Why You Need a Company Social Media Policy

If you have more than one person in your company who engages in social media, you need to have a social media policy. Social media has quickly become the easiest way to grown your online presence. Through all popular outlets, you can quickly and effectively develop your online reputation and extend the brand of your business.

But the lines between person and business social media are quite blurry. For example:

• If an employee uses Facebook to converse with friends and family, should they be using it to share information about your company?
• If Twitter is how they tell their buddies where they are and what they are doing, should the same account be used to spread marketing messages?
• And what if they are looking for another job, but their personal accounts are intertwined with your business accounts. How does that look for your marketing image?

A social media policy is critical for any business since your online reputation will be significantly impacted by what is said about your company. Unless you provide guidelines for employees, you cannot really be certain what sort of reputation is being developed.

Saying “Don’t do it!” is not a policy

Social media has become a mainstream way of connecting with customers. To tell your employees that social media is not allowed is not realistic in today’s business world. Chances are employees are already engaging in social media for private use, and your social media policy should at least discuss what can be done during work hours. Also, if employees are already using social media, a policy can help to define what private social media outlets may be used to extend the brand of the company.

What should a social media policy govern?

A company social media policy should answer the following questions:

• Who owns the social media accounts that are used by your company?
• If employees have personal accounts, can they use them to market your company?
• What is the policy for talking about the company on personal social media accounts?
• What confidentiality is required around your company information?
• What copyright issues should be considered?
• What social media arenas does the company participate in?
• What individuals in the company are responsible for social media, and for those who aren’t responsible, what is their input (if any)?
• Who is in charge of reviewing social media output?
• Who is responsible for responding to customer complaints that appear in social media arenas?

Here are some excellent articles we found that can help you craft a social media policy:

• How to Write a Social Media Policy
• 10 Must-Haves For Your Social Media Policy
• Secrets to Writing a Social Media Policy That Actually Means Something

Sample Social Media Policies

If you’re are in the process of creating a social media policy, Social Media Governance keeps a database of corporate social media policies. They have example from many companies, including FedEx, Cisco and Harvard Law School.

What is the Best Hosting for Joomla?

This is a question we are often asked. What is the best hosting company for Joomla websites? We have tried at least half a dozen, and what we have found is there are certain criteria that you must consider when making a decision. Unfortunately we cannot say we have found one company that is aces at everything, but we have found several that have come really close.

We do not have a server where we provide hosting for our customers. Instead set up their own hosting accounts with a service. In this way our customers have dominion over their website. Since we aren’t the hosts, we have tried many companies to find the best fit for Joomla optimization as well as customer service.

When choosing a host for Joomla, you cannot just choose anybody. Hosting requires a certain set of parameters in order for the Joomla site to run properly. This is why it is important to choose a company that specializes in optimizing their servers to host Joomla sites.

What do we think?

Here is our assessment of companies the we have used. This assessment is based on actual experience with these companies. Please don’t be upset if we’ve left your company off the list. If you’re not on the list, it’s because we haven’t tried you yet. Email us, and we’ll be happy to give it a go. In the chart below we’ve graded some of the services provided to give you an idea of how well they perform. In cases where there really isn’t a measure of service (i.e. unlimited bandwidth), we just wrote yes/no.

What host do we use?

If you’re wondering what host this blog is on, it’s hosted on Siteground. Our company website, Landau Design, is hosted on Interactive Online. Although lately we’ve been considering moving our company site to Hostgator because they seem to have to best combination of what we need, and we have seen no down time since we started using them.

What host do you use for your Joomla site, and how do you like them?

Step by Step SEO to Measure Website Effectiveness

So you want to get noticed online for all the right reasons? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the set of tools and strategies for getting people to discover your website based on its content. Most articles you read about SEO stop there after describing the technical stuff. But good SEO is tied to your online marketing strategy. It is really important for you to be able to attract people to your website who will benefit from being there and likewise create some benefit for you as well.

So we are starting a series of step-by-step SEO blogs that will provide you a plan for novices (and others) to understand, evaluate and think strategically about SEO. If you’ve been wondering how to implement an SEO strategy, just check in every Monday for the next step in our SEO series.

Today’s blog provides a plain English definition of terms important to SEO. Future blogs will take you through each of these areas and explain why they are important, and how to incorporate them into your SEO strategy.

