Welcome to this week's MIND your business podcast, brought to you by the MINDs at MIND Development and Design and our friends at Fresh Roasted Hosting. We are here to educate you and empower you and Schoolhouse Rock you with regard to your business website and getting the most out of it. If you have questions about web development, design, SEO, content marketing, PPC, social media and what it all means to your business, please hit us up on Facebook with your questions, email us at info@minddnd.com or just hit that big beautiful and irresitibly enticing "Ask A Question" button to your right on our website. ENGAGEMENT is the word, ladies and gentlemen...you want to know the biggest evolution in getting your website found by the search engines, particularly Google, in 2015? Engagement! All the optimization in the world isn't going to help you if people aren't drawn in by what they find on your website when they arrive. It's all about personality, folks. Now, more than ever, you must stop doing just what you THINK you're SUPPOSED to be doing and make like Joe Jackson and step out a bit. The progress of your website requires you to step out of your comfort zone. You know, back in the 1970's the great philosophers Roger Daltrey, Pete Townsend, John Enthwistle and Keith Moon asked the enduring question... Who are you? And they really wanna know. Think of visitors to your website as "The Great Who"...in search of information from the right source. We talk a lot about the nuts and bolts of getting your website found by the search engines on this show, and this time around, we're going to spend some time on what you're NOT doing that you SHOULD be doing... 4 ways many of you are NOT setting your website apart with personality. 1. You're NOT putting thought into your images and color schemes. This is an obvious one. What picture are you painting of your business and the EXPERIENCE of doing business with you when people arrive at your website? One of my favorite examples is Five Guys burgers. They're one of my favorites because they're a great example of the fact that in painting this picture of your business, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Now as MIND's lead designer Chad McComsey has said previously on the show, the bright red and yellow color scheme is known to psychologically elicit a HUNGER response. Kudos to Five Guys for stepping ever so slightly outside the box and eschewing the bright yellow...opting instead for just good ol' white. The implementation couldn't be any more simple...red and white checkerboard. Some might even think it's ugly...I think it's very basic and endeniably eye catching. Their website is very clean, basic, nothing fancy at all and sticks with the red and white checkerboard format. They even have a spot on there where you can send them a picture of yourself eating a five guys burger. Once again...very basic concept and one that elicits engagement. Getting people to your site is half the battle. what do they see when they get to your site that makes you memorable tomorrow and any day after? The fan pictures is a nice touch because you really need to get away from the kind of stock photos that everyone has seen before. If you're a doctor's office and you have picture of the same quote-unquote-FAMILY or quote-unquote-PATIENT on your website that we can all see on a credit card website, that's not a good thing. My favorite is the lady with the huge smile giving you two thumbs up right in your face. I've seen her on a hospital website, a credit card website and a couple of others as well. There are some good stock photos out there, but please use caution and, as in the five guys example here, there are other resources for photos that will help with your site engagement. 2. You're not showing a sense of humor. This is probably the biggest one for me....some of you have heard my anecdote about the great San Francisco 49ers coach Bill Walsh...some of you haven't. I'll be brief. Bill Walsh revolutionized the NFL game with the so-called west coast offense that was actually developed in Cincinnati when he was offensive coordinator with the Bengals. Well, he won 3 super bowls as coach of the Niners...including two against those Bengals...and was well known for his sense of humor. His former players talk about how he made them laugh in training sessions and my favorite quote from him is "If you can get people to laugh together, you can get them to be serious together." You don't have to be riotously fall-down-laughing funny. Just show a sense of humor in what you're writing. Some people will find it funny, some may not. You can't please everyone, but once again...step out. You have facts and information that you want to share with visitors, but facts themselves aren't necessarily memorable unless you really LOVE reading text books. Too much fact, not enough fun. today's audience wants pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars and green clovers with their cereal. Oh, and blue diamonds. Listen, you don't have to be a comedian and you don't have to look at every page on your website and every blog post you do from the standpoint of forcing a joke or one liner in there. It's not about that. It's about showing your humanity and your PERSONALITY through your sense of humor. It's also about being yourself...which opens up a bit of a can of worms because some people just don't have much of a sense of humor at all...in some cases they have a very dry sense of humor which doesn't translate well to the written word. If that's the case with YOUR