EduNotes Blog

Finding the Right Web Design Firm

There are lots of places on the Internet you can go to get a web site designed for less than $100. You get what you pay for however. There are also web sites that will help you with Search Engine Optimization for only $25 or some such nonsense. Again you get what you pay for which in this case can actually be counterproductive to your site. Finally there are some excellent graphic designers out there that learn how to convert their work into html and declare themselves to be web designers. For a modest sum, they will build you a web site. Be very careful in this case also.

There are three main elements to web design that you need to make sure you’ve got covered:

1)      Good design
Building a good web site means that it needs to be designed to fit YOUR needs. The problem with most do-it-yourself template sites is that you have to customize your needs to  the template rather than having the design customized to your needs. Your site should be visually engaging and should be customized to help you get your message across to your customers.

2)      Search Engine Friendliness
We won’t lie to you. SEO is very competitive and can get quite expensive. But a key part of web design is an architecture that is friendly to search engines. Some key elements to include in the design: using key words in file names and in image tags; naming sub-directories well; and the obvious – using keywords in the written content – but then also placing that written content in the best place on the page. None of these are included in your super-cheap online SEO services but more importantly, many web designers don’t use or understand these principles.

3)      Functionality
I’ve seen some really beautiful web sites but have had no clue what the next step is. Often graphic designers that hang up their web design shingle are the culprits. They design visually engaging graphics that don’t point the user to the next step. A term often used with web sites is “intuitive”. An intuitive web site is one where the user can easily figure out (without having to do any “figuring”) what to do. Navigation, for example, isn’t hidden or difficult to figure out – instead the menu items are clearly menu items and you can click on them to move to the next page.

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Twitter Done Right

Twitter isn’t all fun and games. There’s some serious business happening among the tweets about Tiger and Charlie and what your accountant had for lunch. Business people want to know, “How can I use Twitter to build a following and promote my business?”

Twitter Done Right! is EduCyber’s January seminar that will teach you how to harness the power of tweeting to build traffic for your business. In this fast-moving seminar, host Brian DeLaet will teach you:

  • How to create a plan for promoting your business on Twitter
  • Who to follow and why
  • How to build a following for you and your business and turn that following into customers
  • Real examples of how businesses have used Twitter to explode their sales.

In other words, you’ll learn how to do Twitter right!

Register online at http://www.educyber.com/upcoming-seminars.php

(Space is limited, so call today!)

When: January 28, 2010

Time: 11:30 am – 1:00 pm

Where: 4251 Kipling St., Suite 190, Wheat Ridge, CO 80033
(2nd Floor Conference Room)

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Why Bother With Twitter?

I’m often asked why anyone in business would want to spend time tweeting. That question often comes from the very same people who spend lots of time in meetings and events with local business associations, chambers of commerce and other opportunities to meet new people or make connections with existing contacts.

Hmm . . . is what I think. I’m not sure why people don’t see the value of tweeting to friends, colleagues, vendors and customers (and in fact all of Twitterland). Here are the reasons I find time to tweet:

  1. I can connect with my known circle of friends and tell them about what is happening (remember, don’t tweet about what you’re doing but about what has your attention).
  2. I can read my circle’s tweets and join in the conversation, letting those folks know that I am engaged in their conversation.
  3. I can share my news – typically that I have posted a new blog article but also about things related to my company.
  4. I can meet new people who share my interests, industry, politics, religion and more.
  5. I can connect with potential employees or staff members.
  6. I can stay abreast of what is happening in the world and in my industry (I learned that Michael Jackson had died through Twitter and I learned that Facebook surpassed 350 million users via Twitter)
  7. I can do research on what my competitors are doing

Most importantly, I realize that Twitter is one more way to network but it is unique in the real-time information flow and the method of using it – I often go days without visiting twitter.com but a day very rarely passes without one tweet or interaction on Twitter.икони

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Evaluating your Social Media Campaign

Question 10 of 10 Essential Questions for Your Social Media Marketing Campaign is “How do I evaluate the results?”

If you planned properly this is an easy question. At the outset you should have set a measurable goal and set a time period. So now all you have to do is, when you hit the milestone set, look to see if you reached your goal.

