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It’s funny to me when I talk to entrepreneurs about how they’re marketing their products.  They might mention online ads, but for the most part, they’re looking at print advertisement or even radio ads.  When I mention social media, they almost recoil.  EVERY TIME.  It’s just very odd to see that reaction when I’ve been so immersed for so long, but the stigma?  Definitely there.

I don’t know about that FaceSpace thing.  I don’t have time to be a tweeter.  LinkedIn to what?

I’ve heard ‘em all.

But the truth is, when I actually sit them down and explain the social media front to them, and show them some shortcuts and pointers?  They usually let go a huge sigh of relief and dive in headfirst.  Social media may seem overwhelming because .. admittedly .. there’s a lot of noise out there.  But when you put on some noise-canceling headphones and start listening .. really listening .. you realize what a huge impact a little effort can have on your bottom line.

Here’s some good tips about how to grow your social media circles.  These can apply to any social media forum, be it Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

1. You naturally have an audience.  Figure out how to get their attention. If you’re running a business, you’ve already got a captive audience.  And if you are selling something people want to buy, you have an unknown potential audience too.  Figure out where they are.  Are they on Twitter already?  Are they on Facebook?  If you need help, there’s a lot of free engines out there that will help you connect to your “community”.   Twellow and Tweeps are two good ones for Twitter that suggest friends on the Twitter platform based on your common interests.  And don’t be afraid to follow them if you don’t know them or know of them.. that’s what social media is all about!

2. Hold your Facebook Friends close, and your competition closer. Sure, it’s great to have a million Facebook friends, and just think of the sales potential there!  But don’t be afraid to connect to your competitors, too.  Friending a competitor not only shows that you’re .. friendly (I’m seeing an overuse of this word now), it also keeps you in the loop of your industry.  So read their blogs .. and comment on them, if you have something worthwhile to say! .. and stay close to them.  You’d be amazed at what you’ll learn and how invaluable that information can be to your business.

3. Connect.  Connect Connect Connect. Reach out and touch everyone.  Having 200 Twitter followers is great, but you’ll make much more worthy connections if you listen as well as broadcast to them.  Some Twitter engines like FollowCost give you a percentage of how often a Twitter user actually responds to its audience, allowing you to realize how the great (and productive!) users actually respond and talk to their audience.  It’s the difference between being a radio signal and a chat room.  People want to engage.  So talk to them.  Hit that @ as often as you have time to.

4. Stack your deck.  A little, anyway. You have friends and family that are already on these social forums.  Ask ‘em to help you out.  Watch any social experiment with human nature, and it will state the plain and simple truth: people like to follow a crowd.  If there’s a long line for something, people want to get in line without knowing what they’re standing there for .. simply because they don’t want to miss out on something great.  And it must be great if all of these people like it!  So ask your friends to do you a solid and join your cause.  If you can get your theatre half-full, the other half will follow without much effort.

NOW.  Having said all of that, make sure that you’re following us on Facebook and Twitter.  I think we’re pretty awesome to follow.

I thought it was odd; I can’t tell you how many “Sex & the City” related articles I found the week of the release.

And I’m not talking gossip articles, or fashion articles, or even movie reviews.  I’m talking BUSINESS ARTICLES.

About how you can identify your business brand with one of the four characters.  About how you can adapt Carrie’s weekly columns to how you direct your business plan.  About how women’s support of this movie should make you want to get on-board and say, “Yeah!  Us too!  Look, we watch that movie!”

.. I’m not sure I whole-heartedly agree.

Okay, let’s cut to the quick.  I know why those articles were written.  You do too.  It’s so that when someone types in Sex & the City into Google, there’s a chance that their article will come up.  And hey, maybe some extra views.. which might lead to some extra revenue of some sort .. or even free advertising .. and maybe a lead or two?

But what DAMAGE are you doing?

I’m all about upping your SEO, but should you do it at the risk of alienating some or most of your customers or audience?  For instance, at SimpleHelix, a lot of our customers (not all, but a lot) are male.  Would they feel comfortable with this article?  Would they feel like their business is in capable hands because we’ve adapted Miranda’s Type A attitude?  More importantly: WOULD THEY EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT MEANT?

No, of course they wouldn’t.  I watched a few seasons of the show and even I think it’s stupid.

So what should you take from trends?

Well, let’s use this one as an example.  From this “trend”, we can see that money may be flowing a little more openly in the marketplace.  SaTC is known for its lavish lifestyle, and if people are going to spend money to watch a flick, and they pick this one?  We all must have a little more financial cushion than we did last year at this time.  We can also see that maybe there’s a growing trend of women as business owners.  Why else would so many business sites develop strategies around a movie proclaiming “girl power!”?  Also, it may show that there’s a lack of original ideas out there: this is a sequel, with a very Three Stooges plotline.  There’s not much new meat here.  In fact, if you check the box office right now for more trends, you’ll see that the top grossing movies are sequels.  There’s safety in repetition.

