One of your best business tools should be your web site. Your web site is where prospective customers go to find out about your business, to check you out, and probably to make the decision whether they want to do business with you or not, and it is working 24/365.
But is your web site the tool that you (and your customers) really need it to be? Do you even have a web site? Do you know your customers are judging your business by your web site (and by your vehicles that they see on the street)? What about your social media? Are you doing that too? What does that even mean? What is your strategy between your web site and your social media? Do you have a strategy? Do you have time to keep them all current and still run your business effectively every day? So many questions. Fortunately for you, we can help you solve all these questions (and many more).
Is your web site current?
If you are just bragging about your company on your web site, you are probably missing the point. Your web site should be where your prospective and existing customers go for information and to do business, at their convenience, and on their schedule. All the information on your web site needs to be current, constantly. If you have forms for your customers to download, they should be only the current versions as well. You need to have brochures only for current products that you still sell (unless you are a manufacturer of products, and you need to have documentation for older models). If your employees and contact information are on your site, that needs to be current. These are the basics. But is your web site fresh? Can your customers find new cutting-edge technology information on your site? Can they find articles about upcoming, future things? Keeping your web site fresh with current content is important. Is there a reason for them to keep coming back to your web site, or is it only a site that potential new customers come to visit? This strategy needs to be incorporated between your web site and with your social media.
What role does my social media play?
Current philosophy dictates that your web site should be more for the “static” information that doesn’t change often (see above though). The dynamic information (the interactive information that changes regularly) should be on your social media site(s). Now keep in mind that I am talking about the small to medium-sized businesses, with limited people resources, and perhaps without a lot of information technology people within their business. We are not talking about businesses like Amazon.com that handle it all on their web site. That is a completely different strategy. For the small-to-medium-sized businesses, social media can be incorporated very effectively to handle all the changing communications, and they are very simple to manage, although quite time consuming.
The perfect world strategy for many businesses if to have closely-tied links between their web site and their social media site(s) of choice.
What should I NOT do with my web site and social media site(s)?
The quickest way to kill interaction of your customers with either your web site and/or social media sites is to not make them useful, hard to navigate, hard to find information and to NOT keep them updated and current. Basically the exact opposite of what I have presented to you above.
The word “static” mentioned above should not be interpreted to mean “create it and forget about it”. If you owned a car dealership and you brought in a bunch of cars and parked them on the lot, then never washed and cleaned them, had no salesmen or finance people to work with walk-in customers, and never interacted personally with the potential customers, how many cars do you think would you sell? If you had the same inventory all the time and it never changed in any way, how many cars would you sell?
The same is true for you web site and for your social media sites. If you don’t update them regularly, that is what you are effectively doing with your web site and social sites. They need to be fresh and useful to your customers. They need to be interactive and they need to be available 24/365. They are great sales tools, but they do not run on autopilot. They are another resource for your customers, but they still require personal interaction and maintenance. Your customers want to be in charge of how they work with your business. Your web site and social media are just more tools to facilitate your customers at their convenience.
For more information, or help with your web site or social media strategies, content creation, photography or general marketing, please contact me personally.
Allen Beck
AKOR Services
2229 SE Burnside Rd., #19
Gresham, OR 97030
www.AKORServices.com
Copyright 2013, All Rights Reserved. AKOR Services
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