In our first question we talked about setting goals and what those goals might look like. The funny thing about goals though is they often change. And that’s ok. The important thing is to continually set, measure and reset your goals.  If you had said you wanted to get 200 new subscribers to your newsletter over a two month period and you hit 250 after one month, it would be a good idea to evaluate after one month and change the goal to, for example, 700.

If you only had 20 new subscribers after a month but three of them converted to customers, you might reset the goal to 50 and add a new goal of converting 10 of them to customers. But if you haven’t set a goal, how do you know if you reached it or not?

Other things you can measure as a part of your evaluation of a social media campaign include:

  • Number of Facebook fans
  • Number of re-tweets onTwitter
  • Number of profile views on LinkedIn
  • Number of views on YouTube
  • Number of click throughs from any social site to your actual web site
  • Number of new newsletter subscribers
  • Number of new customers

Note that new customers is only one measurement. And it is probably not the most important at first. Of more importance is how you engage and interact with the “friends”, “followers”, “connections” or other social media friends in order to build your network over the long term.

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Thankful

It’s time to pause and give thanks. As the pilgrims thanked God for surviving and for all their blessings at the first Thanksgiving, we also thank God for surviving and for all of our blessings.

We are thankful for living in such a great country where we are blessed to be able to start and run our own business

We are thankful that we have been able to not only survive but continue to grow as we have been since we started in 1998

We are thankful for our customers in the Denver area and around the country – thankful for their patronage and for choosing us as their technology partner.

We are thankful for burgeoning growth on the Internet as more businesses discover how to move on to the Internet and those already there look for ways to innovate further.

We are thankful for dedicated staff that help us continue to grow and to service existing clientele.

We are thankful for family, friends and colleagues that surround us, enrich our lives and care.

We encourage you to set aside time this week to reflect and give thanks for your blessings and we thank you for being a part of our experience.

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Your Company Reputation and Social Media Marketing

Question 9 of 10 Essential Questions for Your Social Media Marketing Campaign is How does my company reputation fit into Social Media Marketing. If you haven’t figured it out by now, it is ALL about your reputation.

Social Media Marketing is about engaging others and building long term relationships with others.  This enhances your reputation as a company and establishes you as a player in the long term plans of your potential and existing clients.

There are specific things you can and should do to both monitor and build your reputation:

1.       Set up a Google Alert (www.google.com/alert) for your company name. You can try it with or without quotes to see what kind of results you get.

2.       While both Google and Bing have agreements to include twitter in their results, we still recommend setting up a twitter account to monitor your company name / reputation on Twitter. TweetDeck can be used to do this. Monitter.com can also be used to help you do this.

3.       When your company is mentioned online, engage with the mentioner, whether the mention is good or bad. If the comment is negative, see if there is some way you can reach out and change their mind or provide some kind of remedy.

4.       If your company isn’t mentioned or isn’t mentioned much, don’t quit. Engage and you will find that it will begin to be used.

5.       Set up a Facebook fan page for your company. Plan what you want to happen and make sure you implement your plan.

Why do it? Facebook has 300 million plus users. Twitter has around 60 million users.  You won’t find all of them becoming your customers but you will find a sizeable number that you can interact with to broaden your network.

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Business Owners Ramp Up Their Internet Marketing Knowledge Through AdvanceMy.biz

“Drive thy business or it will drive thee.” – Benjamin Franklin

Business owners know they need to keep moving their businesses forward to find new clients and new markets. Those who are serious about online marketing face the challenge of either researching the internet to learn about Search Engine Optimization, Facebook and Google Adwords, or paying consultants to do the work for them. Many are frustrated by wanting to promote online, but don’t know where to begin.

Brian DeLaet of Educyber understands their frustration. “Internet marketing changes constantly, and most business owners don’t have the staff to constantly research the best ways to market online. That’s our business. We’re on top of all the latest trends in online marketing and we make that knowledge accessible to business owners through our new site, AdvanceMy.biz.”

AdvanceMy.biz is an online site for business owners to learn how to promote their business online and learn from each other’s problems and also from their triumphs. The AdvanceMy.biz staff and our affiliate internet professionals provide an evolving curriculum of the latest in internet strategies and tools that will quickly ramp up your online marketing efforts.

