Small Business Online Advertising
Our last blog was about the cost of doing business. I suppose it would've been more appropriate to title it the "Cost of not advertising with your website". However, the message is clear; if you want to get exposure for your business, you can't rely on the old standards (only) to get it done. Whether you like it or not, you need to roll with the times.
So what does that mean? Well, if you want to reach out to new audiences online, it will take almost a brute force attack at all the mediums to get it done. That means riding the social networking train, using ad words and banner ads, having a blog that you update regularly, maybe even use an email newsletter where you can send virtual coupons to your readers.
Social Networking
Social networking, in my opinion is kind of a misnomer. I mean, you're not out handing business cards out to people and making contacts the "old fashioned" way. It's not sitting at the bar and BSing with the guy next to you. Rather, you're a part of networks like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIN, StumbleUpon, Last.FM, etc. Involvement in the various social networks will be varied from person to person. For example, you might use MySpace just for personal contacts and Facebook for business connections. Personally, I don't use MySpace. I deleted my profile some time ago. I use my Facebook to connect with friends both new and old. However, I also have created a page for my business that I use to communicate with "fans" (blog updates, new projects, etc). I use LinkedIN to connect with other professionals in the design world. Obviously, you want to be cautious with what you share and with whom. Once you put your info out there, it's there for literally EVERYONE to see. So be wise about it.
AdWords
AdWords (google, Yahoo, etc) are a good idea to target specific keyword searches. However, it can be difficult to get it figured out and do it right. Google AdWords is particularly baffling; you almost need a doctorate to be successful with it. The basic premise of it is that you create an ad that targets certain keywords. Then the ads show up when someone searches for that word. You pay for the ad each time someone clicks on it. Depending on the keyword, you could end up paying through the nose for it. So you have to be smart about what words/segments you target. Otherwise you end up throwing out good money with no results to show for it.
Banner Ads
Personally, I'm not sold on the effectiveness of banners as a form of advertising. You'll notice that I have a banner on the home page of this blog. However, it's used to advertise my business. I don't really like ads, but I also realize that they are a necessary evil. They do help with backlinks and could help bring in a little extra source of money. I think there's a middle ground where there's an acceptable compromise between no ads and MySpace. Once they start to get too numerous, annoying, or affecting your overall web browsing experience, I think you've gone too far. So, this is another area where wisdom and caution are to be taken. You don't want to annoy your visitors so much that they bail as soon as they've shown up.
Bloging
Writing a blog can be tricky. You have to decide what you're going to write about and how it pertains to your business. For example, if you have a gym, you want to blog about fitness, health, weight lifting, even nutrition. That way, not does your blog make sense with your type of business, but your backlinks and trackbacks will be so much more meaningful since it pertains to your business overall. That's what I've tried to do with this blog. I've tried to write articles that only deal with website design, development, search engine optimization, etc. Obviously this post and the other about small business advertising kind of break out of that. However, even with those two outlyers, there is a running theme of maximizing your presence online with your website. Let's put it this way; you wouldn't expect a web design company to have a blog about knitting, would you?
Newsletter
This is another one of those things that I doubt it's effectiveness. Sure, I've signed up for some email blasts (NewEgg, Buy.com, World Wildlife Federation, One.org), but frankly I don't read the emails 75% of the time. Either I'm too busy or just don't feel like taking the two minutes to read it. So, I figure everyone else out there must feel the same way about it as me. However, at Christmas time, I took a gamble and tried a newsletter of sorts. I sent out a "Holiay" card with a couple different coupons. One was for existing clients to get a discount on their next redesign. The other was a referral bonus, which was dependent on the person referred signing a new contract. At the time of this writing, I have yet to have anyone redeem one of those coupons. Maybe it was my offer, maybe it was my audience, but I haven't seen any return for the effort. In business, ROI is key. You need to make sure that you're getting your money's worth and frankly, I see more benefit with the influx of visitors to this blog than I have with that newsletter. With the changing landscape of the internet and social interaction, I think that the newsletter is quickly being replaced by other, more convenient and on-demand means.
SEO Part 3: The Reckoning
This is our third post in our series about SEO. If you haven't seen them already, you should visit the first and second blogs. The first one is a high level overview and the second dives a bit deeper and deals with keywords, ALT Image text, etc.
