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Technology is wonderful, but also the complexity of it all can sometimes spell trouble if we aren’t prepared. One of a business’s most important marketing assets is their website. On the one hand it is a platform for their customers to gather information and connect with the business, and on the other it’s a way for the business to generate leads and interest about their product and service.

Are you adequately protecting your website to ensure that it’s resilient in case of a technology failure?

Millions of servers all around the globe are actively “serving up” websites for a viewer to see when they request it. When someone clicks a link to get to your website, they expect it to be up when they get there. You have milliseconds to capture attention and convert that visitor into a lead. What if the website loads terribly slow, or even worse doesn’t load at all?

100% uptime is impossible, at least usually, so a little bit of downtime is to be expected, hopefully your website provider is shooting for the five nines, 99.999% uptime, but that is in a perfect world. Here are a few things to consider about your website and what to do about it.

Find out what your providers SLA is

What is the Service Level Agreement between you and your website provider, whether it’s a consulting firm that hosts your website, or a full blow online application such as HubSpot?

Don’t be afraid to ask, hey what is the expected uptime and what are the backup procedures for my website/application?

It isn’t reasonable to expect 100% perfection from a web host, but it is certainly reasonable to expect a best effort and a plan of action when an outage occurs.

Backup your website and assets

My mom said to me once when I was younger, sometimes to get it done right you need to do it yourself. We pay for and expect good service from technology providers, but sometimes you have to do a little extra effort on your part, to be self-sufficient, or in business speak, have a business continuity plan. We can’t always expect things to go completely well in a problematic situation.

So, what do you do? Just take a periodic snapshot of your website. If you are technical, know how to do it, and have the resources and access to your web server, take a backup there and archive it somewhere. If you would rather, do it in a ‘non-technical’ manner, more simply, you can use a web crawler or spider like tool, which can go through a website, download pages, pictures, and other objects it finds they can be viewed locally, without needing to be connected to the Internet.

Two such tools that do this for free are HTTrack Website Copier and WebReaper. They both work similarly but take your pick. I use HTTrack more frequently.

There are many more advanced tools out there, but these are a couple of the easiest to use and the price is right.

Monitor your website uptime

Your website host should be able to provide logs and information or a dashboard showing uptime, status and if issues come up, but wouldn’t you proactively like to know if your website has just gone down 5 minutes before you are going to be getting on stage to present a new area of your website at a tradeshow? Yea, that’s what I thought.

In walks, Pingdom, the website monitoring tool. They have packages that range from free to enterprise level. I’ve used them in both situations, for monitoring a single website on the free edition to the enterprise level monitoring many websites, applications and services.

Check with your website provider to ensure they won’t be irked if you have the Pingdom “bots” probing their servers every 5 minutes or so, but usually it isn’t a problem, especially if your website host isn’t shady.

Remember you get what you pay for

If you sign up with the $2 a month introductory package offer for your business website, you get what you pay for. While it may be nice getting a bargain, is it really worth it if your website is only up 75% of the time? Look for a web host and provider that has a scalable redundant infrastructure that doesn’t host their servers on low grade equipment.

Startups are always a great place for an entrepreneur. There is always buzz, high flying emotion, and excitement. For many startups they have an end goal in mind and the beginning phases, sometimes a few boxes don’t get checked off. That is OK, because there are many resources and experts available at a startups expense.

If you read blogs like TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb you can quickly get a feel for how the startup arena is. Particularly in the online space. If you are an online Internet company, you need to do everything that you can to outshine the rest, and climb upwards.

What about a content marketing strategy for startups? What good would it do? A lot, here is why.

Content generated consistently garners results

I recently listened to a great podcast on Bernie Borges podcast Inbound Marketing Strategies, which featured Content Marketing Institute (formerly Junta42) Joe Pulizzi. Joe defines content marketing as the creation of content on a consistent basis to attract and retain customers. So true! Great definition.

For a startup, limited resources on hand are often common. Juggling many plates at once is expected and is part of the fun.

Finding time to consistently generate content is sometimes put on the back burner in any business, but in a startup a golden opportunity can be missed if this happens.

Consistent content generates a regular flow of momentum behind it. 

Blogging, tweeting, sharing, guest posting, all the different possibilities and flavors of content creation are all flowing around, so take the opportunity to do it and move forward.

Creating buzz for a new business

A business that I’ve worked with as a consultant to with content marketing strategy is doing many things right.

WhoCanHelp.com, a startup based in Missoula, MT and with offices in Gig Harbor, WA, has created an online marketplace where those seeking services can find specialists in specific fields, and have been gaining momentum in their niche since inception.

