How to

Are Your Offers and Calls To Action Compelling?

by Admin on May 4, 2011

If you use your website for lead generation, the use of Offers and Calls To Action (CTAs) can be one of the most effective strategies available. But to be really effective, your offers should be compelling.

Here is a short list of not so compelling offers:

  • Contact Us
  • Request a Demo
  • Free Trial
  • Request a Free Consultation
  • Save 50% When You Buy Today

What Makes An Offer Compelling?

An offer is compelling when it solves a prospect’s problem. Visitors to your website are usually looking to solve a problem. So to get a website visitor (prospect) to give you their contact information, your compelling offer should make clear “what’s in it for them” or “how you will solve their problem”.

Websites that have compelling offers can convert 10-20% of their traffic into leads. Whereas those, which have offers that aren’t compelling, only convert 1-5%.

How To Create A Compelling Offer

To create a compelling offer, ask yourself these questions:

  1. Who do you sell to? (Be specific)
  2. What problem do they have that you solve?
  3. How do you solve that problem?

Now create a sentence that states your customer’s problem and how you can solve it.

Let us know what your most compelling offers are.

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How To Train Web Spiders

by blogmistress on April 18, 2011

web spiderA search engine spider is a program that follows, or “crawls”, links throughout the internet, grabbing content from sites and adding it to search engine indexes. Spiders will visit your site and see what new content you have. However, the less new content you have, the less they will visit you.

Did you know you can train web spiders? Because web spiders are specifically looking for new content, the frequency of their visits to your site is determined by how often your site has been updated in the past. If  you only update your content once a month, the search engine spiders know they only need to visit on a monthly basis to see your new content.

If you are updating your content at least once a week, thee search engine spiders will get used to coming around weekly to index your new content and indexing that new content means it is then available to be found by search engines! Those web spiders are looking for new content so you have to feed them new content to get them trained to come and visit your site.

A blog is the best and easiest way for businesses to add new content on a regular basis. Work on adding great content that will not only be crawled by spiders and indexed by search engines, but will be attractive to people when they are searching.

Another tool that helps spiders and search engines is an xml site map. XML is a document structure and encoding standard that is the standard for spiders to find and parse site maps. Site maps can improve search engine optimization by making sure that all of your content can be found. You can set your site map so that it will notify search engines when you have new content so the spiders will not only be trained to come back, but will get an invitation to see your new content.

Businesses wanting to be found on the web have to come to terms with the fact that content creation that is search engine friendly is imperative to growing online.

Has blogging helped your business? Tell us how.

Blog Specials

 

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Facebook Page – Another Chance To Do It Right

by blogmistress on April 8, 2011

Facebook PagesA few weeks ago, I wrote a post about the difference between Facebook Pages and Facebook Profiles. If you are using a Facebook profile for your business, of course you are in violation of Facebook’s terms of use and in danger of having your profile removed by Facebook.

“Maintaining a profile for anything other than an individual person is a violation of Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. If you don’t convert your profile (the one you are using for your business) to a Page, you risk permanently losing access to that profile and all of your content.” – From Facebook (see 4-1)

However, building a page and transferring all the current friends to fans is a lot of work and a bit daunting for many businesses. Well, Facebook has made the process a lot easier! They have created a conversion tool to help you move your profile to a page. Other than the risk of losing your business profile, why would you want to use a page instead?

“Since profiles are meant for individual people, they aren’t suited to meet your business needs. Pages offer more robust features for organizations, businesses, brands, and public figures.” – Facebook

The conversion tool is great news for businesses that created a profile instead of a page. You get to keep all of your friends who will now become fans. You get to keep all of your pictures. You will lose any other content so you will need to copy that information and save it if you want to keep it and copy it to your page.

“Be aware that when you convert your profile to a Page, your profile pictures will be transferred, and all of your friends will be automatically added as people who like your Page. No other content will be carried over to your new Page, so be sure to save any important content before beginning your migration.

The account associated with the profile you previously maintained will be converted to a business account, which will be the sole admin of your new Page.” – Facebook

Because Facebook has created this conversion tool, I imagine that they will start really cracking down on businesses that continue to use a profile and, thus, continue to be in violation of their terms.

If you are still using a Facebook profile for your business, you definitely should get it converted ASAP! If you know anyone who is using a profile for their business, share this article with them.

Click HERE to get the conversion started.

In addition to avoiding removal, businesses that use a Facebook page get a lot of great tools that can help them get found. Facebook pages are indexed by search engines. Facebook pages have analytics called “Insights” to help you measure your effectiveness. Facebook pages have marketing tools to integrate with your website, blog email and other platforms. Facebook pages have a host of useful apps that you can apply to your pages including custom pages, email opt in and lots more. While you are limited to 5,000 friends on your profile, there is no limit on the number of fans (or people who “like” you) for pages.

Key Take Aways:

  1. Using a Facebook profile for business is a violation of terms and you risk being removed.
  2. Facebook has created a great tool to convert a business profile into a business page.

Next Steps:

  1. Download the Facebook for Business 1o1 eBook to learn how to effectively use both your personal profile as well as your business page effectively.
    Facebook for Business 101 eBook
  2. If you are using a profile for your business, convert today! If you know someone who is using a profile instead of a page for business, share this article and encourage them to convert so they will not be removed.

 

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Long Tail Keywords for Better Website Traffic

by blogmistress on April 6, 2011

What are long tail keywords? They are the specific niche phrases that help you reach a very targeted market as opposed to short tail keywords that are targeted at a broader marketing. In 2010, on Google, over 50% of searches had over 4 keywords entered. Long tail keywords allow you to better reach your specific targeted audience. This image from the Left Click Blog is a illustration of the long tail.

