do I get backlinks to my site?

First and most importantly make sure your website has quality content that people want to link to. After all there is no point going to all this trouble just to have people leave as soon as they arrive!

Then to get backlinks I suggest using a variety of sources.  First make sure that you’ve submitted yourself to the Google and Yahoo search engines.  Then do a couple of searches to find some credible website directories like DMOZ, Thomson Local and so on.  Many of these will allow you to register your business free of charge.  Then try putting some of your keywords/key phrases into a search engine and see which websites your competitors are listed on or even try your competitors’s web address using the ‘link’ techniques mentioned above. Find out whether you should be or can be listed on these as well. Or it may be that your business works with other similar or complimentary businesses and there may be opportunities to have your web address on their websites. Though beware of having too many reciprocal links, sometimes they can end up effectively cancelling each out out.

These days it is quite common practice to use social networking type websites to help with your backlinking.  For example, submitting online articles, a Facebook Business Page, a business blog, a Twitter account or a social bookmarking account, like Digg or Delicious, will allow you to create a profile about yourself and/or your business thus providing the link back to your business website.  And providing that you actually make use of these accounts, it can be an extremely successful way of telling the search engines that you are most definitely in business! Plus there are many many other benefits in utilising these as well – but that’s another blog post!

In addition to having your own accounts with social networking sites, it is also very useful from a backlinking point of view to read other related blogs, facebook pages, twitter accounts, forums and so forth and post comments on these.  As well as this adding another backlink for your website, and providing you post geniune comments (and not blatant hard-sell ‘come to my website’ type messages) you will also better your own online credibility within your industry, and you might even have a bit of fun or learn something new doing so.

It is a win-win situation.

More information:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backlink

http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=1151743

http://www.webconfs.com/how-to-build-backlinks-article-16.php

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356

The key to a successful online presence and an effective search engine optimisation strategy is by having relevant keywords. Very simply put the best keywords are those that most accurately reflect the words and phrases that your online visitors will use to search online for your website.

By creating your own list of relevant keywords you’ll find it easier to tap into your pool of online customers. You’re likely to find that your website traffic will increase and it will be far more targeted and therefore they will be far more likely to want to engage in a relationship with your business.

WHAT EXACTLY ARE KEYWORDS?

Typically keywords are words and phrases that people type into search engines to find goods, services and information. Much research tells us that most people when searching use more than one word to find something on the internet, and that they will keep refining their words until they come across a page of search engine results that gives a list of website links that satisfies what they’re looking for. If this is the way that you search online it is more than likely that your customers are using this very same process too.

HOW ARE THESE KEYWORDS USED?

Once you have a good list, your keywords will contribute to your websites search engine optimisation and ultimately help shape your online strategy. There doesn’t seem to be any hard and fast rule about how many keywords that you should have but I normally suggest to clients that a good start is to create a 20-30. Your keywords can then be used to help build your website’s text copy, provide relevant search engine optimisation tags within your website’s code, help to develop social networking content like blogging, tweets and other online commentary.

Search Engine Optimisation

Search engines use keywords from your website text content and specially tagged code to establish a ‘theme’ that helps it to rank each page of your website. Amongst other indicators, the strength of your ‘theme’ combined with relevant and credible back links leading back to your site will establish your rank within the search engines for your keywords. Most often a web designer/developer would implement the search engine specific tags within the site’s code that is unless your website’s content management facility allows you access.

You can see any website’s meta-tags by clicking on the View or Page menu’s in your browser then selecting the option that says, ‘source’ or ‘page source’. The code will open in your text editor.

The tags to watch out for are:

Title tag: looks like this <title>words in here</title> Currently the most important of the in-code optimisation tags. The title tag is revealed in the very top blue bar of your internet browser. Typically organisations use this field to simply state their business name. Ideally place 2-3 of your most important keywords/keyphrases here providing they are relevant to the information displayed on that page.

