MIND Development & Design

Social Media and Your Business: What’s Most Important, pt. 2

Marqeteer — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 23:51:34 +0000

Last week we began our discussion on the importance of how you use social media in your business and your web development and web design efforts and examined the first two of the four most important social media dynamics. Now we will examine the other two…

Be willing to give truly useful information through your site. It’s why people will come back. This is probably the biggest roadblock for most businesses. The idea of GIVING away information. As a business, you can either accept it or fight it. If you fight it, you’re fighting a losing battle as it’s too easy to click away from your site and find your competitor online.

If you’re a real estate professional, have a mortgage calculator that people can use on your website. Have free information buyers and sellers can use on preparing for the transaction, getting the house sell-ready, etc. It will save you time in the process and establish you as a reliable source of good information.

Same if you’re an accountant, a financial advisor, architect, mechanic or whatever. Heck, we’re a web development and web design company and we’re giving away a lot of free advice on our site.

Why?

Simple. It’s the right thing to do, and from a business sense we’re getting on the radar of potential future clients. They may not need us now, but if they take our advice, use it on their current website and are happy with the results, we’ll be on their radar should a need arise in the future.

Post consistently on your website…at least once a week. Once a business has decided to put real focus on their website and sharing information, all too often the business starts off a little TOO gung-ho with a lot of posts in the first couple of weeks and then the process tapers off and is forgotten.

Once you make the commitment to sharing good, truly useful information through your website, commit to a reasonable schedule that you can keep up. It’s better to have one good, useful post per week on your site and be consistent than to start off with guns-a-blazin’ and then disappear. Then you wind up looking like you REALLY don’t care. By all means, the more the merrier, but consistency is the most important thing.

There is a pervasive mentality among some business owners and CEO’s that amounts to a short attention span. The mentality where that person will try something briefly and if he/she doesn’t see results fast they move on to something else. This mentality and the negative connotations that go with it are magnified in the communication arena of social media and Internet marketing.

Competition has never been greater with the Internet turning the world into a market for most businesses. Even if you’re a more localized business, you still are in competition with these more global entities when it comes to being found online and establishing ROI with your website.

Patience is a virtue now more than ever, and you must treat your online business presence with the knowledge and understanding that what’s important today is the Internet has made it possible for people to get to know you and your business on their own time…with you nowhere around.

Social Media and Your Business: What’s Most Important, pt. 1

Marqeteer — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 23:37:56 +0000

Good business has always been about relationship building. Through the decades, this has evolved from the simple handshake to wider reaching methods including direct mail, telemarketing, email and now social media and your website.

It’s important in your web development and web design work to understand the dynamics of social media and Internet marketing. Social media is an arena that is becoming more and more a part of your actual website through things like Google’s “+1” button and Facebook’s “Like” button as well as social bookmarking like StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit and others.

What has happened over these past decades is a widening of the gap between consumer and salesperson/business. That gap has been caused by pollution of all the aforementioned communication methods to the point where consumers are saying “Enough already! Leave me alone and let me make my decision in peace. I get it…you’re ALL the best.”

This is what social media is all about and why every “consumer’s” social media account is a safe haven for them. You’re a “friend” or “connection” in that person’s social media world only because they’ve allowed you in. Most businesses that have trouble with social media have trouble because once they’re accepted in a person’s social media circle of friends, they resort to the same ol’ blind “junk mail” or “spam” tactics.

There is no quicker way to get blacklisted in social media circles than to abuse the privilege of being in those circles through spam and consistently “salesy” posts. Anyone who views you as “spammy” or simply want to tune you out can easily do it with the click of a button. This really renders the more “type A” aggressive approaches to communication powerless.

So what are the important dynamics of social media and Internet marketing with regard to your business? Here are the four most important ones:

Care first and people will care more about you.
Recognize social media as top of mind awareness and stop being “salesy” in your posts and messages.
Be willing to give truly useful information through your site. It’s why people will come back.
Post consistently on your website…at least once a week.

Care first and people will care more about you. Perhaps the most simple aspect of the whole social media process is the one businesses ignore most. Care first and be responsive to your social media connections. Yeah, yeah, yeah…we hear it all the time. “I don’t care about what so-and-so had for breakfast.” “I don’t care what so-and-so is doing tonight.” Okay, fair enough. Keep in mind, though, that “so-and-so” is a potential customer/client and they don’t necessarily care about YOUR business, either.

So now what?

