To blog or not to Blog

Blogging is a great way to drive your website. The biggest reason is this provides new content to your website regularly which is something Google is fond of.

Not all blogs are equal: a blog residing on your website gives more weight to your website, than an offsite/free website. Give thought to this before creating your first blog.

Free is easy and simple to get up and running, but won’t give you the greatest value. You can post links back to your site for some help in driving your website. Keep in mind it isn’t easy to move your blog files, and with some services you won’t be able to do this. If you have an existing blog there is a lot of value in the followers you have gained and all your postings. It is something to consider before moving to your website.

In deciding whether to take up blogging you will want to weigh the time factor. It can take 15-30 minutes easily, depending upon the depth of your articles. Do not consider copying and pasting from other blogs or web pages, not only is this copyright infringement, but duplicate content works against you with Google, and you’ll defeat the purpose of blogging.

Your blog can serve to educate your web visitors, or connect with others in a community of blogs. Your contributions to other blogs serve the online community at large. We all benefit. That is really the point of blogging.

My own blog makes it easy for me to pass on new information as the Internet changes without updating my web pages. Trends come and go and it is information I want to get into my clients hands so they can drive their websites.

You can keep it simple and effective!

Email Marketing

Email marketing isn’t going away. Our Inboxes are full of them and for good reason: they work.

There are things to know before you begin. There ARE laws governing email.

Each marketing email needs to include how to unsubscribe instructions. Simply put: “reply to this email with unsubscribe in the subject line”. You must remove any and all requests from your email list. The risk is getting your email flagged as “spam”, which means you won’t reach your recipient. Getting blacklisted is to be avoided.

The pretty image emails (HTML) you receive can be created with the help of your web designer. These are actually hosted. All the files for the email layout reside on your server. The email file is so small and downloads quickly as it refers to your website folder to grab the images for the layout. Quick and custom layouts.

You can design your email – but you can’t guarantee how it will be viewed. Each person defines their email. I personally block all images. Outlook then asks if I want to “view the images”. While amazon.com sends me a lovely layout – I receive a clunky email with boxes for pictures…which are blank. The web designer has inserted text, so I can decide if I need to see the picture.

Just as with a website you can code the font to be used, but if the user does not have that font on their computer it will substitute another and the layout will change to accommodate it.  Macs have fonts PCs don’t and vice-versa. There are universal fonts – which is what you see on most websites.

Another option: You can create your email design in Publisher and save to send as email. Using Publisher means you must optimize the photos. If your email is laden with graphics the file size will be large and clog Inboxes, that alone will get you blocked or flagged as spam. One of my clients sends me the images for the newsletter email and I re-size and optimize. The finished file is larger than an HTML hosted email would be, but small enough to be acceptable to send as an email. This is a great way to begin –  and budget minded. Also note – the above user email rules apply – and your design may not show up as you intended. It can be frustrating, but if you keep it simple – it is do-able. Test, test, test is the key.

If you are doing it yourself – you need to check with your web hosting regarding email lists. If you are starting out and have less than 300 emails on your list you are probably within their limits. But most web host companies limit how many emails you can send within a day – if their maximum is 300 – you won’t be able to send any other business emails in that day.

There is a good reason behind this limitation. When so much email is being sent through a server (where your web site resides) it is using up resources better left to keeping your website downloading fast.

Next up is the spamming factor. If web hosting doesn’t limit the email activity spammers run rampant. Most websites are hosted on shared servers. Once spammers get ahold of a server they will drag down all the sites on that server. Once the spamming activity is tagged by Yahoo, Google – webmail – it will begin to blacklist that IP address as spam – which now compromises all the sites. Be thankful to your web hosting for being watchful!

Now, what to do with a large email list? Move into the email marketing companies. There are tons to choose from. Many have templates you can use to fill in and compose your layout. These are fee based and you upload your email list. They also have the software in place to help out with being blocked and never reaching your recipient, controlling who opts out and so on. They know what they are doing and it saves you some headaches.

Custom Website

You’re thinking about your first website and you feel overwhelmed?

Why a custom website?

Templates are fine if you know enough to fully fill out all the boxes which means you know how to build a website to some extent. There is much behind the scenes, unless you typically view source code you are unaware of and the importance.

Putting your business into a professional’s hand is so important.

There was a time when launching a website was easy enough and you could make mistakes and still do fine through Google. Times are so different. Thus it is no longer a hobby.

So where to begin preparing to create your website?

For the visual design find 3 websites you like – even one element: the color or the layout. This gives your designer an idea of what you envision.

If you have a logo that can dictate the color scheme.

