The Zen of Social Media Marketing. Shama Hyder

mobile devices for everything from casual searches to serious research to making purchases.

      You’ve probably experienced the frustration of visiting a non-mobile-friendly website on a smartphone and had to expand a page just to be able to read it, or tried to click a button designed to be clicked with a fine-point mouse rather than tapped with a relatively “fat” finger.

      Optimization can be done by building separate websites for desktop and mobile visitors, but a better approach is to design your site using responsive design, or other similar background technology, which adjusts how your site is presented based on the size of the device being used. This means desktop visitors, mobile tablet visitors, and smartphone visitors will all have an optimal user experience. (This same optimization should also be done for your marketing emails.)

       Website 911–EMS

      To be great, your website must do three things simultaneously. It must Educate, Market, and Sell (EMS). Whenever I hear that someone’s website isn’t doing what it needs to, I always find it lacking in one of these three areas. And EMS is essential when it comes to conversion.

      Imagine that all the visitors to your website are dots on a scale from 1 to 10. At 10, a visitor becomes a client or customer—the ultimate goal. Now, imagine a whole bunch of dots scattered on that scale. Some are at 1, some are at 5, and some are at 9.

      The people at 1 are just being introduced to your brand. They just heard about you and have landed on your website for the first time. They need to be educated about how you work before they will buy. (Note: The bigger a sale, the longer the education process may need to be. You don’t think too hard before spending $20 on a book, but you may need more time when you’re buying a $20,000 car.)

      The people at 5 already know you. They may even trust you. They just need to be nurtured for a while longer. They may need more education, or they may need more marketing—or they may just be waiting for the right time. If you are there when the time is right, the 5s are likely to buy. Let’s say you sell Halloween costumes. I may not buy until Halloween comes around, unless another event comes along for which I need a costume. But when I do feel the need, it’s important that you are already positioned as a solution.

      The 9s may be ready to buy but just need the right incentive. Perhaps a final reminder? A last question answered? A discount? Whatever it is, your website needs to provide it to make the sale.

      My goal here is to show you that everyone who visits your website will be at a different point on that imaginary scale. Your website—through Educating, Marketing, and Selling—has to move all the visitors who are an ideal fit to 10.

      Let’s take a look at which elements allow a website to serve as the ultimate marketing tool.

       Seven Elements of a Great Website

      A great website has impeccable design, structure, content, optimization, and maintenance. It also ideally includes a lead capture mechanism and social media integration.

      DESIGN: Looks matter—so much so that scientists have a term for the way looks affect us: the halo effect. The halo effect occurs when we think something looks good on the surface and so we broaden the scope of that positive judgment to include characteristics other than outward appearance. If someone is good-looking, we infer that he or she must also have a good disposition. The same concept applies to websites. If a website looks good, we assume that the company behind it must also do good work. First impressions count. Especially online, where a visitor doesn’t have much to go by except your website.

      LEAD CAPTURE MECHANISM WITH FREE GIVEAWAY: The area on your website where visitors can input their name and email address is called a “lead capture mechanism.” The majority of visitors to your website will not purchase right away. It’s your job to make sure you give them options that allow you to stay in touch with them. Email marketing is a great way to stay in touch with website visitors and prospects. But when was the last time you were eager to give out your email address? Chances are, your visitors won’t be either—unless you provide them with an incentive. A white paper, a recorded webinar, or a free report of some type is usually a good choice.

      STRUCTURE: Ever visited a website and found yourself struggling to find a page . . . or even to get back to the home page? Too many choices boggle the mind. And when our mind is boggled, it is easier to say no than yes. The way you structure your website navigation is crucial. The structure must guide visitors through your website and handhold them (virtually) into taking action. And it must do this for visitors at every level—those who may be ready to buy now and those who are first-time visitors.

       Don’t forget about the structure of your mobile website as well. If you are using responsive design, you want to make sure you understand how that technology is presenting your site on differently sized devices and different operating systems. Your website’s structure will necessarily need to be simplified for mobile, but just like the main version of the site, it must be able to guide visitors in a logical fashion.

      CONTENT: Content is king. It is the heart of every good website and serves multiple purposes. The first purpose is to educate prospects and build expertise. This is why blogs are so heralded. A well-written blog can help you stand out from the competition and educate your prospects. (I talk more about blogs later in the chapter.)

       You can provide content in several forms: written (blogs and articles), audio (podcasts), and visual (video). Want to really kick it up a notch? Provide content in all three forms. This is not overkill; it’s about appealing to the various learning preferences of a potential visitor. In this day and age, choices rule. Give your visitors a choice, and they are much more likely to choose you.

       Good content builds trust and credibility with your network. It shows you are keeping up with the latest and greatest trends and information in your industry. It shows you care by sharing resources and tips with your visitors, and it helps you be seen as an expert in your field—the go-to person for all things. The more information you can share, the better. Again, this content should be syndicated throughout your social networks, helping make you a trusted resource.

       Content becomes especially important if you are in the professional services industry or any business-to-business field in which expertise plays a key role. Content is also the lifeblood of search engines. Think about it: search engines are looking to serve their customers with good search results. They constantly have to separate the wheat from the chaff. They have to differentiate spam sites (websites set up specifically for the purpose of spamming people—think Viagra emails) from real, wholesome websites (like yours!). One of the ways they do this is by looking for content. The more fresh content you provide to search engines like Google to deliver to their customers, the more the search engines reward you.

      SOCIAL MEDIA INTEGRATION: Be sure to make it easy for your visitors to connect with you on the social media networks through your website. Why? Remember, turning strangers into consumers is part of the conversion process. People like to consume information in different formats. One person may prefer to keep in touch with your company on Facebook, although someone else may prefer Twitter, and yet others prefer email marketing. That’s why it’s important to give website visitors multiple ways to stay in touch.

       You also want to make it easy for visitors to share the information with their networks. Having a Facebook “Like” button and a Twitter button on each page of your site for visitors to share information on your website quickly with others is a great way to spread your information as well.

      OPTIMIZATION: Optimization has two meanings here. One, your website has to be optimized internally. A website may look beautiful from the outside, but if the inside is poorly built, chances are it will start to show. For example, if it isn’t coded correctly, it can look odd in certain browsers even though it looks fine in others. The World Wide Web Consortium has a tool that allows you to make sure your website is well coded. The tool can be found at jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator. You just put in your website address, and it will tell you what, if anything, needs to be repaired. The second type