Category Archives for "Marketing"

2 Using Keywords on Your Website

Keywords are vectors on your website pages.  Do you remember learning the difference between speed and velocity? Speed is a scalar quantity, which means it is simply a measure of how fast something is going; how many miles per hour.  Unlike vector quantities, such as velocity, speed does not include direction of travel.  With velocity we can work out how long it takes to travel from A to B because we know the direction.

Keywords do two things; explain what the page is about and increase traffic to your site.  The ways in which they increase traffic has undergone recent major changes. These mean you can use keywords to tell visitors what your site is about and not worry about search engines.

They say, if you want search engines to find your site you need to find keywords for each page.  I’ll discuss the need to court search engines in later posts; the point is you need keywords to communicate with your visitors.

Keywords and Relevance

Consider this: how long do you stay on a new site when you visit it?  It depends upon whether the site is relevant to your search.   Occasionally you might be distracted by something you’re not looking for. Usually you have a goal in mind and will stay if the site seems relevant.

As a site owner, you want people to stay who are looking for what you offer.

So, when your page opens, it needs to say clearly what it is about.  This helps visitors who arrive by mistake to go their way.  People actively interested in your site stay and enter into a long-term relationship.

When we get onto search engines I’ll write more about how keywords help people find your site but for now, once they arrive they expect to see the keywords they used to find you!

So, if someone concerned about a plague of frogs, arrives at your site and reads “If you’re experiencing the current plague of frogs this site will give you all the answers you’re looking for …” the chances are that visitor will read on.

They may be seeking frog poison.  If your site advocates building ponds for them, your visitor might be convinced by your copy – so long as it looks as if it’s going to be relevant when the visitor first arrives.

You might like to go to a favourite website and try to find the keywords, perhaps the words that helped you on your first visit to the site.  If you do, add the url and keywords you have identified as a comment and share them with the other readers.

0 Writing Good Copy

Writing good copy for your website is really important.   It takes time to write copy people will read and act upon.  It is the foundation for everything you do online, far more important than the technical side of website development.  If you know html and css, it is an advantage but people read your copy and not your  mark-up  – so it’s worth making the effort to get it right.

Let’s assume you have a cause, product or service and need to make a better case than your competitors.  With non-financial causes, you may have a message to share with the world and want to find others to share thoughts and discuss the cause.  Sometimes you may want your readers to attend a meeting in real life (or a webinar) or else become a member or subscribe to an email list.

Imagine a spectrum from those who wish to simply make money online by any means available, through to those who have a cause and no desire whatsoever to make a penny.

In reality, it hard to occupy either extreme.  The money-maker might want to make money at the start but is likely to discover they have something people value and find they take pleasure in sharing it.  As they develop their reputation in this new area, they will naturally discover ways to generate income from it because they have that mindset.

On the other hand, those who have a cause often find it necessary to generate income to finance it.  In real life this can lead to hours pursuing funding through grant applications and then to find the cause undermined by the need to generate outputs to meet funder’s requirements.  If the cause itself can generate income independently of funding bodies, this can help keep the cause’s integrity.

Generating income and pursuing a cause are not always contradictory and online it is easier to do both together.  Good copy can support both a cause and the need to make sales online.

If you’re serious about your cause then an income can really help.  So you do need to consider carefully whether you or your organisation needs an income.  Are you aware of websites that combine a cause with trading?  How successful have they been?

0 Managing your website: secondary concerns

Last time I looked at the primary concerns of site management.  Whilst content is always your primary concern, secondary concerns, the technical issues that cut across the purpose of your site, are also important.  They include:

I’m going to major on writing copy for the next few posts.  If you want more information about any of these let me know in the comments and I’ll bring them forward.

2 Managing your website: primary concerns

Here are some things to think about when managing your website.  Many people make continual changes to their sites and this theme will help you develop your site.  The days when a site launched and then stayed pretty much the same with occasional updates are over.  Most likely you develop your site in response to users’ needs but this can present new problems for organisations, particularly where volunteers manage the site.

Your primary concern is good content and this post will review options for the content you might produce.  The next post will be about important secondary issues.

What You Sell

Your aim is to produce content that builds trust, demonstrates command of your subject and furthers your organisation’s purpose.  Your organisation will be offering at least one of the following:

1. Services – activity tailored to your client’s needs.  This might be something to do with information, such as consultancy or training, or it might be a physical service such as hairdressing, car mechanics, etc.
2. Products – usually mass-produced and appeal to a range of customers.  If you sell things, products are easier than services because once created, it is easy to reproduce the product and deliver it to customers.  Customers can download information products or receive physical products through the post.  It is possible to sell local products through a shop with online promotion.  Don’t forget, if you give it away, it is still a product!
3. Causes – this is where you seek support from your site visitors for a campaign.  The support might be through signing petitions or writing letters, or it might be a request for donations.  Some campaigns involve visible protest, eg flash mobs.

