As of September of this year, if you insist on using flash based slideshows and presentations at your websites — 7.5 million viewers will not be able to see them. It’s November already, so make that closer to 9 million who cannot see any flash at your sites.  And that’s just iPads — add 73 million iPhone users who cannot see your flash presentations.

Fortunately there are a number of solutions for display on iPads for those with WordPress based CMS and blogs. First a quick comparison… I just bought an iPad (most fun I’ve had since the first computer I bought in 1985), and took this photo (using an Android phone of course — what a geek) of the homepage of WebFadds:

Above photo of our home page shows one slideshow in plain view at top, and another at lower left not working on the popular iPad (NextGEN Gallery plugin — removed now)

You’ll notice that the large slide show at top is indeed working — it’s not made with Flash, but the slideshow at bottom created with a popular WordPress plugin called “NextGEN Gallery” is not working because it uses Flash.  Now I know some people rave about Flash, but I have never liked it for a number of reasons including that it’s difficult to track visitor behavior in Analytics, and it requires everyone to get the latest Flash viewer, and all your prospects can’t be bothered with that.  Now, Mr. Jobs, at Apple, has wisely said no to Flash in favor of emerging HTML5 technologies that will do the same thing — and be open source.  Still another reason cited to avoid the Adobe made proprietary Flash is that it is security hole prone.  This is why Jobs said famously, that Adobe is “lazy.”

You can rail about the irony of Apple’s “closed garden” policy as it embraces new Open Source presentation and video technologies, but the basic fact is that you’re missing millions of potential eyes on your site if you insist on Flash galleries.

What to do?  Here are three solutions:

1. Use the Built in WordPress gallery to display your photos and portfolios when you need a simple solution. A lot of people don’t realize that WordPress has had a great little gallery built in since version 2.5.  At bottom of this post is a video to help you learn about the WordPress built in Gallery.  To show you an example, I decided to make a quick gallery here of some sites we built recently using the next solution detailed below:

   
   
   

2. Use a non-flash slide rotator like the “Easing Slider” plugin we used at above sites — it offers linking of slides to featured contents.  To see the sites in action go to:  CoffeeNutHut.com | ZSquaredMedia.com | IgnitionMSP.com
3. Consider placing your images in Flickr or Picassa Gallery — then embedding them in your site. This tactic gives you an additional “marketplace” for visibility on your

Short Video About Using WordPress Gallery…

There are a lot of short overview videos about using your WordPress CMS at WordPress.tv. We’ve also done a few that include some strategic tips about optimizing your CMS. Below is a good overview video about WordPress — it’s getting older, but you can still get some good tips. For newer videos from WebFadds bookmark our new Videos Category.

Optimization Tip: As I say in the video below, you’re not optimizing a website — you’re optimizing how visitors think about your website and the actions they take including completing key business goals at your site. I recommend you take a good look in Analytics at the new “on page Analytics” that shows you “hot-spot” activity on your pages — where visitors click. Make sure those clicks are tied to goals you’ve set, like submitting a lead form. At right is a thumbnail you may click to review how this looks for our own site. Note that you not only see where visitors click but also get key insights to how those clicks may lead to goal completions, and other visitor behavior including what they do after scrolling down the page, “beneath the fold”. Contact us for an estimate to take your Google Analytics to the MAX with actionable advice.

Video: Overview of Using WordPress as your CMS:

Web Engagement, Social Marketing Tip, and Visual Optimization

On today’s web, it’s all about Engagement and Connection.  In fact, Connection now trumps Content (see why in Why Content is King No More)  as the most important part of your marketing tactics.  Connection to who?  Prospects, leads, and customers.  One on one.  Think of this like what your sales people do at a tradeshow.  They engage booth visitors and get to know them.  People buy from those they know.  That’s the promise of Social Media, and many national brands have already proven this — two times in a row, SouthWest Air has had its highest ticket sales ever, from promotions that only happened on Twitter.  So… what is your “1:1″ marketing strategy?  In this post, I’ll give you some tips, tactics and techniques to help you. One big key — insights into your potential customers. Learn more about 1:1 marketing strategies and tactics from Marketing Experiments (highly recommended) – One To One Marketing.

