Just weeks to Christmas!

Beat the Christmas Eve mad panic to let customers and suppliers know your Christmas hours!

1 Create a Christmas Hours page on your website and enter the details in there now.

2 Mark in your calendar the date to email everyone with a link to your Christmas details. It won’t hurt to get clients looking at your website either!

Take a quick minute and do that now!
2011 has seen a lot of businesses in Canterbury moving around. The quickest way for people to make contact with you is through your website.Finding where businesses have moved to has become even more important.

For everyone else, now would be a good time to check who the contact people are on your website, as staff changes and re-organisation go under the radar throughout the year.

Speaking of staff changes. As kiwis we can be a bit shy about having our photos put on our websites.
The benefit however is that new clients can get a nice personal feel for who your team are, and some idea of who they may meet.

1 Get the team together for a group shot.
Choose a neutral background preferably in natural light (outside on an overcast not too sunny day may be good).
Have a good laugh and get someone to take a lot of digital photos. Hopefully there will be one you can use!

2 Upload the photo to a Meet The Team page on the website.

This means you have seconds to clearly display -

a) what you do/provide
b) who you provide it to.

If the visitor can’t ascertain answers to these two basic questions, your website is history to them.

If I’m a home user and your site looks like it only deals with Corporates, I’m not interested. Likewise if it looks like you only deal with Skis and nothing on snowboards, I will assume I can’t find what I’m looking for.

Browse to your homepage now and try to see it through fresh eyes. How easily can you answer a) and b)?

All is not lost. It may be time to update that About Us paragraph on the home page to be a bit more specific about your services, or the area you service, or how you provide solutions to Home Users, Small Business and Corporates. You will be surprised what a difference changing some headings can make to more clearly stating what you do! e.g. ‘Providing Residential Building Materials Direct To The Trade’.

Google will like it too!

Creating content for your website can be a difficult thing to start, but gets easier with practice!

If you are writing on topics you know well, (i.e. Your business products and services), you should be able to create content that is both interesting for your customers and useful for Google in ranking your website pages. Its a balancing act to provide useful short punchy information, in a format easy to read online.

Sometimes starting can be the hardest part.
So how do we begin to create content from a blank page?

This is my simple approach!

A) Absolutely first of all, have in mind your key 3-4 phrases that you want to use to optimise your overall site. If you have these in mind or written down, they will naturally appear in your content and this is what Google wants to see.

1 Plan the content you are going to make. I find it difficult to pull content from thin air. But if I plan what I’m going to say on 4-5 pages, I know what I need to generate.

3 Once you have asked these normal everyday questions, simply answer them! You could answer these naturally if someone were to phone you, so write that answer down. Turn the questions into sub headings - ‘Territory we cover’. Writing in your own personal manner can be really appropriate for content on websites for small and medium size businesses. This depends on a little on your industry. Mostly we don’t all have to write content trying to sound like some high flying marketing corporation.

At the end of the day, it’s about good, useful information for your clients.

Here are some additional tips to keep in mind while creating content.
* Write for the customer personally
* Keep paragraphs short, 3-4 lines
* Use Sub Headings
* Write short sentences
* Keep your keywords and phrases in mind
* Add little bits of content regularly over time and Google will love you!

We all know online editors have some quirks. But the most significant is to do with pasting content.
The issues lay with what you can’t see. When you select and copy content from another source like a website or Microsoft Word, other hidden information comes with it.

In particular if you select and copy from MS Word, you also get lots and lots of hidden Microsoft tags and code. You can’t see it, but it will break your page and make your content look terrible, or impossible to format and edit.
Not to worry though! You can still copy content from elsewhere. The key is to use the following process.

1 Copy content from source
2 In your website admin put the cursor where you want the content.
3 DO NOT right click paste, or hit ctrl V! Instead press the paste as plain text button on the editor toolbar.
4 You may want to go and delete the lines between paragraphs, and replace them by hitting Enter. This makes them proper paragraphs so you can format headings.

It isn’t really complicated, but definitely is a discipline when you are used to using quick shortcuts for pasting.
NOTE you CAN copy and paste content within your own site. Either within the editor, or from your live site.

