10 Do It Yourself Website Promotion Tips You Can Use Today

Below is an email I sent out to my networking group ProMetroNet (www.prometronet.com) today. As I was writing it, I realized it might help some of you that are struggling with combining online and offline efforts.

Oftentimes, if you are intimidated by the web or worried about promoting your business in a manner that is out of your time-tested comfort zone, you may not embrace new methods of building your business operations.

The following 10 simple tips are a down to earth set of practices that you can do yourself to increase the visibility of your company...today. Feel free to reach us on our social pages to ask questions about any of these items, we will be happy to e'splain, Lucy. =) God Bless.

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Hi folks.

Good meeting today. Thanks for giving me the time to speak. Hopefully the tips I discussed will be useful for your business.

As a follow up, here are the tips I mentioned in the meeting today on how to do some really simple everyday things you can do to advance your business - both online and offline.

If you liked anything I discussed today, please write a little testimonial about us! If you are on Facebook, please go right now to http://www.facebook.com/rockwebsystems. [Like] our page, and then on the right side please write a recommendation for us. One sentence is fine.

(If you prefer LinkedIn, go to http://www.linkedin.com/in/rocklandwebdesign)

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Ok, here are the top ten items:

1. Always ask for Email address or social address during initial client assessment/intake
2. Send brochure / sell sheet by email within 24 hours (Even an MS Word Document works)
3. Email Signature line - always add some sort of event or promotion or good deed you are working on
4. Send invoice by email / mobile device, instead of giving a paper copy
5. Ask for testimonials after you do a good job...but ask them to post on their Facebook/LinkedIn page! They will be showing it to their 150-350 friends
6. Yelp, BBB, Angie's List, Blue Book - make sure you are listed in those locations
7. Write Press release of good work you've done, send through PR Newswire
8. Write do it yourself tutorials, post to your website. Great way of bringing back people to your site
9. Deals on Facebook, Yelp. Create them and post them, point to your website
10. Qr code on print ads - put them on your print publications

Most of these items are do-it-yourself. Of course, if you need help with anything, Rockland Web Design's team can help. We offer low hourly rates, quick work, and measured results. Check us out at www.rocklandwebdesign.com.

Sincerely,

Tom Ossa
Web Strategist
Rockland Web Design
347-450-0333
Sent from my iPad

How a Company or Marketing Person *Should* Ask for a Link to Their Website

Now this is a website with whom we want to link!

Yesterday I got a request from a blogger, Abby Nelson, to link to an article she wrote about what working Moms post on Twitter. You can check it out here: The Ten Most Popular Tweets by Real-Life Working Moms. Below is the text from her request:

Hi, Tom.

I just posted an article on my blog called "The Tem Most Popular Tweets by Real Life Working Moms, and Why You Might Tweet Them Too". (Link) I figured I'd bring it to your attention in case you thought it might be interesting enough to drop a quick mention on your site about it, as I'm trying to increase the readership of my blog.

Either way, thanks for your time!"

Not for nothing, but I get a lot of these requests, and typically we ignore 99.716% of them. (By the way, 84% of all statistics are made up spontaneously.) But I really liked the way that Abby approached us.

This particular request was a bit different for several reasons, and we thought we should quickly outline three reasons why we chose to link to her blog at Nanny Classifieds. I figure many of you that are reading this would want to have links coming into your website, and want to know the best way of going about it, read on:

1. Authenticity - Abby is clearly not like most people requesting links. She doesn't throw some random BS at us saying "I love your blllooooog (misspelled), and this is very happy useful information - for more useful information, please visit my blog howtoloveamoose.com." Instead, she said she is trying to increase the readership of her blog. Honest.
   
   She also left the decision up to the person that owns the blog. Some people simply expect the person they are contacting to fulfill their wishes. Um, no. But Abby simply said "in case you might be interested." Excellent.
2. Relevance - We are a web design firm that performs Social Media Campaigns. Twitter is certainly part of that mix, so an article about Tweeting is certainly relevant to our audience, and we would want to share it!
3. Quality - When I read the article, I was impressed. It was well-created, and the topic was clearly well thought-out. Plus the blog it self looked really nice, I was happy to show my audience another cool techie that takes pride in her website's appearance.

I gotta head to a meeting now. But I just want to thank Abby for a great blog and a great request. And for you readers, keep the above suggestions in mind when developing your website's or blog's link strategy. If you need help, we can assist you with one of several very cost effective Social Media Programs. Give us a call or contact us at Rockland Web Design.