Another new TLA — W.E.M., Web Engagement Management

Ok… so how do we engage and learn more about our prospects?  How about yet another TLA — Three Letter Acronym.  Tired as I am of TLAs, I like what this one is about… WEM — Web Engagement Management.  In a great post on the “5 Pillars of W.E.M.”, writing at CMSWire, Barb Mosher identifies them as:

1. Content Optimization
2. Multi-Channel Management
3. Conversational Engagement
4. Demand Generation
5. Sales & Relationship Automation

More on each point in future posts, but the key is that all five are required for an effective Web Engagement strategy.  Read the source article here:   5 Pillars of Web Engagement Management

Social Marketing Tip with HootSuite

So, let’s look at a tactic to address two WEM “pillars”:  Multi-Channel Management, and Conversational Engagement.  Time is a scarce commodity in most MarCom departments, and especially during this time of rapid social technology change.  That’s why I like HootSuite for its team workflow and cross platform engagement automation features.  So, my tip of the week is show below — use HootSuite’s “hidden” ability to profile tweeters:

Above (click for larger view), using Hootsuite to first monitor important business conversations, we can then learn more about a prospect by clicking on their photo/logo, then clicking on “view more tweets from…”.  Use this tactic to find out how influential the prospect is, and what their major interest focus might be.  Contact us to explore ways to use this engagement tool in your 1:1 marketing strategy.

Visual Media Optimization for Your WordPress CMS

With millions of smartphones, and now over 2 million iPads sold with more “tablets” on the way, now is the right time to consider your visual media methods of engagement and persuasion on your site.  We develop successful CMS solutions on the WordPress platform and are always looking for good ways to do this, so I’m pleased to recommend a versatile way to do that — with one note of caution.  Slideshows are great visual ways to explain B2B technical concepts in a persuasive and easy to understand way.  Consider the slides we did for a recent client, Lopez Research (click small image at right to see site).  This is a simple and effective way to present what you do in a way that engages emotions.  Remember — everyone makes a buy decision based on emotion.  What’s the caution?  Well, right now Apple has said they will not use Flash on their platforms, and most slideshows are done using Flash to drive them.  We look for new emerging standards in HTML 5.0 to break through this wall soon.

Above, a new plugin offers you the ability to show images that zoom and pan, while text explains the concept pictured and gives a link deeper into your site content.

Have a Web Engagement Management challenge you’d like us to review?  Great — contact us today and we’ll do a free review.

WebFadds is an Agency specializing in CMS Websites and Business Blogs, plus Marketing techniques optimized for Connection Cycle Marketing — CCM. We focus on delivering SEO savvy, Content Management System solutions on the market-leading WordPress platform, then provide Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Landing Page Optimization services to ensure you get maximum visitors converting to prospects, leads, and customers.

In this ISSUE:

In this issue we will reviewhow WordPress 3.0 (coming in late April) allows you to adjust your menus to deliver popular content, a new, easy way to do optimizations in your WordPress CMS, and how a well-known SEO company optimized a landing page to increase sales by $1 million a year.  Our topics are directly related.  The more ways you can deliver what your visitors actually want (not what you think they want), the more successful you will be.  $1 million.  Can’t promise you that much, but following the techniques given here will definitely increase your conversions — when a web visitor “converts” to a prospect, lead, or customer. And that’s what it’s all about in the Connection Cycle Marketing (CCM) game.  Let’s learn some specifics.

WordPress 3.0 to Deliver Precision Content Delivery via Menus ::::::::::::

Above, note that you will be able to easily create a menu item that links to individual posts, media, categories, and post tags.

Know what your prospects want.  Deliver it. Have you used Analytics to note key content that “engaged visitors” hunt for at your site (“engaged visitors” are those viewing 3 or more pages)?  Once you do, you’ll be able to better deliver it to visitors using WordPress 3.0 enhanced menu options.  Due in late April, this menu option enhancement should prove to be very popular with CMS managers on the WordPress platform.  Why?  For the simple reason it will be easier to deliver exactly the content that visitors seek with the new system.  Imagine a menu link directly to a compelling sales video.  How about direct to a list of post and pages for a popular “tag”?  Good work WordPress core team.

