custom wordpress sites

Is Your Online Business Trusted?

Conferences, Custom WordPress Sites, Online Consulting, Social Media Advisors

As I am currently 40,000 feet in the air on a Southwest Airlines flight back home I started reflecting on the recent conference I just spoke at for Coldwell Banker Real Estate. Whenever I go to an event either as an attendee or presenter, I always try to take time shortly after to reflect on things I enjoyed, I learned, or would like to see done differently.

As I think back on this event, I find myself focusing on something completely different. One of the things that became abundantly clear at this event is that the way companies market themselves is evolving. See, many years ago I was a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker. Their annual convention at that time was called The International Business Conference, or “IBC.” Now, don’t get me wrong with what I am about to say, but their event had been the same basic real estate style convention for many years. People in their suits talking about how great the market is and giving tips on how to get your clients a mortgage, etc. Most of the time was spent teaching how to convince consumers that “Now is the time to Buy” and “Real estate is a great investment.”

But, this year they knew their conference needed an overhaul to match the changes that are taking place in our daily lives. The classes that would teach on a new product the company was releasing were replaced by things like 30 mobile applications for business. The neck ties were removed to symbolize a change in the mentality of leadership and that it was time for a change. I am starting to see this type of trend become more and more common at business conferences.

Why you may ask? It’s simple. Large corporations like Coldwell Banker are starting to realize the importance of having a strong presence in the social media sphere. So, instead of a conference like this being filled with real estate coaches, the speaker lineup was filled with social media advisors like myself, Chris Brogan, and even the folks at Google.

The concepts of using digital marketing to become trusted agents in a digital world is now more important than ever as consumers are using sites like Google, Facebook, and Twitter to make decisions. These decisions are based upon the following five factors.

1. What do my peers recommend? During the Google presentation Sam Sebastian gave an example home buying scenario. Instead of grabbing the yellow pages and looking for the fanciest advertisement of a real estate brokerage, the couple turned to their Facebook account to ask friends which neighborhood they should consider when buying their next home. Based on what the consumers friends and peers online say about a product or service can now be the decision whether you get the sale or someone else. Not only did their friends give them advice, but one even gave them a specific home listed with an agent. Peer recommendations are becoming more and more powerful each day. Sites like Yelp and Foursquare are more influential in decisions consumers make than ever.

2. Who has been there to assist me in a time of need in the social sphere? Someone that is not sure what to do in a certain situation may ask for help. Businesses need to be monitoring on a daily basis what others are saying about your business, your brand, and industry via services like Google Alerts, Twitter search, etc. Being a social media winner in your industry will turn potential consumers into raving fanatics who grow your business for you. The business who goes the extra mile will be rewarded handsomely for their efforts.

3. How findable are you online? When someone goes to Google and types in a term relative to your business are you showing up on the first page? If you think ranking well in the search engines is not important, ask a successful real estate agent online. One in every three unique visitors to a real estate site is via search according to Google. Understanding how SEO works and positioning your business in the search engines properly for specific keywords applicable to your business can pay off with major dividends.

4. How is the their user experience? Let’s be real here, if consumers visit your site but the user experience is terrible it will affect the possible current and all future transactions with that consumer and possibly even their entire sphere of influence. One of the things I do a lot is evaluations of websites for clients. They do not understand why their current design and site is not converting leads, and most of the time it is because of design of the site. Remember, you are on your site daily, you helped to build and design it, so you know how the site is supposed to work and how to get to the conversion state. But, have you had a stranger look at your site? Here is a good litmus test: Have friend or family member that has not been to your website go and try to go through the process on their own. How easy is it for them to navigate and get to your point of sale? When I do an analysis of a site, many times I pull it up for my wife and watch her try it out. She is a pretty savvy online user, so when I see her struggle I know we need to make adjustments. It’s important to put on a pair of consumer goggles and look at our site from their eyes. If they experience confusion, too many clicks, or slow loading pages, you will not convert them and they will go find another place to purchase their products and services.

