Facebook is a powerful force in the online marketing world, easily second only to Google.

You won’t find a member of Gen Y who isn’t using it and, over the past few years, Facebook’s “mature” user base has grown considerably.

This growth is continuing with the increasing use of the platform by businesses around the world. The general attitude towards FB is becoming “if you are in business, you must be on Facebook.”

But why? If your business is only doing Facebook because “that’s what the others are doing”, then you might just be wasting your time.

But a small business owner doesn’t have any time to waste!

You should only get into Facebook if you have established a real goal for doing so. Your particular business’ goal for entering the world of Facebook could be to:

Humanise your business and brand in the eyes of your customer.

Genuine interactions and their associated connections are integral to any form of Social Media and Facebook is no different. It allows a business to put a human face to a brand that people can actually relate to. Through Facebook, your business can engage in one on one conversation with customers, share tricks and tips about your industry or display your latest wares after a customer has bought them, encouraging others to do the same. These types of “relationships” with your customers, draws them closer to you and much more likely to use your services or purchase your products.

Get people talking about your business.

The average user has, on average, 130 Facebook friends to share with. Imagine what could happen if you could get in front of those 130. If your brand is compatible with these people and engages with them, they might just LIKE you as well!

If only ten from that number decide to LIKE you, pure mathematics shows that the growth of your exposure would be exponential (10 x 10 x 10 x 10…..). There is no other (free) marketing method that can match this. Facebook also has paid options that can expose your brand to even more around the globe.

Directly target your ideal demographic.

Facebook knows everything about you. In your profile, you have entered your location, age, hobbies, even your favourite brands in some cases. A user would be naive to think that Mark Zuckerberg only wanted this information to help you share with your friends. Zuckerberg wants this information so that his company can sell targeted advertising.

As a business with a little advertising cash to spend, this is a golden opportunity. With such detailed information on hand and using Facebook’s paid advertising, a business can market more directly than ever before. For example, if you wanted to target expectants mothers, aged between 20 and 25 who live on the Sunshine Coast, you can. Your business information, once you set up an advertising account with Facebook, will appear on the pages of your exact target audience.

Put your business in front of your customers every day.

Even if you don’t opt to pay for advertising on Facebook, once a (potential) customer has liked you, any posts that you make on your Facebook business page will automatically appear on their feed. Don’t abuse this by posting multiple items a day (which will lose your following) and you have a “friend” for life.

Continue to offer conversation and social interaction, build that relationship up and you have a client who won’t look elsewhere for your goods and services.  A branded Facebook page is a very powerful way to expand your audience and increase the overall awareness of your business online.

I’ve lost count of the number of times that a new business client has contacted me and said “I decided it was about time that I got a website. I mean, everyone else has got one!”

That’s it – that one statement sums up their entire thought process about hiring a professional web designer to produce what could be a very lucrative part of the business’s marketing strategy. That’s generally when I, as the web designer, pull up the reigns and say “Steady on – let’s have a better look at this before we dive on in!”

If you are in the market for a new website, there are a few considerations that you must take in to account before even talking to a web designer.

Be clear on what you want to achieve with your website

Some businesses simply want a web presence so that their physical services can be found (who looks in the Yellow Pages anymore?) Others may look to the web as an additional source of sales through the integration of an online store. Some may just want a place to provide service and support to their customers. Maybe you want to achieve all three? Grab a pen and paper and jot down some notes about the whole purpose for your new website existence. Why are you doing this?

A good website cannot be built overnight

Gone are the days where a website was a simple online version of your company brochure. A fully functional site is comprised of many components, some of which include the visual design, the CMS framework, SEO infrastructure, online commerce tools and backup systems. All of these parts take time to build but most importantly, they take to time to test and fine-tune. If your designer promises this overnight, it’s probably best to look for another designer.

Your Web Designer should be treated like a professional.

Everyone knows someone who has built their own website but just because your nephew built a site for his school assignment, that does not make him a web designer. With all the skills required to make a functional site with the necessary integrated components, a good web designer has honed their skills over many years. You need to trust them to do their best work for your business – and they (generally) will. After all, the future success of their business is dependent on the success of your site – if they do a rubbishy job for you, who else would want to hire them.

