Are you trying to develop your site’s SEO because your new business is growing? Are you getting ready to move to the next level with your start-up?
I am constantly trying to see what tools are available to ease my work, and my clients efforts (especially after I set them up for success). I run across a variety of sites that are successful in short-cutting the learning curve. Instead of having to read 2 books, or sit through 5 months of classes or pay $10,000 in consulting fees, there are a plethora of solutions to help you get at least a cursory education on a variety of challenges for start-ups.
Here is another website that I found it has a great deal of wisdom in short nuggets. It is GUST.com, a website that matches investors and start-ups in one place, creating a clearinghouse for entrepreneurs to look for angel investors in a single location. But the nugget that I found that was really valuable was the hundreds of videos that they have as short 1 to 3 minute nuggets of wisdom from those that have been through the trenches before.
A matchmaker for startups and inverstors
These are investors that most often have sat on the entrepreneur side of the table. They have learned the lessons of start-ups. Most often they learned the hard way. They are often boiled down in the way investors talking to many perspective start-ups can grasp most quickly from practice and repetition. The repitition of dealing with many pitches throughout the day, giving the same advice over and over. Their wisdom tends to be in short little nuggets that you can walk away from with your mind clearer and more focused then the cup of coffee you sipped while watching. These might even be good nuggets to put around your management tables to start out at different meetings. It might also be an interesting way to kind of go through and bring in an outside person to lend some advice to some of your conversations/arguments that you and your management team are having as to how to solve a problem. Certainly, they’re not the absolute perfect answer to everything, but I do find some thought-provoking ideas in there that can be helpful in trying to map out your course, and stay on path to growing your start-up.
I know what you think about gust.com, and the idea of looking at short videos for gaining wisdom and keeping your energy level up as you go through the challenging days of marketing your business to the world through search engine optimization.
What you’re looking for someone who’s looking for what your store is generically offering comes in to see if you have what they are specifically looking for work. You can convert them to being a true engagement while they’re there.
That’s why retailers count how many people are coming in and how many people are coming out there also counting how many of them are actually purchasing. I have worked with over 100 different retail chains from single retailers to Office Big box stores. They are counting by the month, day of the week, hour of the day (I know, I installed the counters that go back to the corporate databases). They are counting how many of customers are actually signing up for the e-mail list. They’re counting how many of purchasers are return customers from previous orders. There also counting what is the average amount of each visitor’s spending. Retail stores count the numbers in so many ways you would be amazed. Just like you need to on your website. Your website is not a black box. You need to be paying attention to what’s happening.
If these types of customer engagement don’t make absolute clear sense to you, then I would suggest you go and spend some time and with brick and mortar retailers. Consider even working as a retailer. Learn how retailers convert the looky loo’s into true engagements. Yes we have all been shopping, but look at how retailers work with other customers not just yourself. Learn how retailers try to customize to the needs of each person, not a one size fits all. It is important that you learn how to look through a store or website through the eyes of a customer. It is important that you understand that the customer is always right in their perspective, and how they are looking at the world. And if you don’t understand their perspective, it will be very hard to understand why they’re not buying from you. If that same attitude of understanding is what a potential customer or visitor is looking at when they see a store and their perspective also becomes very useful.
This attitude of looking at your website and how you design your SEO and SEM. Did you need to present the right kind of signage from the street to get the customer to pull into the parking lot? Once they get inside the store, they need to see what the sign promised is fulfilled. SEO and SEM is about creating it signage from the street. You can fake a man once or twice but once you do, they will ignore your sign for the rest of their life, because you made them cut across left-hand lane and pull into your parking lot. And they will tell their friends to ignore you or worse. You need to create a good ‘sign’ in your SEO/SEM to attract your visitors into your store. But you also need the sign to be a good indicator of what is in the store.
Just as stores don’t (at least those that survive long term) have the same layout year after year, websites also must evolve and continue to improve based on what works and what does not. This should be done as measured experiments. You can follow the models used in Lean Start-up (Eric Ries) and E-Myth (Micheal Gerber). Those experiments need tools like Google Analytics and other tools like ChartBeat. Topics of other blog posts.
Oh, not selling products on your site? I would place heavy odds on your sellling ideas – be they the idea that your service is better then someone elses, or your idea is more important then the next bloggers. Remember to look at the website through your visitors eyes in the path they took to get to your items.
High level business plan suggestion – http://blog.guykawasaki.com/#axzz1j9so32SI I am listening to Guy’s Reality Bites and they echo so much the experiences of many who have been successful in growing a business and getting capital investment. Guy started his success at Apple, but along the way has become a successful venture capitalist, and therefore has sat through many many business presentations. He has learned what works from the perspective of will it get someone to write a check and do a deal.
I have mentioned Seth Godin a few times, I particularly recommend Linchpin
A mindset for new business creation or anyone trying to earn a living
His writing style is light and fun, but I think his ideas are pretty fundamental to the way the new world is. It tells the story that trying to be 2nd best or worse is hardly worth getting out of bed in the morning. Be the best – 2 ways:
Be ‘fortunate’ enough to be the best in a ‘standard’ area.
Be creative enough to define your niche of being best. The key is you should be able to introduce your self as ‘the best ………’ in a way that everyone you meet knows it is the truth. That may be by geography, or creating a new market segment or reframing an existing segment but be the best.
Here is the story of the marketing and passionate niche I was telling a few clients about. http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelellsberg/2012/01/11/the-tim-ferriss-effect/ It demonstrates how the world of broadcast over narrow-casting has passed as absolute law. Our markets are large enough (over 303million in US alone) and flat enough (2 day for under 2 pounds, but so much is the speed of internet) and segmented enough (how many Yahoo groups are there today, how many Meetup groups are there today in your area). So many business owners keep trying to get the ‘big’ publicity hit and fail to understand that most success comes from targeting the key people you want to connect with. That success from connection individually rather then exposure of many.
