web traffic

July 2016 monitor with truck During the 1980’s, I was always asked if I had a business card so that prospective clients could call me. In the 1990’s, the question became, “What’s your email address so I can write to you?” By 2000, both of these queries were replaced with, “Do you have a website?”

There’s no question that websites have evolved into a highly popular tool for showcasing products and services, providing customers with 24/7 access and attracting media pros seeking interesting stories to put in front of their readers and viewers. That websites are so commonly in vogue today prompted an associate of mine to recently remark that whenever she hears a business doesn’t have an online presence, she can’t help but wonder if (1) if it’s really a legitimate entity or (2) it’s just too lazy to embrace the technology.

Obviously neither assessment is a fair one to make if you don’t know anything about the company or its reputation. In the first place, the existence of a website isn’t an ironclad guarantee of authenticity, nor is there a correlation of authenticity based on how slick/polished/glam the screen looks or how many moving parts there are to seduce your senses. Many an aspiring model or screenwriter, for instance, has been taken in by bogus agencies and production companies that use eye-popping graphics, persuasive language and effusive testimonials that sometimes have no basis in truth. Secondly, the absence of a website could be either a planned decision on the part of management to focus on traditional advertising or a reflection of temporary confusion on how to build a website from scratch.

If you want to avoid the expense of hiring someone to build it for you (and if you don’t count yourself among the computer-savvy), the good news is that there are plenty of software programs, books and online resources to painlessly walk you through the process. The bad news, though, is that an amateur-looking website won’t do you or your company any favors; in fact, it could be worse than not having a website at all.

Once you have it up and running, the challenge is then to keep it interesting enough that visitors will keep returning to see what’s new. To accomplish that, you need to think of your website in terms of a car dealership. Let’s say, for example, that you drive past the same lot twice a day on your commute to work. If you always see exactly the same line-up of cars out front, there will quickly come a point that you no longer bother to even glance in their direction. Since the owner of the dealership can’t afford passersby to be indifferent to the inventory, s/he routinely rotates the vehicles. “Wow!” you exclaim one day. “Was that orange truck always there? I wonder why it never caught my eye before…”

The reality is that the orange truck was always there but just parked in a different place. Once you notice the orange truck, you’re going to start paying attention again and wondering what other kinds of vehicles are available for sale.

The same principle applies to websites. Even if you’re simply reshuffling the contents and changing the color scheme, you’re laying the groundwork to drive repeat visitors to your door.

Excerpted from MEDIA MAGNETISM: HOW TO ATTRACT THE FAVORABLE PUBLICITY YOU WANT AND DESERVE (Available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle)

Back in the days when I worked in state government, I always viewed summer with a mixed sense of anticipation and dread. Summer was the season of interns, the season when the floodgates would open and spill forth dozens of cattle-call applicants in their late teens and early twenties. Although these positions were unpaid, it was management’s vision of a win/win scenario: the interns would get work experience to put on their resumes and the rest of us would get a cadre of malleable minions to do the filing, open mail, stock supplies, and run errands.

While now and again we’d delight in finding a true gem who had the skill sets, initiative, and leadership qualities that could one day translate to a full-time job with us, the majority of them were clearly not the sharpest knives in the drawer. Among them:

The one who threw out any mail that personally didn’t look interesting to her. (She asked me why we never got fashion magazines or People.)
The one who filed all the travel claims under “S” for “someone who took a trip.”
The one who took over an hour to deliver a file to an office located on the same floor. (If we had traced his footprints, they would have looked like Billy’s from a Family Circus)

As the saying goes, good help is hard to find. Bad help (which is worse than no help at all) can take years off your life, cause costly mistakes and jeopardize your reputation. While government agencies and nonprofits have no problem doing shout-outs for extra pairs of hands, a lot of sole proprietors I’ve known over the years are not as willing to admit they’re getting overwhelmed. A part of it, I think, is that they want to maintain the image they’re completely in control (albeit exhausted to the point of collapse). They’re also cognizant of the reality that in the length of time it takes to train a helper how to do something – or correct how the helper did it totally wrong – they could easily have just done it themselves.

Whether you’re looking to go the intern route for short-term projects or planning to one day expand your small business and put out the call for prospective employees, it’s critical to have a clear sense of what you want, how much supervision you want/need to provide, and what the participants can potentially gain from the experience of working with you. The more “ownership” they feel they have in the process and the outcome, the more pride they’ll take in paying attention and doing their assignments well.

These same elements apply to situations where you’re subcontracting with local vendors to provide services (i.e., catering) or outsourcing product-oriented tasks (i.e., assembling goods) to an off-site team an ocean away and with whom you have no physical interaction or quality control mechanism. While you may have the highest trust that everyone is doing what they’re supposed to, the bride whose flowers aren’t delivered on time or the client who receives 500 logo key chains with the company name misspelled isn’t going to mad at your helpers; they’re going to be mad at you for allowing that mistake to happen in the first place.

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Here’s the lineup of my guest contributors this month:

Take the Sting Out of Stress When Moving Offices – by Zachary Rook

And, Or, But – How to Handle Objections – by Julie Garland McLellan

How To Design a Marketable Signature System – by Ling Wong

Using Lists to Draw Web Traffic and Media Attention – by Mickie Kennedy

Website Wonderland

Help Wanted