But before you put your website design into a consensus process with a group any bigger than two people, consider what Seth Godin has to say in “If committees told the truth”:

“Hi, we’re here to take your project to places you didn’t imagine.

With us on board, your project will now take three times as long.

It will cost five times as much.

And we will compromise the art and the vision out of it, we will make it reasonable and safe and boring.”

Great work is never reasonable, safe or boring. Thanks anyway.

Headlines are even more important online than in print, because readers are skimming more quickly and are being much more picky about what they spend time reading.

HubSpot has come out with a new list of 13 headline templates proven to get attention for your writing. Here are the first few:

1. 5 Things You MUST Know About [Insert Business Topic]

2. A Guide to Understanding [Insert Business Topic]‘s Recent Changes

3. Best Practices for [Insert Business Topic]

4. Learn How to Do More [Insert Business Topic] With Less

5. 6 [Insert Business Topic] Secrets Revealed

Check out the rest at their site: “13 Awesome Headlines for Business Blogging Success.”

In the old days, you could buy attention for your business through ads and mailing lists. Today, with so much competition for your customers’ or clients’ attention — from 500 channels of cable TV, satellite radio, outdoor ads in places where billboards have never gone before and of course the whole online world of millions of websites accessible through myriad mobile devices — attention is harder to get than ever.

With ads, once is never enough

If you just run an ad or two, it may be nearly worthless. You may have to run hundreds or thousands of ads just to get anywhere.

But that would be totally old school, says Halligan. Today, you don’t need to spend big money on marketing. You just need to be smarter — and switch most of your marketing online.

“The assets of new marketing are social assets such as Twitter followers and Facebook ‘Likes,’” writes Jeanne Hopkins on HubSpot’s blog.

How you do you get them? Halligan says you need to start “Top of the Funnel” marketing, or TOFU: create, promote and optimize content. That means blog posts. But also videos, slide presentations and white papers. Then, go on to Middle of the Funnel, or MOFU marketing: collect leads and qualify them so you can contact the most likely ones.

But how do you know if it’s working? Simple: just measure it.

For TOFU marketing activities, these metrics include number of web visitors and web traffic rank, number of Twitter followers, number of pages on your site, number of domains linking to your site, blog statistics, etc.

MOFU metrics include turning visitors into leads, conversion percentages, and the overall shape of your sales funnel. (Hint: trending up is good.)

Fortunately, when it comes to measuring results, it’s easier to do that online with all the free statistics available than with your old-timey print or broadcast ads, measuring the effectiveness of which was largely guesswork and gut feeling.

So maybe it’s time to fire your newspaper ads and hire Facebook and Twitter. And if you don’t have time or interest to do your own social networking, why not use the money you’ll save from print ads and contract with a smart social media marketer to help you out?

If you live near Staunton or anywhere in the central Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, we’d like to invite you to sign up for one — or both! — of the courses we’ll be teaching this fall at Blue Ridge Community College in Weyers Cave.

First, starting on the evening of Wednesday, September 21 and continuing for three more Wednesdays after that, Erik will help you build your own web site in WordPress. Even if you already have a WordPress site, or want to have a web designer put one up for you, you’ll still learn a lot in this class about how it works and how to make it work for you:

Creating Websites in WordPress for Business and Personal Use

Led by one of the area’s WordPress and online marketing experts, you’ll use WordPress to build dynamic, attractive and professional looking websites quickly and easily.  Learn how to create your site, tune it for search engines, add photos and other multimedia, connect to social media services, choose the right look and feel for your site, and add user-friendly features through plug-ins.  You don’t have to know how to code to have a great website! 50217; $165; Four Wednesdays, Sep 21-Oct 12, 6-9 pm; Instructor: Erik Curren; BRCC Weyers Cave Plecker Center

Then, beginning on Wednesday, October 26, also in the evening for four weeks, Lindsay, our social media guru, will help you make the most of Facebook, Twitter and other services for your business:

