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.

Selecting A Small Business SEO Company

All SEO companies targeting small businesses are selling snake oil!

OK not really but there are many out there you need to watch for which I believe has given the industry a bad name. Search Engine Optimization is something every company with a website or developing a website should take into consideration as they develop their plan for implementation.

If you are not familiar with SEO the simplest explanation without getting technical is the following:

SEO is the process of building your website in a manner that allows it to show up in the search engines for specific items that people maybe searching for, and more importantly it is optimizing it in a way that draws in searches that are specifically targeted at the products you sell.

There are many more technical explanations but that one really is the gist of it.

Now, why did I say many companies are selling snake oil, well let me first say, my company is not an SEO company, I say that very specifically because we do more than just optimize sites. That said we do work with customers that do want some level of SEO work done on their websites and we do build every customer website with SEO in mind from day one. Our success getting customers the search traffic they want has been great but we never guarantee anything, period.

There are a few things that you need to pay attention to when selecting a search engine optimization partner.

If they promise you page one listings run away, here is why. In many businesses you can guarantee something, when it comes to the search engines you are always at Googles (or Bing, or Yahoo) mercy. The provider can do everything right but at the end of the day there is always a chance that Google may not rank the site on the first page number one listing.

If they guaranteed it there are a few things they may be doing that you need to ask about or be aware of, there are companies that will take advantage of the lack of awareness of how the search engines work and will sometimes do one of the following to show you a first page listing:

1. Paid submission directories or search engines - Many will pay a fee to have your site listed number one in a lesser search engine or website directory or possibly take advantage of pay per click advertising on a lesser search engine or directory. These listings are only there if you are paying, quit paying and the listings go away.
2. Black Hat SEO - When it comes to search engine optimization there are two main types without getting to technical, there is white hat which is the proper way to optimize the site, and there is something called black hat. Black hat is the process of trying to trick the search engines into ranking your site but doing things that Google and others frown on. It may work for a short period of time but sooner or later Google will catch on and your site will be banned from search and your competitors will be smiling.
3. Using very odd searches to rank - What this means is showing you a page one ranking for a term that really no one searches for, for instance if you are interested in showing up for Chicago Hair Salons they may work to optimize for Chicago Illinois Hair Salons On Rush Street. You can see how it changes the value of a first page ranking.

Those are just a few things, there are many more but after speaking with customers lately I have a concern that there are people still working down these paths with customers.

All that said, there are many very upstanding SEO companies out there, there are MANY MORE good than bad. Make sure you select one you are comfortable with and ask the right questions.

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.

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?

10 Offline Ways To Promote Your New Website

Whether you are looking for ways to promote a new small business website or a major web development project it is important to find ways to promote the site, although search engines and targeted PPC advertising help drive traffic it is very important, especially for local small businesses to promote their sites on a  day to day basis as their storefront on the Internet.

Too many times I have sat with a business and they talk about having  a website but then talk about how it has never had any traffic, in other words it was a  neat thing to have but they never thought of it as a way to connect with customers or promote their business.

Here are a few ways to promote your online presence with offline methods:

Business Cards - Plain and simple, the standard business card is a standard in business, if you do not have your website listed on the business card you are missing one of the most effective ways to promote your site. I have seen this to many times, someone has a website but you look at their card and sure enough it is not there. Having your domain name in your email address is not enough, make it clear where to go to find your business online.

Take Out Menus - If you are a restaurant do not miss the chance to promote your website on your take home menus or even on your table menus. If you are a business in the area of a restaurant that has take home menus ask if you can buy space on their take home menus for your logo and website. It works, people take these home and stick them on their fridge and see it everyday.

T-Shirts - If you happen to have a business where a uniform is used or have had T-shirts printed up for various reasons make sure you stick your website on it, I have seen people have their phone numbers, addresses, hours, basically everything you can think of on it except for their domain name. A large portion of people focus on remembering the website name these days not the phone number. They can get the contact info from the website.

Billboards - Same as above, more people are looking for the website to go to more so than a phone number these days. A person I spoke to just tonight who is a very non-tech person said he even realized today that he realized it is now the FIRST thing he looks for and never pays attention to a phone number any more on a billboard. If you have a website and have bought billboard advertising do not miss the chance to promote your online billboard (website).

Newspaper and Radio Ads - Lets face it print media is dying a slow (but quickly turning to fast) death so why miss the chance to promote your online presence if you are still advertising in print media. You know people are heading online, make sure they know where to find you there. If you are advertising on radio same thing goes, people are tuning out ads more and more on radio, make sure you get in your website name so they know where to find your online presence, they are more likely to remember that than just about anything else that you may say.

Magnets - Want to keep your logo and site name in front of people hand out refrigerator magnets in your place of business. People use these to hold up pictures, menus, etc so it is a constant reminder when they go to the fridge.

Letterhead - Many small businesses still use letterhead to send business letters or promotional letters on a daily basis. Take advantage of this to get your website in front of the customers or partners you are promoting your message to with your offline paper mailings.

Car Stickers -Window stickers are a great way to get a site and logo in front of people, I see these daily and they are very cost effective to get printed up. Why not get your site name in front of everyone while you are running to get groceries are heading out on a sales call.

Banners - This is something I have used personally, I see many small businesses on a day to day basis that have banners in front of their place of business or in targeted highly visible locations in their area. Most are missing this chance to promote the place people can go to find out more about them, their website.

Team Sponsorships - For years one of the ways local businesses have shown their support for a community has been to sponsor a little league team or maybe the all star soccer team in their area. Think of the value you can get if you give more than just your business name on the jersey and instead put your site name. People are watching their children run around the field for hours at a time, why not keep your site name in front of them.

I am sure there are many others but these are some top ones I have seen used and in many cases not used enough. If you have other creative ways let us know in the comments section.

Personalized promotional items with your company logo and contact information is a great way to promote offline, especially when you give away a products that is useful to people.

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