The courses are geared to three levels – the total beginner, who’s looking to get started, the intermediate web marketer looking to gain more knowledge, and the almost-expert who wants to create and run an online campaign.

To celebrate the opening of the site, new members pay ½ price for the first two months. Sign up at http://www.advancemy.biz. Questions? Email info@advancemy.biz.

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Email Scams Proliferate

Lately we’ve been getting bombarded with email scams. Beware and DO NOT click on these unless you communicate with network administrator (call us if you don’t have a network administrator: 303 268-2245).

One message has a title like this: A new settings file for the <youremailaddress> mailbox has just been released and it was a bogus link that you are supposed to click on. DO NOT click the link!

The second message we’ve seen has this subject line: Important – System upgrade and it also has a link that you should not click under any circumstances.

Beware, be aware, and be safe on the Internet.

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Mixing Personal and Business in Social Media

Question 8 from 10 Essential Question for your Social Media Marketing Campaign:  “How personal does the SOCIAL part need to be?” is one of those “It depends” kind of questions.

While delivering a seminar on Facebook not long ago, one of the attendees remarked “But what if I don’t want to connect with people from my high school? There’s a reason I don’t live there anymore.” That made me stop because until then I’d been a proponent of “laying it all out there.”

The easy answer to the question is it can be as personal (or impersonal) as you want it to be.  Here are my tips for determining how personal you should be:

  1. It’s called SOCIAL media marketing so you should share some personal information
  2. Go ahead and post your birth DAY but not your BIRTH DATE – why make it easy for identity thieves?
  3. Post negative comments with extreme caution – they can come back to bite you if you’re not careful
  4. Tell us about your family in the same way you’d share with someone at a networking event
  5. Keep your marketing goals in mind lest you find yourself adrift in social cyberspace
  6. I aim for around 30% personal and the rest focused on business but that shifts from Facebook (much more personal) to Twitter and LinkedIn.
  7. At the risk of repeating myself, establish a goal and stick to it. Post it on your monitor so you stay focused and don’t end up with 100% social and 0% marketing.
  8. Be creative. Look for ways that your social life mixes with your business goals so that while posting personal information, you’re also drawing attention to your business or business goals.
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Tools to Improve Your Social Media Marketing

Question 7 from 10 Essential Questions for your Social Media Marketing Campaign: ” What tools are available to make my time in SMM more efficient?” can be answered in different ways.

There are tools and then there are tools. Every day there are thousands (yes thousands) of blog entries and tweets about all the wonderful tools available to help you leverage your Social Media Marketing time to maximum advantage.

This isn’t another one of those messages. Instead, let me tell you about two that I use and point you in the direction of finding others.

The tool that I use to tie things together is Friendfeed. Friendfeed lets you tie your various social media accounts together in such a way that you can post once to one account and the post will automatically be updated across all your accounts.  What does “all your accounts” mean? Friendfeed can talk to your blog, to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube to name a few. If you use pictures, it can talk to Flickr and to Picasa. If you are into bookmarking and news, it will talk to delicious, StumbleUpon, Digg and Google Reader. In fact, there are currently 58 different sites that can be tied together through Friendfeed.

That sounds a bit overwhelming.  It doesn’t need to though. You can start with just a couple and still save time by using Friendfeed. Then when you’re ready to add, you can do so and tie them into Friendfeed as you add them to your repertoire.

The second tool I use and like is TweetDeck. While it sounds like it is just a Twitter application, it actually ties into Facebook and MySpace as well, allowing you to post once but push it to all those accounts. I only use it with Twitter but even then it helps. I have a personal account twitter.com/edubrian and a corporate account twitter.com/educyber and I can post to either or both at the same time through TweetDeck.

The power of TweetDeck comes from being able to create groups. I follow more than 1400 people but it works its power even if you follow a handful. For example, you can create a group called “My Industry” and add the people from your industry into that group. You can create a group called “Customers” and add your customers to that group. And so on. The simplicity of that makes life easier and will likely encourage you to follow more people because the flow of Tweets becomes more manageable.

What else is there?

Here are just a few links I found:

42+ Social Media Marketing Tools

4 tools for easier social media management

35+ Social Media Tools That Make Life Easier

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