Tim's Blog

Last week, I was fortunate to lead an Online Marketing 101! workshop for a group in the construction industry.  This was an interesting workshop because it combined a small group participants in a boardroom, with a larger group who were participating via a live streaming session.  

One of the issues that attracted my attention early were the questions about website content management. This wasn't on the agenda, but there were so many related questions that I added a few minutes to speak about it. And since the workshop was all about creating marketing content, it's clear that the issue of (more easily) managing content is a growing concern.

This is especially true as the number of content formats is growing as well. As more sites are being asked to add video formats, content management for websites is growing more complicated for the small and medium sites owners and managers.

A little history first.  In the beginning, websites were typically hand coded. Working with the client, a designer would wireframe the site to outline the functionality, and then begin the design process to add colours from a colour palatte, create or buy images, etc. Concurrently, a developer would use a tool to start the process of coding each page on the site to incorproate the designers graphical elements. The result was HTML and CSS that would control the look and feel of the website.

This worked well until it came time to make a large number of changes or add additional elements to the site. You'd call the developer, and he/she would say that it will take a while to make the changes or modify specific content. He/she was busy and you'd have to wait until they've finished their current project. And because the site was coded using the developers coding style, it was unique and difficult for another developer to learn and modify.

The technology industry is known for change, and content management is no exception. It started with companies with large sites seeking ways to easily add and manage their existing content, and so came the "content management system". Wikipedia defines a content management system ("CMS") as; "designed to simplify the publication of web content to web sites and mobile devices, in particular, allowing content creators to submit content without requiring technical knowledge of HTML or the uploading of files."

More specifically, a content management system allows you to keep track of every piece of content on your Web site, much like your local public library keeps track of books and stores them. Content can be simple text, photos, music, video, documents, or just about anything you can think of. A major advantage of using a CMS is that it requires almost no technical skill or knowledge to manage.

And it's the ability of content creators to submit and modify content without technical knowledge that makes the use of a CMS really interesting for small and medium sized business.

The key benefit of a CMS is that it provides a basic framework and common services that are used for all users or content. This includes templated code that provides universal page managment for the location of page elements (menus, header & footer), colour management, and search engine related meta-tag and page descriptions. Each page template haves hundreds of hours of coding by a developer.

Common services include

1. a common user permission model used throughout the CMS,and
2. a framework for adding third-party modules for hundreds of other services, such as

• ecommerce,
• shopping carts,
• advertising managment,
• calendars,
• newsletter management,
• groupware,
• internal mesaging systems,
• financial applications,
• specialized content delivery,
• social media,
• sports & games,
• and a very wide variety of vertical industry applications.

The result is that a new website can be created much more quikcly and inexpensively, and the existing website can be managed more effectively by multiple people with varying levels of technical knowledge.

Using content management systems, we have developed websites that provide the typical brochure style content, and underlying complex business applications available only to users with the correct permissions. These websites offer far better cost of ownership to the business owner, and, in some cases, generate additional revenue for the business.

If you're consideing a new website, or want ways to better manage content on your existing website, take a good look at using a content management system. It will save you money and provide an excellent platform to build on.

Please This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it what you think about this idea ...

As you finish your planning for 2010, there’s no better time than now to take a deep look at your search marketing options. A good search marketing strategy enables you to attract more people to your website, translating into increased profitability, which also means greater opportunities to brand your company and products. Optimizing your  search marketing strategy requires a multi-faceted approach and an understanding of several different aspects of search engine traffic and search-related services. The following describes the important areas in search and why you should be aware of them.

Where Does Site Traffic Typically Come From?
Organic. The most desirable traffic comes from “organic” search. These site visits occur when users click on text/listings in the unpaid, non-advertisement section of the search engine results pages. Users enter a search term  and the top listings that appear are as a result of their high relevancy to the search term. Professional search engine optimization can help increase your site’s ability to rank highly for organic search terms that closely relate to your site’s products and services.

Paid Advertising/PPC. Pay-per-click visits are the result of users clicking on advertisements. In this model, ads are created that appear above and next to organic results when users search for certain words and phrases related to applicable products and services.  A charge is applied only when the ad is clicked and you follow the link. PPC advertising can be an effective way to increase both the number of visitors to your site and when combined with a solid SEO strategy, can lead to a significant increase in a site’s return on investment.

Direct. In a direct search, a user isn’t using the search engine because they want a variety of results to choose from; they already know what they want and are going right to it. For instance, rather than using Google to search for car parts, they enter the URL http://www.carparts.com to go directly to the site. Naturally they have to know the URL beforehand so this type of visit usually happens with repeat customers, or people that you have otherwise built a relationship with.

