BLOG

Have you ever looked at a business website and had “What were they thinking?” run through your mind? I look at a lot of websites. Thanks to my informal partnership with Ryan Briggs, I’ve also been writing a lot of web copy. The more I learn about website development, the more I’m surprised at some of the commercial websites out there.

To leave 2009 on a light note, I’ve compiled a list of compliments you never want to hear about your own website.

1) You did a great job cramming so much jargon onto your website. You must be really smart. Or maybe I’m just dumb.

2) I love the way you used Flash images on your homepage. It reminds me of a strobe. Add a little music and we could dance.

3) What a great idea to use a small font. Yeah it’s harder to read, but it gives you room for more jargon.

4) I really like the homely feel of your website. Did you do it yourself or did you get your teenaged nephew to do it?

5) Spelling errors are totally cool.

6) Is that your real dog?

7) It’s clever not to put any contact details on your website. You never know who might be trying to get in touch with you.

8) Wow, that picture on your profile page is something else. Are you in porn?

You get my point, right? Keep it smart and professional. Try to imagine how your website looks to a total stranger. We’re all trying to attract unique user traffic but your website could be letting you down.

What have you seen out there that made you scratch your head in wonder? Can you add another compliment to my list?

Happy New Year and best wishes for a busy 2010.

I read an interesting article by Jason Jordan in The West Australian Newspaper titled In defence of Twitter. It’s a good article with some good Word of Mouth (WoM) references for people to follow. Jason wrote every sentence using 140 characters or less to help prove short communications can be extremely effective. I’m glad Jason wrote the story. Twitter has done so many good things for my business I can’t be bothered to get defensive any more. Here are six of my own reasons why I think business, in particular, should be using Twitter.

1) Lead Generation I’ve closed business that started with a tweet. A recent example involved a woman in Melbourne sending a tweet looking for an IT-savvy copywriter. Someone in my network sent me the tweet asking if I could help. I contacted the woman who originated the search through Twitter. The short story is she knew of a national organisation needing the sort of services I offer. She gave me the contact details and I successfully pursued the business. First tweet to accepted proposal: four days!

2) Lead Nurturing While lead generation is a wonderful thing, I’ve recently come to understand the power of lead nurturing. Twitter is a wonderful tool for content marketing, the mother of all lead nurturing programs. Twitter allows you to provide links to valuable information. If you stay consistently focused over a period of time, people make the decision to work with you before they have an actual requirement. It’s a longer sales cycle, for sure, but it’s an extremely effective one requiring no capital investment in marketing.

3) Build a Network I started Global Copywriting in Western Australia without knowing a single soul in my local market. Twitter has helped me find prospective customers, identify thought leaders and connect with other folks who may benefit from copywriting services. Within a few months, my business was beginning to see a significant impact from activity attributed to Twitter. 3a) Virtual Office Mate When you work from a home office, as I do, it’s nice to have a group of people to share triumphs and disappointments. I never know who is going to see or reply to my tweets, but someone always does and it provides a welcome sense of community.

4) Listening Posts If you enjoy eavesdropping, Twitter is a fantastic tool to discover what people are thinking, what they’re reading, where they’re going and who they’re speaking to. If your network consists of industry experts – and it should  – you have access to the most current information available. The Twitter search facility allows you to research a topic, start a conversation, ask questions and find up-to-the-minute answers with a fluidity and range you can’t find anywhere else.

5) Gain Influence I wrote a blog post on public speaking contrasting a day spent critiquing oral compositions with one of my own speaking engagements. The invitation to participate in the ECU Business Edge program as an industry expert was extended over Twitter. Likewise, the opportunity to present at the Brew Small Business Expo Perth was also initiated on Twitter. I had never met the people organising these events before but my Tweets had convinced them I was a worthy candidate. I’m convinced the sphere of influence you can build on Twitter is limitless.

6) Drive Traffic to Your Website Perhaps the most obvious way you can improve your business with Twitter is to let people know you have an online presence. If you have a commercial website, Twitter is an extremely effective tool for getting unique user traffic. If you’ve built a quality network and established your authority, it can be as simple as tweeting a link to your website.

Looking back, I totally underestimated the power and reach of Twitter to affect my business. I started tweeting with the single goal of getting people to visit my website. It didn’t take long for me to realise this was, perhaps, the least important aspect of my Twitter activity. I can’t imagine what my business would look like without the contributions Twitter has made to my network, my corporate brand and my revenue flow. I’m glad Jason Jordan (@jasonjordan) is taking up the Twitter cause. My Twitter-generated business doesn’t leave much time for anything but working on projects in my pipeline.

