Speaking Today To Farmington Business Leaders

Today is going to be booked from start to finish with the morning kicking off with a seminar speaking to the business leaders of Farmington, MO. Farmington is one of, if not the (depending who you ask) fastest growing areas in Missouri. Our partner Big River Telephone worked tirelessly in promoting the seminar and once again went offline to promote to businesses that need to start thinking about how to promote online.

I must say that spending time with medium and small business leaders in a group setting like this is about as good as it gets, I enjoy every minute and some of the questions and discussions are very insightful  as they can help me (and others) understand what the people not focused on the online world are really thinking about technology.

One of the things that really amazes me is the number of people using Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin. I always ask for a raise of hands before I start speaking to find out how many people use each of the services. Facebook always leads, Twitter is always second, and Linkedin third. No real surprise but what I do find interesting is that the crowd is typically not real tech savvy but a rough estimate would be 70 percent of most rooms have Facebook accounts.

As I type that I also realize more and more I am seeing people not even put their website in their commercials on TV, they just go straight to their Facebook page. What a coup for Facebook....

Now, I do spend a portion of the presentation talking about proper domain name selection and after seeing the acceptance of social networking there are very few people who even understand what  a domain name is. I am happy to help do that education.

Farmington is a very progressive area and I expect todays presentation to be a bit different than others and since I know some of the people in the room this time it should make for good back and forth.

Final Thoughts On The Affiliate Convention

Today was the closing day of the Affiliate Convention and I must say it was an absolutely great experience. Sitting with some of the top affiliate marketing people on the web the past few days along with some of the top SEO experts was absolutely great. And if you ever want to hear a person that is passionate about their business listen to the President of SEOmoz talk.

I am wore out so this post will be a bit random but here are some thoughts:

First off thanks to Victor Pitts from Moniker for interviewing both Morgan Linton from Domainvestors.tv and myself for future shows on WebmasterRadio.fm , the interview with Victor today hits on alot of the topics I have discussed on my blog lately so I hope you find it interesting.

One thing that was said over and over again as we talked to some of the convention promoters here and some of the top affiliates was how close our two industries are and how little we interact at this level. There is a lot both industries can learn from each other and the past couple days of interaction showed it over and over. If you want to learn more about monetizing your domains I would suggest going to the Affiliate Convention in Denver next year.

Today I spoke in the AM on a panel with Jamal Haque from Though Convergence, Victor Pitts from Moniker/Oversee, Jon Waterman of Findology (moderator), David Duckwitz from Citizen Hawk (and also a founder of CJ.com) the topic was New TLDs and Domain Asset Management.  There were some good conversation with the audience after the talk as well.

There was an absolutely incredible discussion about Whitehat vs Blackhat SEO that was just simply amazing (have I emphasized that enough?). Listening to the discussion around what Google can and cannot do compared to they actually say was pretty nifty. And hearing someone that plays the pure Whitehat game go back an forth with people that are willing to go a bit more towards black or grey was very entertaining. One of the best lines ever was from Patrick Sexton of SEOish.com who said "I am a drunk lazy ba***** who just wants to wake up in the morning have more money." Basically he was explaining how doing SEO right will help drive continuous traffic to your site. I also saw him speak the day before concerning other examples of what he was done, he is absolutely great to watch and listen too.

I really think the free concept around the show was great, the sponsors want people there so it makes sense to offer the show to free for attendees to the sponsors get their value. Daron Babin who is Co-Founder of WebmasterRadio.FM said it best when he said that someone should not have to pay to get the information they need in a convention like this. Very cool.

I also want to give a shout out to Kevin McKim of DnUrls.com and Bob Olea who owns Oceanside.com , we all hung out and had a great time. Bob really led a lot of the questions in the last session of the show. He was asking what a lot of people were afraid too.

In the next couple days I will be posting some videos and pics of the Affiliate Bash after party where Morgan, Jason, Victor and I got to watch Digital Underground do the Humpty Dance. Awesome party!

Do You Still Read Print Magazines and Newspapers?

Sunday afternoon I was spending a lazy day around the house (we all deserve one) when I realized I was holding the devil in my hands, I was actually reading a print media magazine. One of those old school things that we had before this Internet thingy.

Obviously there is a major shift happening in the news and print media world that everybody could see coming except for the people actually in the middle of it. That shift is the accelerating move of people reading news, opinions, and everything else online. As much as we that live in the online world would like to believe that everyone reads online the major move did not happen until the last couple years and it is accelerating every quarter, and this is not just due to the economy. The shift is here to stay.

