Sensible Web Marketing Tips from an Icon

Francine Hardaway is an icon in the Arizona technology and business community (and elsewhere). Her vast experience and willingness to share it have earned her a great degree of respect. Below is a copy of her recent post to the AZIPA message board. The advice may seem remedial to SEO pros, but the content is rock solid. Please enjoy and implement "7 Simple Ways to Get Search Engines to See Your Site"

(Geeks will already know this) You can't just make a web site anymore and hope people will come. You can't even blog anymore and hope people will come, although good blogging software like Wordpress has built-in SEO (search engine optimization).

You have to do something to get your content out to where the people are. Even large corporations are often disappointed by the amount of traffic to their corporate sites -- people just don't go to sites. In the early days, people "surfed" the net. Now we all know it's too big to find things randomly. Rather, we take advice from friends, follow links from Twitter and Facebook, or take whatever result comes up on Google or Yahoo searches. So do your visitors.

The marketplace is full of companies that supposedly help your site get attention. While some are good, some resort to methods you might not want to be associated with if you care about your corporate image. So don't just hire a company and entrust it with the responsibility of carrying your image out on the internets. Take the time to learn a little about the most important marketing tool you have -- your web site. Develop it correctly and it will be found even without outside help.

There are several simple web site development tools that are almost free or support themselves through hosting services that I use when I want to turn a site over to a client who will be able to maintain it him/herself in the future. Use one of them if you are doing a site yourself. (Weebly , Wordpress , Squarespace )

Or ask your web developer to abide by these simple rules, and your content will get out into the world at large. Search engines work on complicated algorithms that usually involve changes, links in to your site, and good keywords. So here are seven simple ways to get people to look at your site.

1) Create quality. Forget brochureware and product sheets, unless they already contain the keywords your customers and clients will be looking for. No one is looking for a "complete real-time solution." Make your terms crystal clear, without jargon, and repeat them naturally in your copy. Hyperlink terms to other places on your site. If you were buying, searching, comparing in your own category, what would you be typing into a search engine?

2) Add a feed to your site. This allows someone who comes to your site to subscribe to your content. At the very least, create a Twitter feed that will automatically make your site changes or blog posts come up as links in your Twitter posts, where your followers can click on the
links.

3) Change the content often. Search engines look for changes. This is why blogs work. And don't accept a web site that can't be updated and managed by you without having to call the web developer. It's called a "content management system," and you want one. Static web sites don't get found.

4) Make your site social. Put a Share this button on your site, so if someone wants to send
your content to a friend or a social site, it's easy for them to do. There are many different widgets that allow your readers to share your content; just choose one. I've got nothing invested in ShareThis, other than its ease of use.

5) Use anchor text wisely. Search engines crawl it. So every time you write "click here," you are missing an opportunity. Instead, hyperlink keywords you think your readers are looking for, or you wish they were searching for to find your site.

6) Find out what the most important keywords in your sector or business area are. There's a service called Hitwise you can use to get this data, or you can get it from Google itself. Believe me, Google's Adsense program knows. Use them in your copy.

7) Stay away from Flash animations on your landing page. Flash looks good, but search engines don't search it, so if you want to be found, you can forget about it.

None of these tricks is complicated, nor will they get you in trouble with the search engine gods. I've learned them all through hard experience.

FaceBook - Avoid Tattoo Regret for your online presence

The conversation about FaceBook content ownership policies serves to remind us all that posting anything to the Internet is akin to creating online tattoos for your online presence. Like a tattoo, once content is posted it can be very difficult to remove.

Professional marketers are typically aware that any messaging, print or web, can come back to haunt you. They know that with the easy expressiveness and transparency of blogging or Twitter, there can be serious consequences of poor or inappropriate content.

The FaceBook issue applies to all the social media technologies. Once something is on the Internet, there is may be little you can do to take it back. Inappropriate pictures, associations, expressions, etc, can be used against you now and far into the future.

There are some relevent lessons in the recent article in the Daily Chronicle titled Tattoo Regret.
"Derick also removes a lot of tattoos people got in their teens that don't define them as adults, she said. “I think people, when they're younger, want to identify with something. But ultimately, when you get older, you don't want to be defined by that content,” she said."

Sensible marketing planning includes thinking through messaging, themes and appropriate content for all communications, then planning before publishing. The saying goes, Think before you speak applies completely here.

Making Sense of Sensible Marketing Firms

When I began Sensible Marketing, LLC back in 2002 the name, "Sensible Marketing", seemed strong enough, not too trendy, and yet representative of the business I was to build. Fortunately I licensed the business name in Arizona, my primary state of business. I say fortunately because the name "Sensible Marketing" appears to be gaining popularity across the country (see below).
Sensible Marketing operates as an outsourced Director of Marketing, covering a broad array of marketing programs and methods including traditional marketing and web, social media and direct marketing. In particular, Sensible Marketing has strong experience with technology-related B-to-B markets and with marketing to support sales teams.

About a year ago, another Sensible Marketing firm, (Sensible Marketing Inc. for Startups and Small Businesses) showed up on Google searches. This one is based out of LA and is run by another guy named Michael. Over the past year Michael Williams has done a very respectable job of building his web presence using social media, primary as a web-based and electronic expert. And it seems that Michael Williams has a full time job in addition to his marketing company, a situation similar to mine at this point.

Recently a third Sensible Marketing firm has appeared on scene. Sensible Marketing Services out of Knoxville, TN touts itself as more of a full service marketing agency though most of its case studies reflect website and graphic work. Like Sensible Marketing Inc, the owner, Jesse Olive, has invested a significant amount of time in building out his website and blog. Nice job.

One of the first Market Like a Millionaire lessons I learned was from a military commander on the simulated battlefields of the cold war in Germany. He said, "When you see a good idea, steal it." Of course, done within the boundaries of ethics and law, this is good advice. So long live the Sensible Marketing name, may it build a strong reputation among marketing professionals across the nation, and the world.

Recap:

Sensible Marketing, LLC - the first, based in Arizona
Website: www.sensiblemarketing.net
Blog: Sensible Marketing Blog

Sensible Marketing for Startups - based in Los Angeles
Blog: http://blog.sensiblemarketing.biz/

Sensible Marketing Services - based Knoxville, TN
Website: www.sensiblemarketingservices.com