New Visual Website Optimizer for WordPress Plugin ::::::::::::

Above, the Visual Website Optimizer shows you which page variation gives you the best chance to beat the original test version.

Optimize visitor behavior. It’s one thing to get visitors to your site and help them find the content they seek — next you have to convert them from visitors to prospects, leads, and customers.  And, now there’s a helpful plugin from Visual Website Optimizer to help you do just that.  This is good because although Google also makes a Website Optimizer (we like and use it too when its strengths are appropriate), this company provides a WordPress plugin to help you set up the campaign parameters on your site.  We also like its easy to understand reporting charts.  You define a control version of a page, then some variations.  The Optimizer tracks what visitors do, and reports the best variation showing the highest likely improvement.  Always be testing.  Always be optimizing.  Get the plugin here.

How an Optimization company made $1 million for SEOmoz.org ::::::::::::

Million Dollar Case Study: If you’re concerned with SEO, you should be aware of the helpful professional tools and information you can find at SEOmoz.org.  They’re great at SEO — which gets visitors to your sites.  But, the major lesson to note here is that SEO only gets people to your site… you could be leaving literally millions on the table, unless you do what SEOmoz was smart enough to do next.  They optimized, with the as a team effort with Conversion Rate Experts.  Here are the major success points for their campaign:

• They did a lot of listening — to the customer.  Time and again, I see clients making the mistake of thinking that people who know their product and service inside the company… know what to do.  They don’t.  Only your customers know what they need you to do.  SEOmoz, heeded this wisdom, talked with paying and non-paying members, and let their consultants become a customer.  They took surveys and analyzed them.  They listened.  It paid off.
• They used quick wireframe pages to consider new page prototypes
• They ran a series of tests for continual improvements
• They ignored “best practices” and quadrupled the length of the conversion page to better engage visitors
• They explained precisely what customers would get
• They used compelling video to tell the story
• They served customers after subscription (reducing cancellations and charge backs) with a getting quick started guide

Read the rest of the article>>

That’s it for this issue — contact us when you need to Optimize, Connect, and Convert!

SPECIAL: Mention this post to me, and receive 10% OFF on a Social Media Marketing campaign thru June of 2010

WebFadds.com is an agency focused on CMS & Business Blogs, Social Media Marketing, & Landing Page Optimization solutions — a “Connection Cycle Marketing” approach for web mission success. Contact us today for a free quote. And, be sure to download our latest Guide: “Winning Twitter Marketing Tools & Tactics”.

Extending Your Presence Online — How Intense Debate Comments Helps SEO

“He Parlayed his Way to a Million Dollars” – unknown

As I’ve said before, Publishing is the new Marketing, and Marketing via Content now offers continuing new ways to extend your reach and engagement prospects. But you have to foment — that is, promote the growth and development of  your comments, so you can “parlay” your way toward business objectives. One way to do this is with “Intense Debate” — a WordPress plugin that also helps you with SEO.

What is “Intense Debate”? It’s a plugin for WordPress that makes commenting easier to manage and extends your potential reach by allowing your blog readers to choose to tweet their comments. IntenseDebate.com is owned and managed by the same folks that are behind WordPress.com (the remote hosted blogging platform used by millions) and WordPress.org (the software used to create your own hosted CMS and business blog solutions) — Automattic.com.  The company also enables Blogger, Tublr. and TypePad integration.  Features include Comment Threading, Reply by Email, Reputation points and Comment Voting, and Twitter integration — your commenters have the option to send a simultaneous tweet when they post a comment.  Add to that the opening up of the plugin’s API to developers, and I think there’s even more potential to plumb here.  Try it by leaving a comment below.

Above – the Intense Debate comments template allows your commenters to login with Social Networking IDs, Subscribe to comments, and also to post comments on Twitter.

How does Comment Debate help you in SEO? The system provides a very clean, rankable set of Comments on your site, plus gives each commenter the option to tweet their comments when they post them — with links back to your site.

Above, you can manage the comments from more than one blog — all in the same place.