A new site never has guaranteed traffic.

As I have mentioned on a number of blog posts, you cannot expect to simply build a site and it will be automatically successful. It won’t appear on Google for a couple of weeks at best so you will need to put in the initial hard yards and get traffic to the site.

You need to fill it with quality content and let those in your industry and target audience be aware of its existence. Even then, it will take time to build a following and you, as the business owner, need to be ready for this lull from the beginning. Plan out what you can do once your web designer hands you the “keys”. If you don’t have the time, elect an employee to do the task of web management, if possible.

Right from the get-go, take the time to plan out where you want to go with your new website and what type of end result will be better for your business. Of course, no one can be expected to have all the answers. Once you have chosen a web designer to build your site, hit them up with the hard questions to help formulate a successful web strategy.

Let’s be clear from the very beginning – using the internet for small business is NOT the guaranteed golden bullet solution to all your problems.

The addition of an online presence will not automatically turn your fortunes around. Running your own website, engaging customers on social media and selling products online takes effort and hard-work – as will all the strategies outlined in this post.

The internet definitely offers you more avenues to market your business than ever before. You can generate followers and advocates that will purchase from (and market) your business 24/7, sometimes without any one-on-one interaction from you.

Below, there are five online strategies outlined that your business can employ to help raise awareness of your business and its offerings and, most importantly, boost that bottom line.

#1. Boost your Facebook Posts

Ever seen the big BOOST button on your Facebook page?

This is the button you will see next to any posts you have made. With the power of a BOOST (and a minimum spend of $7/day), you can actually display your posts in the Facebook feeds of a very specific audience. These people are the prime candidates to which you want to market your products and services.

For example, our local dance shop is selling Fascinators for the upcoming races in town. With Facebook BOOST advertising, they can target:

Women, who like Fashion, and live within 50 km of the town, in the 18-50 age group

With targeted boosts, you get your message sent out exactly where you want it to go – much better than casting a broad net and hoping you catch something.

#2. Build an eCommerce Store

Coupled with the low overheads associated in running an online store alongside your “bricks and mortar” business, there are two major advantages for building your own online store

Firstly, an eCommerce store can sell your products and services 24/7– your customers don’t have to wait for the doors to open or for you to even be available. A good online store is set up to run automatically with payment options and shipping processes integrated.

Secondly – your online store is capable of selling anywhere in the world. Your customer base is dramatically widened beyond the immediate geography of your shopfront. If someone on the other side of Australia (or the world) wants to buy your goods, they can access your online store and make the purchase whenever they want.

#3. Provide 24/7 Customer Service

Good customer service can be time intensive, and sometimes very repetitive with no immediate remuneration for your time.

With a website, you can off-set some of the repetitive parts of your customer service through the use of frequently asked questions (FAQs), video tutorials and downloadable help sheets (Bunnings are the masters of this) to name just a few. 

Setting up your website’s customer service area properly would be time well spent as the support you provide online can save you hours either on the phone or answering emails.

#4. Plan and maintain a Content Marketing strategy

Content marketing is a must have on any small business website. To clarify, Content marketing is a strategic approach focused on creating and producing valuable, relevant, and consistent content that attracts and retains your target audience. It is also a key element of the Google search algorithm, helping to determine your website’s placement in search results.

How do you create an effective Content Management Strategy?

Decide on your content mediums according to your strengths and your target audience (Blog, videos, podcasts, newsletters….)

Generate a plan in calendar format which includes the dates, topics and mediums for the creation of your content. This includes social media updates and blog posts.

Stick to the plan – consistency is the key to success!

Monitor your traffic to gauge the success of each item. This will give you valuable information in relation to what is working and what isn’t.

#5. Give Email Marketing a try

If you are thinking of employing an email marketing approach to broadcast your small business, you can’t look past MailChimp. It has almost everything built-in to help you create great looking emails, distribute them and, most importantly, keep you within the law regarding SPAM.

Note: You cannot send emails from a business in Australia to anyone you like. You must have the recipient’s permission or an existing customer relationship with that person.  For more information, take a look at the Spam Act 2003.

