What do you want your visitors to do?

This might seem kind of obvious, but surprising enough there are a lot of websites out there that make it hard to find a telephone number or a contact form. If your only call-to-action is the contact us tab in your navigation and telephone number in your footer, you’re probably converting a small percentage of visitors to leads and are literally leaving potential business on the table.

Think about the way you present your information and how a visitor would potentially navigate around your website. Next, think about how you would like them to navigate around your website. Start making adjustments to provide the information visitors seek while leading them through your desired path or funnel.

Calls-to-action

As I mentioned earlier, if your only means of obtaining a lead on your website is through your contact us tab and page, then you are most likely not converting the visitors you worked so hard to get into leads.

There are many ways to add calls-to-actions to your site. You can add a graphic, short form or hyperlinks on each page that prompts your visitor to take one more step to get more information. Be sure to have graphics link to a short web form. I say short because if you try to ask for to much information, visitors will bounce. Try to keep your forms simple by only asking basic information. People are more likely to give up their name and email but not likely to give up a long form full of requests.

Your content and imagery is what is potentially “selling” the visitor on what you offer. If your copy and imagery are well-done, you’ll have an interested visitor. Make it fast and easy for them to obtain more information.

Give stuff away

Another popular avenue is to give things away in exchange for information. You can offer case studies, white papers, ebooks, free trials etc. on your website. Offer these in exchange for a name and email address. Once you have a little information from them, you can begin to add them to your email list (be sure to stay CAN-SPAM compliant). Taylor custom email campaigns around your forms so that you can nurture the lead and increase your chances of converting them into a customer.

SEO is important, very important, but consciously optimizing your site to maximize conversions is smart and important. A well optimized site for search and for conversions will transform your website from an online brochure to a 24 hour sales person.

Completely fill out your profile

This sound simple, but some folks fly through this step. This is your opportunity to quickly summarize yourself (and business if applicable) and highlight your website.

Put some thought into your bio. Pick your most important details and highlight them here. Think about how you want to project yourself and with what audience you will most likely be in front of.

Include your location and url. Adding your location will help localize your profile. The url is nofollow, but still from a well known site and you’ll get a little SEO credit for the link.

Upload a recognizable avatar

Your avatar will be associated with every tweet. This is your opportunity to create branding for your profile. Your followers will visually remember you by your avatar. Keep the size in mind when choosing your image. You will want it to be legible and recognizable even when the image is shrunk.

Add a custom background

Nothing spells “noob” like a basic Twitter background. You’ll want to add a custom background before you begin networking on Twitter. This is a solid opportunity for branding and sneaking in a little more information about you and your business.

If you do not have the resources to create one yourself, there are many services out there that will build you a decent looking template for free (you’ll have their logo plug in your background) or you can have one designed for you (the fees are reasonable and worth it). Just keep in mind the size of the background image you use. You will want it to look right on all types and sizes of monitors.

Include information such as picture of yourself or company logo, additional summary and url’s to other social profiles and websites. Depending on how you set it up, links in your background will most likely not be clickable; so use marketing friendly urls. For example, try to use clean urls like yourbusiness.com or facebook.com/yourbusiness.

Listen, update and get involved

After branding your profile you’ll be ready to get involved. Think about who you want to target and communicate with. Begin following those who you want to connect with. Read their tweets for a while to learn what they are interested in.

Share links and information that you think your target audience and followers would be interested in. Pay attention to what they tweet, listen, respond and get involved in the conversation.

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Charleston, SC – August 2010 – RhinoSEO, a leading online marketing services company, releases a version of their popular inbound marketing tool for free. Now website owners that want to try inbound marketing can do so without paying hundreds or thousands of dollars. Start your free subscription today!

“We are a service based company with an effective toolset that can really help people promote their business. We just don’t feel that businesses should have to pay an arm and a leg for an inbound marketing tool and wanted to make it available for small businesses.” says Adam Coburn, Founder of RhinoSEO.

RhinoSEO’s software is a robust tool that enables users to:

• Analyze website traffic
• Grade their website as well as their competitors
• Track keyword rankings
• Monitor inbound links
• Run email marketing campaigns
• Manage web leads
• Create forms and landing pages on the fly
• Social media monitoring and integration
• and more!

