Category: Websites
Why Your Website is More Important than You Ever Imagined
It May Deliver More Potential Value Than a Store in a Mall or a Booth in a Tradeshow.
Imagine for a moment that your website is really a compelling magazine that sits on a giant virtual magazine rack on the Web where only qualified buyers are browsing.
You are better situated than a store in a shopping mall where idle passers by might wander in to kill time. You're also better positioned than you would be with a booth at a trade show, when thousands of theoretical prospects stroll through the aisles looking for something that might be of interest.
In both cases, you will certainly attract some potential prospects. However, only a fraction of those mall or tradeshow visitors are seeking the specific solutions that you can provide.
Your website's presence on that virtual global magazine rack offers you the opportunity to attract visitors who are actively searching for answers to specific problems. They are on a mission to solve those problems. They need to find a company that can meet their needs now.
Read MoreWhat Do You Tell Your Web Visitors About You in their First Second on Your Site?
Why That Very First Impression is Vital to Your Content Marketing Strategy
Your website may be chock full of terrific content that is both relevant and compelling to your ideal target customers. But, you won’t have a chance to share that content unless you communicate instantaneously that you provide the precise solutions they are desperately seeking.
Your visitors are the potential customers for whom you have developed your content. But those visitors won’t root around in the hope of buried treasure. They have neither the time nor the inclination to guess whether you understand their needs and how you can help them. That’s why you have to engage them them immediately on their arrival on your site.
Read More10 Most Popular Content Marketing Posts of 2009
It’s been a very good year for content marketing. In fact, visitors searching our site for the phrase “content marketing” increased by 85% in 2009 over 2008.
Social media certainly loomed larger in the past 12 months but interest in content marketing strategy accounted for the majority of the most popular posts.
Here is the Cliff’s Notes bullet point version with more detail and links to the full articles following:
- How To Create the All-Important Elevator Speech For Your Presentations and for Your Content Marketing
- 5 Reasons an eBook Should be a Core Component of Your Content Marketing Strategy
- 5 Twitter Tips to Strengthen Your Content Marketing Strategy
- Want to Attract and Retain Great Customers? Become Their Online Content Concierge!
- Six Steps to a Successful Small Business Content Marketing Strategy
- 6 Reasons Why Your Blog Is Your Most Important Social Media Tool
- Why Being Visual Can Bring Beautiful Business Results
- 6 Reasons to Embrace Social Media Today
- Top 10 Lessons Small Businesses Can Takeaway from Smart Content Marketers
- 6 Secrets to Making Online Video Work for Small Business
A more detailed look at the top 10 with links to each complete article is just below. Kick back and enjoy.
Read MoreA Financial Pro Charts the Way to a Great Online Business Presence
Dean Piccirillo Makes a One-Person Blog-powered Website Look like a Major Corporate Presence Online
Building a solid business blog-powered website is challenging for all of us. But it’s even more difficult for anyone who lives in the financial services universe.
Because financial services professionals must adhere to strict compliance regulations, they must be very careful about what they say and how they say it. Dean Piccirillo a principal in HBK Sorce Financial, LLC, manages to convey relevant and compelling information while maintaining essential compliance.
Even more impressive is the quality of his own site's design which manages to be simultaneously newsy and professional. To build DeanPiccirillo.com, Dean used a WordPress theme called Live Wire that can be significantly customized for the needs of an individual business. Perhaps most impressive of all is the fact that Dean did almost all the work himself. Although this may be beyond the capabilities of many of us, it shows what a non-technical businessperson can achieve using the power of a tool like WordPress.
Read MoreLocation, Location, Location on Google: A Great Real Estate Blog-powered Website Rises to the Top
Effective content marketing online drives LifeinBonitaSprings.com to number four on search rankings.
You might think that Realtor.com, Yahoo real estate, the Yellow Pages, either of the two local newspapers or all of the big area real estate companies would trample an individual realtor on Google. But, you’d be wrong.
In fact, when you search for "Bonita Springs real estate" in Google, you pull up a total of 557,000 results. But, standing at an impressive #4 is LifeinBonitaSprings.com. That's the blog powered website of Chris Griffith, a realtor with Downing Frye real estate. It's worth noting that, although Downing Frye is a successful, well-established local realtor, their company website doesn't show up until page 3 of the listings.
Although Chris gets a terrific ranking, does that translate into business for her? You bet it does.
Chris says that she currently gets more than 90% of all of her real estate business directly from the Internet. Just five years ago only half of her business came from the Web.
Read MoreLessons from a Business Website That Misunderstands Content Marketing
You must be clear on what you do and how your customers will benefit
I became aware of the Metwell website as a result of a promotion they had sent me via Twitter. Their website is full of unintended ironies as they offer online marketing advice which the website appears to ignore.
It's also a good example of a website with a pretty good layout that is undercut by a lack of focus and a serious shortage of relevant and compelling content.
I found it hard to understand exactly what Metwell does or how they could help me after a quick--and then a more in depth--visit to their website The company seems to know content is important because their site attempts to provide a lot of content, at least on the surface. But they misunderstand the essence of content marketing by failing to make their content relevant and compelling to prospective buyers.
Here's what I find to be most problematic:
Read MoreSix Steps to a Successful Small Business Content Marketing Strategy
How to go from clueless to compelling to transform prospects into buyers
In 2007, the mention of content marketing brought as many blank stares from small business owners as the mention of a website did 10 years before. In fact, in 1997 when we started our small business magazine in Southwest Florida, few owners had websites, let alone an online marketing strategy.
In 2009, most small businesses do have websites and the term, ‘content marketing,' has gone from obscure to fashionable. When I say fashionable, I mean that the usage of the phrase has skyrocketed in the past two years. For example, the number of visitors to our website who arrived because they had done a search for 'content marketing,' has increased by a factor of 10.
I'm delighted that content marketing has come out of the shadows and into the spotlight. Even so, for most small businesses, developing a content marketing mindset and a strategy to follow just does not come naturally. Fortunately, the fundamentals of a successful small business content marketing strategy are much more commonsensical than you might think. In fact, they build on what have long been best marketing practices. Even those content marketing elements that require a new mindset have a simple and compelling logic that even the smallest business can grasp and adopt.
Here are the six steps that can put you on the path to an effective content marketing strategy:
Read MoreWhy Your Blog Beats Your Website to Your Prospects
Influence them with information well before they are ready to buy from you.
I have written before about the many differences between a traditional website and a blog.
Your website typically provides timeless information, while your blog provides timely information. Moreover, your blog becomes more important as you keep adding more and more content that is relevant to your prospective customers.
But a case study about a consulting company, De Novo Strategy, from Bernie Borges' new book, Marketing 2.0, suggested a new nuanced but critical reason for the power of a business blog. It boils down to the fundamental difference between the purpose of your website and of your blog.
Your website must necessarily be designed so that when your customers are ready to research the purchase of products and services, they will find everything they need to know to make a positive buying decision on your site.
Your blog has the opportunity to reach those prospective customers earlier in the process. The best blogs provide a continuous stream of information about topics, issues, and problems that are specific to a well defined market niche. This would apply equally to content marketing or a segment of the banking industry.
As we begin an initial search for information in a particular niche, we probably have no intention of buying anything from anybody. At that moment in time, we simply want to become better informed in areas that matter to us, either professionally or personally. We are looking for information. We are not looking for a vendor.
