Businesses want the most effective ways for potential customers to be able to find them. Potential customers often proactively seek products and services out, and are more often doing so by searching the web. For many businesses, it is a real challenge to show up prominently in web search results, and it is very difficult to outrank larger regional or national competitors.

There are effective strategies to develop a comprehensive web presence for 2010. This column will discuss an approach to create an engaging and effective web presence not just with a website but to leverage the popularity of other sites on the web. These include social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Blogs, and YouTube, as well as Business Directory Listing and User Review sites. This approach allows businesses to create web outposts on the sites that people are already using to help drive customers to their websites.

It is vital to understand the business and its goals and objectives, its potential customers and their buying cycle, what words and phrases customers use to search for the products and services of the business, and where the prospective customers already spend time on the web. Once these things are defined and understood, an effective and accountable web presence strategy can be developed.

A professional, well planned website is critical. A website serves as your home base on the internet – the place that you control and that you get to define. But it can be a needle in a haystack. Many customers are using the web as an investigative tool to check the legitimacy of a business, as well as to find out about customer reviews of the business’ products and services.

That’s why businesses also need to take advantage of business directory listings and user review sites, several of which are free or low cost. These include sites on the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing, as well as industry specific ones. In the category of user review sites, I would include Yelp, Angie’s List, and a myriad of sites that are accessible from smart phones which are all accessed from the internet, many times at the precise moment that someone is looking for a product or service.

Another incredibly important component of an effective web strategy is the use of social media and networking sites, such as Facebook or a Blog. The use of these sites as they relate to business use will be addressed in future columns. The social influence of the web on buying decisions is huge, and should not be ignored.

This first appeared in print in Community News (www.mycnews.com), November 4, 2009, Page 24, Vol. 88 No. 44.

2009 has been an interesting year in terms of using the web for business. I think the combination of our current political and economic situation and capabilities of web technology are feeding off each other to make the web more social than ever. And this has huge implications for how businesses use the web.

When businesses, causes, celebrities, and so forth started using the web, most of these early sites were very static in nature. They served basically as online brochures. Then people started realizing that you could sell products and services over the web, and we had the huge .com boom and subsequent bust for many.

It used to be that the goal was to drive as many “eyeballs” (that is visitors) to your site and surely somebody would do something valuable for the website owner. Smart businesses realized that there was more to it than just getting people to your site, that there was a social dynamic at work. Communities were being created on the web. Technology soon followed and thus, the term Web 2.0 was coined. Early pioneers who recognized this include Amazon, eBay, and Google.

So many people have known about the technology and the importance of the socialness of the web, but few were able to effectively use it to deliver business value. Now we have started to see several success stories emerge, but why?

In my opinion, this has happened through a combination of maturity and availability of technology coupled with a renewed sense of community - to provide social media sites such as Blogs, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. But also important were user reviews, ratings, and recommendations provided by websites from Amazon, iTunes, and eBay.

Social media sites have been growing in the numbers of personal users, sometimes dramatically over the last several years – primarily for personal use. These social sites demonstrated the desire for people to engage each other and build communities and relationships around their interests and passions. And the economic challenges that many of us face have only accelerated the sense of community.

What does this mean for businesses wanting to use the web? In 2009, we started to hear the success stories. About how businesses were using the passions of their customers as a way to start engaging with them – having virtual conversations and building relationships. Some of these were driven by loyal avid fans who loved their brands (Coca-Cola and Target), but also about businesses that listened to and responded to complaints and provided excellent customer service (Comcast, JetBlue).

In the spring and early summer of 2009, it seemed that every magazine, television network, talk shows, and newspapers had some feature or news about social media sites and success stories about businesses and causes that had used social media to engage their customers.

The key is engagement. Engagement builds relationships and adds value. And there is no substitute for relationships in the world of business, or for a social or political cause.

This paradigm shift allows businesses to create an effective web presence that will help them engage with customers and grow their businesses. So before you create a new website, or redesign your existing one, just give this approach consideration.

Well I made it back from 140 – The Twitter Conference LA. I have to say Twitter never ceases to amaze me. The focus of this conference was on “Tapping Into the Real Time Web” - #140tc for those of you who are already using Twitter.

The Real Time Web is getting a lot of attention these days as businesses and individuals struggle to be found on the web. So what is the “Real Time Web” all about, and why should you care?

Search Engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing) place a lot of emphasis on relevance, and relevance takes time to validate traffic, quality and history. When a search engine indexes a site on the web for search results, it can typically take several months for the site to rank well.

Enter Social Media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. These sites are delivering information real time. Facebook with its 250 plus million users worldwide who are spending on average over 5 hours per month on Facebook, and Twitter has rapid growth in users of over 1800% last year, have already solved the issue of a lack of traffic.

Twitter provides real time information in a couple of important ways. First the tweets themselves, as things are happening. A playlist at a concert as it is happening, an announcement of where to find a mobile restaurant, comments, pictures or videos of an event – these are just some of the ways Twitter can provide information real time. Biz Stone talked about some examples of this – when an earthquake happened there were over 3600 tweets about it before the news feeds reported it nine minutes later, tweeting during political events such as what happened in Iran earlier this year. Try finding this info on a search engine.

