What Website Content Will Negate All Your Efforts
In our experience we find that many companies and organizations, perhaps being restricted by their internal policies and regulations, end up re-writing their press releases and major news announcements and posting them as blog posts. And then they are surprised why their efforts do not pay off.
It is counter-productive to post boring and uninteresting content on your company blog. Press releases are important for business analysts, but they have their own place. Your company blog needs to contain interesting and useful information to your existing customers and prospective customers.
The Hidden Harm of Excitement Announcements about Your Own Products
Do not flood your blog section with posts and articles about how excited you and everyone else is about your new awesome product. The truth is that whether your product is awesome or not is yet to be proven to each individual visitor, and people are tired of reading the same "excitement" on company websites announced about their own products.
In other words, ensure that your website has a section where you would provide a lot of free, useful and interesting information. Interesting to your users, not to your lawyers or executive management. The more controversial this information is the better. It is difficult to get around the legal department, but a couple of disclosures can do the trick.
For example, if you are en educational institution, purchase a subscription to a few leading academic journals and publish regular reviews of the most interesting and controversial articles contained in those journals. You are doing reviews, so it is not your opinion and you are not liable for this information. Readers of your website, however, will be following you because they would see value in staying abreast the hottest topics in the latest academic research. Now that's an easy way to become the centre of attention at a cocktail party, eh?
Basic Checklist for Website Marketing
- Your website needs to have a modern look and feel, appropriate for your type of business (e.g. social networking website versus financial planning firm; alternative energy provider versus HR software development company)
- Your website needs to offer a good amount of free and interesting information to its visitors (links to quality websites in your industry, free PDFs, independent reviews, demos, etc.)
- Your website's content needs to be written in a simple language and presented in an easy-to-read format, suitable for visual scanning on all major mobile devices and tablets
- Your website needs to have clear and visible calls to action (buy, order, download, register - links, banners, and buttons)
- Collect your website statistics and analyze it on a regular basis (Google Analytics is a must; remember to set goals). If you don't know what you have, how can you improve?
- Collect emails of your visitors (newsletter signup, registration form, free download, free demo) so that your sales people can follow up on those registrations. Do not violate the "unsubscribe" and "do not call" requirements and do not trick your users.
- Do a thorough competitive analysis in order to see what practices your key competitors employ and what value they offer
- Conduct a thorough keyword research and determine what keywords your audience is typing when looking for products or services of your type
- Optimize your site's design, content, and formatting by incorporating your main keywords in all structural elements (SEO)
- Acquire as many back links as you can from sites and blogs in your industry or from directory sites (SEO)
- Conduct regular email campaigns, targetting content to specific demographic or job profile. Send short visually pleasing emails with a link to your website's page that would contain more informaiton on the topic. Track statistics and follow up with those who clicked on the link. Email campaigns are still the cheapest and yet highly effective marketing tools (if done right).
- Learn about online PR and Social Media Marketing (the leading sites are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus)
- Add social sharing buttons to your website pages and entice your users to click "like" and "plus" and "share" with comments. The comments should ideally contain your most important keywords. Comments are key. Simply clicking the buttons is not enough, or you will need a lot of them to have an impact!
- Participate in your industry's reputable forums and blogs and offer your opinion or professional advice
- Enroll in Google AdWords and advertise aggressively: create a custom landing page for each ad group and track your statistics. Within a few months, you will be able to narrow down the list of keywords you buy to several most profitable ones (and your budget will stabilize).
Affiliate Marketing
For our purpopses, Affiliate Marketing can be segregated into its own domain. The main reason being that B2B companies usually have resellers, not affiliates. But in general, Affiliate Marketing it is one of the most effective social marketing channels for B2C or C2C businesses.
Summary
In summary, you need to have a modern and professional looking website. You need to be constantly creating content: on your website's blog and on the leading social sites, as well as posting comments on forums and blogs with links back to your site where possible - all using your most important keywords. The key is to create meaningful and useful content for your visitors and for the general public. Re-writing your press releases and posting them on all social sites will be counter productive. And you need to get your users to click on the social sharing buttons: "like" and "plus" and "share" your pages with comments containing your most desired keywords. You also need to communicate directly with your audience by sending regular emails with interesting content in order to entice them to register on your website. Last but not least important, you need to allocate a certain budget for keyword buys and paid ads on leading search engines and social sites. And, finally, If you are selling to general consumers, you need to create an affiliate program.
If you feel you are not clear on any of the points or would like assistance at this stage, contact us at (613) 231-6308 or write to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. We offer an initial 30-minute consultation free of charge.
