Does Your Website Sell or Simply Inform

Sell or Inform

When someone visits your website what do they see? Do they find information of value or a positional marketing advertisement?

Marketing courses have always taught that there are two kinds of ads:

1. Those that keep your name in front of customers and prospects.
2. Those that sell your business and products or services.

Most websites follow the first reason. The problem is that there is no reason for your customers and prospects to return. Okay, they know who you are let’s move on to something more interesting.

Is that what you want? Is that how you really do business? Of course not, you want your customers and prospects to see value and a reason to keep returning. If you are not meeting that need, then your website is futile.

All the Talk About SEO Strategies

People talk and organizations promote the idea of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). This is great if you have something to offer once they click on your ad. If you have nothing to offer, however, all you have done is throw away the money you spent getting them to click!

There has to be a value proposition when they come or the process is futile! SEO organizations don’t tell you that. All they care about is causing people to click on your ad; conversion from a visit to a sale is your responsibility.

When Visitors Come You Must Give Them Value

Whether your visitors are coming to your website, Facebook Page, or even LinkedIn Profile are you providing value? Are you demonstrating what you have to offer by giving them something for simply coming? It doesn’t need to be monetary, it is the perceived value that counts.

Maybe it is a list of the top ten problems that your clients and customers bring to you for help or assistance. Maybe it is the top ten health issues faced by people over a certain age. Whatever it is you need to offer relevant value to the people that come to your site.

When Visitors Come Are You Capturing Their Information

Another common mistake with Websites, Facebook Pages, etc. is not capturing your visitors information. When someone visits, follow the information above and provide something of value just for showing up, but then offer even more if they will give you just their first name and email address.

You need to capture information on who is coming to your site. With Facebook this is particularly valuable when you get them to “Like” your Page, because along with the “Like” you gather tremendous demographic information. You can determine the primary age range of your visitors, whether they are male or female, where they live, their language, and a host of other information. You just need to get them to “Like” your Page.

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Tom Staskiewicz speaks and coaches on Social Media/Social Networking topics helping businesses, organizations, and individuals establish and manage their Social Media presence. Your Social Media presence doesn’t just happen and will not take care of itself. Tom helps you with those processes so your Social Media efforts will work for you.

Click here for my list of Facebook Tips and Ideas or sign up for my Facebook Newsletter.

What Can You Do with an Email Service

What Email Service Is Right for You

Have you thought about using an email service to stay in touch with your customers and prospects? I’m sure you have, if for no other reason than the intensive marketing being done by Constant Contact.

Before You Select a Service; Know What You Want to Do

The truth is that all email services are not created equal. Some have features that others do not. Some charge based upon the number of emails sent and others charge based upon the number of subscribers you have.

How Many Subscribers Do You Expect?

Knowing how many subscribers you will have and how often you plan on contacting those subscribers can make a huge difference in the cost.

How Many Email Lists Will You Have?

Another factor is how many email lists will you have? Will you have both a list of active customers and prospects? Will it be a single list? Will you have a list for customers of each type or category of product or service you offer?

Are You Going to Do Email Campaigns?

Maybe you are asking what is an email campaign, so I will give you a brief overview. A campaign is typically a series of emails sent to subscribers.

The campaign starts with a letter of invitation to join the list (usually an opt-in or double opt-in) process to make sure you have the correct person.

Following the opt-in there is an immediate follow-up with the additional promised information. A few (7-10) days later there is another follow-up to ensure that they received the information and provide a second promotion. 12-14 days later there is another follow-up typically with some type of incentive to sign up. That may be it or 60 days later there could be one last follow up. It’s really up to you.

Some email services support email campaigns, some do not, and others only limited email campaigns or a limited number of campaigns.

To Opt-In or Not; or Will You Spam

Opt-In basically says do you want to participate and lets the reader know that they can opt-out at any time.

Do you want an opt-in or double opt-in process where the people signing up must go to a sight or respond to an email and confirm that they want to be on your list. If you don’t have an opt-in some, maybe many will report you as spam and can get you blacklisted; opt-ins are preferable to blacklists. Unless you are closely monitoring the service you won’t know that your emails have been blocked.

If the service isn’t offering an opt-in option that can be a problem. Maybe you don’t irritate the users but that doesn’t mean that someone else using the service won’t irritate their recipients and the backlash can hit you!