Blogging and Social Media for Business and Entrepreneurs

Social media is a small business owner’s best friend, allowing you to compete with the big guys without stinging ad costs that deliver uncertain results.  Led by one of the Valley’s pioneers in social media marketing, you’ll explore major social media sites—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Stumble Upon, Tumbler and more—and learn how to use them to build two-way relationships with your current and potential customers.  You’ll also gain clear blog writing advice for making an impact and building an audience for your product or service.  If your business is your passion, let Social Media take it to the next level in the world of Web 2.0.50219; $140; Four Wednesdays, Oct 26-Nov 16, 6-9 pm; Instructor: Lindsay Curren; BRCC Weyers Cave Plecker Center

To sign up, download the PDF registration form at BRCC’s website and the follow the instructions to register by phone, in-person or by mail or fax. But don’t delay — we expect these classes to fill up fast.

Sounds perfect.

Until you consider the danger of digital sharecropping. That’s when you plant your online crops on somebody else’s farm.

Consider what happens in the real world when you rent but don’t own your office or business space. Even if your business is humming along smoothly, if you’re bringing in a steady stream of new customers or clients, if you’re keeping costs under control and if you’re planning for the future, your landlord can put you out of business in 30 days.

How? By tripling your rent.

Believe it or not, the exact same thing can happen online. Consider this from Copyblogger’s Sonia Simone:

In other words, anyone can create content on sites like Facebook, but that content effectively belongs to Facebook. The more content we create for free, the more valuable Facebook becomes. We do the work, they reap the profit.

The term sharecropping refers to the farming practices common after the U.S. Civil War, but it’s essentially the same thing as feudalism. A big landholder allows individual farmers to work their land, and takes most of the profits generated from the crops.

The landlord has all the control. If he decides to get rid of you, you lose your livelihood. If he decides to raise his fees, you go a little hungrier. You do all the work and the landlord gets most of the profit, leaving you a pittance to eke out a living on.

So, I hope you can see the danger of entrusting your online marketing efforts 100% to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, MySpace or anybody else besides your own website that you control. Simone says that should be just one part of a tripartite online strategy for your business:

1. A well-designed website or blog populated with lots of valuable content
2. An opt-in email list, ideally with a high-quality autoresponder
3. A reputation for providing impeccable value

Facebook and the other services can support these efforts, and since everybody’s on them these days, you’d be silly not to use them. But don’t put the cart before the horse. Start your own farm first before you start renting land on somebody else’s place.

To get that audience, to keep them interested in you, and then to recruit even more people to join your audience, you need to establish yourself as a likeable authority — someone who offers real value, and also someone whom people like.

The best way to become an authority who’s also accessible and appealing is to set yourself up as a thought leader, someone who’s known as a creative thinker who’s engaged with current trends not just in your own business, but more importantly, in your customers’ lives.

“Being known as a thought leader in your industry is a huge step in the right direction toward increased credibility for your business and its products/services,” writes Pamela Vaughn at HubSpot. “It can also help your business stand out from its competitors. Think about it: are you more likely to trust and purchase from a company whose leaders you recognize as experts in the industry, or a company whose leaders you’ve heard nothing from?”

But there’s another way to look at generations: as anyone who is are alive and active in their adult years at any one point in history.

That’s how Roy H. Williams thinks about generations and trends, in terms of forty year cycles. For Williams, it doesn’t matter how old you are during a particular cycle. If you’re an adult at the height of a cycle, you’ll share its core values. If you’re living while a cycle is ending, you’ll share your society’s doubts about the beliefs that are passing away. And if you’re around while a cycle is on the upswing, then you’ll participate in the enthusiasm of most everyone you know for the new ideas which are coming into their own.

Yes, there will be exceptions to the rule. But talking about historical cycles is all about making generalizations in hopes that they’re more or less valid across the population.

The end of “Me” and the start of “We”

Now, Williams says we’re at the beginning of a “We” era, a time when community, cooperation and making the world a better place are more important than the older values of individual ambition, material success and wanting to be Number One. Society began the new cycle in 2003, when a 40-year-long “Me” period that began in the sixties finally came to an end.

But the more things change, the more things change, as Williams explains:

“Me” and “We” are equal-but-opposite attractions that pull our perspective one way, then the other. Western society swings like a pendulum from one set of values to the other every 40 years with the regularity of an old and reliable grandfather clock. “Me” and “We” values are equally good, but we always take a good thing too far.