Using MailChimp (and common sense), you can create an email campaign that drives business to your website and your physical store:

Use a pop-up plugin on your website to acquire email addresses from your site visitors. Some of these can be set up to send collected addresses directly to MailChimp.

Create list of your existing customer’s emails. Excel is a good way to do this as you can import spreadsheets to MailChimp.

Using one of the many templates, create your first email newsletter. Re-purpose some of the content that you have created for your site – blog entries are perfect for this!

MailChimp has a built-in unsubscribe option. Recipients of the email simply have click Unsubscribe in the footer of the email and MailChimp will automatically remove them from the list, satisfying another condition of the Spam Act.

Conclusion

The real secret to a successful and productive online presence for your small business is summed in one word – consistency. Your website cannot be a stagnant brochure for your business, it needs to be dynamic, helpful and must reinforce your position as an expert in your field with quality service and/or products. Make an effort to set aside 15 minutes a day and develop each of the strategies into a workable system for you – the rewards for your business will become clear in no time at all.

Feeling a little overwhelmed? If your business needs help developing any of the strategies above, please get in touch with Tropical Coast Web Design – we love to help small business!

“The Compound Effect” by Darren Hardy takes a look at the way that small actions influence our lives and long-term goals every day.

The advice in this book is mostly common-sense practice that people simply ignore in their day to day lives. It does contain a lot of “aha” moments that will influence the way you operate and interact with people. The author ties each “lesson” in with powerful real world examples from his own experience as a business coach and Editor of Success Magazine.

Here’s five take away lessons that I picked up reading “The Compound Effect”:

The Compound Effect

Each day, we make thousands of big and small decisions. Every one of these decisions “compounds” with other decisions to determine whether we achieve the goals we set for ourselves. Some decisions set us on a path to a positive outcome, others to a negative outcome. This is “The Compound Effect” in action and, whether you like it or not, it’s happening every day. We’re powerless to stop it – it’s part of life.

Our actual power lies in the fact that we can choose to make the right choices that will compound to achieve desired goals we seek. This is where the book steps in to help.

Be the Tortoise

The book makes it very clear that effective change does not happen overnight. Making a “gung-ho” decision and jumping in all guns blazing to achieve your goals may appear to work in the short term. In the long run though, that effort could simply burn out your enthusiasm and lead you right back to square one. A good example is a diet blitz – cutting out all the yummy things in your diet may appear to be a good idea at first but is it sustainable?

To succeed, be the tortoise and make slow, sustainable changes to your life that you can keep steadfast to. The results will not be visible overnight but six months down the track, you will have gained a steady momentum and you’ll definitely see the benefits.

Small Changes can make a BIG Difference

An analogy is given in the book of a plane flying east from Los Angeles. Just a slight 1 ½ degree change in the plane’s direction results in a massive difference in its final destination (over 150kms). This is comparable with the small choices we make in life – small choices we make over time will either lead us to achieve our desired goals or, if we make the wrong choices, somewhere totally different.

Track Everything

To keep yourself on the right path, the book suggests tracking everything you do to achieve your desired goals. If you want to lose weight, keep a diet and exercise diary. If you want to grow your business, write down the steps that are being implemented to achieve that goal.

Tracking keeps us accountable to ourselves – it becomes a habit to record what you are doing and, if you miss a day, you will feel that you didn’t really commit on that day. This feeling alone will drive you in future to keep your tracking (and desired goal) in mind.

Make the Change a Habit

The overall message of “The Compound Effect” (for me anyway) is to make each step towards your ultimate goal part of your daily routine. Add the changes in such a way that you can commit to them every single day without fail.

Once the changes are a consistent habit, the desired goals will become part of your reality and they won’t disappear overnight like when a “quick fix” fails to deliver long term results.

I must confess that I have a pretty awesome list of clients.

We work well together and always create functional sites that look good and grow business. Sometimes however, there can be issues that disrupt that client relationship and we both need to work a little harder to see the job through to the end.

One of the main problems in the development of a site can be the timeline from when a client accepts the quote to the actual upload of the final website. Invariably, as with any project, there can be issues that can slow down the entire process and hold things up. And if you are “chomping at the bit” to get that site online, it can sometimes feel like your designer is dragging their feet. But it often comes down to issues that are out of their control.