5. How mobile are you? Piggybacking off of number four is the question: How does your site work on a mobile device? If you do not have some sort of mobile option of your site available you are missing out on one of the fastest growing sections of the online market. In the past year mobile queries have grown by 4 times according to Google. By the end of 2011 more than half of all Americans will own a smart phone device of some sort. If you are using a platform like WordPress for your site make sure to at least have some sort of mobile plugin in place. I enjoy the WP Touch Plugin which gives a quick mobile version of my blog. These type of plugin also help immensely in load time for a blog post. If your site is huge to load on a mobile device it could cost someone who may be visiting from another country $10 just to view. If that’s the case, you better have something really awesome and important to them or you will lose them and all their friends forever from visiting your site.

These five things can make or break your business online in this era of new media marketing. They are more important than knowing how to create viral videos, schedule tweets, or even upload a photo to Facebook. Keep the consumer in mind first and how to help them make more informed decisions and they will trust your business more than ever. The more they trust you, the more then will support and promote you to their peers. This is the beauty of social media and how it can be optimized to assist your business in growing online. Use it properly and it will make your business very successful. Use it improperly or ignore it and it could destroy your business permanently.

If you read this post and realized that your business is not following these steps, please contact me, and let’s get started putting your business on the right path!

Google Says Goodbye to Content Farms

Custom WordPress Sites, Online Consulting, SEO, Social Media Advisors, Twitter

Over the past two weeks Google has really been making big news and cleaning up their search results. First we heard all about the debacle of J.C. Penney from the NY Times for not playing well online and using too many black hat SEO techniques to even list. Some of the topics that they used to rank #1 on now are not even found in the first ten pages of search content. Clearly, Google will not tolerate people trying to cheat the system and has no problem acting with authority they possess when needed.

Custom WordPress Site Results in Google — New Social Search Results

Then last week they announced major changes in social search results in Google. No longer will the results just show up at the bottom of the page, but they will now be ranked into regular results along with organic traffic. This means that social media platforms like Twitter are even more valuable to your business. I just did a test to see how this affected my results while logged into my Google account. As many of you know, we built custom WordPress Sites, so when I did a recent search, there was the link to our site sitting at #3 in the results. Granted, my results there might be slightly skewed as I am the owner of the social media accounts, logged in, and in the same geolocation, but when I checked with a friend on the other side of the country, I was #6 there. So, if you aren’t yet using social networks, START NOW!

Following these two big headlines from Google over the past 2 weeks came another HUGE announcement today. Google has declared war on the content farmers. Content farms are websites that simply pull content off of other websites and publish it out as their own. They are also sites that have thousands of pages of random content about absolutely nothing of value at all. People have built these sites because in the past the massive amounts of pages of content would rank well and help them to generate some good income through ads running on the sidebar and people clicking on links within to affiliate programs.

Google Results for Custom WordPress Sites — New Content Farm Free Search Results

But, Google has recognized that these sites are not worthy of such well placement in the SERP’s and have started to take action accordingly. This means that sites that have a blog attached where users are generating their own unique content to their own site are going to start to see better ranking results. I noticed that already I have seen big jumps by some of my keywords. For example, that same term, Custom WordPress Sites, when I search it in a cache cleared browser not logged into Google, it used to rank on page two of Google. Now I have moved onto the first page of Google and am sitting at number 6.

This once again places a greater importance on blogging and writing new fresh content for your site regularly. If you are not creating new unique content for your site on a regular basis you will probably find yourself dropping down into the abyss of results with the content farmers, black hat SEO users, and plain old spammers. Develop a writing strategy, get a plan in place and start. If you don’t think you can find ideas to write about regularly, there are services to help with blog topics from really great bloggers. Saying you don’t know what to write about is an excuse that can no longer be tolerated.

From my perspective, I am really happy with these recent changes from Google and am excited to see how this will affect online businesses as things move forward. If your business isn’t as successful as you want it to be online, it might be time for a change.

