by Daria Steigman on October 4, 2010
Your Web site has great content, but are you using it effectively to generate business?
I’m guilty of this. I know prospects are visiting my site, but I don’t have a strong call to action–so I’m missing opportunities to build these relationships. I’m working on remedying that right now, so last week’s MarketingProfs Webinar on tips for increasing Web conversions was very well timed. Amy Africa offered a lot of great information, including 8 keys to the perfect lead generation form:
- Only ask relevant questions (relevant to the user). The aim here is to get someone to fill out the form. Once you have their information, you can always survey them later.
- Make sure your privacy and security policy is clear and on every page. Aren’t you more likely to fill out a form if you’re confident that the recipient isn’t going to turn around and sell your name?
- Make sure your full contact information is visible in every page view.
- Use only vertical capturing fields (i.e., put city, state, zip code, each on its own line so that it’s easy for people to spot if they make an error).
- Pre-fill data where you can. I think you’re more likely to be able to do this with an e-commerce site, but it goes to ease of use.
- Use the middle column. Africa said that most forms work best in the middle column.
- Deploy colors that work. Blacks and reds work best. (Hmm… Since my logo (and secondary site color) is green, I’ll have to make an exception on this one.)
- Big buttons help. You want to make sure the “Submit” buttons are easy to find–and to hit.
Finally, I thought I’d reiterate something Africa stressed several times: that relevancy is in the user’s mind. So look at your current contact forms (or the ones you’re getting ready to put onto your site) and make sure they’re quick and easy to fill out–and are only asking for information that your prospects are willing to give.
Photo by Chris Chappelear (Flickr).
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Tagged as:
Amy Africa,
Lead Generation,
marketing,
Professional Development
by Daria Steigman on September 20, 2010
I had the pleasure of presenting a Webinar for Higher Logic last week on building a vibrant, connected community.We looked at four “in house” things you must do first, and then talked about some strategies for identifying and reaching out to your audience, building buzz, and launching successfully.
Association leaders are struggling with the same challenges as companies big and small. How do you get started? Who’s going to do all the work? Can I use an outside firm as my community manager? How much of my site should be open to non-members?
Tough questions, and few easy answers. Click here to access the complete Webinar.
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Tagged as:
HigherLogic,
Professional Development,
Social Media
by Daria Steigman on August 18, 2010
In keeping with the time constraints of busy, always on-the-go workers, MarketingProfs has created a new “Take 10” series: short, 10-minute presentations with actionable takeaways. I was smart enough to take 10 minutes out the other day to get a LinkedIn 101 refresher course from Jason Alba.
Alba offered four “do it once” tips for setting up your profile and six “do regularly” tips for keeping your brand front and center on LinkedIn. The highlights of his “do regularly” advice:
- Pose a Question to your network at least once a month.
- Answer Questions whenever you have a few minutes of downtime.
- Join LinkedIn Groups Discussions, which let you reach an audience beyond your first degree network (or start a Groups discussion of your own).
- Use Advanced Search to find prospects.
- Use Company Search to gain competitive intelligence on your prospects and your competition.
- Update Your Status at least weekly. (I’d actually recommend doing this more often as long you have something relevant to share—be it a useful link, a blog post, information about that killer conference you’re headed to, and so forth.)
I’d add one final “do regularly” tip: Read status updates from your network. You can do that easily by pulling in the RSS feed of all your contacts’ status updates. This is a great tool for keeping up with who has changed jobs, is sharing good news, or otherwise has something worth commenting on. I tend to skim the updates (there will be a lot), looking less at who’s connecting with whom and more at who’s sharing news. See something interesting? Click through, leave a quick comment, and become instantly top of mind.
Photo by Mario Sundar (Flickr).
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Tagged as:
Brand,
Jason Alba,
LinkedIn,
MarketingProfs,
Social Media
by Daria Steigman on March 24, 2010
[Note: This post originally appeared on IABC's Communications World blog.]
It can be hard to hold a room these days. Between the Twitterstream and the BackChannel, and our relentless need to surf as we learn, keeping your audience alert and engaged requires skill, smarts, and a great presentation.
While not every speaker can be a rock star, there’s no excuse for not doing your homework. Yet, time and time again, speakers screw up the basics.
Here’s my list of the seven deadly sins of a bad speaker:
- He mumbles, fumbles, and stumbles out of the gate.
- He reads his PowerPoint, which is all text anyway.
- He makes sweeping pronouncements, but offers no data to back them up.
- He’s giving the same speech, with the same examples, at the third conference in a row.
- He doesn’t bother to change the date on his handouts.
- He forgets (or does he really?) to leave time for questions.
- He name drops, and name drops some more.
Have I left anything out? What speaker sins have you seen?
Photo by Mauren Veras (Flickr).
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Tagged as:
BackChannel,
Twitterstream
by Daria Steigman on March 12, 2010
Is your Web site optimized, or do you mostly just have random people dropping by?
I was on another very useful MarketingProfs Webinar yesterday, this time on the topic of SEO essentials. Janet Driscoll Miller of Search Mojo coupled a great primer on the topic with some terrific tips and free resources for monitoring and analyzing Web sites.
Here are her 5 SEO essentials:
- Make sure your Web site is indexable.
- Keywords are the foundation of SEO, so it is important to identify the right keywords for your target audience. (Google AdWords Keyword Tool is a search tool that lets you identify the volume of searches associated with a particular word or phrase.)
- It’s not just about identifying keywords, but also where you place them. They should appear in a number of places on the page (i.e, filename, title tag, meta tag, meta description, link text, and so forth). The best sites aim for 2-4 percent keyword density.
- Inbound links help search engines rank your site, and the best inbound links are one-way. (Yahoo’s Site Explorer can help you determine your site’s link popularity.)
- Your social footprint is becoming more and more important. (For example, Google Caffeine is expected to incorporate more social media links; Google’s real time search already is.)
Finally, Miller stressed that it is not enough to incorporate SEO–you have to measure it. She advises regularly (i.e., monthly or quarterly) measuring your rankings in search engines, your competitors’ rankings, and your site traffic from organic search.
Photo by mecookie (Flickr).
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Tagged as:
Google Adwords Keyword Tool,
Google Caffeine,
Janet Driscoll Miller,
MarketingProfs,
search engine optimization,
Search Mojo,
Yahoo! Site Explorer
