While I haven’t seen this supposed unseasonably warm weather that is going around, yesterday was officially the beginning of spring.  And with spring comes the big spring clean – dumping out all the stuff we don’t need or use from our closets and kitchens.

I love the feeling of clearing out the deadwood, and leaving space for the anew.  Honestly, I just like having some breathing room.

But have you considered giving your website a bit of a spring clean?

Shaker brooms. You know, the ones that last forever.

A 7 Point Checklist for Spring Cleaning Your Website

A spring clean for your website can easily be finished in less than a day; a few hours, if you’ve got yourself organized (and you’re able to make most of the tweaks yourself, or have your IT folks on the line).

I’ve looked through my notes of the last few website reviews that I have personally done, and rounded up 10 easy things you can check on your own site.  Do you pass this 7 point checklist?

1. Check your copyright line.  Nothing says “we just don’t care” than a website that says “Copyright 2008.”  Yes, people do notice that stuff.
2. Freshen up your media page.  You’ve got a media page, right?  Press releases, founder headshots, bio, how bloggers and writers can get in touch for interviews…
3. Slim down your menu. Menus are the most common place for website bloat; they’re like that drawer in your office that always gets stuffed with junk.  Less is more!
4. Write some blog posts.  Fresh blog posts are good for social media, good for SEO… are you keeping the blog updated regularly?
5. Double-check event calendars and prices.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve caught something on a client site that was weeks, or months, out of date.
6. Get some fresh pictures up.  Tidy up those out of date photo galleries, get some new staff/team photos up.  Ask your colleagues, maybe someone has taken a photo recently that will really make the site “pop.”
7. Do a quick analytics review of the last year.  I also advice looking at analytics over the longer term, so fire up that stats program you have and look around.  (You might need my analytics jargon explained post.)  What’s popular?  What’s NOT popular?  Why?

The idea here is that you don’t need to spend all day writing blog posts, updating media pages, or reviewing stats.  Close down Twitter (yes, I just said close Twitter down), put your phone on silent, and focus on identifying tweaks.  The path to more effective websites is made of small steps, not giant leaps.

Need More Help?

Want a hand in getting a deep spring clean that will help you make more sales with your website? Then check out our handy complete website evaluation.  It is fast, focused, and great value.

Have questions about your site?  Email me, andy [at] travelonlinepartners.com.

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I get a lot of clients who have a really tough time with their sites “because they aren’t writers.”   This is an understandable problem because yes, words are an important part of an effective website.

The Keyboard is your friend, not your foe.

Being a good writer is NOT the same thing as being able to put together a great website. There’s a lot more to the package. If you consider yourself a bad writer, chin up and consider some of these suggestions on those days you’re dealing with your site.

Write How You Speak

You know slick copy the instant you see it – it’s covered in “but wait, there’s more” and “free gift with purchase” crap, and it feels very rehearsed.

If you’re reading this, I suspect you aren’t selling products that have recently appeared on an infomercial, so skip the slick approach and go with words that are how you speak. Yes, even if you aren’t the most eloquent person in town – travelers who read copy that is understandable, even if it is basic, can empathise with you. and almost picture the person they’ll be meeting when they arrive.

And isn’t that the goal of your site, to give them a preview of what they’re buying? I mean, would you really not want to book a stay on a cowboy ranch whose site didn’t have a hint of twang, or reserve a tour with a guide whose sales copy sounded like she would be a riot to hang out with for a couple days?

Write Less

Cut the fluff.

You know your product better than anyone. What do people ask you about all the time? What’s the biggest concern of your ideal customer? What makes it one of a kind? What else do you want people to know? Cut the crap and answer those critical questions.

Get Help for the Important Stuff

I know I’m biased since we offer content creation packages, but you need to get a professional to help you on the important pages of your site – that’s the home/about pages, and especially your product pages as well.

