Web Site Design Specialists

Using social media to market your business is a good idea. Just don’t plan on getting your whiz-kid nephew to do it for free.

By B.L. Ochman

For companies, resistance to social media is futile. Millions of people are creating content for the social Web. Your competitors are already there. Your customers have been there for a long time. If your business isn’t putting itself out there, it ought to be.

But before you take the plunge, bear in mind the many myths that surround social media.

1. Social media is cheap, if not free. Yes, many of the tools that can be employed in social media marketing are free to use. These include Google’s (GOOG) video-sharing site YouTube, Yahoo’s (YHOO) photo-sharing site Flickr, the social-network building tool Ning, and content aggregators such as Digg and eBay’s (EBAY) StumbleUpon. Free blogging tools abound too; among them are WordPress, Twitter, and FriendFeed.

However, integrating these tools into a corporate marketing program requires skill, time, and money. The budget for an effective social media marketing campaign begins at $50,000 for two to three months. I’m sure companies have spent less, and I know they’ve spent more.

Building a site that incorporates interactivity, allows user-generated content, and perhaps also includes e-commerce doesn’t come cheap from anyone who knows what they are doing. Even taking free software like WordPress and making it function as an effective interactive site, incorporating e-commerce, creating style sheets that integrate with the company’s branding, takes more than time. That takes skill, experience, and money.

As a rule, a $50,000 to $100,000 budget can cover the creation of a simple multimedia microsite that becomes the center of an online community. Add in some widgets to help distribute the content and form a credible group on Flickr, Twitter, or Facebook and other networking groups to enhance the community aspect of the campaign. Complex functions add to programming and design costs.

A high-yield, highly targeted blog advertising campaign to kick off and support the program will cost an additional $25,000 to $100,000 a month. Advertising through Google’s AdWords, e-mail support, co-registration, and other tools that drive traffic would be additional costs.

2. Anyone can do it. A surfeit of whiz kids and more experienced marketers are claiming to be social media experts and even social media gurus. Search the bios of Robert Scoble’s 56,838 Twitter followers using Tweepsearch (www.tweepsearch.com), an index of the bios of Twitter users, and you’ll find:

4,273 Internet marketers

1,652 social media marketers

513 social media consultants

272 social media strategists

180 social media experts

98 social media gurus

58 Internet marketing gurus

How many of them have actually created a successful campaign for clients using social media tools? I bet you’d be hard-pressed to find half a dozen with real track records.

A successful social media campaign integrates social media into the many elements of marketing, including advertising, digital, and PR. Opinion and theory are no match for experience, and the best social media marketers now have more than 10 years of experience incorporating interactivity, blogs, forums, user-generated content, and contests into online marketing.

Video contests by companies hoping for viral buzz and Google juice are as plentiful as mosquitoes on a humid summer night. But, like their insect counterparts, most video contests suck.

It’s the rare video contest that gets as many as 2,000 entries. Many, like Denny’s (DENM) recent disastrous effort, get fewer than 10 entries. Apparently, 48 Denny’s breakfasts over four years wasn’t a big motivator.

3. You can make a big splash in a short time. Sure, sometimes a social media campaign can produce substantial and measurable results quickly.

Social media is great if you’re already a star, but that doesn’t happen overnight. Amid the recent launch of my T-shirt design business, Pawfun.com, I have relied heavily on my 4,000-plus Twitter followers and 120,000 readers of my What’s Next Blog, which I’ve updated as often as five times a day since 2003. Because that network already exists, with not one dollar spent on advertising, we were able to generate more traffic in our first three days than some major companies get after years online.

Zappos Chief Executive Tony Hsieh, whose company has millions of customers who are evangelists for the great service that built the brand, quickly became a Twitter star, with more than 32,000 followers. When Dell (DELL), JetBlue Airways (JBLU), the Chicago Bulls, and other love-’em-or-hate-’em brands joined Twitter, they immediately developed huge followings.

Tweets can be used to drive traffic to articles, Web sites, contests, videos, and so on—if people already care about your brand, or if you have a truly original idea that people will want to share with their followers.

One recent example of a Twitter-generated success is Savvy Auntie, a community for aunts, godmothers, and “other women who love kids” that was launched six months ago by Melanie Notkin. She has counted on Twitter to drive traffic, help her find suppliers, products, and even investors. She developed a Twitter following before launching her business, then tapped into it for help when she launched.

