Whatever the case, if you want your visitors to take a certain type of action, you’ve got to make your intentions clear to them by building effective calls to action into your site!

A “call to action” is just what it sounds like – using the text and design elements on your site, you’re asking your visitors to take the specific action you desire.

Type #1 – The Sales-Oriented Call to Action

Sales-oriented calls to action – as you might expect – include the text and design elements you use to convince website readers to purchase your items.

Consider the example below from home remodeling products retailer BuildDirect:

How many specific calls to action can you see on this sales page?  Just a few include:

• “View our bestselling laminate flooring”
• “Save up to 80% on quality flooring delivered to you in Verona”
• “Connect with Us”
• “Learn More”
• “See it in Action”
• “Shop Now”

Visitors arriving on this website should have no doubt as to the specific actions the BuildDirect company wants them to take.  At this point, the only decision left is which particular action to take – not whether or not to engage with the company in the first place!

So what goes into an effective sales-oriented call to action, and where can you incorporate them into your site?  Consider any of the following elements when determining how and where to add these useful features into your website:

• Good calls to action should be noticeable. Don’t bury your calls to action at the bottom of your website and expect them to still be effective!  Make them large and prominent, using bold graphics and eye-catching fonts in prime locations on your website to make your calls to action as effective as possible.
• Good calls to action should be direct. When adding calls to action to your website, be specific about what you want your visitors to do and use direct language that makes your requests as compelling as possible.  For example, “If you have a second, consider checking out our range of laminate flooring products” simply doesn’t have the same punch as, “Find the best laminate flooring product for your needs now!”
• Good calls to action should be used sparingly.  The more calls to action you add to your ecommerce website, the more you’ll dilute the strength of each individual element.  When adding these tools to your website, think carefully about which one or two actions you most want visitors to take, then use your calls to action to encourage these activities over lesser priorities.

Type #2 – The Opt-In Call to Action

Depending on your unique business model and the type of website you run, you may not be asking readers to buy anything at all!  Plenty of offline service professionals (including real estate agents, insurance agents and many other employees) use their websites to generate qualified leads to contact in the real world.  In addition, many websites use email marketing newsletters to pitch their prospects – a process that begins with an info-gathering opt-in form.

In these cases, the goal isn’t to get visitors to fork over their credit card information – instead, you’re after their personal contact information.  Because you’re appealing to different personal motivations in these readers, the calls to action you’ll want to use on your site are different as well.

Here’s what to consider when adding opt-in calls to action to your website:

• Pitch benefits in your opt-in calls to action.  When asking visitors to submit their personal contact information through your opt-in form, be sure you’re basing your call to action on the benefits of subscribing, not the features.  Use your call to action to show visitors how they’ll benefit by completing your form, not just what they’ll receive for doing so.
• Every element of your opt-in form should be tested. Test the location of your form, the color you use for your opt-in button, the specific wording featured on your button and the text you use when introducing your form and its benefits to your readers.  The more elements you test successfully, the more effective your form will be.
• The fewer pieces of information you ask for, the higher your opt-in rates will be. When developing your opt-in call to action, keep in mind that requesting fewer pieces of personal information will improve your subscription rates.  Consider testing the benefits of a shorter opt-in form as a part of your call to action.

Type #3 – The Social Sharing Call to Action

Finally, suppose you aren’t trying to engage with individual users on a further level – whether through product sales or follow-up information – at all.  Suppose all you want them to do is to share your website content with others, either through “Click to email” buttons or on popular social networking sites.

Even in this case, you still need to make use of calls to action to increase the likelihood that your visitors will follow through and share your content.  Although the practice of social sharing is becoming more commonplace, it’s still unwise to assume that your readers will take any action on their own without your explicit reminders.

To encourage readers to share your content with other users, you need to make the process as simple as possible.

• Build social sharing tools into your content. If you want people to share your business blog articles on Facebook or Twitter, don’t assume that your readers will take the time to copy your link, navigate to their favorite social networking site and then paste your URL into their profiles.  Unless your content is truly tremendous, website engagement isn’t usually high enough for readers to go to these lengths to share your articles.  Instead, make the process as easy as possible by integrating social sharing features directly into your website.
• Use sharing tools in multiple locations.  There are plenty of different social sharing tools out there that can be added to your website, but be aware that one style may not be enough.  For example, suppose you use the popular TweetMeme button, which adds a small “Share on Twitter” button to the upper right-hand corner of your articles.  But what happens if a reader doesn’t decide that he wants to share your article until he gets to the end of the page?  Again, don’t assume that he’ll take the time to scroll back to the top of the article to find your social sharing button.  Add a second set of sharing features to the ends of your articles to capture as many potential “sharers” as possible.
• Ask your readers to share your content directly.  As long as you’ve written good content, most readers will respond well to text that’s written into your articles asking, “If you enjoyed this article, please share it on Twitter so that others can benefit as well.”  Using variations of this request in your content makes your call to action more personal – and, therefore, much harder to ignore than a simple social sharing tool.

Although the process of integrating calls to action into your website may seem overwhelming, try to start small.  Over time and with continued improvements, you could see big changes in your overall conversion rates as a result of these simple additions!

Image: Daniel*1977

Basically, when you first build your website, you make a lot of assumptions.  You assume that the copy you write and the images you choose will be the most engaging options for your target visitors.  And you assume that the product benefits and call to action text you’ve chosen to feature are as compelling as possible and will result in the most possible sales.

But the problem with making these assumptions is that you’re just one person, with an insider’s view of your product or service.  And what you feel is most important to selling or converting leads on your website might not resonate with what your target customers want to see or hear.