So while noticing and acknowledging overarching trends can help steer your business, it may prove more harmful than helpful to align yourselves with them.

(Because you always run the risk of what happened with Sex & the City 2 .. it bombed at the box office.  What does THAT say about your SaTC business strategy?)

“Play nicely with others” is as important as “don’t run with scissors” in the grand scheme of integrating with other people.  Let’s face it; we’re all business people, and the largest part of business is playing nicely with others.  That’s just the greater part of it.

And it’s not even a fundamental rule because it’s good advice; in a lot of cases, it’s because everyone’s actions play a significant part in creating the “greater good” environment.

Let’s talk this on a shared server example.

Most business owners just starting out in the online world aren’t going to want to invest a whole lot of dough into a technology until they’ve seen some return on investment.  Understood.  So roughly about 65% of online shopkeepers are going to want to try a shared server environment initially.

While there’s plenty of good to a shared server .. low cost, easy maintenance .. there’s a few risks.  One of the greatest risks is that if a playmate in your shared server sandbox goes rogue and starts flinging sand, there’s no where else to go.  If that playmate invites his bully friends to come over and they’re too rough, you’re stuck.  You’re at the mercy of your playmates in that shared environment.

That’s where we come in.  Our 24/7 tech support is always monitoring a huge screen of blinking lights to let us know which servers are most active, and in a worst case scenario, which servers are being taken offline because someone isn’t playing nicely in the sandbox.  Our techs are certified at what they do, and they work closely with our bi-coastal data centers to isolate any problems so that (hopefully) there’s little to no downtime for everyone else.

And like all good caregivers, we try and give every player in the sandbox one or two warnings to play nicely.  Hopefully, the message hits home and day goes smoothly from then on out.  But occasionally, we’re forced to send someone to a timeout.

DDoS attacks (explained here by our System Admin, a master of words) are part of a shared server environment.  Put simply, it’s that bully inviting a thousand of his friends into an already occupied sandbox.  We do what we can to resolve the issue quickly, but there is no guarantee that we can keep these from happening.

If you are overly concerned with DDoS attacks affecting your business, consider upgrading to a semi-dedicated or dedicated VPS server, i.e. your very own sandbox.  We’ve seen far fewer DDoS attacks on these servers (dedicated servers have not suffered a DDoS attack in our history with SimpleHelix!), so it might be worth the cost.

As always, if you have ANY questions, you can find help online, by phone, or by Twitter.  We’re always here to help; it’s what we love to do.

The percentage of people shopping online increases every year. Did your online business process its share of online sales? If not, try these techniques that encourage visitors to buy.

1. Encourage impulse buys.
Fast food restaurants understand this concept. Think: “do you want fries with that?” You can do that online as well:

• Suggest related products. Amazon.com is a leader in this technique. An online shopper searches for a particular book and clicks to view the details and reviews. The detail page offers the book at a special price if the customer buys it together with a book on a related topic or by the same author.
• Associate linked products. If a customer buys a video game, ask if he’d also like to buy some batteries, games, or other peripherals. Those are items the customer may forget to purchase or might not realize are available.
• Limited time offer! A visitor is more likely to take advantage of a special offer if she knows there’s a time limit. “Only 2 days left!” But don’t get carried away. An advertised limited time offer really needs to expire, otherwise, you lose the trust of your customers.

2. Offer online-only specials.
Many people use the internet to gather information about products online. They visit several websites to get an idea of what’s available and at what cost. But some don’t complete the sale online. Instead, many log off and head directly for nearest brick and mortar store to make their actual purchase.

Take advantage of this tendency by providing an incentive for these “window shoppers” to buy online. Advertise an offer that’s only available at your website and you give your visitors added incentive to become a customer. Remember though… most users are quite well educated about what’s available, so they’ll know if your offer is really a special deal.

3. Ship larger orders for free.
It doesn’t take much more time and effort to pack and ship 5 items than to pack and ship 1 item. It’s more efficient for you to pack more items in each order, so give customers an incentive to purchase more at one time.

How? Many online shoppers really hate paying shipping charges. It’s not uncommon for the shipping charges for a small, low-priced item to add an extra 50-70% to the purchase price and customers feel that retailers take advantage of them.

But for a small retailer, small orders are a pain to deal with. Raise your profit margin and encourage larger orders by offering free shipping for multiple-item orders or orders that reach a certain dollar level. Online retailers that have tried this, have found to this to be very effective at boosting sales.

4. Be honest about pricing.
People want to know the total price before they start filling out a shopping cart order form. Most users will leave a site without completing their purchase if the site doesn’t show total cost – including shipping – before asking for personal information.