To give potential site owners an idea of the problems that can pop up from time to time, let’s take a look at some of the “little” issues that can hold up the release of a website.

Domain Name Issues

If you have already purchased a domain name and are transferring it over to the technical control of your designer, there are a number of steps to be followed, all of which can hold things up. Some of these can take up to 48 hours to take effect even after they have been implemented.

Even once the required changes to the settings behind a domain name, it can still take another couple of days for those changes to “bounce” around the web and become official.

ARRRGGHHHH for all parties involved – drives me nuts sometimes!

Server Hold-ups

I won’t list company names in this section but if you were using my services, it would be my job as your developer to steer you right away from some of the largest web server providers in Australia. From past experience, I can guarantee that the biggest holdups in site development can be caused by these providers.

Some are so fernickety about their servers that, even after a customer has purchased server space; they cannot make any changes online with submitting a customer service ticket. These often take up to a week to get any action taken and some even demand that the customer must give a reason for the change (What? – it’s my server space – I have paid for it!!!)

If some of these guys need to be contact via phone, you will always be routed through the Philippines or India. Not a great situation when you need something done straight away.

Google

Once a site is complete, some customers hold the false notion that it will automatically appear on Google. Unfortunately, sites need to be submitted / indexed by Google before they will appear on the search results. Although there are tricks to expedite this delay (I have a nifty trick…) – in the end, it is completely out of your developer’s hands and into the realm of the Google Gods….

On-Site Issues

Another hold-up in the completion of a new site is the creation of the content for the site. This generally will not be done by your web developer and some customers have not read the fine print to find this out.

If you don’t want to write your content or you feel that you can’t produce the quality you want, get in a touch with a copywriter. They can take dot points for each page and create fully written paragraphs for placement on your site.

Despite the potential for the issues above to arise, the road to a website is more often than not smooth sailing if you have the right web developer “on the job.” They will be able to foresee the problems above and build waiting time for various parts of the process into the overall plan.

How do you find this developer I hear you ask? Quite simple really, just ask around. Find some sites in your local area that have been well designed and contact those business owners for the details. You can check client testimonials on various developers’ sites too but take these with a grain of salt, no developer will ever post negative comments on their own services for the general public to see.

If you have any questions about the issues above or you want to talk to someone who navigates these murky waters on a regular basis, give the team at Tropical Coast Web Design a call on 0488 406 050 – we’d be glad to help.

Twitter, the 140-word social media platform, has been with us since 2006 and one could be excused for thinking that the #hashtag has been with us just as long.

However, the first tweets that featured a #hashtag actually appeared a year later when user Chris Messina decided to create a method of grouping like-minded tweets into the same clusters.

Nowadays, the #hashtag is an integral part of Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and even Facebook. It can be used as a powerful tool for online marketing and any business owner who wants to drive their social media marketing on to success need to master their usage.

Choosing the right #hashtag to engage with your target audience needs some thought and practice. They are remarkably similar to the keywords that are used in conjunction with search engines to find a website, if the wrong words are chosen then the results won’t point towards your business, and you risk losing potential clients.

Thankfully, it is not too hard to select #hashtags that will work for you. Here’s some simple items to consider when using #hashtags on your Social Media marketing:

• Ensure that the #hashtag is relevant to the topic. Don’t be obtuse.
• Take a look around the web and use #hashtags that are already in circulation. This doesn’t mean that you can’t create your own but commonly used tags have already got a “readership.”
• When creating unique #hashtags, use words that will directly link back to your business. For example, if I were tagging marketing memes, I could start a “trend” with #troppossmarketingmemes. Watch that you don’t be too broad, as tags can be hijacked, leading to detrimental effects for your business.

The perfect mix for #hashtags in any single social media item was once between one and two. Anymore and there was a drop in engagement.

In 2022 however, more hashtags equal better results. There is actually no defined “correct” number of hashtags for an Instagram post however the social media gurus at HootSuite* says that “about 11 hashtags is a good number to start with”.

* HootSuite has written an excellent guide to using hashtags with Instagram. Click here to visit their site and access this amazing resource for your social media.

