Posted On November 3rd, 2010 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under Headspace News, External Articles, Marketing,
Most business owners know that the internet opens up a lot of marketing potential, and that harnessing the power of the web, and specifically social media, is important to staying relevant. However, many entrepreneurs fail in a few key areas of managing their online presence — particularly when it comes to online communities.
NOTE: This article was published in the October 2010 issue of Business Voice.
It can be very tempting to want a blog or forum on your corporate website. After all, getting customers engaged with your brand is the holy grail of all forms of marketing. Some companies opt to use Facebook or Twitter for their online business communications, avoiding the upfront development fees associated with a custom blog. There’s nothing wrong with either approach, provided you keep the following points in mind:
Commit
Too many business owners begin an online community, thinking that simply getting a site built or starting a Facebook page will be all that’s needed. At the beginning they are fired up and excited about it, so they emphatically post their first couple of entries (Usually something akin to “We now have a blog” or “Welcome to our Facebook Page!”) But then life happens, and the posts slow down and eventually cease, much to the embarrassment of the website owner.
There are a few reasons this might happen:
- You may be expecting too much of yourself and your audience. Too many owners feel they need a post or article that is lengthy and detailed. The bar is set so high for themselves that they opt to not post at all.
- You feel that you don’t want posts to be too personal or transparent; that you will appear unprofessional, or even worse (gasp!) your competitors will see what you write!
- You don’t see immediate results. Users are not commenting, and your inbox is not getting flooded with requests for work and flattering reviews of your latest post.
The latter point happens because of the former; users are not engaged because the posts are not regular, or they are not interesting. But abandoning your community is not the answer. I always tell our clients when they want to start an online community that it is akin to starting a fire with wet wood - it takes time up front, and a few failed starts, but once you commit to it and keep adding fuel, it will eventually sustain itself with comparatively less work. So what to do then?
Engage
Don’t be afraid to post brief posts with a personal viewpoint. Users prefer these types of posts because it demonstrates you. No one wants to engage online with a faceless corporation, and the big brands who have successfully started an online community have shared their personal viewpoints and helpful, interesting content that has resonated with their customers. Don’t post press releases on your site. Unless they are media contacts, most users just don’t care!
Don’t make the mistake of trying to directly market or promote yourself with your blog or social community. It will seem self-serving. But if your content is good, it will market you by default because you will stay fresh in the minds of potential customers.
Your staff represents your brand, so get them involved. If they are posting their own thoughts and ideas, or even helping customers through blog comments or Twitter posts, it can only reflect well on your company.
Don’t be afraid of your competition — they are going to see what you write — get over it!
Post regularly but make sure that even if your posts aren’t lengthy and extravagant, they are quality. It’s better to have one great post every week than one boring post every day.
Keep a notepad handy and write down post ideas as they come to you, in the shower, in the car, wherever ideas happen. You can always sit down and compile several posts when the inspiration has hit you, and then stagger when you actually release them online. This will make it appear as if you’re regularly posting, but in reality you’re cheating!
Don’t be too disheartened if no one seems to be commenting. It takes time for an online community to build momentum (remember the wet fire concept?) but you can encourage people to comment by asking questions, linking to your posts in other similar online discussions, and most importantly, responding to the occasional individual who does comment.
Don’t try to control the message. If you delete negative posts on your blog, they will only appear on someone else’s. Instead respond in a positive, humble, but truthful and genuine manner. Even better, if your community is engaged with your brand, they may even come to your defense — you may not have to say anything. You couldn’t ask for better marketing than this.
Posted On April 2nd, 2009 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under External Articles, Business, Development,
View the original post here: 10 criteria for selecting a CMS
I like all of Paul’s choices for the post, including:
Multi site support
We’ve had a few instances come up where our clients have multiple websites all running off the same server. In these case, having a CMS that let’s you edit content across multiple sites from the same admin login is invaluable.
Roles and permissions
Whenever I set up a website for clients to edit themselves, there’s always some work involved in making it a pleasant experience for them. With different levels of permission, I make sure that while my Super Admin account has all of the bells and whistles that I need for development, the client’s account is significantly simplifed to make it easy for them, and also avoid the chances of them accidentally deleting everything!
User interaction
Modern sites almost always require some sort of user interaction, whether it’s filling out a contact form or adding a comment to a blog. How easy does the CMS make it to gather, store and view the data?
Managing assets
In many cases, clients need to upload images, PDF, and video files through their site. How easy is it for them to store and use the content?
These are all great points Paul made, but I have two more of my own I’d like to make:
Markup generated
Something I hate about many CMS’s is the HTML they generate. It’s frustrating to design and develop a standards based site with clean, semantic markup, only to have a content management system to spit out nested div tags with unintelligible class names like “node-21”. This sometimes can mean that your design is dictated, not by user testing or skilled designers, but the back-end code that makes the content editable.
Wake up CMS developers! The CMS should just control what flows out of the database, not what the users sees and interacts with. This is one of the reasons we love Wordpress and ExpressionEngine. Utilizing their powerful loop, it generates data and let’s you wrap it in any sort of markup you want.
Open Source vs Proprietary
This is a controversial topic, but the bottom line is this: Open source CMS’s are free to download and use, built by a community of developers. The downside is that if the CMS doesn’t have a large following, there is no one to support it, and also you don’t have a tech support phone number to call if you need help.
On the other hand, proprietary CMS’s are developed and owned by a commercial company. Some like this option because they can speak directly to the company for support and to feel taken care of. However in many cases, there is the risk of the company going under, in which case, you have to rebuild your site if you want upgrades. Also, I find that proprietary systems are more limiting than open source, simply from the fact that open source projects are built by a large community, and companies are limited to their staff.
What about you, do you have any other factors to consider when choosing a CMS?
Posted On March 25th, 2009 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under External Articles,
Check out the post What It Means to Copyright a Website
Although this is US laws, one would imagine the same principles apply here in Canada.
Posted On March 23rd, 2009 Author Kyle Racki
Filed Under External Articles, Marketing,
Another great post by SEO Moz - Facebook Advertising - An Opportunity for Deep Targeting at Very Low Cost
Let’s face it - social media is the big buzz word right now. But even so, I highly endorse the view that using social media to promote a business can work as long as there is a real plan in place, not simply an “everyones doing it, so should I” approach.
In the post from SEO Moz, there is some interesting notes made about advertising on Facebook, worth checking out. Note a few excerpts:
“Facebook advertising differs from traditional paid search advertising in that instead of bidding for certain keywords that people are searching for, you are bidding on the demographics of the user. The demographic filtering technology is still in its infant stages, but even so allows you to target your ads to a specific age, sex, and even things like what school they attend or their sexual orientation. The strategies for advertising in this direction are still being developed, and the competition is still far less than you will encounter in the paid search area.
Why is this powerful?
- The demographics are far more accurate than most data (age, sex, gender preference, relationship, etc.)
- The deep data - being able to choose to market to employees of specific companies - should be an amazing tool for the right advertiser
- The keyword associations that people have with their Facebook accounts are correlated quite highly with true interests
- The “approximate reach” number gives you great insight into your target market size (even if you never place an ad)
Next Page