I know how proud you are of your website from 2005, but just like marriage proposals on reality TV shows, some things are not meant to last. Websites today are what business cards were 30 years ago. You can either hand your customers a bland, bent-up mess that looks like it has been sitting in your wallet for the past 8 years, or provide a fresh, eye-catching representation of your business.

While visual appeal is an obvious reason for updating your website, the benefits are more widespread. For example, Google has recently announced a “freshness update” to its omnipotent search engine algorithm that rewards websites for fresher content with higher search engine rankings. Also, integrating your website with certain social media tools can vastly increase your website traffic and brand awareness.

Tip #1

Dates and Links

Update or remove old references on your homepage. In particular watch out for old dates, outdated events, and broken links that no longer point to their original source. Another commonly overlooked example is the copyright date usually displayed at the bottom of websites. Using the same copyright date from 2008 will make website visitors question the “freshness” of all other website content. Here is an example of a professional format for the copyright date on websites:

Copyright © 1998-2012 Example Corporation. All rights reserved.

If you have not taken the time to do this for 2012, now is as good a time as any.

Tip #2

Old School Visitor Counters/Website Analytics

Whenever I find a rectangular box on a website informing me I’m the 11,658^th visitor, I look outside my window to make sure I didn’t accidentally step through a crack in time on my way to the office and get transported back to 1999. What’s worse than the tacky, completely inaccurate counter is knowing that behind the scenes of this website there is a hamster wheel powering the analytics where there should be a modern day V8. Good website analytics have become so crucial to the modern business I can’t imagine trying to use a website without them. In fact, most of the major business decisions we make are based on data collected from our website analytics. Even free tools such as Google Analytics can provide comprehensive insights such as how and where people are finding your company online, what marketing methods results in actual sales, and the list goes on. While I admit there is a small learning curve to using these tools, many of them are free to use and the investment in time/money to learn how is always worth it.

Tip #3

Overly Flashy/Unrecognizable Content

As much as I appreciate a good episode of “Wheel of Fortune”, flash and mystery have little place on a modern website. Today’s consumers want information clearly laid out and easily accessible online. If customers have to scroll down and/or click through multiple pages to find what they are looking for, they will drop like flies. My pet peeve for industries breaking this rule is restaurants. As much as I appreciate the decadent slideshows of featured cuisines and pages regarding unique philosophies for seeking out only the best ingredients, I do not want to feel like I’m looking at a Where’s Waldo book while simply trying to find the menu. As a business owner, you need to identify what your customers want most from your website, and give it to them in as simple a format as possible while retaining a professional appearance.

Tip #4

Website SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Many recent studies have found that while pay-per-click advertising can still be effective at driving website traffic, SEO is the leading vehicle of choice for growing online traffic as consumers become more adept at discerning ads from natural search engine results. Many older website designs lack SEO rich features that search engines like Google look for today. The first step of SEO is to include local and specific keyword phrases into you web pages. If your website is heavily designed with images instead of text, search engines are likely skipping over important content. A good way to determine what is being read by search engines is to click and drag your mouse to highlight all the text on a web page. If the text is part of an image (bad), the entire image will be highlighted or you won’t be able to highlight the text at all. If you have additional questions regarding SEO for your website, we are happy to provide a free consultation and quote.

Tip #5

Social Media Buttons

Simply put, they are free to use and allow your satisfied customers to instantly connect with your social media sites which can create social buzz about your company and promote branding. Rather than get into a lengthy How-To here, I’ll direct you to a host of other sources dedicated to this topic:

http://mashable.com/2011/03/11/add-social-sharing-buttons/

http://www.addthis.com/

If you want more ideas, just google “how to add social media buttons to website” and you will find several detailed guides.

