Slaughter Consulting's Blog

You have a Website, Now What?

alishaslaughter — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:48:21 +0000

When people come to me and ask me to build them a website I immediately ask them if they have considered how they will drive traffic to their new site. The saying, “if you build it, they will come”, does not apply here on the world wide web. A website is nothing without a comprehensive plan as to how you are going to get people to visit, revisit and stay on your site.

To ensure success with your website consider the following basics:

Content and Usability: First off, make sure that as you build your site you develop it to be information rich and easy to navigate.
Keywords: Search engines index your site using commonly found words and phrases on your pages. If you want to be found in specific search engine searches, determine what “keywords” people will use (or you want them to use) to find you and then create copy on your pages to support those searches. Be sure to use keywords that are specific to your site, and use them repeatedly throughout the text on your site, as well as in your meta tags, titles and alternate text used to describe images.
Easy Loading Pages: Don’t load up on the big images. Optimize your images for quick and easy viewing.
Newsletters: Send out a regular newsletter and offer visitors the option to opt-in. Always offer an opt-out in each email! Be CAN SPAM compliant.
Easy to find Contact Information: Don’t make visitors search for your email or phone number.
Setup Anayltics to Track and Measure Site Traffic: Check out my resources page to track where your visitors are coming from, how they are finding you, how long they are staying and what pages they are visiting. Try different things and test how visitors reach these changes.
Submit Your Site to Search Engines: Check out my resources page for the links to submit to the top three Google, Yahoo!, Bing and Ask.
Develop a Linking Strategy: Submit your site to directories, trade organizations, and request reciprocal links.
Develop a Social Media Plan: Social media helps to promote your site by building a network of people who are interested in you and your business, generating awareness and interest, and producing links to your site. Social media activities include blogging and social networking on sites like Facebook, Linked In and Twitter.
Utilize Every Point of Contact: Taking an integrated approach make sure that every communication includes your website URL. Include it on your business cards, stationary, literature, email signature and print ads.

Following these basic steps will help to keep you on the right track. As with every promotion activity test and measure your success. Good luck with your website and if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Social Networking Success

alishaslaughter — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:51:37 +0000

I have been working on numerous real estate projects over the past few years. Recently, I have been assigned with helping a few realtors and businesses utilize and develop a social networking strategy. Whether you are a real estate agent or not here are some simple guidelines for establishing your plan of attack.

Goals and Objectives
Decide what your business goals are and how each network you decide to use can support that goal. Also, while you are using and growing your networks you are going to want to measure against these goals to make sure your efforts are worth your time. These goals can be acquiring new clients, establishing yourself as an industry expert, marketing products, testing out marketing ideas, etc.

Develop Plan and Strategy
Examine your target market and determine the appropriate social networks to reach them. Since managing your online presence on these sites takes time I suggest you pick just a few to start out with. Establish basic goals for each site and make sure that you regularly monitor your effort against these goals. Establish your home base on your blog and update and manage your contribution to the networks from there. One other thing to keep in mind is to not only talk about yourself and things you are doing, but to also monitor and contribute to the “conversations” going on.

Participate and Evaluate
No marketing effort is worth doing with out proper tracking and evaluation. Your social networking effort should be somewhat fluid and if something works do more of that. Also, since there is so much give and take, listen carefully to what you networks responds to and offer them more of the same.

Additional Resources:
Getting Started with Social Media in 2009 (for Real Estate)
5 Keys To Social Networking Success
How to Use Social Media To Grow Your Business

Click here for a compresensive list of social networking sites:
The Top Social Networking Sites

Email Best Practices

alishaslaughter — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 15:57:08 +0000

Email marketing is a cost effective way to stay in touch with customers and grow your business by word-of-mouth. When used correctly, you can keep customers aware of new products and educate them on the ones they already use adding value to your business relationship. There are a few things to keep in mind when creating these messages and I found a great article on the Lyris website that gives a quick overview of best practices to keep in mind when creating and sending. Click below to read the article:

The Ten Most-Ignored Email Best Practices

Following best practices ensures continued readership and further opt ins. With every marketing effort customize as much as possible to your customers buying interests and analyze, analyze, analyze to track click though and opt-outs. No marketing effort is worth doing with out a tracking mechanism in place. Some great email management tools are listed below:

www.ConstantContact.com

www.iContact.com

http://www.campaignmonitor.com/

Happy Marketing!

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