Website: What have you done for me lately?

Ask not (only) what your website can do for you but what you can do for your website!

Any relationship has to have some give and take in order to be fulfilling and this is equally applicable to your relationship with your website. A relationship with a website? Really? Yes, I use the term deliberately because a website is quite different from many other elements of the marketing mix in that it is not static; it is a living, breathing entity that requires on-going love and attention. However, like anything that receives the time and TLC that it craves, it will pay it all back to you in spades in the form of relevant web traffic and client conversions.

Assuming you’re not the technical type and you are using a designer/web developer to create your website, there are many things that they should build into your site to make it work for you. It is however not good enough to assume that your involvement begins and ends with giving them a brief and paying your invoice. You need to engage with your site and ‘give something back’ and only then will you maximise your investment and really have a website that works for you.

The following tips can be used as a checklist for any website and I’ve broken it down, firstly into what you should demand from your site and secondly what you should be contributing to the process.

Gimme Some: What You Need Your Website To Do For YOU

1. Make sure your website is optimised for search engines. The most beautiful website is only of use to you if your prospects can find it!

2. Your site should feature optimised web copy. Choose keywords wisely, aiming for a keyword density of 3-5%. They should be relevant and specific to your business to try and beat the competition

3. Make content interesting and engaging and NOT enslaved to SEO: you should never compromise flow and message with blatant keyword cramming. Clearly communicate your benefits as visitors have very short attention spans!

4. Include a clear ‘call to action’ on every page. Understand what it is you want your prospects to do

5. Provide clear navigation. Allow your prospects to find their way around the site and locate the information they want quickly

6. Use images that reinforce and enhance your messages and break up the page. Use them in a functional way as well to aid SEO such as alt text and descriptions

7. Make it easy for your prospects to interact and engage with you. Feature enquiry forms, RSS feeds, e-news sign ups etc and clearly signpost them on the site. Data capture can also allow you to conduct permission based marketing

Everything I Do, I Do It For You: What YOU Need To Do For Your Website

8. Keep your content up to date, fresh and interesting through your blog and news pages. Update weekly if possible – neglecting your site once the initial page copy has been created is a big no no. Search engines love fresh content and so, in fact, do your visitors!

9. Share success via your site. Case studies, testimonials and quantitative results all send powerful messages to prospective customers

10. Offer free resources on your site, relevant to your industry. They will drive traffic and demonstrate your expertise and after all, everyone loves a freebie. Just give a taster though – you still want people to need your products and services!

11. Regularly review your page content to keep it fresh; blogs are not the only areas that benefit from being kept up to date!

12. Integrate your web content with social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to maximise exposure. People consume information in different ways. Some prefer smaller bites of information but you can still drive them through to your site if you whet their appetite sufficiently

Don’t panic! While your website does demand constant attention this is one relationship where you can actually get away with passing the job to someone else. If you don’t have the time or the skills to manage your site yourself you can outsource this to a professional who does – I’m always happy to be ‘the other woman’ in this type of relationship!

This blog post accompanies the #loveyourwebsite series posted on Twitter 14/02/11

Is SEO killing copy writing?

Has search engine optimisation (SEO) transformed crafted copy into contrived content?

Writing web copy; or more specifically, writing optimised web copy that works, is very different in nature to writing marketing copy for offline materials such as brochures, sales literature etc. While a traditional copy writer has to worry about conveying key concepts, emotive themes, flow, readability, structure, punctuation, grammar and spelling, a web content writer has to worry about all those things plus the functional factors that will ensure the website gains high search engine rankings and can be found by its target audience ie SEO.

You have to consider your keywords, but the skill lies not only in choosing keywords but your keyword density, prominence and frequency. In other words, how many times you use your keywords, how many times in relation to the total number of words and where you put your keywords. Phew! But SEO doesn’t stop there, you also need to think about long tail keyword strings, titles, descriptions, tags etc. Where once you set out to be a writer, carefully crafting persuasive, engaging marketing copy, you were forced somewhere along the way to become a maths/IT geek – what happened to being an artist? *sobs*.

SEO web copy has to perform in a very different way to regular offline copy. Think of it as the difference between making a spaghetti bolognese and baking a cake (bear with me on this!). When making a spag bol there are a few key ingredients, you need your mince meat, tomatoes, pasta etc – think of these as your theme, structure and flow – but otherwise you can throw in some mushrooms, herbs, garlic, maybe some peppers, possibly a glug of wine – these would be your personal ‘voice’, your vocabulary, your style. The point being anything goes and as long as you end up with a tasty dish/communicate your key messages there are various routes to getting there. To write great optimised web copy it’s much more like baking a cake because there is a very functional element to SEO in addition to the stylistic one. A cake requires precise measurements and a certain amount of science so that it will rise. Search engine optimisation also has a very prescriptive ‘recipe’ and requires considered keyword usage and a certain amount of knowledge of how search engines work so that it will rank highly and be found.

