January 2018 Women’s Start-up Club Recap: Online Presence Part 1

February 28, 2018/,
WSC January 2018

The 3rd Women’s Start Up Club event on January 31st attracted a huge turnout! It may have been the topic, Building an Online Presence, or that we had the honor of a male guest speaker, Wolfgang Bierer from Endeavour. Either way, it was an evening packed with information– read on for the highlights, takeaways and Wolfgang’s presentation below.

The next Women’s Start Up Club Meeting on March 22 will continue the discussion on utilizing the right social media tools to build a strong online presence. Register for the meeting here!

Wolfgang Bierer encourages all business owners to have a webpage – even if it is just a simple homepage – and to connect social media to the webpage to drive traffic. Content is most important, as well as keeping the webpage and social media tools active and interesting to avoid customers getting bored. Please see slides 5 and 6 of the presentation for different approaches to targeting B2B and B2C audiences.

Digital Marketing is about “getting found online”. Digital Marketing it consists of:

  • Webpage
  • SEO optimization
  • Social Media optimization
  • Content Marketing
  • Email Marketing
  • Pay per click

This is a tough process and requires and continuous flow of revamping. Slide 10 shows the digital funnel in detail and Slide 11 shows the layers of digital marketing. Do not panic too much– you do not have to use them all, but to get a successful start, the top layer is the most important one to focus on. If in doubt, it is as well always good to learn from the big players in the market and the downgrade for your business!

After a general overview of digital marketing world Wolfgang then went deeper into webpages. Webpages can be overwhelming and have a lot of layers. It was recommended to start small, to focus on a few tools (social media channels) instead of losing yourself. Before deciding which additional tools you want to use (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.), be sure to know where your clients are, meaning what tools your clients use.

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Setting up a webpage:

  • Marketing Foundation
  • SEO
  • Content strategy are a start-up must.

SEOs (slide 16) react on content, change content regularly, even if just a sentence to keep it moving. But SEO require some work, learn and go deeper about specific keywords, if you are too generic your page will not be found. Also, a basic understanding of how a webpage is structure is recommended.

A general structure for every page is:

  • Header – the name of the page (shown in the browser)
  • Body part – where all the information lies, defines your webpage layout. Often it goes deeper and deeper as you click, Wolfgang referred to it like the Russian dolls, you start with the bigger picture and layer by layer you go deeper.
  • Footer – for analytic tools

When you just start out or are small to medium sized it was recommended to use providers/templates and tools that are either for free or can be used with a limited budget.

And keep in mind to start with a simple template, a webpage grows with your business! Make sure you include some analytic tools (eg google analytics) to track your page, know where you clients are, what they click, how much time the spend where, etc. to get more specific as you grow.

Some recommended Web Design Resources(slide 14):

  • Wix.com
  • weebly
  • Go Daddy

The pros and cons between the ones above and wordpress (used by some in the audience) were also discussed. Wolfgang recommended to have a look into them, try their free versions and play around to see what works best for you! (slide 15 gives you access to a free set up on Wix).

While some templates and services are plug and play it is advisable to have some basic understanding how your webpage works. To “know” your webpage.

Today, with all different devices used to access a webpage (computer, ipads, phones, etc) a website should have the following functions to adjust:

  • Responsive design and HTML 5 (to be accessible on different devise sizes)
  • CSS is responsible for design details such as fonts etc.

Press F12 on your webpage and you will go into coding details. Often alignment issues, etc can be found there. But as mentioned, this requires some basic understanding.

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Here are a few more takeaways from this information packed evening:

Social Media Activity

How to increase followers:

  • “Like them so they will like you” (digital reciprocity)
  • Have good and attractive content
  • Commenting vs liking –  commenting has a greater impact

Key Messages

  • Keep it simple.
  • Engage on a personal and emotional level. Encourage call to action (CTA), this makes it easy for the target audience to interact with you.
  • Know your target audience: tailor your social media, starting from what you will use to how you use it to your target audience.
  • Be specific. The more specific you are the greater impact you will have on search results.

Creating Traffic

  • Update your content regularly (once a week). These can be small changes, such as switching a picture around or changing the colour of your website background.
  • When using pictures, ensure that you name the pictures using your brandname. This will increased traffic.
  • Link social media to your website (backlink)

Cross-links are important

This includes:

  • Direct social links
  • Consistency (especially in regards to pricing)
  • Use same keywords across all media, example #. Hashtags function like keywords.
  • Consider integrating a link to maps – “find me on google map”

Utilizing a Website vs. Blog For Your Business

Website

  • Information based
  • Used for introduction of your company and services
  • Allows  e-commerce engines
  • Allows for payment options
  • Accessible to a larger crowd

Blogs

  • Targets a specific topic
  • Usually sign-up based to create a fan base
  • Direct communication with target audience
  • No e-commerce or payment options
  • Tends to be easier to maintain (Facebook is a type of modern blog)
  • Can help to increase traffic

NOTE: Link blogs to your website and not the other way around to increase traffic and search results!

Keywords

“Be specific”

  • Include company name, product name, service name, vocabulary your target audience will search for.
  • You can use up to 60 different key words to help search engines find you and increase traffic
  • Update content regularly, just adding or changing one sentence can assure that you will stay on top of the search engine results
  • Or in other words, old, static content will move you down in the list of the search results
  • Increase the user experience, example encourage and enable comments or create account options. Every new comment is recognised as an update of your content.
  • TIP: do not offer to keep credit card information on your site to avoid potential future liabilities.

Resources

  • Slideshare.net  – a great resource to find presentations on almost any topic.

Thank you to everyone who joined us! Here is the link to Wolfgang Bierer’s presentation. Looking forward to seeing you at our next meeting on March 22!