The more qualified visitors your website receives, the greater your brand awareness and the more leads you receive.

So what is a cost effective way to improve your online presence? Assuming that your website is well designed and well optimised for search engines – if not, give us a shout!

One method is to add yourself to online web directories. Read on to find out which are some of the more effective at getting you results.

What’s the difference between a search engine and a web directory ?

A search engine – Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. – indexes website pages and ranks them in terms of relevance when people search for words on those sites.

A traditional web directory specifically categorises websites that are manually submitted to the directory. A good example of when you might get more relevant results from a directory rather than a search engine is when you search for something like a bakery in a specific location. Think Yellow Pages rather than Google.

What are the benefits of being in a web directory?

A good web directory will provide you with three things:

1. More reach. If a web directory is easy to use and promotes itself well, people will go to that directory to search for information, products and services. If you aren’t listed with that directory you may be missing out on leads.

2. Incoming links. Search engines like Google will rank a site more highly if it has a number of good quality incoming links – that is, websites that feature a hyperlink to your own website. The more links you have from reputable sites, the higher your chances are of appearing well in search results.

3. Actual search engine results. Have you ever searched for a company and seen search results featuring entries from NZS.com, Finda and Hotfrog? It’s not uncommon for a company’s entry in a web directory to appear BEFORE the same company’s own website! Good web directories know search engine optimisation inside-out and are always pushing for good search rankings.

Even if you don’t have your own website (and perhaps ESPECIALLY if you don’t have your own website) you can put enough information into a web directory listing to start building yourself an online presence.

3 Web Directories Worthy of a Listing

There are literally hundreds of free web directories out there. Many of those even add your website to their directories without your input. But some directories are certainly better than others. Let’s take a look at just three of the more professional looking directories.

Finda.co.nz

If you’ve done a lot of searching online, no doubt you will have seen the Finda name appearing in search results. Unlike some other directories, Find allows you to add up to 10 images with your listing. Very handy if you want to show off some of your products or services.

Finda also offers a free e-mail service that provides you with statistics on your entry. It can be quite handy to know how many times your entry has appeared in search results and how many people have clicked on that entry.

To put Finda into context, let’s take a look at the results for the “Trocadero Bakery” search term:

Trocadero don’t have their own website and yet they appear at the top of the search results. All of these results are from free web directory listings – Finda, Wises and AA Maps.

Also worth noting is that the fifth result is a blog article from our own Hot PJ blog! We had a bit of fun reviewing hot cross buns last year and wrote a blog article on our results. Don’t neglect the power of blogs for great search engine presence!

Finda states that it receives over 500,000 page views per month.

HotFrog.co.nz

Hotfrog is very similar to Finda. It’s simple to use and offers examples of good descriptions throughout the submission process. My personal experience is that it doesn’t have as much exposure as Finda but it’s still worth submitting your company details to increase your reach as it’s so easy to use.

Hotfrog states that it receives over 250,000 page views per month.

NZS.com

In many ways, NZS.com is in a different league to the other two directories. NZS is the only site of the three that provides a wealth of resources and information from reputable professionals to help you market your business online. NZS is actually more of a search engine combined with a web directory with a whole heap of resources thrown in for free!

NZS.com also operate a blog, a Twitter account and a Facebook account – all designed to add value and increase the online presence of the NZS.com site and your company’s listing.

NZS.com visitor number statistics state that it was reaching over 1,400,000 page views a month last year!

In Summary

You could spend hours and hours adding yourself to the mass of directories that are out there and, for a large number of them, it wouldn’t be worth your time. But you really can increase your search rankings by adding quality entries to a few reputable directories.

If you’re only going to list your company with one web directory this year, I would make it NZS.com. There’s a heap of features and information to help you get started and the site is constantly growing and developing.

If you have time, add yourself to the other key New Zealand web directories mentioned here as well, and also add yourself to the Open Directory Project – an international directory that many search engines recommend listing your company with.

