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What is your Video Strategy? Video Strategy? Yes… get ready for it. I too held off, but WebFadds just received a new client as a result of my first video posted on YouTube in January.  I mentioned this WordPress 2.7 with conversion tip video in an earlier edition, but some of you said the video was not permitted in your email — so here’s a direct link: WordPress 2.7 Introduction – Using WordPress as Your CMS.

Whether you’re a service provider, or selling products… video is becoming a key component of good content. But, will sales result from any video you place on your site? Jon Quarto-vonTivadar, writes how that is NOT the case in his article: “Video Views Up, When Will Sales Follow?” Take a look — he has good advice.  And here’s a series of articles about producing videos.

The Most Important C’s of Successful Online Marketing: A while back, I wrote an article on the five C’s that contribute to your success online: Content, Community, Conversation, Connection, and Conversions. Note that at the original writing the final word was Convergence, though I am updating this strategy to change that to Conversions, for the best focus, from a business perspective. Which of the “C’s” are most important?

Content. Everything else is secondary.
Conversions. Everything else — except Content — is secondary.

Get Content… and you'll Get Customers.

What about the other three C’s? They’re important too, because even in these times of new technology… people will still buy from those they know. But they’re not primary.   Because you can chat people up and plant links here and there back to your site, doesn’t mean you’ll be successful… even if your Google pagerank increases. Unless you have persuasive content, and continually focus on improving your conversion rates, all else is just busy work with no pay off.

And yet, I often see many requests for SEO work, or social network linking projects with little consideration toward first making your Content compelling, on target, and persuasive — a discipline my colleagues Newt Barrett and Joe Pulizzi write about in a new book about, “Content Marketing.” You should get their book – Get Content, Get Customers.

I see even fewer marketing project proposals written with an eye toward Conversions. Why?

I’ll close with some interesting results from our LinkedIn poll on “How well does your website convert visitors to leads or customers?“  which point to the answer to that question:

Results by Job Function…

This result shows that some creatives actually focus on conversions — those are the ones you want to hire, because they begin with the end in mind (your strategic business goals).  Marketing types, so far in this poll, seem focused on sales (yellow), but not completely clear on the concept of conversions — they do not understand how “optimizing” (blue) landing pages (adding your value proposition, for example), can increase your conversions .

So… how well is your site converting? Stop by at LinkedIn and take the poll… and if you’d like to focus on, and increase your conversions — give me a call.

Contact Us · (360) 566-2451 · Email

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What actions do you want visitors to take at your website?: Seems like a logical enough question for you to ask during the development process, right?  Strange then, that I was at a Search Engine Marketing seminar this past week where three different companies had put their sites up for review, and one could not answer the question, one wasn’t sure what their prospective customers were searching for, and another had a “buy” button that did not lead to a shopping cart.  That’s why I always insist on identifying key landing pages and conversion routes when you first make your site map (a conversion happens when a visitor “converts” to a lead or a customer).  Begin with the end in mind. Always know what your visitors must do at your site so that you will meet your business goals, and precisely where at your site the action should take place, and how you will persuade them to do it.  The rest is optimization — I’ll chat with you more about that in future issues.

Speaking of chat… did you notice that you can contact me quickly via chat in my sidebar at WebFadds.com?  Stumped, need a quick fix or troubleshoot?  Just jump over here and page me via two different chat systems — Google or Skype.  Your choice.

A forms creation plugin I use on most development projects: CForms for creation of professional contact forms on your site, has been updated and revised to work with WordPress 2.7 (you have upgraded to 2.7, haven’t you?  If not — do so soon for the great new streamlined admin. features, for security, and so the latest plugins will function well). 

Let’s have a closer look at some favorite CForms Features:

• Multi-Part / Multi-Page form chains

• Multiple forms on one or many pages / posts

• Tell-A-Friend functionality, see Help documentation

• File attachments / Upload, fully configurable per form

• Multiple upload fields allowed

• Cloning / duplication of forms

• Drag and drop form management

• Timing of forms (start & end dates)

There are other forms plugins for WordPress — around a dozen — but none I have found offer the features and functionality of cForms including the built in CSS styling of forms:

Above, CformsII admin. links appear on your sidebar (lower left), and the “Styling” link gives you a number of preset (but editable) CSS looks for your forms (red arrow).

Best of luck and success online -

Scott

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