Tip #6

Online Reviews Tools

In typical format, I have saved the best for last. One of the fasting growing trends in social media regards how customers interact with businesses via online reviews on social websites. Gone are the days when customers patronize a company because of a glossy brochure or fast talking salesman. Customers today have especially grown a distrust of testimonial web pages (for good reason) in favor of social review sites like Yelp, Insiderpages, Google Places, and so forth. This has led to an explosion in online review website usage which is not always advantageous to business owners. As consumers turn to outside sources to evaluate businesses, owners can be crippled by negative reviews (true or not), constantly needing to monitor the plethora of review websites, and long drawn-out processes for addressing harmful content. Rather than accept this as fact, there is another option. Several companies now offer very inexpensive online review tools that allow business owners complete control over 3rd-party, verified reviews.

For example, our tool, SurveyLocal, lets businesses automatically invite customers to review them, while directing positive reviews to social websites and negative reviews to be addressed offline (over the phone or in person). Once collected, the entire report can be made available for the owner to post on their website (optional of course) in place of an outdated and mistrusted testimonials page. While your complete report may include a few minor blemishes among all the positives from your real customers, if you choose to display it on your website you will gain significant trust from potential customers while reducing the need for people to turn to outside review websites that you have little control over. Also, most companies that offer this kind of tool give you the option to have positive reviews shared on your Facebook page which is a great way to populate your page’s feed.

Summary:

In case you are still thinking: “Well that sounds great and all, but I still prefer our website from 2005,” let me conclude with one last statement. The tips from above are not merely suggestions for future experimentation, they are all tried and tested methods that have produced real results for our clients. I purposely singled out the simplest and most cost effective ideas in hopes that 2012 will be an improved year for your company as we all endure the tighter economic climate together.

We wish all those at sezWho the best as they move on to other endeavors.

WeFollow is a new user powered Twitter directory by Digg’s Kevin Rose.  With a sleek interface and #hashtag directory, it is catching on fast.

Add Yourself to the We Follow Twitter directory

We Follow lists the most popular Twitterers by categories created with #hashtags.   Adding yourself is simple:  Sign in to your Twitter account, visit WeFollow, click on the “Add Yourself to WeFollow” button

then simply add 3 hashtags that describe you or your Twitter topics.

What, pray tell, is a hashtag?

A hashtag is a way to create groups of content on Twitter - they function like tags on other social media sites, like Flickr.  So, when you tweet, if you are speaking about the subject of marketing, and you use the word marketing, add a #hashtag – #marketing – to add additional context and metadata to the tweet.

#hashtag.org tracks tweets by hashtags in real time, so check it out too.  This is a great way to find others to follow with similar interests.  Looking for tweets on Dallas?  Here’s the Dallas tweet directory on #hashtags.org.

Dallas Marketing Services is a marketing blog
published by Seven Aspens Consulting

Update: Ma.Gnolia was a public social bookmarking service that closed at the end of January, 2009. You can learn more about the history of what happened to Gnolia in the Citizen Garden podcast.

Social bookmarking site, Ma.gnolia, puts the social in social bookmarking providing an online venue to “Discover, Share and Discuss the best of the web.”

Once signed in, set up your profile with an About You blurb, home page URL and image/avatar.  Next, stop by your preferences to establish your privacy settings.  If you’d like to add your Ma.gnolia activity to your blog, check out the  Blog Tools.

Ma.gnolia Social Bookmarking

Bookmarks Anywhere

Keeping your bookmarks on a website allows you to access your favorite websites from anywhere. Your bookmarks are available and always backed up no matter which computer you use.

Find Stuff Other People Like

And even better, you can see what other people have found and share bookmarks with your friends. Bookmarks can be kept private, but most are public and available for everyone to see. See who has the same interests as you!

Find the Best of Web through People, not Machines

In social bookmarking, you only find the bookmarks that other people think are worth keeping. Ma.gnolia ratings and tags instantly give you an idea of what people think of a bookmark, making your web searches more informed than ever. It’s like having a community of assistants help you find what you need, when you need it

Ma.gnolia Add-ons

♦ LinkRoll Generator:  Shows a live roll of your Ma.gnolia bookmarks on your blog or website.