So is good SEO web copy all about keywords?

So you just use an online tool such as the Google Adword keyword tool to select your keywords and sprinkle them over your copy like parmasan cheese (gone too far with the spag bol simile?!). Job done. No? No. The thing is, not only do you have to attract your audience in, you also need to engage them when they find you. All too often I see web copy literally littered with keywords and phrases whose flow has been severely compromised because keyword cramming has been prioritised over the traditional rules of good copy writing. I can just imagine some machiavellian type web developer standing over a copy writer with a whip demanding that “crumbly shortbread biscuits” be used 4 times in a single paragraph before it can be signed off. OK just me then! The point I’m making is that there has to be a balance between functionality and style in equal proportion and if your copy makes no sense because it has been forced to accommodate keywords then you will still not gain business, no matter how many website hits you get. To go back to our cake theme (over egging the pudding now? Sorry!), it still has to taste nice/read well.

So, returning to our initial question; is SEO killing copy writing? Well it has certainly upped the game and us ‘artistes’ definitely need to adopt a more technical approach but as long as we devise our keyword strategy carefully while maintaining high standards of quality content that would not be ashamed to grace a brochure or leaflet, I think copy writing is alive and well! Remember, if SEO means no flow say no!

Now, for that cake…

Spreading Good Business Karma

In life, they say, what goes around comes around. This is also true in business, or at least I like to think so. Most business people subscribe to the theory that client is king and do their utmost to ensure that their needs and expectations are not just met but exceeded. Fabulous; I used to have an old boss who called this ‘client cuddling’ which is quite a nice analogy is it not.

But how often do we engage in ‘supplier cuddling’, ‘colleague cuddling’ and even ‘competitor cuddling’? Some of you reading now may be spitting out your tea in disgust at the thought but is it really so outlandish an idea?

One of my mottos in life (I have several: one for every occasion!) is treat people as you wish to be treated yourself and this certainly has resonance with me in my working life. I wish to be treated with respect, politeness, honesty and professionalism and this is how I try to behave towards others. And yes, that includes suppliers, colleagues and competitors. I do this because I think that it’s the right thing to do and allows me to feel pretty good about myself and my moral fibre. I also do it because the cynic in me realises that you just never know when your good deeds and words will bear fruit at some point down the line and, by the same token, when the reverse will come back and bite you on the bum!

One of my bug bears is quoting for work, putting a lot of time and effort into a proposal, and then never getting a response. Nothing. Nada. Nish. I don’t expect to convert every proposal. I understand that often a client does not have the budget, didn’t understand what they really wanted, can’t commit the time or just decides to use another provider. I am a big girl, I can deal with this. What really gets my goat is when they don’t extend the professional courtesy of letting me know and giving me some kind of feedback. I don’t think it’s a lot to ask and that is why I always try and do this with my own suppliers. I have often had business back from providers, either first party or referrals, because I make an effort to build a good relationship with them. It also helps you maintain good prices and standards of service.

If those ‘non communicative’ prospective clients then come back to me some months later I would respectfully decline to quote for further work because it’s not all about the client choosing the provider: a good consultant will exercise choice and discretion over the clients they take on board in the same way a client does with a provider. Personally speaking I only want to work with clients who have respect for my time and expertise and who operate in a professional manner.

I had a rather snotty e-mail from a client recently which was very opinionated, quite rude and blatantly sent on the spur of the moment with little thought. The comments in the e-mail were ill deserved and yet I chose not to rise to it (although it nearly killed me not having the last word: one of my less appealing character traits!). I responded professionally and tried to deal with the points raised with my motto in mind. The situation was diffused and I even received an apology but I did wonder, would they have sent that e-mail to a client? Was it ok to be rude because I was ‘just a supplier’?

Now, don’t get me wrong; this caring sharing zen-like creature is no push over! As well as aiming for high standards myself I do expect the same from others. When things go wrong or I don’t feel that they are meeting these standards I will challenge them and be firm where necessary but always in a professional manner and always aim for an amicable solution if at all possible.

But competitors? Surely we don’t have to be nice to competitors do we? Actually yes we do. I recently pitched for a contract against 3 other consultants and I was unsuccessful. When I got my feedback I asked who the successful candidate was because this was obviously someone who was doing something really well. They told me and I approached them about meeting for a coffee and linking up in some way. My theory is that we have a common purpose, operate in the same field and just might be able to learn from each other. There might also be opportunities somewhere down the line to work together. She was very open to the idea and we’re hoping to meet up in the next couple of weeks.

