The Goals: Learning, SEO and Social Media Experiment, (and possibly get some passive income without investing much money).

As a developer, I’ve probably built or worked on several hundred websites at my current job.

As the company has grown and our offices have become more spread out, the exposure to elements of a project that are not part of development has naturally narrowed. (I do sometimes miss our “one room schoolhouse” office). Flyte has been on the leading edge of Social Media and I’ve become a convert, but haven’t done a lot with it beyond my Twitter and Facebook pages.

I thought it might be fun and interesting to see what my learnings would be while working through a new project of my own.

Lesson 1: Figure out your business first, then build a website for it. Not the other way around.

The idea:
Several friends and acquaintances have mentioned that while Amazon is a trusted online store, they feel overwhelmed by the busy home page and the number of choices. As a voracious reader, my friends often ask me what I’m reading and for suggestions. I also hear excellent book suggestions from friends and my boss.

My idea was to present selected choices through Amazon with quick pick book suggestions. Once people find they like the site suggestions it can become a quick way of picking a book and ordering it though Amazon, usually within the framework of my cozy website.

Since this was a learning project, my approach was like that of a number of people with new, very small businesses – with a not fully defined idea for making some money, and a preference for spending my time worrying about what the site looked like instead of how effective it would be.

After going back and forth with my build (for much longer than I should have) because I waffled between direct links to Amazon or an iframe associates store, I decided to really go for the social media challenge and use the iframe store within my content area. This means I’ll need to get really creative with Social Media, since search engines will not “see” the book content in the iframe store. Iframes are sometimes a necessary evil ­ but be aware of their limitations and build in other avenues to feed rich content to search engines.

Lesson 2: Visual look of design is important, but know your content, strategy, and information architecture so it can guide the design.

(And lesson 2b, which I already knew but apparently had to learn again the hard way – make sure you have the design locked down before you start the build).

• A site that is pretty will not trump the lack of good content or non-intuitive navigation.
• You can be unique and creative without getting your budget off track.
• I’ve been using an app for turning photos into ink and water color drawings and decided to use this to create illustrations for my site. After buying a few stock photos, and taking a few myself, I used the app to give a cozy welcoming feeling to the pages with faux illustrations.

I went ahead and made the site live. After all, if you build it they will come, right? My only promotion of it was to offer a sneak peak on my facebook page (soft launch) . As expected, I’ve had very few hits (I check my google analytics daily – there was one weird day where I suddenly had 42 visitors, direct traffic from Hennepin County, Minnesota – I have a vision of an entire classroom of people being given a wrong URL!)

The better approach

Now to see if targeting search engines and using Social media can make a difference.

Coming up with keywords: Word Tracker offers a free trial or you can use the free keyword tool at Google. I put in my generic search term – Book Suggestions. Wham! immediately it returned something I’m embarrassed to admit I hadn’t given a thought to – using the phrase Book Club suggestions. I was also surprised just how much difference a slight variation can make. E.g.: “book club reading list” had low competition, and global search number of 4,400. However, “reading book club” had low competition, and a global search of 246,000.

I came up with several similar eye openers and went back to my site, rewriting some of the content, navigation and titles to incorporate the terms. I admit, at times the text felt more awkward to me, but we’re giving keywords a try right?

Next I moved over some of my mainebabyboomer blog posts on books I’ve read to the new blog on The Cozy Library. Since I’m using iframes, the blog is going to become the main source of content that the search engines can find. Starting out with several posts gives it a kick start, and I’ll need to blog regularly each time I read a new book.

I’m writing this guest blog post for the flyte blog, hopefully encouraging YOU dear reader to come visit my site. [Insert shameless self-promotion here - go to http://cozy-library.com].

Lesson 3 – Know when phase 1 is done and it’s time to start phase 2.

I could go on tweaking the site and adding content forever, staying in “soft launch” mode. There will always be more SEO that can be done, more books added, more blog posts, more design tweaks. I want to comb through past flyte blog and Maine SEO blog posts culling out ideas to follow up. But that work can also be done after official launch. It’s better to get this website out and start promoting it – while I continue to go on reading flyte articles on how to use twitter, facebook, blogging and SEO to promote it. So….(drum roll)…Announcing the new site, Cozy-Library.com.

