Welcome to part three of the Effective Website Goals series. Parts one and two talked about 1) increasing revenue and decreasing expenses and 2) creating more free time. Today let’s talk about how your website should build and grow your business.
Believe it or not, not all websites are designed to make money or save time. Some take a longer term approach and are designed to build the business. True, this often translates into making money down the road once the business has been built up.
I’m sure there are hundreds of different ways to break this topic down, but I’m going to keep it simple and break it into two parts:
- Creating an Asset
- Building Trust / Authority / Relationships
First off, I hope that you are running your business as if you’ll sell it one day. It truly is the best way to run a business because it helps you make better decisions each and every day. Plus, it makes building an asset and trust important goals for a website.
Creating an Asset
There’s a whole lot more to your website than just the dollars and cents it makes for you each month. It’s an asset and becomes more valuable as you add new pages, get backlinks, build systems, and increase your traffic/readership.
Building an Archive of Knowledge
By continually adding quality and relevant content to your website, you’ll create a huge archive of knowledge. Over time you’ll get much more search engine traffic and become a place for people to look first when they have questions or problems that need fixed.
Adding Backlinks
As your archive of knowledge grows, you’ll undoubtedly start getting more people linking to your site. This has two huge benefits. First you’ll get more non-search engine traffic to your site. And, these backlinks will help move your rankings up in the search engines. Two benefits for the price of one.
Systematizing Your Business
You’ve probably heard it said hundreds of times, but McDonalds doesn’t have the best food on the planet. But, they do have extensive systems that make it a very profitable and desirable franchise.
Try to set up systems in your business and website. It’ll help you in day to day productivity and efficiency. And, it’ll increase the value of your business. Check out E-Myth Revisited for more information about setting up systems for your business.
Increase Readership / Following
So now your website has lots of relevant information, is getting lots of direct link and search engine traffic. Now it’s time to capture your visitors’ information so you can communicate with them when they aren’t visiting your website. This leads directly into the next way to build your business… Trust / Authority / Relationships.
Building Trust / Authority / Relationships
Once people trust you and see you as an authority/expert, it’s a lot easier to sell and promote your business. For example, I personally see Dr. Phil as a semi-tubby dude. (He may or may not really be tubby, but that’s how I picture him). Anyway, due to his following and many people see him as expert, he’s able to put his name on weight loss type products. How can a guy sell weight loss books when he himself could stand to lose some weight? It’s all because of his expert status and his followers trust him to promote good products / information.
Your business can take advantage of this same expert / following phenomenon, but hopefully your image/expertise will fall more in line with the goods you are promoting.
Becoming an Authority / Expert
I’ve already talked about building up your “archive of knowledge” on your website. This will go a long way in building your credibility and helping you be seen as an expert in your industry. You’ve continually proven yourself to be competent and trustworthy.
If you’re a plumber and your website has helped someone fix a drippy faucet and unclog a their backed up drain, they will definitely think of calling you next time they need a plumber for a big project.
Creating Relationships
Another goal of your website is to build relationships with your visitors. Not only through your website, but through social networking, email, and RSS feeds.
Relationships through your Website
Ideally you want as many ways possible for your visitors to interact with your site. Whether that be adding comments to your posts, responding to other visitors’ comments, participating in forums, taking polls, etc. The more they can interact, the more they’ll come back.
Social Networking
There are hundreds of social networking sites and you should participate in as many you have time for (as long as they are related to your business and your customers hang out there).
For instance, most all businesses should be using Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Then, search for specialty/niche social networks that relate to your business. If you sell yarn, join some knitting and crocheting social networks/forums.
When participating in social networking sites/forums, it’s important to follow the rules, be helpful, and don’t directly sell. As you prove your worth, people will visit your website when they are ready.
Email Marketing
For just a few dollars a month, you can sign up with an email marketing service. Sure, you could manage the mail list yourself, but you’ll soon find out it is a huge headache. Plus, you get access to a lot of cool stuff that you can’t easily do if you’re flying solo.
RSS Feeds
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a great way of letting your customers decide where and how they get information from you. Your customers can “subscribe” to your website through MyYahoo, Google, or one of hundreds of other feed readers. Then, every time you add posts to your website, the headline will appear on their MyYahoo, Google, etc page. If the headline interests them, the rest of your post is just a click away.
Conclusion
You should view your website as an asset that will grow in value over time. There are quite a few ways you can accelerate the rise in value. This is the third goal of an effective website.
Every time you add quality content to your site you increase the value of your asset. Granted, it might be slow going at first, but eventually you’ll hit a point where search engines start to love you, people start talking about and linking to your site, and WHAMMO, you’ve got a very valuable website on your hands.
Another way to build the value of your site is to participate and communicate with your market outside of your website. Think of this is the new and improved way to advertise.
Anyone can buy a banner ad on a website that says “We’re the best company”. That’s easy… it just takes a few dollars and it doesn’t prove in anyway whatsoever that you are the best.
But, if you participate in a forum and answer just one prospect’s question, you’ve just PROVEN that:
- You do know what you’re talking about.
- You’re trustworthy.
- You’re an all around likable person.
As the number of your followers, subscribers, and fans increase, so does the value of your business.
Please leave any comments, questioins, or thoughts below.
