NuRelm, Inc.

Evaluating YourBusiness Website

What Makes aWebsite Work?

NuRelm E-Business Software

info@nurelm.com

NuRelm, NuContent and Osmosis are trademarks ofNuRelm, Inc. © 2010 NuRelm, Inc. All Rights Reserved

What We’ll Cover

Agenda:• Introductions• Part I, Foundation: The basics a

website needs to have in place.• Part II, The Grand Scheme: How does

your website fit into the Web ecosystem?• Part III, Examples: Examples of tools

people are using and how they relate to your site.

• Part IV, Implementation: Put a plan in place that keeps your website alive even when your attention is spread thin.

Who We Are

NuRelm's niche is providing user-driven, interactive websites that are easily editable by non-technical marketing department staff or small business owners.

What We Do

Online Training• Web-based training delivery

• Online course development

Content Management• Web content management software

• Hosting and Web development services

• Integration of open source CMSes

Online Marketing• Analysis of existing online marketing

• Ongoing marketing services

Web Development/Advanced Web Apps• Professional Web site design

• Development of sites in an array of languages

Why we’re presenting this

• Provide real value• Present topics that NuRelm understands,

but NOT imply that we are the only choice

• Create useful discussions and relationships among attendees

• Work with managers and business owners to help them use the Web to grow their businesses and boost sales.

Every company chooses how to build a relationship with their community. We prefer to do so in ways that :

Part I: Foundations

Your Site!

General Thoughts

•Everything hinges on having a “good” Web site.

•What makes a Web site good?

•How do I know when it’s good?

•How can I maintain a good site?

A Web Site is Good When It …

• Has a good design, but design alone doesn’t make it good.

• Has useful, interesting, concise, up-to-date content.

• Has useful functionality.• Is structured such that everything is

easy to find.• Does not have any broken elements.• Is easy to load, print, search.

Good Design

Make it professional:No bad midi music, clip art, waving flags, barking dogs, distracting backgrounds, animated lightning bolts, etc.

Many Web designers can only build static online brochures, so decide now if you want: Online portfolios, email forms, rotating testimonials, rotating imagery, opt-in newsletters, Flash animation, RSS, Podcasts, Blogs, search tools, content management, etc.

Good Functionality

Good Content

• Schedule site updates and stick to the schedule

• Don’t let obviously old content stay on your site

• Check meta tags• Put someone in charge of your site’s

content• Put a process in place to review Web

site content

Without current content, few visitors will return to the site:

Good Content

Decide How to Maintain Content

• Outsource content changes• Expensive, slow

• Make changes via HTML tool• Requires technical skill• Slow, time consuming

• Make changes with content management tool• Fast, easy

Some form of content management is the only site update solution that works over time.

Good Content

Content Management: NuContent

1. Log in2. Go to a page3. Click on the “Edit”

link4. Type changes

Good Site Structure

• Along with main navigation, add organized links to crucial areas of the site on front page.

• “Pull” latest news, events, or other items from other areas of site to front page.

• Use good navigation structure.• Put careful thought into site outline.• Don’t let the site get confusing.

Make it Easy to Find The Good Stuff:

• Content must stay current• Keep marketing the site• Monitor the results of your efforts• Put Web

processes inplace

Keeping a good Web site is an ongoing effort that starts once the site is launched.

The golden Web site rule

Maintaining a good Web site is an ongoing effort:

Part II: The Grand Scheme

How the Web is used today

• Consumer Reviews• Read Articles• Share Videos• Download Music• Emotional Support• Voice Opinions• Discussion• Online Shopping• Read News Stories• Watch Videos• Do Business• Keep in Touch• The list goes on and on and on...

A few reasons people use the Web:

We love to INTERACT on the web

But What IS Online Marketing again?Step 1: Find Me!(alternate title: Looking For Love In All the Right Places)

Your Site!

Big search engines

Social networking

Articles / pressPaid listings

Membership organizationsLocal search

listings

But What IS Online Marketing again?

You must have a site that works and that does what a client wants, but once that’s in place, GOOD CONTENT is what will usually bring them back. Social Media is a great way to provide good content on a regular basis.

Step 2: Come Back!(alternate title: Hold Me)

Good structureGOOD

CONTENTGood functionality

But What IS Online Marketing again?

You must have a site that works and that does what a client wants, but once that’s in place, GOOD CONTENT is what will usually bring them back.