However! Don’t neglect your own website! It’s no good increasing your site’s visitor numbers if your website isn’t converting visitors to sales. If you would like a free website review guide, drop us a line and our Christchurch based web design team we’ll e-mail one to you.

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Image: New Twitter Lists

Well, it looks like our Hot PJ Twitter account has been selected to be part of a small group (probably about 100,000 or so!) that can try out Twitter lists before it’s unleashed on the Twitter-verse.

So what are Twitter lists?

Twitter lists are groups of similar Twitter accounts, as assigned by the person that created the list. Let’s say I have a lot of followers in New Zealand and Australia but I want to organise a meet-up in Christchurch. I could create a generic update that says “Meet-up in Christchurch. Reply if you’re keen”, which might get not get a great deal of notice from my followers as it’s lost amongst other updates.

To get more of a response, I could go through my followers list, find out which people are from Christchurch and send each one of them an @reply. This would greatly increase the number of responses but would take a lot more effort – sending 30 to 50 individual replies – and really annoy my other followers!

With the new list function, I could create a list called “chc” and assign each of my connections based in Christchurch to that list. At this stage, I assume that I can then send one update directed at that entire list by using the special @ reply name.

Note that I originally created the list as “christchurch” but changed it to “chc”. This shortened the reply tag from @hotpj/christchurch to @hotpj/chc which obviously allows for more characters in the update and makes it easier for others to retweet.

Image: Adding people to your Twitter list

By the looks of things, this creates an extra level to our Twitter URL. When the testing period has finished, you would be able to go to www.twitter.com/hotpj/chc to see all the Twitter accounts I have added to that list.

When you add someone to a list, and you’ve set the list as public, people will be able to see what lists any account has been added to. We have already been added to @slowninja’s list of “bloggers” – i.e. people that write blogs.

Image: Twitter lists we are on

Anyone can now click on that list to see who’s on there. More than that, they see all the updates only from the people on the list. This is handy if you wanted to only see what Christchurch Twitter people were saying. And of course, also handy if you want to follow more people in that particular category.

Image: Updates from members of the Twitter list hotpj/chc

These lists should help us to target our tweets a lot more and it will help to keep updates even more relevant.

Some people may think that people outside the lists will be ignored – if I’m organising a tweet-up in Christchurch and just send an @reply to the chc list, it may look like I’m excluding people in Auckland that might actually be in Christchurch at the time of the meet. This actually wouldn’t be the case – that person would still see my update if they’re following me, they just wouldn’t get any special notification like they would if I had specifically @ replied to them.

Other than regions, some handy lists would be along the lines of “People I’ve met”, “Fellow Designers”, “Quality Tweeters”, “Friends”, “Humorous Accounts” etc. – although you would want to think of some shorted names!

The danger is that if these lists are public, your followers may get jealous of those on the list! There’s also a risk that someone creates a negative list and adds you to it – at this stage of testing, there doesn’t appear to be a way to remove yourself from a list unless you actually block that whole Twitter account.

It would certainly suck to find yourself on a list called “@peoplethattalktoomuch” for example!

We’ll certainly be keeping a close eye on how the list function develops.

Disclaimer: Oh by the way, it does say that this function is in the beta testing stage and so we shouldn’t tweet about it, but we’ve checked the list of Twitter personnel and noticed that they’re happily mentioning it themselves so the news is already out!

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How can Twitter and Blogs generate more business for my company?

So let’s talk in real world jargon-free terms for a typical small business. In this example I’ll use two fictional garages in Christchurch; Bob’s and Steve’s.

Try to picture yourself as one of these mechanics, and your closest competitor as the other.

Now both of these mechanics provide a similar offering for a similar price. They’re both situated on the same street and at first glance there’s little to distinguish between the two. Originally, neither garage owner saw the need for much of a website. They figured the majority of their business came through passing traffic and word of mouth.

However, Steve soon realised that something had changed. Bob was suddenly getting a lot more business while Steve remained quiet.

The reason for Bob’s sudden increase in customers came down to a well thought out plan to increase their garage’s online presence.

