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Part 2 of social media marketing: ensure your site is visit-worthy
March 28, 2008

Part 1: research & evaluation / benchmark what people are discussing
Part 2: ensure your website is visit-worthy
Part 3: create bookmarks & tagging for your content
Part 4: increase your linkability & reward your inbound links
Part 5: evaluate the online channel strategies

Once you have performed your research and know which sites your customers are visiting, what they're discussing, and where/how you can contribute to their questions, now you need to visit your own website objectively. Before you begin to recruit "evangelists" to discuss your business, you need to ensure that your site is visit-worthy. 

1.  Does your content contain what people were discussing?  Using the Vintage clothing example from step 1, people were wondering how to shop for vintage clothes and what to look for.

2.  Do you have outbound links (links to other sites, even competitors)?  In this media you want to be seen as a visitors resource, even if you don't understand how linking to your competitors can be beneficial to you.  The goal is to have visitors see your site as a place to go for information--in addition to what your sell--and tag it as helpful (more on this later).  This will help your search engine relevancy.

3.  You need to be adding value, not just selling your products/business.  Every day, your customers are being bombarded with every conceivable buy me! buy me! message possible, they don't want the hard sell by you.  There's nothing more off-putting then visiting a site (or reading an email) that evokes the feeling of being slimed (greasy used car salesman approach), strong-armed, or telling us something that is belittling (like we need to buy this product to be prettier/slimmer/xyz...all is takes is one search to discover all the reasons why customers should buy or not buy that product - people are discussing it somewhere).

4.  What does your About Us section really say about you?  Are you boring or appealing?  Are you a business your target audience will relate with? Ask if you're not sure. People will check this out, after they view your content, to see if you're someone they want to associate with.  

It may seem tedious, but your site says more about you than anything else (to the online community). Taking the time to analyze assess your content will pay off in the long run.

Posted by Suze Bragg on March 28, 2008 | Comments (1)