18 Do-It-Yourself Online Marketing Tips for Your Business Website

Hard to believe a week has passed since my last post – I actually meant to post Part 3 of my series about What A Business Website Should Do much sooner. Nonetheless this timeless information (at least in the internet age) can be applied over a long period of time to deliver results to your businesses website. Once again Alec Hess from Full Voice Media takes us through a comprehensive list of DIY strategies that you can start doing TODAY to enhance your online presence.

If it seems like an overwhelming list, bookmark this post and pick 2-3 things that you’d like to focus on and attack those items as an area of focus for the next 30 days and come up with a plan to apply. If you’d like to do video on your website, promote yourself more with an email newsletter, create a Facebook fan page – whatever it is that grabs you – I highly encourage you to do your research and learn about how impactful these areas of online marketing can be. Better yet you can always Contact Me with any questions about this list or learn about how you can take any of these areas to the next level with our Online Positioning Services.

Without further ado, here Alec provides his practical marketing advice beginning that can be broken up into 3 areas: Positioning yourself, supplying content, and interacting with & retaining your potential customers. This is covered in these 18 Do-It-Yourself Online Marketing Tips for Your Business Website

The idea behind online marketing is to position you, your business or your brand in every online area in which potential customers congregate. If you practice brand consistency and have an engaging and useful website your efforts around the web will be incredibly effective in attracting prospects.

Position:

1. Create a Facebook Account. Facebook is the most robust and popular social networking site on the internet. Use it. You should ‘friend’ everyone you have ever met or done work with. This connects you to this person in a way that is deeper than just having their contact information.  Now you have not only ways to reach them, but also information on them and ways to reach every single person they know.

2. Create a Facebook Company Page. Invite everyone you know and meet to comment and offer suggestions. Regularly update it with useful tips and advice. Feature a link to it on your website and vice versa. Ask for opinions on industry relevant do’s and don’ts. Run surveys to get discussions going. Answer all inquiries and comments promptly. Constantly grow your friend base and refer to your website often mentioning the resources available there. Join other relevant groups and pages; contribute opinions and offer advice and statistics.

3. Create a Twitter Company Page. Invite everyone you know and meet to comment and follow your tweets. Regularly tweet with useful tips and advice. Feature a link to it on your website. Ask for opinions on do’s and don’ts. Answer all inquiries promptly. Constantly grow your follower base, use sites like Buzzum.com to search out and follow potential customers. The best way to get followers is to follow others. Find influential tweeters in your industry and follow them. Engage and get involved. You must consistently “Tweet” to be relevant.

4. Create a YouTube Channel. With almost 100 million people visiting YouTube each month it pays to find a way to interact through videos with potential clients. Comment on videos that are likely to be watched by potential customers. Slightly “homemade” type videos are still OK, although the more sophisticated, cleaver, fun and informative your video can be, the better.

5. Join LinkedIn. Invite friends and business colleagues to connect with you. Join LinkedIn groups in your field and participate in discussions; offer your opinions and advice. Mention your website when it is appropriate and ask for advice and opinions.

6. Join Online Business Groups in Your Industry. Do an online search for groups and websites related to your core business and join and participate. If you are not communicating, networking, collaborating, and advising your peers and potential clients on these sites you may be missing a huge opportunity. But you must be consistently engaged in establishing and strengthening your brand for your efforts to produce results.

7. In Person Promotion. You have a website, but how does anyone know to go to it? Well… you have a phone number, how does anyone know to call it? The answer is you tell people and you tell them often. Giving out your website URL should rank even higher on your list of information to give out to peoples of interest because your website will include your phone number and much, much more.

a.     Your website URL should be on the tip of your tongue when networking.

b.     Your website URL should be on your business card.

c.     Your website URL should be in your email signature, or somewhere in every email you send.

8. Cross Positioning. Don’t forget to include links to your Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or any other accounts you have prominently on your site. Allow users to share content from your site with their friends through those social media sites. There are a variety of free tools to facilitate that interconnection. Put an RSS feed on your site and blog.

Supply Content:

9. Start a Blog. A blog on your website allows for greater SEO (search engine optimization) and can also be the basis for your newsletter and information for all your other online efforts. “60%+ of consumers begin their search for products and services online by searching Google,” according to Chris Brogan, social media marketing guru. Write about personal stories with past sales, link to great info on the web, be informative and entertain. The blog must be updated at least weekly to become a valued source; daily is better. Include an RSS feed to make it easy for people to follow your blog. Include images, charts and/or videos. Reveal your personality, but keep it professional, don’t offend, and make it concise.