It’s important to remember that when you’re dealing with an easy-to-use open forum like social media, you will be connected with all types of people. This holds true for your website, too, as social media bookmarking and sharing buttons like the Facebook “like” and Google’s “+1” are morphing websites into the new wave of social media. You may see Tweets and Facebook posts from some connections that leave you rolling your eyes or shaking your head. Just ignore them, because tomorrow they may post something about their daughter/son’s upcoming graduation or a birthday, etc. and it’s important to respond to these whenever you can because it let’s people know that you care about more than just selling them something.

Care first and people will then care about you. Take that first step. It’s the most positive top-of-mind-awareness there is.

Recognize social media as top of mind awareness and stop being “salesy” in your posts and messages. The Internet is a forum where you can put your business in front of millions upon millions of potential visitors and customers or clients. Why, then, do so many businesses forget about people in this forum and focus on “ME ME ME”?

There is virtually no spin or sales pitch you can throw out there that people haven’t heard before. In fact, many potential customers know the pitches by heart either because they’ve heard them before or they’ve been through the same sales training as you. Sales has by far the highest turnover rate of ANY mode of employment, which means there’s a good chance that many of your prospects are or have been in sales themselves.

Simply put, today’s consumer really HAS heard it all before.

When you go to make a new post on your social media account or website, think of your audience as collectively thinking “Blah, blah, blah…yeah, I know you’re the best. How can you help ME?”

Transparent, consumer-focused marketing has never been more important than it is on the Internet, because as soon as someone gets a bad feeling about you and/or your business they can click away from your site in a millisecond. Eliminate sales pitches from your social media and website communication and focus on giving information…and perhaps a little entertainment when warranted.

Next week, we will examine in detail the third and fourth most important social media dynamics.

Your New Website… What Do You Want?

MIND — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:03:16 +0000

Often times as a web design company in Lancaster PA we are confronted with a very familiar term, “I don’t know”. The client knows they want a new website or a website redesign but they just don’t have the full vision yet. Once the process begins, because the project wasn’t fully hashed out, we find that the client tends to add more items to the project, piecing it together as we go. This is difficult for a number of reasons. The first being simply that once a project’s scope has been determined, going back and adding new features or functions is sometimes difficult and can end up costing you more of your tightening budget. The second reason is that the project usually comes out weaker than it could or should have. When you piece a website together in this way it often causes problems because the foundation of the site may not have been built to compliment those additions. When this is the case we need to build out additional functionality to account for those additions which often makes the overall site (usability and functionality) less solid.

Building a website is like building a car. First you must ask yourself, “Do I want a Mercedes Benz or do I want a Yugo?” After you’ve figured that one out, what kind of features do you want? Sure, the Yugo is bare bones and the Benz comes with a lot of options… but you need a customized look and feel so you can stand out from the crowd. Do you want a a new paint job and rims (design)? Or do you want an upgraded engine with the satellite radio/DVD combo (development)? The options are endless… what do you want?

When a company wants to spend their budgetary dollars more wisely they will give a hefty amount of thought into what their web development and web design. They will brainstorm it and form a strategic plan of action. Sometimes, however, it’s not that easy. We don’t expect other companies to know the technical side of what we do, as well as we do, so we tend to encourage our clients to contact a web consultant.

A web consulting company can help you identify and outline your company’s needs as well as make recommendations on how to accomplish those needs. Did you know that choosing the wrong operating language for your site can cost your 10′s of thousands of dollars?! Do you know how to edit HTML and CSS code on your own? If you choose the wrong web design company you may be left having to pay for each little change you want to make if you don’t! Are you a high maintenance business that needs the site to run on it’s own? The right web development company will offer you maintenance and content packages so you don’t need to worry about the day-to-day operations. Is search engine optimization a big factor in your business? Do you know the cost of running a REAL SEO campaign? Did you know that running a campaign for a highly competitive term could run you upwards of $20,000 a month or more? All of these items and more can be answered by a good web consulting company.

So before you decide to go straight to the company that is going to build your site it may be a good idea to have a plan ready from a professional web consultant. With a plan in hand the development company will know exactly what is needed and what is wanted because the homework has already been done. This is make your web design or redesign project run much smoother and make your site that much more efficient!

FUD – And Why It Doesn’t Work On The Internet

Marqeteer — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:36:55 +0000

If we step to the edge of the chasm that has developed between consumer and sales/business professional in all realms over the last few years, we would undoubtedly see a big “F-U-D” at the bottom of said chasm.

Yes, sales and business “pros” now have to deal with the aftermath of decades of “training” that have led to the distrust so rampant now from consumers.Unfortunately, many are incorporating the same methods on their websites.