So, back to my opening point – what goes around comes around. Business communities are small and you live on your reputation. You are much more likely to get work, and have a range of providers who will do a great job for you, if you do right by people. By putting those vibes out there: being nice, courteous and professional to everyone that you have contact with, you are spreading good business karma and one day my friend it will all come back to you.

Using Social Media to Develop Collaborative Working Partnerships

Social media is increasingly being used to create engagement with customers and prospects and is as integral a part of many organisations’ marketing mix as a website, PR or advertising (actually probably more so than high cost activities such as advertising!). But is ‘increasing sales’ the be all and end all objective for social media?

Many businesses, and particularly smaller ones, are seeing the value that social media has for creating collaboration: finding like-minded professionals and organisations they can work with to create bigger opportunities, enhance their product/service offering or just learn from to improve what they do. More and more businesses are being born from conversations started on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Linked In.

So why would you want to collaborate? What benefits could that bring to your business?

You may think that your precious time is most productively reserved for focusing on attracting customers but you may be missing out on a movement that is having a huge influence on developing businesses. The benefits of collaboration could be as follows;

•  To enable you to pitch for and deliver larger projects
•  To compliment your skill set
•  To be included in your partners’ opportunities
•  To create new revenue streams/business ventures
•  To add new products and services to your portfolio
•  To reduce the reliance on yourself
•  To create a ‘contingency plan’
•  To increase your resource

So how do you go about it then?

Well the principles of attracting ‘partners’ isn’t really so different to those for attracting customers. If anything it may be easier as your potential collaborators have as much to gain from the arrangement as you do. As with any social media it can take time to establish yourself – don’t go bombarding people with invitations to form businesses before they’ve even got to know you! The following strategies can help you build trust and credibility; 

•  Establish yourself as an expert in your field
•  Demonstrate that you are committed to adding value for your audiences
•  Demonstrate the range of services and products that you offer
•  Provide details of the kind of projects/business you are working on
•  Create a personality for your business – people want to work with ‘people’, not ‘companies’
•  Communicate that you are open to developing partnerships
•  Establish a niche
•  Monitor potential partners to establish whether you want to work with them
•  Strengthen your positioning
•  Encourage advocacy

Once you establish yourself and start to build your following (and are following others) start to identify the kind of people you’d like to work with and engage them in direct conversation. Build the relationship and dig a little deeper to establish whether they are like-minded, that they fit your objectives in terms of personality, skills, background, profile etc. Open the dialogue regarding forming partnerships, it may be that you start to converse outside the constraints of the social media platforms via e-mail, phone, skype etc. Gauge whether they would be interested in working together and even look out for opportunities that you could share. The nature of social media means that you don’t necessarily need to be geographically close to work together!

Laura & Louise is one such an example of this in practice. Louise Gibbs speaks of how social media helped her develop a new business idea with Laura Summers

“Laura and I first got in touch through Twitter, we shared several tweets and discovered we both had young children and were launching our own businesses.

Through Laura’s business (Petit Poppet) she has many parents asking for her advice on baby wearing and sling advice & following many late night discussions (all through twitter, facebook or Skype!) we realised that we were both being regarded as experts in our own fields.

We felt there was a gap in the online presence of accessible parenting advice – and thus set up Laura and Louise. A question and answer platform where parents can ask any question they have and we have an incredible line up of experts that will help us to give a full and detailed answer. We have been extremely lucky to have found a great friendship that we can base our business on, both having some great contacts from our individual businesses and we are thrilled with the success of the launch of L&L.

We have done all of this collaborative work and only met in person for the first time recently. We live in different parts of the country. The distance has not been a problem though, we work most evenings online together – via skype.

Our advice for others looking to use social media is to Do It! It has grown both of our individual businesses and has been a huge push and success of our launch of L&L that we already have followers and customers that like our products and trust our professional friendly approach. We are big advocates for social media!

www.lauraandlouise.co.uk

A full report on developing collaborative working partnerships via social media, packed full of tips, strategies and advice, is available as a download here. Simply register with the site to access this and other FREE marketing resources.

Extreme Multi-Tasking for Business Mums?!

Now I’m always on the look out for ways to help me be more productive and maximise my time but is this a step too far? Being a content junkie I subscribe to a number of RSS feeds and this one popped up today (from the very cool Trendhunter) – lap top cases that double as a chopping board!

Travelling to a meeting by train? Client late? Waiting for a web page to load? Make sure you always keep an onion and the odd carrot with you and make use of that precious time by getting ahead with your evening meal prep: genius! As if us working mums don’t try and do it all as it is!

What’s next though? An iPhone app that peels the spuds? If only… *sighs*

http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/wooden-cutting-board-cases

Business cards: stationery or marketing tool?

How much thought has gone into YOUR business card? My latest blog post for Ego provides some tips for maximising your business card to use as a real marketing tool to sell you and your business. Some cool business card examples from around the world as well!

The humble business card – are you missing a trick?