♦ TagRoll Generator:  Displays a live roll of your Ma.gnolia tags on your blog or website

♦ Ma.gnolia Marker:  Allows Mac users to bookmark right from the Dashboard

♦ Button Generator:  Genenerates a   button linking to Ma.gnolia.com, Ma.gnolia signup, your bookmarks or one of your Ma.gnolia groups.

♦ Ma.gnolia Roots:  This is really cool. connects you with the Ma.gnolia community as you browse the web.  Simply drag the red Roots banner to your links or bookmarks bar, then head out to any site on the web and click the Roots symbol. A pop-up window appears displaying what the Ma.gnolia community thinks of that site.   Find out more at the Roots Screencast.  Very cool and you can even use Roots with Chrome .

“It’s sort of a cross between Facebook, a blog and Squidoo.”
– Seth Godin

In anticipation of the October launch of his new book, Tribes, master marketer Seth Godin created Triiibes, an invitation-only community this summer.   Those receiving an invitation were required to pre-purchase the book to gain access to the online community of marketers, which is created on the Ning platform.

Although there was much anticipation that Triiibes would be opened to additional members when the book launched last week, it appears the Tribe has spoken and decided to keep it private.   A new message has appeared on the Triiibes login screen stating:

This network is by invitation for the foreseeable future. If you were advised that we’d be opening it one day, it seems as though we won’t… the triiibe voted to keep it closed for now. I’m sorry. If you have an invitation, click the link in the email to join.

Since we have had inquiries about how to join Triiibes, we decided to provide a little insight to what lies behind the Triiibes walls.

What the Tribe does on Triiibes

Inspire. Illuminate.  Innovate.

Triiibes members can set up a personal Triiibes Page with an image, photos, URL, extra text, third-party widgets and personal information which includes answering various questions like “Do you lead a tribe? Tell us about who you lead?”

Triiibes members can also review their latest activity, check in on Triiibes friends, access Triiibes groups, and check out the Triiibes job board.   As of this post, there are 3694 Triiibes members.

What’s Next on Triiibes?

We check in on Triiibes each day and will post an update if membership opens again.

In the mean time, check out the Tribes book – it is short and a good read and here’s a video of the Triiibe – by my count, I’m in the 70′s.

Find more videos like this on Triiibes

Squidoo is a collection of over 700,000 pages created by users about whatever they want the world to know – ideas, recommendations, interests, instructions – basically any topic that they know or care about.

Squidoo was founded by marketer, Seth Godin, in 2005 and is a free service where users, called lensmasters, select a topic and then create and publish a single page called a lens, which can be enhanced with photos, videos, links, feeds, articles, lists and text to support their efforts.

The pages are monetized with ads and items from Amazon, eBay or CafePress and the proceeds, if any, are split between Squidoo (45%), charity (5%) and the lensmaster (50%).  The lensmaster has the option of keeping their cut of the proceeds or donating it to one of a long list of charities (we chose the ASPCA).

Getting started:  Register with Squidoo and create a profile.  The profile includes a photo, bio, ability to add numerous links to blogs and websites (yours and those you recommend), and a list your favorite Squidoo lenses.

The Squidoo Lens:  Each lensmaster can create as many lenses as they wish and are encouraged to do so by Squidoo.   When completed, the lens is listed in one of 30 categories, tagged with key words, and if you’d like a copy, it can be easily exported with the click of a button.  Notification of the completed lens can be Tweeted with a click of a button.

Here’s our recently created lens called:

The Marketing Equation:  Time + Money + Skill = Marketing Success

Business Use:  If you read our lens content (recommended), we mingled content with self-promotion.   Squidoo lenses index well with search engines and can create traffic to your website  so, as we mentioned in our lens – here’s one of those free marketing opportunities and the only cost is your time in setting it up, so give it a try!