Let’s look at an example:

The words “Real Estate” get 1,000,000 monthly searches. If you are using the keyword real estate, it will be very hard for you to rank. In most cases, it would also not be effective to rank for real estate. If you are a local Realtor, it does not make sense to try to compete for the term “real estate” because you are competing for that phrase world wide.

The term “Real Estate in Mountain Home, AR” gets way fewer searches. If you are a Realtor in Mountain Home, Arkansas, that would be a better keyword phrase to try to rank for because it is specifically relevant to you. This is an example of a long tail keyword phrase.

You can take this example even further. While “Real Estate in Mountain Home, AR” is a good phrase, in this case, you still have a lot of competition because there are many Realtors in Mountain Home. An even longer long tail keyword might be, “Norfork Lake view home in Mountain Home, AR.” Of course, there will not be as many people searching with that phrase, but, if they are using those words and they find your listing for a Norfork Lake view home in Mountain Home, AR, you have delivered exactly what they are looking for. That kind of traffic is very valuable because you have exactly what they are looking for!

Think of long tail keyword examples for your business. If you have a static website, the opportunity to get long tail keyword traffic is limited. You should limit your keyword phrases to one per page. If you have a 20 page website, you have 20 long tail keyword opportunities. However, if you have a website that you can expand and add pages or even better a blog, you have limitless opportunities to rank for long tail keywords that will reach a more targeted market.

You can research keywords online with free tools such as Google’s keyword tool. You can also do research with paid tools such as Hubspot’s keyword grader that can be integrated with your blog and website and track your keyword traffic.

Key Take-Aways:

  1. Use long tail keywords for better traffic. Reach your niche market more effectively.
  2. The more opportunities you take to use long tail keywords, the more effective they will be.

Next Step:

  1. Start a blog! It is one of the most effective ways to reach your target market.

 

 

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Social Media Marketing How-to: Facebook Lists

by blogmistress on February 10, 2011

I recently attended an online marketing webinar. It was pretty good for traditional marketing – handing out business cards, etc. It wasn’t so great when it comes to social media marketing. During the webinar, participants were asking about how to use Facebook in their marketing. The presenter said he was saving that for the end.

Finally, at the end, the presenter told us that he didn’t use Facebook that much, but he recommended having multiple profiles for your business.

Shocked

When I finally picked myself up off the floor, I noticed I wasn’t the only one who was shocked. He was recommending this because he thought it was a good way to keep business friends and personal friends separate. Okay, I see what he is trying to say, but there a couple of problems with this:

  • Having multiple profiles is a violation of Facebook’s Terms and your account could be disabled (this is not an idle threat, it really has happened)! From Facebook’s Terms:

Registration and Account Security

Facebook users provide their real names and information, and we need your help to keep it that way. Here are some commitments you make to us relating to registering and maintaining the security of your account:

  1. You will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission.
  2. You will not create more than one personal profile.
  3. If we disable your account, you will not create another one without our permission.
  • Facebook provides a way to separate your friends all from your profile without risking your account. It is called Lists! Lists are a great tool for your social media marketing efforts!

So here is the deal with lists. You can create lists, add your friends to lists and then use your lists to determine:

  • who you see in your news feed
  • who sees your status updates
  • who sees if you are available on Facebook chat

Here is how you create your lists:

  1. Log in to Facebook
  2. Click on “Account” on the top right hand side of your screen
  3. Click on “Edit Friends”
  4. Click on “Create A List”
  5. Name your list
  6. Add your friends to your lists
  7. Repeat for as many lists as you need

If you have a lot of friends this could take some time, however, Facebook has some ways to help you. You can search for friends to add to your lists in a number of ways.

Facebook Lists for Social Media Marketing

So, for instance, if I want a list of everyone who lives in the same city as me, I can select “search by current city” and then type in my current city. I can then add a list with the name of my current city and add everyone that the search returned to my list!

As you can see, you can have lists according to current city, school, hometown, and interest. That can help you a lot when you are building your network.

So, now how can you use those lists? From your Facebook Home, you can filter your news feed according to your lists. See the tabs that say “Top News” and “Most Recent?” The blue arrow next to “Most Recent” will drop down and let you filter your news feed to see only those in certain lists. Just choose which list you want to see and your done!

Facebook Home

You can also control who sees your status updates. When you post a status update, click on the arrow underneath the status box. If you want only one list to see your status or if you want everyone except one list to see your status, just choose customize and enter the name of your lists in the appropriate boxes. How cool is that?

Status Update on Facebook

You can also control who sees if you are available for Facebook chat. From the chat menu at the bottom left of the screen just choose the friend lists that you want to see that you are available. I usually have the chat turned off on my profile; but if I had it turned on, this would be a great feature to make me available only to those I choose.

So, as you can see, Facebook Lists is a great tool for your Social Media Marketing arsenal!

Key Take-Aways:

  • Using multiple profiles or using profiles for business is a no-no!
  • Using Facebook lists with your profile gives you a lot of power to choose who sees your profile content.
  • Using Facebook lists can be very useful for your social media marketing.

Next steps:

  1. Download the free Facebook Checklist for Business from Wharton Website Design & Marketing.
  2. If you are local in North Arkansas – sign up for the Arkansas Small Business & Technology Development Center workshop: Facebook ABC’s for Business.

Photo of doll by Mr Lynch via Flickr

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