Content marketing is gaining a lot of traction in the mindset of marketers and, especially, small business owners. I recently presented a seminar on the topic at the Brew Small Business Expo in Perth. While doing my research, I realised much of what is being written about content marketing assumes the reader understands the basic components. I didn’t fully understand them when I started, so I thought it made sense to lay the groundwork here.

First, content marketing is nothing more than an online strategy to educate your customers. The goal is to discover what your customers want, then deliver the information to them in a constructive way. When done successfully, content marketing is the perfect method to establish your expertise and gain the trust of your prospects. You’re not selling to your customers, you’re educating them.
Content marketing has three components:

• SEO
• Content
• Social Media

Each of these components is integral to a successful campaign. Working in unison, the components form a tight cycle, each enhancing the performance of the other two. If one is missing, your content marketing strategy will lose effectiveness or fail altogether.

SEO
Search engine optimisation is the part of content marketing that points people to your website when they’re searching for information. The important thing to remember for this discussion is that only about 25% of SEO is in your control, driven by the keywords used on your website. The remaining influencers are outside your control and have to do with links to your website from other reputable websites. It’s also influenced by search engine rankings. For this reason, your online strategy requires more than just good SEO techniques.

Content
The heart of content marketing is the original material created for your company, products and services. Designed to inform and educate, your content should be developed in anticipation of the information required by your prospective customers. To assist the SEO component, keywords should factor heavily into every piece of material developed. Creating several different types of collateral is the most effective strategy. White papers, case studies, website copy, videos, e-books, photos, and presentations are examples of original content you can post on your website to assist consumers in making decisions about your offering.

Social Media
The final component of content marketing is social media. Without going into a discussion about specific tools, the idea behind social media is to give your content “legs” by driving traffic directly to your website. You can do this in a variety of ways, and it’s recommended you deploy more than one social media channel. The more traffic visiting your website, the more attractive it becomes to search engines, which then favour your website with better rankings.

Once you’ve established an effective cycle for your website, each component will boost the effectiveness of the other two. It’s not a complicated concept, but implementing a successful content marketing strategy is time-consuming and requires planning. The great thing about it is you can develop it piece by piece, over time, without investing a huge sum of money. I’ve done it for my own business and intend to share those experiences here.

Writers spend a lot of time sitting behind a desk in solitude with their thoughts. I enjoy working on a project, researching and revising until the copy is the way I want it. I usually deliver my work via the internet and have customers I’ve never laid eyes on. It’s a stress-free job, especially when you work from a home office as I do. This week I was away from my desk and, on two occasions, remembered work can be nerve-wracking.

Industry Expert
Wednesday morning, I travelled to Edith Cowan University in Joondalup. Invited as an “industry expert” to judge oral compositions, I was flattered, honoured, and extremely grateful to Sue Hickton for considering me. Sue and I have been following each other on Twitter, but I had never met her in person before Wednesday morning. She is part of the Faculty of Business and Law at ECU, which incorporates the Business Edge curriculum – the first of its kind in Australia.

My role was to critique the six student finalists competing for first place in public speaking. Joining me as an industry expert was Dr. Mark Bennett from Learning Collaboration. Even though his credentials contain many terms foreign to my experience – PHD, atomic, physics, mining, etc. – we are both seasoned public speakers. Dean Roepens from ECU joined us in the judging. Also from ECU, Aaron Jackson facilitated the session and both he and Sue contributed to the judging.

Job Readiness
All six students surprised me with their preparation and professionalism. I was expecting to count the number of “ums”, warn against going over time and give pointers on posture and appearance. The goal of the Business Edge program is to prepare graduates for the reality of corporate life. It’s working very well. Despite visible nerves, every one of them pulled off a professional presentation demonstrating competence in public speaking. I was impressed. To a person, the recommendations for improvement had more to do with refining a skill than acquiring knowledge. It was a very satisfying way for me to spend my morning.

Small Business Expo
The tables turned the next day. Presenting at the Brew Small Business Expo Perth on Thursday, I had the opportunity to speak about Content Marketing to a group of small business owners. I’ve built my business using the three components of Content Marketing:

• Search Engine Optimisation  (SEO)
• Content
• Social Media

Once again, my invitation to speak at the Small Business Expo came through Twitter. This time Bambi Gordon, a Sydney-based Director of The Brew whom I had never met, opened the door based on my tweets on @globalcopywrite. I was thrilled.

Ready, or not?
Maybe it was because I had been analyzing students the previous day. Perhaps it was because I was putting my credibility and that of my company on the line with this seminar. Either way, by Thursday morning I was regretting I had ever agreed to present. I’m one of those rare creatures who enjoys public speaking, so it felt extremely odd to be out of sorts. As the room filled up, I took a deep breath and reminded myself that I had worked on the presentation for 2 months, had it professionally designed and rehearsed every day for the past 3 weeks.