4. You can do it all in-house. Wrong! You need strategy, contacts, tools, and experience—a combination not generally found in in-house teams, who often reinvent the wheel or use the wrong tools.

It is rare indeed to find an in-house team that can not only conceive and execute a social media campaign but also drive traffic to it with effective e-mail segmentation, search optimization, blogger outreach, blog advertising, Google ads, and more.

5. If you do something great, people will find it. Quite simply, that never was true. Until you can drive traffic to your social media effort, you’ve got a tree falling in the forest, heard only by those standing nearby. A great number of tools can drive traffic, including StumbleUpon, Digg, and Twitter, but nothing works better than word of mouse—one friend telling another, “Hey look at this!”

6. You can’t measure social media marketing results. You can use a variety of methods, including mentions on blogs and in media; comments on the content; real-time blog advertising results, and click-throughs to your company Web site. You can get very precise statistics from a variety of sites, including Google Trends, Twitter search, Google Analytics, BackType, and Compete.

The tools are there. The gurus who know how to use and interpret them—not so much.

Search Engine Optimization has two key pillars – off-site optimization and on-site optimization. Off-site optimization focuses on building up keyword-rich links to your website from other sites.

“On-site optimization, on the other hand, ensures that website coding is as efficient as possible for search engines and maximises click-through rates from search engine results. This report focuses squarely on on-site optimization – and specifically on how existing websites can be improved.”

The top 10 search engine optimization mistakes are:

1 Wrong keyword phrases – specifically, not researching and targeting keyword phrases that are relevant to your audience. You can research keyword phrases for free at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com

2 Wrong page title – this is the title that appears in the blue bar at the top of your browser when viewing a web page. This also gets displayed as your page title in search engine results, so it has to contain your keyword phrase as well as a reason to click on the link.

3 Wrong ‘meta’ description – this is the description that appears underneath the page title in search engine results. Again, improving this can drastically improve your ‘click-through rate’ after being found in a search engine.

4 Wrong ‘meta’ keywords – although not as important as it once was, your ‘meta’ keywords give you another opportunity to tell search engines what your page is about. Remember to be specific in relation to your page topic.

5 No heading tags – Heading tags are little pieces of code that surround the most important heading on your web page. These tags simply say to search engines that this is the topic which is covered in the page. Remember to include your keyword phrase.

6 No ‘alt’ or ‘title’ tags – These are the tags that display alternative text if an image can’t be displayed. However, they also give you a further opportunity to communicate your page topic to search engines.

7 Wrong URL format – A URL is simply a web page address. By making your URL’s as simple as possible and by incorporating your keyword phrases within your URL, you improve your search engine optimization.

8 Not enough content – Search engines still struggle to rank websites on anything other than the volume of quality content. Quite simply, if you don’t have enough content on your website, then you aren’t giving search engines enough to ‘chew on’.

9 No content keywords – As well as including your keyword phrase in the areas mentioned above, you need to include this phrase at least once within your main page content to demonstrate that the page subject matter is relevant to the phrase.

10 No keyword rich text navigation – Apart from content on the page, search engines also determine the relevance of a page by reviewing the phrases contained in the links to that page. You need to ensure that you also have your keyword phrases in links to each page.

If I mention the word design it’s likely to call up images of creative graphics, artistic layouts, and decorative aesthetics. But is that what design is all about? Are all those fanciful wows necessary to have a successful web design? While design certainly takes aesthetics into account it is just as concerned with the functionality of the thing being designed. From the Wikipedia:

Designing normally requires considering aesthetic, functional, and many other aspects of an object, which usually requires considerable research, thought, modeling, interactive adjustment, and re-design.

It’s the ‘functional and many other aspects’ that are often overlooked as being part of design, but in many cases they are more important than the aesthetic considerations. How a thing looks is important, but if it doesn’t function well it won’t matter how beautiful it is.

What goes into web design?

When it comes to web design what are the other aspects that make for a successful design beside the overall look of the site? Some concerns beyond aesthetics would include:

1. Usability – Perhaps one of the most important considerations for a website is how usable is it. Can people interact with your site without feeling lost? How well does your site allow users to perform their tasks

2. Accessibility – How accessible is your site? Not everyone will view your pages in a modern browser. Some will use screen readers. Others may be viewing your site on a PDA. An accessible design will let your content to be seen over a variety of devices and even give your site a competitive advantage.

3. Development – The code behind your site can help your pages load faster in a browser and help keep people on your site and away from their back button. Lean code can make a site more usable as well as make it easier to maintain.