A third party perspective can help you point out what you’ve not made clear, or highlight obvious improvements that you might not see because you’re too close to the stuff you’re selling.

Try Another Medium: Video, Audio, Photography

If you hate words, then why not use other forms of content to help spruce up that web presence. If you’re a photo pro or can dazzle folk with fun and engaging videos, then make them.

In fact, I encourage you to try experimenting with podcasts, photo galleries, and videos because you may find you’re more skilled than you think (and your customers might love that content even more than you expect).

As mentioned in our previous video tips, videos don’t have to be stellar TV productions. A touch of polish is just enough.

Don’t forget the most important part.

Don’t forget the most important part of any web content page: asking for the sale! Tell them who you are, tell them what you do, and then tell them how to proceed. Whether that’s “here’s more info on our related package” on a blog post, to a easy-to-find “book now” button your packages page, don’t forget this part.

(Second most important? Tell them where to go if they have questions.
Speaking of which, if you have questions about what we do? start here.)

P.S. Your writing isn’t as bad as you think it is.

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One of the questions I get in client projects and consultations is:

Do I need to offer customer support via social media?

Five years from now, the answer to this question will be such an obvious YES, people won’t be asking it. Hopefully by then, technology will make it a little easier for businesses handle, especially those of you smaller travel providers who don’t have a full-blown customer service department.

As for right now, I’d like you to remember that social media channels are not just marketing channels, they are communications channels, and communications means customer service. In my opinion, then, your social strategy must include dealing with concerns and issues. Social media isn’t just for the fun stuff.

What happens when you don’t offer customer service via social media?

I have a classic example of what happens when you don’t handle service issues. What happens is that your customers can take control, and usually if they’re upset, that result isn’t going to be pleasant. Take for example the Waiwera Thermal Resort and Spa in New Zealand. They recently made a policy change that has upset a significant portion of their customers, and instead of dealing with the fallout on their social profiles, they’ve buried their head in the sand.

Weeks later, their Facebook page (which is the third result for the company in Google!) is still littered with negative comments.

The result? Everywhere you go online to look for this resort, you see a bunch of upset people. Their Facebook wall has miles of negative posts, and there’s even now a boycott fan page with several hundred fans.

That’s an extreme example, but even if just one customer is unhappy, you owe it to them and the rest of us in this industry to handle their complaint. You wouldn’t just ignore someone that called you wanting assistance, or showed up at your office, right?

How about just “forcing” people down existing, offline customer service channels?

If you’re active on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media outlets and can’t don’t want to deal with customer queries, one school of thought is to send people to your offline customer service channel(s). This is an active practice in many industries – and while I understand the challenges of customer support in the social media environment, I don’t think this is good enough.

I have great example, from personal experience, of a company who does this. I regularly travel the Amtrak Cascades service between Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon. This service is often delayed because Amtrak shares the rail lines with freight companies, and those freight trains get priority.

On a recent trip, I had changed to an earlier train due to some scheduling conflicts with my later arrival into Portland. When I arrived and checked in at Seattle King Street station, an attendant alerted me that our train was stuck behind a broken down freight train north of the city, and thus there would be a potential delay – timeframes unknown.

A customer service disaster unfolded as staff made no further announcements about the delay and took a “hands off” approach to the situation. Even 90 minutes after our scheduled departure, staff had no information.

I tweeted about the delay, tagging Amtrak in my tweet, letting several people know about my now-unknown arrival. Amtrak quickly replied to my tweet (yay!), but with this standard response:

@andrewghayes Please feel free to give us a call at 1-800-USA-RAIL if you would like some more information,

— Amtrak(@Amtrak) January 26, 2012

I replied to ask them why I should call a 1-800 number when I’m sitting in a train station full of Amtrak employees who have “no information.” Unfortunately, I didn’t get a response, which seems to be the policy of companies who operate a “send them offline” strategy for social media.

I will repeat: social media isn’t just for the fun stuff.

