So you took the plunge and invested in a website. You were convinced that it is easy; would increase your profile with potential customers and allow you to consider other marketing initiatives.
Congrats.
The most important thing you can now do is to update your website – regularly, with fresh content and with your voice in a style that your customers will appreciate. This fresh content can prove a challenge but it can be do with a proper plan and a managed team.
So if you have fresh content is your website helping you? It may not be if you are neglecting one of these important factors.
1. State your privacy policy: Provide a clear privacy policy staring that you will not share contact information or other personal details with third parties. Once you make the promise, plan to keep it and act accordingly!
2. Use a legal disclaimer: Look in the front of any recent business advice book. You will see language that says the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services and that the information is for educational purposes. Good advice. Include similar language on your site. An example that you cite does not make it appropriate for your reader to think that it applies to them.
Disclosure: We are not lawyers, and this is not legal advice; please seek proper legal advice before making any decisions.
3. Copyright notice: Are you notifying your visitors that your content belongs to you? Protect your intellectual property -- your site content and free resources -- by taking advantage of copyright laws. Post a standard copyright notice.
4. Job postings. Hiring suggests growth. Growth suggests success. People like to be associated with successful people. Create positive descriptions of the talent your firm attracts.
5. Key employee bios. People do business with people. Are you keeping your people a secret? Maintain and promote short positive bios. Keep them current and keep them positive.
6. Case studies. Keep them short and focus on the benefits. This can be achieved in an article approach that is easier to lay out. You can give some examples on how to achieve similar benefits!
7. Contact us. It is amazing how some websites make it difficult to contact the sales and marketing teams at the company. Sure we know about spam and junk emails - but hey, do you really want your prospects to jump through hoops to communicate with you?
Thanks to inspiration from Tom Searcy (MoneyWatch)
The good news is that the seven above pitfalls are easy enough to avoid – now that you are aware of them and have a list to go over with your webmaster.
Original content – that may take a little more work but yes that too is surmountable – tell your story; speak in your voice and remember, let the smile shine through!
Keep smiling!
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