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Developing your Online Presence Thomas Deneuville @tdnvl https://thomasdeneuville.com
Developingyour
Online Presence
Thomas Deneuville
@tdnvl
https://thomasdeneuville.com
Who I am
Born in France, grew up in Tahiti, lived in Italy, UAE, and USA.
Dual background: Engineering and Music (theory/composition).
What I doFounder/Editor-in-Chief of I CARE IF YOU LISTEN.
Owner of Sustainist Media.
Digital Content Manager at Cornell University.
2Cover photo: Radek Grzybowski / CC0 Illustration: Bucky Cox
Today• Your goals, your offers
• Your website
• Your social media presence
• Your email marketing strategy
• Q&A
These slides and the resources I’ll share with you today will be posted on my website.
Visit: https://thomasdeneuville.com/cma3
The bigpicture
STRANGERS VISITORS CUSTOMERS FANSREGULARS
Attract Close
Convert
Social mediaSearch (= Content)ReferralAdvertising
FormsFollow buttons
(Landing pages)
EmailSocial mediaBlog
DelightRecognition
Exclusive contentExclusive events 5
Your goals
“What keeps me going is goals.”—Muhammad Ali
Read SMART Goals for SMART Music Entrepreneurs: Step One to Making Your Dreams Happen, by Astrid Baumgardner on I CARE IF
YOU LISTEN.
SMART stands for:
• Specific: Don't be vague!
• Measurable: Can you put a number on this goal?
• Achievable: Is this goal within reach?
• Realistic: Is this the right goal at the right time for you? Think strong first
step vs. overnight huge success.
• Time-related: When can these results be achieved?
Are your goals SMART?as introduced by George T. Doran
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Your offers8
What are your offers?
• Music, videos, scores, etc.
• Tips/Advice
• Your experience
• Their experience
• Curation
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Your website
The center of your digital presence
• Where your content lives
• Where you can best track activity
• Where you control your brand the most
• What people (should) find first
• A gateway to your email list/social media profiles
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Your domain: Buy it. Park it.
Get an email address, too.
http://janedoe.com> [email protected] or [email protected]
Bonus: Get an SSL certificate.
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Start with your content
• Make an inventory (text, images, videos,
audio)
• Should it all be on the site?
• How often will you refresh/add content?
• How can it be grouped?13
Your navigation
• Don’t be creative
• Limit to 7 (+/- 2) items
• “X and Y” ? Warning!
• Don’t mix types: Discover, Bio, Listen, Videos
• Avoid vagueness: Media?
• Place it where it’s expected
• How will it expand?
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Gutenberg Diagram
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Why a blog?
• Could best match one of your offers (tips,
experience, etc.)
• To give a “historical” perspective your bio can’t
give
• To keep on generating fresh content on your site
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What constitutes your brand?
• Your image: Press shots, videos
• Your style sheet: Typeface, color, logo
• Voice/tone
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Your image: Press shots
• Great investment (reuse on social and email)
• Orientation: Portrait and landscape
• Easy to find on your website
• Offer high res (print) and low res (web)
• Add photo credit in the filename
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Your style sheet: Typefaces
• Pick two
– One for headings (has personality)
– One for your main text (neutral, easy to read)
• Serif = sans-serif
• Pick a web font (Google, Typekit, etc.)
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• Up to two bold colors. They should:
– Contrast
– Complement each other
• Shades of grey are “free”
• Light background
Your style sheet: Colors
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Which technology?
Static
– faster
– cheaper to host
– could end up being expensive to develop
– good for small websites without a blog
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Which technology?
CMS (Content Management System)
– more expensive to host
– maintenance can be complex
– lots of open source and commercial solutions
– easy to blog
– Examples: WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, etc.
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How do you measure your success?
Install Google Analytics on your site and
enable Advertising Features (under
Audience > Demographics.)
Google Analytics is free.
Focus on ratios rather than number that will always increase.
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Your social presence
Who is your audience?
• Does your audience fall in a specific
demographic?
• Is your audience found in specific locations?
• What does that mean in terms of networks?
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Who are your influencers?
• People you learn from
• People who share the same interests
• People who could reshare your content
• People whose followers you’re interested in
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Some Channels
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Start small
• Being on social is a commitment
• Take the time to make it fit in your routine
• Schedule!
• Pick your channel(s) wisely
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How many times should I post?
• Observe: What makes you comfortable?
Uncomfortable?
• It’s probably more than you think
• Follow a ratio
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Your ratio
● 4 pieces of original content from others
● 1 repost
● 1 self-serving post
4-1-1
Conversations are excluded30
When should I post?
• Don’t listen to what “experts” say.
• Looks at your audience’s engagement or
use a tool like to help you determine
best times to share.
• Be consistent and experiment.
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Schedule!
For free
• RSS aggregator
• Throught Tweetdeck, Facebook, Later, etc.
My favorite
• Buffer’s awesome plan is $9 a month, but they offer
a free plan, too.
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How do you measure?
Facebook and Twitter offer some solid, free stats.
For Instagram, look into Iconosquare.
SumAll is a nice platform to bring all these stats
together, but is pricey ($99 a month). Look at
Dasheroo for an alternative.
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Your emailmarketing
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The only audience you “own”: Your email list
• Email is a truly private space
• 3x more email accounts than Facebook & Twitter accounts combined
• The best traffic comes from email
• Segmenting
• Automation
• Better control over your brand
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Think about segmenting early
• How are your offers reflected in your emails?
• Can people opt-in for specific offers?
• Is geography important?
• Anything else you need to know about a subscriber?
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How to build your list
• Forms (on your site, your Facebook page)
• Twitter Lead Gen Cards
• In-person (use an App)
The key is multiple sources:
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Show offers on your form
● First name = personalization
● ZIP code = geographic segmenting
● Self-identified interests = more effective
segmenting
But don’t ask for everything upfront!
You’ll have other touch points to gather
this data.
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Come up with—and stick to—a schedule
• How often will you have something to offer/to say?
• You don’t have to email everybody all the time (that’
s what segmenting is for)
• Less than once a month? People forget...
• What makes sense for you?
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The reading happens on your site
Not in the email!
– Offer previews/excerpts and link to the content
– Reading on mobile is getting better but it’s not
ideal
– Clicks help measure engagement and tastes
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Inverted pyramid
Stuff they shouldn’t miss
Stuff of interest
Stuff they can miss
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Another wayto look at it
When creating your email,
imagine that:
● scrolling is free
● but readers have a click
budget of 2 or 3 clicks.
What would you change, now?
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Ideally:One email,
one call to action
● No distraction
● One decision to make
Thanks!
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What about newsletters?
Newsletters are fine.
Focus on curation and quality of content.
Don’t send a “website.”
Remember the inverted pyramid...
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Two important metrics
And what they mean:
• Open rate ≈ Your subject line (+ preheader)
• Click through rate ≈ Your content
Establish your own baseline and improve!
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Physical address in the footer?
• It’s the law: CAN-SPAM Act of 2003
• P.O. Boxes are OK
• Link to unsubscribe (+ update) should be
there, too
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If you’re going to “sell”
• Do it in an email!
• People are used to receiving offers/buying
from email.
• Higher conversion rates than social media.
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Thanks for listening!
Questions? Need help?
Let’s connect on Twitter or LinkedIn:
@tdnvl
https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasdeneuville
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