Look for things to go too far in the “We” direction after a couple of decades, leading to a stifling culture of conformity. After that, things will start to swing back towards “Me” and personal freedom.

Meantime, whether you’re in business or trying to do good in the world, you should now be appealing to the “We” generation and the value of living a meaningful life over the value of trying to be happy by buying more stuff.

Generally this trend will favor people who provide services and experiences over businesses that offer products. Of course, people will still need products. But those that offer value and quality over glitz and bling will have an advantage.

That’s too bad, because research has shown that it can be five times more expensive to get a sale from a new customer than to sell something to somebody who’s already bought from you.

For that new customer, you have to figure in the money you spend on ads and directory listings, the money you lose on coupons and promotions and the staff time you spend on cold calls, staffing booths at community events and even meeting with potential clients, if you do that.

But an existing customer doesn’t require any of that time and expense. They just call you or come by your place, either on their own or after a little nudge to let them know you’re still around and eager to help.

However, to keep those existing customers, you need to remember one simple but often overlooked tip.

Don’t forget to say “thanks.”

As the folks at Authority Rules explain, this doesn’t have to be difficult. Just schedule some time to:

• Run a blog post to thank readers for their time and attention.
• End an email message with a “thank you” for subscribing and reading.
• Use your favorite social media platform (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) to express your appreciation.
• Schedule a special promotion for a holiday like Thanksgiving that’s associated with gratitude.

– Erik Curren

A: Constraints — deadlines, short staffing, distance from customers or suppliers, low marketing budgets — are just a part of business, as they are of life. We may not like them. But wise people have always taught that constraints, or discipline, builds us up, makes us smarter and more creative.

“When we fight constraints and eliminate them, we often gain access to new insights, new productivity and new solutions. It also makes it easier to compete against people who don’t have those constraints,” writes Seth Godin.

Today, everybody’s short on money and it may just not be in the cards for you to do that expansion anytime soon. So, what can you do but make the most of your current space?

Time to get creative:

• Can you un-clutter your space by eliminating furniture, equipment or inventory you really don’t need? The minimalist look is actually very trendy these days and your customers might see your re-do as a stylish upgrade.
• Can you do some of your business outside your main location, say, at house parties? Network marketing is well established. But housecalls are now coming back for many types of businesses, especially services like hairstyling.
• Can you do more business online? With the social web and mobile devices, more and more customers are skipping the physical store and connecting with businesses only through the Web. The customers like it better and it can save the business a lot of money.

As Godin puts it, “There’s a useful alternative: embrace the constraints you’ve been given. Use them as assets, as an opportunity to be the one who solved the problem. Once you can thrive in a world filled with constraints, it’s ever easier to do well when those constraints are loosened. That’s one reason why the best filmmakers learn their craft making movies with no budget at all.”

Click on the image to see the full-size version.

With all the clutter out there, it’s hard enough to get people to visit your website or blog. And it’s just getting worse, with more than a million new websites added every single month.

I’ve talked many times about how to cut through that clutter and to go the people who are most likely to be interested in you: offer content that will be valuable and interesting to them, keep it short and engaging and be authentic — put in a little bit of your personality. People like to connect with other people, not with companies. And certainly not with software.

So, you’ve done all the right things, and voila, you’ve gotten some decent web traffic. Now, how do you convert visitors into customers? And when I say customers, I don’t just mean the paying kind. That may be your ultimate goal, but there are lots of intermediate goals too that you can’t skip over: you want people to give you their email address, or download an ebook or share your content with their friends.

To encourage people to take action of any kind online, whether it’s spending money, time or effort, you need a good landing page.

The folks at Formstack have just come out with a brilliant graphic on how to create the perfect landing page. Here are three points they highlight:

• Use a headline that’s catchy and visually attractive (pay attention to typeface and color)
• Put in a strong call to action that creates urgency (consider the phrase “download now”)
• Go easy on the links — normally putting in a link every 3-5 sentences is good because it will make your page more attractive to search engines; but in this case, you don’t want to give your visitor too many chances to leave the page before taking the action you want them to take.