Good structureGOOD

CONTENTGood functionality

Step 3: Do What I Want!(alternate title… oh, never mind)

Find Me: Search Engines

Indexing Search Engines (spiders)use software to search almost every site on the entire Internet, each has its own private algorithms for ranking sites.

Subject Directoriesare categorized lists of Web sites built by humans, not software. Not nearly as big as spider-built search tools.

Find Me: Search Engines

• Rankings generated by each search engine’s proprietary algorithms

• Basics: Good page titles, descriptions, structure, readability (your web developer should know what these mean)

• Items that will make the difference: Good content, lots of good links to your site

Links from other sites to your site are critical to building good organic results. People won’t link to you if your content is bad. So, good content is critical!

What are “organic” results and how do I beef mine up?

Find Me: Search Engines

From a 2007 article on www.infovis-wiki.net

Ok, this is weird,but ...

Smileys = Websites

Fingers = Links

Big = High PageRank

Got it?

Definition

Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media supports the human need for social interaction, using Internet- and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many).

-Wikipedia, 2009

Components of Social Media

Social media can be said to have three components:

• Concept (art, information, or meme … your content)• Media (physical, electronic,

or verbal)• Social interface (intimate

direct, community engagement, social viral, electronic broadcast or syndication, or other physical media such as print)

The passenger

(your content)

The road(the internet)

The vehicle(media

choices)

Find Me: Social Media

To be honest, I don't even know what ALL of these are. But I know the big ones. Grab an “AddThis” button from www.addthis.com

Do you have kids? Ask them about these sites.

Communication: The Old Days

Traditional Media

Communication: Today

Traditional Media

Electronic Social Media

Your Web Traffic Strategy: Overview

The passenger

(your content)

Social Networking

Social Bookmarking

RSS FeedsBlog

Contributions

Microblogging

Local Search Directories

Organic SearchSearch Directories

Blog or Website

Paid Search

Part III: Examples

Social Media Examples

The types of Social media we will discuss:

• Blogs

• RSS feeds

• Microblogging

• Social networking

• Social bookmarking

Blogs: What are they?

• Short for weblog

• Online journal entries

• One author, multiple participants

• Frequently updated and intended for general public consumption

• Ideal for large or small businesses w/ a lot of good content that will set them apart

Blogs: Pros• Great for viral marketing

• Boosts SEO

• Easy / inexpensive to build

• No technical knowledge to maintain

• Can reach target markets

• Easily searchable/archiving

• Establishing expertise in a field

• Providing pertinent information that other sites may link to

• Driving traffic to your site through blog marketing

Blogs: Cons

• Regular Upkeep

• Time consuming

• Professional writing skills

• Hard to build an audience

• Lots of research required

Blogs: Example

Blogs: Next Steps

• Hosted or part of your site?

• Pick the software (Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, MySpace, more)

• Plan, write, plan, write, …

• Use Feedburner (a blog is an RSS feed)

Blogs- Tips and Tricks

• Submit your blog to sites like Metafilter, Bloggpedia, and Blogged. These will help people in those communities find content on your blog and it will help create incoming links.

• Advertise your blog like you do your existing products.

• Track the statistics of your blog.

• If you have an established business, consider having a professional customizing the blog's design for branding purposes. Wordpress makes it very easy to do this.

• Try to keep the material updated weekly.

RSS: What is it?Also known as Really Simple Syndication, an RSS reader is a tool that pulls information from multiple Web sites and displays it in a central location, ideal for:

•Important Alerts

•Weather Bulletins

•Stock Quotes

•Retail sales

•Tips of the Day

• News sections

• Blog updates

• Discussion forum posts

• Events

• New product releases

RSS: What does it do?

RSS Reader

CNN FeedTech Soup FeedMSNBC Feed…

RSS: An example

RSS: Pros• Easy integration

• RSS readers are easy to use

• Could boost SEO

• Increases returning visitors

• Automatic upkeep

• Relatively cheap to integrate

• Provides one more way for people to find you

RSS: Cons• You haven’t done this yet on

your site!

RSS: Suggested Next StepsTurn your news section into an RSS feed

Use Feedburner:

• “Our Web-based tools help bloggers, podcasters and commercial publishers promote, deliver and profit from their content on the Web.”