How does Comment Debate help you in Business?

• As stated at Intense Debate — the system serves to bring “quality comments to the forefront”.  And “forefront” translates to engagement with just the right sort of thinkers and prospects for your brand.
• Save Administration Time: Once you have an Intense Debate account, you can quickly manage the comments from multiple blogs all from one control panel online.
• Synergy Loop:  You comment on a post(s) at other sites related to your business mission, and this gets automatically tweeted on Twitter, whereby like-minded people may visit your business blog, comment and have their comments then appear on Twitter with links back to your blog.

Can my business stand up in an “intense” debate? Of course.  This is like asking if your sales force will be able to handle discussion, and even criticism at a trade show.  They can, can’t they?  Good companies will always embrace engaging the market because the constructive criticism will help them perfect products and services.  And great sales people know that debate is an opportunity to present your position which leads to more sales.  Plus, you can always moderate your comment system to weed out spam and destructive comments.

Recommendation: Install IntenseDebate (the WordPress plugin is freely distributed) and add your business blog to the debate.  Webfadds will be pleased to provide this service for you — we’ll be adding it as an option for our Social Marketing Solutions (just contact us at that page).

Playing Ball: Innovation, change, and Social Media Marketing growth… it’s happening rapidly each week.  Last week, Twitter reported astronomic growth — up 422% in 12 months. WordPress reported 2 million business blog and CMS installations in 2008.  Wow.  Talk about “playing ball on running water.”  How do you grab a hold of this tiger and make efficient and effective use of it in Business?  I’ll give you some pointers on how to stay optimized.

CMS Thought of the Week: The *whole web* is your Content Management System.  Today, I was checking my LinkedIN homepage, and reviewed a number of blog posts — there — from friends and colleagues.  The same posts often show up in my twitter stream (shortened into 140 characters with links back to posts). And, Google lets you create a sort of “mash-up” via Google reader (for RSS feeds) where you can share your posts and those of others — see: my Google Reader Public Mashup.  Are you optimized to take advantage of these key web CMS techniques?  Contact me and we’ll work on it together.

Twitter Tips of the Week: If you’re looking for a job, check this link to an excellent Mashable article (a great web publication, using a CMS developed in WordPress) will help you learn how — on Twitter.  That’s right!  I’ve found and worked with two clients there in two weeks.  Plus… even if you’re not looking now… consider the article carefully and you’ll understand some key Twitter Social Media Marketing strategies and Tactics.

Next, look carefully at the “Five Phases of Social Media Marketing” — Social Marketing is not “free”, but it will pay off when you tie it into Analytics… and — analyze for conversions (that’s the R.O.I. secret).  One great question from the article:  “Will your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system interface with your social media tools?”  Watch for good CRM’s to start adding in Twitter functionality.

WordPress Eding Tips on Video: WordPress is a great CMS solution — we develop exclusively with it.  As you learn WordPress, and start managing the admin. area, you may like to review these short (approx. 2 min.) videos.  There are more available at WordPress.tv, but these are my “A-List” to help your work be optimized… in WordPress:

Posts:

• writing-and-publishing-a-post
• using-quick-edit-and-bulk-edit-to-manage-your-posts-in-half-the-time
• saving-and-returning-to-draft-posts-pages
• publishing-your-post-at-a-later-date

Add Categories & Tags to Your Posts (always do this — good for both SEO, and helpful site navigation):

• adding-categories-and-tags-to-your-posts

Pages:

• creating-a-post-excerpt-using-the-more-tag

Sidebar:

• adding-a-widget-to-your-sidebar

There you go.  That should help you optimize your WordPress and Social Media work.  Now… about those conversions? Have you optimized your landing pages so you can increase your conversion rates?  Contact me.

Social Media Marketing — who has time for this busy new marketing strategy? Busy indeed, but optimizable using automated techniques… I’ll tell you how.

What is Social Media Marketing? Simply put, it’s the use of new technologies — from blogging to twitter tweets — to engage prospects for your company’s services and products.

Is Social Media Marketing (SMM) on the Rise? Yes. You know — I resisted Twitter for some time due to my perception that it was juvenile and had no real business purpose. Wrong.

