Posts Tagged ‘google’

One important facet of having a business presence online is accessibility. You want to make it easy for people to reach out to you. You can attract all of the eyeballs you want to your site, but if you aren’t accessible, you won’t be able to build any relationships. If you are going to practice conversation marketing, you need to make it possible for others to start the conversation with you. Here are 10 tips on how to be more accessible online.

1. Put contact info everywhere

Wonder why people never call? Maybe its because they don’t know your number. Your primary contact info should be everywhere, including your web site, business cards, and all of your marketing material. Make it easy for people to find your number, email, or any other means of contacting you.

2. Set up a Twitter account

Twitter is tops for ease of access when it comes to the social networks. Having a Twitter account and actively using it opens up a new channel of communication.

3. Set up some chat accounts

People actively use chat software, such as AIM, Google Chat, and Skype. You don’t have to use all of them, but you should use some. There are even chat clients that support multiple chat platforms.

Take this a step further by incorporating chat into your web site. Google Chat has a function to make this easy. It is often easier for people to reach out to you via live chat than to pick up the phone.

4. Have easy to find and use contact forms

Have a contact form on your web site. It is up to you what information to ask for, but if you just want a person to reach out to you, make it simple. Ask for name and email, along with their question.

5. Get active on Facebook

Facebook is here to stay, obviously. Chances are, you probably already have a lot of customers actively using Facebook. So it makes sense to start an account for your business. Alternatively, you can start a fan page for your business using your personal account.

Provide links on your site to friend you on Facebook. Once you get established there, many of your Facebooking customers and prospects will reach out to you there.

6. Allow comments on your blog

If you write a blog, allow for comments. Don’t worry about spam or negative stuff, you can moderate your comments to keep that stuff out. By having comments, you are opening up another means of communication. It is a good idea to respond to the comments on your blog as well as to send an email response to the commentator. Its a great way to start a conversation.

7. Get a toll free number

Make it as easy as possible for people to call you. If you don’t have a toll free number, consider using an online service such as Ring Central to get one. People will be more likely to call if its free.

8. Make signing up for your newsletter easy and obvious

Your newsletter is a primary means of regular communication from you to your customer. Sometimes, the only way  a person will reach out to you is to sign up for it. So make it easy and painless. Include big links to it on your site, and only ask for name and email when a person first signs up.

9. Host webinars and calls

A great way to be accessible is by putting yourself out there. Hosting a webinar or live call on a regular basis allows people to interact with you on a group level with the opportunity to make it more personal by them asking a question. This is easier for some people than picking up the phone and asking questions directly. With a webinar, they have a chance to just listen in. Its up to you to excite them enough to move that to the next level of interaction.

10. Engage in plenty of conversations

A hermit is not very accessible. Instead, be the life of the party. Be everywhere. If you are active on social networks, a regular blog commentator, a blogger yourself, you will have more face time and make it easier for people to discover you and engage you in conversation. Just by being there, you are naturally much more accessible.

photo credit: Mr. Read

Recommended Reading

I am constantly on the prowl for good business books. Right now, I am reading Crush It, by Gary Vaynerchuk. I love Gary’s take on passion and business. This book will give you a kick in the butt to get up and get moving as you pursue your passions and your business.

If you are interested in Crush It, you can get it through Amazon by clicking here or by visiting your local bookstore.

Have a Small Business Question? Ask me and I will answer it here – email me with your question now.

Get Unique Content Weekly with The All Biz Answers Insider Newsletter

–

Bradford Shimp is the publisher of All Biz Answers. He is also the co-creator of Idea Anglers, a place to see your ideas come to life through collaboration. Follow on Twitter @bradfordshimp. Let Bradford help you with your business – visit BroadRiverCreative.com

Twitter is good for marketing. Yes, its a great place to connect and build followers and get your message out. But its great in another way to. It forces you to boil your message down into short sentences. On Twitter, you have to tell you story quickly, succinctly, and without a lot of fluff.

This is important. The world’s attention span is shrinking, at least when it comes to advertising. You need to know what message you want to get across and be able to do it simply. If you can, people will still listen. If not, they will just be annoyed by your marketing efforts.

Can I Have Your Attention for a Few Milliseconds?

Everyone is saying that the human attention span is shrinking. People have less time and just won’t give you the time you need to make your sales/marketing pitch. Well, we all actually have the same amount of time.

The thing is, from a marketing standpoint, you just can’t get as far with traditional methods. Thus, marketers blame people for short attention spans. But from the people side of things, we are actually just fine, thank you very much. People are still capable of giving attention to things that they care about. There are just more sophisticated ways of connecting with what we care about, so we are able to focus on them more and tune the rest out. Yes, this does have some negative consequences, especially if we become insular and don’t listen to other points of view. But from an advertising standpoint, who needs it?