Have a few links, photos or quotes you’d like to share with the world, but not really a lot to say? Then tumble on over to Tumblr and easily express yourself with your own tumblelog.

Tumblelogs vs. Blogs:  Tumblelogs are short, mixed-media posts where words are few and photos, quotes, links, music and videos, with or without text or captions, rule the day.  Many of Tumblr’s tumblelogs are wordless; just a pictorial representation of the Tumblr’s take on the world.  While text can be used, explore Tumblr and you will quickly find that most text is limited to one or two lines.

Ever have a bullet-point boss (wouldn’t read anything beyond the bullet points)?  Definitely hook them up with Tumblr.

Tumblr

Tumblr is a free, extremely easy-to-use platform created by David Karp who is 21 and has a goal for Tumblr to reach one million Tumblrs by the end of 2008.   Yeah, 21 (great article on David Karp).

Tumblr Exploration:  On Tumblr, you can explore today’s Tumblr posts (there’s 160K+ at the time of this post), check out what is on the Tumblr radar (interesting Tumblr tumblelogs), explore the Tumblverse, find Colorful Tumblrs, stop by Tumblr Music and even check out The Tumblettes.

Getting started: As Tumblr states, you can sign up in 10 seconds.  You will then be taken through a short introduction task session or you can venture out on your own and begin customization of your Tumblr tumblelog.

Tumblr Customization options

Info: Create a title for your tumblelog, a description, upload an image, and decide whether to keep the provided Tumblr sub-domain address (ex: DallasMarketing.tumblr.com) or map a custom URL to your Tumblr account.

Theme: Next, choose from one of the 12 themes for your Tumblr tumblelog and add custom CSS if you are so inclined.

Appearance:  If your selected theme allows it, colors for items such as background, title, text, links, etc. can be changed in Appearances without requiring CSS to do so.

Feeds: Add RSS feeds from up to 5 other sites to your Tumblr page.  Choices include Links only, Links with summaries, Text without titles or just photos.

Advanced: (Not really that advanced – be sure and set these) Set your time zone, post count, various display options and Directory options including:  Allow search engines to index your tumblelog, ping the blogosphere, promote your tumblelog on Tumblr and add your location (to the Tumblverse).

Expand your Tumblr knowledge

Tumblr Help provides FAQs, stop by the Tumblr Staff tumblelog to catch what’s new on Tumblr, and visit Tumblr Goodies for added functionality.

The first word that comes to mind with Issuu is “awesome.”  Issuu is a free online publishing site that allows users to convert documents into interactive online publications and then embed the documents into websites or blogs.   The document is presented in an interface so realistic it feels as if you are thumbing through a magazine or glossy brochure.

Here is a document we put together to try out Issuu… click on the document for the expanded view.

Imagine the possibilities: Transform product literature, fact sheets, brochures, training manuals, annual reports and other printed business materials into elegant, interactive documents.

Getting started: Sign up and create a profile with a description, image and website and blog links. You can explore documents published by the Issuu community, make some friends, learn more about Issuu for business use or read the Issuu blog.

Publishing documents:  Issuu requires all documents to be uploaded in .pdf format. If you already have a brochure in a .pdf format, give the process a try by clicking on “Upload A Document,” completing the document information and then submitting.

Once uploaded, click on the document to ensure it looks as expected, then click on the drop down on the lower right hand corner to get the code for embedding the document into a web page or blog.  It’s that simple.

But wait, I’m not a graphics person…You can create some attractive documents with tools you probably already have.  If you have Microsoft Word and a photo editor, give this a try.

Create a new Microsoft Word document and change all the margins to 0.   In a photo or graphics program, create a layout that measures 817 pixels X 1056 pixels, which should be the same as one page in your Word document.   When you have your image/page complete, save it and then go into Word and Insert the picture. Create a page break and repeat for the next page.  When you are finished, convert the Word document to a PDF and your are ready to upload.  If you do not have a .pdf converter, check the Issuu FAQs for suggestions.