Opt-ins protect you as much or even more than they protect your recipients.

Will You Have Mini-Memberships?

A Mini-Membership has people sign-up typically paying a fee for a limited-term-membership (compare it to a four – 12 week class and sometimes up to one-year). Each week or month they will have the next part of their course delivered to their email box.

Some email services support this and some do not. Some will support several limited-term-memberships and others will support only one.

Before you select a service know what you services you are expecting them to provide.

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Tom Staskiewicz speaks and coaches on Social Media/Social Networking topics helping businesses, organizations, and individuals establish and manage their Social Media presence. Your Social Media presence doesn’t just happen and will not take care of itself. Tom helps you with those processes so your Social Media efforts will work for you.

Facebook – Posting from Your Page to Another Page

I Want to Post as My Page on Someone Else’s Page, but the Posts Show They Are from Me

I get this comment or the question as to how one Page can post on another all the time. Obviously the ability to promote your page on someone else’s Fan Page would be great. What an opportunity that would present for going viral.

Posting from My Page to Another Page

After some serious thought and testing on the issue I came up with a way to do it. It is not 100% fool proof by any stretch, but it can work.

What you need to do is use ShoutOuts! You may wonder what’s a shoutout. It’s the practice of posting something on your Page that includes the name of the Page where you want your post to display and prefacing it with the @ sign. For instance if you post includes @upproach; it will show up on my Page.

Here are the caveats.

1. You must be a Fan of the Page where you want to post.
2. The Page where you want to post must allow Posts by others.
3. You can find out if this is enabled by going to the Page and clicking on the Options button on the upper right corner of the Wall.
4. If you see Posts by Page, Posts by Page and Others, or Just Posts by Others; things are looking good and the @ option will work.
5. If the Page defaults to Posts by Page and Others all the better; your message will get more visibility.
6. Even though the Page allows these Posts; administrators do have the ability to delete your Posts.
7. You cannot reply to a Post on the Page. Your post will be a new post.

So there it is. I have tested between my own Pages and found this to work.

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Tom Staskiewicz is a Social Media/Social Networking Coach helping businesses, organizations, and individuals to establish and manage their Social Media presence. Your Social Media presence doesn’t just happen and will not take care of itself. Tom helps you with those processes so your Social Media efforts will work for you.

Your Fan Page Needs Your Friends

Do My Fans Need to Know I Administer the Facebook Fan Page

Here’s the deal. You created a Fan or business page under your personal profile; that makes you the administrator of the page. Unless you post something on the Fan Page that gives it away as to who you are; your Fans cannot tell.

Two Steps to Better Hide Your Identity

If you are still worried the best way to hide the details about yourself is through the security settings on your personal profile. What you want to do is manage the information that you want to share with everyone, your friends, and your friend’s friends.

The other protection is deciding who you will accept as a friend. You can control this and if there are people that you do not want to have access to your personal information do not send a friend request or accept a friend request from them.

You can also classify your friends using the FB “list” process and create lists and then assign your friends. When you post you have the option to select the lists that you want to see the post you are leaving. That provides an additional method of restricting who sees what content.

Why You WANT the Two Connected

The last thing is that your business reputation and brand come for most of us from our personal reputation. What role does your personal reputation play in your business and how much do you count on your friends for referrals. The more restrictive you are the fewer the referrals you will receive.

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Tom Staskiewicz is a Social Media/Social Networking Coach helping businesses, organizations, and individuals to establish and manage their Social Media presence. Your Social Media presence doesn’t just happen and will not take care of itself. Tom helps you with those processes so your Social Media efforts will work for you.

Helping Your Children by Building Your Network

Your Network Has Value to Your Children

While you may typically think of your network as your list of contacts that will help you in your business or career. Your network has the potential to help more than just you. One of the most important benefactors of your networking efforts can be your children.

How Your Network Can Help Your Children

Through your connections, you can provide your children access to influential people they may otherwise never know. Whether your child is looking for a connection to a college, an opportunity for an internship, a job, references, or some other interest that can benefit from a connection; you can be the missing link.

Almost daily most of you come in contact with interesting people with varied backgrounds. Capturing these connections brings value to you and your network, but it may also bring a needed future connection for your children.