The least they could have done was apologise. They could have also asked to call me, or messaged me to find out more information, since they knew my name and what train I was supposed to be traveling on.

Word of Mouth Customer Service?

The Amtrak story doesn’t end there. A friend on Twitter alerted me that Amtrak had posted an update on their Facebook page about my train. Huzzah! I flipped over to my Facebook app and opened up the Amtrak page. Nothing but train deals and people’s photos. After about 20 minutes, I figured out that the update was on the Amtrak Cascades page. *confused look*

Strangely enough, this is the only customer-service related post on their page - ever. (And the last thing they've posted in weeks.)

I eventually did make it to Portland, albeit on a different train and about 4 hours late. But the story doesn’t end there! (Ha.)

On my return train, we ran into problems again. En route, the train was delayed due to repairs on the tracks south of Seattle. Our conductor informed us that the track works would be going under significant work throughout the next month, so expect delays in travel in both directions.

I looked on Amtrak’s page to see if there was some information about this, as well as checked FB/Twitter to see if there was a post I could share. Nothing. So I wrote my own, and got a friendly response back, again almost immediately:

@andrewghayes Thank you for sharing this to your followers and getting the word out.

— Amtrak(@Amtrak) February 6, 2012

I know the marketers say that you should get your customers to spread your message word of mouth, but I’m not sure that is what they meant.

3 Morals of the (slightly long) Story

Social media tools are communication tools, so when your customers have a problem, question, or concern, communicate. Deal with issues right there when you can, and only when you can’t, take them offline.

If you’ve got customer service issues in the real world, you bet they’ll surface in the social one too.

Take control of the conversation, particularly when there are unhappy/inconvenienced customers. It’s the right thing to do.

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What is the one thing that gets overlooked in nearly 99% of the websites we look at in our comprehensive website evaluation?  The website menu.

Your website menu is just as important as the content that it is trying to organize.

While there’s no one right way to do a menu, here are 8 common mistakes made when organizing your menu.  Use this list as a quick checkup on your existing menu or a guide when planning a new menu/site design.

A bad menu can quickly kill an otherwise good web experience.

Mistake No 1. Not putting menu items in priority from left to right.

It’s a common designs standard to put the most important items in your menu on the left-hand side, and the least important items on the right-hand side. I think this is a good standard you should follow. Your first menu item should be “Home” and your last menu item should be “Contact.” Order everything else in priority from left to right.

Mistake No 2. Not using a top-of-page, horizontal navigation.

When the web first started, we had three dominate website menu styles: a horizontal bar, a left-hand side vertical bar, and a right-hand side vertical bar. The right-hand side option has fallen out of favor (for good reason – it’s confusing), so today you mostly see left hand or top horizontal menus, with the top horizontal being the most common and the easiest to use – that’s the kind of menu we have here. I recommend a top horizontal navigation bar in almost all cases.

I see lots of site that have more than one horizontal nav bar, or have both a horizontal plus an additional left side navigation. Both of these styles are hard to pull off successfully, so I don’t encourage them unless you’ve done some testing with your customers to ensure the navigation is clear. (Give us a call if you need help testing.)

Mistake No 3. Having a website menu more than three layers deep.

I understand that some websites are huge, and sometimes a multi-layer menu is impossible to avoid.  But really, anything buried more than 3 layers deep will be hard for users to find.  I encourage you to try and spread out the menu – feel free to take advantage of the full menu width and bring items up to the top

Mistake No 4. Burying important items in a navigation, or worse, forgetting to even put them in the menu.

Speaking of menu layers, your “sales” items – e.g. “hire us, “services,” “how to give us moolah” should always be at the top layer, or as close to it as possible.  Don’t bury anything important.  Earlier I said you should prioritize from left to right, but also prioritize top to bottom – with important items in the top layer.

Also, you would be surprised how many people ask me “how’s come this page gets hardly any views” when it wasn’t in the menu in the first place.  Double-check your menu to see what’s missing.