They were recently featured as a Startup of the Week over at TechFlash.

One of their key advantages relating to content marketing strategy is that their website platform allows them to produce massive amounts of content in the form of categories, structures and individual pages. Some of it is generated dynamically, most is manual through the creation of a post by someone who is a user looking for a specific service, such as a plumber or roofer or other service.

When we originally worked together we focused heavily on landing pages to work in conjunction with paid advertising campaigns to help convert visitors into website users. Now they have a steady stream of organic web traffic through search engine marketing and content marketing combined efforts.

WhoCanHelp.com has taken off and is branching into many areas and garnering partnerships with Chamber of Commerce’s in areas such as Washington, Oregon, and Montana.

They have an avid blogger blogging and producing content and information for a listening audience and continue tweeting and building a Facebook community.

Build, and build it

If you build it, they will come. Yes, it’s true. Many say if you build it, they will come, but you must continue building it, creating, expanding, and doing what you can to create a community around your startup.

Your culture needs to shine through with a human element and show your business is in it for the long haul and the investors, partners, and your startup all benefit by building not only a strong brand, but a platform for lead generation over the long term. Your website footprint as it expands through blogging, website pages, and other ways to produce avenues of entry will help build that buzz and user base to make a successful startup such as WhoCanHelp.com!

Does your business really need a blog? It is a fair question when you consider the following:

• Blogging takes time
• Blogging requires producing ideas regularly
• You need to identify who will blog and how often they will do it
• Blogging does have costs associated with it (time, maintenance of blog platform)

After all, you are already a busy business owner not with a lot of time on your hands, and the salary that you are paying your employee is dog eared for other more important activities, right?

Sure, take that approach if you want your business to be left in the dust.

Define blogging will ya?

Blogging in its most basic form is just posting information regularly on your website in a dedicated area, whatever you want to call it, updates, news, information, research. In fact, the idea of blogging stemmed from early Internet journaling.

Needless to say, it has evolved to be much more involved than its primitive form, but the basic idea of blogging hasn’t changed.

Purpose of blogging: Publish on a topic of interests and information that is readily available to the world by means of the Internet, whether it is ready directly on the website, or perhaps syndicated to another platform through an email newsletter, mobile device, or another website re-publishing it.

In essence, blogging is the means for you to put out whatever information you want about your product, service, and industry from your viewpoint to spread the buzz, interest, and garner interest about your brand.

In his book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR (which is a must read by the way for any owner, manager, or marketer), David Meerman Scott shows us the many reasons how regular content published on a website should speak to your target audience and what the pay off is.

This innovative book talks about the real-life change, not trends, that the world of business has undertaken and how prospects and customers are buying much differently than they have in the past.

While we think of a traditional blog as the one hosted on your own website, others to consider are the micro-blogging platforms such as X (formerly Twitter). Where you really want to focus your efforts first and foremost is on your blog – what you own and host.

Who cares about your business blog?

Your future customers, current customers, past customers, your mom (well maybe), your internal staff, partners and vendors and you.

Buying decisions are being made more and more by factors that your business may not have considered in the past. How well your business is represented online, the activity (blogging and social media) that takes place surrounding your brand. Is there any discussion happening around your product and service? Yes. Are you engaging in that conversation?

Blogging ROI – Factors to consider

There shouldn’t be any convincing involved in getting a business blog in place. With businesses with blogs ranging from some of the largest companies in the world, to the smallest mom and pop, they all have the same ability: to reach out to their audience and make the connection.

As a businessperson, one of the quickest things I found out shortly after going into business for myself was that people truly do business with people. Blogging isn’t that different. Having trouble generating those sales leads because people don’t feel connected to your brand or know what you are all about? Blogging can help you solve that problem. You can put a real face to the name, and stories in front of the numbers.

Make the most out of business blogging

Getting the most out of a business blog starts with the content marketing strategy. Aligning your business strategy, with sales goals, and learning how and then speaking to your audience will be one of the best decisions you can make for your business.

Aside from connecting to your future audience, it helps your business get found in the first place. The more content on your website, especially well-crafted content, the larger the online footprint you have, thus making the exposure greater. Makes sense doesn’t it? Searchers will see you, and in return learn more about your company.

Capture leads through compelling offers and calls to action. Now that you have the reader’s attention, what are you going to offer them to help answer their questions and solve their problem? Use your blog as a primary source of leads. With more people regularly reading blogs as a source of information, news, and entertainment, you have that excellent opportunity to close the deal.

Your website’s search ranking is dependent on many variables. Although that is true, your website should have many places of entry for potential customers to find what they are looking for.