Postscript Learning – the spike in my google analytics turned out to be because I was doing cross browser testing using Adobe BrowserLab – be sure to take their IP out of the mix if you don’t want to skew your results.

Gloria Maher
Web Developer, Reader

Mainebabyboomer.com

The mainebabyboomer.com blog has moved to mainebabyboomer.com/blog

I was reminded of this over the past couple weeks as I changed my internet service and phone provider. My existing DSL service (OTT-formerly MidMaine) was pushing out a measly .5 – .8mbps (yes, that’s point eight) and the time had finally come to just change to another provider. I chose GWI because we use them at work and service seems fine. The combined DSL and Phone package requires Fairpoint to be a contributor as well – something to do with the combined wiring at the end of our condo building.

I was really excited, thinking about that awesome speed I was going to see when the switch happened. GWI guy showed up on time, was courteous, and explained to me that Fairpoint had not been out and done their part of the job – possible communication breakdown. My switchover was rescheduled for a week later.

Next GWI guy showed up on time, was courteous and helpful, and explained that the Fairpoint people had been there but still hadn’t done what they needed to do for GWI to complete the work. He called his office to touch base and the person on other end told him I have Time Warner (I don’t). I pointed out to them that Time Warner does not even come to Brunswick. Again, no switch completed, but he checked wires, set up my modem and generally did what he could in the moment.

The next night I came home from work to find I had no phone dial tone and no internet connection. Since the order for the switch had been submitted almost two weeks ago, my current provider assumed ok to cut off my service. I tried not to break into a cold sweat and panic from not only tech withdrawal but feeling cut off from the world. Without my beloved internet I was bereft.

When I got in touch with them this morning they apologized and explained that a vendor meet appointment was set for this afternoon and I would finally be reconnected to the Interwebs. Fairpoint even came a little early and got my phone back online.

Each person was courteous and helpful, but by the time each had done their job, the process as viewed from my side had been seriously lacking in quality and satisfaction.

The cascade:

1. Communication between vendors took too many attempts. (Multiple trips expended resources both in productive hours and in gas for vehicles.)
2. No one thought to stop the end service order to my existing company when problems were encountered. (Using up more productive hours in phone calls and follow up.)
3. For the most part they did not take a view higher than the scope of their current job to visualize what was happening upstream or downstream – not looking at the big picture and the details at the same time resulted in loss of service (and extra expenses for them) during the handoffs.
4. I had to use a vacation day in order to be home to make sure all was finally completed, which in turn affected my productivity at my workplace (and the possibility of my spending money on a “real” vacation day if I hadn’t had to use it for this instead).

We are all worried about this economy.

When it comes to the environment, we often hear that even little things like turning off a light or recycling the newspaper can make a big difference if we all do them.

I have to wonder as I set up my own small side business, how much of a difference can we all make to the economy if we pay attention not just to doing our own jobs well, but also keep the broader perspective in mind, including where things might be improved in our work handoffs before and after our step in process. Each small improvement we make in our productivity can trickle down to the next part of the process – more efficiency, less waste = better economy.

For those that know me, don’t worry, I’m not leaving my current employment.  What I’m learning there (and will continue to learn) I’ll be using in the role of tour guide and developer for new/small businesses, helping them pull together the pieces for their first web presence. My goal is to help you fill that gap between no website, and a custom web marketing approach.

I’m not officially launched yet, but if you know of a small business looking for an affordable website, feel free to send them my way at gloria@mainebabyboomer.com.

More details coming soon!

Social Media video (will take you to YouTube)

Particularly in this economy, when so many have lost their jobs, I was stunned by the statistic on employers finding employees through LinkedIn.

Not to mention, the Customer Service implications are HUGE!

Gloria Maher
Born to babyboomer generation, but living and working in generation Y and X.

Have you seen the Sprint commercial that uses statistics? I love the part where it gets to Twitter and shows all the little blue twitter birds – instead of Tweeting they’re saying “Me Me Me Me”.  Then it goes on to say that 26% of the people watching have no idea what Twitter means.