4. Search engine optimization – For many sites search engine optimization will play a large role in the marketing efforts of the site. From the simple naming of files and folders to the way your navigation is built, site development can help improve a site’s chances of drawing search traffic. A poorly developed site will put up barriers to getting the site crawled and indexed and impede the ability of the site’s pages to rank well.

5. Conversions - It’s no use to have all those people come to your site if they don’t do what you want once they get there. Good web design will consider the best location for your shopping cart buttons. It will consider the ideal shape and size of a button to get a user to click. It will emphasize and de-emphasize various components of your site in an effort to improve how well the site converts visitors into buyers.

6. Information Architecture – If your visitors can’t find what they want when they want it they will not only leave, but they may never again return. The organization of your information can improve navigation on your site and help lead visitors deeper into your site to your sales pages.

How important are looks in web design?

I don’t want to imply that the look of your site isn’t important. First impressions do count in how your site is perceived and can make a difference in whether or not people stay on your site. On the other hand there are some who argue that an ugly site can actually convert better.

With the exception of industries like art, fashion, and perhaps even design, a beautiful site is not really necessary. Desired maybe, but necessary no. For most sites all that’s really needed to is to remain above a certain line of professionalism, a line above which your site is clearly no longer considered amateur. Usually follow a few basic design principles will be enough to give your site that professionalism.

Summary

Much more than the way your site looks goes into the design process. While it’s easy to think of aesthetics as design it’s very far from the truth. Web design includes many other aspects including how well your site functions, how accessible it is to a variety of devices, and how well it converts.

When considering someone to design your site it’s important to look past the obvious ‘wow’ your design can give you and look into how well they can create a site that effectively communicates your message and effectively helps increase your bottom line.

Google Maps, foud in the the Google Local Business Center, supplies an excellent submission tool to get your business found locally.

Why should you list your business on Google Maps?

Google Map of Keystone Media

1. It won’t cost you a thing. You can create and display a business listing for free. Period.

2. You’ll reach qualified prospects. There’s a very good chance that lots of people are currently searching on Google Maps for the products and services you offer. Why not make it easy for them to find you?

3. You can offer coupons for free. Displayed in your listing on Google Maps, coupons can reward loyal customers and attract new ones.

4. You have full control over your listing. With Google Maps, you don’t have to worry about publishing deadlines or outdated content. After we initially verify your address, you can edit your listing whenever you like. You’ll see your changes reflected in the search results within six weeks.

5. You can manage listings for businesses of any size. Whether you have one business location or one on every block, you can manage your listings from a single account. (If you have more than ten locations, you can make updates by sending Google a data file.)

Although blogging has been around for years, it’s only in the last year or so that it’s really become big, especially in business. Some of the top corporations now have blogs, and you can read about these corporations, as well as get news.

The main reason blogs are so popular is because they’re personal. It gives the author an opportunity to inject his/her personality into his/her writing.

How does this apply to your business? There are many ways, but here are six:

1. You can brand your business.
Branding isn’t just for big business. You can brand yourself too. By creating your own niche and writing about it, you can create your brand. By branding yourself, others will associate your product with you.

It’s not enough to get traffic to your site. You need targeted traffic, and the more targeted your traffic is, and the more traffic you get, the more opportunities you have to make sales.

Blogging is not just an effective branding tool. It’s also an effective public relations tool, allowing you to further build your image and brand.

2. You can become an expert.
When you share what you know on a topic, it gives you the opportunity to be perceived as an expert. You are providing additional value to your product.

When you are perceived as an expert, people are more likely to listen to what you have to say.

By establishing yourself as an expert on a topic, you are offering value to potential customers that your competition isn’t. Not only that, you can drastically cut your marketing expenses because your potential customers are coming to you.

This is called pull marketing. Pull marketing is much more effective than push marketing because you are drawing customers to you, and they already want what you have to sell.

3. You can establish credibility.
Credibility is a difficult thing to establish on the internet. You need to gain your potential customer’s trust before he/she will buy from you.

Although there are certain things you can do that can help with trust and credibility, like adding your phone number to your site, a blog is more effective. It will help you get your potential customer to see you as a real person, not just someone behind a computer.

4. You can create a new marketing channel. 
Email marketing isn’t as effective as it used to be. Too many problems exist now with spam and filters. It can be nearly impossible for you to get your marketing message through.

With blogs, you can use RSS, as well as other forms of communication, like podcasting, to get your marketing message through.