To bridge the gap, smart marketers use data-driven decision making based on actual numbers – not assumptions.  When you use web analytics and split testing in order to find out exactly how people respond to the different elements on your site, you’re able to maximize conversions and increase sales with changes that are based on facts.

The Google Analytics program is widely considered to be the gold standard of web analytics, as it’s free to use and full of great features.  If your site runs on WordPress, integrating Google Analytics is as simple as installing a plugin and copying the profile ID from your Google Analytics account.  Installing the program on HTML sites is a little more time intensive (involving copying and pasting blocks of code into the header sections of your site), but still worth it in terms of the information this program can generate.

What kinds of information, you ask?  Well, for starters, Google Analytics can show you where your visitors are coming from, what they’re doing on your site and how long they hang around before leaving.  You can also use the program to find out which pages on your site receive the most traffic, and what keywords people are finding your site for in the search engines.

Using this information, you can make more informed decisions about potential changes to your website.  For example, if you knew that one particular site was sending you the majority of your traffic, you could look for similar sites to work with in order to gain exposure with others who might be interested in your products or services.

Sounds pretty cool, right?  Let’s look at a few of the specific ways you can use this program to make decisions about changes to your site.  For the purposes of this article, I’m going to assume that you already have the program installed, but if you need guidance in this area, check out the Google Analytics “Getting Started Guide.”

Once you’ve logged into your Google Analytics Dashboard, you’ll see a few things right off the bat:

• A graphical representation of the number of visits to your site over the last month,
• More specific details about your site usage,
• A map representing the locations of visitors to your site, and
• An overview of both your most popular traffic sources and content pages.

And while there are tons and tons of different things you can do with this information, let’s stick with the data that can be most easily translated into actionable website improvements for website owners.

So for starters, go ahead and click on the “View Report” link under “Traffic Sources Overview.”

On the next screen, you’ll see more information about the sites that send you traffic, including a breakdown of your top traffic sources and the keywords people are using to access your site.  There are two things you can do with this information – find related sites and uncover new keywords.

I referenced the process of finding related sites earlier, but let’s take a look at this process in more depth here.  Click on “Referring Sites” in the data overview section near the middle of the page for a list of the sites that sent you the most traffic.  Scroll through your top referring sites and see what similarities they have.

For example, if you’re receiving a large portion of your traffic from an article directory, consider adding more content to the site or expanding to post content at similar sites as well.  Alternatively, if you notice that traffic from a particular source has a lower bounce rate or a higher average time on site, look for similar sites on which you can promote your site.  This will save you time and reduce wasted effort, as you already know that traffic from these new sites will be likely to convert.

Next, click back to your Traffic Sources Overview and click “View Full Report” under the “Keywords” summary.  Many website owners find that their sites are receiving traffic from keywords they’d never considered targeting, so this portion of the Google Analytics dashboard can be a goldmine!  If you notice keywords that you aren’t actively targeting sending you traffic, consider adding content to your site that targets these keywords in order to secure an even higher SERPs ranking.

Using these techniques can help you to improve the flow of targeted traffic to your site, but that’s not all Google Analytics can do for you.  To learn more about how your visitors are engaging with your content (and, consequently, to uncover ways to improve their user experience), navigate to the “Content” section by clicking on the relevant tab in the left-hand navigation menu.

Again, there are a few things you can do here.  First, take a look at your Top Content pages, by clicking on “View Full Report” under the summary section.  This will expand into a list of the most popular pages on your site – if your site is small, the default view of ten results may include all of your pages.

Take a good look at this information to check for any pages with either a significantly higher bounce rate or a lower average time on site.  Either of these signals could be an indication that the people who are arriving on these pages aren’t finding what they’re looking for.  Consider going back through your content on these poorly-performing pages and looking for ways to make them more engaging for your visitors.

Within the Content Overview section, you can also click on “Navigation Summary” in order to learn more about how your visitors are moving through your site.  By understanding the paths people take while navigating your site, you can identify any pages that result in significantly more exits than others and take preventative action in order to plug these “visitor leaks”.

Of course, this summary represents only the most basic of overviews into the full power of the Google Analytics program.  As you become more comfortable with the platform, you’ll want to take advantage of more advanced features that allow you to set and manage goals, as well as track the monetary impact of any changes you make.  With time, you’ll find that using data-driven decision making in order to drive the changes on your website results in some significant improvements to your bottom line!

Image: Search Engine People Blog

What this means is that, instead of sitting back and waiting for people to come to your site, you’ve got to be proactive about bringing visitors to your page.  In this article, we’ll look at a few of the best ways to generate traffic to your website, as well as the action steps you need to add each of these strategies to your web promotion arsenal.

Strategy #1 – Blog Commenting

Blog commenting is a truly underrated tool when it comes to generating traffic to your website.  Although it’s a little more hands-on work than other traffic generation strategies, it can be incredibly useful in both improving your SEO and sending visitors to your site.

Basically, blog commenting consists of visiting other blogs in your niche and leaving comments on other peoples’ posts.  When you leave a comment, you’re able to leave a link back to your site as well.  This means that if you comment on high quality sites, you’ll get a link back from each of these sites (improving your SEO), as well as traffic back from other readers who see your comment and click through to your site.

There are two keys to getting the most out of blog commenting – choosing good blogs to comment on and leaving good comments.  When looking for blogs to comment on, choose high PageRank authority sites that have active comment sections.  Remember – if you’re the only one commenting on a site’s posts, you won’t be picking up any traffic from people reading your comments!

Once you’ve identified good sites to comment on, be sure to leave good comments.  This means taking the time to read through the post and come up with something insightful to say.  You don’t need to write a novel in response to a post, but asking a related question or sharing your own opinions on the author’s post are good ways to get your comments approved as often as possible.