One example of how I was wrong about Twitter, and a tip for you: I used a new Nearby Tweets Search Engine (Twitter posts are called “Tweets”) recently to find out who was talking about similar business strategies in my neighborhood. Results? I have five leads, and one coffee meeting scheduled to discuss new business. Could I have looked up related businesses on Google? Perhaps. But I would not have known who was actively and currently focusing on certain business topics. That’s the key, and you can easily do the same.

Take a look below at the “Benefits of Social Media Marketing” chart which appears in a whitepaper, free for the download, by Michael Stelzner, who interviewed 900 business people and marketers for his research. You’ll get some great insights when you read the report.

Above, over 900 business professionals report positive results using Social Media Marketing methods (from Social Media Marketing Industry Report, by Michael Stelzner)

How to understand SMM and make it work? Two recommendations: Think about standard sales and marketing principles in new venues. Look for automation.

On the first point, just think about standard sales methods and think of social media a bit like those “business after hours” prospecting events that sales people always attend. You tune in, listen, make yourself known, and schmooz around a bit. People buy from those they know.

Of course, you’ve still got to find the time to make the switch from old ways of doing things to new. Good news. Since the new “venue” for Social Media Marketing is online, on computers, some of the work may be automated. I want to caution you — you still have to get in there and “hand out cards” and make your personality known… that’s what it’s all about.

Which social media sites for business? There are a lot of choices out there, but for now, I recommend concentrating on just three: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIN. These are market leaders, each with a different focus and functionality, and I have seen all three bring business for our clients.

New WebFadds Social Media Max Service: Now about automation — one of the reasons we’re focused on CMS solutions using the WordPress platform (in addition to SEO strengths) is the excellent sets of plugins to add features and streamline your work. We have identified eight key plugins for SMM which in particular automate blog postings to twitter, and facebook walls, display of feeds from twitter in your blog, display of linked in information, and more.

We will install and configure this Social Media Max package on your WordPress Content Management System for $739. Need your Facebook, LinkedIN, and Twitter accounts set-up too? No problem — we’ll do it for $339. Includes initial coaching on working these services for business “conversion” purposes. We then set up your Easy Tweets controls for a powerful way to grow your twitter following, and channel them back to your business blog (we coach you on success with your Easy Tweets – $25mo. account). And for a limited time, we’ll include installation of Google Analytics at your site to help you track your site for conversion health. Contact me today to get started.

That’s enough Optimizing for this time — remember to always be converting.

#3 on Google in less than 19 Minutes: What’s the true power of a Business Blog? Well, you know I always focus on conversions. But before you can convert a visitor to a customer, you have to have visibility. And once your Blog gets accepted as a trusted source for information in your market niche (about 2-3 months of steady posting at least twice a week for new blogs), then your latest posts will go up fast — and rise to the top if your content is good.

A case example is a blog post on camp cooking contests we put up Saturday morning at SportsExposBlog.com, during their four-day tradeshow, where each day selling more tickets is a key to success. Within 19 minutes, that post was #3 on Google for the search, “Cooking Contests, Salt Lake City.” Great for immediate, and targeted visibility for those interested in reviewing cooking contests.  It’s still in position #4 on Google as I write this post.  Another client, Tom Hale — an Adwords Expert Extraordinaire — regularly sees his posts register high on Google in under 10 minutes.

SEO Technique Tip: First, the business blog for SportsExposBlog.com is developed on the WordPress platform, which out of the box provides a number of ways to Optimize for Search Engines. Then, we used a professional SEO plugin called HeadSpace (see articles about how HeadSpace works here ) and configured it for the phrase “Cooking Contests”, and the locality, “Salt Lake City”, for that specific post. It worked.

Why WordPress as a CMS? Last week I was at the Portland Search Engine Marketing Professionals annual Search Fest — a day of seminars and trainings on tips, traps, and techniques for this rapidly evolving field. There, a sales rep. told me that WordPress was not a CMS. Huh? Funny, it seems that Ford Motors, Comacho Cigars, CNN, the New York Times, and a host of other Fortune 500 players didn’t get that memo. They’re all enjoying the strengths of WordPress as their primary Content Management Solution. Of course, the sales rep. was, well, repping his own proprietary CMS based on Microsoft’s unpopular ASP.net platform.

