A New Strategic Internet Marketing Website
Have you thought about re-doing your website? I know for many businesses that this crosses their mind on a regular basis. For some it’s due to performance not meeting their expectations – so they look to their site as the evil culprit- not the best reason by the way. For others, they are the leaders in their field (that’s us 🙂 ) and through identification of changes in online trends they make the updates necessary to continue to grow and prosper on the web.
I wanted to outline why we have decided to update our website, what the major components to the change are, what our overall goals for the change are, as well as what the negatives are to making the change to our new format. Incidentally, I think you need to be able to answer these questions for yourself before you ever spend a penny on updating your website.
So why the change? I believe the web has made a significant shift in the last 2 years (which was the last time we overhauled our website) and has become one big networking event that never sleeps! Although I think we had a very good website that was performing well, I believe the risk we’ve taken in changing our website to make it more social then ever before is a worthwhile long-term investment, that will pay major dividends. This change for us means the ability to become more transparent to our potential clients, add more value to our current clients, and give more to all those that care to listen. A brochure site that is nothing more than a billboard on the web is dead, we just haven’t had the funeral yet.
What are the major changes we incorporated? Some of the more obvious changes are becoming more transparent by putting faces to our brand. You’ll find my face all over the place and it helps to personalize the environment. But anyone who writes, and contributes on the site will also be made visible – “this is who I am”. Social Media and the ability to share any component whether it be a page of information on how to “hire us” or a post like this giving quality information (I hope it is anyway) was a key component. When we say share information – we mean it – all major networks are incorporated and the ability to add new ones on the fly is simple.
Some visibility pushed from other channels like our FaceBook fan page or our YouTube Channel are incorporated minimally. This was to do with our strategic internet marketing plan and have definite reasons for the limited visibility. However, the ability to become a fan, on the other hand, is all over the place on the site.
Every component of the site is about interaction. In fact, our main page is now our blog. This was a big decision, and I think the right one. Through search engine optimization we will optimize services on the different pages, but when you land on our site, it’s now all about you and us giving quality information that can benefit you. This really enforces my belief that the web is becoming all about relationships, transparency, and nurturing prospects to clients. I also believe it will bring us our best-suited clients in the end.
So what are the goals of the new site? Engagement, engagement, and engagement. All else will stem from this. New clients, new fans, new opportunities. Every change which occurred and is to come is about transparent engagement. To help eliminate our competition in this field (and there’s lots of it) we will open our hands and show our cards. New clients will know us before they ever sign the dotted line. They’ll be our friends and our fans. We’ll know them through questions they ask, and the passion in their communication. They will win big time because they’ll know what to expect and we’ll exceed it. OK, that was a little salesy but we mean it.
The negatives of the new design are…. a lot of extra work! That’s it, well OK maybe one more thing. Getting our whole team mentally shifting to be real. Believe me, transparency is hard to do but as we transition to this, you can see the excitement building. The hard work part really comes from ensuring to continue to produce quality content consistently. It’s being very disciplined, even if you feel no one is listening, they will, and every contribution to that content has to be as if our next fan will be reading, watching or listening to it.
Funny thing is when I talk to clients one of the big challenges is what they will talk about on their websites. When you go through this transition and truly commit to transparency, it’s amazing how much you have to give. What about you, do you think we’re nuts, ahead of our time, or on the ball? Want to join us, tell us about your transition, post your link of your site and let us and the world take a look and make “our” own judgment on if you’re coming clean.
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