• Analytics program: This is a tool that provide statistical information about activity on your website. It is provided free by your hosting company or by another online service such as Google.
• Hits: This was a term used early on in the web world to indicate how many visitors came to a site. Hits are actually NOT a visitor count. Hits are the number of files downloaded from a server when a page is called for. So if you have an HTML page that has 10 photos on it, when somebody types in that page URL, there will be 11 hits to the server (1 HTML page + 10 photo images).
• Visitor count: This is the number of distinct visitors who have visited at least one page on your site. It is measured by the IP address (Internet connection point) assigned to one computer. So practically speaking, two people could share a computer and it would only count for one visitor. But generally speaking, this is a good indicator of how many people view your site.
• Unique visitors: If a person visits your site on different days during the same period, this is counted twice in the visitor count. To measure unique visitors, your analytic program adjusts for this and counts each IP address once.
• New visitors: This is the number of new IP addresses that view a page on a site during a particular period. This means that since the inception of your analytics software, this IP address has not visited up until this point.
• Page views per visit: This is the average number of pages that a visitor views before leaving a website. Depending on your analytic program, you may see this as an average of all visitors or you may be able to get data distinguished by some other criteria e.g. new visitors.
• Bounce rate: If a visitor views your site and leaves immediately, you will have a high bounce rate. There is no set standard about how fast this must happened before a visitor has “bounced.” However most experts agree that visitors typically will leave after 15 seconds if they don’t believe a website is interesting to them. It is said that a high bounce rate is an indication that your site does not pertain to the information the individual is seeking. A high bounce rate could be an indication of a poorly designed site, insufficient content, or poor SEO bringing in people from keywords that are not relevant.
• Time on the site: This is just what it sounds like and your analytics program may have a way to view additional variables in combination with this e.g. unique visitors.
• Top Content: This is information about the most popular pages on a website. Typically an analytics program will sort the pages and display how many people visited the page in numbers and percentage of all visitors.
• Page views: This is the official term for number of pages viewed on the site.
• Referring site: If a viewer does not type your URL directly into their browser to arrive at your site, they must have found a link on another site or used a search engine to discover your website. The site that provides the link to your website is called the referring site.
• Traffic source: This indicates whether the person came from a link on another site, from a search engine, social media site, etc. The traffic source tells you the types of sites that are referring your readers, while the referring site gives the actual URL of the source.
• Landing pages: This is information about the first page that visitors arrive at when they come to your site. In other words, they may not come to your site through the home page, but the link they followed may lead directly to a page within your site.
• Exit pages: This tells you the page visitors were looking at right before they left your site. This information ties into the bounce rate. If you have a high bounce rate, look at your exit pages and see where people are leaving.
• Organic search: This is a term used to describe a search that is based only on keywords. This means that the results are not influenced by paid advertising or other factors.

5 Keys to Managing Your Social Media Campaign

Social media is everywhere and businesses today feel compelled to jump in. Some are using it to increase traffic to their website or blog, but many more are using it to establish a reputation as an expert. No matter your reason for using social media, how do you make sure you’re jumping into the right veins, and how do you know if it is getting you results?

I have create 5 simple keys to help you determine whether your goals and actions are in line with each other. Follow these steps to make certain you are not spinning your wheels with your online efforts.

1. Write down your goals and objectives

Determine your social media goals so you know what you are moving towards. Some goals might include:

• increase traffic to your website
• establish expertise and build your reputation
• assist in search engine optimization for your website
• find and connect with new customers

Make your goals measurable so you know when you are moving towards them. For example, if you want to increase traffic to your site, you might say:

• increase traffic by 300%, or
• increase traffic by 1,000 visitors

2. Monitor your progress

How do you know if you are doing what you need to in order to achieve your goals? Come up with simple methods for tracking social media implementation so you know how much effort you are putting in. For example, if you are commenting on blogs, keep a spreadsheet of links to all blogs you’ve placed a comment.

If you are measuring traffic increase, be certain to install Google Analytics or something similar on your website so you will know how many people are coming, where they are coming from and what keywords they used to get to you.