Strategy #2 – Forum Marketing

In general, the best way to generate traffic to your website is by putting yourself in front of your target audience – and forum marketing is one of the easiest ways possible to do that.  Think about it – where else are you able to interact directly with your target market and convey your authority in such a meaningful way?

As you might expect, the first step in getting started with forum marketing is to find forums in your niche to participate with.  Look for forums that are as active possible – just like with blog commenting, it doesn’t make sense to go to all the effort of setting up a forum profile and posting topics if there’s no one else around to see your work!

Once you’ve identified a good forum (keeping in mind that the forum you choose doesn’t have to be directly related to your niche, as long as your target audience is present), it’s time to set up a profile.  Upload a profile picture and set up a signature with a link back to your site, as long as this is allowed, based on the terms of use in your chosen forum.

Also, keep in mind that forums are especially sensitive to being marketed to, and you risk getting kicked out if you’re too self-promotional.  Instead of using each post to blatantly advertise your website, provide helpful, substantive advice.  Eventually, people will begin to perceive you as an expert and will want to know more about your business naturally.

Strategy #3 – Guest Posting

Guest posting – or, the process of authoring articles for other websites in exchange for a link back to your site – is another great way to drum up traffic for your site.  As long as you choose good sites to submit guest posts too, you’ll benefit from increased exposure and the implicit endorsement of the blogger or site owner who runs your post.

To get started with guest posting, you’ll need to identify the best possible sites to share your content with.  Again, the best sites for this promotional strategy are those that are high PageRank, with good traffic, active readers and high rankings in the search engines.  You might need to do a little research to uncover your sites, although if you’ve been active in your niche for sometime, you probably already have a good feel for who the acknowledged experts are.

Once you have a few potential guest posting sites, contact the authors to see if they’d be interested in running your guest post (some site owners have pages on their sites to share their guest posting terms, so check there first!).  Spend some time on the target site determining what type of posts perform best so that you can share a proposed topic that you feel will resonate with their readers in this initial email.

Then, once you get the go ahead, draft a good piece of content and submit it – with HTML markup intact – to the site owner and get ready for the traffic to start flowing in!

Strategy #4 – Press Releases

Depending on what niche your business operates in, you may find that releasing notifications to the press about new developments or new achievements is a good way to drum up visitors to your site.

To write a good press release, it’s important to first have something noteworthy to publish.  You don’t need to have cured cancer or launched a rocket to put out a press release, but to get picked up by the best news agencies, you’ll want to save this technique for actual milestones in your business’s growth.

When you do have an event occur that’s worthy of a press release, Google “press release format” to find the accepted structure a press release should follow and then submit it to sites like PRWeb, PRLog and PressExposure.

Strategy #5 – Organic SEO

Truly, the best source of traffic for your website is to earn a top ranking in the organic search engine results pages (SERPs) for your target keyword.  According to a study cited by Search Engine Watch, the sites sitting in the top three spots of each Google results page account for 58.4% of clicks from all users that land on that particular SERP.

So how do you get your site ranked in the top spot?  Well, answering that question isn’t easy, as Google and the other search engines don’t release the exact factors that go into their ranking algorithms.  However, it’s widely accepted that the number and quality of the backlinks pointing to your site, the quality of the content on your site and your site’s load times all affect where your site winds up in the SERPs.

As you might have guessed, incorporating any of the first four strategies discussed in this article is a good way to improve not just the amount of traffic flowing into your site, but the backlink profile as well – both of which can have a dramatic effect on your standing in the SERPs.

In the past, article marketing consisted of writing up 500-word, keyword-optimized articles for submission to article directories – mega content sites that consisted entirely of externally-created web articles with links pointing back to the authors’ sites.  In exchange for posting content to these sites, authors received a high quality backlink and traffic, while the directory profited from advertising revenue as new content was generated and posted.

Google Panda changed this system.  In fact, before it was released that the internal name for this major algorithm change was “Panda”, the update was referred to by SEO bloggers as the “Farmer’s Update”, given the extreme impact the change had on content farm sites.

To put it simply, Google decided that sites consisting of entirely user-generated content and offering little in terms of “authority” content weren’t as important as sites built by genuine authorities and de-ranked these sites for many of the keywords that they were already ranking for in the SERPs.  Some of the major content directories that saw hits to their ranked keywords included EzineArticles, HubPages and Associated Content.

So if simply submitting articles to directories is out, does that mean article marketing is dead?  Absolutely not!  There’s still a ton of potential with this marketing technique – we just need to approach it in a different way…

First, let’s take a look at the article content itself.  In the past, it was good enough to throw together 500 words or less, with your target keyword phrase included a few times to improve the keyword density of your content and a resource box with a compelling link or two back to your website.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you felt about the quality of existing web content) this isn’t going to cut it anymore!

Instead, content generated for the new article marketing should meet the following criteria:

• Content length of at least 800-1,200 words. Remember, Google is looking to reward content that provides exceptional value for its users, and it’s pretty difficult to put anything substantive together in only 500 words.  Longer article length is just one of the criteria that plays into determining whether or not a piece of content is high quality, but it’s a major factor in Google’s eyes.
• Proper attribution. These days, Google is looking for content that’s written by authority figures, and one key giveaway is that real authority authors tend to link out to other sources to properly attribute the facts and statistics cited in their writing.  To mirror this effect (and to be sure Google sees your content as “authority” writing), be sure to link out to high quality sites at least 2-3 times in each article you write.
• Natural writing style. Gone are the days of including your target keyword phrase 5-8 times in an article – no matter how hard you had to work to shove it in there!  Good content is natural and well-written, not focused on meeting arbitrary density requirements.

Of course, drafting good content is only half the battle.  The next important thing to consider is where you’ll submit your new content.

