Thursday, 5 June 2008
Geek tweak - Try out different browsing experiences
 Have you ever looked at your website in different web browsers? Many people use Internet Explorer, but many more use things like Firefox, Flock, Opera, Navigator (the list goes on). There are also many more people checking out websites from their mobile phones and PDAs. What looks brilliant in Explorer may look like a pile of dog food in another browser (or a mobile phone) which means you are losing sales and customers. I have 3 different browsers installed on my work computer and check out pages on each of the three browsers to make sure the site looks OK across the three of them. It may not be perfect - but at least it gives me an idea of what I am up against! Recently I have had a few clients whose websites just didn't work across the 3 browsers - which meant they were throwing away at least 10% of all site visitors before they even had read the first word on the page (for a copywriter that is just straight sacrilege!). If your site doesn't look great across different browsers, it is time to visit your friendly web developer to get your site updated. While you are there - ask them to put in a permanent 301 redirect for your website. There is a historical quirk that means Google (and other search engines) index both www.heartharmony.com.au and heartharmony.com.au. When they do that you could get hit with what is called "duplicate content penalty" and lose Google rank as a result. The simplest way to fix it is a permanent 301 redirect so that heartharmony.com.au automatically redirects the search engine to www.heartharmony.com.au. Does all of this sound weird? Go to your browser and type in your website without the www. in front of it. What comes up? If it is anything other than www.yoursite.com.au you are losing valuable Google rank. Talk with your developer or if you are a closet geek go to your cpanel (if you have one) and put in a redirect yourself. Ingrid Cliff Heart Harmony Putting your business into words Labels: internet marketing, website design |
Wednesday, 4 June 2008
The Thirty Day Challenge - The Best Internet Marketing Course Going????
 If you run a small business it pays to learn the latest trends in internet marketing. In my opinion, the best course available to teach you is called the Thirty Day Challenge ... and the even better bit is it is free, with nothing to buy to make it all work.How the course is structured is a pre-season where you learn the latest free tools and software available on the net and the actual challenge in August where your goal is to earn $1US applying your learnings. I did the Challenge last year and from personal experience I can tell you it will push every one of your boundaries. The technology pre-season was brilliant - the tools I picked up boosted my productivity enormously. The actual challenge saw amazing and dramatic results for my business and my e-books and I now generate at least 1/4 of my business income as a direct result from the course (so you can see why I recommend it!). A heads up - from my HR history I have to tell you the guys that run the course (Ed Dale and Dan Rein) are not trainers. They tend to be a bit full of themselves, waffle and take a LOOOOONNNGGGG while to say anything that is needed to be said. The trouble is their nuggets of content are so unique and worthwhile that it is worth putting yourself through the agony of poor presentation to get the content (or do what I did and find someone who created cheat summary notes from the waffle and refer to the notes rather than watch the videos/TV streaming). The other thing is often you are asked to do things without context or explanation - just "do this it is cool" or "it works". I found this personally challenging and almost threw in the towel a few times because of my need to know "WHY". But they were right - it does work (and yes the results are cool) so put up with your inner demons if you are like me and work through it. They have continued this approach into this year's Challenge with the release of their first pre-season training video on the internet browser Flock. Lots of how and absolutely no why! AARRRGGGHH but given my experience last year, Flock is my new browser and I am controlling my need to know why. The Thirty Day Challenge just like all good training only works if you actually apply what you have learnt. Looking at the videos/TV streams or just reading the blog notes does nothing unless you actually apply it. You need to block out dedicated time and put the tools into action. I already have committed to a lighter workload in August to allow time for the challenge each day. One of the most powerful parts of the Challenge is the need to form teams to back you up. Last year I had a great team from people around the world and like all teams we had people committed to the project and the odd passenger. It was great experience again from a HR side of things about setting and running virtual teams using the latest free technology available and is worth doing the course just for those lessons alone. This year I am looking for a local team of small business people passionate about the internet, dedicated to following through and willing to commit the time it takes to do the course. I will happily share my expertise and look forward to learning from other team members as well. If you are interested drop me an email and we will have a chat about it in a bit more detail. The best sized teams are about 4-6 people. So - check out the Thirty Day Challenge, book some time in your diary and prepare to be stretched! I will keep you posted on my blog about some of the things we are learning through the pre-season and actual Challenge over the coming months. Ingrid Cliff Heart Harmony Putting your business into words Labels: internet marketing, thirty day challenge |
Thursday, 1 May 2008
Creative strategies to build links
| High value links to your website affect your page rank on search engines like Google. If you are on the front page of Google you get more visitors than if you are on pages 2 onwards. One interesting linking strategy was discussed in Jenni's Papercraft Designs Blog. She reviewed a site called Living Creatively which is giving away 6 advertising packages over 3 months valued at $5000 for people who link to the Living Creatively site (and no I am not entering as it is not my target demographic). The other cool thing they have done is make linking easy through providing simple buttons to put on your website - all designed to make linking a breeze. Can your website do with a boost of links? Have you considered a competition (run in compliance with all of the appropriate local laws) to help you do this? How can you make creating links easy for your potential link partners? Until next time Ingrid Cliff Heart Harmony Putting your business into words. Labels: internet marketing, link strategies |
Monday, 18 February 2008
Using the Net to Improve Your Business
| Do you want to grow your business and are interested in how the internet may be able to help you with low cost (or even better - free) marketing strategies? My good friend and colleague Donna-Marie Coggins and I will be running a Business Growth Session on "Using the Net to Improve your Business". Date: 3 March Time: 10-12noon Location: Chermside library Bookings essential In this session we will be sharing our top tips on how you can get the best marketing results from the internet (even if you don't yet have a website). These are simple strategies that almost everyone can put in place - and you don't have to be a geek to do them! Book now. Until next time Ingrid Cliff Heart Harmony |
Tuesday, 1 January 2008
Marketing tip - What is Squidoo?
| One of the most useful sites on the net is Squidoo. It is where you get to showcase your depth of expertise in particular areas. With Squidoo you shine a lens on your niche information in a fun, interactive and informative way. On the plus it has high rankings when your page is indexed, you can include links to other websites/blogs etc and you can make money linking to products from places like Amazon. Once you get the hang of the design, creating a lens is easy and quite addictive to do (sort of like on-line scrapbooking!) On the downside it seems to take some time before Google discovers your great new page. But why would you do it? Because you get to position yourself as an expert in your field, to attract traffic, to promote your business and create additional income streams. To give you some idea of what a Squidoo lens looks like here are two I have done up so you can get an idea of the sort of thing you can do: Employee Handbooks that are right, read and understood Marketing plan template Happy Squidooing! Until next time Ingrid Cliff Heart Harmony Blogs: Small business ideas Employee Performance Reviews Labels: internet marketing, marketing tips, small business ideas, squidoo |