How You Sell It

The good news is things have become much easier in recent years.  Media you would never have dreamed of using, even a couple of years ago are within reach.  So, here is a list of media you might use:

1. Web pages have many functions.  They can be particularly helpful for those who want to advertise a service and use their site as an online brochure.  This works where the site content does not need to be updated often .  I don’t necessarily recommend this approach but it seems to work for some organisations and free-lancers.
2. Blogs are a good way to publicise just about anything.  A steady and consistent blog can prove your knowledge and understanding of your subject area, draw search engines to your site and publicise developments online and off.  They are also a good way to organise information such as directories of local organisations or events.
3. Downloadable papers and ebooks are also effective, especially where people use the material on your site.  For example, an instruction manual in .pdf format may be more helpful than simply putting the content on pages, because it is easier to print and pass between devices.
4. Images are always helpful and with a digital camera or mobile phone, you can capture images very easily.  You can also have great fun mucking about with images on Photoshop.
5. Audio files that can be downloaded to listening devices are extremely popular.  So too are audio CDs.  The reason is people like to listen to things whilst in their car or out jogging.
6. Videos are extremely popular.   They are much easier to produce than they used to be.  Perfectionists may balk at using their mobile phone to film a short video but so long as you get the lighting about right and eliminate background noise, you can produce something good enough. Of course better quality videos are better but you have to start somewhere and the opportunity may be lost if you have to go home and fetch a better camera!

These are your basic building blocks.  The ways in  which you combine and build one upon the other can transform your website.

What do you think?  Have I missed anything important?  Have you any examples of great content at minimal costs?

0 Your Relationship with Your Subscribers

This is the last in a series of five posts about promoting your website locally.

When people visit your site they will join your email list if they find your site content of  helpful.  So, you need to focus  on your offer to your subscribers.

You can offer additional material through an email sequence, email broadcasts or downloads (perhaps in a password protected part of your site).  Some sites charge and others offer content for free.  Offering free material to subscribers encourages them to join your email list.  This means you can tell them when you add new material to your site.

If visitors can comment then it is worth notifying your email list when there is something new to share.  Other reasons may be you want to recruit visitors to a cause or sell them a product or service.

Good content is also a reason for other sites to link to yours.  If people link their site to yours, this increases its chances of showing up in a search.  Links to pages and blog posts increase the online presence or authority of your site.  As more people visit your site, they are likely to sign up to your list.

Resist the temptation to link back to these sites unless you really want to recommend their content.  Reciprocal links have a mutual advantage as both sites experience increased traffic.  However there are two disadvantages to reciprocal links.  First, search engines ignore them because closely related sites often have this arrangement.  Also, if you have many miscellaneous links for no reason other than misguided politeness your site will become cluttered.

Take a back-link to your site as a complement, by all means acknowledge it and thank the people  who set it up but only return the favour where it will really help.

That completes my suggestions for now about increasing local traffic to your website.  There are more ways than the ones I’ve touched upon and I’ll return to the topic from time to time.  If you have any ideas, do share them in the comments.  This is a fascinating area and it would be good to build up a resource of ideas, especially ones that can be shown to work!

1 Manage your email list

This is the fourth in a series of five posts about promoting your website locally.

Lots of organisations have email lists and in the community sector they’re often kept in a spreadsheet or distribution list.

This is not sustainable.  As your list grows in size, your Internet Service Provider will think you’re spamming because you’re sending a few hundred emails at once.   Also if you are going to send a lot of emails, recipients should be able to unsubscribe.

So, you need to manage your list!  The big advantage is once you have a list, you can grow your followers.  As people sign up to your site, you alert them to new material as you put it on the site, remind them about events and offer products or services.  This blog has an email service and if you look below, you will see a sign-up form that links directly to an email service.  I don’t need to think about it, as the service does everything for me.  Sign up to see how it works.  You receive a weekly summary of this blog and an email sequence about community development.

You can do this through an email subscription service, where you can manage more than one list, whilst confident you are fulfilling the requirements of the law and etiquette.

Some Email Services

If your organisation has a limited budget there is a good deal with MailChimp.  They allow you can have up to 2000 subscribers free of charge and you can send a maximum of 12 000 emails per month.  However, you can’t sequence your emails with the free offer and once you go over the limits it is marginally more expensive than other similar services.  So, go for this if you expect to stay small and just want to send newsletters and occasional emails.

AWeber charge from the start but they’re a little cheaper than MailChimp and include email sequences from the lowest prices.  This is probably the best service for medium to large lists, particularly if you expect to expand your activities.