As a parent building your network can be one of the most unselfish acts you ever take as you work to create the connections that your child will need as the progress through their career.

Read my other networking articles on this Blog for more reasons why you MUST be networking.

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Tom Staskiewicz is a Social Media/Social Networking Coach helping businesses, organizations, and individuals to establish and manage their Social Media presence. Your Social Media presence doesn’t just happen and will not take care of itself. Tom helps you with those processes so your Social Media efforts will work for you.

Does Your Social Networking Answer the WIIFM Question?

What’s In It For Me?

The reality is that people are always looking to understand how they will benefit from any activity or action undertaken. They may be totally supportive of an idea or a plan, but their own interests will eventually come into play. With that in mind do you have the WIIFM answer for your customers and prospects?

Does Your Offer Answer Your Customer’s WIIFM Question?

If you can answer that question for them and answer it repeatedly with a benefit that they perceive has value and is of interest; you will get their attention. We are all bombarded with information constantly and one of the easiest ways to weed through the information is by looking for those messages that quickly tell them what is in it for them and make if very clear what they have to gain.

They will take that information and then weigh it against their cost. If the benefit out weighs the cost, they will be interested and act. If the perceived benefit does not outweigh the cost, they will move on to the next offer.

Do You Struggle with the WIIFM Question for Yourself?

So whether you are promoting yourself, your business, your service, or your product; you must be able to provide your reader with an answer to the WIIFM question. If you can’t or you don’t it is wasted effort on your part and you then need to look at the WIIFM question for yourself.

If you don’t want to put the work into your own activities then YOU must be failing your own WIIFM question. For whatever reason you do not feel that putting the effort into your own activities is worth the benefit you will receive.

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Tom Staskiewicz creates networking strategies that help you build your individual and business brands. Ask him how! Check out the UP^PROACH website.

Social Media.. What Site or Sites Are Best for My Business?

Few Companies Take the Time to Select the Social Media Sites that Will Be Best for Them

I don’t know how many times I have read purported experts telling organizations that they should have a presence on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Plaxo, Friendster, MySpace, etc. I have heard them specify up to 10 sites that they state are critical to your business. Do they really know? What is their proof?

If you go looking for sites on your own you will see that Wikipedia lists over 190 different Social Media sites. On top of selecting your Social Media sites; businesses are told they must be blogging and oh, by the way, you should do podcasts in your spare time.

The reality is that there are way too many options and no business, regardless of how well staffed they are, can effectively participate in all these sites or even 10 sites. To make it worse many so-called Social Media consultants or experts spend little or no time understanding your business or helping you develop a strategy. My experience is that their interest is to get you involved in Social Media Sites far more than helping you achieve Social Media success.

What Do You Hope to Accomplish with Social Media and Why?

Before you jump into any site you must first understand or determine what you are attempting to accomplish. You must be able to answer these questions:

• Who do you want to talk to?
• Where do members of your audience spend their time?
• What Social Media sites serve your audience?
• What is interests your audience?
• What information can you contribute to meet their interests?
• How often do you want to talk?
• What of quality or value do you have to say?
• What action do you want your audience to take?

I am sure you can come up with other questions that will help to narrow your focus and evolve your strategy.

When you can answer these questions you are then prepared to start evaluating which Social Media sites will best serve your purposes. Certain sites lend themselves better to one objective or another and none are a one-size fits all solution.

The mistake that you do not want to make is to spend time in places where you will not find your customers and prospects or where you have nothing to add to the conversation. My friend, Neal Shaffer, wrote the blog post 5 Reasons Why Your Social Media Strategy Isn’t Really a Social Media Strategy.

Your Social Media Strategy Must Be Evolving

Your Social Media strategy must be evolving. Social Media sites will come and go, customers will redefine their interests, and/or you will change your strategies. You must be prepared to adapt and change as your needs change.

The reality is that businesses must pick and choose their Social Media sites with care. Just like you take care in selecting your product or service lines you must be using the same care in selecting your Social Media sites.

Social Media Has Much to Offer Businesses, but They Must Do Their Homework First

If you take the time to do your homework; your chances of success will increase geometrically.

Begging for Facebook Fans

Are You Looking to Build a Following for Your Facebook Fan Page?

