• Write 10 ways your industry will change this year.
• Break down the new laws that will affect your niche this year.
• Create a list of the best industry resources.
• Talk about why things are better today (or not) than they were 10 years ago.
• Attend industry events and blog about them.
• What someone needs to consider before getting involved in your industry.
• Create a list of the 10 books that someone in your industry should read.
• Post about what you’d like to see fixed in your industry.
• Conferences people in your industry should attend/speak at.
• Issues in your space that deserve more attention.
• Create a poll. Blog the result.
• Post photos from your company party/team building workshop.
• Why you’re different (and better) than your competition.
• A video tutorial showing how to use your most popular product.
• The problems your sales people hear about most.
• The answer to the most common email you get.
• The secret ways to use your site/product.
• How you’re using Facebook.
• Give 5 reasons to sign up to your email newsletter.
• How you learned to do what you do.
• What you’re doing to beat the summer slump or winter blues.
• Provide an end of the week link roundup.
• 50 reasons why someone should hire you.
• Praise your best customers.
• How customers can woo your customer service department for free stuff.
• Give something away to one of your blog readers.
• Publish a customer testimonial.
• Explain the benefits of being a customer.
• Share local organizations you support and ask customers to share their favorite.
• Introduce your staff.
• Share the best decision you made as a small business.
• Your biggest challenge as a small business owner.
• What you love best about being a small business owner. What you don’t like.
• Write about the achievement you’re most proud of.
• Introduce a new employee and what they bring to the table.
• Give people a video tour of your building.
• Share your company’s history or story.
• What’s next for your company?
• A list of your most trafficked posts.

For the complete list, please see the original post: 100+ SMB Blogging Ideas to Kick Start 2010

Monthly Drawings

Hold a monthly drawing for a gift certificate from among the new people who provide their email addresses to you that month.

Employee Contest

Want to get a lot of addresses fast? Start a contest for your employees, staff, or volunteers with a prize to the person who’s collected the most email addresses from customers, clients, or members. Reward them with a day off, a gift certificate, a free meal, or a cash bonus!

Here are some things you can do to build a permission-based list, wherever you go, however your organization interacts with the public.

At your office or place of business:

• Ask every caller if they want to receive your email newsletter.
• Request customer email addresses on your POS, online ordering, or checkout system.
• Add space to your comment cards or surveys for people to sign-up.
• Put tent cards, wall, or counter displays in your place of business. Use a teaser, if applicable, about getting the inside scoop or exclusive offers from you.
• Use a fishbowl on your counter to collect sign-up forms or business cards. Offer a weekly or monthly prize, like discounts or gifts from your establishment or other local vendors. Announce the winners in your newsletter, and add everyone in the bowl to your mailing list.

If you’re online and use social media:

• Add Constant Contact’s “Join My Mailing List” button to your website and your Facebook page so people can join your list.
• Ask your Twitter followers to sign up for your list by providing a link to your sign-up form on your website.

When you’re at events, in the field, or networking:

• Bring a sign-up sheet to every public event you exhibit at or participate in: fairs, open houses and fundraising events – any place where dozens of people will encounter you.
• Leave postage-paid sign-up cards behind when you visit clients so they can mail it back to you. Just write your address on the back and stamp it – it won’t cost them a penny to join.

When you already use email marketing or outgoing communications:

• Make it easy for recipients to tell their friends about you with a “forward to a friend” link.
• Staple a sign-up card to customers’ receipts, or include it in the envelope if you mail them bills.

This list has been slightly adapted from its original source, Constant Contact’s List Building Guide.

When I was first contacted by CMD to create a new website for them, I had to take a closer look at how Attorneys gained business. The majority of law firms rely on word-of-mouth to obtain new clients. So I made the assumption that if you are visiting the CMD website, you’re probably looking for information that supports what your friend or colleague that referred you to them had said. With that in mind, each web page provides as much factual information about the law firm as possible, while putting a heavy emphasis on either calling the law firm directly or filling out one of a number of contact forms.

