WebRev Blog

Mashable had a great post over the weekend, listing the factors that make a tweet credible, according to researchers from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University.  The data seems to confirm what we discussed  last week pertaining to networking and reciprocation, regarding the idea that there is a trend away from "following" or subscribing to a bunch of people online just to grow a network.  According to this study, this practice can actually be a detriment to perceived credibility, at least according to this study.

So what does work?

According to this same study, it appears some of the old-fashioned methods of gaining credibility may be seen as more valuable, especially in their fancy new "new media" clothes.  

At the top of the list of items which increase one's perceived credibility online are peer review and demonstrating that you are a subject matter expert in your field, along with backing your data with credible references.  These concepts have always been important in the fields of academia, literature, science, and journalism - whether in print or online.  Increasingly, they are finding their place into new media, and (at least indirectly) into the search engines, which are an important lifeline for young researchers.

Which brings us back to your website, your blog, and your social networks?  How can you increase your online credibility? 

1) Network with other industry experts.  Link to their quality content when it makes sense to do so.

2) Establish yourself as an expert in your industry by being the go-to place in your market niche.

3) Make sure the sources you link to are high-quality credible ones.

4) Be current in your delivery, but make sure your grammar is correct and your graphics are professional

What are the ways the people you follow online convinced you that they are credible?

I've been doing some "online shopping," lately, but not with the intention of buying online.  I've been shopping local businesses - those businesses within about 10 miles of my home.  We've had a construction boom in this area recently, and I'm finding that a lot of the services I used to drive into Tulsa to buy are now available in my home town - Broken Arrow.  

Rather than driving all over town, exploring nearly-completed strip malls, I've made a new habit of checking online (usually on my mobile) to see if I can get what I'm looking for is open yet.  I've been pleasantly surprised at what I'm finding.  So, let's talk about some of the things I've been looking for online - and what your local potential customers may be looking for they're trying to find your product or service online.

1) A website.  I'm still amazed at how many businesses are only available in online directories and unreliable referral services - without their own web page.  Remember, customers tend to be motivated to go online and "review" a business when they're angry, so if your entire online presence consists of a listing Google's crawlers pulled from the yellow pages and a Yelp listing - you're putting your business' online reputation in the hands of a software program and your angriest customers.  Don't do that.  You really need to take charge of your own online reputation by setting up your own web presence (web page, social networking sites, etc..) and making sure that your customers can easily find your business in a search engine - both by the name of your business, and by searching for your product in your city (e.g. "steak, broken arrow").

2) Mobile.  Increasingly, people are searching for local business information on-the-go.  They may get a hankering for sushi while they're out shopping, or for fish tacos while they're watching a movie. They might be at the auto-repair shop, and realize they have an extra hour to kill, and start looking for one of those nice pedicure shops that has the massage chairs within walking distance.  Make sure your customers can find you on their mobile devices.  Even if your full website is not mobile friendly, they should be able to access a listing of your basic services, a map to your front door, and access to any specials you might be running, and a phone number they can call to ask you if you have what they need in stock.

3) Tags. Actually, most of your customers don't know they're looking for your tags, but they're important. Your customers simply enter what they're searching for (i.e. "keywords," or "search words") into their search engine, such as "day spa Bixby," or "wine tasting Edmond, OK," into their search bar.  If they have a coupon or they've heard about or read about a special deal offered by your establishment, they may also search by the name of your business and the name of your town.  Make sure you have your posts, articles, and entries properly categorized, tagged, and titled.  If you have your menu posted as an image, make sure you also tag that image with the most popular items on that menu (the search engines can't crawl text in an image, so they won't know if your menu has steak or burritos or both). If you offer delivery or curbside pickup, or some other popular service or item, make sure this is tagged prominently on your site.

What else do you look for when you're shopping local businesses online, and do you have suggestions for incorporating these features into a website?

I've been looking for a better system of compiling the research I do for blog posts and other projects.

