Tips for Creating a Top Business Web Site

Does your Web site help sell your business? Does it draw them in, and invite them to learn more? Here are some top tips for creating a Web site for your business that works for you, and not against you.

1. Design Tone. Essentially, does the ‘look’ of your site match your business’ purpose? If you’re an accounting firm, for example, you need a sophisticated look, whereas if you sell children’s clothing, you can have a more fun design.
2. Clutter. Keep all the extras to a minimum to create a neat and tidy site. You don’t want to confuse your readers, or make them search for the info they need.
3. Font. While fancy fonts may look nice, they actually turn readers away - they’re difficult to read on screen. The same goes for font size - anything too large runs the risk of displaying improperly on the site.
4. Quantity. Too much of a good things is, sometimes, too much. Keep sentences and paragraphs short. In fact, consider using bullet points.
5. Blog. Adding a blog to your business site not only brings repeat visitors to your site, but it also develops a dialogue with your customers. It adds a personal element to you and your company. However, be sure that the tone of your blog matches the design tone of your overall site. Of course, it should also go without saying that if you do add a blog, you blog consistently.
6. Collect Contact Info. This is another way to extend the personal relationship with your customers. Collect their contact info so you can communicate to them regularly, whether via e-mail or with a newsletter.
7. Edit. Ensure your content is correctly spelled, without grammatical errors. Of course, being well written is another plus! Do all your links work?
8. Clear Navigation. Does the content on each page match the page button header? Is everything organized logically and plainly? Don’t make people search for the info they need and want.
9. Contact Us. Can someone really contact you, or can they only fill out an online form? I don’t think it is just me that gets frustrated when I cannot find a company’s phone number or address, and instead have to resort to filling out an online form and keeping my fingers crossed that I get a response (more often than not, I never hear back).
10. Graphics. Do you remember reading certain textbooks in school that would literally put you to sleep because you were just reading words, words, words? The same goes for your site. Be sure to have some graphical elements throughout so your content is not solely made up of text.

The Types of People on Twitter

Inc. published online a guide to the types of people on Twitter, titled “8 Types of People that Belong on Twitter.” I attended a PRSA Leadership Rally this past summer, and discovered during the Keynote Address by Matthew Harrington, President and CEO of Edelman, U.S., that the younguns (can’t remember if this was high school or college students) told Harrington that “only thirty-year-olds are on Twitter!.” I can’t speak to the truth in the demographics of that, but Inc.’s article breaks up all of us Twitters into eight groups as follows:

1. The Personality - These are celebrities and others who are a brand unto themselves ala Oprah Winfrey and Ashton Kutcher.
2. The Guide - This group is made up of experts on a certain topic who are assigned to seek out and respond to questions related to the topic of their expertise.
3. The Brand Watchdog - Self-explanatory, really, but these are people working for a company; they respond personally and proactively to messages relating to their company or product.
4. The Customer Support Rep - A customer support rep who answers customers’ complaints, issues, and/or questions via phone calls, e-mails, as well as through Twitter.
5. The Publisher - Just as it sounds, this grouping is made up of those who feed info related to their topic of expertise and/or influence. They are usually relevant and consistent (or should be) with their tweets, though they may not be out first with the information.
6. The Promotion Channel - Spammers and e-commerce sites, along with contests, Twitter-only discount codes, and free giveaways make up this group.
7. The Conversationalist - Those who actively engage with their followers, truly connecting with them by tweeting several times a day, often conversing directly (or targeted to) a few individual people.
8. The Curious - I think of these via the older term of lurkers, for those making up this group simply listen without tweeting.

What type are you? Personally, I was a lurker (aka Curious) for a while, and am attempting to morph into a Conversationalist.

@LauraLaChapelle or @PRSA_MD

Time-saving Online Tools

 Akin to Sawmill Marketing’s online list of Twitter handles for Baltimore-area media, I’m compiling this list of time-saving online tools. I’ll update it as needed, so this will be a live, fluid document, with the items in no particular order other than being grouped by free versus fee-based.

There are hundreds (thousands? millions?) of such tools out there, so I’m sure I’m missing many. Send me suggestions of an awesome tool you use!

Free Tools

• Groupsite - for file sharing and group management.
• SnapPages - create a very basic Web site (you can also use Wordpress to do this, either the Wordpress hosted or self-hosted versions)
• Google Docs - Don’t want to pay Microsoft licensing fees for their Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint? Use Google docs to create text, spreadsheets, and presentations.
• Google Voice - Integrate your telecom services with one phone number, send voice-to-text voicemails to your e-mail and more. Google Voice is currently only available for GrandCentral users, but will be open to new users soon.
• Del.icio.us/delicious.com - One-stop list of your favorite bookmarks. Billed as a “social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages from a centralized source”, you can bookmark sites, share them, and even check out popular tags.
• Twitter - need I say more?
• FaceBook - again, the dilemna of whether or not to put these obvious ones on this list.
• Google Buzz - Once again, Google is attempting to corner the market on, well, everything. Share updates, photos, videos, and more. Basically, it’s a combination of FaceBook, YouTube, and Twitter. Plus, you can import from Twitter, Flickr, etc.
• Tweetdeck - View your Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as see YouTube and Flickr images, all in one spot. Categorize Tweeters into columns so your topics are separated.
• Ping.fm - Type once, update several accounts at the same time.
• SocialOomph - Schedule messages on Twitter (plus, pay $29.95 per month to schedule messageson FaceBook pages).
• Gist - Though this is in beta right now, I’ve heard some buzz about it. Essentially, it will integrate and update your contacts from all your various social media sites, along with your e-mail contacts. I’m looking forward to playing with it when it’s out of beta.
• Hootsuite - Have multipel Twitter accounts and cant seem to find the time to udpate them all adequately? Hootsuite is your answer.

Fee-Based Tools

• Basecamp by 37 signals - A great online replacement for Microsoft Project, with cost plans ranging from $24 to $149 a month. It’s billed as a “web-based project collaboration tool.”

Jobs if you Love the Internet

And I always thought I spent alot of time online…

Turns out that is because of my job! CareerBuilder - as reported by CNN - has determined the top five jobs for people who love the internet, and three of those top five are public relations and/or marketing related.

Top 5 jobs for those who love the internet:

• Branding Consultant
• Public Relations Director
• Recruiter
• Social Media Consultant (can I say “duh”?)
• User Operations Analyst (and ditto)

Happy surfing!