So is it time to jump on the bandwagon?

Well, if it’s just for your own personal use, sure give a try and see what you think. Not essential, but many folks really find it useful, entertaining, or at least otherwise amusing. Just don’t invest too much time in it or you might never come back.

But here’s the real kicker — if you have a website and you’re trying to build the traffic count, using Twitter to your advantage is a must. You might eventually gain just a handful of new visitors (but they’ll be very targeted if you do it right), or with a little luck, you might even be able to attract new visitors in virtual flocks thanks to your Twitter strategy.

Here are the basics of starting a new Twitter strategy like this:

1. Start a separate profile just for your website. As tempting as it might be to mix your personal and professional Twitter accounts, just don’t do it. Start a brand new account and profile just for your website.
2. Tweak your Twitter theme. Try and match or complement your website’s look by using appropriate colors and perhaps using your logo for your profile picture. Add a compelling one sentence description to your profile and be sure to include your website’s URL. Because space is limited on what’s shown on your profile page, be sure to skip the www and just get right to the point with sharing your web address.
3. Add an app to your website. If you have the appropriate place ready on your existing website, adding a Twitter app to display your most recent tweets right there is a good idea. This can be completely customized to really blend right in with your site, or if you’d rather take the easy path, Twitter does provide a plug and play app (just a snippet of code to paste in).
4. Make some friends. Now don’t get too ambitious here and just start following anyone and everyone. Keep it related to your niche and grow your followers accordingly. Start with perhaps your direct business partners and then follow others that complement your niche. Proud member of your local business scene? Tap into that network on Twitter. The thing is, the tighter you keep the follower base, the more valuable it can be — and at the same time, those who follow you will be much more likely to also be within or related to your niche.
5. Use it wisely. Active participation is the key to success with Twitter. You can’t just broadcast a message every day and expect that to do much good. But if you answer questions, participate in ongoing conversations, and share tips and advice, you’ll build up some "street cred." And then, you’ll be able to share a promotional message every now and then to a captive audience.
6. Get subscribers. A few online marketing gurus out there have found that using Twitter to grow your opt-in mailing list can be extremely effective. If you place a great deal of value on your email subscriber list, you’ll definitely want to experiment with this technique.

Follow this simple strategy to get started with Twitter. Before long, you’ll have more targeted followers than you’ll know what to do with!

Until Next Time.
George Chaney
President/CEO
SEO King, Inc.

1. Be Uniquely Informative.
   Consumers trust the experts. The good news is that we all have a little bit of expertise somewhere in us — we’ve just got to share it. Present visitors to your site with painstakingly accurate information that’s both helpful and relevant to their needs. But be sure that in doing so, you share your own unique voice instead of coming across as just another big company. Standing out from the crowd by sharing your own nuanced perspective on the subject matter helps brand you as an expert.
2. Transparency Is The Name Of The Game.
   Tell your visitors who you are, where you are, and how they can reach you. Sounds like common sense, but on the web, too many sites seem to do everything possible to hide their true identity — and that’s not good for building consumer confidence!
3. Give Visitors Options.
   Let them be in control. Present visitors with choices and options necessary to become trusted clients at their own pace. Sure, forward pushing sales techniques can work wonderfully, but if building confidence in your business is priority number one, it’s probably wise to focus instead on a "pull" type website. In other words, the strategy is to allow and encourage visitors to share information or take the next step at their own speed rather than pushing them to do so immediately.
4. Share The Love.
   It might be contrary to common practice, but one thing the blogosphere has taught us is that sometimes freely sharing links to external high-relevance resources (not your competitors, of course) can be an excellent way to build trust with your visitors. It tells them that you care about them enough to help them even if it means sending them away from your site. The idea is that they’ll come back to you as a trusted resource, permitting you many future opportunities to convert.
5. Nail The Aesthetics.
   Make your site perfect in every way possible. Now, this absolutely does not mean you need to have the flashiest website in the business at all. In fact, sometimes the simple sites come across as being much more professional and trustworthy. But at the same time, you’ve got to focus on the smallest details and show your visitors visually that you’re obviously in it for the long haul — not fly-by-night — so that they can be inspired to have consumer trust in your website.

These five easy ways to build consumer confidence are a great start. But why not take things a step or two further? To do so, just keep your own log of the sites you visit yourself and what makes you feel secure (and what turns you away). Do this for a week or two and you’ll have a treasure trove full of ideas to implement that will help you build trust a

Until Next Time.
George Chaney
President/CEO
SEO King, Inc.

And the very best part about building a strong base of clientele and customers is the fact that word of mouth referrals and repeat customers tend to snowball incredibly. Compounding customers is just like compounding interest!

Now this is really no big secret at all, but many neglect to realize the impact and power of an ever-growing customer base until it begins to happen. Here’s how to get there:

1. Provide a desirable service or product.
2. Work hard, especially in the beginning to get the word out.
3. Develop a good rapport with new potential customers and clients.
4. Offer your customers value (this could be financial value or anything else that’s valuable to them).
5. Earn the sale.
6. Deliver everything you’ve promised to your customer, exactly as expected.
7. If any kinks arise in the process, be transparent and make it right.
8. Express your sincere thankfulness to your customer.
9. Potentially ask them for referrals (or at least make sure they know you’re open to new customers).
10. Keep doing steps 1 through 9 above again and again.

Seems like common sense, right? That’s exactly what it really is, but it’s just a matter of following through with it all time and time again.

Before long, your highly-satisfied customers and clients will not only come back for more of a good thing themselves — they’ll also tell their own network of friends, associates, family, clients, and so on. This is powerful stuff here (and where things can begin to get very interesting)!