The #hashtag can be a powerful tool when used correctly and smart companies like Black Milk Clothing have built themselves successfully through smart Social Media marketing. There is no reason other businesses can’t follow in their footsteps. Integrate a Social Media plan featuring the use of clever #hashtags with your regular business website and help your online traffic grow.

While Social Media for small business continues to be a rave topic in marketing forums around the world, statistics indicate that, although annoying to some, email marketing is still one of the most powerful tools that a business can use to engage with its customers.

Your Inbox is irrevocable proof of this – how many items of marketing did you receive this morning?

Although some will never be opened, the humble email can still be an effective way of reaching out to your customers. But, as with anything, there is a right way and a wrong way. Here’s our four top tips to help you create an effective (and legal*) email marketing strategy for your business:

Step 1: Grow your database

Before you start any email marketing campaign, you need legitimate* emails in your database to use. Gathering these addresses is quite easy if you have an established website. You can use the popular method of the pop-up window or simply have a newsletter subscription somewhere on your home page. MailChimp has plugins that work directly through the WordPress framework and integrate with their newsletter systems, saving the hassle of collecting email addresses and adding them manually to your campaigns.

Whatever method you use, remember to always declare why you are gathering the addresses and what can be expected in return (see value point below).

Step 2: Remember the Mobile Users

Due to the unstoppable growth of smart phones, more emails than ever before are being viewed on a mobile device. In fact, up to 75% of email opens* could be via mobile depending on your industry. To cater for this audience, ensure that your emails are mobile optimised – easy to read on a small screen, low on data usage and concise in their information.

* http://www.emailmonday.com/mobile-email-usage-statistics

Step 3: Be aware of the SPAM Act 2003

To keep your email marketing within the lines of the law, you must ensure that any emails you send comply with three main points – Consent, Identity and Unsubscribe.

Consent – The receiver of your emails must be made fully aware at the time they subscribe exactly what they will be receiving in return. Consent can also be in the form of an existing relationship with the receiver i.e., they are already a customer.

Identity – Marketing emails must identify who is sending the emails and their contact information.

Unsubscribe – Each email must include an Unsubscribe option so that consent can be retracted at any time.

Learn more: http://www.acma.gov.au/Industry/Marketers/Anti-Spam

Step 4: Offer Value

The secret behind any email campaign that wants to grow and be effective to offer subscribers VALUE in what they receive. Value can come in multitude of forms. You can reply with a free eBook, a newsletter filled with tricks and tips or keep them up to date with the latest industry news. If you are advertising products or services, butter up the receiving party with a discount voucher for their next purchase.

Everyone loves getting something for free and your subscribers are more likely to stick around.

Remember, what may work for one business may not necessarily work for yours. As with any marketing, try out all your ideas but be sure to MEASURE the response. Don’t spend hours of your precious small business time barking up the wrong tree only to find out that you aren’t getting a decent return from your efforts.

Make a note of what works and what doesn’t, fine-tuning along the way. This approach will lead to an effective email strategy that will grow your business without eating away at your marketing budget or your valuable time.

If your site has been built on the WordPress framework, you are in good company.

With a calculated 37% of all websites built using this user-friendly CMS, WordPress is easily miles ahead of its competition. However, with this popularity comes an inherit danger – it is a regular target for hackers.

WordPress was born from an open-source project and remains free to everyone who wants to create a website. Open-source means that the code that makes the entire system work is available on the internet with no restrictions. This factor is important in the whole WordPress “ecosystem” as it allows developers and coders to create the myriad of plugins and themes that make the CMS what is it.

Unfortunately, hackers can also look at the code and discover its weak spots, making it vulnerable to spamming and security breaches. For the small-time user, this may never be a problem that presents itself. But if your site attracts the unwanted attention of a hacker, they can cause all kinds of problems for your small business website and its visitors.

To protect your site (big or small), there are some quite simple measures that you can employ without the need for any programming knowledge (or outside help):

1. Update the WordPress Core.

To do this, access the Dashboard of your site. If a new (major) version of WordPress has been released, this information will be displayed on the main screen of the Dashboard with an UPDATE link. With the newer versions of WordPress, small incremental updates to are performed automatically.