Well, we are still influenced by marketing, just in different ways. One of the big shifts is that people will not spend a whole lot of time considering an option before moving on. When a Google search brings back thousands of sites, people will scroll through several quickly until finding one that appeals to them. The ones that catch the most attention are able communicate their message quickly, both visually and with its content.

Your job as a small business owner is simple. Keep things simple. The more focused and clear your message is, the better. If you can’t put your entire marketing message in one simple 140 characters or less post on Twitter, you have too much fluff.

Master the format of short and quick, and you have a much better chance of someone hearing out the rest of your story. Make your introduction your message, and elaborate if you need to. Its even better if you can boil down your message so that it needs no elaboration.

Here’s a hint. Every time you look at your marketing message, don’t think of what you can add to it, but rather what you can cut out of it.

Refine Your Message to its Core Truth

You probably know what an elevator pitch is. Its your sales pitch boiled down into a very short message. You should be able to be compelling in a very short time window, say the length of an elevator ride.

The elevator pitch isn’t just for the go-getter salesman and the super busy CEO. Normal people are just as busy and guard their time just as closely as any CEO.

Think of it this way. If you want to show respect, package your message in such a way that it can be consumed quickly by your target audience. Chances are, it will be consumed while the prospect is in the middle of something else. If its just fluff, it will be skipped. If its compelling, you have a chance to grab the attention of that prospect for a few more seconds.

Here is where you marketing message needs to fit. It needs to fit in a voice mail. It needs to fit in a Google text ad. It needs to fit in a Twitter update. It needs to fit on a business card.

Some businesses hold to the idea that they can just sit down with someone and then they can sell them. Yes, but its getting harder and harder to get people to sit down with you. If you need a lot of time to sell a prospect, you could be in trouble. My suggestion would be to switch to educational marketing. Even then, you need to bait the hook and get people interested in listening to you with short messages.

Here’s a hint. To refine your marketing message, write it up. Take as many words as you think you need. Now, delete all but the most important words. Start by cutting out your ifs, ands, and buts. Then move to your fluffy adjectives and verbs. Cut down to the core words, and then try to craft them into one or two sentences.

Say More, Annoy Less

The holy grail of marketing, in my book anyway, is to be able to talk openly with prospects without them being annoyed by you. There are a lot of aspects to this, like getting permission and providing value. One of the biggest parts is saying more when you do communicate.

Wait, didn’t I just tell you to cut down your marketing message to its barest essentials? Yes, that was me. I don’t want you to say more as in more words. I want you to say more as in make every single word count.

If you can have people hanging on every word you write or say, you won’t be thought of as annoying. This means limiting your sales pitches and making them count when you do make them.

If your words matter to the people that hear them, you are going to win. If they are seen as annoying dribble, you are going to lose.

You decide what you want to do. Either take the time to craft a concise and powerful marketing message, and build an information and education campaign around it, or don’t. As the options for people continue to increase, they will be tuning more and more noise out. Don’t be the noise. Instead, be the trusted insider. And when you are, never waste people’s time with excess. Get to the point, and stay there.

Here’s a hint. Disguise your marketing message as a public service announcement. You can inform and sell at the same time. If people digest your marketing message as information, they are more likely to be predisposed to buy.

So, I’ve just taken over a thousand words to tell you to keep it short. See, its a process to learn to be brief and get to the point. You won’t be able to do it right away, but with time and practice, you will be an expert at marketing zingers that speak volumes. Good luck!

Recommended Reading

I am constantly on the prowl for good business books. Right now, I am reading Crush It, by Gary Vaynerchuk. I love Gary’s take on passion and business. This book will give you a kick in the butt to get up and get moving as you pursue your passions and your business.

If you are interested in Crush It, you can get it through Amazon by clicking here or by visiting your local bookstore.

Have a Small Business Question? Ask me and I will answer it here – email me with your question now.

Get Unique Content Weekly with The All Biz Answers Insider Newsletter

–

Bradford Shimp is the publisher of All Biz Answers. He is also the co-creator of Idea Anglers, a place to see your ideas come to life through collaboration. Follow on Twitter @bradfordshimp. Let Bradford help you with your business – visit BroadRiverCreative.com

Having an email newsletter is a very good idea. It is a way to stay in conversation with customers and prospects very inexpensively. You can use it to build trust over time, educate and inform, and turn leads into customers. That being said, there are a few rules you need to follow.

Keep Selling to a Minimum

If you have a goal to connect with customers and prospects and to build trust through conversation, you need to keep your sales pitches to a minimum in your newsletter. There are exceptions to this. You could offer a newsletter that was all discounts and special offers, all the time. If people like your product, they will like that.

For the most part though, if you have a traditional small business, you only have a few things to sell and/or are not discounting constantly. What you need to focus on with your newsletter is your knowledge and expertise. If your customers buy web site design from you, you should seek to educate them in that arena. For instance, you might include an article about how they can get listed on Google Local for free.

