Managing and Growing a Successful Web Presence

Notes by: Mary O'Brien

6/7/2011 BIG Event

Speaker: Mike Granetz, CEO Peak Two, and panel

What Makes A Successful Web Presence:

Web Presence: The intelligent existence of your brand across unique but related online channels.

Must:

· Have a clearly defined purpose (why am I creating this website?)

· Offer compelling information

· Engage the audience across multiple channels

· Pair outreach with a focused search strategy

· Measures and interpret metrics

· Refine itself regularly

Consists of Platform: Content / Outreach and Distribution / Search Strategies / Analysis

Three Keys to a Successful Platform:

· Pick one as a home base – can either be your website, Facebook page, Twitter account, etc. You cannot manage all of them, so pick one!

· Keep the user in mind

· Have a measurable purpose. What information are our clients seeking on our site and how often?

Content Meaning:

· More meaning, less messaging

· Consistency more important than frequency – don’t post all promotional material; every third or fourth post can be promotion, rest can be opinion

· You’re already an author – Give yourself permission to be an expert. Consistency is more important than frequency. Redirect and Reprogram; you have more time than you think you have. Begin to channel or capture your dialogue you have at the water cooler.

· Get comfortable sharing your expertise. In the meantime, follow others you respect their dialogue and conversations.

5 Keys to Successful Outreach & Distribution:

· Fish where the fish are. Take advantage of Hootsuite and Cinchcast (call a phone number and record podcast, uploads to Twitter, etc.) – cinch.fm

· Majority of target audience will not get to your website – but they are out there – go where your customer is

· If I had to pick one social networking site, it would be LinkedIn.

· Information and trust is the currency of the social web – bring more to table than just facts. Try bringing to the table “my neighbor” has a great product. People want to see you are sharing the expertise and knowledge you’ve learned from others. In other words, scratching others backs is good for business.

· Think of target audiences – not just customers but someone who can refer you to potential customers

· Search vs. Social? Which should I invest in? Both! It’s search PLUS social! Avoid the temptation to separate. Always be helpful and consistent with that, even if it doesn’t impact your business.

· How do I measure the benefit? (e.g., 3 tweets a day? ) The difference is with Search (did a Search., saw our ad or link and clicked on it).

· Not automated – try to understand the algorithm, the more you understand it, the better the site. How are they getting their links? Get alot from contests and free article submission sites, paid links. Expect Google to get away from links but more into social networks.

· When looking for a vendor, say “I would be interested in doing a test with you” and see how they work as an organization and if they do key work searches.

· Make sure as a service model we are incenting the referral to our site.

· Are we making sure our content on our site is mobile friendly?

· Do we have a internal key work linking strategy?

· Key word research – put a value on a conversion, key word analysis tools, PPC values – create something measurable

· When posting, put key words first and brand name last

· SEO is more important than social media because it is easier to put a number on

· Google Analytics (free)

· What do you want to measure? How far or deep do I want to measure it?

• Always measure traffic sources and what are they looking at:

o Traffic sources and traffic data

o How much time are people spending on my site?

· What is the data telling me? What can I do with that? Am I taking that information and testing new things and if the conversion is better?

· Hard to know what to change – for example what is more important: the price, the advertisement, etc.

· Need to consistently be testing our site.

· Generating loyalty to our brand is important. If you see a person who has opened your site, send them an email. Email marketing is important.

· Build a landing page in order to capture enough information to send out emails.