Well, in reality I have only ever subscribed to the print newspaper for maybe a total of 6 months, this was around 1995 or so. Pretty much directly after that my news world started to come from media sites online. But I always continued to subscribe to several (ok probably 10) print magazines because for some reason I found them more useful than print newspapers. News is real time, much of the articles in magazines were more story and research based so real time did not matter as much.

Over the years though I have continued to shift until I got to the point where I subscribe to only 2 print publications, those are Wired and Fast Company.

Those 2 magazines are my 2 favorites and I think they still have very good, interesting, and forward thinking articles. I really wish Business 2.0 was still around since that was #2 only to Wired for me.

Anyway, I am sure over the next year or two I will likely quit subscribing to those as well and move completely online.

As the majority of my readers are from a pretty tech savvy online crowd, do you still subscribe to any print magazines or newspapers? How much longer and if you care to share what are they and why?

NOTE: After I wrote this Cate sent me a link to a great story that has about every link you would ever need to understand the shift and what it means. Thanks Cate!!!! I have reading material (online) for awhile.

The Best Thing An Online Marketing Company Can Hear

Today while in our sales meeting I heard on of the frequent comments I hear from people that have spoke to small businesses about online marketing, websites, etc. That comment is "I do not get any business from my website" or  "I do not remember ever getting a call from my website" or something similar.

To me this basically means I am walking out with an order or going to be getting one sometime soon. If you are someone that focuses on online advertising or web development or anything related to that field those words should be music to your ears. If you get worried when you hear that because now the customer has a negative perception about doing business on the web this is your time to turn it around and show them that you are the help they needed to make the web work for them.

Keep in mind when many small business buy or bought their websites it was done on a purely technical basis, no one actually explained to them that it was for gaining business or promoting their business online.

Their "web development partner" could of cared less in many cases if the customer ever received a visitor, they took their check and ran. Website was built, their work here was done.

Well, if these same small businesses who have the concern about business on the web based on their lack of success with it can be shown a plan to success suddenly it opens up a whole new world for them. Suddenly they can compete better with their competitors who may not have a presence online, or maybe grow their business through contacts online they did not even know had been looking for them (I have a great story about this if you want to contact me).

Either way, "I have never had any business from my website" should be music to any online advertising or marketing companies ears, listen for it and do not run away scared when you hear it, walk away with an order.

Top 5 Small Business Website Mistakes

As we work with small business owners daily to develop their plan for their online presence we hear a lot of the same questions and at the end of the day the customer is always right but there are things we try to help people keep away from or things that we find that maybe they did not do the first time they built their site that they should do this time. Here are 5 things small businesses either need to avoid or need to think about when they have their websites built:

Music playing on site- This is a major thing to avoid, when websites were being bought and deployed because they were "neat" and new this was something a lot of people did. Also I have witnessed this a lot on customer sites that were built by non-professionals. Without fail the majority of people visiting your website will be turned off by the auto-playing music as soon as they hit your site. This is an absolute avoid. Please please do not do this.

Using templates based on framesets - This is something else I see weekly by customers who have bought websites from people that focus on vertical markets, many of these niche market template websites are based on frames and you lose the ability to link to individual pages of the site. This is very late 1990's. If you bought your website from a niche market provider or you had your website built in the late 90s or early 2000's and your site is built with frames it is time for an update.

Working with developers that do not understand SEO - This is also very common, in my mind if you are having a website built and basic SEO is not part of what they do by default what is the point, if you spend 5K for a website and no one ever goes there does it matter? No. This is a very common issue with older technology companies in an area that have never upgraded past the "tech" part of websites. This is also very common when people focus on the flashy/pretty part of the site and not on attracting customers. If you ever hear someone say "Oh yeah my sister was gonna build my website" this is probably going to be a problem as well. For the small business customer that may read this and needs to understand what I mean please feel free to use my contact me form.

Using Flash and only Flash to build a site - Last week I sat down with a potentially large Missouri.me advertising customer who also wants a custom website developed. Although we do not focus on custom websites in this case it makes sense for us to do it. But what was interesting is they brought up the site of their would be competitor and it was done almost 100 percent in Flash. Sure it looked great and did some cool stuff but it ranked no where in the search engines, all their traffic was from PPC. They focused on pretty and not getting customers. Flash is another item that decreases the ability of the small business owner to optimize their site for the search engines. Avoid making it the focus of your site.

Clip Art Animated GIF's - Just like the music reference above, this is very late 90s early 2000's. Having clip art based graphics on your site will turn users off. The little guy walking across the screen that is on a graphic is not something that is neat anymore. Please avoid this, clean nice looking graphics will be more interesting to your visitors.