Seven good tips from orthopreneur.com:

• Include keywords in your title tag. The title is the first area the search engine spiders are programmed to look when they come to view your web page. Every time you add a new blog post, it is considered a NEW page to the search engine spiders and they are on alert. If you have your blog setup correctly with an SEO plug-in, it will give you the option of writing a more appealing title for your human readers and then using a manual override for the search engines. How you SEO your blog setup initially is critical to the success of your posts.
• Use keywords in your headlines that are relevant to your topic.  It will help the search engines find your article and encourage potential readers to click on the link to your post.
• Content is King when writing a blog post.  Write on topics of interest with a human element.  Blogging is social networking.  Readers are entertaining your insight, opinions and evaluating your personal expertise in any given area.  I recommend blog posts be written on an ninth grade reading level, not on a professional post graduate level they don’t understand or are interested in taking the time to decipher.  If you write as though you are talking to a group of friends or high school students, it will flow better and sound like you are really interested in writing on the topic.
• Use relevant links in your blog posts whenever possible and link your keywords with an actual word or keyword phrase. I also suggest you write in the first person using “I” when writing blog posts rather than the third person using “WE”, whenever possible. It elicits authenticity that is hard to deliver when writing in the third person.
• Break your blog article into small paragraphs and/or bulleted points just like this one.  Internet readers skim content.  Readers view content on a computer screen differently than they do on a printed sheet. Bullet points and short paragraphs makes it easier for them to read your post, increasing you’re the chances they will come back and read more at a later date if they find your content interesting.
• Throw in video whenever possible.  Readers today relate to video.  Who wouldn’t prefer watching a video to reading a post when trying to get your point across or discuss content of interest?  YouTube and other social video sites are a wonderful source of content.  You are only limited by your own imagination when blogging.  Mix it up and give it a twist you can associate with your content.
• Always add a thumbnail or photo to your blog post.  Photos add interest to a boring text page and break it up for the human eye to scan easier.  To maintain and aesthetic look to your blog, I suggest using the same size photo whenever possible.

10. Write Articles of Interest for local, regional and trade journals in your field, for both online and traditional media, again to establish you as an expert.

11. Practice Brand Consistency. Make sure any and all materials you use to promote keep a similar “face” (visual appearance) and “voice” (content and tone). A professional look always communicates confidence, trust and reliability. This applies to any physical spaces you have as well as virtual.

Interact and Retain:

12. Customer Retention and Reach Out: Your current and past clients are your best sources for new business. Word of mouth is priceless. Keep in touch. Seasonal greetings, best wishes, inquiries regarding your performance, etc. Keep in their thoughts using emails, post cards, letters, newsletters, phone calls, print advertising, radio, TV, etc.

13. Engage in online forums and build trust and respect. Don’t try too hard to promote. Give advice and helpful information. Listen. Interact when you really have something to say. Compliment and praise.

14. Use Email Marketing. Everyone uses Email so you can’t afford to overlook this opportunity to engage with your clients. Create new content or aggregate useful content online and regularly send clients who opt in useful information, offers and advice. The Opt-In part is the most important part. Nobody likes spam. Either purchase opt-in lists of potential clients from list brokers or better yet use your own client list generated from pat sales, contacts or online registration from your website. Survey show Email marketing has the highest return on investment of any direct marketing. It’s flexible, cost effective, can be automated and allows for two- way communication between you and your clients. It’s like a post card, but better.

15. Make your Pitch about Serving, Providing, Fulfilling: It’s about understanding what your clients want and not only about what you have. Emphasize making their wants met. Explain the benefits they will see from their point of view. Don’t just list features and expect people to value them, show them how each feature specifically improves their life or experience. Emotion is a strong reason for choosing a business or service; make sure you connect on an emotional level by highlighting the results your clients can expect.

16. Create an Email Newsletter. Similar to email blasts but with more depth, a regularly released newsletter can highlight market trends, opinions and advice useful to buyers, sellers and investors. Become a trusted source of relevant information. And use lots of links back to your website.

17. Sponsor local events that promote and feature your brand and encourage involvement on your website.

18. Create contests, specials, events; anything that gets you noticed, and cross promote online and with traditional media.

And don’t forget:

Combine Traditional and Online Promotion: Develop a marketing plan including a budget and allocations for online and other efforts. Take a hard look at what has worked and what hasn’t. Try new things. Make sure you identify your target audience and market to their unique preferences; most Americans over 50 respond to different stimuli than do 16 to 30 year olds and you must make allowances for different age groups. Gen X’ers (between 30 & 50) are skeptical of traditional intrusive advertising; they depend on their cell phones, text messaging and email to keep in touch. They use the Internet as their first line of research and advice. Using the Digital Media for marketing, and your website as your hub for contact will only grow in importance as time passes. Expensive traditional marketing materials and mailings of old go unread in favor of marketing mediums that include audio, video, and social networking that appeals to a more visual style of learning, found in tech savvy generations who are always on the go, and base their decisions on personal emotional responses according to orthopreneur.com.

Re-evaluate Your Marketing Plan: Trends and marketing strategies and available technologies change constantly and you need to review your marketing tactics at least once a year.

Alec Hess is the Principle and Lead Project Manager at Full Voice Media. He’s also an entrepreneur and creator of outstanding products such as Penance Pill. You can learn more about Alec by heading over to his blog.