The overall authority, which is how well search engines value your website, has a determining factor in how much more favored your website will rank versus a competitor.

There are three things that you can do now to begin helping improve your website’s search rankings.

Take a look at your titles

The titles on the pages of your website, the words you see at the top of your browser window, are very important. For one reason they describe to the website visitor the content of the page that they are on. But for another very important reason, it is an opportunity for you, the website owner, to tell the search engines what the content on your page is about. They consider the title of the page to be a key determining factor when keywords are considered as to how it will rank.

Inbound links using the anchor text close to or describing in the best keywords your page title, will also help boost this.

Update your public profiles

Go to each of your public profiles on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, LinkedIn, forums, and any other public facing accounts and check to see if your website URL is in the profile settings. If not, add it! You can even place different URLs in your profiles. For example, on one you could put your home page as the link, but for another put a direct link to your blog.

If you find a service with a profile that allows you to ‘describe’ your website with text, do that as well! LinkedIn for example will allow you to select Other and then put in a custom description. Use this wisely and choose your top keywords for that page.

Contact partners and organizations to link to you

Inbound links are worth their weight in gold. Especially when it comes from a reputable source.

Contact your partners, organizations you are a member of, and other resources you have and ask if they would include a link to your website. Do this with the thought it minds that if it’s a resource that would link to you, that you are well acquainted enough that you may be willing to link to them.

Note: If they agree to link to you thank you and request that they use some of your choice keywords to link. Example: If you are a moving company, you want them to link to your business website with a link such as Best Local Moving Company or Specialized Moving Company Services being the descriptive text.

Parting thoughts

One of the best things about going through these exercises regularly is that it is best practice. Honestly, these things should be looked at on a regular basis so that the success of your website’s rankings will always be climbing.

Don’t set goals, set objectives to realize the results that your business needs over the next year, such as increased leads and sales, brand awareness and a great return on investment through your inbound marketing plan.

Shift your mentality from knee jerk reaction, poorly thought-out online marketing strategies, to a more proactive, result orientated inbound marketing plan. You do this by setting objectives.

The word goal, primary meaning is, “the result or achievement toward which effort is directed; aim; end.” (dictionary.com)

Taking this into account having a goal or an end in mind isn’t just enough. How are you going to get there? What path will you have to take?

Embrace objectives to guide your business to meet the plan results aimed for head on. Objective means, “something that one’s efforts or actions are intended to attain or accomplish; purpose; goal; target” (dictionary.com)

Objectives encompass goals – achieving results your business needs

After establishing the needs for your business, such as you need to generate more leads to increase sales to keep the doors open, how do you apply them to inbound marketing objectives that will help you achieve the objective’s goal?

The planning could be as simple as this:

See how this quick exercise shows the shift in mentality from setting a goal to setting an actionable objective? You could equate the need with a goal, but if you don’t go beyond the need and put it in a plan, no matter how simple it might be, you won’t achieve the results your goal tells you to.

Meet those objectives set in your inbound marketing plan

You don’t have to be a genius to set objectives. There isn’t any rocket science involved, but a results orientated outlook is required. Along with a different outlook, working with an inbound marketing expert, and the information and marketing metrics that can be gathered from your website will set the tone and be a perfect guide to following the inbound marketing pathway to hit the target.

The world of eCommerce comes in many shapes and sizes, from the smallest niche shop to large behemoth online retailers. One thing is undoubtedly true: electronic commerce has changed the way we buy.

Consumers are buying online to save money. While the pressure is on local businesses to compete, and in some cases survive the effects big box stores has on the “buy local” movement, many smaller retailers are using online eCommerce to grow their business and increase profits.

Take a look at the five following eCommerce infographics that illustrate the world of modern eCommerce.

1. What are people really buying online?

2. How consumers are shopping online

3. How do colors affect purchases?

4. Who’s using coupons?

5. Dissecting the best E-Commerce software

Marketing Takeaway

Understanding the way the consumers are buying, what they are buying and how will determine the way you will position and market your online store. Whatever industry you are in, buyers are looking for a good deal, but at the same time looking for a quality product and experience. You can deliver the results those prospective customers are looking for when you craft and execute an effective inbound marketing eCommerce strategy.

Is the time, effort, and money you spend using social media a good investment for your business? Are you measuring your social media ROI?

If you are going to be putting the time, research and investment into your social media strategy it’s critical that you know if the results are where they should be and what you can do to improve that.

What are your goals with social media?

First of all, look at what are the goals in your social media plan.

Spending time looking at the big picture and applying the amount of time and resources you and your company are willing to spend on social media can define the amount of effort you are going to put into getting the most out of social media.