Here’s a screenshot of the new Creason, Moore, Dokken & Geidl website:

It was a pleasure working with everyone at Creason, Moore, Dokken & Geidl.

Visit the new Creason, Moore, Dokken & Geidl Website

Feel free to take a look around and give me some feedback!

Some of the features I included on the website

Call to Action

I sat down with Jason at SBC and we decided that the best way to expand his business was to recruit more distributors while support current distributors. So the first thing users see when visiting this website is the free product catalog call to action button. This does two things: it gives the user access to SBC’s high quality, downloadable product catalog and also allows SBC to collect information about the prospective customer so they can make contact and continue the marketing process.

Online Product Catalog

For current distributors as well as prospective customers, I’ve taken the product catalog and re-purposed some of the information and technical specifications to allow for instant access to updated and new offerings.

This also helps SBC out in the search engine optimization game. I’ve included relevant keywords in the technical data to help boost them in search engine rankings.

Distributor Login System

With so many distributors already on board with SBC, they needed a way to streamline the process of getting the most vital information to each level of distributor they have. I set up an area for distributors to login and see pricing information specific to their level of involvement with SBC. Also, distributors without an account can request to have one set up for them.

Email Newsletter

In hopes of lowering costs of direct mail marketing, I created an HTML email newsletter template so any new marketing materials can be sent electronically.

Ability to Add and Edit Content

As with any website I build, the ability to add to and edit current content is included. This allows SBC to manage their website themselves and saves them from having to pay maintenance fees for every little addition they’d like to make.

Blog

Once again, this is included with every website I build. Blogging isn’t the latest trend for small businesses, it’s a necessity! Now you can learn what SBC is up to at your convenience!

Data Collection

The point of any website is to collect information about your potential customers. Strategically placed throughout the website are contact and request forms to allow SBC to not only gain insight into the type of person visiting them online, but to also allow them to effectively market to those visitors.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free and extremely powerful service that gives you insights into your website’s traffic. The amount of information that is tracked is amazing, but don’t worry, this post will just cover the basics

What You’ll Learn

• The difference between the Visitors and Visits statistics.
• What Bounce Rate means.
• Understanding where your traffic is coming from and why.
• A quick overview of the Goal Tracking feature.

The Dashboard

After you have Google Analytics set up and running for a few days (so that you have some data to look at) visit your website’s dashboard and you’ll see something like the image below.

By default, you’re viewing traffic for the last 30 days, not including today (because today’s traffic hasn’t finished collecting).

Under that pretty blue graph, you’ll see 6 statistics under Site Usage.  Here’s a breakdown of what those stats mean:

• Visits – How many times your website was visited in the time frame set above.
• Pageviews – How many pages were viewed.
• Pages/Visit – The average number of pages viewed per visit.
• Bounce Rate – The percentage of visits that left your website without viewing any pages (other than the one they entered on).
• Avg. Time on Site – The average amount of time spent on your website per visit.
• % New Visits – The percentage of how many visits had never been to your website before.

The next area is labeled Visitor Overview. The is the number of individual people that visited your website in the given time frame. You’ll also a map of where your visitors are coming from.

The final two areas on your Google Analytics dashboard are Traffic Sources Overview and Content Overview.

Traffic Sources Overview shows you how your visitors got to your website.  There are three types of traffic sources:

• Search Engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo etc)
• Direct Traffic (Either they typed your website’s address into their browser or they clicked a link from something other than a web page, like your email signature)
• Referring Sites (Another website that has linked to your website)

Content Overview is just that, an overview of your content. Here you’ll see the most viewed pages on your website and the percentage of total page views that makes up.

Visitors vs. Visits

So the easiest way to explain the difference between Visitors (sometimes called Absolute Unique Visitors) and Visits is to think of it in terms of customers walking into your business. When a customer walks into your store for the first time, they have become a visitor. Now let’s say they leave and return 2 weeks later. They have now visited you twice, but they are still just one visitor. So the Visitors stat is actually the physical number of people (or computers) that have been to your website. The Visit stat is how many times those visitors were on your website. Clear as mud? Great.