Explore your business using the Business Model Canvas. I have worked with many different start-ups.
A new way to get to the Truth of a business plan
Along the way, I have built a variety of questionnaires that I found very helpful for all to understand and clarify what the real objective and strategy. Having recently found this 1 page tool, I find it naturally replaces my flat mini-book of questions with a single sheet that is far more action oriented, less overwhelming and more action oriented.
And of course, there is the E-Myth Revisited by Micheal Gerber.
The cost to start up a business these days is lower then ever. As the needs for technology and communication sophistication keep increasing, the cost for these tools keeps dropping, at least to get started and prove your concept. Voice phone calls and voice mail is free (once you pay for Internet access) with Google Voice and many other solutions. Video conferencing is free with a little technical know how using Skype and other services. The list goes on (I keep trying to keep an updated list, but the best in breed and abilities change so frequently).
One of the ways of determining some of the best of breed is to look at the many (many, many) end of year “best of” lists. These often consolidate and update the author’s finds from throughout the year.
Here are some cool types of tools for businesses looking for low cost (free on up) solutions to business communication and learning challenges. Cloud solutions are going mainstream. Even the GSA (goverment Services Administration) is using the cloud (they choose Google Apps and will save 50% of email costs in 5 years).
Comment on what are your favorite tools that you could not live without, and what tools have you discovered this past year that you are keeping in your tool box for 2011
Want to save time and get more traffic to your website? I recommend answering your visitor’s questions as clearly and completely as you can. This takes the advice written by Michael Gerber, decades before the Internet was even opened up to the public.
If your website is a part of your business, I highly recommend reading Michael Gerber’s The E-Myth Revisited. It is written partly as a parable to describe the entrepreneurial myth of many small businesses. It is part parable, and part information. Gerber uses the story of Sarah, a struggling business woman, to describe the process of the written steps you need to take to improve your business. Whether your business is large or small, the website needs to have an entrepreneurial spirit. Therefore, I recommend reading and integrating this classic book that has formed the foundation of the businesses I have started, and the hundreds of business’ I have consulted for.
If you are trying to get more traffic to your site as easily as possible, I recommend creating or extending your FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section on the site. The idea of the FAQ is to collect all the different questions that customers ask on a repeated basis with answers. Why does a FAQ get you more traffic? Because when properly designed these pages will be descriptive of the terms that customers use to look for answers on your site. These terms will probably be repeated just enough without seeming ‘spammy’. So take the time to write out the questions and answers on separate pages to let users understand your site in the context of the questions your visitors are looking at your site.
It has also been suggested that Timothy Ferriss’ The Four Hour Work Week is another great resource that really explores the idea of defining your business on paper in a way that can ge shared with others. There are some great concepts there and clear steps outlined on how to document your business and create FAQ or Frequently Asked Questions pages. He has made a whole lot of money on implementing effective (both cost and time) ways of making money on the web following his own advice.
Are you a newer business without the traffic and experience of knowing the questions your visitors will ask? Time to do some market research. Larger business’ will pay a decent dollar to go out and see what perspective customers are thinking about. If you cannot afford to pay, it is time to get guerrilla in your approach. Ask friends, set up a kiosk at a flea market, hang at coffee shop, go to your kids soccer game and ask what questions do you have. Be ready to collect the questions, and test the answers. Stop by the library and read about market surveys and how to create your tests with as little bias as possible.
I would recommend a FAQ page that has all the questions on one page, then link to each question and answer on a separate page. On the page, I recommend the following:
A clear title that states the site name, short version of the question, and contact info (800 number).
A clear description of the site and question in the Description META tag.
Keywords META tag related to the question and answer keyword phrases.
Question summary
Long question
Short answer with key phrases in them.
Longer answer with key phrases and links to other pages as appropriate to the site or off the site. This is your chance to really explain and give the background appropriate to understand your site and what you are trying to have each visitor walk away from your site with, knowledge wise.
Ideally, ‘breadcrumbs’ to how you got to this page from the home page of your site.
Ideally, links to the rest of the site navigation system in text and graphical.
Ideally, UGC – User Generated Content where visitors are allowed to comment and ask follow up questions and give responses.
Ideally, have short poll questions to begin to truly understand how users view your pages (4 questions at most, ideally only 1).
These steps generally will create content that will allow the search engines to ‘understand’ your site and help rank you well on a variety of search terms. The key is to explain your site from the perspective of someone who does not know anything about your site. Do not assume your users have much background when they come to this page and ask the question, if for no other reason than this is the case for Google. It does not automatically understand anything and it is up to you to ‘explain’ your questions to the search engines.
Understand that unless you have been writing interactive copy for decades (and the Internet has only been public for 15 years), you will need to continue to learn how your visitors interpret your site. That is OK, and the fun of online marketing. This will require you to continue to tweak and improve your site. Google actually prefers to see sites that continue to evolve rather than act like the US Constitution (and even that we keep considering changing on a regular basis with admendments). Remember, it is a lot easier to change a website than it is to change our tax code and laws, and ‘they’ change that with great frequency (usually for the worse, unless you have million dollar lobbyists, but I digress). Sucks that we have 100 Senators, not to mention the hundreds of Representatives, and they have a whole lot of staff just to work on the wording of our laws. Are you better than 600 legislatures and thousands of staff in your ability to write your website FAQ pages? If so, please contact me ASAP, we could make millions together! Otherwise, keep reviewing your questions and answers and keep improving your responses based on your feedback of how well you are communicating.
The key is to put in writing on the site all those amazing visions you have for helping others with your site. It really needs to be written down and not just in your head.