5. Provide great customer service.
It takes far more effort to attract new customers than it does to keep existing ones. That simple concept seems to be forgotten in these days of anonymous email and the torture of automated phone systems:

“Press 1 for the Order Department, Press 2 for Sales, Press “Wish Again” to speak to a live operator!”

42% consumers made their most recent online purchase because of a previous good experience with the retailer.

6. Create compelling website copy.
Design is an important component of website credibility, but design only takes you so far. Visitors quickly note the design, but then look for content. Format your content to reflect how people read online and write persuasive, convincing online copy.

7. Have complete product information and photos.
People want to see what they’re buying and they want to know a lot about it. But consider overall page size and download time when you’re adding this information.

1. Informational pages.
   You accomplish two goals when you create informational pages. Pages loaded with useful information attract human visitors and search engine spiders. Good information turns your site into an authority site on the Web so customers feel more comfortable buying from you.
2. Create thumbnail images and link them to full-size photos of the product. Even if you can post life-size images of your product from several viewpoints, don’t place them on the main informational page. Instead, create thumbnail images the link to the larger photos. Visitors with slow dial-up connections will thank you!
3. Optimize images.
   You should carefully optimize the size of all the images on your website. Identify slow-loading pages and optimize all your images.

   Visitors have a limited amount of time and patience, so make sure they’re spending time reading your content instead of waiting for the page to load.

Closing The Sale

The basic idea of methods 1-4 is to close the sale while visitors are at your website.

They help encourage visitors to buy before they leave your site. None of these methods are underhanded or unethical. They’re based on common knowledge of human nature. Successful marketing and salespeople use them and so should you!

One of the most (happily) frustrating parts of my job is often trying to convince business owners that setting up an online shop is not only easy, but profitable.  There are so many people who equate online shopping to identity theft, who equate technology to Big Brother, and who equate online stores to spam sites that I spend a good chunk of my networking time trying to convince them otherwise.

And while I can say a million times, No, it really IS easy! they always retort that I’m online all the time, so of COURSE it’s easy for me.  Or if I say Look at the minimal amount of start-up costs!  And how there’s little maintenance! they always say you get what you pay for, and that’s why there’s little money directly involved.

For example, there is a very nice lady in a networking group that I’m a part of who sells ladies’ accessories as part of an in-home sales team.  She’s rated one of the highest regionally, and she does extremely well with her in-home and book shows.

BUT.

She handed me her business card one day and, being a girl, I went online to drool over her wares.  Her website was down.  I figured, meh, I’ll try again later.

I ran into her at our next function and mentioned it to her and she said, “Yeah, it’s down more than it’s up.  But what can you do?”

?!?!

I quickly scheduled a one on one meeting with her to discuss that YES, there’s a lot that she can do.  And SHOULD do.  Because that’s basically free money for her.

“But I don’t understand all of that computer stuff.” she told me, wearily.

Here’s what I plan to show her.  That you don’t have to understand COMPUTER stuff, you merely have to understand MONEY.  Research marketing firm eMarketer announced that eCommerce has risen sharply since the first quarter of 2010; retail (brick-and-mortar) shopping is making a slow comeback.  The difference is night and day: eCommerce has risen 15%.  Retail has risen 3%.

Now, having said that, the slice of online shopping is still a smaller piece of the pie than the retail side of things, but if .. like in the case of this business owner .. you’ve already got one slice, wouldn’t you want that rapidly growing other slice too?

Last week, I told you about a revolutionary (and tricky!) experiment that was held at he prestigious IDM B2B Marketing Conference.  John Bottom, a British social media “pioneer” from the company Base One, proposed that he could launch an eBook during his keynote address and by the end of the day, have garnished 1000 downloads of the previously unreleased material.

It was a startling claim to make, and I know many (INCLUDING ME!) were hoping he would not only meet that, but exceed it.  Because we at SimpleHelix believe that the social media revolution is just now beginning to find its feet, and will soon become a far more accessible and profitable platform than our traditional methods of print and tv.

I jumped online and googled how the experiment turned out, and .. honestly .. was a little disappointed.

From Base One:

Now that the dust has settled I can report back on the whole experiment… The final count, including pdf and video views, was 570 downloads – and while I’m a little disappointed we didn’t make 1,000, I’m still delighted that the experiment worked by proving clearly how content can spread if it is interesting.

570 people voluntarily accessed a piece of information – a fact that one member of my audience put into context by saying that it would cost thousands of media dollars to achieve the same effect by interruptive advertising.

I totally agree with John’s overall take from it .. it was a very pointed experiment, and even if they fell short of the goal, I think that it’s fair to say that gathering even half of the goal’s downloads would’ve taken quite a chunk of change to happen in the traditional media.  And keep in mind that this was merely HOURS .. not weeks, not a month .. just around twelve hours.

So if you, as a business owner, had been on the fence about jumping into a new foray with social media .. maybe this will be the push you needed.