Blogging opens up technology for you in a way that email doesn’t. It gives you a variety of ways to distribute your marketing message and increases your chances of your marketing message being effective.

5. Creates a communications channel with your potential customers.
Blogs are interactive. You can allow your potential customer to leave messages for you in your comments. He/she can ask you questions, and you can respond more quickly.

This will also save you time in the future because others may have the same questions. You’ll already have the answer easily available.

Blogs are also more responsive in that you can write about the latest trends in your topic and give your potential customers the latest information.

6. Solves your search engine optimization problems.
Blogs are search engine friendly, and you can get your blog spidered faster and easier than you can a traditional site.

This can help you get traffic from the search engines quicker and easier, and the beauty of it is that it’s targeted traffic.

Although blogs may have started out as personal journals, their business application is far more reaching. Blogs can help you explode your business marketing efforts in a way that no other internet marketing method can. Blogging, although not required, is something you should consider if you want to increase your business and increase your profits.

Do a search on Google or Yahoo!, and you’ll notice a different type of listings set around the organic results. These “sponsored results” are pay-per-click ads that appear when people search using the keywords in the ads. PPC has some tremendous advantages for online businesses:

Google AdWords Pay-Per-Click Ad

1. PPC ads show up immediately.

You can drive traffic to your site right away, even if you haven’t been indexed by search engines yet.

2. You only pay for results.

No matter how many times your ad is displayed, you pay only when someone clicks on it. And by watching your results carefully, you can determine how well each ad is converting and if it’s worth continuing.

3. It’s a great testing tool.

With PPC, you can run several ads simultaneously, allowing you to see very quickly which ones work best. Test your keywords this way and use the best ones on your site to boost your organic search results.

In fact, you can use PPC to test everything from your product offerings and price points to your ad headlines and sales copy.

With a combination of PPC and SEO you can make sure your target market will find you. No other set of strategies offers you so much scope as search marketing. You can dramatically improve your search engine rankings and direct quality, targeted traffic to your website.

A lot of the techniques here are basic, but some techniques come and go. What worked last year may fizzle this year. And discovering a great new search marketing trick could put you far ahead of the competition. So have the basics covered, but also try new techniques and strategies. With ongoing search marketing, you’ll be where your market can find you–front and center in the search results.

• Age of web site
• Length of time domain has been registered
• Age of content
• Regularity with which new content is added
• Age of link and reputation of linking site
• Uniqueness of content
• Related terms used in content (the terms the search engine associates as being related to the main content of the page)
• Citations and research sources (indicating the content is of research quality)
• Depth of document in site
• Metrics collected from other sources, such as monitoring how frequently users hit the back button when SERPs send them to a particular page
• Metrics collected from sources like the Google Toolbar, Google AdWords/Adsense programs, etc.
• Rate of removal of incoming links to the site
• Use of sub-domains, use of keywords in sub-domains and volume of content on sub-domains and negative scoring for such activity
• Rate of document addition or change
• IP of hosting service and the number/quality of other sites hosted on that IP
• A common postal address on the “contact us” page
• Hosting uptime
• Broken outgoing links not rectified promptly
• Unsafe or illegal content
• Quality of HTML coding, presence of coding errors
• Actual click through rates observed by the search engines for listings displayed on their SERPs

Social Media Marketing is the ongoing process of engaging users within the online communities to generate organic exposure, build brand awareness, opportunity and sales for your business.

The following list is a sample of the social media web sites currently available.

Social Networking

1. www.Myspace.com
2. www.Facebook.com
3. www.Bebo.com
4. www.Blackplanet.com
5. www.Xanga.com
6. www.Imeem.com
7. www.360.yahoo.com
8. www.Classmates.com
9. www.Hi5.com
10. www.Tagged.com

Social Bookmarking

1. www.Digg.com
2. www.Netscape.com
3. www.Technorati.com
4. www.Del.icio.us
5. www.Fark.com
6. www.Stumbleupon.com
7. www.Mybloglog.com
8. www.Reddit.com
9. www.Kaboodle.com
10. www.Slashdot.com

Professional Networking

1. www.Linkedin.com
2. www.Spoke.com
3. www.Xing.com

Classified Ads

1. www.Ebay.com
2. www.Craigslist.com
3. www.Kijiji.com

Q & A Sites

1. www.Ideaspit.com
2. Answers.yahoo.com
3. www.Quimble.com

Other Sites

1. www.Squidoo.com
2. www.Kingofthelist.com
3. www.listdump.com