To see the process in detail watch the following Surefire Help Videos-

Part 1: Paste as plain text from another source

Part 2: Preparing pasted content for formatting

Part 3: Formatting text content

* Domain name - For your existing site this is probably set and gaining history and trust with Google already. But if you are considering a new site it might be worth considering a generic keyword loaded domain name e.g. swimmingwithdolphinschristchurch.co.nz
* Filename - when you create a new page, you have the oppportunity of editing the filename. This filename is part of the URL address (location on the internet) when you browse to that live page. 3-5 nice keywords can help Google understand the page. E.g. ‘book-swim-with-dolphins-christchurch’. Watch our video on creating a new page and writing the filename.
* Headings, Sub headings, Bold - Google actually sees Headings and Sub-Headings are slightly more interesting. So make use of that format drop down list tool on the editor toolbar. Making important text bold can also help. Don’t overdo it and remember your readers. Watch our video on formatting text.
* Content - Content is King and always will be. You can’t beat good topic related content, both for Google and your readers. Over time Google is going to read your content and literally record what words and phrases are in it, and where they are located. This is where the search results come from.
* Links Out - links on your website to other pages, both in your website and off to other peoples websites, are of interest to Google. Remember in training we talked about making the text ‘Click here’ the link is a bit pointless? Use good keywords and phrases for the actual link people click on. e.g. ‘Click here for more information on swimming with the dolphins‘. Watch our video on creating links.
* Image Alt Text - You can tell Google what your images are. Helps with Google Images searches. Watch our video on writing image Alt tags.
* Meta Title - watch our video on Meta Titles. This is the most important thing (after content) you can do on your site.
* Meta Description - watch our video on how to create effective Meta Descriptions and their use.
* Activity - Google wants to see new and current information. This is because Google wants to provide the most up to date and relevant content to it’s clients making searches online. So add content regularly. It doesn’t have to be much. And check through your stats how often Google and the other search engines are coming back to crawl through your site.

There are many many options when it comes to creating facebook Like buttons. This is the simple version!

* Choose the page on your website that you want to put the ‘Like’ button on.

* Click on source view and very carefully paste the code into the page. Usually you would put the like button at the bottom of the page. Save and publish, and your Like button will appear on the site!

The answer is partly dependant on what else you are doing.
If you are already operating at 110% doing your business accounts, inventory, human resourcing, and updating the content on your website on a regular basis, then the answer is probably no.

There is a distinct difference between having a facebook account and using a facebook account.
Like any marketing tool these things have to be used to be effective, and unfortunately for facebook it is an amazing way to spend enormous amounts of time.
Something most smaller business owners have in short supply.

It takes time to build a network of ‘friends’. Unlike a website that is open to the public, a facebook account relies on that group of people who have voluntarily joined you in order to be fed your information.
That’s the second part. You need to generate specific information of interest to this inner circle. This has to be done on a very regular basis to keep them involved and engaged.

Warnings aside, lets say you have the time and your target market is correct for facebook.
Here are some handy tips for creating that effective facebook company profile.

1 Go slow and steady, don’t overdo it. Any marketing takes time, don’t blow all your energy in the first week!
2 Contact your fiends/fans directly. Welcome people individually that add themselves to your friends list, think of each new person as a potential lead for your business.
3 Don’t spam. Apart from facebook eventually catching up with you, its not a nice experience for your friends.
4 Consider it an educational experience. You don’t need to sell to every friend/fan. Your friend list is everything, give them something worthwhile to come back for.
5 Limit your advertising budget. If you choose to use faceboooks advertising package, start off small. Just like Google Adwords, test the waters carefully.
6 Only create one facebook account for your organisation. Multiple accounts is against facebooks terms, and it simply doesn’t add any value.
7 Use coupons and incentives. If its appropriate to your business, provide special offers to the exclusive group of facebook friends. Growing that list is all important and there needs to be benefits to being in the inner circle.
8 Post entertaining status updates. Keeping facebook friends engaged is important, a simple clever status update can do the trick.

* If you don’t have a free Google account, sign up for one first! Or log in to your business Google Account, Gmail Account or Google+ Account.
* Browse to the Google Places sign up page http://www.google.com/local/add/analyticsSplashPage
* Click on ‘Add new business’
* Select New Zealand and put in your phone number. This way you can see if there is existing information on your business.
* If you have existing information, click on edit, otherwise click on Add a new listing.
* Add all your business information. Profile, hours, payment method, hours of opening, correct map location, upload images.
* On submit you will be given the choice of how you want to validate your listing.

Post real time updates and check out your dashboard for performance.

Mention Google and most people think of the Search Engine.
Some people may also think of Gmail, and others might even think of the Google operating system Android that is appearing on smart phones, tablets and other devices.

Dig a little deeper and you realise they do quite a lot more than that.
Google has a suite of online applications specifically designed to help businesses. You can take a look at them all here http://www.google.co.nz/services/

Here are three that caught my eye.

Google Places - Formally called Local Business Centre and recently revamped and updated. Not only mark your business on the map for Google Map searches, but provide business information, post offers and live updates and check out your performance dashboard.

Google Site Search - Put a Google search box on your website and enable visitors to search just your site. Powered off Google search results.

Google Friend Connect - Interestingly this looks like a social network literally on your website. I’m struggling to think exactly what kind of business website this is appropriate for! But there may be something interesting in the Social Gadgets they mention.

To get access to these applications, you need to sign up for a free Google Account here http://www.google.co.nz/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=27439

If you have a Gmail or Google+ account, you already have access!