Both services provide loads of guidelines about how to get the best out of them.  They generally simplify your lists and so they are worth exploring.

There are other email list services and you might want to check them out before you make a final decision.

Do you use an email service in the voluntary or community sector?  What offers do you make to your subscribers?

0 Find out What your Followers Want

This is the second of a series of five posts about promoting your website.  It may seem obvious and  few organisations do it.   Find out what your followers want.  We easily convince ourselves that we know what our followers want and it happens to be what we can provide!

Use your email list to invite comments or suggestions, eg to suggest products and services.   If you do this, be sure you sign people up to your list with their consent; if you collect email addresses for some other purpose and then sign them up, they have every reason to be upset.  When you ask for their email address, be clear about what you will do with it.

Finding Followers’ Views in Real Life

In a real-life business, followers can respond either online or in real life.  If they respond in real life, eg through a questionnaire, ask them to leave their email address to join your email list.

So, if you are a baker you might find out which types of loaf are popular, whether they would like recipes or how they would like you to extend your business, eg by adding a coffee shop.

You can ask people to discuss issues outside your business.  So, perhaps a community group wants to canvass opinions in the area.  The baker’s might offer to ask their followers for their views.  In return, the community group might have a list they can contact on the baker’s behalf?

The ground rules are:

Charging for services is not always necessary; when it is, you can use your email list.  Don’t be afraid of people falling out with you if you make them an offer.  It isn’t compulsory to buy from you and whilst many on your list might not respond, if you build on the trust you’ve already generated, then it might work for you.   Those who are really upset can unsubscribe.

We need to be much more inventive about using online media locally.  The private sector is often distanced from community activities.  Do you have examples of how small businesses have participated in community activities?

0 Promoting Your Website Locally

You have a website and you want to promote it.  Simply putting good content up is little use if no-one sees it.

If you are a local group or business, you have a several advantages.  Organisations with a national or global reach are solely dependent upon online techniques to promote their site.

Locally you have a geographically constrained market and so should be able to reach a high proportion of it.

If you serve 20 000 people, your appeal should be to those people.  An email list of 2 000 people should be possible, with focused effort.  If the quality of what you’re offering is high, word of mouth should help you build your list further, that is people will forward information online and talk about it locally.  Even a smaller list might have significant penetration into your community depending on your offer and willingness of your followers to pass on your communications.

Here are some ways to invite people to visit your site.  At every opportunity:

So, there’s a few ideas.  Have you tried or thought of trying other approaches?  Has anyone got a list that’s large and very local?  How did you do it?

4 What Makes Content Compelling?

Of the many things you must consider to be successful in your marketplace online, perhaps the most important is good content.  Scratch that – the most important thing is excellent content!  What makes content compelling?

If your content is excellent, you need not worry so much about search engine optimisation (seo) because people will find their way to your site.  OK you may need to do some seo and conversion testing, that depends on what you’re aiming to do but with good content you’re almost there.

That’s the claim and we need to question it!

It’s certainly true if your content is compelling then you have the foundation you need for your site.  People will recommend your site, place links on their site to your site and so help you build your following.  This is a long haul strategy; you may have to post regularly for as long as 2 or 3 years to build up the site authority you need!

So, simply posting good content is unlikely to be enough.  It’s foundational but it’s worth considering what you can do to promote your content.  With some of the following you need to have made a start and have something for people to read.  They are strategies for the long haul but remember every organisation is different and sometimes there are opportunities to do things quicker!

1. Find out what your market wants and meet their wishes on and off site.
2. If your site is local then promote your site offline and locally.
3. Collect contacts’ email addresses and build an email list.
4. Encourage visitors to your site to join your email list.  Offer some good reasons to join it.
5. Encourage your subscribers to link to your site and recommend your activities.

In future posts I’ll address each of these in turn.  And I shall write about the content itself in the fullness of time.  Please share your ideas and examples of good content in the comments.

0 Reclaiming the Marketplace

Last Tuesday I wrote about the Co-operative Movement and the massive changes working people made to the country through mutuals.  They did this without the support of community development workers and usually with luke warm support from politicians.

The point is the economy is in our hands.  There was never a time when politicians supported the structures the public needs to conduct their business affairs.  How could there be?  If we need institutions we must develop our own.

An Exception

Perhaps one exception is the 1945 Labour Government.  They built the welfare state within 5 years. It is arguably the greatest of the changes brought about through co-operation and the start of its decline.  Two points:

Does the internet offer an opportunity to find our way towards another period of similar innovation?  I believe it might, provided it’s integrated into the local economy.  So long as the internet is a network of local economies and not one economy centralised in massive servers.

Quite a challenge!  How can we support local economies online?  What are the new structures we need to regenerate our communities today?