ActiveRain Tutorials

One of the things that we at 210 Consulting love doing is helping new businesses get their online marketing started in the right direction. Unfortunately unless you are always working in the web development, SEO, and online marketing industry, it can be overwhelming to a new company. Also, since you are just starting your new business, money is usually very tight. So, when you go to purchase business cards, accounting software, or a domain name and they offer to get your site up in running in less than 10 minutes for under $100, you are ecstatic to do so because you can now say you are on the internet.

Usually within 10 minutes of a conversation with a new prospective client I can tell if they have one of these types of sites. Why because they have only 5 pages of content, on a standard layout with zero ability of customization, and the adding of plugins or a blog is impossible! When I ask them why they chose this as their website company, the response every time has been this: "Well, I didn't have a bunch of money to go buy a fancy site and didn't want to put that much money into something. Once this site makes me some money I will upgrade. Besides my new site looks pretty and will be fine for my online marketing strategy."

This is when I finally ask the client, Would you order a steak if you were eating at a superior seafood restaurant? No! Because they aren't known for their great steaks. They are known for serving some of the best fish on the planet. This same principle holds true when you purchase a website from an online postcard company or an accounting software company.

These types of websites are designed to be simple, easy to set up, quick to activate and are inexpensive. But the limitations they possess are huge. My sister-in-law set up a website the other day for her new business and was very excited when she emailed me a link to look at the site. I pulled it up and called her within 2 minutes to tell her to stop wasting her time and that we needed to do something different. We then made a call to one of my connections that was able to create a WordPress Blogsite for her in just under a weeks time, she hired me to do some graphic design work and for under $1,000 we had her an awesome and amazing new site up and running.

So what made her new site that much better & worth the expense? Here are just some of the big differences:

• Unlimited Pages of Content versus only 5- The original page had a total of 5 pages of content available. She had maximized that in her first 10 minutes of setup. She could add more, but there was a fee each time she went to add more pages. On her new Wordpress.org blogsite, she can now add unlimited number of pages with pictures, videos, links and more. The reason the number of pages is so important is that it is a big factor in how search engines rank your content. More pages make you look more like an authority on a subject and thus the page goes up in the searches.
• Power of Plugins- Plugins and widgets are awesome additions to any site. Unfortunately her template 5 page site did not offer any of this. She could not add simple things like a Facebook share button, or a ReTweet button. With a blogsite like WordPress she has the ability to do all these things and much more that not only make it easier for people to share her site with others, but some that also help her with her Search Engine Optimization.
• Online Ordering- The template 5 page site also prohibited the addition of any types of online shopping carts or purchase online buttons. Which as her business continues to grow she wants to start offering these features to her clients so that they can purchase her items online and ship them around the world.
• True Ownership of Her Content Forever- Unlike the other company, the information is now on her own site. She owns it and nobody else. She does not need to worry about if they decide to raise the price up. Or if they go out of business, or if they move servers and crash things for weeks at a time. The other nice thing is that she has a home base to direct customers to that only her content & products. The customers will not be finding her competition there. While online forums are great sources of online business, you do run the risk of your customer that found you there clicking a link to your competitor that is on the same platform and losing the business to someone else. The same holds true for those those that "have their website on their company site" which is nothing more than just a profile there that drives traffic to your organization and not you. All it takes is one accidental click on a company site and once again your co-worker is getting the sale instead of you.

These are just four of the many reasons why I said she needed to change her site before even really starting. Luckily, she listened to me & took my advice. We worked together with a web developer and built her an awesome looking & highly search engine optimized blogsite. She then did a few training sessions with me to develop her targeted audience and keywords to write about. Since then she has written a few blog posts, added some great content to her site & seen an explosion of traffic. Without this, she would not have known the first thing about what to write about or what types of things people are searching for. Remember, she wants to bake cakes, not become a online marketing expert.

So what are the results?

