5 Things Your Business Needs To Do On The Web In 2010

Here are five things you can focus on when you are planning your 2010 Web Strategy….

1. Target Local

• Use Google Local Dashboard
• Write Targeted Copy (ex: “We are the top full service plumbers in des moines“)
• Geographically target ads on Facebook and Google

2. Use Content For Marketing

• Create some videos
• Repurpose content
• Spread it everywhere

3. Make Data Driven Decisions

• Use information and analytics to make decisions
• Test everything

4. Maintain Content Outposts

• Make sure the content you are creating is delivered TO your audience
• Stay alert on your outposts to further discussion
• Use tools like HootSuite to manage all outposts efficiently

5. Make Money Online

• Create new revenue streams using the web (it’s not as hard as you think)
• Generate hot leads using social media and search marketing
• Get and grow a good list

What are you doing in 2010 for your business? Let us know in the comments or jump into the forums!

Interested in how you can run your business online? Check out our latest webinar.

image via houseofsims

Learn To Run Your Business Online In 2010 – Free Webinar

We are starting our Web Strategy Bootcamp series on Thursday, December 10… What is it? It’s a webinar series to help you learn how to run your business online – simple as that. At 48Web we’ve been running our business online for two years and want to share our tips and tricks with you.

In this first webinar we’ll layout a basic web strategy and concepts for running a business online in the upcoming year. We’ll cover things like creating content outposts, building community the right way, and how to leverage your traditional marketing dollars online.

This is not “how to start an online business and make millions of dollars in 2 months by selling a Twitter ebook”

This webinar will show you how to leverage the web to run your existing business better and more efficiently. I’ll run through a short presentation and will follow up with live Q&A. For more details on what we’ll be covering see my online business mindmap and read 5 Cornerstones of An Effective Web Strategy.

Details

What: Web Strategy Bootcamp – How To Run Your Business Online In 2010
When: Thursday, December 10 2009 at 2:00PM
Where: Online at WebStrategyWorkshop.com

Sign Up Now

If you have any questions, please let us know in the comments or jump in the forums… And feel free to email me at andy[at]48webconsulting.com

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Web Strategy Outposts – Episode 1

In this episode we discuss how you can join the community and find the best content on web strategy topics.

UPDATE – Some of the quick links – like WebStrategyWorkshop.com/facebook mentioned in the video are not working at the moment due to an incompatibility with a WordPress plugin and the latest WP update. Please use the links below instead.

Links

• Web Strategy Forum – a web strategy forum for discussions on posts, podcasts, and anything else
• Web Strategy Digest – a digest of links from around the web that are important in developing a web strategy
• Web Strategy Links – links submitted and voted on by the community
• Facebook Page – our facebook page – join the fun!
• FriendFeed Group – important topics and discussions from around the web
• Diigo Group – links and discussions on web strategy
• Follow us on Twitter – we post links, posts, podcasts – updates on everything above

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Going Viral is Not A Content Strategy

If your content strategy is to “Go Viral” than you need start over. As Scott Monty says above – “viral is a result, not strategy”. If you produce engaging, quality content – then you may be able to go viral. If you set up a good syndication and distribution system by creating content outposts – then you may be able to go viral.

But don’t think by just putting a video up on YouTube, it will go viral and that’s the end of your content strategy. One lesson we teach all our clietns and members is that simply building a website does not mean people will come. That’s the first misconception we always try to reverse. A killer website is only as good as the community that is built around it. Viral content needs an engaged community. Start with web strategy basics and becoming viral will be a result

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Web Strategy is More Than Your Website

One of the initial points we try to make when beginning work with our clients on a web strategy plan is that your website is only one piece of the puzzle. A proper web strategy plan includes much more than just building a website. In the last episode of our internet business podcast we started a new segment called “Don’t” – during which we gave the advice “If you build it, they won’t come”. This means just having a website isn’t a web strategy. If you build a website and expect people to start visiting it with no additional work you are setting yourself up for failure.

Here are some tips to broaden your web strategy beyond your website…

• Find your audience, Build your community, and Engage people in social networks
• Develop Content Outposts
• Start an SEM campaign

5 Web Strategy Planning Steps

If you are diving into your own web strategy planning, here are five focus areas for you to think about.

1. Technology

• Make sure you use the right platform from the beginning
• Must be easy to update
• Don’t choose closed-source, proprietary technology
• Find optimized solutions for SEO and Internet Marketing

2. Content

• Define content strategy
• Create content outposts
• Produce engaging content
• Make all your content infinitely shareable

3. Community

• Read related blogs on your topic
• Comment wherever you can
• Find related people on Twitter
• Develop relationships surrounding your niche

4. Internet Marketing

• Keyword Research
• PPC advertising
• Email Marketing
• Affiliate Marketing

5. Analytics

• Know basic metrics
• Keep bounce rates low
• Setup conversion goals
• ABT – Always Be Tracking

At 48Web, we offer web strategy plans tailored to your business. Contact us if you get overwhelmed!

Deliver RSS to Email Subscribers

When we discuss content strategy one of the recommendations we give in almost any circumstance is to create content outposts so your content can be consumed in many formats. One of the greatest distribution mediums for your content is RSS – which by now is universally supported in any technology platform you should choose. Even though RSS is readily available and highly consumed – there are still many people that prefer email delivery.

As you know we are advocates of creating and automating processes – and email delivery of your blog content can be handled this way, so you don’t have to manually update your email subscribers. Now if you use FeedBurner it is easy to setup. When clicked on, your users will simply need to enter their email addresses to receive your RSS feed in their inbox.

However, we prefer to use aWeber – which has two complementary features for creating automated content outposts. First of all you get an extremely customizable tool to send out your RSS feed to email subscribers. We prefer using aWeber for many reasons and their Blog Broadcast tool is one of them.

aWeber allows you to schedule broadcasts based on time or number of entries to send. Furthermore it will automatically send out a message on Twitter for your readers to view posts.

Here are some hints when integrating your blog’s rss feed to email subscribers…

1. Don’t send them too many posts, maybe just your “Featured Posts”
2. Send a digest rather than single emails per post
3. Provide a call to action at the end of these digests
4. Add value to your email subscribers as incentive to subscribe
5. Don’t just dump content on your subscribers – it’s an easy way to lose them

A lot of these techniques and tips have come from a lot of experimentation and tweaking. Again – this is why we prefer using aWeber as it allows us full customization for delivering RSS to email subscribers.

image via Annette Schwindt