3. Pay attention to the conversation

Whatever social media outlets you participate in, utilize tools that allow you to monitor mentions of you and/or your company. For example, HootSuite allows you to set up a column that shows each time your username has been mentioned on Twitter. You can also set up setup columns that show you every time a keyword or phrase have been mentioned, and in this way track mentions of your company name or phrases that differ from your Twitter username.

Google alerts is an excellent way to keep abreast to what people are saying. It’s also a great way to know when your content has been indexed by the search engine giant. Set up a Google alert for company name, project names or even phrases of topics where you would like to join into the conversation.

As you monitor the conversation, be certain to jump in if needed. This means thanking people for the positive comments, but also adding your feedback to the not-so-nice comments. Reputation management is a huge task, but a very important one as you create your online presence.

4. Leverage existing assets

Social media implementation can be the biggest black hole of time sucking you ever met. But it doesn’t have to be if you plan wisely. Look within your company and investigate existing assets that cold be re-purposed into social media voices.

A great example is this blog, which was created when we realized we were spending quite a bit of time writing long emails of explanation to clients. We found ourselves copying and pasting the same answers over and over, and finally realized it would save us time if we cataloged all these answers into a blog.

Look at what you are already creating and see how it could be pushed into the social media sphere. It could be writing, video, audio, photos or even social media tasks that employees are already engaging in. One company we recently spoke to found out that employees were spending an average of 20 minutes per day (during break time) using social media. So they asked them if they would spend 20 minutes of work time engaging in social media for the business. Their social media plan was born, and they have had a tremendous result without a lot of changes in time or effort.

5. Be consistent

Choose your plan wisely, so you will not let your followers down. If you create a plan that requires more time than you have, then it will be impossible to be consistent. Consistency is the trust factor that lets people know they can rely on you. Be predictable, and you will build connections and followers who will be there when they expect you. Don’t show up, and you will lose your disappointed connections.

The key to consistency is being honest with yourself about what you CAN do, so that you WILL do it.

What are your tips?

Let us know your favorite ideas for managing your social media campaign. Do you have any tips that you have found most useful and creating, monitoring and maintaining your social media presence?

15 Ways to Promote Your Website on a Tight Budget

It has reached a point where a business without a website lacks a certain legitimacy. Like a business card, it has become an essential part of sharing your information with potential customers. But many small businesses have a tight budget for web development, with little or no extra funds to do an official marketing campaign.

The following resources will help you promote your website without having to spend a dime of your money. It will cost you time though. There really are no short cuts for effective web marketing. The truth is, you need to put in some time and effort to get results. But if you DO put in that time, I PROMISE you will get results.

Most of these suggestions are easy to implement, and I would strongly suggest recruiting individuals within the company who can spend 20-30 minutes per day helping in the online marketing effort. Heck, even your teenager or neighborhood kid could help you in these tasks. If the person can surf the web, they can help you implement most of these free ideas.

Before you start, get something to track traffic

Install a metrics package to monitor the traffic on your site. Google Analytics is a free one that is great at helping you see how many visitors come, where they are coming from and what keywords they use to find you in the search engines. You don’t have to use Google, but use something. You want to measure the changes as you implement your plan.

15 Ways to Promote your Site for Free:

1.Make sure you’re listed in the search engines: Most people don’t realize that not all the search engines are going to pick you up automatically. While Google is the biggest, there are many other smaller search engines that can have an impact on your traffic. Use an SEO tool like Web SEO Analysis to analyze your website, and see which search engines have indexed you.

2. Online Business Directories: This is a biggie for gaining SEO points and putting yourself out on the Internet. Set a weekly goal of inputting your company into online business directories, and be sure to include a link back to your website. You can use GetListed.org to find out if you are already in some of the major directories, and find out how complete your listings are. Some of the most popular free business directories include:

• Google Business Directory
• Yelp
• CitySearch
• Best of the Web
• ZoomInfo

3. Ask clients to give you online recommendations: Once you get listed in business directories, then do some legwork to get your offline clients to share how much they love your services. Research has shown that users are more compelled by testimonials than your sales pitch, so this is an excellent way to bring yourself to the top of the heap in a business directory. An effective strategy is to focus on one directory at a time, gain 10-15 recommendations, then move onto another directory. In this way you will build a solid reputation for each listing.