Thanks to @DanSanchez for inspiring this post.

If you have questions about the right steps for your small business website please use the contact me link above to contact me. If you have more suggestions for small businesses to avoid feel free to put them in the comments section below.

Small Business Facebook And Twitter Use Growing Fast!

Received a tidbit from a friend of mine citing a Merchant Circle survey showing some amazing numbers and something I have hit on with a few posts lately. More and more businesses are starting to understand the use of social media for use in directly connecting with their customers, here are a couple direct quotes from the survey results:

The online survey of 2,403 of MerchantCircle’s small-business members, conducted in September, found that 45% also have a presence on Facebook and Twitter with the express intent of promoting their businesses.

45 percent is a pretty amazing number in my mind, although it is pretty common for large corporations to start to take advantage of new technology (although not always in the most effective manner) it is very uncommon for smaller businesses to take advantage of it. What becomes very important to them is how they integrate this into their larger web presence, i.e. tying their website into their social media presence.

And another quote:

Internet2Go and MerchantCircle attributed this to the ease and low cost of participating in social media. Of the small businesses polled in the survey, 79% reported annual marketing budgets of less than $5,000 per year, with 44% spending less than $1,000 annually.

Now, this was a really interesting piece, the ease of use statement is interesting simply because most small businesses consider the Internet a very technical experience and that turns them away from using various marketing methods associated with it.

On another note, if you are investing in domain names in many cases they would likely look at anything web related as a marketing expense, if you think you are selling a domain name to a small business (which are the majority of potential customers) at large sums then you may want to think about their budgets a bit.

Internet Marketing Seminar In Bonne Terre – Thanks Small Business Leaders!

Thanks to the small business owners from Bonne Terre, MO and surrounding communities for taking the time to come to our local search and online marketing seminar held at Mario's Italian Grill. I know that you are all extremely busy and taking 2 hours of your time after hours is asking a lot, especially when it is concerning a topic that is new to many and before the presentation was probably something you thought a business in rural Missouri may not need to be concerned with.

As you know now, it is very important to take advantage of all online avenues to create a holistic online marketing plan, from your Domain Name selection to your use of Facebook and Twitter, it all needs to work together to make sure you customers remember your brand and know where to go to find out what you are doing next, what specials you have or new products you are introducing. As I mentioned, finding targeted visitors for your website is key, understanding what customers are searching for when looking for a service or product you sell is how you focus on turning browsers into buyers. As I mentioned, no longer is having a website something you do simply because you can, now with the shift of newspaper readers and local business search moving online faster than ever you have to think about how your customers use the web even if you do not.

As I mentioned a portion of the content on this blog is targeted at helping my small business customers, as such I thought I would point out a few posts that I have done that you may find useful:

Why Small Business Should Advertise Online - Open Letter

Why Small Business Should Advertise During Down Times

Offline Ways To Promote Your Website

How To Create A Facebook Fan Page

Once again, thank you for my time and let me know how I can help!

Yellowpages Marketing Ripoff

I am sure the Yellowpages has been doing this for years but I wanted to warn small business owners as they open their mail in the next few days as I had two other people mention this to me today unsolicited.

I have no idea if this is being done because they are desperate to sell paper print ads or if it is something they have always done or if it is something new they are trying for another reason  but as a person who sells advertising to companies I took major offense to the way that the Yellowpages sent their mailing asking for payment on an "order" I had made. Now keep in mind I have had the Yellowbook people visit but never the Yellowpages and have done posts about the Yellowbook visit. But in this case, and I threw it away or I would post it verbatim, the Yellowpages sent a mailing out too, as far as I can tell, all businesses in the area and I am sure a much larger area than that, asking for payment for an ad order I had placed....Ummm never placed.....

Well guess what, there was no order, by any of the other people I talked to either. Now from the marketing side I can see what they are trying accomplish, I am not naive and I do understand the value in positioning a letter to make it sound like the customer must sign and act. I get it!!!

But also, the goodwill that gets dimished by positioning like this, basically by either a) feeding on a customers lack of knowledge of marketing techniques, or b) a customers lack of time to read through what was sent, is just sickening to me.

The first person that mentioned this to me today is a very smart businessman, a long term restaurant owner who has seen it all and he almost signed it and sent it back, in effect agreeing to an order he never placed but he would of been held responsible for. Why, because he was busy and did not have the time to review it in detail, luckily he had sat it aside and decided to review it later.