Inside every area on your dashboard, you’ll notice a “view report” link. Click it to receive more detailed information about each report.

Goals

The real power of Google Analytics lies in its goal tracking capabilities. What it allows you to do is define certain steps that users must do to complete a task. For example, a common goal to create is for your contact form. When someone fills out your contact form properly, they are usually taken to a “Success” page informing that their request has been received. By setting up a goal for this we can see exactly how much business is created from our website.

For another example, let’s say that you just incorporated a blog into your website. You could create a goal that tracked how many visitors that viewed your home page and then noticed your blog and read a blog post. The feedback you get from goals is extremely valuable. It gives you direct insight into how difficult or easy it is for your users to use your website and allows you to adjust accordingly.

Conclusion

Google Analytics is an extremely powerful service. This post is just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve you’d like to learn more about Google Analytics or would like a Google Analytics account set up for your website, please feel free to give me a call at 208-743-5797 or use my contact form.

Have a Purpose

Whether it is selling more products or encouraging visitors to fill out your contact form, defining a purpose for your online ad campaign is arguably the most crucial step in starting your campaign off on the right foot. If you don’t have a specific goal in mind, you’re throwing your money away.

Relevancy is the Name of the Game

Just like with any advertising, determining the demographic is a key part of the success of your campaign. Choose a website who’s users match your demographic or, if you use a service like Google Adwords, select keywords that are relevant to your campaign and Google will handle the rest.

Have a Clear Message

Setting a clear message in your ad encourages users to click on your ad. Let them know why they should click on your ad and what’s in it for them if they do.

Make Users Want to Click

If you are creating a banner ad campaign, using graphics and photos that help to support the overall message of the ad will not only put a more professional touch on your ad, but gives the user more confidence in your business. Using keywords relevant to the website / web page you are advertising on gives the user a feeling of relevance to what you’re offering.

A Little Motion is Great, A Lot is Not Better

It is always a good idea to include some motion in your banner ad, but be careful, having too much motion in an ad can actually be seen as annoying and decrease the effectiveness of your ad.

Avoid Auto-Playing Sound

Sound that starts as soon as the ad loads is the quickest way to kill your ad. Don’t get me wrong, sound can be a great way to help get your message across; but let the user decide if they want to hear the sound or not. Adding a button to enable or disable sound increases the interaction with your ad while letting the user make the decision to hear your message or not.

Your Landing Page is More Important Than Your Ad

The overall idea behind your banner ad is to get the user to visit your website, but just dropping your potential customer off at the front door (your home page) and making them find the relevant information themselves is a bad idea. Link your ad to a page that is specifically designed to extend the message that your ad is providing.

Test Everything

And I mean everything! Try two different ads that convey the same message. Try one ad with a photo of a girl and one with a photo of a guy. Try two different landing pages. The great thing about online advertising is all of these differences are trackable (more on this in a moment).

Monitor Your Results

The days of judging an ad’s effectiveness by how many clicks it got are long gone. The more important measure is how many of those clicks actually turned into customers. Did they buy something? Did they fill out your contact form? Did they sign up for your newsletter? Remember your ad campaign’s purpose from above. Clicks don’t mean squat if you can’t either count the dollars or continue the conversation with your new potential customer. Using a stat tracking service like Google Analytics will help you realize how well (or poor) your campaign is doing so you can make adjustments.

Conclusion

Advertising online is an extremely effective and can be relatively inexpensive if done properly. As always, feel free to take advantage of my Free Website Consulting Offer and I’d be glad to look over your current campaign or give some insight on a campaign your considering.

The numbers don’t lie!
Did you know over one third of customers looking to purchase a product or service start look online first? 60% of those customers buy from the website they visit, whether online or in-store. That’s huge! That means one third of new business starts online….and you’re website hasn’t been updated since 2005?