2. Update the plugins that you are using with your site.

In the main menu of the Dashboard, under the Home button, an Updates options will appear when updates for your plugins are available. Click on it to access the Updates page and select the updates that you want to apply. At the same time, visit the plugins page of the Dashboard and delete any plugins that you aren’t using. Even though they aren’t being use, these deactivated plugins can still provide backdoor access to your system.

3. Use a secure password.

A brute force attack, where the login for a site is attacked with a systematic password hack, is hard to protect against but with a secure password (one that used no familiar words and a mix of symbols, letters, numbers), the hacker will have to work harder to penetrate your system. Also, try to limit the number of users that have access. If someone doesn’t need access and will not be updating the site, don’t give them access.

4. Install the WordFence plugin.

This free plugin has so many features that I can’t list them all here. For an extremely basic explanation, WordFence provides high-quality firewall and malware protection for your WordPress website, and you should have it on your site. Setting this plugin up puts into place a huge roadblock to anyone or anything wanting to cause harm to your site. Get it here: https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordfence/

All the above options are accessible through the Dashboard of your WordPress site but only if you have administrator access. If you log into your site and cannot see or perform the tasks listed, contact your website developer, and request an upgrade of your user access.

There is nothing worse than trying to regain control of a severely hacked website however, if it does happen to you and the above steps do not reverse the damage to a perfect state, it is not the end of the world. The server on which your site resides should be* backed up on a regular basis and can be restored by your server provider* to a previous day/week for a small charge.

As always, however, a pinch of prevention is worth a full pound of cure.

• If your web server provider does not backup at least three times a week, then it is imperative that you find a new provider. Security of your website is paramount.
• A server provider such as Digital Pacific, NetRegistry, WebCentral, etc. provides the space where your website lives. It is generally different from your Internet Service Provider (ISP) that connects your business to the internet.

Unsure about how to implement the security measures above, get in touch with Tropical Coast Web Design. We can undertake a no-obligation security audit of your site and let you know how we can help. 

It’s important that all website owners are aware that the boffins at Google are always changing and upgrading what is known as the “search algorithm”.

They cannot always be relied upon to keep your website exactly where you have worked so hard to position it. And when these changes are updated to the web, the new algorithm can have a drastic effect on search rankings for some sites. Over the past couple of years, the “Panda” and “Penguin” updates have sent thousands of websites crashing down the rankings and some of these were well-built sites with relevant content and solid SEO (search engine optimisation) behind them.

What does that information mean for you – the site owner?

It means do not rely purely on Google for the marketing and distribution of your website and brand. There are a variety of methods to garner support and clientele for your site without even using the “Gods of Google.”

To get your site started on the “google-less” path, here are some quite simple methods that can be quickly and easily used for your website:-

1. Traffic From YouTube

This may not work for everyone however if you have a product that lends itself to video (reviews, demonstrations, etc), get out your i-phone, create a couple of videos and get yourself a YouTube channel today. With the right type of engaging video, this is a terrific way to drive traffic to your website.

Example: BlendTec – http://www.youtube.com/user/Blendtec

2. Traffic From an Email List

Easy step-by-step process for this one:-

• Create an e-book about a topic that you and your target audience are enthusiastic about. For me, this would be about “Website Marketing.”
• Add a form to your website that allows people to receive / download your e-book in exchange for an email address. You must indicate what will be received via this email address i.e., monthly newsletters, sales offers, updates, etc.
• Create a newsletter (or similar) and keep your customers posted on new developments on your site, prompting them to return to the website to check them out.

You’ll need to be careful with this – unsolicited emails can land you in serious spam trouble however if you have a “record of consent” and a clearly marked unsubscribe button, you should have no issues. Google “Spam Laws” for more information.

3. Traffic from Facebook

As regular followers of my blogs know, I believe that Facebook, when used effectively, can be a terrific way to get traffic across to your website. Content for Facebook needs to be interesting, valid, and worthwhile to your visitors. Find a balance of these and you will see immediate benefits.

4. Traffic From Forum Posts

If you maintain an active participant on a relevant forum, this can be one of the most successful methods of getting traffic to your site. Traffic from your forum posts will be already attuned to your ways of thinking and keen to do business with you. Given the right impression, you will be already seen as a “Key Person of Influence” giving you great credence among your target audience.