As mentioned previously, article marketing in the past revolved around directories.  And while there’s certainly still some merit in submitting articles to these sites (especially as Search Engine Roundtable notes that many of the sites hit by the initial Panda update have started to see a recovery in their traffic), they shouldn’t be the only tool in your article marketing arsenal.

Instead, one of the strongest article marketing techniques you can use right now is to submit your articles to other websites as guest posts.  In this case, you would identify a site in a similar or related niche as your own and contact the owner of the site to see if he or she would let you post an article to the site.  The owner gets your content for free (a huge bonus, as most website owners are pressed for time!), and you get a link or two back from the article to your site.

To get started with guest posting, you’ll need to first identify good candidates to receive your articles.  If you’ve been active in your niche for some time, you should have a good idea who the authority site owners in your industry are.  If not, you might need to spend some time Googling target keywords in your niche to see who the top sites in the SERPs are.  Ideally, your top guest posting candidate sites should have a high PageRank and a good Alexa score (depending on the niche you’re in).

Once you’ve identified a few possible candidates, search the website to see if there’s any information posted on how to submit a guest post.  Some authors will post quality guidelines on their sites, as well as offer information on whether to write the post or contact the author with a post suggestion first.  In either case, keep any communications you have with the site’s author professional and suggest guest post topics that fit with the site’s existing content and will appeal to readers.

If you get approved to write a guest post, it should go without saying that the content you submit should be of the highest possible quality.  In addition to improving your search engine optimization, guest posting can also significantly increase the amount of traffic to your site, as it’s like you’re getting a vote of approval from an authority site owner when your content is posted on his or her site.  Make it content that you would be proud to have your name attached to, and you should see a pretty big benefit from the added exposure.

Of course, guest posting on blogs isn’t the only way to generate traffic and backlinks through content written for other site owners.  Beyond blogs and static websites, there are plenty of web professionals who run email newsletters or ezines who need content regularly as well.  To target these business owners, follow the same steps as you did with guest posting – find authority newsletters, contact the owner for approval and then submit your best work for publication.

And finally, don’t give up on article directories, either – just don’t sit around and expect that posting a few articles on these sites will be enough effort to generate significant traffic or SEO benefit for your site.  Again, it’s important to write good content and choose only the highest quality articles to submit to the top directories, but you shouldn’t discount this promotional method entirely.

By varying your approach to article marketing and ensuring that the content you create meets the “authority” standards Google looks for in new content, you can position yourself to see not just a flood of new visitors to your site, but a boost in your SERP rankings as well.

But what does engaging web content look like?  For one, it’s bursting with personality.  The people reading it feel like they know you and would consider you a friend.  The language is casual, yet persuasive when it needs to be.  And above all, it makes your readers feel like they’re more than just outside observers to your content – they’re an active part of what’s going on with your site.

Of course, creating this engaging tone is easier said than done.  However, if you feel like your current content isn’t engaging your readers effectively (as evidenced by high bounce rates and low average time on site, according to your Google Analytics reports), it’s worth investing some time in improving your writing style.  Consider the following tips:

#1 – Share Yourself

As a rule, it’s nearly impossible for your website’s visitors to engage with you if they don’t know who you are!  If your website has absolutely no personality, readers won’t feel compelled to engage, lowering your conversion rates in the long run.

So how can you open up and share yourself?  Well, the “About Me” page on your website is one great place to start.  If you don’t already have this page on your site, add it – but don’t just fill it with some boring, boilerplate text.  Instead of the default, “Welcome to my website.  My website is about this topic.  Hope you enjoy it!” use this section to share more about your personal involvement in your chosen niche and what you bring to the table as a website owner.

You can also integrate smaller hints about who you are throughout your website.  If you write a blog that teaches any kind of strategy or shares advice on how to do something, consider adding anecdotes about how you’ve applied the instructions to your own life.  Or, if you run a business or ecommerce website, add sides notes that describe why you offer the products or services that you do, based on your own life experiences.

#2 – Understand Your Readers

Engaging through web content is a two-way street.  Although you can put yourself out there all you want, you still need to understand who your readers are and what interests them in order to form a true connection.

So take some time to think about their motivations.  Why are they reading your website?  What do they hope to get out of the interaction?  The more you know about your readers, the better you’ll be able to tailor your content to their needs.

Consider the following advice from the XD Web Solutions blog:

“Another tip in understanding your readers is to write like you’re talking to ONE reader. I find that I’m more engaged when the author is speaking directly to me using words such as “you” and “yours.””

By taking the time to understand your readers and make them feel acknowledged, you’ll strengthen the relationship you have and make them more likely to convert to buyers or subscribers.

#3 – Ask Questions

People want their opinions to be heard, so one easy way to increase engagement with your readers is by asking questions throughout your website.  If you run a blog, this is easy to do – simply end each post with a question related to the post content and ask readers to share their thoughts and opinions in the comments section.

But even if you run a traditional business or ecommerce website, you can still employ this technique by making questions a part of your static content.  For example, if you sell hand-knitted sweaters on an ecommerce site, one product description could include the question, “Can’t you just imagine wrapping yourself up in this cozy sweater on a cold winter morning?”

Even if you don’t expect your visitors to answer, you’ve gotten them more engaged by activating the part of the brain that automatically thinks up answers to any questions that are posed.

#4 – Create a Story

The most effective marketers are story-tellers.  Think about any long-form sales letter you’ve ever read or any infomercial you’ve ever watched – how many of these sales tools revolve around the story of one person, whose suffering was alleviated by a helpful product?

Obviously, your story doesn’t have to be specifically tailored to sell a product, but giving your readers a clear idea of who you are through a storyline that you’ve defined is a great way to keep them engaged with your website.

To do this effectively, think of 2-3 personal things that make you unique.  By repeating these points throughout your web content, you’ll create a “character” that people will remember and want to come back to.