Let’s talk about this!
Take advantage of my free consulting offer and I’ll show you how you can watch those website visitors come walking through your front door.

No, this is not a sales tactic. I just want to share my knowledge with those that need it. What do you do when your car starts making a funny noise? You ask your friend who’s mechanically inclined for his opinion right? Then based on his opinion, you make a decision to either take it to a mechanic or attempt to fix it yourself. I’m your mechanically inclined friend! Well, more like internetly inclined friend.

Let’s talk! Use the contact form, leave a comment, call me or whatever! Just get a hold of me (Jeff Purcell) and be sure to mention this blog post and we’ll set up a time for you to ask me questions!

Here’s the bullet points from the article:

• To Build Trust
• To Become Familiar
• To Get Repeat Business
• To Make More Sales
• To Build Your Authority
• To Save Money
• To Create an Opt-In Market
• To Save Time
• To Expand Your Reach
• To Create Multiple Buying Opportunities

A well planned out email marketing campaign has an average ROI of $45 for every $1 spent! That’s why I get so excited!

If you haven’t done so yet, be sure to sign up for our email newsletter (we promise not to spam you) or leave a comment below and let’s discuss this!

First Things First
We need to set up a twitter account. You can do that here. You’ll need to pick a username. This will be the name that all your new potential customers will see and associate with your company, so pick something close to your company’s name. For example, my Twitter username is inlandsolutions.

On the next page, Twitter is going to give you suggestions on people you might enjoy following based on a list of categories. We’re going to skip this step for now as there are much better ways to find interesting people to follow and we’ll touch on those later.

Step two gives you a chance to import your contacts from Gmail, Yahoo Mail and AOL Mail. I suggest doing this. The list of people in your address book is a great place to gain loyal followers as you already have had contact with these people and therefore they are less likely to block you. Note: Importing your contacts from your email provider does not send them a message or alert them in anyway, unless you want them to be notified.

The final step gives you a chance to search for people already using Twitter. Feel free to do this if you like. The idea behind Twitter is communication, so the more people you have to communicate with, the better.

So now your account is setup. You’ll need to activate your account via the email you used to register, but that can be done at a later time. Now we need to get the word out that your company is now on Twitter. The first and most important thing to do is have a Twitter widget placed on your companies website. Be sure to check out Twitter’s widget page for a few different widget types. We’re interested in the “Profile widget”.

Now that your website has the profile widget installed and running, we need to spread the word through more traditional means. That means, email signatures, business cards, print advertisements, television, radio. Whatever your traditional means of advertising, be sure to include the address of your Twitter account. Note: Your Twitter address is Twitter.com/username. For example, my username is inlandsolutions, so my Twitter address is http://twitter.com/inlandsolutions.

I know, this seems like a lot of stuff to do before we even get to start using the service. Just trust me, we’re almost there. But before we dive in and start telling people all about your next big thing we need to set a few ground rules.

The Trick
There really isn’t a trick to posting on twitter, but if there was one, it would be to not sound like a radio advertisement. Don’t use twitter to push advertisements to anyone who will listen. That’s counter productive. No one will want to listen. Instead, use the service to let your customers know “What’s going on in your world”, or better yet “What has your attention right now”.

Tips on What to Tweet

• Don’t tweet about your product or business more than 50% of the time. No one likes a spammer.
• Do post about the people inside your business. This makes the customer become just that much more a part of what’s going on.
• Do tweet about other people’s stuff. The “retweet” function is perfect for this. Anything that makes you look less like a business and more like a handful of people that work together, the better.
• Don’t be afraid to reply to people. That’s the whole point of twitter, conversation. The quicker you figure out that Twitter is a way to connect with people, the more success you will have using it.
• Do keep your tweets short. You only get 147 characters!

Final Thoughts
A great way to kick off your time on twitter is to start using search.twitter.com. Search on a few terms that deal with your industry and see what people are saying about it. Also, search on your own business name. This is a great chance to not only protect your brand, but connect with customers already talking about you and your services.