If Build It...they might come.

Years ago I had a roommate who asked me to produce a website for him. He required a relatively straight forward “web-brochure” --simply a few portfolio shots, and contact information. A week after it was posted he was upset because he had not seen any increase in business. I checked the web traffic log and noticed that he had only a handful of “hits”. I asked how many people he told about the website, or if he had sent out an email announcing the launch of his site. My questions where met with a blank stare, followed by a few slow confused blinks. He thought the web was magical – and just because he had a website – everyone would see it. Ummm – no.

These days building a website is NOT enough. To build mindshare with current and potential clients, you need not only a dynamic website – but need to leverage social networking as well. The shortlist of Social Networking sites include: Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, and YouTube.  There are certainly more social networking sites/services - but these are the ones I would recommend focusing on.Additionally, one would like to measure (Google Analytics) the effectiveness of services – and a method to reach (Constant Contact) clients not using social networking sites.

Here is the basic process:

1. Sign Up
2. Connect!
3. Publish
4. Measure (analytics)
5. Repeat from Step #2

Step 1: Sign up - FREE SERVICES!

Facebook – a site dedicated to re-connecting friends/classmates/coworkers. Individuals “friend” each other to become part of an ever growing social circle. Additionally, GROUPS or FAN PAGES allow member s to “friend” a company, celebrity, organization – or even a product. Each time you post a thought or update – your selected friends are notified via their own Facebook (FB) accounts. www.facebook.com

Twitter – a service that allows individual to share their micro-blog with followers. Using Twitter you can “Follow” friends, companies, celebrities, or news organizations. Short updates, limited to 140 characters, allow people to share thoughts or events quickly and easily. www.twitter.com

Blogger / Blog Spot – a service that allows individuals to self-publish articles, thoughts, and journal entries. BLOG combines two words, WEB-LOG…weBlog. If you can use a Word Processor, you can use Blogger. It’s a Fun and Easy way to share your thoughts and experiences. www.blogger.com

YouTube – think of this like a free space to make and post your own commercials – or like a VIDEO BLOG. Embed links from your video – back to your website. www.youtube.com

Step 2: Connect! Cross connect each social network with each other.

On your website post a links to your Twitter, Facebook, and Blog pages. Additionally, embed any videos that you produced in your website. It makes your website more interactive, and connects your visitors between all your online publications. Encourage current clients to “friend” your Fan Page on Facebook or follow you on twitter. In the same way, you need to follow/friend your clients or customers, or favorite business. Soon you will see the “SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION” between you, your customers, and other business around you.

Interconnecting all your social networking pages also cuts down on your workload. For example – with just a little work each time you twitter – your entry can automatically be added to your BLOG, WEBSITE and Facebook accounts. Tweet once – and you’re done!

Step 3: Publish

Facebook and Twitter accounts can be easily cross-connected – so as you publish tweets (Twitter), they can be automatically added as Facebook entries. It’s the whole TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE idea. Additionally, once you sign up for your Twitter account – you will have access to a piece of HTML Code that you or your web-master, can place into your website. Doing this will publish your tweets to a scrolling box on your site. Hey that’s THREE birds!

Your BLOG, will require a bit more work. It does take time to draft, edit, correct and post a blog entry. I encourage you to create a regular schedule of blog entries – weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly – whatever. The danger here is that if a potential client reviews your blog, and sees that you haven’t entered anything in months – they could perceive (you) as inefficient, or not current. Again, once you post a blog, publish a link to your Facebook or Twitter account for maximum exposure.

Broadcast an email to your client base regularly. Yes, you could send out an email to all your clients via mass email – but with some drawbacks. For example netiquette dictates that you should allow people to both OPT-in and OPT-out of email broadcasts. In other words, don’t spam your client base. One type of service that is NOT FREE, but extremely valuable is called E-Mail Marketing. Two companies come to mind: CONSTANT CONTACT (www.constantcontact.com ) and VERTICAL RESPONSE (www.verticalresponse.com ). These are email broadcast services that integrate easily into your website. They allow users to add/remove themselves from your mailing list. It also will push out beautifully designed emails to recipients on your list. However, its biggest selling point is that it REPORTS back to you the number of emails opened, how many people visited your site as a result of your email, how many emails failed to deliver, and the current number of people who have subscribed/unsubscribed to your list.

Posting to YouTube – this is a topic I will cover in an upcoming blog entry.

Step 4: Measure

Certainly, if you use all the above mentioned services you will have a jump in internet traffic. Hopefully that will translate into more business for you – or at least greater mindshare. But you will need REAL DATA, as to how well each service is performing. For that I suggest employing another free service – GOOGLE ANALYTICS. Site analytics allow you to see many aspects of your site traffic including: number of visitors per day, traffic source (search engine, or link from your blog, facebook, or twitter), length of each visit, how many pages each visitor viewed, etc. This data is valuable in the sense that it drives you decisions as to how many email broadcasts to send out, or site updates, or traffic from Facebook. I will cover Analytics in another upcoming blog. This topic is just too broad to cover in a paragraph or two.

Step 5: Repeat

Once your social networking site/services are set up and connected – the next challenge is maintaining and continuing to publish to them. With so many items interconnected the maintenance should be relatively easy. But you must be CONSISTANT, and publish often. Visitors to your site(s) want to see current information and events. If you fall behind visitor interest will fall --- and web traffic as well.

Search Engine Optimization and Social Network integration is something that my company, New York PanMedia, assists several clients with. Feel free to contact me—there are links to my site in the margin of this blog page.