A Figurative Look At The Numbers

For this example, let’s assume that you are a freelancer offering web marketing services to your clients. You’ve started your new venture as a New Year’s resolution and you’re just getting started. End of month one, you now have a great little website promoting your services and have begun working hard to attract and earn the trust of new clients (probably through email, social media, or even the trusty but dreaded cold call).

After several unsuccessful contacts, the 12th person you contact decides they’ll give your service a try. It’s a small project and a week later, you’ve delivered on your promise. Client books a bigger project. In the meantime, you’ve successfully secured 3 additional new clients. All is well.

About two months after you’ve completed the project for your first new client, you get a phone call from a business associate of theirs — this person is looking for someone to help them out as well. Deal is made. Now guess what?

Because of just this one initial client, there’s now two good clients. That’s 100% "compounding client interest" right there alone. Now those other 3 clients you’ve started working with before… 2 are highly satisfied and maybe the third decides to go a different direction.

At any rate, let’s assume each of your 4 existing active clients refer you to 3 more new clients over the course of the year. End of year one: your client list of 4 hard-earned customers has now grown to 16 (for the work of attaining just 4).

Now let’s count on another successful year for year two. Each of your "referrals" now in-turn refers you to 3 new active clients on their own part. That’s 52 clients for the work of the initial 4 in the beginning. As you can see, it only compounds from here!

In The End…

It doesn’t matter what business you’re in or what your product or service is. Work hard at earning a few good clients in the beginning and before you know it, you’ll have more referrals than you’re able to handle. Compounding customers is just like compou

Until Next Time.
George Chaney
President/CEO
SEO King, Inc.

Online Automation

By automating your website’s sales process, you’re ideally ensuring that your customer can complete an order or lead generation conversion step directly right from your website at any time they choose to visit. Of course, the process should naturally guide them from their first landing on your site all the way through the sales process. This type of automation does require some planning and tweaking, but in many instances, there’s literally nothing better than a finely tuned machine.

Personal Client Service

While automation just works in many cases, some niches are ideally served by hands-on personalized client service. For example, if you’re in the business online of selling DVDs, the likelihood that your customers are going to require direct personal service are slim to none — they’re just looking for a good price and for your company to deliver the product on time and intact. On the other hand, if you’re selling a product like new homes, or perhaps home mortgage loans, your customers are simply not going to place a final order for delivery via your website; instead, they’re going to need personalized client service and guidance throughout the decision and buying process.

Achieving Balance

In the end, it shouldn’t necessarily be about taking an either/or approach, but rather one of finely-tuned balance. So you don’t have to choose between offering your customers convenient online automation or instead giving them personalized client service. You should (and really have to) offer both, perfectly balanced to your product and niche.

Reaching a healthy balance with online automation as a priority would be letting customers complete the purchase of that new DVD all online, just as they’d like. But personalized service still needs to be available at a minimum in case they have any questions or run into problems with the order.

When your main focus needs to be on personalized service first and foremost, you’ve definitely got to go above and beyond in offering that to your customers. In this case, your balance of automation would rely on driving contacts and building leads — doing things like including contact forms strategically located in your copy.

Again, in the end, you don’t want to go with just online automation or just personalized client service. Instead, you’ve got to work hard to attain that balance that your customers expect — and at the same time, ideally the balance that ends up driving the most conversions. Automation and service should work in harmony.

Until Next Time.
George Chaney
President/CEO
SEO King, Inc.

Today, though, let’s stick to the important role that newsletters play in the client retention department.

Newsletters make subscribers part of the team. When customers feel like they are insiders or part of the club, they’re going to be much more likely to remain favorable to your company and its products or services. It’s all about loyalty — and newsletters are proven effective as a loyalty building tool.

Newsletters get visitors coming back to your site time and time again. It’s relatively easy to attract a visitor to your site the first time (through organic search or PPC, for example). But the challenge really comes in both keeping them there and getting them to come back again. Sending a regular newsletter to your customers reminds them that you’re still in business.

Newsletters create a sense of anticipation for your customers. It’s true. With excellent quality content and a regularly scheduled broadcast that’s predictable by the recipients, your newsletter subscribers will actually look forward to receiving your email. Can’t just push an easy sale this way though — that won’t work. Instead, you’ve got to create something packed with value and interest grabbing appeal — much like a favorite magazine.

Newsletters are affordable to create and send. This holds especially true when compared to the expensive printing and postage costs associated with traditional postal direct mailing campaigns. Asking for opt-ins is easy — most newsletter services provide everything your web designer needs to set up a good opt-in form. And there are even a few good free newsletter mailing/management services out there when you’re just getting started with building your list for the first time.

Newsletters allow accurate targeting. It’s been noted in many successful newsletter campaigns that one broadcast — for example, to say 1,000 subscribers — will actually produce a 200% visitor rate. That’s 2,000 visitors by emailing 1,000 customers. What’s the reason for this? It’s actually simple… recipients forward quality newsletters to their friends and associates and those folks then follow the path to your site as well. You certainly can’t beat this two-for-one concept. And thanks to the accurate tracking and targeting made possible by electronic mailing, you’ll be able to tweak your campaigns to perfection.

In today’s competitive online environment, you’ve got to take full advantage of all of the proven-effective marketing tools and techniques out there. Email newsletters might sound awfully web 1.0, but the fact of the matter is that they still drive results like nothing else. They’re perfect for client retention!

Until Next Time.
George Chaney
President/CEO
SEO King, Inc.