The software is a fully functional tool that allows users to get the most of their online marketing. With RhinoSEO’s software, users have the ability to gain in-depth knowledge of their website visitors and better convert those visitors to leads. RhinoSEO comes with comprehensive analytics, email marketing capabilities, lead management system, social media engagement and more. No longer will business need to use multiple tools for their online marketing. RhinoSEO’s software is an all encompassing, free solution to effectively promote businesses online.

Beyond the free software RhinoSEO also offers a premium subscription that includes CMS, CRM integration, API usage, and extended metrics for $100/month. Hosting is not required.

*bandwidth restrictions apply

1. Add a link back to your website – Sounds simple right? It is! Add your website url to your page. Be sure you also feature it in the left sidebar for maximum visibility. This will help send additional traffic to your website as well as help with your SEO. Google loves links and a link from Facebook is a good one to have.

2. Company profile – Still standard stuff here, but you would be surprised how many people seem to skip over this. Fill out the Info section of your page to include “about us” type information. This will help visitors who are not so familiar with you know exactly what you do.

3. Static FBML – Add the Static FBML app. This app will allow you to essentially have a custom landing page on your Facebook page. You can include custom html, content, images and graphics. Once you have everything in place, you can make this tab the default landing page. There is an option for “Default Landing Tab for Everyone Else.”

4. Blog feed – Install the Social RSS app. This app will enable you to publish your latest blog posts to your wall. There are useful settings that let you “like” your own posts, add the posts to your wall or in a dedicated tab/box.

5. YouTube – There are several good YouTube apps out there. I happen to like YouTube Video Box. This app will give you a dedicated tab where you can feature all your videos from your YouTube channel. Videos are a good way to breathe a little extra life into your pages.

6. Promotions – Let’s face it, your brand probably isn’t the most interesting thing on Facebook. Many of the people become “fans” because they are looking for discounts. So, give them what they want! Facebook is a good outlet for one off promotions, contests etc. Promotions is a great app that makes running Facebook promotions a breeze.

7. Poll – Don’t let your Facebook page become static. Interactivity is interesting. Give your fans something to do on your page. Polls are a great way to get others involved in your brand as well as give you an opportunity for some easy market research. Add a Poll to your page today!

8. Usernames – If you haven’t noticed, page urls are not attractive out of the box. They are long and hard to share. Once you have 25+ fans you can get a custom username for your page. This lets you further brand your Facebook page. Now your Facebook url can be Facebook.com/YourCompany.

9. Promote your page – One of the best ways to promote your Facebook page is on your blog. Give your blog readers an opportunity to connect with you. Facebook is a great way to better stay in front of your audience.

Why do you want a blog?

Blogs can be powerful tools when used correctly. You probably already heard that which is why you want one. But you still have to answer the question as why you want a blog. Does your website need an outlet for more content? Are you looking to garner some inbound links? Do you want added exposure? To help sales? I could go on.

Essentially you should have this question answered BEFORE you begin building your blog. Why? Because you need to know your goals so you can outline a roadmap as to how to achieve them. There are many different ways to use a blog and knowing what you are going to use the blog for before you begin will save you time in the long run.

For example, if you are using the blog for additional content for your website, well then, your posts should be full of content. At least 400 words per post if you really want to get the benefits from the search engines. It would also behove you to do a little keyword research so you can properly optimize your articles as well. If you are looking for added exposure, you would want to incorporate social media sharing options throughout your blog. You would also want to get involved in social media so you can promote your content throughout the social networks.

Who are you writing for?

This is important. You should know your audience or target audience. Just like in sales where you want to know your customer, in blogging, you want to know your reader. Find out what they are interested in and the best ways to communicate with them. This being said, find out what social media outlets they spend time on and try to network with them on those networks. Writing for your readers encourages reader engagement and will help your content spread.

Be sure to listen to your readers as well. Encourage comments and listen to your readers feedback, both positive and negative. This will help inspire you to write more and match your topics to what your readers are interested in.

Don’t leave any stone unturned

Blogs are highly customizable. There are many resources out there to help you integrate social media sharing, promote following you on various social networks, increase engagement and subscribers and even sell products. If you use WordPress (which I highly recommend!), there are an abundance of free plugins to enhance your blog.

All this being said, if you are on the fence about installing a blog for your business/website, then stop thinking and do it. Just be sure not to just mindlessly add a blog. Just like building anything else, you need a plan.

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Click image to enlarge.

Original Infographic from Smashing Apps.