Meta-tags: These are placed within the code of your website. The meta-tag ‘keywords’ will simply list the keywords relevant to the individual webpage they are on and the meta-tag ‘description’ will retain a 1-2 sentence statement about your business and the content of the individual page that utilises 2-3 of your keywords. The search engines prefer that the description is informative and not hard-sell.

Alt tags and link ‘titles’: You’ll know if a webpage has these enabled by running your mouse over any on-page links, menu links or images and having a small yellow rectangular box appear with text inside. Not only do these help with search engine optimisation by listing relevant keyword(s) but provide sensible non-visual navigation cues for website accessibility.

H1 tags and Bolding: As well as making it easier for visitors to digest chunks of text on your website, using headers and bolding of words helps the search engines to determine better the ‘theme’ of your page and therefore helps with your search engine rankings. H1 to H6 are simply six standard ‘codes’ that web designers/developers will use to create section and paragraph headings.

Text Content: Your list of keywords will be crucial in helping you create the text copy for each of your webpages. As well as providing useful information to visitors the search engines will read the text on your website and look for any similar keywords that are used frequently in a natural and organic way. Search engines are very clever in recognising when a website has simply listed all their keywords over and over again solely for cheating the optimisation process and they will either ignore it completely or black list the page from their results.

Online presence outside of your website

Your keywords can also help better your online presence outside of your website. Here I’m talking in terms of social media and social networking. For example, if you’re registered with LinkedIn, the online business networking directory your profile should be littered with your main keywords. If you have a business related blog or use a micro-blogging tool like Twitter, your list of keywords can help shape your blog topics. Or if you say use Facebook for business, again these have opportunity for relevant keyword placement, and providing all of these social media sites link back to your own website, then you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how much they can help with your search engine rankings.

SO HOW DO YOU CREATE A USEFUL LIST OF KEYWORDS?

Getting together a list of keywords isn’t difficult but to be successful does require a small amount of time spent researching and refining the words. Let’s take for example a local website that sells DIY hardware.

I have found that typically when first asked to provide a list of keywords a business will send a list of between 10-15 singular words that they feel are relevant to their business. In this case, I may have received a list that said ‘hammers, nails, fences, paint, screws, timber, tools, drills, lights, bulbs, bathrooms’.

Imagine for a minute if someone in a search engine simply types ‘nails‘ what kind of website is likely to be thrown up in the results. A quick search reveals mostly website’s about fingernails, nail varnish and nail care. Nothing at all on the first page about fencing or building nails. And let’s face it, the majority of us won’t go past the first page of search results before refining our search.

So immediately we can see that unless you’re an corporate multi-national who’s very image is ‘nails’ or your business operates in a very unusual and niche industry, then your website isn’t going to do well with singular words.

The first step in creating your keywords is to make a generic list, then think about the journey that someone will take to find your business online – a journey that can often take days of online research as opposed to impulsive offline purchasing.

Gary Reid from Search Works, (taken from a recent .net article) says that the first type of search is called ‘navigational’ where a search query will include a brand name, a web address or a company name. The second type of search is called ‘informational’ where highly generic phrases will be used for example ‘fence palings’ or ‘concrete nails’.  And the final leg of the journey is called a ‘transactional’ search where typically 3-5 word phrases are used to really narrow down the search, for instance, ‘white porcelain door handles’ or ‘brand model colour size location’.  The key is to have a list of keywords that represent each stage of this journey and that are specific to each page of your website. It’s worth noting that the search engines when evaluating your webpages don’t like to see too much repetition.

Once you have a list the next step is to ask friends, family and customers for their input. There is no harm in asking customers how they found you or what they might do to search for you online (if they didn’t know your business name).  More often than not when I help customers with this part of their keyword creation, they find that outsiders to their business will use different words to the jargon that they use on a daily basis. So it is really important to make sure that you’re using the words that your customers would use and not simply what you assume.