A Targeted Effort

With the goal of increasing qualified leads, Bob set about improving the look and layout of his website. He included a strong marketing message and a clear call to action.

Through speaking with a lot of his customers, Bob discovered that many of them had initially tried to search the web for a solution to their car’s problem, rather than searching for an actual garage.

Setting up a blog

Armed with this knowledge, Bob added a blog to his site. Bob’s blog featured posts about:

- tips and tricks for maintaining a car

- common issues and their likely causes

- new car parts on the market

- occasional profiles on some of his staff

He encouraged his mechanics to provide his receptionist (who was good at typing and a stickler for error-free spelling) with one article a week to update the blog.

In no time at all, he had a brilliant resource on his site. The blog posts served to increase his search engine rankings through relevant, useful articles that would appear in search engine results for anyone looking for answers to various car problems. Bob had also opened up a two-way communication with prospects before they had even made the conscious decision to take their car to a garage.

Blog readers were asking questions in the form of comments they placed on the blog. Bob made sure one of his staff would answer these questions with the key underlining message that the reader should pop round to the garage so they could take a look at the car. This helped to suggest that Bob’s mechanics were experts in the industry and introduced prospects to the people that would be working on their vehicle.

Once the blog was operating smoothly, Bob set up a Twitter account.

Setting up Twitter

Within a few minutes he had completed his Twitter profile with a bio featuring keywords on his business, a link to his website and finally the location of his garage.

He then added 5 or 6 posts with a mixture of brief tips, specific links to some of his blog posts, and the odd personal comment about something that had happened in his home town or something he had found interesting in the news.

Bob then used a few search terms to find other popular Twitter users in Christchurch and Canterbury – his target market areas. He followed a few of those accounts and sat back to observe things that were being said and the general format of people’s Tweets.

Once he had a handle on the best practices for posting short updates, he started to reply to a few people’s tweets. In doing this, he opened up some two-way communication between his Twitter account and others. When those people replied to Bob, their own followers would see Bob’s name and see that he knew about cars and would take a look at his account to see if he was worthy of following.

After this, he used a few search terms to find people who had recently Tweeted about anything to do with their car. When he found tweets from people who were having trouble with their vehicle, he sent them public replies to ask if they needed any advice.

Whether those people were in Christchurch or Milan, Bob had shown his worth as someone who could help with car problems.

A summary of Bob’s Twitter updates

Bob updated his Twitter account a couple of times a day with:

- Links to each new blog post with a brief description

- Tips for maintaining a car

- His opinion on something he had read in the news about new car models

- Replies to other Twitter users with specific help and advice

- His own testimonials for other Twitter people that he had found useful

- Funny comments about his own amusing work stories

- His recommendations for particular car parts or petrol/oil brands etc.

A higher level of word-of-mouth promotion

Any future potential customers looking at his Twitter account would see a variety of posts from someone who had a bit of personality and was the man to talk to regarding car problems.

Bob found that even if he didn’t get direct business from his connections on Twitter, he often had customers turn up at his garage who said they had asked their own followers for a good mechanic in Christchurch and Bob’s name had come up.

Within a few weeks, his online presence had exponentially increased. His Twitter posts and blog posts all served a purpose to drive traffic to his website. Once he had more relevant people on his site, he had an opportunity to tell them what his business could do for them and started to generate more and more qualified leads.

Bob’s business began to pick-up and he became a minor celebrity online as the man to turn to for car problems.

In the mean time, Steve sat on the kerb outside his garage and scratched his head, wondering what Bob had done to suddenly pick up so much more business.

What’s your next step?

If you can picture yourself in Steve’s position and you think that a blog and/or Twitter account could work for you, or if you already have either account and want to learn some tips and tricks to maximise their performance, reply to this e-mail to register your interest in the Hot PJ Seminar; How to use Twitter and Blogs to drive traffic to your site.

The seminar will be held on Thursday 29^th October and will be presented by our Business Development Manager, Mark Lincoln, in Christchurch.