The goal is to provide a newsletter that your ideal customer base will want to read, on a regular basis. You may not be able to write one that every single customer will look forward to, but you can do one that your most active and loyal customers will appreciate.

Stay Regular

For a newsletter to work, it has to be sent out on a regular basis. Just like with marketing in general, you need to stay in front of your prospects. The best scenario is to send a newsletter out once a week.

You can come up with enough interesting content to do a weekly newsletter. You just need to commit to it. Also, your customers will not be annoyed with a weekly newsletter, as long as you are providing good content.

If you are communicating on a regular basis via your newsletter, you are building a real relationship with your prospects. People who read your newsletter will be informed, be insiders, and will help spread the word and be more inclined to buy when you need them to.

If you just send a newsletter irregularly, with a press release or special offer, people will not be in the habit of reading it or trusting it. It will largely be a waste of time.

Always Get Permission and Maintain Trust

If you want your newsletter to be successful, you absolutely must make it permission based. Sure, it is fine to email your customer base from time to time without getting permission. But that is really no different than sending postcards. With a newsletter, you want people to buy in to the concept of it.

Send out regular invitations to join the newsletter to your customer base, but don’t just start sending them the newsletter until they sign up for it. There are lots of reasons for this. You don’t want to be seen as a spammer, for one. But also, you really want to qualify your readership. Those that take the time to sign up for the newsletter are far likelier to read it and to engage in a deeper conversation with your company.

Once you get permission, you need to maintain the trust. Never sell your newsletter list. Its okay to make offers from other companies, ie. affiliates, but only if you know and trust the product. Trust is the key to doing business. The newsletter is a goldmine for creating and building trust, because it allows you to stay in regular conversation with your prospects and customers. So honor that trust. Give value, and don’t be selfish with your newsletter.

If you follow these three rules, you will be on your way to developing a great newsletter. Now, you just need to work on creating the right content.

Have a Small Business Question? Ask me and I will answer it here – email me with your question now.

Get Unique Content Weekly with The Letter

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Bradford Shimp is the publisher of All Biz Answers. He is also the co-creator of Idea Anglers, a place to see your ideas come to life through collaboration. Follow on Twitter @bradfordshimp. Let Bradford help you with your business – visit BroadRiverCreative.com

How do you keep up with your favorite blogs? Do you try to visit each one regular, looking for new content that will interest you? You may want to consider putting all of your favorite blogs in one place so that you can scroll through articles, finding the best ones to read in your limited amount of time.

RSS, which stands for Real Simple Syndication, is what makes it possible to grab articles from your favorite blogs and read them all together in one place. You need two things to make this work. First, you need choose a feed aggregation tool, or basically a reader that will pull the different RSS feeds to one location. Secondly, you need to know how to access the RSS feeds of your favorite blogs.

Choose a RSS Feed Reader

Your RSS Feed Reader is a web service where you will have access to all of the articles from the blogs you want to follow. There are many options here. The one I like and use is Google Reader. Google Reader makes it very easy to grab feeds and organize them into different folders, and also to browse through articles by title or by blog.

Grab the RSS Feeds

There are several ways to get a blog’s RSS feeds. Many blogs make it easy by adding a button that you can click. An RSS feed button is usually orange with 3 diagonal slashes.

If you click on an RSS feed button, one of two things will happen. You will either be taken to a page which asks you to choose which RSS feeder you use, or you will be taken to a page with a lot of funny text. In the first scenario, you will only need to select your RSS reader of choice and you will automatically be taken there and will be able to add the feed to your reader. In the second scenario, you need to copy the web site address that appears in the search bar. You will then need to go to your reader and manually set up a new feed, pasting the address in where appropriate.

The other way to add a feed is right from your reader. With Google Reader, you can click to add a new subscription. That is where you can paste the web site address from the previous scenario, but you can also just type in the web site address for the blog. If it is RSS capable, Google Reader can automatically find the feed and set it up in your reader.

The Benefits of RSS

Having all of your favorite blogs in one place is nice. It is kind of like having a newspaper, but customized for your favorite content. With RSS, you can stay on top of new content at your favorite blogs. It is easy to skim past articles that don’t interest you to find the gems that you want to read.

Of course, you will still want to visit the actual blog from time to time, to leave a comment or to read full articles. You can do this easily from your reader by clicking a link. A RSS reader makes interacting with and reading blogs simple. If you are reading to educate yourself, it makes sense to pull content from a lot of blogs into a reader and then focus on the posts that are pertinent to you.

If you don’t already take advantage of RSS and a feed reader, try it out today.

Have a Small Business Question? Ask me and I will answer it here – email me with your question now.

Get Unique Content Weekly with The Letter

–

Bradford Shimp is the publisher of All Biz Answers. He is also the co-creator of Idea Anglers, a place to see your ideas come to life through collaboration. Follow on Twitter @bradfordshimp. Let Bradford help you with your business – visit BroadRiverCreative.com