Yes, it’s the aforementioned principal of FUD – Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Creating a need where there really is none…a need born out of the salesperson creating uncertainty and doubt in the mind of the consumer about their current situation, which in turn creates fear that the sky will fall if the consumer does not act quickly.

The web development and web design on your business’s website should never incorporate methods that are manipulative or negatively “salesy.” In fact, it is these factors that will drive people away from your site in a millisecond.

If you have been disappointed with the results of your website, take a look at your site analytics (Google Analytics is a good tool for this). Look at how long visitors stay on your site and how many pages they look at.If people are leaving your website after a very short time, it might be a good idea to look at your content and how it speaks to people.

Look for FUD. Is there anything in your content that speaks fear, uncertainty, doubt or all of the above? If there is, remove it and simply replace it with information with legitimate value. FUD doesn’t work on the Internet. Information sharing does.

FUD is a tactic born out of selfishness, which makes it a tactic that will ultimately defeat itself through poor service and lack of referral business. Instead of FUD, create a blog page and post useful information regularly every week. This will create an interactive information hub that will allow you to connect with customers and potential customers/clients better than ever.

Remember that on the Internet FUD means “Friggin’ Useless Domain.”

No Related Posts

Think personalized searches aren’t the wave of the future? Think Again.

Marqeteer — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:37:42 +0000

Facebook, Bing, Google, Google Plus, potayto, potahto…

It’s really amazing when you watch the intense strategic competition between the search engines online. What do Bing and Google both have in common (besides both being search engines, smartypants)?

Social media.

Are you taking social media into account in your web development and web design efforts for your business?

You should…because social media is becoming more and more powerful and personalized searches are becoming the norm.

Think about it…Bing teamed up with Facebook to integrate the “like” button, etc. into their algorithm to provide personalized searches back in late 2010 (read about it here). Shortly after, Google tried to partner with Facebook in similar fashion and were allegedly rejected.

Hmmm…

So it was just a few months later that Google unveiled Google Plus and began incorporating the “+1″ button into its searches to make them more personalized. In January of this year, Google’s integration of search results with its Google Plus social media platform set off quite an uproar. It was basically their answer to what Bing was doing with their Facebook partnership.

See the correlation?

All that said, what this means to you in your business is that if you don’t have those “like” and “+1″ buttons readily visible on your website, you need to get them on there ASAP. Social bookmarks, too. These are the easiest ways for visitors to share your site with others. And with the advent of personalized searches, those “likes” and “+1′s” mean that you will be showing up in the search results of the friends of those visitors to your site.

Make sure your web development and web design team have your site current with these features. It’s all about sharing and it’s important that your website is as easy to share as possible:)

New Year’s Resolution: I Will Care

Marqeteer — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:17:20 +0000

Ok, we know it’s not the New Year yet and resolutions don’t really matter unless they’re serious commitments, but we have a New Year’s Resolution challenge for you and your business.

Look at how your business is represented online through your web development and web design strategy and make this simple commitment: I Will Care.

I Will Care enough to put thought into my website and how it represents my business online.

I Will Care that my website doesn’t look or feel like an afterthought.

I Will Care enough to put some of my own thought, time and energy into my website so it truly represents me and my business.

I Will Care to envision my website as an interactive forum with legitimate, current and valuable information people can use because I know this is what will create the “top of mind awareness” that I need.

I Will Care to seek out legitimate SEO and Internet marketing and NOT seek out the magic pills that tell me what I want to hear but ultimately don’t deliver.

I Will Care enough to be patient with my SEO if I’m just starting with it and active with my SEO to be sure it remains Google-friendly.

I Will Care enough to work with my web development and web design team on creative and valid new material to keep my site fresh.

Your site will be as successful as you want it to be…and that requires your input because no one knows your business better than you. Communicate clearly with your development and design team and with your SEO/Internet marketing specialist, as this connection is what results in the best and most powerful websites online:)

All Fingers Point to Your Website…Are You Ready?

Marqeteer — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 20:44:28 +0000

Do you feel like you’re spinning your wheels and accomplishing little or nothing in terms of tangible results with your web development and web design efforts?

The old adage of keeping it simple is the key. All roads lead to Rome…Rome being your website.

The ultimate goal is to earn a higher ranking in the search engines through both onsite and offsite SEO (search engine optimization).

And that’s where it gets confusing, thanks to the myriad “solutions” available online and the unfortunate promises they make in their sales pitches.