Storing my links, photos, text and citations for these projects on a hard drive long ago ceased to be practical, as I do much of my reading on my mobile phone, but most of my writing on my laptop.  I needed portable storage that I can access from anywhere.  Thumb drives are just one more thing to carry, store, and try not to damage, (and they don't work on my mobile phone, so web-based storage is a must.  I've tried several systems, but haven't really been happy with any of them.  I finally gave up a while back, and just started storing this information in a web-based e-mail account set up for this purpose. 

Finally,  today I found an application called Evernote, and I really like it.  It functions like e-mail storage and threading, but is much easier to categorize and tag.  Photos, web clips, links, audio messages, and text.  The files are called "notes," and these notes can be for shared or individual use.  I also downloaded the "web clipper" for my browsers and I can just right-click on any web page and store the link and/or the page in my notes for quoting later. 

It's very user-friendly to download and use - from the website or from the wireless provider's app market.  The app works as a plug-in, rather than a tool-bar, so it doesn't take up any valuable space on smaller screens.  So far, there isn't anything that I DON'T like about this program. 

All notes can be tagged, so that when it's time to begin writing on a topic, I need only to pull from the notes on that tag.  It's great.  If you would like give it a try, visit Evernote.com.  There is a premium version available, but the free version is great.

As a local business, your readers are most likely to find your website when they Google you to get directions, find out more about the products and services you offer, and see if you have any "specials," that would apply to what they're needing that day.

If they manage to do this (preferably on their mobile devices), you're doing a good job with "SEO," which is "search engine optimization." Now, what you want to work on is reader retention - getting those readers to keep coming back.

They will keep coming back if you give them a reason to add you to their feeds, either in a feed reader or on one of the social networks like Facebook or Twitter (note that if you post your entire articles to the feeds, it is likely your readers will seldom actually click through to your blog, so you'll want to pay attention to the stats for those feeds and include them in your reader retention numbers).

With all of the other websites out there, what makes people want to include YOUR blog or website in their daily reads? Simply put, you need to pack your website with something of value to that reader.  Here are some common features that will make readers think, "Oh, I want to make sure I get the updates on this site!"

1) Humor.  Think of the site "ICanHasCheezburger."  According to conventional means, this isn't even a "good" website.  It has a stupid, hard to type name and URL. The design is...it actually doesn't even have a design.  The content is a mess - mostly user generated.  But they're one of the most popular websites out there.  I visit the site a couple of times a day. Why? There's always something there that makes me laugh.  It's good clean fun (safe for work, in case you get caught surfing at the office), and there's something for everyone.

2) Shareable content. If you provide content that is "quote worthy," relevant to your industry, in a timely fashion, it's likely you'll attract the attention of other bloggers who are blogging about your topic.  They'll add you to their feeds just to keep "tabs" on what you're wriitng about.

3) Freebies. This doesn't mean that you have to provide the products or services that you normally sell of profit for free. That's usually not a good idea.  But you might be able to provide inustry-related information, links to great deals online, or some other product or service of interest to your target demographic.  For example, a day spa might provide daily bits of wisdom on stress relief or maintaining healthy skin and hair.

4) Dicounts.  If you normally offer discount specials in your other advertising efforts (such as the phone book, newspaper, radio advertisements, etc.) be sure to include them on your website as posts that will show up in your feeds.  This will give people a good reason to click through to your site to check out and hopefully use the product or service you're advertising.

5) Event Calendar.  A community event calendar can be a great way to establish yourself in your local market niche, and network with other professionals in your industry (they won't want to be left off of your calendar).  Performing artists often include calendars of their own performance dates on their websites for easy access, as well.  If you use a calendar, be sure to put the updates in the form of a blog post or article that will show up in your feeds.

What other ideas do you have for packing your website with value for your readers?