There are several platforms out there offering CMS solutions, ranging from Cold Fusion, to Open Source PHP/MySQL, to Ruby on Rails, and ASP.net. Check around, and you will find many more options in the PHP realm, of which WordPress is arguably one of the top five choices. Way back in 2007, WordPress won “Best Open Source Social Networking CMS” from Packt Publishing.

What’s the best CMS solution for your company? Well, WebFadds, of course, can make the case for WordPress. But I admit, you’ll see some great contenders out there. A young fellow on a plane I took to Salt Lake City last week showed me an impressive proprietary CMS built in the Ruby on Rails environment. One big choice is Proprietary (you pay one company for a license and rely on them to continually improve your CMS) versus “Open Source” (the initial core program is free to download and install, and upgrades are free).

WordPres wins again, since it is in this initially “free” category.  But to be frank, free is not really free. You will want to custom configure and tweak it for maximum SEO and administration optimization — and that costs some money. But I think you’ll see that WordPress still wins when you compare your R.O.I. to other systems over the mid-term.  And, optimization with WordPress is not just about SEO — you’ll also streamline your content administration wrok.

Contact me — I’ll be pleased to work with you to find the best solution for your R.O.I… and, take a look at this overview: CMS WebSite Solutions with WordPress.

How Well is Your Site Converting?

Business Blogging — A Paradigm Shift: I was working on a CMS development project last week for a company of technically savvy consultants, and so was very surprised when our team received feedback that blog links shouldn’t appear on the front page of their site, and that blogging was just for rambling. Hmmmmm. At first, I thought they didn’t get it — they didn’t understand how social media marketing was such a great opportunity for them to connect with prospects and make sales. Then, I realized I didn’t get it. I’ve been engaged with it for some time, so I assumed clients understood that nowadays, Marketing is Publishing, and Publishing is Sales. Yeah, yeah, I know about the “ass-ume” thing.

“… when I worked in Advertising for a Manufacturing Company, we produced “sales literature” and hired field sales people. Online, your blog is both. It combines the education of good marketing literature, with the entertaining, instructive, and persuasive conversation of good sales people. “

This just goes to show that in a time of rapid change you can’t assume people have caught up with the paradigm shifts. Shifts? Yes. You know, like, “The computer will never replace typesetting machines.” “Art will never be produced on a computer.” “Professionals will never use digital cameras” … Those kinds of shifts. To those we’ll add, “blogging cannot be a very good business tool.” Ready to make the shift?

Anatomy of a Good Business Blog Post: Remember, you are a “Conversion Blogger.” In those two words are the secret of your success. You “blog” to put your personality into it and engage your readers. You make “conversions” (get leads, downloads of whitepapers, make sales), by simply asking for them after your readers get to know you.

Above is a “strategic wireframe” of a good business post. Note, that I have added some SEO tips, since that is still another reason to make regular Business Blogging a primary marketing thrust.

Here are the essential elements of a good Business Blog Post:

1. Write a good headline using the “H1″ tag, and include a primary SEO phrase
2. Write friendly voice blog copy, that educates and entertains, and also include your primary SEO phrase.
3. Include a compelling photo or illustration that helps you put your point across
4. Include a call to action that asks your reader to convert to a prospect (download a whitepaper), a lead (fill out a form), or a customer (make a purchase).

Connect, Engage, Convert… people buy from those they know.

Can You Prove It? Can I prove this works?  Yes. Install Google Analytics. Set up a Sales Funnel from your blog to a conversion page. Assign an ROI figure per conversion. Then, analyze the results.

Some Common Reservations about Business Blogging:

“It Takes Too Much Time”: Yes, it takes time. So, for business purposes monitor your R.O.I. with a good Analytics tool. Done well, it will pay off.

“It Takes Too Much Time”: It takes time, yes, but it’s more efficent than writing individual emails to all your clients and sales leads.

“Our Competition Doesn’t Do It”: Opportunity for you.