In this post, we will look at backlinking and social media and how they affect your SEO.
Backlinking
The concept/definition is pretty simple: Backlinks are inbound links to your site. The more outside links you have pointing to your site, the better. That means that your site will rank higher based on importance.
Example: You and I each have a website dealing with and farms. I have 10 sites that link back to me in one way or another. However, you have 100 sites that link back to you. Because you have more sites that link back to you, the search engines will interpret this as your site is more popular or important than mine and therefore rank it higher than mine.
The inherent problem that I see with this is with content. If you really think about it, it's not hard (although time consuming) to start getting a bunch of links pointing back to your site. However, does the quality of your content warrant it? There are a number of techniques out there, one of which is building or taking advantage of a link farm. You don't want to do that. A link farm is a group of sites that all link back to each other. This is a form of spamming the search engine (spamdexing) and is considered all around bad.
There's also a concept called "linkbaiting". This is when there is some breaking news and you end up having a gazillion bloggers write about it. A good example of this was/is the iPhone 4 debacle between Apple, Gizmodo, and that dude that screwed up and left the phone at a bar. If you look back at my blog posts, you'll see I didn't touch the subject here. I wanted to stay true to the intent of this blog, even at the possible detriment of hits. The point of linkbaiting is that you're writing about a topic that is interesting to a large group of people in the hopes of getting them to visit your site and link back to you.
However, the search engines also consider the quality of the backlink. In short, it looks at both sites and determines if the site linking to you is relevant to what you're blogging about. In particular, what kind of authority level does that site have about that specific topic/genre? The more authoritative the site, the better the quality. So, in my example above, if I would've blogged about that iPhone 4 issue, I may have garnered a lot of visitors and possibly some backlinks. However, those links would have a low value because that topic overall doesn't have anything to do with this blog. Or consider the other side; I've now linked back to Gizmodo (above) for the sake of the exmaple. They'll get a backlink from me but it won't matter much due to the content of this site.
So, backlinking is necessary but the quality of that backlink trumps sheer numbers. So the Holy Grail would be to have a ton of backlinks from authoritative sites that share the same or similar content.
Social Networks
Social Networking... the bain of my existence. On one hand, I enjoy connecting with old friends via Facebook, on the other hand, it's a huge waste of my time. Here's a sad little story to entertain you for a minute before we get into the subject:
By nature, I'm a fairly introverted person. I enjoy my alone time and I don't particularly enjoy crowds (no, I'm not anti-social and no, I don't live in a shed in the Montana back country). So I don't generally go shopping. Anywhere - the mall, the grocery store... if I can, I'll get what I need online. It's generally cheaper and a more efficient use of my time, and I don't have to deal with large crowds of people. Anyway, our family had our kids and my wife and I decided to do some shoe shopping this weekend. When we were done, I couldn't help but think how weird it was shopping in person; having to deal with a sales rep and their inflated retail pricing. It occurred to me that the more we live on the web and the bulk of our interactions are via Facebook, MySpace, etc, the more our society fails. On one hand, it's great to have info at your fingertips, on the other, it's putting up fences interpersonally.
So to me, social networking is a bitter-sweet thing. As a business owner, I realize I need that component to help my business grow. On the other, I think it is the downfall of our society (okay, that might be a little over-dramatic). So, let's just look at the pluses and what it's intended to do.
Social networking focuses on building relationships between people/groups who share the same interests and/or activities. My LinkedIn profile connects me with other designers while my Facebook profile connects me with scattered friends. As a business model, it allows me to connect with more people at a relatively low cost (free). Better yet, it allows me to connect with people in different parts of the world. Otherwise, the alternative is the local phone book. While that is an important aspect to a business owner, it's limited to your region. Another great thing about social networking is that it provides a backlink to your site. Granted, it may not be a real quality backlink in some situations, but at least it's something.
There are a number of different directions one can take when discussing social networking. I wanted to focus primarily on the aspect of how it can build your customer base and that can help with your backlinks and overall visibility online.
I have to admit this, though; I have yet to garner a new customer as a result of any of my (albeit meager) attempts at social networking. Maybe it's because I just don't have all the time/motivation it requires. Or maybe it's just not as effective a tool as they say. Time will tell, I suppose.