Always remember: The purpose of your website is two main things: get people to call you or get people into your business/on an appointment with you. It’s really that simple.

So where does all of this SEO crap fit into the picture? Your onsite SEO ensures that all of your titling and content contains the proper key words and phrasing in the proper amount. Too much can kill your ranking. The right words have to be balanced with the right presentation so people will like what they see when they find you and, thus, stay longer.

Your offsite SEO is mostly links back to your website. Yep, you want a whole bunch of fingers pointing to your website because that tells Google that you’re both relevant and popular. Links can come from a variety of sources, and making comments on other relevant blogs is a good place to start.

Each comment you make is a link back to your site. Now, that being said, make sure your comments are relevant and add to the conversation. ”This was a nice post” or “You have really made a good point here” (or any of the other lame generic comments you’ve undoubtedly seen) are both thoughtless and worthless. Compliments only count when they’re followed by thoughtful comments that add to the conversation.

Guest blogging is another great way to generate links. Think of some of your favorite blogs and contact the owners. Simply ask if they accept guest blog articles. Some do and some don’t, so find the ones that do and get writing:) It not only gets you more links to your site, it exposes you to an entirely new audience as well.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have a presence in social media forums for both linking and interaction with your target audience.

And if you remember nothing else from reading this, remember that all roads lead to Rome…Rome being your website. You want a lot of fingers pointing at you so you’ll be noticed.

Just make sure you have the right web development and web design team to create the kind of site people will truly like when they discover it.

Get a Google +1 Button On Your Website, Yo. Word.

Marqeteer — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 16:48:12 +0000

No doubt many of you have seen the little Google +1 button (shown to your right in loving enlargement) on websites and blogs you have visited. Some of you understand it and some of you may think it’s one more distraction.

Two words with regard to your website: Get One.

It’s an important part of your long term plan for web development and web design.

In an age of Internet marketing/viral marketing becoming marketing on steroids, Google put in their two cents…which is worth WAY more than two measly cents to your business. The Google +1 button sits there next to the Facebook “like” button, Digg button, StumbleUpon button and whatever other social media sharing buttons are on a web page. All of those buttons are very valuable in getting your website viewed by a much wider audience and building your following online. The Google +1 button might just be the most valuable of all, as it can affect where you appear in the search engine results of people who click on it.

The way it works is when a visitor has a Google account and clicks on the +1, it will give them a little message that says “You publicly +1′d this as (their name here).” From that point forward, whenever they do a search for your kind of business you will rank higher in their search because they publicly +1′d your site. Basically, Google takes the fact that they gave your site (or a page on your site) a “thumbs up” in the Google platform and factors that into the algorithm of their personal search.

More and more, this kind of “personalized” searching is becoming the norm. It only figures that Google will work their own offerings (i.e. Google Places, Google Plus) into the algorithms and reward those of us who are smart enough to use them. Google is by far the largest search engine with 75% – 80% market share. Don’t take that lightly.

Get the button, and if you don’t know how your web development and web design team should be able to easily take care of it for you:)

Thanksgiving Turkey and Keyword Stuffing

Marqeteer — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 18:11:03 +0000

The evolution of SEO in the effectiveness of your web development and web design efforts changes weekly if not daily. For every legitimate method of being found online, there are a zillion people to abuse it to the point where Google reduces its value in their algorithms.

Incidentally, what makes “zillion” such a great number is that it’s an arbitrary number to which anyone can assign any value. Gotta love it:)

Anyway, one of the big culprits we deal with today is “key word stuffing.” That’s basically cramming (stuffing) as many key words into the copy on your pages as possible and cramming as many key words into links, etc. that you possibly can. This is the kind of behavior that makes your site look and read spammy, yet why do so many people still use these tactics?

Simple: Desperation and/or impatience. The key to using key words in your SEO is moderation, not stuffing. There should be no more than a 3% saturation of any key word phrase on any page of your website. Links to your site are also now more effective if they contain your name or your brand name rather than key words in the links. This is due to the abuse of key word “link wheels,” which are basically a series of sites set up which link to each other and then link back to one central site.

Be consistent with your blogging efforts, content management and site updates and exercise reasonable moderation in using keywords in your SEO efforts. It’s excess that leads to the constant changes, such as the Panda Google updates, which are specifically designed to eliminate the effectiveness of spammy behavior in both on and offsite SEO. If you go overboard with any method, you are basically contributing to that method being rendered ineffective in the long run.