“Isn’t a Press Release Good Enough?”: No. Press releases miss the opportunity for you to engage directly with your prospects and customers. Remember, people buy from those they know, and most press releases are cold, corporate statements. Put some personality in your posts. Entertain, Educate, then ask for the sale.

“We Don’t Know Good Writing Techniques.” Here’s a link to a series of articles on copy writing and blog writing.

“Blogging Isn’t Supposed to Be About Sales”: Two thoughts for those that say this. Why not? And, second, “all of communication is an attempt to persuade.” I quote one of my Communication Professors on the last point, and yes — I wanted to argue with him, but it would only have proved his point.

“Blogging is Only for SEO Juice.” Write blather filled with SEO phrases, and you’ll get traffic, until Google penalizes you. And even that short lived traffic will bounce away from your site and you’ll miss the sale. Use SEO phrases cleverly in copy? Yes. But don’t fail to engage and convert.

Remember… it’s not just about sales, because you also use your personality to entertain and provide education for readers. But it can and will definitely lead to sales.

In the 90′s, when I worked in Advertising for a Manufacturing Company, we produced “sales literature” and hired field sales people. Online, your blog is both. It combines the education of good marketing literature, with the entertaining, instructive, and persuasive conversation of good sales people. So… go make the sale.

And remember that the only thing constant is change, and with change comes inevitable paradigm shifts. Resistance is futile (any trekkies out there?).

Give me a call, or contact me and we’ll explore Business Blogging opportunities for your company, and how to make the paradigm shift.

Contact Us · (360) 566-2451 · Email | Twitter: WebFadds

Hello -

This eNewsletter is now “The Optimizer”: I’ve changed the name to “The Optimizer,” to focus on one concept — optimization. Optimization, in a word, expresses the work leading to success at your websites. Not only do websites need optimization for search engines (SEO), but also efficiency and content marketing gains using an automated, dynamic CMS solution — another form of optimizing your work. Factor in the ongoing R.O.I. improvements you get from optimizing your landing and conversion pages, and you have my recipe for online business success — a la Optimization. We’ll be talking about tips, traps, and techniques for Optimizers in every issue.

Are Conversions Gender Specific?: Hey, should have reported this prior to Valentine’s day… but you can bring up even now with your mate. As you know, we have an ongoing poll at LinkedIn on “How well does your website convert visitors to leads or customers?“. Well, this poll shows that so far (it’s live, go add your own one-click vote), women get more leads (at their websites), while men do more optimization. Yet… more men than women don’t understand conversions. Hmmmmm. No wonder there are relationship psychologists:

Publishing Persuasive Content: Speaking of optimizing — your content itself is the place to start. Today, Marketing is Publishing, and Publishing is Sales (when you’re a “Conversion Blogger”).  Every company online is in Publishing. Take a look at this article covering success results of businesses that create quality content.  Now that’s the way to do it.

Blog for The Conversion: Remember that a conversion happens when a visitor to your site moves one step closer to a business mission goal you have. What goals? Convert a visitor to an interested prospect who might return (give them a whitepaper to download), a lead (they fill out a form), or a customer (the pay for, or at least order a product or service). And your blogs should provide meaningful and engaging content, which also asks for a sale.

Two examples: The first client, in the business of providing tradeshows to Sportsmen, has a new business blog (from WebFadds) and while providing hunting and fishing tips, they also ask for online ticket sales to their expositions (see SportsExposBlog.com). That’s doing it right.

A second client, in the business of providing travel fare specials, has been writing lots of jibber-jabber blog posts just for the “SEO juice”.  Huh? That’s an old-school concept where you just fill up your posts with keywords and phrases and hope Google picks you up.  This is a bad strategy for three important reasons: Visitors will “bounce” right out of your site if content is not engaging; Google has filters to block out sites that aren’t really relevant; and without conversions in mind as you create content that really connects with visitors… no sales will be made. Instead, give your visitors some real meat in your content, and let them get to know you. People buy from someone they know. Then, ask for the sale. You’ll see conversions and ROI stats from Google Analytics that justify your effort.

So… how is your site converting? Contact me, and we’ll explore the value to your company that increased conversions will bring.