EvoBloggito

Your Business Website as a Garden: For Show or Food?

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Jun 24, 2009; Category: Blogging, Business, Marketing, Search/SEO, Zeitgeist; Tags: Local Search, Marketing; 2 Comments

People have gardens for different reasons. There are flower gardens, usually out front where passersby can easily see them, which are meant to provide enjoyment or present a certain "look" to the neighborhood and to the people who live there. And there are vegetable gardens, which provide food.

If your vegetable garden is a hobby, and you don’t depend on it (i.e., nobody goes hungry if the tomato plants die), getting the kids to water it and pull weeds is a chore in itself. If your garden provides a significant portion of the food that ends up on the dinner table, however, watering and weed-pulling are a lot more interesting and engaging. You can be proud of a nice flower garden, but you can live off a well-managed vegetable garden.

Business websites and blogs are like that. If a website or blog is just for show, and/or disconnected from the marketing functions, no one takes a lot of interest in keeping it filled with fresh content and making sure it engages the company’s customers. These are the websites that often fall into the "set-it-and-forget-it" category: the gardening equivalent of plastic flowers, which show their age as they collect dust and their colors fade in the sunlight. On the other hand, a business website that’s continually updated with new features and timely information is like a well-cared for flower garden which is trimmed, watered, and kept fresh with new plants. People can tell the difference, with gardens and with websites.

Traditional websites are like flower gardens. They’re meant to impress people and tell a certain story about a company, to both its customers and employees. The best ones impress people, but even the badly done ones succeed in telling a story, if not necessarily the one a company had in mind. Blogs are more like vegetable gardens. They can lead to increased visibility, prospects, and business if they are worked diligently and intelligently. In my opinion, most companies need both, and they would benefit by caring for them with adequate time, attention, and resources.

I hear frequently that maintaining a website, writing blog posts, and taking part in social media is "just too time-consuming," and sometimes, "too expensive." Probably so, if you treat those activities as "hobbies" rather than as an integral and critical part of marketing in 2009. If you recognized that, done well, those activities could result in more customers (i.e., putting food on the table), you’d see it as time and resources well-spent.

Online marketing, like gardening, bears fruit when you to view it as a serious pursuit worthy of your time and effort. Until then, you should probably expect a bigger than necessary marketing budget and increasingly mediocre results.

The Upside of 62% of Small Businesses Not Having a Website

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Jun 8, 2009; Category: Business, Marketing, Search/SEO; Tags: Local Search, Marketing, SEO; 4 Comments

A couple of days ago, I posted my reaction to an article I read that said 62% of small businesses do not have a website, which astounded me. But there’s a big upside in that statistic. You might think I’m talking about the upside for me, owner of a web development company, but I’m talking about the upside for you, the small business owner. Whether yours is one the businesses that already has a website or not, that statistic represents a “sweet” opportunity you can take advantage of.

First, you need to understand that more than 70% of consumers have adopted the web as a place for finding information before they buy (and sometimes as a means of purchase: e.g., Amazon). A great deal of that information gathering results in a local purchase from a local business found online. In support of this trend, Google has made recent changes that enable people to find local providers of goods and services more easily. If you want customers, you want to be where 70% of them are looking (radio ads, newspaper ads, and even Yellow Pages ads do not draw that percentage).

Second, of the 38% of small businesses that do have a website, fewer than one-fourth have websites that are effective in terms of drawing search traffic or giving web visitors reasons to become customers. This is for a variety of reasons, but from observation, I believe it’s mostly because typical small business websites are static, non-interactive, and haven’t been updated since the day they were launched. We call those set-it-and-forget-it websites. A few years ago, they were of some value, if for no other reason than to show your prospects that you were “with it.” But things have changed and that’s no longer enough.

That means fewer than 10% of small business websites are of any value whatsoever in attracting new customers. Which means that, if you create an “effective” web presence, you’re in better position to take advantage of search traffic than 90% of your competitors, and that opportunity is open to you if you already have a website that isn’t effective, or if you’re one of the 62% that doesn’t have a website at all.

The thing about the web is, it’s a constantly changing environment. What worked 5 years ago is hopelessly outdated. What works today will be outdated 5 years from now. That might seem discouraging, but only if you decide to let it discourage you. There are some things to learn in order to use it effectively as a marketing tool, but as my wrestling coach used to say, “It ain’t rocket surgery.” Once you get into it, you will find it all within your capabilities, and you’ll be able to keep up as things evolve.

Let your competitors keep their assumptions that it’s too hard (not knowing makes everything seem hard), or too expensive (certainly not compared to that Yellow Pages ad!), or ineffective (and it is ineffective, if your website is the set-it-and-forget-it variety). As long as they think that way, your opportunity is intact (and as long as you think that way, so is theirs). But as a business person, I’m sure you know some action is required to turn opportunity into reality. (Our phone number, BTW, is on our contact page. I’m just sayin’…)

Wanted: A Plumber Who Wants to Grow His Local Business

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Jun 7, 2009; Category: Blogging, Business, Marketing, Search/SEO; Tags: Blogging, Local Search; 3 Comments

To prove that local businesses can grow their business through blogging, we’re looking for a plumber who wants to serve as our "test subject" in a public experiment, which we’re calling "The Plumbing Project." We’ll set him (or her) up with a blog and provide free consulting services for a year. And of course, we’ll monitor how things are going and let people know about it here on EvoBloggito and on Twitter (and that kind of exposure can’t hurt your business, either). If you’re not a plumber, but know one who you think should be blogging, please point them here.