I wrote earlier this week about the internet protest against SOPA and PIPA, an event which is now being deemed the "internet blackout."  One of the ways word was spread about the even was by internet petitions like Stop the Wall and Stop American Censorship, and Google's anti-SOPA petition, and others.  ReadWriteWeb estimated that a total of 7.5 million people signed petitions (it is unknown how many of those were duplicates from people signing more than one).

Considering this is proposed U.S. legislation, and there are only about 300 million people in the United States, and even allowing for the fact that activists may have signed multiple petitions multiple times, it's obvious that the idea of internet censorship gets A LOT of people fired up (as well it should).  

So now, what is going to happen to those internet petitions?

What is going to happen with all of the data that was gathered by those who signed the petitions?

Yes, the numbers will probably be used for lobbying purposes, but the actual signatures cannot be used for any official purpose by the U.S. Houses of Congress or by the President.  Mostly, that data was gathered for the benefit of the petition hosts.

Google says (emphasis mine),

"Your first name and last initial may be published publicly as part of the petition to Congress. Your email address may be used to send you updates on SOPA/PIPA and other Internet policy initiatives. Your zip code is used to display the groundswell across the country and inform the appropriate members of Congress for your district and state. That’s it. Your personal information is in no way connected to any other Google services or Google account."

So, Google now has about 4.5 million e-mail addresses of civil libertarians which it can and will contact in regard to any "internet policy initiative," including informational e-mails from it's paid advertisers on these topics and...surprise...fund-raising efforts from those paid advertisers.  If you signed that petition, get ready for an onslaught of spam from just about every political organization that knows how to use e-mail.

So what's the good news?  We've written extensively here on WebRev that polls are a good way to increase blog readership.  Why? Because people just love to give their opinions.  The petition takes the poll a step further by requiring the respondent to give their contact information in order to particiapte.  This allows the petition host to gather information for a newsletter, or other e-mail contact.  Of course we know all of our readers here are ethical and would not sell or share their lists without the express permission of the people on that list.  Used strategically, a petition can be a way to quickly gather contact information for a target demographic.

After reading 10 Things All Entrepeneurs Fail At by TechCrunch's James Alutcher (and resisting the English teacher inside of me wanting to correct the grammar mistakes in the title), I thought of a couple of mistakes I've made and seen others make when putting their new business venture on the web in the form of a website and/or a social networking profile.

The first is underestimating the importance of an online presence.  I went through my local coffee shop's drive-thru earlier this week, and while I was waiting in line, I decided to look them up online.  I was stunned to see that they really have no online presence.  They're in a few directories developed by other people, but they don't have a website or any sort or any social networking profiles that I could find.  Needless to say, I'm working on a proposal (I wonder if they would let me do the job for free mocha frapps...hmm).  But I digress.

One of the first things people do now when they discover a new business, or when they're checking out a new business, is LOOK THEM UP ONLINE.  If they're a local business, people expect to be able to see the hours of operation and a map to nearby locations.  People are also hoping to look at a menu of the products, and maybe even a discount.  In many cases they'll be using their mobile devices to do this.  Any business that hasn't taken charge of its own online reputation by having at least their basic contact information listed online in an easy-to-find and use format is missing the boat. 

The other mistake we all tend to make when we're starting a new business, and caught up in the excitement of seeing our first website (and showing all of our friends), is that we might overestimate how much business we're going to get from that website.  Somehow we tend to imagine that there are millions of people just sitting out there with a void in the shape of whatever we're selling that are going to be so happy that we finally opened for business and put up a web page or a Facebook profile.  Maybe that will happen, but just in case it doesn't (ahem), it's important to remain realistic about the purpose of our website and the goal of our online efforts. 

Sure, if you really study and implement good search engine optimization and you have a business that is geared toward online commerce, you may see a lot of profit just from the online traffic you generate.  For most local businesses, however, the website and/or social networking profile is the new yellow pages ad: You must have one so that people will know you're legit, but the traffic you're going to get solely from there will be a small percentage of your overall profits. 

Have a great weekend, everyone!