Mistake No 5. Not carefully deliberating on the word choice of a menu item.

Now that you’ve obsessed over what pages go where in the menu, you should spend just as much time worrying about the label on each menu item.  The word choice can effect whether or not your menu is confusing.  Let’s take an example – say you are a small hotel.  What does “Rooms” on a menu mean? It’s unclear.  ”Book a Room” versus “Types of Rooms” or “Room Choices” is better, because that’s much more clear on what you’ll get when you click.  The idea here is to keep it short and sweet while still being very clear. In general, one word descriptors aren’t that useful except for very common web menu links (e.g. “contact”)

This tricky one only proves my point that you need someone else to look at your menu once you’ve drafted it out.

Mistake No 6. Having hard-to-use drop-down menu navigation.

Raise your hand if you’ve cursed at a website menu that had drop-downs that were next-to-impossible to use. (Even worse on a mobile phone.)

I’d love to say that drop downs perform poorly (because I personally dislike them) but that isn’t the case – as long as it is easy for even the most unsteady hand to mouse through the menu layers.  Issues like these can be hard to fix as they’re often tied to your technology platform, but they’re worth fixing, because otherwise you are annoying paying customers! Bonus points if your menu highlights the current page you are on.

Mistake No 7. Changing a menu order/contents on a whim.

I hate it when grocery stores rearrange the aisles, and your repeat clients will also hate it when you make constant changes to the menu – it makes it hard to find things.   The only time you should be changing the menu is either a) based on customer feedback, or b) based on your website analytics feedback (or c) I told you to, lol). Otherwise you are at risk of overengineering this stuff.

If you need more help on understanding what your analytics are telling you, check out our resource page for more helpful tips.

Mistake No 8. Assuming your menu is the only way to navigate your website.

Last but not least… you’ve now got a menu that is superb and easy to use, but don’t rest on those laurels… a menu is not the only way to get around a website.  And in fact, many web users are so disillusioned with crappy menus that they’ll skip the menu entirely.  To make sure you cater for these folks, ensure that you take advantage of two other best-practice navigation styles:

• Search – a good search option is a must no matter how big or small your site is.
• Inter-page links – make sure each page links to other appropriate pages.   If you’re struggling with this, always ask “what’s the next logical step?”  For example, I like to make sure about page always end with a “now explore our products/services” link, because that’s a logical next step.

If you haven’t noticed, I think menus are pretty darned important, and they don’t get the attention they deserve. Good luck with making your menu the best it can be – let me know if you’d like some help.

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I’ve had a lot of thanks for the tips in our email marketing jargon explained piece, so I thought I’d dive right in with some explanations of typical analytics jargon, because sometimes it can feel downright confusing!

For the purposes of today’s discussion, I’m mostly referring to Google Analytics, but in fact these terms are used wildly across a variety of analytics platforms.

If you’re not sure what analytics means, that’s ok – let’s start right there.  Web analytics are simply tools that you use to measure how much traffic your website recieves, where it comes from, and what those users are doing while they’re on your site. This data is important because it can help you know what percentage of your web users are actually buyers, and help you gauge the effectiveness of your various online marketing – you don’t want to pay for online advertising that doesn’t send paying customers, right?

Ok, now let’s dive right into the murk.  Here are some terms worth paying attention to, and what they mean.

Google’s graphics and dashboards might be easy on the eyes, but they’re still filled with jargon-y junk.

In alphabetical order…

A/B Testing (or Split Testing)

Ouch, alphabetical order means we start out on a hard one.  But A/B testing is simply testing two different scenarios to determine which one has better conversions.  Only two versions are tested in an A/B test; when multiple variables are changed, this is a multivariate test (see below).

How You’d Use This:  Let’s say you have just 1 page where people buy something.  You’re curious if people click a green BUY button more often than a orange BUY button.   Google Website Optimizer offers you the ability to do this, but it’s definitely for the intermediate/expert folks.