The next step is to take this bigger list and try these out in a search engine to see what type of results that you get.  This is excellent for many reasons, you’ll instantly see what works and what doesn’t as the results will either show your type of business or not. Once you start finding keywords that work, you’re likely to find your online competitors and can then look at their websites and see what keywords that they’re using by looking at all the optimisation factors as listed above.

Again you can see any website’s meta-tags by clicking on the View or Page menu’s in your browser then selecting the option that says, ‘source’ or ‘page source’.

Now that you have a pretty good list, you can also make use of many online tools to check your keywords for popularity and frequency of use and for suggestions as to alternative but useful keywords that you may not have come across. For example:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
http://www.seotoolset.com/cgi-bin/checktraffic.cgi

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

I’VE GOT A LIST OF KEYWORDS SO NOW WHAT?

Set about having all the search engine optimisation tips above implemented. Look at your website content – does it need an overhaul, do the words need rewriting? Have your web designer/developer add or refresh the ‘tags’ that need improving if you’re unable to. Look at ways you can expand your web presence past your website through social networking alternatives and use your keywords to help with the content of these. Take time to review your list once in a while, keep checking that they’re relevant to your business and that they’re working for you.

Have Google Analytics installed on your website, it’s an excellent tool and will provide some feedback on keywords used to find your site and it’s FREE.

As Gary Reid said, ‘blindly optimising for a set of keywords is a quick way to waste time and money’. Certainly in today’s economy making use of inexpensive marketing techniques is crucial and having smart keywords will definitely go some way in helping to avoid wasting time and money. Particularly for small businesses it will help in quickly targeting your online marketing efforts so those very important customers who are out there really searching for you and your business will find you and not your competitors.

I was recently invited by Katrina Thompson  to talk to a women’s networking group www.meet-yorkshire.co.uk about marketing tips for small businesses during a recession.

My first tip was more of a plea – Don’t stop marketing!  I used information from the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) to illustrate that, although 45% of companies reduced their marketing budgets in the first quarter of 2009, 11% of companies planned to increase spend and it would be these businesses who would win out in the end. 

Jim Connolly bears this out in a recent blog post when he discovered that businesses who not only survived, but thrived during the last recession had one thing in common – they continued to invest in the key areas of their businesses; like marketing. 

As the CIM’s (Chartered Institue of Marketing) Mark Stuart says, “Customers do not stop buying in a downturn: they just buy differently.”

Having hopefully convinced the ladies of the need to step up their marketing activity, I went on to share some tips that have worked for me and my clients.  I encouraged the audience to consider low cost ways to raise awareness of their businesses and recounted my own experiences about three60 branded cycle paniers (www.bikebins.com – not sure if the idea is to promote, or not!) whilst holidaying in France – my web stats showed a marked increase in French visitors for those two weeks in August!  Not only that, but did you know you can claim 20p a mile for cycling to client meetings?

We also talked about the opportunities that recent journalist redundancies on regional newspapers afforded small business owners with a story to tell.  You can either write a short piece about the story yourself (take a look at the papers you’re targeting to get a feel for how the journalists write) and submit it to the paper (ideally with a picture of about 1MB), or call the paper or radio station and tell them about your story.  Try to choose a story that will interest their readers/listeners and take the opportunity to promote your business on the back of it.  For example, a Hull couple made headlines after the 2007 floods forced them out of their home and made them re-evaluate their lives.  Aged 50plus, they subsequently resigned from their careers and have launched their own business.

We’re very lucky to be business owners in rural East Yorkshire as we’re a very tight knit community.  Research amongst my clients suggests that they are gaining business as the recession deepens as we’re all encouraged to pull together, shop local and safeguard livelihoods and communities.  I encouraged the ladies to maximise this opportunity and to consider collaborations with other complementary businesses.  For example, the celebrated East Yorkshire Wildlife artist, Robert Fuller, is launching his latest exhibition on Father’s Day and is treating Dads to a glass of ale from nearby Wold Top Brewery.  Cheers!