#5 – Use a Casual Writing Style

Sure, writing in perfect, grammatically correct English has its place – in libraries, universities and government institutions!

The best way to implement a more casual writing style is simply to write in the way that you speak.  Imagine the content on your website as a conversation you’re having with a friend.  Would you tell your friend, “I will be hosting a barbeque on the morrow and would love the pleasure of your company”?  The truth is, you’d probably say something closer to, “Wanna come over for a BBQ tomorrow?  I’d love to have you there!”

You get the idea.  Casual, engaging web writing makes use of contractions, dashes and other technically-incorrect emphasis marks to get the point across, so whenever possible, throw grammar and syntax to the wind and simply write the way you speak.  Your readers will appreciate it!

#6 – Make it Easy to Connect

If it isn’t appropriate to include too much informal content on your website, you might find it easier to engage with your readers by offering additional ways to connect.

Keep in mind – engaging your readers doesn’t have to mean coming across as unprofessional.  If you’re a lawyer, accountant or other business professional, you don’t need to fill your website with slang or cutesy stories just to grab your readers’ attention.  Your readers simply want the opportunity to get to know more about who you are as a person.

One way to accomplish this outside of your website is through the use of social networking sites, which allow you to interact directly with your readers in a less formal setting.  By connecting on sites like Twitter or Facebook, you’re able to share a different side of yourself with your visitors, without compromising the integrity of your primary website.

#7 – Experiment with Alternative Media Styles

There’s no “one-size-fits-all” approach to what works in terms of engaging your readers.  What one group of readers responds to will totally turn off another group, so it’s important to experiment with different styles and different types of delivery.

For example, if your content is text-intensive and readers don’t seem to be sticking it out long enough to take action, why not consider delivering your message through video?  Or, maybe your readers will be more likely to listen to your 30-minute treatise on a given subject if you release it via podcast. Either way, you won’t know until you give it a try!

But is there any merit to these ideas?  Are we slowly evolving into self-involved, narcissistic shlubs, as the news media would have us believe?  And if this is the case, what do these accusations mean for web businesses that use social networking as a key part of their business models?

To determine whether or not we have cause for concern, let’s look at the actual data…

For starters, it’s important to point out – as PsychCentral did in the wake of a particularly inflammatory article decrying social networking on CBS – that there are significant limitations to the current body of social networking research.  Because social media is a relatively new phenomenon, there hasn’t yet been time to conduct the kind of long-term studies necessary to draw any real conclusions about the impact of social networking on our culture.  And to date, the research that has been done is typically small in scale and not necessarily applicable to a wider population.

To illustrate this concept, let’s look at the article, “Facebook tied to poor mental health in teens: What parents must know”, which ran on the CBS News website on August 9^th, 2011.  The article, which was based off of research shared at the 2011 American Psychological Association (APA) annual convention, leads off with the following text:

“Is Facebook turning teens into narcissistic, antisocial outcasts?  One leading social network researcher says yes.”

The article then goes on to describe a number of different maladies that have been attributed to social networking by scientific studies, including anxiety, depression, mania, lower test scores and narcissistic behavior.  Certainly, if you were the parent of a teen or a heavy social media user yourself, the text of this article would be cause for concern.

But hold on for a second – is it possible that we aren’t hearing the full story?  Dr. John Grohol, reporting about the CBS article on PsychCentral, says yes.

“Absent from all of the news reporting is context, as usual. So-called journalists simply take what is said at the conference or in the APA press release, consider it factual, and report on it accordingly.”

In his article, Dr. Grohol goes on to describe the circumstances under which each study used to draw the conclusions of the APA press release in question.  For example, the CBS article describes the negative mental health effects of social networking as including, “more aggression, mania, anxiety, and depression.”  And while the CBS article frames these ill effects as far reaching, the actual evidence may not support this conclusion.

According to Dr. Grohol, the only scientific study that has shown a correlation between heavy social media usage and negative mental health effects in teens and young adults was carried out on a very limited sample of only 70 students attending Assumption College (a small Catholic college in the Northeast US).

Now, there are a couple of important things to point out about this particular, the first of which is that correlation does not equal causation.  Just because researchers noticed a higher incidence of mental illness in heavy social networking users doesn’t mean that it was the use of social media sites that specifically caused the mental health issues that were observed.  In fact, as Dr. Grohol notes, it’s entirely possible that social networking users with existing mental illnesses are drawn to use social media sites more frequently as an alternative to in-person interactions.

It’s also important to note that the sample used in this study is very small and not nearly a good enough representation of social networking users as a whole to draw the conclusions made in the CBS article.  Seventy people is hardly a large enough body to predict the effects of social networking on every teen and young adult, and the experiences of a small group of private college students certainly wouldn’t translate to older users, the elderly or even high school social media users.

In addition, as Dr. Grohol points out, the CBS article leaves out the results of one of the largest studies of social networking usage to date, perhaps because its conclusions didn’t fit the neat narrative designed to attract readers to the CBS news website.

“In a large study conducted on 2,603 undergraduate college students in Texas, researchers found a positive relationship between the intensity of Facebook use and students’ life satisfaction, social trust, civic engagement and political participation (Valenzuela et al., 2009).”

So what conclusions can we, as web business owners, draw from this discussion of whether or not increased social networking usage is negatively affecting us?

First, we can unanimously agree to ignore the opinions put forth as fact in these link-bait news articles.  No matter how the scientific studies are twisted to prove a point, it’s hard to argue with the fact that Facebook recently surpassed the 500^th million registered user, or that Google+ filled its first 10 million slots within a few days of opening to the public.  Social media is here, and it isn’t going away any time soon.