Sage Advice
I got a rocky start but soon found my pace. I remembered advice from my early days of public speaking, which I also shared with the students. The audience wants you to do well. They’re rooting for you. No one attends a presentation with the hopes the speaker is terrible. When you realise you have the goodwill of the entire room behind you, things get a whole lot easier.

It’s a shame none of the students I’d judged the day before were there to see me. Public speaking is a skill and an art. You never, ever leave a presentation knowing you delivered it perfectly. You rarely even give a talk the way you planned it. You just forge ahead and learn from each experience. One other thing the students would have witnessed is how powerfully a public speaking gig can affect your career. I was booted out of the room when the Q&A portion threatened to run into the next session. By the time I got back to my desk, I had emails from attendees asking for more information. I spent all of Friday replying to requests and following leads.

Is it worth 30 minutes of discomfort to supercharge your business? You bet. I would have to say standing in front of a group is the single most effective thing I do to establish authority and drive prospects to my business. With so many people terrified of speaking in public or refusing to do so, anyone who can get on their feet and deliver a credible talk is already ahead of their competition. The Business Edge curriculum at ECU is going to make it harder on all of us by ensuring their graduates have the skill and confidence to compete.

I’ve been writing a lot of website copy lately. I’m consistently caught between the web designer’s instructions and the desire of the client. The client, invariably, wants more content on the front page of the website. If they can’t get more text, they will usually ask for different wording. While client satisfaction is a driving factor in my business, when it comes to the Home Page, my answer is always the same. “Your Home Page has a job to do.”

How it looks, how easy it is to use and how readily the search engines can find it are the 3 main focus areas for web designers and copywriters developing a website. I approach the Home Page like a puzzle. Getting the keywords and phrases in relevant text, making it fit in a prescribed area and ensuring it supports the brand of the client is no small feat.

Your Home Page needs to accomplish 3 things. They are:

1) Attract search engines

If your website is not ranking with search engines – specifically Google, Bing and Yahoo – your business is not going to get much traffic. Enough has been written about the importance of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). I’m not going to flog that horse again. It’s imperative that your Home Page contains 6 to 8 keywords or phrases that your prospects will be using in online searches.

My friend Kevin Walsh, a talented copywriter and owner of Copy Unlimited in the U.K. says it best:

Writing for the web is a delicate balancing act. You can easily move up the search-engine rankings by stuffing your copy full of keywords. And you end up with something like this:

Welcome to Widgetz International, the specialists in red widgets. We’ve been manufacturing red widgets for over half a century, and there’s not much we don’t know about red widgets. We eat, breathe and sleep red widgets. We spend $100,000 a year in R&D on red widgets. Red widgets are our life. We’re just passionate about red widgets. If you’re looking for red widgets, you’ve come to the right place. Click here to read more about red widgets.

It’s a sure way to lose the reader. A far better way to move up the rankings is to have useful, relevant copy with keywords occurring naturally throughout.

2) Drive website usability

I had a client who insisted I tell the web designer to remove the tables at the side and bottom of her website so we could include more copy. Those “tables” happened to be navigation buttons. She didn’t understand their relevance until I related it to her business. She is a property developer, so I explained that the buttons on the side of her website were like the hallways and doors in a house. If she didn’t have them, her visitors were going to have a difficult time moving from room to room. The buttons at the bottom linked directly to her Services pages. I equated them to the electricity and plumbing in her house. When she suggested we add more text, I explained that the text box was like a window in a brick wall. We could only use the space that was there if she was prepared to pay for a redesign of her site.

What this client failed to understand is that websites undergo their own construction phase. Every graphic, colour, font and shape are picked for a specific reason. It’s critical that web design reviews are carefully considered before giving the designer instructions to build the website. While things are easily moved in the design phase, once the website is under construction, it can be costly and time consuming to make even small changes in design. To use my building analogy, you wouldn’t get to the decorating phase of a new house and decide to swap out the bricks, would you?

3) Leave a first impression

The most common complaint I hear about the Home Page is that it doesn’t say everything it needs to. Most people are confusing the Home Page with the “About Us” page. The Home Page is designed to give a brief summary of your company and that’s it. You can wax lyrical about your business philosophy on the Profile page. Your credentials and references can be included on whole pages of their own. Your Home Page is not the place for lengthy descriptions about anything. It’s just not.

If the Home Page isn’t working well, the rest of the website probably isn’t worth much. A properly designed and implemented website will represent your brand, generate leads and allow you to develop relationships with your clients. Don’t get hung up on what is missing from the Home Page, and let it do the job it was designed to do.