Twitter allows 140 characters at a time, so how can anyone communicate anything of substance with that kind of limit? Passed links is the key. A Passed link is a link to a website that is embedded in the 140 character tweet. Utilities to shorten the url are key, such as bit.ly or tiny.url. This could be a link to an interesting article that the Tweeter wants to share that may have thousands of words or it could be to a page on a website. The possibilities are endless.

There is an entire ecosystem of sites and services that have built up around Twitter to deliver the real time web. Twitter has become a great way to drive traffic and find information – real time. I’m in, are you?

Mr. Tucker is a small business owner of Changescape, Inc. in St. Charles, MO. He is a small business consultant and an internet presence management consultant. Mr. Tucker currently serves as Co-Chair of the St. Charles County Chambers of Commerce Technology Committee and is also the Chair of the St. Charles Chamber Health and Environment Committee. You can follow him on Twitter.com/Changescape.

This first appeared in print in Community News (www.mycnews.com), September 20, 2009, Page 3, Vol. 88 No. 39.

This entry is the first in a series of three posts on establishing an effective web presence.

The Importance of Content

I hear a lot of business owners talking about how important it is for people to be able to find their website, what we refer to as Search Engine Optimization or SEO. And while this is very important, I think there are a couple of other topics that people forget to talk about to create an effective website, namely content and conversion, so I’m going to start with these.

As business people, we put our websites out there to get visitors to do something that we would like them to do. This is called a call to action, and it is a very important consideration on how we build our websites. We can drive thousands of people to our website , but if no one takes action toward an outcome that we both desire then what real value is that? Our visitors feel like they've wasted their time, and for the business owners have just lost a potential customer.

Too frequently in regard to website content, we forget about what is important to our customers. Instead we write the content that we (the businesses) think they want. We use our terms and frequently forget about the buying cycle of our products and services.

A successful website focuses on engagement and conversation instead of static one-way communication. And it therefore needs to be written with the visitor in mind. This shift seems to be occurring at faster and faster rates than ever before.

Visitors often seek your products and services out when they do a search, and are more often doing so on the Internet. Interrupting a potential buyer while he/she is in the middle of something just isn't effective. Many visitors are now proactive with researching products and services. I’m sure there is truth that if you say something long enough people will listen. But will it have the intended consequence? Will it finally get someone to call us for our products and services, or will it make sure that they will never call?

The web gives us the opportunity to get permission from visitors to converse with them, so it has tremendous potential. These conversations can lead to relationships and ultimately conversion (that is, taking the actions the business wants).

It is not just enough to drive people to your website. It needs to be the right people. And it needs to add value for those visitors so they stay on the site, engage, and keep coming back. Once we are privileged by having a visitor on our site, we need to make sure that they get what they are looking for and that the business can capitalize on the opportunity to build a relationship and a customer.

This is where content and search optimization are critically intertwined, and why businesses need to make sure that they think about the importance of content. After all, your customer is only one click away from leaving your website, maybe forever.

I was fortunate enough to be able to go to the 140 | Twitter conference last week. It was a very interesting mix of perspectives of fellow tweeters including co-founders, media strategists, businesses, comedians, celebs, musicians, and not-for-profits. A few things really jumped out at me while I was there that I thought I would share.

The first impression is how playful Twitter culture is. The creativity and light-heartedness of the Twitter community is what makes it appealing. Even when used for business, the playfully and human nature still comes though. And it needs to be that way. If all you ever do is tweet is a dry impersonal promotion, how engaging will that be? Twitter is, after all, all about engagement and conversation.

Another point that was emphasized by nearly everyone there was adding value. Always challenge yourself on this. Be genuine. Whether it is providing valuable resources and passed links, or retweeting something you want the world to know about, the way to engagement is through adding value. There is very much a givers gain mentality within much of the Twitter community.

Never underestimate Twitters’ ability to drive traffic. It has become a great resource for sharing ideas, joining the conversation, and driving calls to action. You can use it to get feedback to test out products or promotions, let people know about events, drive them to a blog or website for more information, and on and on. But don’t be so naïve as to think that just because you tweet it people will see it. As @GuyKawasaki stated, it is a touch of arrogance to think that your tweet will be heard in the noise of Twitter, so persistence and follow though are key.

Mining Twitter is incredibly valuable. There is an entire ecosystem of apps, tools and sites that allow you to mine twitter for just about anything. Creativity and time are required, but monitoring and mining twitter has become fundamental for many businesses. As an example, nearly every corporation that I heard represented at the conference monitors twitter as a way to provide better customer service as well as to maintain brand reputation. But Twitter is also very valuable in identifying new potential customers. The power of the Twitter platform is analysis.

Finally, my last point is the power of the real time web. Twitter breaks news, whether it is elections in Iran, earthquakes in California, the death of a celeb, or the popularity of a new TV show… or a disgruntled customer, or an avid/ecstatic fan, a cause in need, or a life to save… or joining a conversation live at a conference or as an event like the Inauguration of President Obama. After all, Twitter is a website whose tweets are searched and analyzed by a lot of people, for a whole variety or reasons. Twitter does this to identify trending topics and suggested users to follow. @TonyRobbins describes Twitter as an intelligent browser. In part it is because of the real time aspects that it delivers.

To wrap, @Biz (Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter) stated that social alchemy is taking place… not bad for something that was prototyped in a couple of weeks and upon its first use made him laugh!

To see more about this conference on Twitter, search for #140tc and/or follow @140tc