Originally, when we began planning the Solutions Stars Video Conference for Network Solutions (Oct. 29 at 1, don’t miss it!), we originally though we’d feature individual interviews of our 32 marketing experts. However, upon reviewing the interviews it became clear that content themes were occurring across the interviews, creating areas of particular interest. Namely:
* Building Web Presence
* The Social Opportunity
* Start with Listening
* Strategy Drives Outreach
* You Need Social Networks
* To Blog or Not to Blog
* Visibility Through Search
* Rising Above the Noise
* Time Demands
As we prepare for the conference in 9 days, which will provide free insights and online marketing tips to small businesses, it seems like a good idea to provide some Buzz Bin thoughts on each section. As a fellow marketer and editor of the videos, selecting the themes and then thinking about them afterwards caused me to reflect. So I’ll do nine posts in nine days, one on each section. The first is web presence.
Building Web Presence
The marketers featured in this section are:
In today’s economic world where the accessibility of the American dream seems endangered, there still lies the web. In fact, many businesses – from part-time stay at home parents to billion dollar powerhouses like Amazon and Zappos — have built their entire front facing organization online. Here, on the Internet, anything goes, and wild dreams come true.
Web presence offers the great equalizer. David can earnestly fight Goliath on the Internet, because one domain is just as good as another. It’s what you do with it. And often subject matter expertise can become diluted or lost in large organizations, providing David the opportunity to win.
For a company not to have a web presence today – even a dry cleaner – seems foolish. It’s the first place people go to find anything. Search dominates everything. I found my local Chinese delivery joint using Google!
So failing to have a web presence is simply turning away the greatest marketing opportunity a small business has. In addition, B2B organizations and consultants, which are often relationship driven businesses, have an even greater opportunity to build one on one opportunities online without expending hundreds, thousands of dollars on networking events.
Creating the Presence
Building a web presence can be an extremely fear-filled experience for an entrepreneur. There’s so much technical jargon, and boot strap start-ups often find hiring a consultant to be cost prohibitive.
In 1994, my first job was writing articles for the Consumer Electronics Association’s CE Network News. One of my first assignments was writing up this funny Internet software called Mosaic (now mostly experienced via FireFox), created by this fellow named Marc Andressen.
So much has changed since then, and the tools have become much easier to use. Whether it’s starting your web presence using free blog tools like WordPress or Blogger, or getting an early version web site via a domain name registrar and hosting company (thank you to Solutions Stars Video Conference Financier Network Solutions), companies can pretty much use simple templates and fill in text and graphics.
Software packages like WordPress and Blogger even allow you to use your own domain. And owning your own domain is critical. Consider the value of search engines again. Do you want to send someone to the WordPress site where your presence is just one of many, or drive in bound links to a unique URL. The long term and intelligent thing to do from a branding and search perspective is to invest in your domain and hosting, regardless of how you build the site.
From there, it comes down to marketing savoir faire and the viability of your product and service. Marketing online has its own nuances, and the remaining eight Solutions Stars Video Conference sessions focus on getting the word out.
In addition to the main site, please visit the Solutions Stars Video Conference event pages on Facebook and Upcoming:
Geoff,
Look forward to seeing how it comes together.
All the best,
Rich
I have read this post. This is very much true. Even I own a blog account on video conferencing. Video conferencing is indeed a great innovation in technology and communications. One day video conferencing will be like an ordinary house-hold item in the next 5-10 years.I will mention your post in my blog.