Have a Party on Your Website


Imagine you're planning a big party at your place... today. What will you do first: clean and cook, or invite people?

Spending time and money to promote your business online is a bit like sending invitations to a party on your website. You want your place to be ready when the doorbell rings.

Before you make the pretty pictures or the clever articles, make sure to vacuum under the couch. People will judge you.

photo by jackfrench / Flickr

Click to Tweet this Article

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

OK, so you might need 34 letters to say "I feel good!" in some circumstances. But I can't ever imagine needing 340 words to say "expect glitches". A client of mine received this email below from an online service provider. No, you won't want to read it anymore than she did. Want to know the short version? Scroll down. Salesforce.com is committed to providing a highly available service to our customers. We are committed to continued investments to increase the overall uptime of our service, to deliver optimal value to our customers. With that, we are excited to announce a major advancement in this area for our major releases, effective with our Spring '12 release. W hat is the change? We are happy to inform you that we are improving our major release upgrade process. This improvement means that your organization will be generally available during our major release upgrade windows. Note: The term "Generally Available" means that we are...
Keep reading »

Your 'Thank You for Signing Up' Page

Image
A redirect page is a webpage where someone ends up after filling in your subscription form. This is something you have control over and it's worth putting a little effort into. After all, someone has just said they trust you enough to sign up for your newsletter - it's a good time to dazzle them with more of your brilliance and give them some value right away . Here is a screenshot of Anita Kirkbride's redirect page. When someone subscribes to Twirp's newsletter, this is where they end up. Here's why this page is great: It clearly describes what the subscriber signed up for. There's a free giveaway, which was promised in the call to action. There's a link to get immediate value by going to Twirp's blog. Also those cute little Twirplings at the bottom of the screen jump up and down... which made me feel kind of happy to have subscribed. Is it time to take a fresh look at your own redirect page? What is the most important message you want t...
Keep reading »

What Feedback Do You Pay Attention To?

Image
Have you ever fallen into the trap of making a change because of one single piece of feedback? It's happened to me and I've seen it happen to others. Don't change your brand's font (or anything else) because one person doesn't like it. One person's preferences will never represent a significant sample of your target market. We want feedback, we ask for feedback, and when we get it, we feel we have to act on it. Not so. Instead, we need to think about it, give it careful consideration, and get more feedback from our target market - because it's their opinion that matters when it comes to our marketing. originally published in Work Better, Not Harder newsletter November 30, 2017 Click to Tweet this Article
Keep reading »

How much is too much?

Image
And equally important, how much is too little? Too much and too little can both be bad when it comes to e-marketing. People ask me how often they should send out their newsletter and I always answer the same thing - as often as you can bring value to your subscribers . And if you can do that every single day, yippee! I myself subscribe to 4 daily newsletters. Back to reality... of course, there's work involved and that might have an impact on how often you send too. I do strongly believe that you need to send something at least once a month to be having any impact. Here's a general rule of thumb: more frequent = smaller amounts of content, and vice versa (Now remember, rules are made to be broken so perhaps I should call this a guideline instead.) Of course, social media is a great example of the 'more frequent' strategy. Aside from how much content, you'll also want to consider the type of content in relation to the frequency...
Keep reading »

Encourage the Connection

Image
ex ample of connection links Not every newsletter reader is going to want to engage with you in the same way. Each will have a platform they prefer to use. Linda and I are a perfect example of that. Linda likes Twitter . I prefer Facebook . But none of that will matter if you do not include social media connection links in your eNewsletter. Different than social sharing links , social connection links are the ones that take the reader to your page or profile on that platform . These links allow readers to find you everywhere online instantly. If they can't find you, they can't connect with you. Facebook, particularly, has a really crappy search feature. It is common to not be able to find what you are looking for. You want your reader to be able to find and connect with you in a couple of clicks. Encourage the connection by including social connection links.   Click to Tweet this Article
Keep reading »

Prevent Scope Creep

Image
All big projects have the potential for scope creep - uncontrolled changes in project scope. It results in missed deadlines, budget overruns and altered deliverables. We entrepreneurs can be guilty of this when it comes to operating our businesses. It’s easy to get distracted by new opportunities and ideas. It’s sort of what small business is all about: being flexible enough to jump on opportunities. I’ve been guilty of doing this myself. It can be fun and challenging but sometimes not very productive. I’ve created 30 or so workshops that I have no desire to sell. My branding and website have undergone many renditions. Was I being productive during those hundreds of hours? It felt like it. I was busy but, oops, I wasn’t making any money. In January 2010 I set my theme for that year to be ‘FOCUS’. It stayed my theme for 2011 and I’m finally seeing the results of my intentions. (In fact, I’m satisfied enough to pick a new theme for 2012.) I did it by creating simple rules for ...
Keep reading »

Guest Post: 10 Ways to Figure out What to Write on Your Blog When You Don’t Know What to Write on Your Blog

Image
Frances Leary When I saw this blog post by Frances Leary, I immediately asked her if I could share it with you. Frances is owner of Wired Flare , specializing in SEO, Internet Marketing & Social Media for franchises and organizations in Canada, the U.S. and Europe. While she's blogging about blogging, all of these tips below work for newsletters as well... We've all been there. Complete brain freeze.  The only problem? You need, need, need to get this blog article out STAT. You've already pushed it to the last minute, and you’re down to the wire. It simply can’t wait.  So you’re in a predicament. What do you do?  Truth be told, we often find ourselves in this predicament, and when we’re in it, these are some of the things we do…hopefully they can be a starting place for you, too. Tell a success story – Think of moments big or small that have happened in your business recently that can be a celebration. Did a client give you a pat on the back? Can you gi...
Keep reading »

Graphic Solutions

Image
Copyright and graphics are topics that come up in our business all the time. When you are using images on your website, blog or in your newsletter, you need to ensure they are copyright free or you have paid the copyright owner for use. You should not search Google images and take any image that pops up. Google searches for all images and does not filter out any by copyright status. There are several free sites for images and several more that are reasonably priced under $10. I recommend that you take some time to search for images that are not overused on the internet. You will come to recognize those that are most popular. Some of the places you can find free images are: Morguefile - a lot of free images, some very artsy, some not great quality but lots of quality there for those who are willing to browse Microsoft Office clipart - images that come up in that search are copyright free Unprofound - created and run by designers, this site has the very cool feature of s...
Keep reading »

Your Marketing Made Easy

Image
We have a LOT of options when it comes to our online marketing. The choices can be staggering, often leading to no action at all. Yesterday I had the opportunity to participate as a facilitator at the Your Marketing Made Easy conference in Regina, SK. 10 facilitators, 16 workshops - covering topics like social media, blogging, email marketing, SEO, event marketing, web usability, and so much more. It was a fun and inspiring day! My only regret is that I didn't get to attend many of the workshops put on by the other facilitators. photo by  Alvil Tayco on Twitter Click to Tweet this Article
Keep reading »