It’s also important to keep in mind that social networking sites can be a powerful tool for good.  As Dr. Grohol points out, the elderly population – often thought of as being ill-informed when it comes to technological advances – are taking to social networking sites at a surprising pace, perhaps because these tools enable them to connect with friends and loved ones at a time when physical conditions may prevent these interactions from occurring face-to-face.

Social networking sites have been used to increase awareness for charitable causes, raise money and encourage interactions between vastly different socioeconomic groups.  And despite the larger role social networking sites play in our lives and what the news media would have you believe about this development, our society hasn’t completely shut down as a result of brain-washed social media users.

Consider this final quote by Dr. Grohol:

“There is little proof that using Facebook and other social networking websites like it cause significant or meaningful health or mental health problems in the vast majority of teens or kids who use them.”

So at this point, the way forward is clear.  It would be foolish to abstain from social media marketing based on the results of a few small scientific studies and lose out on all the benefits this channel has to offer.  So as long as social networking is used in a responsible, ethical way, there’s no reason it can’t – and shouldn’t – continue to play a hugely beneficial role in increasing brand awareness and disseminating information for your company.

If you have any doubts about whether your current website design is working for you or not, consider the following advice.

Reason #1 – Bad Design

Despite the popular saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” the truth is that we all make these snap judgments based on first impressions – and this goes double for the homepages of most websites.  In fact, when you consider that the average first-time website visitor takes fewer than seven seconds to decide whether or not to stay on your site or click “Back”, it’s easy to see why good website design matters.

Of course, design is a subjective thing, and what appeals to one visitor might turn off another.  However, there are some basic rules that you should never, ever break when it comes to web design.

No animated graphics! Nothing says late 90s like a dancing snowman gif graphic.  If you’ve got them on your website, get them off – there’s a good chance they’re killing your conversions.

• No frames! Frames (the website structure that allows one portion of the screen to remain stationery while the rest scrolls independent of it) are outdated, and have been deprecated by current HTML standards.  Instead, choose a website structure that relies on the more modern <div> tag to give the page its form.
• Use web safe colors! Although monitor resolution has come a long way since the late 1990s, there are still some general rules of thumb to follow when setting up the color palette for your website design.  For example, use a high amount of contrast between your text and the background color, include plenty of white space to give your visitors’ eyes a break and use color sparingly as an accent so that it doesn’t overpower your message.

Reason #2 – Poorly Structured Navigation

People come to your website looking for information.  Maybe they got there by typing your URL directly into their browsers, or maybe they’ve landed on your page after typing a question into a search engine and stumbling across your site in the results.  Regardless of how they’ve found you, they’re looking for something – so how do you think they’ll feel if it takes them half a dozen clicks just to locate the page that answers their questions?

As you can see, navigation is important, but what does good navigation look like in practice?  For starters, it’s shallow, which means that most pages on the site can be accessed within three clicks (via the site’s navigation structure and internal links).  It’s also intuitive, which means that the categories you’ve designated in your navigation menu make sense to the user, who is able to select between different navigation options to find specific pieces of content.

Of course, determining whether or not a navigation menu is intuitive is tough to do when you’ve had your nose buried in your site throughout the development process.  For this reason, it’s a smart move to enlist a trusted friend or family member to take a look at your site and let you know if the categories you’ve chosen make sense.

Reason #3 – Slow Load Times

No matter how pretty your site is or how intuitive your navigation structure might be, people still aren’t going to stick around if your site loads slowly.  Remember what we said earlier about only having a few seconds to capture someone’s attention?  If visitors have to wait 10-15 seconds for all your images to load, they’ll be gone just as quickly as if you assaulted their eyes with neon graphics.

But slow load times aren’t just bad for your visitors – they could also be hurting your search engine rankings as well.  In early 2010, Google employees Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts announced on the Google Webmaster Central Blog that the search giant is now including page speed as one of the many ranking factors that determine where a site will land in the search engine results pages:

“We encourage you to start looking at your site’s speed (the tools above provide a great starting point) — not only to improve your ranking in search engines, but also to improve everyone’s experience on the Internet.”

To improve your speed, install a caching plugin (if your site runs on WordPress) or compress images and clean up old deprecated code (if your site runs on HTML).  For more ideas on how to get your site to load faster, run it through the Web Page Test service and consult a web development professional on how to implement the recommended changes.

Reason #4 – No Clear Message

There are billions and billions of websites online today, which means that – unless you’re one of the few truly unique business models out there – your visitors have several options available to satisfy their needs.  And, as stated above, since you only have a few seconds to grab their attention, it’s crucial that you clarify immediately what your website is about and how you’re different from other sites online.

In marketing, identifying this point of differentiation is often referred to as developing your USP – your unique selling point or proposition.  If you’re getting a lackluster response from your website visitors (as demonstrated by low conversions and a high bounce rate), it could be because you a) don’t have a clear USP yet or, or b) your USP isn’t clearly stated on your site.

If you don’t feel like your USP is clear, consider the following seven guidelines for creating a solid USP by E-Myth author Michael Gerber:

Make it short – a phrase, not a sentence.

1. Keep it vague enough to leave room for the imagination of your reader.
2. Try to convey a positive feeling.
3. Give it impact and emotion.
4. Avoid defining your business as a commodity.
5. Focus on the promise of emotional gratification – the result or benefit – not the work or features you offer.
6. Make it consistent with the general perception of your business and what you have learned of your customer’s gratification mode and purchase preferences.

Once you’ve developed your USP, make sure your message shines through on your website.  Put it in the header, in the sidebar, in your graphics – whatever it takes to be sure that it’s immediately apparent to visitors what sets your website apart from all the others online.