Key to this strategy – you must find a forum that your clients are accessing for information or help. For example, Whirlpool would be great for anyone in the telecommunications industry as many people seek help here for a range of technological issues. You can sign up as an expert and offer help to the hundreds of “lost souls” seeking your assistance. Be careful though, Whirlpool and other forums are not keen on the hard-sell so leave the marketing hat at the door and watch people follow you anyway!

5. Traffic from Blog Commenting

Similar to leaving posts on a forum, you can also gain traffic from your comments on other industry/business blogs. Make sure that your comments add to the discussion and are not made purely to draw attention or to inflame a situation. Always use courteous and polite language – remember that if someone tries to incite a derogatory comment from you, you always have the options of responding or leaving.

These are just a few of the ways that you, as a site owner, can drive potential customers to your website without any input from Google searches. Please don’t see this as a complete replacement to optimising your site for Google, which would be madness, however as a site owner, it is particularly important to cover all the bases when it comes to getting visitors to your website.

As a web developer, I use technical terms every day in my business that are now second nature to me.

Once I have collaborated with a client for a few months, I notice that some of those words become second nature to them as well. However, in the initial period of contact, some website newbies (a newcomer inexperienced in a particular activity) are completely bamboozled by the language of the internet and I find myself explaining what those words actually mean.

In this week’s blog,  I will try to explain some essential terms that every website owner needs to know in order to effectively market their sites.

What is a CMS?

If you have a website that you can log into and update yourself, chances are that you have a CMS enabled website. CMS stands for Content Management System. This is a piece of software installed on a web server that allows quick and easy changes to the site without the need to understand complicated code.

My CMS of choice is WordPress, and it is estimated the 22% of all new websites are created with a WordPress background. My clients can create new pages, add content, insert images, and change the navigation menus without any more knowledge than you need to create a Word document. Some of the buttons are even the same.

From a marketing viewpoint, a CMS allows the site owner to keep the content fresh (not stale – see the next question) and, if you are using WordPress, you can optimise each page for search engines as you create. Fresh content means return visitors and more interest from the search engines (such as Google –they love it!)

What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. This is quite complex field if you really want to delve into it. In general terms, it refers the way you set up your website in order for search engines such as Google and Bing to catalogue and prioritize it for results when people come looking via their portals.

There is a whole market out there of SEO specialists whose primary job is to look at a client’s website and optimise it. It can be quite expensive depending on the level you want to delve to but fortunately there a number of things that you as the website owner can do yourself.

Marketing View on SEO – It is obviously important to get your site ranked highly in Google so here are a few tips that you can try:

• If you are running WordPress as your CMS (all my CMS clients are), install the plug-in “All in One SEO.” This allows you to individually optimise each page on your site.
• Look at your competitor’s sites if they are higher ranked in Google. Look for keywords that you should be using on your site and scatter throughout your text (sensibly of course so that everything still is grammatically correct).
• Keep your content fresh (have I mentioned that before?)

What is Social Media?

You might be surprised but when I mention the term “social media” to some of my clients, they don’t know what I am talking about. However, if I use the words Facebook and Twitter, they automatically understand me. Social Media is defined in Wikipedia as “the means of interactions among people in which they create, share, and exchange information and ideas in virtual communities.”

Put simply Social Media is a form of online interaction between people.

From a marketer’s viewpoint, Social Media is essential to any business that wants to grow. It allows interaction between the business and its clients including the passing of information, problem solving, product testing and all varieties of community-based communication. It has the ability to change a client from a customer to a fan. Social Media can also be a means of driving visitors to your official website through the release of various information.

What are Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a service from Google that automatically generates detailed stats about a particular website’s traffic. It measures conversions / sales via that site so that owners can determine the success of various campaigns that are running.

Just like SEO, Google Analytics has a variety of levels depending on how far you wish to “dive” into it. At its most basic level, marketers can use it to measure page visits and geographical location of visitors. Individual pages can also be analysed to check the effectiveness of the page and how long a visitor spends looking at content. Whilst not directly telling you how to fix the problem, Google Analytics can tell you where the problems lie.

Still need help cutting through the jargon? Give me a call on 0488 406 050 and we can have a chat about how these strange terms (and working with us) can get your business some well deserved attention on the internet.