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Small Business Marketing on the Internet

Debra Murphy — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 02:31:28 +0000

Getting found on the Internet is one of the most cost effective mechanisms for finding new business, yet many business owners don’t have the time to figure it all out or the budget to hire someone to do it for them. Using the Internet to market your business has its complexities like all marketing strategies, but understanding the basics can go a long way towards having new customers find you when they are in need of your services.

There are two valuable avenues available for marketing on the Internet – Internet marketing and social media marketing. These are two different, but very related and overlapping strategies.

Internet marketing is using online media to execute more traditional marketing techniques such as advertising, direct marketing, and public relations. Social media marketing uses the Internet to create relationships via conversations, networking and word of mouth marketing techniques. One could say that Internet marketing uses “push” marketing and social media marketing uses “pull”.

Using the Internet to Get Clients

To start down the path of Internet marketing for your business, you need to understand what you want to accomplish with marketing on the Internet. Just like all other marketing programs, before you decide that you want to “do” Internet marketing, you need a plan. And, like any marketing program, if not planned properly, you can spend a lot of money with little result. Figure out what you want to accomplish with Internet marketing and if your target audience is using the Web to find the services you offer.

The following simple diagram gives you a roadmap to help you implement these strategies without becoming overwhelmed.

Develop Your Web Presence

The first thing to do is to invest in a good web site or blog optimized for search engines. You may be thinking, “Well duh”, but I still speak with many business owners who really don’t have a web property of any kind. And if they do, their web site was created by a friend and has not been touched for a few years. The following tips will help you get started:

Regardless of whether you choose a web site or a blog, consider having it created in WordPress. In the past year, I have been converting the web sites of most of my clients to WordPress. Even if they don’t need a blog right now, they still have a flexible site where they can manage the content for themselves. In a very timely post, Shama Hyder lists the top 10 reasons for using WordPress for your web site.
Get a great design that is easy to navigate and consistent with your brand.
Build your web site and continue to work the content so that it reaches your ideal clients with the precise message that resonates with them.
Write regularly on your blog with content that appeals to your target audience. A blog without regular posts lose its readers quickly.
Purchase the domain name for your company name and your personal name. You will take control of your complete online reputation. Both domains can be pointed to the same site or blog initially. Matt Dickman has a post on Owning Your Digital Identity that suggests you not only get your domain name, but secure your ID as soon as possible for all social media sites now.

These are only basic tips to get started. If you are not sure how to proceed, get help from someone who understands this space and can mentor you through the process. In addition, this is only the first in a series of posts about marketing your business using the Internet. There’s a lot more coming in future posts that cover many of the topics in the diagram.

Small Business Marketing on the Internet is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

Building Social Media Relationships

Debra Murphy — Fri, 23 May 2008 22:56:37 +0000

I occasionally have conversations with people who debunk the value and power of social media. They seem to think that some people hide behind social media to avoid actually meeting people in person. Although I’m sure there are some who are like that, I believe social media has more pluses than minuses and can benefit your marketing activities immensely.

I spoke about the global connecting, sharing, and learning benefits in my post on the Benefits of Social Media earlier this year. So I thought I would share some of my real experiences.

Social media enables me to:

Connect with people through common interests (such as marketing, social media, and golf) irrespective of where they live. Through social media, I have connected with folks worldwide because we found something in common that drove the connection. People I have never met and probably would never have had the opportunity to meet if not for social media have introduced themselves to me either after I’ve connected via Twitter, commented on one of their blog posts or referenced a post in one of mine. It’s really just a matter of time before we’re at someplace in common and our paths cross for real.
Get to “know” the people I interact with because they share information about themselves, including their photo. “Putting a face with a name” makes the person less of a stranger. Last night at the Institute of Management Consultants meeting I attended in Waltham, MA, Scott Monty, Laura Fitton (Pistachio) and Aaron Strout were on a panel to discuss social media (what else!). Other Twitterers such as Mike Langford, Stephen Dill and Dmitri Gunn were in attendance. Our profile pictures enabled us to recognized each other immediately and conversations bypassed the “getting to know you” banter and proceeded quickly to interesting dialog. It was a great evening made more so by not having to walk into a room of strangers. I hope to get many more opportunities to meet folks in person from my social networks as I did last night. It was a great experience.
Constantly learn. I get updated on a lot of information from very knowledgeable people so I’m not the “last to know”. Between RSS feeds and Twitter posts with URLs to interesting information, I keep up on the pulse of what’s happening. By scanning various feeds, I can pick and choose the information I’m interested in at the time, flag that which I want to read later or share it with others.
Carry on conversations with people as if I were in the next office. As a person who works from a home office (and loves it!), I can have conversations with people throughout the day and not feel cut off from the world. But just like co-workers who drop into your office and interrupt your concentration, you have to manage your use of social media to ensure you get work done.

For those of you who are still skeptics about social media, you need to try it in order to understand the value it can be to you. If it doesn’t work for you, that’s OK - it may not be the right marketing activity for your business. But if you are considering social media as a marketing strategy, start with the basics – a blog, LinkedIn and Facebook. Once you get these going, then add Twitter. After that, it’s up to you to determine which other tools may be beneficial to you based on your target market and how you want to reach them.

Building Social Media Relationships is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.

Protect Your WordPress Site

Debra Murphy — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:01:10 +0000

As one of your major marketing tools and in many cases, the only thing your prospect sees of your business before deciding to call you, your web site and/or blog is a valuable property that needs to be protected. Having had a client that built security software to help companies prevent malicious attacks on their systems and networks, I am sensitive to these issues. So the two posts from Anita Campbell at Small Business Trends caught my attention.

The first post called Hacked: It Could Never Happen to My Site (Famous Last Words), tells the tale of what exactly happened. The second post, How to Protect Your WordPress Site has some useful tips to work into your operations.

I love WordPress and recommend that all my clients use it for their web property due to its ease of use. But like all things web, it is subject to hacker’s antics just like other types of web sites. Here are two more tips that you can do to have a contingency plan if your site is attacked.

First, always keep an updated clean copy of the WordPress theme code on your local system. Since most themes are modified to your unique needs, once you have the site or blog design updated, copy it from the hosting platform to an area on your hard drive. That way if you do need to reinstall WordPress and recreate your blog or site, you have a non-compromised version saved. Remember, to update your local copy of your theme any time you modify the code.
Second, use the WordPress export capability (found under Manage) to export your posts, comments and pages to an XML file locally. Again, if you need to recreate the blog or site quickly, you can upload the content really quickly. There are definitely ways to backup the database itself, but in the event you have to start over, you can reload the content into a clean database. Depending on how frequently you post, you need to make the export a regular activity.

Security is an ongoing process. Don’t think it can’t happen to you. Keep backups of both the code and the content and you can recover quickly if you are one of the unfortunate few.

Protect Your WordPress Site is an original post from Debra Murphy, Small Business Marketing Coach: Masterful Marketing - Marketing in the New Media World. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Debra on Twitter, Facebook or Google+.