After he read it he figured it out quickly that the letter was basically saying that buying send this you are agreeing, etc but in reality no order had been placed. Imagine how many people actually sign this and just send it back because they do not understand the way this scam is setup. And I do consider it just that, a scam. It preys on those that do not have the time or understanding of what is being pulled over on them. Sure I know these people should be responsible enough to watch the contracts and orders their business signs but when something like this is received from an authoritative company many small shops will sign and move on. It just is what it is.

Well, it sucks, it is wrong, and I can tell you as more people realize that the amount of print Yellowpages being actually used is dropping at a faster rate everyday people will stand for it less.

If you want to quit receiving the Yellowpages visit YellowPagesGoesGreen.org. I do not get paid for anything on that site but did help them with some of the marketing for it, to tell you the level of interest by people to know longer receive the print Yellowpages they had 165,000 sign ups in one year with ZERO paid advertising....

You Never Know Who Is Watching

Just got back from an all day meeting so this post will be short today since there is so much left to do today but wanted to tell a little story.

As a blogger (I still do not really consider myself one, but I guess technically I am) we tend to put out what we think, somewhat edited for public consumption, sometimes not so much. I have a balance I try to play here between domain news and general online promotion and marketing topics and so far no one has screamed so the balance I hope is working. As of late I had some level of focus with some of my posts around what my customers would want or needed to hear.

One of the posts was An Open Letter To Small Business Owners which focused on the various things that businesses needed to think about as the Internet changes the way they promote their business, I was not targeting the big multimillion dollar corporations but more the rural or even large city small businesses that are trying to determine what to do as  newspaper readership drops and other advertising mediums continue to have less impact on their businesses than they had hoped.

Well, now to why the title is You Never Know Who Is Watching, last week I received an email from a lady in rural Kentucky who is working to promote her business but has just had no success with conventional advertising but searched for how to advertise to rural America. She landed on my post and felt it was exactly what she was wanting to hear. We had a call this morning I expect we will end up doing business together.

This is the second time that I have had something like this occur outside of the domain investor crowd who makes up the majority of my readers, first with the communications director of a professional cycling team and now with a potential customer who liked the message. There has been much talk lately about targeting end users more directly as it pertains to domain value, well part of that may start with domain blogs focusing more on the external world instead of being so inward focused.....

Also, on this topic take a look at Aron Meystedt's post at Symbolics.com today....

Get Out There And Make It Happen!

A laid back Saturday for me but thought I would quickly relate a story from this past week that led to a larger post here than I planned. Several weeks back when I did the seminar in Cape Girardeau, MO discussing topics such as local search, social media, domain names, and other online business topics I had met a gentleman who had a business that had been running out of the same small shop for many years.

Well, when I say many years I should define further, more years than I had even been alive (I am 36, so this business has been running successfully for many decades). The owner was in his late 70s and explained that although he did not have Internet access in the office or at his home, after listening to this seminar he understood that he was likely missing customers that were looking for his products online and finding his competitors.

What he had learned was that he needed to start thinking like his customers, after many years the way business was being done had shifted and there was an opportunity to grow, even if just incrementally, by having a presence online.

The next week my account manager for the area sat down with the customer and defined a plan to help him get online, it was more than a website, more than an ad, it was a solution to a problem and not just a product (that is a post for another day).

What is exciting about this is before we could even turn his website over to him he had already started getting calls and emails. Let me repeat, his products were in such demand before we could even hand it over to him he was getting business from it.

What does this mean, well first off it means that a person does not have to spend 20 thousand dollars to find value in doing business online. But even more so I think it shows that even people that have never had a presence online, businesses that have been around for decades, can still find value in doing something, even if it is small, online.

As I have said before, sometimes those of us that spend our life online like to talk about how others just do not get it. I look at things a lot differently these days, I say "What can I do to help educate the people who need it most?"

Everyone continues to sit back behind their computer screens and type away but the large (I would venture more than 99 percent) never get out with the majority to make things happen. They like to talk about end users, customers, etc but who is taking the initiative to connect with the larger populace?

And I am not talking other tech focused crowds (although when it comes to domain names in general there is much value in that and kudos to Chef Patrick for starting down that path this week.) I am more talking about connecting with local Chambers of Commerce, local business organizations. In other words, groups that are outside your comfort zone of tech friends?

It benefits us all the more the general populace is educated on the value of doing business online, heck I do not even mind when I see competitors out doing the same. Sure they will get some business but it also makes my life easy when I go in to talk to the same business later.

Once again, what are you doing to grow your business outside of the online community? Are you sitting back and waiting for it to come or are you making it happen?

« Previous Page — Next Page »