There are lots of fan pages out there and many, if not most, go begging for fans. Interestingly I see many posts of people saying “Be my Fan”, “Follow My Page”, “Click on This”, etc. That may work with some people, but you will never gain a quality following using that process. That is unless you are a celebrity and people are ready to jump at anything you say or do.

To Be Successful Facebook Fan Pages Need Fans

Without a doubt your page will be far more successful when you have 100s or 1000s of fans; but you will never reach that goal by begging. You must be providing value to generate fans. There are many different ways to provide value or otherwise encourage people to follow you; but you must be providing something in exchange for their clicking “Like” and becoming a fan.

What Do You Have to Offer?

Obviously one of the first things that you can be offering is valuable information. For instance if you are reading this article; you obviously believe that there is value in the information. Providing information that is helpful and can add value to your readers can be the enticement necessary to get them to become your fan.

Some pages gather fans by offering specials, using coupons or other pricing incentives, running promotions, and other activities to encourage participation. All of these actions can help in building your following. Along with those activities you need to be regular in your postings and activities. People are not interested in Pages that stop and start.

On my page UP^PROACH I offer Fan Page tips. This is gaining me a following and therefore people must believe that there is value in what I am saying. If I can do it, so can you.

Make your Fan Page appeal to readers by giving them quality!

Does Networking Work?

Have you ever wondered if networking pays off?

Here is my latest experience. Approximately 8 weeks ago my contract was ended. I had been contracting at one company for the past 3 ½ years and it was only supposed to be a 1 year contract. That worked out well for me and I am happy that it lasted that long. I will get back to the end of the contract in a little bit.

Prior to this contract I had been looking for work for about 6 months. I had some things here and there that kept us going, but it was tough regardless. What is important, however, is what I did while I was with this company.

Take Action

The first action, not under my control, was shortly after I started I was called to a regional employment role in my church. The second action was I started using LinkedIn. The third actions was the more I learned the more I wanted to learn on how it could help me with my search.

Learn to Network

By learning how to network and allowing my network to get to know me I made many great contacts. I didn’t know everyone in my network at first and in many cases I am still getting to know them; but I will keep working on this.

Make Lots of Connections

About 1 1/2 years after getting into LinkedIn I started on Facebook. I had watched my teenagers use MySpace and then Facebook and thought they were wasting their time. I was wrong! At least with the idea that Facebook offered nothing for me. I started connecting with all kinds of people and it has been great.

I now have over 850 connections on LinkedIn connecting me to over 8 MILLION people and I have over 650 connections on Facebook. Some of the LinkedIn and Facebook connections are duplicated, but most are not.

After the Contract Ended

Anyway back to having the contract end… I contacted my and other recruiting companies to see what might be available. It wasn’t long and I had a couple of opportunities presented. One ended up panning out and I started the Tuesday after Labor Day.

Emailed Over 170 Contacts

The other thing that I did, however, was send an email to about 170 of my email contacts. That process generated over a dozen responses with possible opportunities. Where I went wrong was not sending that email out earlier in the process.

Let People in Your Network Know Who You Are and What You Can Do

When people in your network know you, know what you can do, and know what you want to do; they are there to help. My email went out a couple of weeks ago and I am still being contacted by members of my network to see what they can do to help. The truth is that I still have well over one thousand people that I could contact; a majority of whom I did not know three years ago.

I connect with new people all the time; it is my goal to be adding 5 – 10 new connections either on LinkedIn of Facebook every week. Sometimes it is as many as 20 per week and this is what YOU must be doing as well.

Networking works when you give it a chance.

Building Your Business Using Social Media

Does the World Know About Your Expertise?

I received email this morning from my friend Charlie Cook. Charlie helps small businesses with their marketing. In his email he was talking about a bike shop, Santa Fe Mountain Sports.

Charlie needed to fix the derailleur on his wife’s bike so they could take a ride. An avid biker, Charlie thought he was up to the task, but quickly realized he needed some help. He went to YouTube and searched on “adjusting front derailleur”. He found the video he needed and saw that over 400,000 other people had found it as well. All told this bike shop has over 1.3 million views of their videos that demonstrate their expertise.

Are you demonstrating your expertise? Are you getting your word out?

As Charlie points out even if each person viewed it twice that is 200,000 exposures to potential customers and it is all done for free!

I can help you make Social Media work for you! Contact me at tom@upproach.com and let’s talk!