business, be honest with yourself. Maybe you need someone writing for you who can get your points across in more palatable fashion. You may think that there's no room for humor in the business you're in. Take a look at your competition. Are their websites very straightforward and humorless? Do you have the guts to break the mold? And when we come back from this break, two more ways many of you are NOT using your personality to set your website apart... ================================================== And we are BACK with the scintillating second half of this week's MIND Your Business Podcast. Before I forget...we'll be back with you next week, but we'll be taking Christmas Day off...no podcast on that day...we'll hit you up again on New Year's Day. Just wanted to give you fair warning, but we will be here next week. We're talking about ways many of you are STILL not using your personality to set your website apart. Personality is soooooo very important...look at how Wendy's has struggled with their identity since their founder Dave Thomas passed away years ago. He was the personality and face of the franchise and elicited trust because it was nothing fancy. He was your kindly grandfather or next door neighbor. Anyway, we've discussed images, we've discussed humor and now... 3. You're not letting anybody "in." A few months back, I talked about a restaurant my wife and I went to in Idaho last year called the Old European Restaurant. It was a small local place and just looking at the sign and the building structure, we kinda felt it was going to be one of those cool local places that would give us a good memory as well as some bangin' food. The monte cristo sandwich there was aces by the way, and the staff was superb...especially since we got there right at closing and they served us anyway. The menu was called the Old European Storybook and alternated pages of menu items and desriptions with pages of short, interesting bios on every single member of their staff from the owners to the dishwashers. When YOU, as a business owner, show appreciation like that for your staff, it speaks to everyone who sees it. Two things you can do with your website to let people IN are share a personal experience here and there...like I'm doing HERE...and introduce them to your staff. You should be proud of your staff...heck you hired them, didn't you? People can wallow in obscurity...totally caring about their work and putting everything they have into it, all the while not really thinking anyone notices or cares about THEM! Highlight a member of your staff every month on your blog. Watch the difference it makes. And don't be afraid of sharing personal experiences. You're not giving your life story away to strangers and you're not opening yourself up to identity theft...trust me, I do it all the time on this podcast! A personal anecdote can really help get your point across and show, once again, that you have HEART behind your business and in what you do. And finally... 4. You're NOT using Video!!! Don't fear the camera, people. And you don't have to do anything fancy. Video is the arena where too many people overthink what they're doing in terms of presentation and UNDERTHINK what they're doing in terms of actual content and what they're saying on camera. First of all, let's look at presentation. Some businesses have the budget to do more elaborate presentations than others. You may not be one of those businesses, and that's okay. Most of the videos I watch in the SEO world every day are anything but elaborately produced. Truth is, your video doesn't HAVE to be elaborately produced in order to be effective. You know, my favorite era of movies is from about 1968 until 1981 around the time Raiders of the Lost Ark was released. The reason was that there was more focus on the PEOPLE and the DIALOGUE in that era and even BEFORE that era...because we didn't have the technology we have today. Dialogue and interaction...now it's style over substance, really. That works in the movies, because people pay their money, they're entertained and they're done. With your business and, in this case, your website video your substance will ultimately win out. Your style can make your substance palatable and memorable. As for your substance...keep it short. Short videos with nuggets of information that people can walk away and actually REMEMBER! Keep in mind...attention spans aren't what they used to be. If your video is over 3 minutes, you stand a very good chance of that viewer moving on. It sounds crazy and some of you are deeply disturbed by this, but it's simply the truth. I'll give you the same advice here that I give you on blog posts. If you have a really, really long blog post, split it into a two or three part series. Do the same with your videos. You think you have enough information for a 10 or 15 minute video...I say CONGRATULATIONS, you have a 3 to 5 part series. Use your presentation...hey, maybe even a little humor...to augment your substance and you will see just how valuable video can be in connecting with your audience and increasing your engagement! Thank you again for listening to this week's MIND Your Business podcast, presented by MIND Development and Design and our friends at Fresh Roasted Hosting. If YOU have questions about web development, design, SEO, content marketing, PPC, social media and what it all means to your business, please hit us up on Facebook with your questions, email us at info@minddnd.com or just hit that fast and bulbous "Ask A Question" button to your right on our website.