In a previous post I mentioned that I thought Twitter was Facebook with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder).  This week I attended a 2 hour seminar on Social Media (e.g. blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and many many others).  I have a better idea now of how Twitter can actually be of value.  For use on a personal level, I’m still not entirely converted – I’d rather write in this blog where I’m only limited by my time – not by the 140 character Twitter post limit. (But then again, none of my friends and only one relative are on Twitter.  I have found it enjoyable to see my co-workers posts [did I mention I have the best co-workers in the world?]).

The seminar really helped me see the professional advantages of Twitter.  I’m not a fan of hard sell and I can now see how Twitter and Facebook can be used by business to build relationships – the cornerstone of selling services or products.  It also is a great way to know what your clients and potential consumers are saying about your company.

I joined Twitter that same evening.  I don’t expect to spend much personal time on it, but as someone who works in the technology field it was a good learning to set up my account and do enough tweeting to get a handle on it.

As I was setting up the account though it really struck me that the popularity of Twitter harkens back to about the mid-twentieth century when the party telephone line was still in use.  More than one household shared a telephone line, and another party could eavesdrop just by picking up the phone and listening.  When you first go into Twitter is might seem  confusing because you’re only hearing one side of the conversation if it’s part of a thread.  Clicking back and forth between the linked users though you can “listen in” to the conversation.  The only difference is on Twitter everyone using it KNOWS you’re listening in.  This makes for a good way to get out a message you want delivered, or listen to what others are saying about a subject.

This also got me thinking about the value of different skills and their use in different jobs. (More on this in a future post).  Twitter, Facebook, etc. can take up a lot of time, and perhaps not the best use of time for someone doing production work.  But there is indeed a strong call for companies to make use of these avenues to understand their market, promote the positive aspects of the company, and be aware of any negative so that it can be addressed.

Gloria
Twitter Semi-Convert

My bigger surprise though was that there wasn’t more attention to the few potential customers circling the booths.  Now, I’ve run into this before – a middle aged woman without a husband in tow, it sometimes seems I must have grabbed my invisibility cloak by mistake.  (I once had a phone conversation with a siding salesman.  I had called because I was thinking of having my house done and needed a quote – I was pretty much told right out that he wouldn’t bother coming unless my husband was home to make the decision. I chose not to tell him that I wasn’t married and was capable of making a decision…since I had already made one based on his attitude.)  But back to my home show experience…

I am thinking of having a couple projects done at my condo – maybe a window replacement, maybe a countertop replacement.  I haven’t yet committed to the idea so was not aggressively flagging down help.  In one case the guy did come over to speak to me (window guy) and I mentioned Condo.  He seemed to immediately lose interest and told me I should talk to the condo association first.  I understand that that is something I need to do, but we aren’t an overly structured association and I wanted to find out a general price range before going to the association.  No interest, no ballpark price range.  (In fact, there might even have been an opportunity for them to set themselves up as the supplier of window work at this association.)

By now I was more curious about what type of attention I might get given the low turnout and the bad economy.  I had expected there would be higher attention and more in the way of special offers.  So I wandered into several booths where there was more than one representative and I was the only potential customer.  They continued the conversation they were having amongst themselves and no one approached, or even seemed to notice I was there.

Now here’s my insight for sales representatives.  It’s true that if my mind was already made up about purchasing, I would have proactively asked you for information and help.  But in this economy business is not necessarily going to come to you…you need to keep an open mind about who your next customer might be and when someone is on the fence put in some extra effort.  Had someone been more proactive about approaching me and supplying information and suggestions of options, they might well have turned me into a buying customer.  I’m not looking for a hard sell – which is just as much a problem as being ignored. Maybe it’s a little like driving a standard – when I was learning I used to pop the clutch all the time.  Finally I learned that the sweet spot is a very small area in the middle, and you need to feel the right level of tension in that sweet spot to control the beginning of the move forward.

Just something to think about the next time you do a quick assessment / dismissal – anyone might be a potential sale if you’re willing to work for it.  I think perhaps that people are now so convinced the economy is bad, that it’s not worth the effort…but that can easily become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Gloria
Potential Customer but Still Looking