Home Staging Checklist

If you are selling your home you really should check out the new workbook by Susan Victoria Phillips, Certified Interior Designer, Home Staging Consultant and author of “The Seductive Power of Home Staging: A Seven Step System for a Fast & Profitable Sale”. She has just released her newest book “Home Staging Workbook: A Comprehensive Checklist” for pre-order.

Visit her site for more information and to pre-order before June 1st, 2012

Top Social Media Mistakes Your Business Can Avoid

Lack of Engagement. Social Media isn’t just a two-way street; at its roots, it’s multidirectional. That means that the communication between your business and an individual extends far beyond that of an email, phone call, or in-person conversation. Your communication is being read, shared, and commented on by others that you may or may not know. People are even talking about your business without your involvement.

Solution: Remember that it’s not all about you. When people are commenting or asking questions, make sure you take the time to thank or answer them. If there are businesses that you like, make a connection in social media. If there are clients that post interesting (and appropriate) things, go ahead and like them, follow them or repost/retweet (with your own comment). Also, it doesn’t hurt to keep an eye out on social and review sites to see what people are saying about your business.

Lack of Content. If the only reason you are posting on Facebook or Twitter is to get more likes or followers, why are you posting at all? People don’t want to read about how you want more people reading your posts or tweets.

Solution: Post about things that will be of interest to your existing and potential clients. They’ll share with others and help spread the word. If people are interested in what you’re writing, they’ll come back, like and/or follow you.

Lack of Purpose. Hopefully, you’ve invested time and effort into creating a website that represents your business well. When it comes to business, Facebook, Twitter, and others are the new marketing channels. The purpose of marketing is — shocking as it may be — to sell products or services. Yes, brand-building, product exposure and client engagement are all very important, but ultimately they are intended to get people to buy something from you.

Solution: Make sure you’re making the connection between your social media activity and your website where they can buy from you. Keep your site active by posting articles, updates, and announcements, then share them on social media. Have a way for people to connect with you on your website using a newsletter sign-up. An important thing to consider: What if Facebook or Twitter suddenly disappeared? What would happen to all those likes and followers that you’ve spent countless hours and effort on? How would you get in touch with them? It would be nice to have your newsletter email list as a fallback.

Posting to all sites at the same time. Each social site has its place. Many people will engage with you across multiple sites so you need to be aware that posting on all of them — at the same time, with the same message — ends up giving the appearance of automation, or worse, spamming. This may result in people disengaging.

Solution: Time your social activities based on how the sites are used. Even if it’s a single announcement, make sure that you time and word it differently. For example, announce something on your website and Facebook a week in advance, then tweet a reminder on Twitter closer to the event.

Life Magazine Powered by…

You guessed it, WordPress. Time Life site has recently been relaunched running on WordPress. I know there are thousands big of businesses running WordPress but it’s nice to see yet another high profile public site using one of the best content management systems out there.

Emails and Newsletters

If you are collecting emails on your website for newsletters or email updates you’ll want to make sure that you are compliant with the US CAN-SPAM and/or Canadian C-28 regulations depending on where your email servers and clients are located.

Got a Smartphone, Get a QR Code Reader

Further to my popular post about QR Codes, I figured it was time to talk about reading these codes.

QR Codes are starting to gain a little ground in advertising, who am I kidding, they are popping up everywhere. One of the early adopters of this technology was Real Estate agents and like most implementations you have a broad mix of excellent use to useless. I’ve seen lawn sign with QR Codes in front of a home for sale that link me directly to the house details (photos, price, agent contact info) and location-aware functionality that shows me other homes the agent lists in the area. I’ve also seen the same kind of placement that send me to the agent’s website with no easy way to find details about the house I’m standing in front of. I have clients using them for newsletter signups at their retail counter, others with them on their front door to send after hours visitors to their website and some using them on all their print marketing to engage that “younger audience”. No matter what they are doing with them, it’s up to the viewer to have some way of using the QR Code.
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Link Building

Getting your website noticed is one of the most challenging things involved in launching and maintaining an online presence. I often have clients contacting me to say they have received an email offering them the opportunity to get great exposure for their website by adding them to directories or lists for a small, one-time fee. It is very tempting to think that it’s a good deal but they are running the risk of actually having a negative impact on their website.

Don’t get me wrong, links are good, they always have been and (I expect) they always will be. What creates a problem is the type of links and how they are perceived by the various search engines. For the sake of discussion and practicality, we can just focus on Google as the search engine of choice for most internet users.

Let’s step back for a moment and consider why you would want links to your website. It seems pretty obvious that the more links pointing to your website the more potential visitors you will have. This is what’s called “referred traffic”. Links will also help search engines find your website and improve how the search engine “sees” it.
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QR Codes

You’ve probably seen the funky squares with scribbles somewhere in your travels and may or may not know what they are. They’ve been around for awhile and are very popular in Japan but now they are making an appearance in North America. Read more >>

Google.com or Google.ca?

There is an important distinction between Google.com and Google.ca when trying to plan your online search engine efforts. Of course, ideally it would be great to get high placement for your site and keywords on Google.com but realistically why would you put a lot of money and effort into it?

As it turns out, Google.ca was used for around 65% of Canadian searches followed by Google.com at 13%. This is partly due to Canadian visitors to Google.com automatically being sent to Google.ca for their search and also due to people trying to get more relevant local results. Google Places, among other tools, have been moving us to more local search results and when you add in review sites like Yelp.ca it is getting a lot easier for people to find things where they can use them.

So if you are a local business, what does this mean to you and your marketing efforts? Well, it means you should make sure that you are set up properly on Google Places, that your web site clearly indicates where you are located and that you should be putting some of your seo resources into localized online advertising and local link building. Also, if you have a loyal client base, you should ask them to rate you on local review sites.

Getting the Most Out of Your Social Media Efforts

So you’ve got a website running and it’s getting some decent traffic but you keep hearing about how social media is the “next big thing”. Sure it’s been around for a while, but now everybody’s doing it. Let’s look at social media as it pertains to online social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, other people’s blogs and forums.

One of the things to consider is that, unlike your own website, social media is essentially out of your control. You can tell people about stuff, offer guidance and even have some success in promoting your product or service but it’s everyone else that is in control. What they say about you, how they share your information and whether they decide to connect with you are major factors in your social media efforts.

First things first. Why are you online? If you are hoping to generate revenue from advertising and affiliate links and you just want big traffic numbers then most of what I’m about to say isn’t likely of interest. If, however, you are promoting your own product or service then the quality of those visitors and the customer service that you provide will be an important consideration.
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Too Good to be True…

…then it likely is. If you ever received emails promising riches and freebies you’ve likely thought “this is a hoax”. Most often you’d be right except there’s always one that makes you wonder. Well for years Snopes.com has been debunking email and internet hoaxes and scams. Next time you receive a once in a lifetime offer from a friend who is forwarding the message to you because they heard it was on Good Morning America or CNN, take a moment and check it out at Snopes.