The analogy I like to draw is the cornerback Lester Hayes of the Oakland Raiders in the 70′s and early 80′s. Back then, players used a sticky resin called “Stick ‘Um” on their hands to help with their grip on the ball. Used in reasonable moderation, this substance was legal. Hayes, however, pushed it to the limit in the 1980 NFL season. He smeared it on his hands, jersey, pants, shoes, helmet…anywhere the ball would potentially touch (see the picture to the left). In 1980 he was one interception short of the all-time season record with 13, while an additional 4 were called back because of penalties. Teammates even joked that the reason he got all those interceptions was StickUm …because if the ball even touched his hand he’d hang on.

By the 1981 season, Stick Um was outlawed (and still is) in what is known as the Lester Hayes Rule. Can you imagine what the league would look like if this was still allowed? Ridiculous.

That is what continues to happen with the evolution of online marketing and search engines. People take legitimate, legal methods and go overboard to the point where search engines have to step in and do their job: Create and maintain a level playing field for all.

Search engines continue to evolve and those changes occur almost daily. For example, those meta tags that were once pretty valuable on your site are now not indexed the way they once were. Why? Because the search engines became wise to the fact that people are key-word-stuffing their metatags…so they have devalued those tags in indexing. Is this permanent? Probably not. These things go in cycles and in time, metatags will cycle around to more valuable indexing again.

In the meantime, like our parents told us (but we didn’t wanna listen)…practice moderation. At least with your SEO:)

Anybody Remember Ishtar? A Great Internet Marketing Lesson Can Be Learned From It

Marqeteer — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 15:29:22 +0000

Do any of you remember the 1987 comedy film Ishtar? Most of you probably don’t, but many of you are probably rolling your eyes because it is notorious for being one of the absolute biggest box office flops in movie history.

$55 million dollar budget.
$14 million dollar take at the box office.
You do the math.

So what in the world does a movie from before the Internet age have to do with your web development and web design? Well, our friend Mark Boyd – aka Marqeteer – is just strange enough to track down a movie like this and draw an analogy. While reading this analogy, remind yourself of how quickly viral marketing spreads online – especially if the news is negative – and you will see the correlation.

Ishtar was pretty much doomed as soon as it hit theaters. It ranked #1 its first weekend with a fairly modest take and fell rather quickly due to a merciless barrage of negative reviews, all fueled by negative commentary about the ridiculous budget, infighting, actor/director clashes and other things that had nothing to do with watching the movie itself. The negative word spread and colored people’s perception of the movie without them even seeing it.

If you were to ask someone today if they were familiar with Ishtar, there will be those who say yes. Of the people who say “yes” only a small portion of them have actually seen the movie. Most of those who haven’t seen it will undoubtedly be familiar with the negativity surrounding Ishtar…and maybe even offer an opinion, however uneducated. However uneducated those opinions were, they led to the movie being so badly reviewed that it’s not even available on DVD here in the US.

Which means people will give opinions even though they have no first hand knowledge about something. How you present yourself online and communicate through your website speaks to people either positively or negatively. Whatever reaction you get from people will be spread quickly through their circles of friends. These people are then likely to offer opinions to others…sometimes without having visited your site themselves (i.e. Ishtar).

Obviously, you can’t please all of the people all of the time…but you CAN put thought into your content, your pictures and your overall presentation that will be inviting to people and create more positive buzz.

Don’t make your website too nice or milquetoast…let your personality, humour, creativity and opinions shine. It humanizes you to visitors and leaves either a positive or negative opinion with them. This opinion will be spread by both those who know and don’t know. Heck, look at the layout of the MIND website. Think we like rock n roll and retro pictures? Hell yeah! That’s us. We love it and, fortunately, people love us for it.

What do you love? Remember, people will love you for it.

As long as it’s not Hot Fudge Love…

MIND Development & Design

Social Media and Your Business: What’s Most Important, pt. 2

Related Posts:

Social Media and Your Business: What’s Most Important, pt. 1

Related Posts:

Your New Website… What Do You Want?

Related Posts:

FUD – And Why It Doesn’t Work On The Internet

Related Posts:

Think personalized searches aren’t the wave of the future? Think Again.

Related Posts:

New Year’s Resolution: I Will Care

Related Posts:

All Fingers Point to Your Website…Are You Ready?

Related Posts:

Get a Google +1 Button On Your Website, Yo. Word.

Related Posts:

Thanksgiving Turkey and Keyword Stuffing

Related Posts:

Anybody Remember Ishtar? A Great Internet Marketing Lesson Can Be Learned From It

Related Posts: