Wait! Do You Have A Web Strategy For Your Website?

Developing or creating a new website for your business without a website strategy is like someone who is trying to run a business without a business plan. Having a web site strategy and working to evaluate the results of your strategy will make sure you are meeting or achieving your business objectives/ goals and help insure your web site's success. 

 

A quick search with Google, Yahoo! or any of the search engines will reveal millions of web sites, the majority of which were created with a focus on publishing content about a business or product, with little thought of how practical the web site really is or what the site is supposed to do.

 
Today I would like to concentrate on two elements should be taken into consideration when we build website strategy Wants vs. Needs It's important to distinguish between wants and needs and focus on functionality necessary to reach specific business goals with your web site. 

From my perspective I would say we should have a clear vision when we plan to create a website and identifing customer or client needs.

Developing a marketing strategy is not just limited to your web site goals, but your overall marketing plan and what advertising, marketing and customer service goals are best suited for your web site. 

More often than not, a web site is treated as an afterthought without a specific purpose beyond offering basic company information and an e- mail form. We view a web site as an interactive extension of a company, with few limitations. 
Setting Web Site Goals.

The first step is to list all the specific tasks you want your website to accomplish. Besides offering a potential customer information about your company services, what should your web site "do?" 

Should your website help you to accomplish E-commerce? Serve students for online learning? Distribute information to your customers? Offer customer service? Should your web site be used as a recruitment tool? Or for advertising and promotion?  

Creating a list of priorities  

The most important thing to consider when building a website, is the end user and what he/she wants. To this end, it's important to create user personas, a set of imaginary people that describe the end user or users of the site. Personas allow us to create user-centric designs and ensure that we focus on and empathize with the people we are endeavoring to reach. In practical terms, a user persona is quite similar to a character sheet in a role-playing game.

As you list what you want your site to do, prioritize the list into three categories: 

1) Primary, "must do" goals, how we help persona achieve goals
2) Secondary, "it would be nice if . . ." and what we should do to describe our solution to persona
3) Next phase, "if we have to postpone this, it wouldn't hurt us."  When grouping your web site goals, keep in mind the one overwhelming reason for having a web site in the first place and compare it to each of the goals as you prioritize them.  

After establishing clearly what a client's stated web site goals should be, we compare these goals with a client's expectations regarding their web site, current Internet technology and their marketing and advertising plan.  Separating wants and needs. 

Ordering Web Site Priorities  

Having your priorities outlined and your goals detailed will help you to determine what you really need. Go through your priority list and measure it against your web site goals. If a web site feature you want will help you to accomplish a specific task then include it as long as it utilizes Internet technology or browser technology that is widely supported by today's browsers.  

If you have items on your list that don't match your web site goals well, it's probably a good idea to hold off implementing them. Finally, having a priority list will make it easier to decide what to include or exclude in your web site when working within a limited web site budget.  

10 Tips for a Great Web Site 

1) Making great first impressions is important and your web site may be the first exposure to your company a potential customer experiences. Strike a balance between content and design. 

2) Avoid focusing exclusively on graphic design rather than making the web site useful. Give your web site visitors a reason to visit your site often.  

3) Create simple navigation. Design your site so your users can go from one page to any other page. Avoid navigation schemes that rely on the user having to search for a secondary navigation menu or having to use their browser's "back" button in order to navigate. 

4) Work on creating a web design that will respond to various screen sizes. This means the layout will change based on the visitor's screen size, and on smaller screens 

5) Distribute your web site information on several pages so the user does not have to scroll often. By distributing your photographs and graphics over several pages, your pages will load faster.

 
6) Know who is coming to your site and how your site is being used on a monthly or quarterly basis. This information will be invaluable for updating or refocusing your site to better serve your target market or customers. 

7) Update your site frequently and create a reason for your web site users to keep coming back. Repeat visits give you an opportunity to repeat your marketing message.  

8) Capture information with your web site. Use forms, offers and promotions to get your web site users to tell you who they are and what they are interested in. Not only will this help you to design a more useful web site, collecting e-mail addresses can allow you to notify customers and potential customers about new products or services. 

9) Review your web site goals quarterly. As the Internet evolves and as new technology becomes mainstream, it is good to review the purpose of your site and the usefulness of new tools and implement these new tools when they make sense.  

10) Avoid "do-it-yourself web site design." Yes, there are programs that let you build your own web site. If you don't have experience in graphic design or producing professional web sites, hire a web development company with proven abilities to help you. 

Thank You!

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Legends of Chima & Agile User Stories

 

Adoption of Agile practices in project management is growing at an astonishing rate- roughly 10% per year. As company or organization you need to prepare for significant challenges in order to switch from waterfall to an agile. But all of us know that waterfall project management has served us well for many years. So why change now? Well, Waterfall project management is effective. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it, and many companies continue to use it. The key difference between Agile and Waterfall is the type of process control in use.

From my perspective, the number one key difference between Waterfall and Agile is the ability to respond to the evolving business needs immediately. This is the big deal. This is why so many companies are adopting Agile.

Let us first define an Agile in a way that we can understand it properly. Agile is a software development methodology in which the process of development occurs through short increments. The requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams

Therefore, to adopt agile approach at your workplace, your team needs to practice and make a strong commitment to change. Becoming a professional agile team means re-engineering the way they think about work. Agility is a mindset that can be improved and not perfected.

I will give an example; I have an online shopping issue. I have decided to buy the latest computer items everything online which include (ATX tower, Power Supply, CPU, video card). I mean everything, even the monitor. It's fast, easy, inexpensive, and convenient, so what's the problem? Well, the problem is assembly. I'm not very hardware guy inclined. I can muddle my way through, but the bigger problem is that I don't have all the tools. Without the right tools and skills, it's harder to successfully assemble my purchases. In the same way, your agile project needs the right tools and the right skills to succeed.

To fulfill these needs and skills, you'll need the following full-time roles: Scrum Master, Product Owner, Developer, Business Analyst, or BA, Quality Assurance Analyst, or QA, a Database Analyst, or DBA, and Subject Matter Experts, or SMEs. These team members can be loosely divided into two units, the Customer Unit and the Development Unit. While they serve separate purposes, they are one team.

The Scrum Master role is much more practical. He will spend most of his time removing obstacles for the team and ensuring they have a great work environment. The product owner should have a direct line of communication with the customer. He works closely with the final users of the product and determine the work for the rest of the team. The product owner works with the development team to create the requirements for the end product through the use of “user stories”

This is phrase looks weird, but frankly speaking it is amazing! User stories are short descriptions of application functionality from the perspective of the user. They are small and are generally written in the same format. I usually say, user stories like Lego Game, developers will create an awesome model and write a convincing project description to build the Legends of Chima!

Well, the first segment of the Story tells the team who will be using it. This is important because if you're not focused on the right User, you won't provide the right product. The second part of the Story is very simply what needs to be built. So all these collection of user requirements will be stored in the product backlog, to be developed as the project continues.

The backlog is a ranked list of all the functions and features that the customer would like to see in the final product.

The user stories follow the general pattern of:

I, role, want to be able to, functionality, so I can, reason.

An example would be, "I, as a student, want to be able to pay tuition online so I can register for classes." Or “As a Database Administrator, I should be able to revert a selected number of database updates so that the desired version of the database is restored. “ In traditional development methodologies, a requirements document is usually developed first and lists all requirements that team will be working on until the project is complete.

In Agile development, there is no large requirements document because the specifications of the project can change easily as the technology changes or new ideas are presented.
They are easy way of taking care of customer requirements without the need to make formal requirement document and without the need to perform tasks which are about administering and maintaining them

There are many benefits to using user stories over a more traditional requirements document, including:

Simplicity

User stories are simple and fast to write, both the customer and the team can describe the exact requirements (Functional and Non-Functional) without using, multiple long descriptions of the task that they want to achieve.
This simplicity will contribute to the process because the customer does not need to know the technical aspects of his requirements, the simplicity in writing user stories will help him to use a basic language to reflect his functional needs.

Written by the customer

User stories based on the customer requirements that knows what he wants to get at the end of each iteration. This allows the scrum team to communicate directly with the customer (or with the product owner that represent him) to get a better understanding of the real needs and what they should deliver.

Easy to Prioritize

Once the user stories added to the product backlog, the product owner with the team has the opportunity to understand which stories are more important to the customer. Following this basic approach, the PO and the team can prioritize the important user stories first; this prioritization will guarantee that the team will deliver the most important user stories first which will lead to happy customers. This will also help drive understanding with clear and concise explanations of the problems a user faces.

Communication

User stories are a great way to increase the communication among the team members, and between the team and the product owner, a good user story will enable the relevant stakeholders to make a real conversation about the requirements and expectations of the customer.

Collaboration

The team will review each story during the sprint "Planning" meeting, this will increase the discussion between the team members (Especially when the need to make the requirements analysis) so they will increase the knowledge prior to implementation.

All in one

Each user story contains all the relevant information that the team members need to start the implementation (Acceptance criteria, Requirement specification and done criteria) without searching different parts of the data between multiple resources.

Commitment

User stories will allow the team to evaluate each story so they can determine the work effort prior to taking any commitment during a sprint.

Your future planning efforts will bring the team to near-term, committed deliverables. User stories is a stage that assure your stakeholders they will get committed plans from the team

 Thank you!

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How You Know It’s Time To Think Different!

On Sept 27th, 2015 I have attended a conference in Canada hosted by SOHO, and the conference topic was "how to improve your business in Canada". People were talking about hiring skilled candidates, promote your services and  apply a tool such as benchamrking and market research to measure business performance in the market. From my perspective I have another plan and opinion which has a positive impact on business improvement whether in Canada market or other market. 

Nowadays, a website is a necessity for entrepreneurs, small businesses, home-based businesses, and anybody selling products or services. Regardless of your other marketing methods, enabling potential customers to either find you through a Google search or learn more about you after they’ve seen your other marketing material is key to creating and developing new customers.

A well structured website is required to make a business online. As Internet is becomes more important for users. It offers many benefits to make user's life more convenient and easy. For the promotion of business it is needed that you should have a website from where users could browse and purchase products that your business is offering.

Nowadays, people are using apps for different purposes. For every business apps are important to communicate with users on a secure network. They also delegate their tasks with the help of these programs. From exchange of resources to implementation of solutions for an extensive, each procedure needs web programs.

This process was activated due to some customers who were regularly challenging customized sites which can provide their objective. Furthermore, progression in technology has persuaded designers to discover unknown areas of web development. They can utilize the new update in their projects for better performance and adaptability.

A wide range of programs are available to business owners, using which they can make their companies even more effective and thus generate more benefit. The area of web design and development has gone through a technical trend, customized web database integration services have collected the attention of customers and clients.

They can now personalize web programs as per their specifications and requirements.

Web design and development services have become very essential among organizations working in different sectors. Furthermore, customized web programs allow incorporation of several features such as tracking analysis, database, content writing, marketing etc.

It has also been noticed that these programs fulfill business needs, regardless of the products engaged in those, Hence, they help to handle work procedures and information in a manageable way.

Benefits of Web Development Services

A market for personalized web application solutions, has been designed out by a huge number of software companies. Following are some main benefits of employing customized web development services:

1. Web surfing around can be assisted. 
2. Transactions, including loads of information can be handled quickly 
3. The volume of visitors to a website can be improved.

Stages in Web Development Process

Development of a web application includes the following phases:

1. Determining the characteristics of the venture and its objectives 
2. Devising a Specific Strategy depending on the goals of the venture 
3. Developing the Project as per the program 
4. Testing the venture for protection at every level of development

Creating a website for your business more than just a website isn't about a fancy or flashy design. Rather, a smarter design that makes a site more user-friendly with high-quality content worth returning for is all that is needed to make a business or brand stand out among the rest.

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Building Your Content Hub is A Way To Build Your Brand!

There are thousand topics talks about how to build a content that driven website. Last 5 years you may have noticed a change in the way you are consuming content. With more and more large companies looking to find ways to connect to their ideal consumer there has been a shift in the way content is being developed and shared.

To begin with, I would like to give a brief about the way of building a content driven website which could help to boost your business in marketplace.

There is quite of planning involved in developing a content rich website. Here are step-by-step instructions that will make it a simple task:

Do your research

Use a keyword research tool find theme-related keywords that are high in demand and relatively low in supply. Find a sufficient amount of profitable keywords that will enable you build 50 to 100 pages that are focused on an individual keyword. This process will also allow you to evaluate your concept to make sure that there is enough demand and that the market is not totally saturated with competition.

Form a written plan

Prepare a three-tier plan for your content using the keywords. The first tier will be your homepage and should focus on the concept keyword that represents your niche or theme. The second tier will consist of introduction pages with keywords that are related to your navigation buttons. The third tier represents content pages that focus on keywords related to your second-tier pages.

Upload the content to your website

It is wise to add the content to your website as it is developed and make sure that it is submitted to the search engines. After you have about 30 pages of content, you can start promoting your site by getting it listed in directories, engaging in article marketing, participating in industry-related forums and blogs, social marketing, etc.

Continue to add content to your site and participate in link building activities

The more content that you have, and the more high-quality incoming links that you establish, the better your website will do in the search engines. Visitors also love content driven websites. If you provide the information that they are looking for, it develops credibility for you and you will likely convert many of your website visitors into repeat and referring customers.

Build up a content hub for your business

In the context of marketing, it’s a place where various types of content – articles, videos, images, etc – exist for the purpose of engaging audiences and spreading knowledge and information to current and future customers.

As Daniel Newman explains, we’re no longer living in a time where brands can simply publish content about themselves and successfully connect with their audiences. Newman puts it perfectly when he says today’s world of marketing “is more about sharing and collaborating and with that generosity comes interest, loyalty, and commitment to a brand.”

I would say, creating a content hub doesn't only apply to large businesses or corporate, and it also doesn't have to take a lot of budget and/or time.

Therefore, if you have a big business or even small business and you want to generate revenues for your business or product you offer, you need to not only choose the best products and services to represent, but you need to drive traffic to your newly created hub pages.

For example, if you are marking information products for home based business owners, you could create a hub page offering information and resources to network marketers. When this niche of people land on your hub pages, they will find valuable articles, blogs, reviews and other resources to help them grow their businesses. And, if they find your hub page valuable, they will likely return again and again. And when this occurs, you are increasing your opportunities for generating direct sales whether in terms of getting more traffic or hits.

Before one week, I was browsing American University of Shrajah Website www.aus.edu and I have found AUS web team have established successful affiliate digital strategy when they built faces.aus.edu which I believe it will another way to driving massive traffic to AUS website.

From my perspective, this is a great way to take best advantage to enhance your business or services you offer and get more reputation enhancement. Here we can back to my previous phrase and ask ourselves how do we choose which platforms to engage on? 

In the same time, I would say it is a real challenge between concentrating on the website we drive, and how should we coordinate all the many parts of our company’s social media presence in content hub. So at the end we and you should have strategy to use your company website as the hub of your product or service business to boost your business reputation

In summary a content hub can be used to:

- Increase website traffic
- Increase the time visitors spend on your website
- Increase brand awareness
- Establish thought leadership
- Increase social sharing
- Increase leads and lead conversion

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Don't Just Sit There! Start Getting The Proper SEO For Your Business

SEO could benefit many businesses who are looking to increase their online presence and drive more targeted traffic to their websites. Unfortunately the SEO industry is not known for its transparency and this can be confusing for businesses that are wondering just what exactly they will be getting in return for their investment.

What Should your SEO be Doing for Your Business?

It is important to know exactly what your SEO will be doing for you and how they will provide you with measurable results. Be wary of any SEO who offers a guaranteed ranking, it is impossible to guarantee a ranking with Google or any other search engine!

Any SEO who can guarantee results without even knowing which keywords you want to target is using this as a marketing ploy, how could they guarantee results if you wanted to compete for keywords like "Apple", "Google" or "Facebook"?!

Without conducting keyword research it is impossible to tell how likely the success of an SEO campaign will be and how long it is likely to take. SEO is an ongoing process of research, testing and analysis. It takes careful planning to identify the best keywords and to then put a solid strategy in place to rank for those keywords.

On-site and Off Site SEO

SEO takes into account factors that are both on-site and off-site. On-site SEO entails an analysis of your website. It involves looking at many factors including the site structure, use of keywords, the sites content, page loading times and the HTML and CSS that the site is built with. Good on-site SEO benefits the end user and also helps to avoid any technical "Gotchas" that search engines don't like, such as duplicate content.

A good SEO will start by analyzing your site and making recommendations to improve an optimize the site for both users and search engines. Off site SEO involves creating relevant backlinks from other sites to yours.

Each backlink is counted by the search engines as a vote for your site. Websites are given an authority score called Page Rank. Each time a site links to you it shares a little bit of its page rank with you, links from high authority sites share more of this page rank than lower authority sites. Incoming links to a site are known as backlinks.

To Follow or to Nofollow...

Some links carry no authority at all, many links carry a nofollow attribute that tell the search engines not to count that link as a vote. Webmasters and bloggers might add this attribute themselves if they don't their link to be counted as a vote for the external site or it could be automatically added by the platform they are using to publish their content, this is often the case when a site offers its user to add comments or content and the webmaster has little control over what links get created by the sites contributors.

Links without the nofollow attribute are termed "dofollow" and pass page rank from your page to the linked page. In HTML there is no actual dofollow attribute, dofollow happens by default in the absence of a nofollow attribute. You should never nofollow internal links as this will cause any page rank that would have been passed to that link to just evaporate!

Where Did You Get Those Links?

You should ask your SEO how they will create backlinks, a good SEO will try to build a varied backlink portfolio for you. This portfolio should include high value links that are found in bodies of text such as blog posts. These usually carry the most page rank but also require the most work as the SEO will need to build connections with blog owners and often provide the content themselves.

Any good SEO will look for quality over quantity, anyone promising a high number of links is probably best avoided. The search engines like to see "Natural Links of Love", a few high quality links will go a lot further than many low quality links.

Other linking strategies include using quality business directories or commenting on blogs and forums as well as using social media and social bookmarking sites.

Link exchanges are best avoided as these two way links don't look like natural links. Search engines can see the Internet as a series of connected nodes and easily detect unnatural patterns like this.

Your Business, Your Needs

Your SEO should talk with you about your business needs and goals and also try to understand as much as they can about your target audience. If they don't do this then they are unlikely to pick keywords that will attract and convert the right audience for you business. They should conduct extensive keyword research and be able to identify the keywords that will bring in more of the right traffic. Traffic is useless if it doesn't convert!

Added Value

Your SEO should also be able to research your competition and tell you what keywords they are targeting and also how much time it is likely to take to compete for the same keywords. They should also be able to come up with alternative strategies if those keywords are far too competitive for your budget or to bring in traffic while you work towards competing for the main keywords.

SEO takes time, it doesn't happen overnight. Your SEO should be able to provide you with a monthly report that shows how you are progressing through the search engine results for your keywords. They should also be able to run PPC campaigns on your behalf and also create content and copy for your site.

Many SEO's will also be able to promote you via social media and advise you on other Internet marketing techniques such as building mailing lists for email campaigns.

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How Blog Can Improve Your Business in 7 Ways

If you are interested to do business online, you are encouraged to blog.

You may be wondering why you should blog and whether it is worthwhile for you to do so.

Here are a few good reasons why you should blog.

1) Rank well with search engines

Blogs allows you to keyword optimized for search ranking purpose. You can put keywords in your blog title, blog post heading, description, comment invitation, archive titles, trackback links and category name.

Search engine loves blog. They love fresh content. Therefore a blog that updates everyday has better ranking with the search engines than a blog that updates once a week.

2) Building a relationship

People who visit your blog read your articles and eventually build a relationship with you. A blog allows the readers to know the blogger's opinion or personality much better.You can initiate conversation with your readers in your blog. You can also invite comments or ask questions to your readers. You can find out what are their needs are and how you can meet those needs.

3) Inexpensive way to promote your business

A blog is an inexpensive way to promote your business compare to any other method. You can share with your readers what is happening with your business and what are the changes that is to come.. You can post articles about your products in your blog.

4) Show passion and commitment to your industry

Blogging allows you to show passion and commitment to your readers about your industry. If you do not have a strong passion for your industry, you will not be able to sustain your blog long term. Most successful bloggers usually have their blogs for a period of time and as a result of that they start to reap their rewards for their blogging.

5) Old articles still being read

When you write a good article in your blog, the article does not stay forgotten. Search engines can still pull out your old articles for readers to read if your content is good and has good keywords to it.

6) Alternative Traffic Source

Bloggers like to link and network together. If other bloggers finds that your blogs is interesting and point your blogs to their readers, you will find that you have traffic coming from their blogs. Traffic coming from those blogs is at zero cost and some of their readers may end up being your customers.

7) Build reputation as an expert

Blogging can establish you as an expert in the particular field. When people read your blogs, they can judge for themselves how good you are in the field. You gain exposure in the industry and if you give good content in your blogs most of the time, soon you become an expert. People will trust you and whatever you recommend, they will believe you.

With all the reasons stated above, it is worthwhile for you to blog for your business. So let's not waste time and start blogging.

Want to learn more about blogging or internet marketing? Please contact me @ any time

Good Luck!

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Want To Step Up Your Business? You Need To Build An Online Community

Search Engine optimization is an effective method to enhance the value of your website and market your online business. Every day, things are changing in SEO. If you’re not already working on creating new technique and adapting different strategies, today’s the day.

And it’s your time, use it and don’t waste it!

I am not saying the existing SEO is dead or that backlinks around are obsolete, or whatever all that crazy talk is that's been going around. It's that there's a way to integrate all the pieces into the big picture of building a better company by building an online community around it.

When I studied the marketing module in my MBA @ University of Cumbria , I have discovered in marketing strategy program there are lots of benefits to building a community around your company, but if I had to choose a few, here are my filtered top five:

It will help you to build your record in Google’s algorithms


Building an online community is one of the best ways to weather Google’s algorithms. If you're continually chasing the algorithm, you're putting all of your power in what Google's going to do next. If you're building a community around your business, you're putting the focus where it belongs: on your business. Building a strong company and brand isn't something that Google can take away.

There are many benefits to building online communities. One of those being the SEO benefits it can have for your organization’s website. Google algorithm updates such as panda and penguin removed many of the old ways of ‘doing SEO.’ They represent the lengths to which Google will go to try to weed out poor or low-quality content.

It will add more value to your business


Today, the Internet can be a great tool for businesses if you learn to properly use it for marketing and selling, but it hurts businesses that try to survive without it. As the number of people going online increases (due to the growth in mobile devices and mobile internet speeds). The future of every business involves online marketing and e-commerce solutions that replace or accent traditional selling methods, and here's the information that proves it.

For me, I always looking to build up an online business, and try to focus on one direction when start building online community. You have to do a bunch of stuff to better serve your customers like creating quality content and resources, enhancing your product or services, and improving your systems and processes. Doing these things adds equity and value to your business and attracts the right customers to your community.


It will help you have purpose


There’s a lot of effort involved in building a community around your brand, and it’s not just about creating content or being on social media just because everyone else is doing it. When you’re strategic about community building, it forces you to identify goals and put a solid purpose behind your efforts.


It will help you stand out


If you’re committed to the process of building a community, you are going to be doing a great deal of self-discovery and applying older marketing model (acronym AIDA). It stands for: Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. In parallel you should look out your window and write down all the businesses that provide a product or service within your sight. During this process you’ll determine what you’re all about, what you love to do, and what it’s going to take to help you stand out among the competition.


It will put the focus on goals, not tools

Building an online community isn’t a bunch of fluffy stuff. I would say, in trying to differentiate your company, the temptation is to try to do everything for everyone. Determine what you do best and focus on that. Let your customers engage into your story, products, services and business. It’s the seamless integration of tools like SEO, social media, content marketing, email marketing, and all kinds of other important stuff (like hard work and passion). But in order for the tools to be effective, they’ve got to be driven by a strategy that is rooted in the goals of your whole business.

Want to know what really matters to your audience? Ask them and then listen (really listen) to their answers. It’s about making meaningful connections. It’s about building relationships and giving without the expectation of receiving something in return.

A present for you

For the past several months, I have been writing a lot about how to know on your market, keywords and topics, understand your marketing funnel and how to attract customers to it. And now, lucky for you, I'd like to share our process for how to build an online community for your business. 

Whether you’re building a community from scratch, or you’re working to grow an existing one, you can use this process to get your community rolling or optimize and leverage what you already have.

Developing a powerful online community provides you with the perfect platform to both promote and engage with your customers, providing significant benefits for your business

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Want A Thriving Business? Build Up A Website For Your Business!

Having a website for your business is considered an essential role to success your business and it is a necessity to compete in today’s business environment.  An effective website can often describe your products and services, explain how customers can get in touch with you.  In competition market today, a website is a given for any successful business -- regardless of size or industry.  Without a website, businesses won’t be taken seriously and likely will decrease their chances of being found by new customers.

Last week I have attended networking meetup session for ( business network) I discovered that 43 percent of small business owners still weren’t using social media because they didn’t feel it was important to their business. I really surprised, and these statistics has pushed me to open a discussion with some of people who has SMBs and doesn't have any online business page whether in social media or a website or an Internet presence at all.

May be you have a question says; there is some businesses who are doing phenomenally well without a website, how they can do that? I agree with you, too. But I often wonder how much better they could be doing if they took the time to invest in one. And when I say “website,” I don’t mean an electronic version of that brochure they ‘have been holding out for the past 10 years. I mean a legitimate, well-thought-out site that is designed to inform, engage and convert their audience.

Based on that, I would like to list a few benefits that come along with creating a usable website for your small business. Let me know why you think it is (or isn’t) important for a SMB to have a website in 2015.

1. You stop being invisible.

I am not trying to promote the online pages, but by creating a website you stop being invisible to the people trying to find your product or service online. More and more studies in marketing are telling us about the positive effect where customers are learning to research online before buying offline. They’re typing their problems or needs into the search engine of their choice and are researching the companies that appear for those queries. If you don’t have a web presence, there’s no chance of you showing up and you never even enter into their thought process. In 2015, you can’t afford to be invisible. Am I right?

2. You help control your rankings.

The amount of fresh content, the amount of traffic your site has, the amount of getting your way in search engine optimization that can help to control your position in your site shows up and for which queries. By creating optimized content, building relevant links and creating a brand that customers want to engage with in along with how long visitors stay engaged on your site, and whether they recommend it to others - all of these are factors in SEO ranking.

 

 

3. You create another sales tool.

A website is a powerful sales tool and one that allows you to address your customers’ concerns, give them the information they need to make a decision and create compelling calls to action. I would say your website is your home turf where people can go to seek out trusted information about your company and engage with you on a more personal level. 

 

4. Enhance your business brand image to public:

Your website is an effective way to build your brand image. Not just your logo, the way your content is arranged, your layouts are setup will influence the professionalism of your business. By creating a website, you set up shop on the Internet and show customers that this is where they can come to find information about you, to read articles that you’ve written and to learn more about your company and the way of selling your image. All of these things build authority. Without a website, you’re at a huge disadvantage as a small business owner trying to speak to your customers.

5. Stay ahead of the competition and expand your customer base

A website enables you to stay ahead of and keep up with your competition. If your competition is online, they will be finding all of the customers searching for products and services in your industry. Without a website you are missing out on all that business. A professionally designed website also allows you to expand your business into new markets far beyond the local customer base that you used to reach with print ads or the yellow pages.

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Apply These 5 W's In Your Business To Double Your opportunity to Success

I have a significant insight about the strategy of establishing any small business in different industries, and today I wanted to share it with you. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

One of my friends had established a small company in XY city in Canada, his plan was to offer general cleaning and maintenance services which can compete other cleaning services companies in the market place.

After a one year he has finally come to realize there is just no way to make it work. It was heading in the wrong direction and start losing many customers. He and the business both broke, behind on his personal bills from funneling all his available cash into the business and receiving at least 3 -5 collection calls a day.

In the end of 2013, I met him in Canada and we started talking about many things that negatively impacted his business. He told me that he is not sure he can live with the guilt of simply walking away from this business that took a year to create. The shame of not being good enough or smart enough or prepared enough to make it stand out in competitive market.

I kept listening and listening without adding any comment until I raised my hand to stop him and asked him;

Me: Have you done any research or business plan before open this business? Have you applied five W's of marketing? I read from his eyes that I am asking about something doesn’t relating with his story!

Friend: I don’t know what do you mean by W’s marketing. We all do the same thing here when start small business. Everybody in the business has the same tools, the same skilled technicians and it has just turned into a battle over price, price, and price.

Me: So you have no distinguishing strategy, nothing that sets you apart?

Friend: No. which strategy you mean and what is the W’s? 

Me: Starting a business has its perks. However, there are some areas that you need to review, build a strategy before you hang an "Open" sign on your storefront, the best way to begin any business venture is research, plan, write it down and then act.

One of these strategies is Five W's: who, what, when, where, and why. 

Who? You need to understand your community – your clients, customers, and your potential customers – to succeed in your business. The better you know who they are, the better you can deliver value for them and the better you can serve businesses that want to connect with your customers or clients.

What? What makes you different? To people who might be interested in your service, or to businesses interested in connecting with your audience, you need to stand out from the crowd of alternatives. It is important to understand the details of the products you will market. What are you doing to distinguish your product from the competition? The more you seem like just another service technology or just another advertising vehicle, the less time, attention and money you will command.

When? Timeliness has economic value in any business. Creating deadlines and delivering the services on time is crucial to keeping yourself on track. Don't procrastinate! The business that can offer a services or product according to the scheduled time is on its way to success as it is considered valuable for consumers and businesses.

Where? Location is going to be increasingly important: you should figure out how location will (or won't) contribute to the success of the business. Will you work out of your home to start or will you lease office or shop?  Where will you be located and why is this good location for your business.

Why? You need to understand (and be able to explain) why someone would use your product or service and why a business would pay for any services you offer. You have to understand what Clayton Christensen calls the job that you are doing for a business or a user.

Whether you’re starting your first or your third business, expect to make mistakes and face some barriers. This is natural and so long as you learn from them, also beneficial. If you do not make mistakes, you do not learn what to do less of and equally, what to do more of.  I would say the great thing about owning your own business is that you get to decide what you want to do and what direction you want to grow in.

Before starting your own business, it’s important to take some time and reflect on what needs to be done to get a successful business off the ground. The planning stage is crucial, and will set the stage The Five W's of business for how efficiently your company operates. If the planning of your business is still in its infancy, finding your ‘Five Ws’ can be a good way to understand the basics of how your business will operate.

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How to Improve Your Next Business Engagement in 8 Steps

Nowadays, when people talk about social media, they are talking about all the ways using social media can increase their networks, reputation and the way of selling their image! On the other hand we can see most marketers are trying to use social media to increase a company's bottom line. At the end and as final outcome if we used it properly we can say social media has changed the world.
From my perspective, It’s not just about using platforms and tools for the new look and feel design of it, I think it’s important to remember how crucial the old fashioned relationship and business communications are.

In this article I would like to raise one of the most important elements which considered a key success factors in social media “Engagement”

But what does engagement actually mean? And are social media follower counts really important?

Engagement in a product or services business refers to how much people interact with a brand's social media and website. For instance, if you are selling chocolate cinnamon cake, I would say it may be tough to convince your clients or customers to share your secret chocolate sauce, a new dark chocolate product, or even a bad chocolate taste story with customers.

But, openness can go a long way in social media. Your community will feel involved in your company and appreciate the trust you show toward them. They may become interested in your story, want to get involved in your product trials, or stay in touch with updates. That hook may be what you need to generate new, long-term customers.

When I did my research via different online sources I found there are over 1.82 billion social network users worldwide; do you believe that?? That number is expected to increase to approximately 2.33 by 2017. Needless to say, being active on social media is an essential part of your marketing plan.

But active without followers like bird without wings. If you have followers on your social media channels who are engaged by your updates and realize tangible value from them your marketing efforts will be better rewarded.

I believe you have a question now and ask; how do you get followers and reach your audience over the internet? The answer is by providing them with real value and having a two-way conversation. People enjoy reading posts that offer advice, tips and tricks, but if they can then engage with the author of those posts or the company behind them, it takes their experience to the next level. Below are the most active steps that let your business, services, blog, website get more followers and engaged.