Contact one of our team now to register for this seminar which will leave you excited about your future online potential. For more seminar info, visit our blog post about the upcoming Twitter and Blogs seminar.

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Have you been hearing all the hype about Twitter but are still unconvinced as to how it can be used to create more leads for your small business?

Then the Hot PJ Twitter and Blog Seminar is for you!

The seminar will be presented by our own Business Development Manager, Mark Lincoln.

Mark is very enthusiastic about the use of Twitter and blogs for small business and recently presented to 50 representatives from non-profit organisations. He’s brimming with fresh knowledge from last week’s Search Engine Bootcamp and looking forward to sharing some of this knowledge at the seminar.

What you can expect to learn from this seminar:

1. The knowledge to setup a blog and Twitter account
2. Best practices for your first posts
3. Tips on how to start building your network
4. Quality advice on how to turn Twitter and blog readers into leads for your business
5. Industry examples of good and bad Twitter and blog use.

Date: Thursday 29th October
Time: 8am to 10am
Venue: Just Desserts Conference Room – 33 Wordsworth Street

Tickets will be just $25 incl GST, which includes a light breakfast and tea and coffee. We keep our seminar groups small and select to encourage a two-way conversation between presenter and attendee so that the presentation can be tailored to fit your business.

To register your interest, drop Mark Lincoln a line now. Get in quickly as places will run out fast!

Mark Lincoln

T: 03 374 9929
E: bdm @ hotpj.co.nz

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During marketing consultations, I’ve been encouraging a lot of non-profits to set up Facebook Pages. One person I spoke to had a concern that they didn’t want their Facebook Profile to become public and openly associated with their organisation.

This reminded me of a job interview I once had at a recruitment agency. During the interview, social media came up. The interviewer admitted that she had tried to find my Facebook page but couldn’t see anything because of my privacy settings.

I then admitted that I’d researched her and had found out the last two places that she had worked at, the job roles and awards she had won, the high school that she went to and even a high school photo!

Mark Lincoln. BDM and Horse Whisperer

Since then, I have two Facebook accounts. My business Facebook account is totally open – no privacy settings – and I add photos from around Christchurch, a couple of sporting photos and the odd holiday snap. Basically anything I wouldn’t mind being on the front page of the local newspaper! I also connect to anyone that I’ve met through some other business network. Only know me through Twitter? Sure you can be my Facebook friend! Just let me choose the business account first.

My second Facebook account is only connected to friends and family and is totally locked up. Maximum privacy settings with “friends only”. This means that 1) friends and family came post as many baby photos of me that they like and 2) my friends and family never feel that I’m trying to involve them in my business without their wishes.

I read something in an admin and support services blog by Heather McDonald of “Your Right Hand”:

I heard a person say he was on Facebook with some mates from work, and they were sharing photos and stories of fun times… until their boss requested to be friends with one of them.  To make a long story short, it turned ugly and disciplinary action was taken by the boss.

The moral of this story is don’t be afraid to decline friend requests! In the case above, the boss might have felt a bit put out, but the employees would have been within their rights to refuse the request.

In the case of employers using Facebook to search for anyone that they’re looking to employ – ok they get a brief idea of what the person gets up to, but it’s quite unfair to judge their working life based on a few pictures from their social life. Has that employer never had a couple of drinks? Have they never been to a karaoke bar and made a fool of themselves? Have they never been a baby and thrown up on their aunt’s favorite jersey?

It all comes down to whether we want to employ sterile robots or people with genuine personalities.

When it all comes down to it, just set your privacy settings to a level you’re happy with. But remember that no matter how hard you control photos that you put up yourself, it’s hard to control photos that other people upload and tag you in!

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I was chatting to a fellow business person last week about a friend who is a ‘search marketing expert’. “Don’t talk to me about search marketing” he replied in utter disgust. Of course I had to ask what had prompted such a response.

He had received a call from someone claiming to be ‘from Google’. Now as soon as I heard this alarm bells went off in my head. It would have been enough for me to say “yeah, right, and I’m the Queen of England”, but to some these words hold weight.

