Dave Segrove

This brief post came as a result of a conversation with a client. She was frustrated by the amount of work she was having to put into her online marketing, feeling that is was an effort with an uncertain reward...

...and of course it is! Last time I checked, there were no guarantees that just because you built a website it was going to be visited by the masses. No one promised that anyone was going read your blog, reply to a tweet or "like" you Facebook.

Whether you're online for pleasure or business (or both), nothing is certain. There are ways to help improve the potential audience, and by extrapolation potential market, but don't assume if you build it they will come.

This is why I repeatedly tell clients that online marketing, whether with your site, social media, a blog, emails...however you do it, has to be a labor of love. If you don't feel passionate about something then why the heck should anyone else?

You started "following" people on Twitter but they didn't all seem to follow you back. No one seems to retweet your posts either...and sheesh, no one commented on that blog post. It was all good stuff; useful information. Why doesn't anyone care?

You have to find your online voice and message. Call it a "personality", but your online "self" is the person you are in cyberspace. That person may be just like you in real life, or very different. Yet that person has to have a voice, and a message. If you have no voice, no one will hear you and if you have no message, you have nothing to say. Think, for a moment, about all the crap you see in an average day online...how much of it is really useful or meaninful?

In my opinion, your message needs to be something that means something to you. You can't always be clever. You're not always going to have success, but if you care about what you're "speaking" about, if it's a labor of love, it will grow.

It's a bit like gardening. You till the earth (set up your Facebook, website, blog etc) and you plant the seeds (start developing content). You nurture (follow others, leave feedback, interact), weed (unfollow, remove excess or irrelevant content) and harvest. It's a rare gardener who doesn't have some casualties along the way, but one hopes, in the end, that is was worth it.

If it seems too much like work, then perhaps you should ask yourself if this is something you should be considering and, by extrapolation, ask yourself if any of this is really what you wanted to do in the first place. Better to find out now...

We gave my client an online "makeover". She found her niche and passion and her online presence is growing like you wouldn't believe!

Social Media.

It's all the rage. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTube, Digg, Reddit...not to mention all the little tools and utilities out there that we can use to update all of the above.

Where does the novice start?

STRATEGY : You need a plan. A plan starts with a goal. Without a goal, how do you know whether you're succeeding? A business goal will help you determine what social media tools will help you achieve it.

TIME : Yep, the old enemy of humanity. The old saying “Rome wasn't built in a day” applies here too. Like anything worth savoring, from financial investments to fine wine, social media is going to take cultivation, effort and time to mature. It does occasionally happen overnight, but don't count on it.

RESILIENCE : You are going to make mistakes. You are going to try things that don't work out. You may even invest in the wrong tools or resources. This is part of doing business, and it's part of marketing. Learn from your mistakes, pick yourself up and dust yourself off. Then get back into the fight.

INVESTMENT : Accept the fact that you're going to make an investment if you're really going to try and use social media. Investment is going to mean time, effort, money or a combination of these.

PATIENCE : This goes hand-in-hand with time and investment. Understand that you've got some learning to do, some time to put in, before you start seeing a return on your investment.

EDUCATION : Social media can be a powerful marketing tool for your business. There is going to be some learning involved in order for you to figure out what the right plan of attack is for you. Read blogs or books on social media and social media marketing. Play with the tools, most are free. Better yet, get trained - by some like me :)

SINCERITY : Don't try to make yourself or your business seem like something it's not. Listen as well as talk. Social media is just that, “social”. It's a two-way process. There are too many people out there treating the web as a recording studio and not a telephone...don't be one of them.

So, if you want to earn your social media stripes, you have some work to do, some learning and some investment, but doesn't anything worthwhile need these things?

Social media doesn't have to be intimidating. It can be fun and rewarding. Take your time, dabble, ask lots of questions. Like any new relationship, social media will take a little time to get to know; but who knows where it may take you?

Holy Internet Batman!

In January 2009 I wrote an article titled "1.5 Billion Internet Users…and Growing", exploring the incredible development of the use of the web in recent years. I just happened to be (web) surfing this morning when I decided to visit the authority on Internet statistics, Internet World Stats...

...almost 2 BILLION! We'll perhaps a slight exaggeration. The numbers at the end of 2009, a mere 11 months after I wrote my last were 1,802,330,457. That's an increase of 400,000,000 users, or 26% of the world's population.

In North America, the US is way out front in terms of number of users (220 million) but in percentages, it's behind Greenland (90% but only 57,600 population). Canada has a 75% penetration which translates to 28 million users.