4. Commenting on other blogs: Most blogs allow you to put a link back to your website or blog. If you comment intelligently, people might just click on that link and visit your site. Even if your comments don’t intrigue anybody, those link backs help your search engine ranking. 15-20 comments per day would be ideal, but most people don’t have time for that. Set a goal of making at least 3 comments per day on blogs, but please follow my cardinal rule: do not spam the blogs! Only offer comments that are legitimate, don’t do it just to gain a link back.

5. Submitting articles to article directories: This is a very effective way to draw traffic to your site and build link backs for SEO. Andrew Rondeau recently wrote an excellent post about how to increase traffic by submitting to article directories. Here are some of the most popular article submission sites:

• EZine Articles
• eHow

6. Write press releases and distribute online: This is an often forgotten, very effective online marketing tool. It is not challenging to write a press release. There are many how to write a press release tutorials online. There are also many press release sites that will allow you to submit and distribute your release for free. Here are some of the more popular free press release sites:

• www.i-newswire.com
• www.pressbox.co.uk
• www.pr.com
• www.prleap.com
• www.prlog.com
• www.prweb.com
• www.theopenpress.com
• www.24-7pressrelease.com

7. Submit informational pages to bookmarking sites: People often think of bookmarking sites as only applying to blogs or news. But the truth is, if you have pages on your site that contain quality content that is informational, you should submit those pages to bookmarking sites. People peruse these sites to find out about popular content on the web, and they are an excellent way to draw in quality traffic. Some of the most popular bookmarking sites include:

• Digg
• Stumbleupon
• Delicious
• Reddit

8. Offer to guest post on other blogs: This is a very effective strategy for bringing in traffic, especially if you don’t have your own blog to share your knowledge. Get to know colleagues of complimentary businesses, and ask them if they ever accept guest posts. Track blogs within your industry, and watch for invitations for guest blogs, or offer to guest blog if it seems appropriate. Many of the bigger blogs these days request guest bloggers because it’s an effective way to keep quality content coming in at a fast pace.

9. Add social bookmarking links on your pages: This is a simple and quick way to get your visitors to help you promote your site. By adding these links, you’re encouraging them to share your information if they find it helpful. You’d be amazed how many people take the 15 seconds required to click on these links. We recently wrote a post about how to add share icons to your website or blog.

10. Create an RSS feed for your content: If your site is built with a content management system such as Joomla or Wordpress, you can activate an RSS feed for your content. This allows other websites to pull your content into theirs. Why would you want to share your content? Because it creates a link back to your site, and it spreads the words. In Joomla you can create feeds for specific categories, so you can limit what content is pulled versus which appears only on your website.

11. Use a monthly newsletter to announce changes to your site: There are many services that make a monthly newsletter an easy task. Mailchimp is our favorite, but Constant Contact is one of the most popular. These sites allow you to manage your mailing lists and create newsletters with pre-built templates. Get a format you like, and be consistent about creating and distributing your newsletter. If you are tracking your website visits, you should see a surge in traffic on the days you send out your newsletter.

12. Create a HubSpot or Squidoo page. These websites all you to create a page with information on a specific topic. They generally only allow one page per topic, so the opportunity is fabulous for link backs to your site. Updating your pages with new content helps in keeping it in front of the users of the site, in addition to creating link backs to your website. As with other social media suggestions, be sure you choose a topic that you are genuinely interested in, so your content adds value to the community.

13. Put your URL in the signature of your email: This one seems obvious, but not many people do it. Every time you send an email it’s an opportunity to share your website. If you have a blog, include that too.

14. Create videos and share them through social media video sites: This is a growing trend in publicizing websites. What do you do that you can share via video? Is there anybody in your company that would make a great spokesperson? Or perhaps you can create some how-to videos. Once created, you can share your videos via online video sites. The most popular include:

• YouTube
• UStream.tv

15. Get involved in an online community: Generating a presence in an online community can be an effective way to share your expertise and create link backs to your website. Choose a community you are genuinely interested in so you will enjoy reading and replying to posts. Choosing a forum within your industry is usually the best choice. Be certain to create a signature that includes a link to your website.

Got any more ideas?

Our clients are always asking, so if you have any other free ways to promote a website, we’d love to hear about it! Please share them to the comments section. Thanks!