Making your WordPress Site More Social

Social Media Advisors, Social Media Training, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Tutorials

We all hear the importance of social media and why you need to have a strong presence in it. We know that there are sites like Facebook, Twitter, & YouTube and other social networks. Many times though we want to see what type of results these social networks are sending in traffic to your sites.

As I mentioned recently in a post, we need to be more social and less media with our social media marketing efforts. But, for those of you looking for cold hard facts to prove that you are not in a giant vortex of time wasting I have some stats for you. Currently, our site is averaging around 30% of our traffic directly from social media platforms. We still are seeing a huge section from search engines and referring sites, but our number of clicks from various social platforms like Twitter and Facebook are increasing rapidly. Because of the increased success, I wanted to share a few things you can do to make your site more social and easy for readers to distribute your content out to social media platforms.

Since I have a fond love for WordPress Sites, here are a few plugins that can be used on your site to increase it’s socialness. (yes, I just made my own word up)

Facebook Share- This plugin has played a huge role in our content being shared. I purposefully placed this plugin at the top right of my posts to make it in eyesight the minute you visit a page. Several of our posts have received well over 40 shares. The average person on Facebook has well over 100 friends. That means that my simple post has just been given the opportunity of being viewed by over 4,000 people!
Twitter Retweet- There are several different buttons that can be used for Twitter sharing of your blog posts. I like the Tweetmeme button personally. Once again our posts are being tweeted well over 40-50 times. Recently, a post I wrote about Google Instant was tweeted by Chris Brogan. Currently he has over 158,000 followers on twitter. His one tweet placed my post in front of all those eyes. Not to mention that his tribe that read the post and liked it then tweeted it out too. This button gets placed at the top of my post right with the Facebook Share for optimum exposure.
Facebook Like- This plugin gets overlooked many times because it doesn’t place a fancy graphic on the person’s feed and a link. But what it does do is place a link that says the name of your post on their Facebook profile. If that is done by 70-80 people this will also drive traffic to your site. I place this plugin at the bottom of my posts to give everyone one more reminder to share stuff they enjoyed.
Sexy Bookmarks- This is a personal favorite of mine. This plugin simply rocks. I liked it so much I actually wrote about it before here. On a side note, they are also a company that uses social media well as they were recently named our Social Media Winner of the Week. The reason I enjoy this plugin is that it opens up endless possibilities for your content to be shared. With a simple click of a button at the bottom of a post your blog post can be shared with over 90 different social media platforms. Included in that list is Google Reader, Posterous, LinkedIn, Email, and so many others. Half of them I have never even heard of!

I have no doubts that the reason I have seen the recent increases in traffic from social media platforms is being caused by these four plugins above. The other major reason for an increase in traffic from these sources is the involvement of both myself and by business partner on the various platforms.

If these plugins are implemented along with the proper use of a social media marketing strategies, you will see a great increase in traffic to your site. The one point that cannot be overlooked in this entire blog post is the previous statement. You have to be using social media platforms like Twitter & Facebook in the ways they were intended and not just spamming others. Remember, installing the plugins is the easy part. Getting consumers to visit your site and use the social plugins willingly is the tough part.

photo credit-ahisgett

You Don’t Order Steak at a Seafood Restaurant, So Why Buy a Website From Postcard Companies?

Custom WordPress Sites, Online Consulting, SEO, Social Media Advisors

One of the things that we at 210 Consulting love doing is helping new businesses get their online marketing started in the right direction. Unfortunately unless you are always working in the web development, SEO, and online marketing industry, it can be overwhelming to a new company. Also, since you are just starting your new business, money is usually very tight. So, when you go to purchase business cards, accounting software, or a domain name and they offer to get your site up in running in less than 10 minutes for under $100, you are ecstatic to do so because you can now say you are on the internet.

Usually within 10 minutes of a conversation with a new prospective client I can tell if they have one of these types of sites. Why because they have only 5 pages of content, on a standard layout with zero ability of customization, and the adding of plugins or a blog is impossible! When I ask them why they chose this as their website company, the response every time has been this: “Well, I didn’t have a bunch of money to go buy a fancy site and didn’t want to put that much money into something. Once this site makes me some money I will upgrade. Besides my new site looks pretty and will be fine for my online marketing strategy.”