Here’s what the plumber gets, absolutely free:

1. Professionally designed WordPress blog with appropriate plugins to assist with search engine optimization, visitor engagement, etc.
2. Google Analytics account to track blog visitors.
3. Twitter account to help with business and blog promotion.
4. Training, coaching, advice, and assistance for 1 year.
5. Webhosting for the blog for 1 year (after which we’ll charge our normal annual webhosting fee of $125 if you want the blog to remain on our servers; otherwise, we’ll move it somewhere else for free).
6. More business!

This is not a free ride (the person we’re looking for knows that nothing worthwhile is)! We’ll do everything in our power to help you be successful, but ultimately it depends on you. You’ll have some things to learn and some work to do, but if you do it right, it’ll be fun. Here are the selection criteria:

1. You do not already have a business blog.
2. Your business must be in northern New Mexico (would like to conduct some training face-to-face).
3. Your business must be full-time.
4. You must be 18 years old or older.
5. You must agree to follow our advice on blogging and online promotion (we promise not to advise anything painful).
6. You must currently rely on Yellow Pages advertising and other traditional local marketing techniques (radio, newspaper ads, etc.) to reach your customers and prospects with your message.
7. You must be willing to write; you do NOT have to be a great writer.
8. You should have some opinions about your business and how it benefits your customers (a business blog is not the place to express political opinions).
9. You must care about your customers and prospects.
10. You must have a reasonable comfort level with computers (you have to own one!) and the internet.

Also, we’re not absolutely dead-set on the local business person being a plumber (although, if not, we’ll need to change the name of the project). It could be any local business person whose business serves a local area, as opposed to a national or multi-state market. The reason we think a plumber would be a great test subject is that most people, including most plumbers, wouldn’t expect a plumber to blog. However, if you own a produce store or bicycle shop that caters to local customers, make your case: we’ll consider it.

Write us using the application form below, the email link in the right column, or send a letter via snail mail (see our contact page) and convince us that you are the plumber (or other local business person) we’re looking for.

Here’s My Convincing Case for Helping Me Grow My Local Business

The "convincing case" deadline is July 7, 2009. Evo reserves the right to reject any application.

Sorry, deadline has past: no takers.

How to Gain Maximum Advantage When People Search Local

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Apr 19, 2009; Category: Business, Communication, Marketing, Search/SEO; Tags: Google Analytics, Local Search; No Comments

As you may or may not be aware, Google and other search engines (yes, there are still others, more or less) are altering their approach to search to deliver "personalized" and local search results. This means if someone searches for "wood stoves santa fe," they get Santa Fe listings for wood stoves at the top of the page, rather than national listings. People are searching like this more and more, and the major search engines are changing how they deliver results based not only on the inclusion of a locale in the search terms, but also based on the searcher’s IP address, which tells them where you are. Theoretically, if you searched for "restaurants paris", you would get different results if you were in Paris, Texas, than if you were in Paris, France. Waaay different. If anyone can test that and get back to me, please do.

Also, as we’ve talked about here earlier, Google assigns greater relevance to regularly updated websites that contain focused content. As a business owner, you can benefit from these changes by blogging, and by listing your business on the major search engines’ local search listings.

Google Local Search

If you go to Google’s search page, down at the bottom you’ll see a link that says "Business Solutions." That link takes you to a page with links to a number of useful applications (including Google Analytics). The one we’re after is called "Local Business Center". Click on that and either sign in, if you already have a Google account, or create an account. Follow the instructions and you’ll have soon created a listing. Before your listing goes live, you’ll need to validate your listing by phone or US mail. If you select the phone option, you can elect to have them call within 5 minutes, and your listing will appear the next day.

Yahoo Local Search

For the life of me, I cannot figure out how to navigate to the add-your-listing page, but once you’re there, you can begin the process of creating your listing. They have pre-defined business categories, and do not allow your listing outside of those categories. Also, you will have to create a Yahoo account, such as a Ymail account, if you do not already have one.

Microsoft Live Search

I’m not sure this is really a major search engine in terms of use, but it’s a Microsoft application, so you it’s hard to ignore. At Microsoft’s search engine, www.live.com, you can click on "More" above the search bar and click on "see all" on the dropdown menu that appears. That takes you to a screen that includes a link to "Local." And then… I got lost. Just go here and click the button to add your listing. Again, creation of an account is necessary (e.g., a Hotmail address), and again, you can validate your listing by having them call you or mail you validation information.

Blog Readers Only Come for the Jelly Beans

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Apr 16, 2009; Category: Blogging, Communication, Marketing; Tags: Humor, Local Search, SEO; One Comment

When we implement a blog for a client, it feels a little like we just delivered one of those little Easter chickens (the ones that drop jelly beans as they walk). As delivered, the blog is ready to go, but the bloggers have to load them up with jelly beans, wind them up, send them off to drop jelly beans a couple of times a week to really benefit from having a blog.

Blogs need readers. Readers need to see new posts. No new posts, no readers. No readers, no benefit for your business.

Let there be jelly beans. At least weekly, please.