Well, take a look for yourself. This was an email conversation I had with her today:

Hey Jeremy, Just got 3 cake orders today for a word of mouth referral! So far since the website has been up I have actually collected about 450.00! Its quite a bit for cakes and chocolate covered yummies....

My response:

Awesome! So how many cakes have you sold in the first 2 weeks now? 5? 6?

Her Response:

Originally Posted at: 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors

As technology constantly evolves there are always new platforms that arise and newer ways to effectively market your business.  Right now, some of the more popular networks that you are always hearing about are sites like Facebook, & Twitter.  Both of these platforms continue to evolve into more powerful networks and opening more & more opportunities for business.  Our Facebook page is our third largest source of income into our company. 

The one thing that many overlook is the ability for your blogsite to become a hub of business.  Whenever I am doing online consulting with a client,  I make sure to always enforce the importance of a good blogsite that they own as the foundation to their marketing plan.  As I have shared in previous posts, it is imperative to your business to have your own website where your content & brand is strongly displayed and that you can direct all your traffic back to.  Having just a page on a company website, or on a platform other than your own, you always stay at the mercy of someone else. 

Just under two years ago I set up an analytics tracker on one of my blogs to keep track of how many visitors I receive.  Since then I have been amazed by the stats.  There have been over 101,000 page views that have taken place during that time period.  In addition, the blog has seen over 67,000 unique visitors.  That is an average of 4,236 page views per month and almost 2,800 unique visitors per month. 

These numbers are HUGE.  There are multiple reasons why these numbers are as high as they are, but here are the top ways to get traffic to your blog:

1.  Search Engine Optimization- When I was selling real estate & trying to gain the most exposure to my site, the best way to accomplish this was to write for the search engines.  I did research on keywords that were going to be easily attainable for high rankings and traffic and then set out to write & land on the first page for those longtail keywords.  Usually I could take the top spots within only a few blog posts on a term and keep it the top spots fairly easily. Search engines account for over 76% of the traffic that come into my blogsite.  On the other hand, Twitter & Facebook only account for just over 1.5% of the traffic.

2.  Establishing Yourself as an Authority-  With the increasing amount of exposure the internet provides for businesses & their online marketing, there are more & more competitors that try to gain business via the internet.  The one thing that will bring them back to your site & sharing it with their friends is if you give them more creidlble information on the subject they are interested in.  While many fear that if they share too much information, they are giving it away.  Businesses fear that the consumer will not contact them if they share too much. The reality of the situation is that being an authority builds a layer of trust with the client that makes them decide to work with you over your competition.

3.  Sharing Your Experience- Sharing that knowledge gives you an increased level of credibility that will drive that consumer to work with you.  Also, even though you have shared how to accomplish something in detail, consumers will still call on you for your professional experience.  Remember, we are the professionals that work in the industry daily.  That experience is invaluable to most consumers & will bring them in to work with you for that reason alone.

4.  Consistency & Regular Updates- If consumers know that they can find your content on a regular basis, they will come back to read regularly because they are always met with new content.  Writers like Chris Brogan have been able to gain over 38,000 subscribers because he writes daily new unique content.  If you can write at least 3 times a week or more, solid high quality content, you will gain a readership that will return regularly to your page. 

5.  Relate to Consumers- One of the biggest mistakes I see people make in writing blog posts is that they do not try to connect with the consumer.  They write using the terms of their industry or the way they would talk when trying to sell something.  Readers of your blog do not like being sold to!  Instead of trying to sell, try to connect, it will be much more profitable to your blog.  If people feel it is nothing more than one GIANT ad, they will run for another source never to return to your blog. 

If you apply these 5 simple steps into your blog, you will see an increase of traffic and subscribers like you could never imagine.  Trust me when I say, it works!  Once I applied these into my blog I saw my numbers grow exponentially to the place they are now!  If you have any questions or would like some help in achieving these types of numbers for your blog, feel free to contact me directly to schedule some personal coaching.  I'd love the opportunity to assist you in getting your blog the traffic it deserves!