“How would you like your business to be on the front page of Google?”

The businessman’s eyes lite up. For a 3 month trial he could have his business listed on the ‘front page of Google’ (Google Adwords).

He asked to be sent an invoice, but of course they wanted his credit card details on the spot!

8 weeks prior to the end of the trial he rang to cancel his business. “No!” they said, “You had to let us know 10 weeks before the end of the trial, it says so in our terms and conditions.”

A bitter exchange followed with this company refusing to listen to the concerns of their client (who had not received the terms and conditions), and taking two further payments from his credit card for the next 12 months – over $1000 per business category.

“Did they talk to you about how you would measure the success of this campaign?” I asked.

“Did they talk about having tailored landing pages to convert those visits, because you know it is all very well to draw people to your site, but your site must lead them to pick up the phone or email you about doing business.” His sales rep nodded in agreement. It’s sales 101!

“No they didn’t!” the business owner replied.

I checked out this search marketing company’s website. On first look it seemed to be genuine; the content on search marketing appears to be in line with current thinking, if light on detail. They also offer website design services but don’t show any samples of their work – their own website looks like it has been built from a pre-designed template downloaded from the web.

None of the testimonials on their site were from Australasian businesses despite their claim that they help ‘local business’. I am also very suspicious of business websites that display a PO Box address instead of a street address, and do not identify or profile any of their staff or management.

I raised this whole issue in Twitter and it turns out this is all too common. Other businesses have received the exact same calls – on a fairly regular basis.

The moral of this story is to be on your guard

We all know the saying that if something sounds too good to be true it usually is just that! Check out the credibility of any cold calls of this nature with your website developer or business colleagues. Ask for the contact details of other local businesses who they have done work for.

Dodgy search marketing companies rely on the power of ‘Google’ and the relatively open nature of it – using it to their advantage. They also know business people are very busy and aren’t always well informed when it comes to search marketing.

Don’t let them take another victim!

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I recently read an article in NZ Marketing magazine by a well-known New Zealand marketing professional that said “Understand the market of your clients. If their target market is middle-aged decision-makers, these people simple are not going to be on Facebook, Twitter or even Linked-In for business.”

Personally, I have made a great many business connections through Twitter. I connect with business professionals on a daily basis and feel privileged to be able to ask for their knowledge, expertise and advice – which they often freely give.

Many of these people own their own business. In my mind, that makes the majority of these people the key decision makers.

I also connect with many middle-aged business professionals through Facebook and Linked-In. As far as I can tell, Linked-In’s ONLY function is to connect business people. Facebook certainly has its place for business but admittedly is a lot more social-focused than Twitter and Linked-In.

However, Facebook experienced a 276% growth in the 35-54 year old bracket in the second half of 2008.

In summary, I really feel that Twitter and Linked-In are primarily used for business, and primarily by the 25 to 54 group. If your target market consits of business people aged 25 to 54 and you want to connect with them online, Twitter is the way to go.

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I have just got back from my first Twitter Meet-up (tweetup) in Christchurch. Quite an interesting experience.

It’s strange to walk into a cafe and up to a group of strangers sitting around a table and say “So … are you the people from Twitter because if not you’re probably wondering what the hell I’m talking about right now”

It’s also one of the few occasions where people have had to introduce themselves twice; once with their real name and once with their Twitter ID. I had it pretty easy as my Twitter ID is my name: www.twitter.com/marklincoln kinda boring really!

The event was quite a good experience though. It’s great to put a face to the Twitter ID and meet a lot of great business people from Christchurch’s relatively small community.

I look forward to the next #chchtweetup!

Some of the Christchurch Twittery Twits I met today:

wendydavie
mrsgooding
debraclarknz
samnzed
mirandarights
serenity22
inkoder
debinz
lewisbostock
growyourbiz
nzdesignagirl
bexielady

… and me! marklincoln

Click the header image of this page to search for Twitter updates on the Christchurch Tweetups

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