• Helps you publish, distribute, and track your feeds

• It’s free

Microblogging

Definition: A form of multimedia blogging that allows users to send brief text updates, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user.

These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, E-mail, digital audio or the web.

-Wikipedia, 2009

Good For: Promoting events, press releases, special offers, and breaking news.

Examples: Twitter, Facebook, identi.ca, Jaiku

Microblogging: Suggested Next StepsUse Twitter as a business resource to

gather information, not just to disseminate it:

• Begin by following other business Twitter accounts that are relevant to your business.

• Post interesting, relevant, business-related information.

Social Networking

Definition: Focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instant messaging services.

Good For: Extending network, find leads, build partnerships and staying up to date within business community.

Examples: LinkedIn, Facebook, Plaxo

Social Networking

Concepts of Social networking:

• Create a profile

• Find contacts (colleagues, co-workers, prospects, partners, family members, etc.)

• Add them to your network and introduce yourself if it is someone you don't personally know. This is good for introductions.

• Post your strengths, goals, interests. Please refrain from posting about things that are too personal, like that time you decided to drink a bottle of wine and fight a phone pole.

Social Networking: How it may drive business

• Business referrals from pleased clients, partners, colleagues.

• Great follow to connect with people from networking events or new prospects that you've met previously.

• Building expertise by posting on forums and answering questions for people.

• Link blogs, Twitter accounts, and other social media items to tie all your efforts together.

Social Bookmarking

Definition: A method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren't shared, merely bookmarks that reference them.

-Wikipedia, 2009

Good For: Viral marketing

Examples: Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit

Social bookmarking: How to use it for business

• Free and effective way to get backlinks and drive traffic to websites and blogs

• Get friends and co-workers to help rank your links for more credibility and exposure

• Understand how these sites work before using them, the best way is to just explore them

• The most popular ones are Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit or StumbleUpon

Part IV: Implementation

Example Integrated Website Strategy: Goal

We want to put together a Web strategy which

• Uses everything we just reviewed

• Can be turned into an efficient process

• Can be performed by members of your marketing staff who do not necessarily know everything about the business

• Is effective!

Example Social Media Marketing Strategy: IngredientsGather up the following ingredients:

• Part of your website that you want to feature, let’s say blog

• An RSS reader

• One or two good social bookmarking sites

• LinkedIn accounts for all your sales people

• A Twitter account (or experiment with one of the others listed previously)

• A stalwart marketing intern

Example Social Media Marketing Strategy: Prepare

Your Internet expert … unpaid

marketing intern (Ace)

Make a list of related blogs and set them up in an RSS reader. Review each week for articles that your staff could respond to.

Build up a list of followers and followed. Only “tweet” interesting things, such as links to excellent articles related to your field, or relevant news stories. You’ll use this to market your own articles.

Excellent for sales person networking, but also a great way to create links to your site. Everyone in the office should have an account.

Sign up, and regularly recommend good, relevant sites. You’ll use this to recommend your own when the time comes. Everyone in the office should get an account.

Example Social Media Marketing Strategy: Launch!

Ace has set up your new blog, collected witty, informative articles from the staff, gotten everything ready, and now you launch it!

Pick an article and talk it up … Twitter, Facebook, links on LinkedIn, thumbs up on Stumble and anything else. Remember, more links not only provide traffic via the links, they make your search rankings go up.

Get creative. There are a lot of high-traffic sites where you can place a high-traffic link. For example, projects.metafilter.com is a great place to not only get feedback on your new blog, but to get traffic.

Keep Marketing

• As with content updates, schedule online marketing activities

• Put someone in charge of online marketing.

Try this: get an intern and tell her to spent a day finding places to place links and publish online articles, and to put the results in a spreadsheet for you.

The Internet seems magical sometimes. Unfortunately, it’s not … marketing must go on, just like in the real world.

Monitor your progress:Example

Put processes in place• Come up with a plan to update content and

market your site.

• Do it.

• Track what happened.

• Rinse. Lather. Repeat.

Conclusion

Your website is at the center of a Web of information that you control. Tips:

•Make your website “good.” Think about design, navigation, functionality, and content.

•Learn how your site fits into the Web. Find out where people are coming from, and what tools they are using.

•Position your Website right in the middle of the tools people are using to get information and stay connected.

•Take a methodical approach, put processes in place, just like with other aspects of your business

www.nurelm.cominfo@NuRelm.com

724-430-0490

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