This is when I finally ask the client, Would you order a steak if you were eating at a superior seafood restaurant? No! Because they aren’t known for their great steaks. They are known for serving some of the best fish on the planet. This same principle holds true when you purchase a website from an online postcard company or an accounting software company.

These types of websites are designed to be simple, easy to set up, quick to activate and are inexpensive. But the limitations they possess are huge. My sister-in-law set up a website the other day for her new business and was very excited when she emailed me a link to look at the site. I pulled it up and called her within 2 minutes to tell her to stop wasting her time and that we needed to do something different. We then made a call to one of my connections that was able to create a WordPress Blogsite for her in just under a weeks time, she hired me to do some graphic design work and for under $1,000 we had her an awesome and amazing new site up and running.

So what made her new site that much better & worth the expense? Here are just some of the big differences:

Unlimited Pages of Content versus only 5- The original page had a total of 5 pages of content available. She had maximized that in her first 10 minutes of setup. She could add more, but there was a fee each time she went to add more pages. On her new WordPress.org blogsite, she can now add unlimited number of pages with pictures, videos, links and more. The reason the number of pages is so important is that it is a big factor in how search engines rank your content. More pages make you look more like an authority on a subject and thus the page goes up in the searches.
Power of Plugins- Plugins and widgets are awesome additions to any site. Unfortunately her template 5 page site did not offer any of this. She could not add simple things like a Facebook share button, or a ReTweet button. With a blogsite like WordPress she has the ability to do all these things and much more that not only make it easier for people to share her site with others, but some that also help her with her Search Engine Optimization.
Online Ordering- The template 5 page site also prohibited the addition of any types of online shopping carts or purchase online buttons. Which as her business continues to grow she wants to start offering these features to her clients so that they can purchase her items online and ship them around the world.
True Ownership of Her Content Forever- Unlike the other company, the information is now on her own site. She owns it and nobody else. She does not need to worry about if they decide to raise the price up. Or if they go out of business, or if they move servers and crash things for weeks at a time. The other nice thing is that she has a home base to direct customers to that only her content & products. The customers will not be finding her competition there. While online forums are great sources of online business, you do run the risk of your customer that found you there clicking a link to your competitor that is on the same platform and losing the business to someone else. The same holds true for those those that “have their website on their company site” which is nothing more than just a profile there that drives traffic to your organization and not you. All it takes is one accidental click on a company site and once again your co-worker is getting the sale instead of you.

These are just four of the many reasons why I said she needed to change her site before even really starting. Luckily, she listened to me & took my advice. We worked together with a web developer and built her an awesome looking & highly search engine optimized blogsite. She then did a few training sessions with me to develop her targeted audience and keywords to write about. Since then she has written a few blog posts, added some great content to her site & seen an explosion of traffic. Without this, she would not have known the first thing about what to write about or what types of things people are searching for. Remember, she wants to bake cakes, not become a online marketing expert.

So what are the results?

Well, take a look for yourself. This was an email conversation I had with her today:

Hey Jeremy,

Just got 3 cake orders today for a word of mouth referral! So far since the website has been up I have actually collected about 450.00! Its quite a bit for cakes and chocolate covered yummies….

My response:

Awesome! So how many cakes have you sold in the first 2 weeks now? 5? 6?

Her Response:

8 actually

a gift basket

and 50 chocolate covered pretzels!

As you can see, she is well on her way to regaining the money she spent on building her website and the beauty is that she will continue to profit from the site for a long time thereafter too! So before you sign up for a website through one of these other companies, stop and ask yourself, Would you order steak at a seafood restaurant? Then why am I buying a website through a postcard company?

If your small business needs assistance getting started with your online marketing plan and would like to see this type of results, feel free to contact me to develop your online marketing gameplan. Also, if the picture above has you interested in some delicious chocolate covered pretzels, make sure you visit Vie Bakery. Lastly, if you are wondering what we suggest for a website, we believe you should go with a custom WordPress Site.