Product Feed. A product feed is a data file that is created containing information about your products. The feed is structured, with specific fields of information that are filled in, such as size, color, brand, price and other specifications, and is submitted to search engines (such as Google, for their “Shopping” option) and comparison shopping websites (such as Shopping.com, Pricegrabber.com, and Shopzilla.com). Product feeds are most effective when submitted regularly to make sure that these sites have the latest inventory specifications to display. Customers searching within these indexes and subsequently clicking on your listings will be taken directly to your site.

Social Media. Site visitors have many options for finding you with the advent of social media. Users may find your site through your blog, Twitter account, Facebook page, or YouTube channel. These are excellent ways to attract search traffic, as social media represents a growing trend online.

Other search engines. Site visitors have a variety of search engines to choose from when they search online. Google has the biggest share, by far, of the search market, but some other options are Yahoo.com, Ask.com, and AltaVista.com. Or DogPile.com, which combines Google, Bing, and Yahoo listings for each search.

Which Search Engines Matter
Google performs 65% of all searches, so it is worth the time to optimize for them. Yahoo was a distant second at about 19% while newcomer Bing.com is establishing a foothold with a market share of approximately 9%.

How SEO Has Changed
The basics of search engine optimization are still needed. These include on-page content consisting of useful information organized in an effective way, embedded with targeted keywords, and incoming links from other high quality sites. Each search engine company closely guards how they rank their searching algorithm, but we know that search engines constantly change these algorithms for competitive reasons and to respond to spammers trying to break the system.

Google is placing increasing importance on off-page factors that are not generally under the control of website developers. There's more emphasis on incoming links ("backlinks") and link authority, and less weight on on-site optimization. Incoming links from other high-quality web sites is considered to be the top “true” indicator of a site’s popularity and factors highly in placement on the results pages.

Another is relevancy, which is how closely related the content of the sites linking to you is to your content. For instance, if you sell home staging services, it wouldn’t make much sense for you to have an incoming link from a pizza parlor, so Google is not going to value that link very highly. However, if you had links from furniture designer sites, that would be very highly valued.

Another factor is link text; the words used within the link coming to your site from the other page. For instance, if your link from a nursery is a link with the clickable text “wholesale flower grower,” that is going to be much more impressive to Google than a link with the clickable text “click here.” Link building is a long-term project, so have a plan, be patient, and do a little at a time.

PPC
Using PPC to drive traffic to your online store can work very well, but if the clicks slow down, so does business. It’s a challenge to keep these accounts profitable; they often require a lot of attention to make small changes to adjust for keywords and price per click to save a few cents or dollars per click. There’s really no way around it—online marketers do need to pay attention to their PPC accounts and be willing to experiment, try new ads, new landing pages, and new keywords.

Google Insights for Search (http://www.google.com/insights/search/#) is a relatively new free product from Google that provides information to help online retailers make decisions about their paid search. Google doesn’t release the actual number of searches for any key word, but they do provide results that help track trends.

Twitter, Facebook and realtime search
In late October 2009, Bing entered into agreements with Twitter and Facebook for better display of real-time search results from those services. Shortly after, Google announced that it will similarly display status updates from Twitter. Though Bing’s Twitter service is already active, Google’s is not quite ready to go as of now. This is a big development, since for the first time, information is available on Bing that is not on Google. When these deals are implemented, Bing and Google will integrate status updates by users of these free services into their regular search service. Twitter and Facebook are by far the largest sources of real-time and content-sharing information on the web today. In order to be listed in the public search results, users of these services have to have certain privacy settings to allow it. If, as a business owner, you have debated about getting a Twitter or Facebook account and haven’t yet done so, there is no better time than now.

What You Can Do
The above article presents a lot of information about seemingly unrelated topics. But that is indicative of how the scope of the Internet and how it is used has changed. The first thing to do is assess where you currently are in all these search avenues: what are you using, what are you not using, what would you like to be using, what do you need to learn more about.

Look at your analytics to see where your traffic comes from. This is the most basic of the information that you need to help you decide, with your budget of time and money in hand, where to put your efforts.

With regards to link building, there simply is no real, effective way to reduce the amount of time and effort this takes, but building links from other high quality sites is probably the top one or two most effective things you can do to increase your search engine rankings. If building links is your goal, work on developing relationships with other site owners, enhance the content of your own site, and offer them good reason to link to you. If you are selling products, make sure you are developing good exposure in Google Product Feed through well-optimized, complete data feeds. If you have the budget, experiment with paid search options.

When we work with clients to develop and manage online newletters, one of the first issues is educating a client why they would consider having an in-house newsletter.