Reason #5 – No Call to Action

Unless your website is strictly informational, chances are you want your visitors to do something after landing on your site.  Maybe it’s purchasing a product, visiting your physical location, subscribing to an email marketing list or even something as simple as printing off a coupon for use on a future purchase.

But unfortunately, unless you tell your readers explicitly what to do, most of them will leave your site without doing a darn thing.  According to Copyblogger editor Sonia Simone:

“If you want your reader to take action, use highly specific language with clear, concrete details. Don’t leave any question about what you want to see happen. And don’t be afraid to be a little ‘too obvious.’”

Telling your visitors exactly what to do is known as a “call to action” in marketing jargon.  Crafting one isn’t always easy, but it’s worth investing the time and energy into drafting the closing text that ensures your website is as effective as possible.

Image: Remarkable Design

But what if you aren’t ready for the “latest tips and tricks” on how to effectively integrate these tools into your website’s promotional campaign?  What if you’re still simply wondering what these sites are, why you should care and how to get started?

In this article, we’re going to go back to the basics, examining the purpose behind these social networking titans and identifying ways to use them successfully in conjunction with your standard website.  So if you’re ready to finally get up-to-speed on social networking – one of the web’s biggest paradigm shifts – let’s get started!

First of all, let’s make one thing very clear.  Social networking sites are tools that can add an element of interactivity to your traditional website – they aren’t replacements for your website.  Most visitors who interact with you on new media sites will still want to reference information on your regular website, and it’s important to remember that you don’t own any content you build on social networking sites (information shared there becomes the property of the network itself).  For these reasons, it’s important to maintain your website even as you add social networking profiles into the mix.

So, with that caveat out of the way, let’s jump in to our first social networking site – Facebook.  Although Facebook isn’t the first social networking site (that distinction is usually given to the now-defunct Friendster website), it’s one of the longest running social networking sites online today and the one with the largest reach in terms of total users.

Originally founded in 2004 by Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg and his roommates, The Facebook (as it was once known) was intended to be a portal through which Ivy League students could connect with one another.  The base of the site has always been the individual profiles users are able to set up, which share things like education, marital status, interests and activities.

But beyond the simple ability to share information about yourself, Facebook enables users to connect with each other and share updates in real time.  Once a new user establishes a profile, he or she can “friend” acquaintances (allowing access to the acquaintance’s private information), share current status updates, send private messages to friends and friends and, more recently, chat with friends through the Facebook chat tool.

In fact, for this reason, Facebook is best thought of as an evolved dating site – although the goal of Facebook users isn’t necessarily to find a new flame, but to create ongoing connections with friends and family members.

Of course, since the site’s launch in 2004, significant changes have been made, including the launch of “pages” that can be set up for businesses, websites, public figures and other non-personal institutions.  If you own a web business or website, setting up one of these pages to represent your company is a great way to interact with your customers in real-time (compared with standard websites, which require communication through phone or email).

If you haven’t yet started using Facebook for business, you’ll want to take the following steps to get up-and-running:

1. Set up a profile for yourself (use a pseudonym when setting up the account if you use a different name in your business – Facebook’s TOS only allow for one account per person).  Populate this profile with information about yourself, set your privacy settings, and begin connecting with friends and family members using the “Add as Friend” buttons near their names.
2. Once your profile is established, set up a page for your website by navigating to http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php.  Choose the type of page that’s most applicable to your business (most people will choose “Local Business or Place”, “Company, Organization or Institution” or “Brand or Product”).
3. Add content to your business page and encourage your website visitors to “Like” the page.   The number of “Likes” you have may factor into your site’s ranking in the search engines, making it even more important to get started with Facebook ASAP.

For more details on how to set up and optimize your Facebook business pages, check out Facebook’s new “Facebook for Businesses” guide.

Following the launch of Facebook in 2004, the next major social networking site to gain prominence and widespread adoption was Twitter (launched in 2006), although the roots of this new media engine go back to the mid-1990s.  To understand what Twitter is and how it’s used, we first need to understand what it grew out of – blogs and blogging.

The word “blog” is a combination of the words “web log”, and it refers to a type of website that is frequently updated with new content, typically by one author.  Think of blogs as a type of web journal or diary, where the author is able to share timely information in a sequential manner.  Blogs can be written on a particular topic (such as finance, business or lifestyle/personal interest stories), or they can be a general sharing of one person’s thoughts.

Twitter is what’s known as a “micro-blogging” platform, meaning that its users share the same type of information that they would on their blogs through their Twitter profiles, but with one key restriction – Twitter’s 140-character post limit.  Because of this inherent need for brevity, Twitter updates take on more of a conversational feel, although it may take new users some time to warm up to the rapid-fire sharing of thoughts and information that occurs on the site.

If you fall into this category, don’t worry.  According to Mashable:

“Twitter is just communication in a new shape, but it’s also a platform for listening to the communication of others in new ways.”

From a business perspective, Twitter offers a number of unique advantages not present on traditional, static websites.  For example, business owners can search Twitter feeds for questions related to their business, their products or their industry.  By answering these questions directly, in real time, business owners can demonstrate their knowledge and authority, while generating traffic to their homepages.

Here’s how to get started with Twitter:

1. Sign up for an account at Twitter.com.  Keep in mind that your username will be displayed on all of your Tweets and your conversations with other Twitter users, so you’ll need to decide up front whether it makes more sense to use your personal name, your business name or some combination of the two.  Fill out the rest of your profile, being sure to include a bio and a picture (users tend to engage more with people who have these two items completed).
2. Start Tweeting!  “Follow” people in your industry, and then start sharing helpful information via tweets.  If you aren’t able to spend time on the site regularly, enlist the help of tools like the free Buffer app to schedule Tweets ahead of time.
3. Schedule regular searches of Twitter for keyword related to your business (generally, it’s best to do this at least once a week, or more often if you’re able to).   Whenever you see people asking questions about your industry, reach out and provide helpful information that answers their questions.