Asia still lags behind with 20% of the population having Internet access, but that's an increase of 250 million people, almost as much as the entire North American continent. That number is primarily comprised of Chinese web users (384 million or 28% of the population), followed by Japan with 75% (96 million) of the population and India a close third with only 7% but 81 million users.

In Europe, the top three countries, number-of-Internet-users wise are Germany (54 million), the UK (47 million) and Russia (43 million). However, on the percentage scale, the leader is Iceland (93%), Norway (91%), and Sweden (89%).

Netcraft's 2010 survey of websites reports that 207 million websites responded to their tests. Remember that these include sites such as Wordpress which have "sub sites" below them, but this is still an increase of 20 million since my January post (187).

I could go on and on. Take a moment to check out the numbers for yourself. In conclusion, what this all means is that over a quarter of the planet is wired to the web. From an e-marketing and e-business standpoint, that's an incredible ocean in which to go fishing and all indications are that the numbers are going to continue to go up. The ratio of users to websites is going up, which I guess is good for those of us who have sites, there are more users to go around.

Can't wait to see how this all looks in another 12 to 18 months. Isn't the World Wide Web an amazing place?

Reference sources
Internet World Stats at www.internetworldstats.com
Netcraft at www.netcraft.com

The Internet has become an even greater melting pot. Online and offline lives are blurred. Many people seem to live their lives online and communicate with a world of people they may never have met. Every detail of their lives is shared in Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, Wordpress, Digg, Reddit...and of course email.

There are some very positive benefits to this incredible online world, I'm the first to admit it. I have clients around the US with whom I've developed relationships using purely online methods that I wouldn't have dreamed of a few years ago. I can share information so easily, click-click-done.

But the ease of communication has blurred the lines between business and personal for many people. I've written about this subject a couple of times in the past (links below), but for the uninitiated, here goes:

Mixing Identities

I see it all the time. I communicate professionally with someone and the next thing I know they're sending me a “friend” request on Facebook, or a network link on LinkedIn. If they want to connect with my professional identity, I'm alright with that and happy to share, but sorry if you want to be my “friend” on a personal level. Let's have a few dates first...?

Many people don't separate their personal and professional identities and this can have serious repercussions. I've received emails from people I barely know with everything from “please forward this message of goodwill to 10 people...” to petitions, rants about anything, links to cute videos, jokes...you name it.

Opening the professional door to a business relationship does not give you the right to assume that people want to see or share in your personal life.

The Risks You Take

Your opinions and tastes might be different from those people to whom you are sending emails to or trying to connect with in a social media context. If you're sharing purely professional information, opinion etc, then all well and good, but a lot of people don't stop there.

Consider the reaction to someone who disagrees with something you send them. What if they're offended? Could it be the end of a relationship? There are increasing numbers of stories in the press about social media “faux pas” that end up causing retractions and apologies, but in this world of instant communication, once it's said, it's very hard to unsay. If you've invited someone to be your online friend, do you want them knowing your friends and family too...or the fact that you “got totally wasted dude”?

One shudders to think of the legal ramifications, especially if there are license requirements that one might be expected to observe!

Separation of Church and State

If you're sharing your personal life with your business colleagues, be prepared. As much as many of us would like to think that our “work” and “play” personalities are the same, or at least similar, they should be different, especially online. 

I call it the “separation of Church and State”. If you've not considered separating the two, please do so. You do need to watch what you say. As the World War II posters advertised “loose lips sink ships” and it's very true.

Can you afford to take the risk?

Related articles:

• EMAIL FAUX PAS
• SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

Running your business is work enough. Finding the right web designer shouldn't have to add to the pressure; quite the opposite. There are many good web design companies out there. How do you find the one that's right for you?

1. Ask to see recent examples of their work.
2. What industry experience do they have in Real Estate?
3. Ask for references and contact them. Previous or current clients should be able to provide you with a lot of information about service, quality, costs etc.
4. Ask about how much involvement you'll have during the design phase. It's your site, right?
5. Ask for quote that includes everything. Be sure to ask if it includes helping you set up things like your email addresses, domain names and hosting.
6. Ask if they warranty their work.
7. Ask about ownership. Will you own all the code and content or are you leasing or owning it jointly?
8. Ask for written deliverables and time frames.
9. Ask to speak to the people doing the work, not just the sales people.
10. Ask about what may happen in the event (heaven forbid) that they go out of business. Will you be left high and dry?
11. Custom or template? Do you want a "cookie cutter" solution or a custom site? Find out which you're buying.
12. Are there ongoing, renewal or recurring fees?
13. Can you get IDX integrated?
14. Can you add options or must you buy a "one size fits all" package?