I’ve been experimenting with blogs. Within an hour I can build a site, and I mean website, not blog. Well, it’s a mix really, so I’m calling it a blogsite. This ‘blogsite’ fulfils all the requirements of a basic business. These include
• Logo
• Pages
• Contact details
• Product descriptions
• Integration with social media
• Search Engine Visibility
OK. I’m a late developer. Bloggers have always known this. Contractory, I know, but though I’ve been a blogger myself since blogs began, I always looked down on the templates they used. (Some were pretty bad in the early days in fairness.) Then I started to question that logic when WordPress started to get impressive. I quickly imported my blog – TheTannoy.com from Blogger into WordPress (so simple) and I really got into the machine behind the text. I’ll port the .com URL over soon but its currently at thetannoy.wordpress.com. It’s all got so simple all of a sudden.
If you have a good logo and a basic template, the job is done. The logo communicates the seriousness of brand adequately IMHO. The rest is down to giving people what they want when they come to a site. Not an arrogant tour of the egos of your marketing department, of your good self, but rather a brief who, what, where, why, how much, contacts and a bit of relevant news.
The news is the hook. The best way to get people in contact with your business is not to fall into the trap of thinking that your business is that interesting. News is interesting. Developments, wow, market shifts, numbers and measures… news. You might indeed service a bit of the sector better than others, but that will all come out in the wash, won’t it. Being up to date in the digital world is by far the most important thing. Having a service that is relevant for today. Not tomorrow, or yesterday, but today. Then it’s down to pricing and the golden mean of digital marketing, and the point of this post, reach.
Every communication via your new website needs to hit the other locations where people hang out. No-one is going to seek your little shop in your new fresh corner of the Interweb. They hang out to be social in a business context, a family and friend one, or a news and views one. Just like in the real world. So, these hangouts are linkedin, facebook and twitter. So, every relevant utterance has to be share with the relevant audience. There are loads of cool widgets to help you do this on WordPress. Use them, and no site updates, or news, or views are wasted. They all have some audience. Maybe not huge, but a much bigger one than would exist if you’re waiting for that audience to wander by your website.
In truth, the vast majority of traffic to a B2B website does not come from customers, unless you are in the news, classifieds and entertainment business. A good proportion of your daily visits will come from competitors. Only rocking businesses will break this rule, but these are few and far between.
So, the best way to know that your messages are reaching your customers is to make sure that your blogsite is pushing messages to twitter followers, Facebook likers and Linkedin luddites (sorry, it rhymes and is often true). Then, let the competitors wander by. In a single push of the button ‘update’ you have updated your site and hit the relevant audience for your business… Simples.
Another good thing to note. It’s free. No harm in that is there.
To my surprise then, when I Googled my new websites, there they were. First page. Position 1 to 3. Sweet. Now that’s clever.
By the way, the sites I built are: www.monitrackresearch.com, www.paviliondigitalwebsite@wordpress.com (soon to be paviliondigital.com).
Addendum: I just mapped TheTannoy.com to wordpress. It took all of 30 seconds – instead of at least 30 minutes and 2 days for it to register before.