Once you have your basic profiles up and feel more comfortable with these two new media sites, you’ll want to take your promotional strategies to the next level.  When you’re ready to move on and take full advantage of these services, be sure to check out Search Engine Watch’s guide, “Social SEO – Facebook & Twitter Best Practices”.

Image: daniel_iversen

For all its intimidation factors, guest posting is worth the risk for the exposure to new audiences, the new relationships with other bloggers, and the high-quality backlinks. So how can you pitch your posts and assure that they will be accepted as often as possible? Start by following these simple pieces of advice.

Know the blog

You need to have at least a surface-level familiarity with the blog you are pitching to. Make sure you have read the About page and a number of the recent posts. Notice whether or not other guest posts have appeared recently, and check for a page that describes how to present a guest post proposal.

If the blog has instructions on how to submit guest posts, and if the blog’s requirements contradict anything else you have read, always follow the blog’s specific requests. These tips are general guidelines, but many larger blogs are overwhelmed with guest post proposals, and the requests which don’t follow the blog’s requirements are easily discarded. Make it clear that you have done your research.

Be sure to choose the right blog to start submitting guest posts. Try starting with smaller blogs before targeting A-list bloggers, and be sure to listen to and learn from any feedback from editors or commenters.

Offer multiple ideas

When a blog does not specifically request a fully written post, it is best to offer post ideas instead. By providing two or three different ideas, you can be sure that you are spending time on the post which will get the best reception by the blog’s audience. You will also be able to incorporate any ideas or requests from the editor, instead of trying to add them in later.

When offering your ideas, flesh them out enough to be understood without being too wordy. Try offering article titles and one or two sentences describing what you would write about. Format the email so that the titles stand out – using a bulleted list or making the titles bold with the descriptions beneath.

Prove your mettle

If you are not sending a fully-written post, show the quality of your writing by sending links to your best work. Sending links to your blog helps, but showing other guest posts that you have written shows the blog that you are pitching to that you are experienced with guest posting. The social proof of seeing that other bloggers have trusted you to guest post on their sites can also help influence an editor to accept your work.

If you blog on a similar subject as the blog you are submitting a proposal to, you should point out your site as well. Also mention if you have specific expertise or another reason for being a good voice in your field. When other bloggers respect you as an authority or insider instead of a newcomer, you will have more meaningful connections which might even blossom into other partnerships.

Cut to the chase

Though this might seem like a lot of information to put into an initial contact, you should also make sure your first email is as short and streamlined as possible. Include a sentence or two of introduction stating that you would like to guest post, include your guest post ideas, and then add links to previously posted work. End with a simple thank you.

Avoid sending attachments unless they are specifically requested. Most people, including bloggers, view any attachments from unknown senders with suspicion, and might go as far as ignoring your email when they saw it had an attachment.

Though you might be anxious about the idea of guest posting, start by just writing a proposal. Once you know that a subject is right for a particular blog, you can write your post with that blog and its audience in mind. Plus, nothing speeds up writing like a deadline! By taking a baby-step approach to writing guest posts, you can get your posts done with less anxiety and more success.

Getting Started

Like any real merchant account, you’ll need to sign up with Intuit Web Payment.  It is a quick and easy process and you can start listing your products as soon as you are approved.  Setting up products is easy:

Intuit Website product manager

All you need is a name, a description and a price.  Do put some thought into the description.  If it’s a common product, the manufacturer probably already has marketing-ready copy to use.  If it’s a unique product, then be creative!

Of course, it’s best if you also provide a picture.  You can upload a new one directly on this page.  Quality photographs will help your customers see you as a professional store.  Again, a manufacturer might already have images ready for use.  If not, for smaller items, consider using a lightbox to diffuse the light and isolate your product from the background – they cost around $100.

Despite its name, our SimpleStore can handle the most common advanced features including:

• Adding attributes, such as size and color.  You can even set a different price for each option, e.g. if you want to charge more for extra large.
• Setting special shipping prices for an unusually hard to ship item.
• Using categories to give your customers an easy way to browse thru the items in your store.

Adding SimpleStore to your Intuit Website

Once you’ve created your listings, it is easy to add them to your existing Intuit Website.  If you are starting from scratch, check out this blog post to see our great new template gallery and learn how to get started creating a website for the first time.

Most businesses will want to add a new page to their site that is dedicated to their store, keeping the other pages to provide general info, contact info, testimonials, and so on.  With your website loaded for editing into SiteBuilder Plus, create a new page.   Now, simply go to the eCommerce tab and drag a SimpleStore onto your website.  We suggest you size it to fill the page.

That’s it!  Your store is pre-configured to work with your Intuit Web Payment account.  Here’s an example of a finished cookie store:

Finished Cookie Store

SimpleStore and Intuit Web Payment in Action

When your customers visit your website and see products they like, they add them to their cart.  When they are ready to checkout, they will see this clean, professional checkout page:

Intuit Web Payment checkout page

There are no ads, logins, or other information to turn away your customers – just this 1-page checkout.  And when your customers ultimately get their credit card statement, it will have your business name showing, not some other company’s name, so they won’t be confused or concerned.

Taking Payments Over the Phone

If you or your customers prefer to order over the phone – Intuit Web Payment comes with an online terminal so you can take their credit card info over the phone.  The choice is yours.

Getting Paid

That’s what it’s all about, right?  Intuit Web Payment automatically transfers funds to your bank account – fast.  Some payment systems hold your money for weeks, and make you come get it.

The bottom line is that by leveraging our new Intuit Web Payment capability, you can now accept credit card payments the way that is best for your customers and your business.