What should be your goals in social media strategy?

Increased brand awareness, and ultimately sales is going to be a top priority, but what objectives do you have to get to that point?

A well defined inbound marketing strategy will encompass everything from website optimization, to blogging and a content marketing strategy, SEO, and how social media ties it together.

For example social media has become increasingly important in the area of SEO (search engine optimization).

Start on inside and work outwards to build effective social media plan

Aligning internal sales goals and company growth needs with your inbound marketing plan, and ultimately social media strategy needs to happen from the inside out.

Cross communication between the sales team and marketing team can help determine the level of interaction and investment that can be made before delving into social media brand building.

If you are one of the many companies already interacting with prospects and customers via social media, great! You’ve put in some of the leg work to get the social media planning off the ground.

Work with trusted business advisers to continue fleshing out and aligning your business goals with the actual lead generation that is possible through social media and a well defined inbound marketing plan.

Woohoo! This is an exciting time of the year. With 2011 just right around the corner, the opportunities are ready for your business. Whether or not you were able to reach all of your goals in 2010 is water under the bridge now because 2011 is coming upon us fast.

Taking the big picture in mind, as you prepare to earmark budgets and resources to meet your business growth and sales goals in the next year and beyond, here are three key things to add to your inbound marketing strategy for 2011.

1. Actual Content Marketing Strategy

Ok so you have a fancy pants blog with a great design and you are wanting to prove that you truly can generate those leads you always hear comes with blogging.

First, a mind shift. Let’s get away from the term blogging and use a more descriptive view of what you are trying to do: content marketing.

• Write to your customers – Identify the personas, the type of prospects your business would like to do business with
• Talk less about yourself – There is a science to blogging. Your content marketing strategy should focus on writing for customers, sharing useful, high quality, resources and information.
• Spend more time producing – Do what is going to be most profitable for your business and drive those leads. Spend less time doing it yourself, patching servers, tweaking design and more time producing high quality content. Let experts in design, inbound marketing strategy, and SEO do the “hard” stuff for you.
• Be an informed content marketer – While to get to the point where you are able to actively produce the kind of magnetic content that drives leads, pay attention to analytics and marketing events (such as an email newsletter campaign) that are producing visits and leads. Do more of what works, and less of what doesn’t.

(Source: State of Inbound Marketing Report .PDF)

2. Use Inbound Marketing Tools and Resources

To put your content marketing strategy into play you need the appropriate tools.

• Social media management – Balancing time and available internal resources with current demands and job requirements sometimes have little available time available for social media interaction. Explore the tools you need to get the job done and interact with your audience while building a brand and driving leads to your website.
• Go local, everywhere – Your business relies more on getting found today than it ever has before. As more and more people begin chucking the yellow pages in the trash, you must appear where your prospects are looking for you. Keyword research is a critical component to your inbound marketing strategy. You must know and use in your content the keywords that will be most relevant and drive traffic to your website.
• Work with an inbound marketing expert – An inbound marketing strategist can guide your business down the path to set goals, and meet them for your business. To get the revenue results needed, for less of the cost of hiring an employee to focus on online marketing, put together a plan with an inbound marketing company.

3. Nurture those relationships

Make 2011 the year your business does an outstanding job of nurturing relationships with customers and prospects.

Using email marketing as your channel, you can effectively build and maintain relationships with your buyers, at the same time reducing your advertising costs.

Bottom line is, when done right, email marketing can lower costs and increase profits.

Focus on two areas in your email marketing in 2011 to see the lower costs turn around into increased sales:

• Direct email readers to the appropriate place to make a sale – As long as you do a good job making your emails interesting, and actionable, your click through rates should be increasing and maintaining good levels. But where those clicks land is even more important. The email should drive the recipient to a specialize landing page, or offer page, on your website where they can take an action.
• Segment your email list – As you build a list it is easy to think that the work is headed in the right direction. While it is good to build a larger list, the numbers don’t mean anything. The groups or segments that exist inside of your email list is more important. Use your email marketing tool and expert guidance to identify VIP customers, hot prospects, and those who have little interest now but might later. If you send the same old email to the same old group of email addresses, your effectiveness may not be as great as you intend. Break it up into customer and prospect segments to realize the value of increased sales.

Look forward to the future

The opportunities that exist with a well thought out and planned inbound marketing strategy, coupled with the sub plans of content marketing such as social media focus and email marketing, etc. your business can see increased leads and sales in 2011 and beyond.

Keep an open mind, use the expert resources available, and remember that hard work, and a destination in mind always pays off.