Your website wants to make a large footprint. One client has 237 pages – which would be a huge task to begin your first website. Five pages is so small it is difficult to maximize your content to feed search engines. Ten pages allows for a well rounded entry level.

Begin to think about your pages: Home,  Contact Us, About Us are standard pages, also Testimonials. Your Home page and About Us pages often share content. If you have a mission statement for your business that is valuable.

Think about organizations you belong to (Chamber of Commerce) licensing, BBB.

Photos and more photos. People are visual and truly a picture is worth a thousand words. Digital photos are the best, but old snapshots can be edited, color improved and are quite usable, so don’t shy away if they represent your product or service.

Whether you use a Testimonials page or not – collect these. They can be sprinkled on your other pages if your budget won’t afford a stand alone Testimonials page. Ask your valued customers for a couple lines, or find old cards of thanks for your service.  Read an earlier blog of mine:
http://www.brendasimon.com/blog/?p=119

Now, you’re ready to call your designer!

Google background

Google

Did you get caught with Google‘s background this week? Yikes. I am pretty easy going, but this was so distracting. I enjoy the white background and simplistic home page for Google. It has everything right where you want it – easy loading page, easy navigating page.  Suddenly on Thursday I landed on Google to find a faded white Google name – and all the navigation buttons white with a drop shadow and difficult to read; and then this slower loading huge image.

Next up how to change it. A handy “change the background” link in the lower left corner. The catalog of choices was few when I was there.  I finally created my own and positioned it to just cover the white Google name.  But, still their choice of white on white with a drop shadow was a bit odd for all the other buttons/links.

Their forums were lit up with unhappy users…and accusations of mimicking Bing flying furiously.  (We DO take our Google seriously.)

Happy to find by Saturday Google abandoned the idea.  Now, you can choose to have an image…or not.  Thank you!  I like a white background.

Website Copyright

Website Copyright Issues

Each website owner has to own the rights or have permission to use the content on his/her website. In the beginning of the Internet people felt they could use anything “up there”.  Artists and musicians were the first to be hit. ASCAP has gone a long way in protecting digital rights for musical compositions and continues.

Now web users recognizes theft of music and art, but photos are still being grabbed from websites. As a website owner you are liable for the content of your website.

Recently a nonprofit organization had an image donated through a prior connection many years ago. It turned out that “donation” was a reworked art from a museum. A letter was sent to the organization to pay a sizable sum. They have pulled it down and hope this and an apology will be enough. The sender of the letter has deep pockets, they go after people on a regular basis.

With digital cameras and Photoshop mediocre photos can be polished and “pop”. If you need a studio shot iStock photo is an affordable resource. You purchase the RIGHTS to use the photo. Done deal. Read the fine print as ALL rights are NOT included. Most of the time anything you print and resell will NOT be allowed. You can use the purchased image in your print ads, but not to put on a mug and sell. For less than $2 you are headache free.

This also includes written content. You cannot copy and paste from another website. Besides that issue: Google will recognize duplicate content and you lose value with Google.  Websites exist to help write your content.

After you launch your website you don’t want any legal headaches.

Website Testimonials

Have you ever read customer reviews or testimonials before making your decision to buy products or services? You’re not alone.

Quite an increase in the past 2 years, these reviews are becoming more and more important to online shoppers, or before picking up the phone to call for services. Recently released data tells us 2 out of 3 online consumers spend a minimum of 10 minutes scouring product reviews and testimonials before making a choice to buy, or for those of us selling services – before they pick up the phone. It goes on to further say 1 in 3 consumers spend 30 minutes or more.

There are now website dedicated to authenticating the testimonials on your website to let your web visitors know these were not made up.

Even negative reviews factor in to authenticity. Ever wonder why amazon.com allows reviewers to post pro and cons? Not only does all this activity drive their website, but the absence of negative reviews in this environment can indicate someone is deleting negative feedback. Allowing the negative raises the website’s trustworthiness.

It comes back to an old marketing idea of letting others speak about your business. Get those testimonials!

Pay for YouTube?

YouTube and another video site, Hulu, are each moving toward paid content. Looks like they will be in the form of premium membership will allow access to some content. Most likely the famous: “What my dog is doing?” videos will still be free to view.

In this new configuration some content developers would be able to charge for their videos.  Sounds like people will get quite creative and competitive to bring out new and useful content!

Website Business Value

Most businesses recognize the need for a website for their own purposes. It turns out now the website is an asset when obtaining a business loan. Recently an incoming client was told he needed to have a website in order to apply for a business loan.

It’s nice to know all the time spent to create your website is seen as an asset. Of course – if you sold your business…once again you would have value!