Tell a story

Perhaps the story is something as simple as how the new application that you developed on Android phones solved a memory size issue. Whatever the case, the power of a good story can’t be denied. It’s the follow-up to a story that was shared, including absorbing and responding to the reactions. It’s the action of connecting with someone that was affected by your story in one way or another and nurturing the beginning of a relationship with that person. Because of this, engagement can often unearth new stories or add to old ones, providing you with even more content.

Build trust

Building trust within your social community is considered an essential part and critical in online discussions. Building trust via social media channels is one way to build this credibility.

Respond to positive feedback

Positive feedback is your gate to pass the quiz in engagement session! It offers your brand a chance to turn casual fans and admirers into full-blown fanatics — the people we refer to as brand evangelists.

Respond to negative feedback

By listening carefully to your online community, you’ll easily spot customer complaints as they arise and quickly defuse find out a proper way to fix those situations.

 

Show your personality

Always keep in mind; you’re having a conversation, not publishing a press release. The simple act of responding like a human being will delight your community. If your brand was a person, what would you want people to say about him or her? How does your online presence reflect your answer?

Go beyond Facebook and Twitter

Though Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are still among the most popular, marketers can benefit from using social networks beyond these three.

Find, create, and share content

Producing and sharing your own content is a great way to add your voice to the conversations about your industry.

Follow back

Remember, not only is following those that follow you a kind gesture, but it will also help grow your overall following by showing potential new followers that you’re the type of brand who engages, not only broadcasts

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Questions You Need To Ask Your Business About Web Strategy and Web Services

In world business today we notice there is intense competition on the business front, web technology and efficient communication is the need of the day. For instance, Information Communication Technology has grown by leaps and bounds for the growth of business.

This need for evolution has thrown a shadow on many sectors in information technology, as web strategist I would say, web technology brings in another need to make this information selectively observable and its visibility to be changed on the fly.

Today, in the business world, web services provide a mechanism of communication between two remote systems, connected through the network of the web services. These services are based on a set of standardized rules and specifications, making it more portable.

About a year ago I was doing my research on how to boost your business in a way that change revenue concept. I realized that no matter how good the websites your company built were, they were often failing to live up to their potential. The problem was the organizations I worked with were failing to manage the sites effectively.

Before go through into my article I have a story I faced when I was supporting one of my friends when he started his business. I once had dinner with my friend who owned an food trading company with $1.5 million in annual sales. He had asked for my help to market to his current customers in Calgary, so one of my recommendations was to create web strategy for his company website. He loved the idea, so I gave him a few details on how it would work when we had a third meeting in Trib Steakhouse. In that day I put all my questions on the table and asked him following questions; what does your website do for your business? Who looks at it? How do they find it? How does it compare to your competitors? Are people sharing your content and talking about you?

Therefore, I’ll be honest with here and say; it has been a steep learning curve. In 2013 I was doing my MBA program and I have gone through a crash course in business marketing strategy and the tools of marketing consultants which presented by Prof. Freddy Nager.  I have learned so much and discovered so many invaluable techniques.

However, I have also discovered that companies or organizations should focus on couple of things to boost their online business in a positive way which include web strategy and web strategy.

What is web strategy?

As I have discussed on my previous articles, the web is an essential part of doing and improves organization business in the market (regardless of whether you operate in the public, private, or not-for-profit sector). For this reason we have seen there are a lot of online services had built a website to generate income with very little planning; because they have an idea, worked on it and the next day they start building the website, without putting any goals or objectives for the website that meet company vision. With a strategy I hoped that we could move the web in  same direction, therefore web strategy is playing a key role in driving website to achieve company vision and snap the profit.

Simply, web strategy is like a business plan, but it is the plan for your website. In it you outline a road map for your website. You outline obstacles and challenges you expect to face, your plan to overcome those obstacles, and goals that will determine whether you’ve been successful.

What is a web service?

Web services are client and server applications that communicate over the World Wide Web’s (WWW) Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), web services provide a standard means of inter-operating between software applications running on a variety of platforms and frameworks. It is any piece of software that makes itself available over the internet and uses a standardized XML messaging system. For instance, a SEO service is considered as web services.

I believe you got the idea about those two essential elements in online business success, and if you want to get ahead of the pack, you need a personalized a clear strategy that fits with your business goals and your organizational culture. You’ll also need to figure out the right way to deploy and new web technology and use your resources to make your goals achievable. The most significant benefits associated with these two elements is the potential to bring in consumers from around the globe.

A great website is about so much more than simply design, in fact today a great looking site should be a given, making it work for you is the challenge and that's our strength.  Of course we do all the usual web related things, all the 'geeky' stuff, all the creative stuff but we do this in a business context, that's why we are different.

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