The fact is that online newsletters have become ubiquitous. General news sites, industry-focused publications, consultants, brokers, trade associations and companies of all sizes now produce newsletters. It's at the point where subscribers are far more selective about the newsletters that they choose to receive, especially if it is being received into their email Inbox.

Online newsletters can still be a powerful marketing tool, because they enable companies to develop and maintain a relationship with customers, as well as to “nurture” prospects. Online newsletters are far most cost effective that printed mail, and can be created more quickly and focused on specific audiences.  They position your company as an industry expert, allowing your team to concentrate on creating great content.

But they have to be well-crafted to stand out from the crowd. So how do you write a successful email newsletter? Here are a few tips ...

• Provide news that is interesting to your reader. Unless you’ve got a really hot new product to announce, your latest “company news” will not likely give you more than the time it takes to read the first sentence.
• On the other hand, news about industry trends or statistics – buying patterns, inventory levels, employment, products, regulation – is generally of interest. The more industry-focused, the better. Bookmark or monitor RSS feeds from key sites, or use a newsfeed services to collect this data.
• Offer tips and advice. Business readers are naturally drawn to any article with “How to” in the title (assuming it’s actually something useful). Tap the knowledge within your company – engineers, developers, field techs, consultants – to develop these articles.
• Develop case studies. reading about how real companies solved real problems are always interesting. Let your customer’s words promote your company rather than being too self-promotional. Describe theproblems first, and then how your product or service helped. Make sure the case study also makes your customer look good and get their agreement. you can always promote the case study in publications that reach their prospects.
• Make it interactive. Include a quick poll relating to an industry topic (e.g. “Can you see a use for Twitter to generate leads at your company?”). People love to have their voice heard, especially if it can be done quickly.
• Express yourself! Make your opinion known about a industry topic of interest, similar to a blogger. This is where you can create a personal brand, so be consistent.
• Make it fun. Business is serious, so including humor is different and desirable. Including a video, cartoon, trivia question about a completely unrelated topic, or something else amusing.

Technical Tips

• Keep it short. Keep the body of the newsletter short by providing headlines and excerpts linking to longer articles on your Web site or blog. This enables readers to scan the content quickly, then click to articles of interest.
• Provide both HTML and plain text versions. Most hosted email services allow you to set this up automatically. Some readers prefer the nicer HTML look, while others won’t be able to view an HTML version due to firewalls and SPAM filters.
• Optimize for the search engines. Click here for more information on on-page optimization.
• Provide an RSS feed of your newsletter content for readers who prefer that option.
• Use a professional and relevant subject line– the more reader interest-specific, the better. “Here's Your XYZ Company Newsletter” is accurate but b-o-r-i-n-g. More effective subject lines include phrases such as “How to…,” “10 Signs It’s Time To…,” “Secrets of…,” “10 Successful…,” “_____ Challenges,” “Advice for…,” “Tips for…,” “Trends in…,” “Mistakes To Avoid When…,” and “What To Watch Out For When…,” grab your readers’ attention. If you can include your recipient’s first name in the email subject line, so much the better.
• Give your newsletter one owner. To maintain consistency in format, tone, and delivery frequency, one person shoud be in charge of creating the newsletter together, even if there are multiple authors. There are technical tools to make this process easier, so that the authors can send material when they can, and the editor can use a quick editin environment to quickly pull it all together.
• Use a service. Let a professional service handle the nuts and bolts of subscribes, unsubscribes, bounces, white-listing, SPAM compliance, and list management. There are a number of reasonably-priced hosted services that provide all of the basic list management functions, plus features such as allowing subscribers to select plain text or HTML email options, pre-built HTML templates, and detailed subscriber tracking reports.

The bottom line is that email newsletters can still be an effective marketing tool, as long as you focus on your readers’ needs.

When I get to talk to people about what I do, I frequently get asked to describe the Twitter phenom. Most people have heard of it, but don't really understand it or grasp the power of Tweeting for business or personal branding reasons. Most of these conversations center around the initial concepts of using Twitter as a way for one person to tell another person what the author is having for lunch that day, or what type of shoes they are looking for. But Twitter can be (and is) used for much more.

The fact is that Twitter is an immediate delivery communications platform whose uses are just being understood and enhanced on a daily basis. For instance, major PR campaigns are created that use Twitter as a key platform for research and demand generation. 

So back to the heart of the issue -- What is Twitter?

Here's a link to a short video that should make it easier to understand Twitter's structure and basic functionality. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGbLWQYJ6iM&feature=player_embedded#

Once you get the basics, come back here periodically for ideas of how you can use it to achieve specific goals in your business.

(BTW, you can follow us on Twitter @creativerevenue, or if you are in the real estate sector industry specific information is published @mycondodox)