Given that it was a networking meeting, there was no doubt about the extensive low cost opportunities that all types of networking affords small business owners, but the ladies were asked to consider the benefits of social media as part of their marketing armoury.  Many use Facebook and similar social networking sites to interact with friends and family but had not considered using such tools to raise awareness of their businesses and drive traffic to their websites.  A friend of mine was recently encouraged to join the online business network ecademy and within hours his business had grabbed the attention of a BNI Director in Sydney.  The result? They’re meeting up in Sydney when the client visits for a holiday next month!   

So whatever you do – don’t stop marketing! Make the most of the many low-cost but effective marketing opportunities available to you and your business.

Tracey Baty is the founder of three60 marketing and pr and specialises in helping small and rural businesses to grow through creative marketing communications.

For me a good website needs to mirror the personality behind the logo/brand/white van, particularly so as I work with many small businesses where the person and the business are one and the same.  With an online presence becoming ever moreso important for companies, a poorly designed website is not only a waste of money but can reflect badly on the credibility of the business, causing far more harm than good.

One website that I find myself visiting time and again for inspiration is Patrick McNeil’s Design Melt Down. Patrick’s site is a glorious catalogue of website screenshots categorised by colour usage, design elements, design styles, themes, site structures and sites and so forth.

It’s a site to go to when you want to see what other people have done with say the colour green or you want to see a variety of blog styles without having to spend hours searching for good examples of blogs.

It’s a place to see how other sites have used logo badges and crests,  a place to find great examples of commercial, tourism and finance type websites.  And it’s a place to find sites with grassy backgrounds, retro graphics and minimalism.  I could go on but I don’t want to spoil the intrigue.

Whatever stage of website design or build that I’m at, it’s just a great site to visit.  You never know, perhaps one day there’ll be a katproductions site as one of the great examples!

Twitter is known as a micro-blogging application and in simple terms this means it allows people to post comments on what they’re doing directly to the web.  At first I imagined this to be full of people simply telling the world what they’d had for breakfast and how deep the snow was in their part of the woods.  A bit like a Facebook status (more about that in another blog).  And all in only 140 characters.

But it’s so much more than this and the opportunities for conversation with others is endless.  Over the past two weeks, I have followed conversations between other web designers, picking up industry trend information and design tips.  As a follower of a fantastic design magazine I have been sent incredible links to online resources and web design freebies, and I’ve been able to ask questions directed at my peers and receive valuable feedback.  And because it’s not an email, all this has been delivered in a very direct, straight to the point fashion – perfect for someone with not enough hours in the day (like myself).

As well, I been able to listen to the witty and brilliant rambles of Stephen Fry @stephenfry, receive insights into the life of Jonathan Ross @wossy and find the most delicious savoury pancake recipe from Jamie Oliver @jamie_oliver.  A girl’s gotta have some fun!

Many of these things I could have found by searching on Google but the point is I didn’t have to! Plus at some stage in the near future, I hope that I’ll be able to pass relevant information and links onto my own followers – customers and other web design folk alike!

Just think how this could benefit your business. Twitter provides a means to create a personal and mutually rewarding conversation between you and your customers, you and your suppliers, well you and the world at large. You have all the control AND IT’S FREE. (And be warned possibly addictive).

Of course there is an etiquette to it just like with email, the most important is absolutely NO blatant sales pitches. And as well there is a method to its madness, a simple Twitter guide is provided here courtesy of Sometimespace.  Oh, and like anything online be sensible about your privacy.

By adding your own website address to your Twitter profile page, then adding your Twitter link to your website, you’ve got another credible and relevant inbound link to your website for the search engines to follow.  It’s an excellent way to boost your online optimisation efforts.

What have you got to lose, join Twitter and have a play.  Make sure you pick a username that has some meaning to your business, do a simple search to find others in your industry, follow a few people for a while and see what happens.  Just like blogging to begin with, it may feel a little strange but practice makes perfect.

Follow katproductions @katproductions