And if you so desire, there’s a GREAT eBook available at Base One called Opportunities and Threats: the Future of Social Media as Viewed by Senior UK Marketers for download.

I like working here.  I like it for a lot of reasons.  And it isn’t (always) about the paycheck, lemme tell you.

One of the reasons I really, really like working here is our support staff.  Far different from your usual “outsourced” support, our guys are a tight-knit bunch.  They really enjoy their work, and they REALLY enjoy the problem-solving aspect of their jobs.  They take each support ticket as a challenge, a chance to best the other guys in going above and beyond when it comes to service.  And while it’s sometimes an internal battle for the MOST EPIC SUPPORT EVER, I often find results that prove that our customers see the effort as well.

Take, for example, this great RatePoint Review we received this week, from Hank:

Their servers are amazing, their support is FAST AND ACCURATE, and they articulate every point precisely and accurately. If you have questions they walk you through every step of the way instead of simply sending you to an “article” or “faq” section of the site. Special *Kudos* to MICHAEL for his knowledge and prompt and accurate help in regards to all my countless questions and concerns. I have been with simplehelix for over a year now and have not had 1 single issue. I have tried others such as bluehost, hostgator, 1&1, however nothing compares to their “light speed” servers and quality human customer service. I never had a Magento site run faster than on SimpleHelix. Thank you guys for all you have done for my websites. It is greatly appreciated.

I also really enjoy how our team is very flexible about trying new things, and they adapt quickly to change.  It’s necessary when you work in technology; what’s hip and new one day is completely obsolete a week later.  It takes an amazing and dedicated team to stay on top of the new gadgets and gizmos out there.  Staying on top of hardware and software changes are often what keep our customers up and running, and you’ll see that as a customer as well.

A great shout-out about this same issue came from Martin Dean in a RatePoint Review:

It is hard to fault the level of support that Simple Helix Provide. As a responsibly technical user, working with a complex Magento deployment I have frequently approached SH with quite detailed queries. Justin, Scott and the whole team are always quick to respond – and if they don’t know they find out. As with all technical services, occasionally things can go wrong – with Simple Helix whenever we have had a glitch (usually down to Magento not them!) the response has always been first rate. In a nut shell, I continue to trust them with our mission critical e-commerce web-servers and have no issues recommending that you do the same.

But I think what sets us apart, aside from our 24×7 support, is the fact that you connect with a live, actual, human being when you call us, Tweet us, or send us a Support Ticket online.  You aren’t talking with a bot or a scripted pass-thru; you’re talking with someone who is held accountable for the support they provide you.  They take PRIDE in that, and it’s what helps our support excel.

We noticed this in a great Twitter response from our new design partner, Allan MacGregor:

@SimpleHelix technical support was excellent once more ! One of the best hosting companies I have tried so far …!

We are incredibly proud to be your internet host provider.  We know that there’s a lot of choices out there, and it’s easy to get caught up in the noise of SERVERS and SPEED and GREAT DEALS! and all of those are important factors, no doubt.  But we really, really take YOUR opinion seriously, and we’re more than thrilled to be the hand that helps you up when something catches a snag.  There are no “support points” needed to call us.  You don’t have to hope that your issue only crops up during office hours.  You don’t even have to know how to properly articulate your issue using “tech speak”.  You just have to be able to use a phone, send a tweet, or click a link.

We’ll take it from there.  And be proud to do so.

1. Non-compliance Isn’t an Option
If your site accepts, processes or stores credit card information, you have to take on the responsibilities of being PCI compliant. A large part of that has to do with the security of your site’s infrastructure and the manner in which your customers’ data must be secured. Internal processes and data accessibility also factor in and can influence your ongoing operations. Utilizing a 3rd party payment gateway, and delegating the strictest requirement to another provider, is a common means for getting an E-com site up and running quickly. This is complicated stuff though, so at the end of the day, if you have questions, be sure to ask an expert.

2. Always Expect (and Plan for!) the Unexpected
Say one of your products is touted by a movie star, talk show host or super athlete. Would your site be ready? Could it handle the traffic or quickly scale up to handle it? Whatever kind of hosting solution you choose, make sure you have a plan in place, so you can build up your configuration and architecture to deal with this kind of unusual demand. And if you have seasonal spikes, sales or promotions, enact your plan and test it weeks before the onslaught.

3. Keep Your Eyes on the Shopping Cart
Online shopping carts are the cash registers of the online world. They ring beautifully when a sale is completed but have a tendency to get jammed on occasion. And when they do, you need to know quickly. Since there isn’t a clerk available on the Internet to inform you of such issues, it is critical to have a robust monitoring solution in place. From basic site availability monitoring to custom URL monitoring and Synthetic Transactions, a multitude of tools are available to ensure your shoppers will be able to complete their transaction on your site.