Bounce Rate

Bounce Rate is the percentage of people who came to your website and left without visiting another page.  It’s a number many people obsess over without reason, because there are lots of times when someone is a bounce and it’s fine – say, they land on your blog post that sends them over to another site for a special deal.  Ok, they only visited one page, but it’s fine.

How You’d Use This: You want to get this number as low as possible.  Just based on how the web works, it will never be zero, so stop trying.  You’re doing great if you are below 50%.   Smart people look at the bounce rate of important, individual pages, not an entire website.

Conversion / Conversion Rate or Percentage Conversion

A conversion is where a website visitor completes a specific action. Conversions don’t always have to be a sale; a conversion could simply be a signup to a newsletter form, or to leave their phone number for a callback.  The percentage conversion or conversion rate is the percentage of all people who saw the offer and took it (so 100 people saw it, 5 phone calls, that’s 5% conversion.)

How You’d Use This: You need to know what your conversions are (a sale, signup, etc.)  Then you have to compare those to your overall visits to get percentages.  In Google, this can be tracked under the “goals” functionality.

Conversion Funnel

A conversion funnel is the defined path that visitors should take to reach a final conversion.  For example, if you have 3 screens of data to be entered before someone buys your product/service, each page or screen is a step in the funnel. The reason they call it a funnel is because as you move through each step, you’ll lose a few people, so you want as few steps as possible.

How You’d Use This: In Google, this is also under the “goals” functionality.  If you have multiple steps in the checkout process, I suggest you include all of them in setting up a goal.

Cookie

A cookie is a tiny text file placed on your visitor’s computer while browsing a website. Cookies contain information to track user behavior and returning visitors.

How You’d Use This:  You don’t – Google and other software products handle this for you.

Direct Traffic

Direct traffic is a visitor to your website that didn’t come from anywhere specific – it wasn’t a referral, they had your web link and they clicked it, say from their browser favorites.  Of course, there are many ways a visitor can get to your site without a referral – for example, your business card is a great referral source to your website, but since we’re jumping from offline to online, that isn’t trackable.

How You’d Use This:  High levels of direct traffic are good because they could be repeat customers, but ask yourself where they might be coming from?

Entry Page

An entry page is a page that is the first page a visitor sees when reaching your site.  Entry pages aren’t always your homepage; let’s say you have an advertisement that sends someone to a particular sales page for a package.  The sales page is the entry page for all those ad clicks.

How You’d Use This: This is useful by seeing what you most popular content is.  When a new customer comes to that page, what kind of experience are they getting?

Exit Page

An exit page is the last page a visitor sees on your site.  They’re on the site and they click that “x” button to close the browser, or they click on a link that takes them to another site.

How You’d Use This:  People tend to overengineer this one – the fact is that people have to leave your website at some point, right?  So just pay attention to pages that rank high on the exit list.  The top page should be the “thanks for your order” page,  right? But are lots of people looking at a sales page and then leaving?  What could be wrong?

Goal

A goal is another word for a conversion.  Google calls it a goal because it isn’t always a sale.  See conversions, above.

Heat Map

A heat map is a tool that shows levels of activity on a web page in different colors,with reds and yellows showing the most activity and blues and violets the least. The result is a map which makes it easy to see what areas on the page are the most active.

How You’d Use This: This is great for the visual learners who want to know what’s going on with a particular page – heat maps are only good for pages with lots of traffic and “next step” options, like a homepage.  Google doesn’t technically offer a heat map tool, but you get something very close with their “In Page Analytics” option.  (I’ve often found this buggy, your mileage may vary.)

Hit

Every request to the server is recorded as a hit; this isn’t a very useful measurement as even search engine spiders are included, as are a simple request for an image.

How You’d Use This:  You don’t.  If you see anything about number of hits, ignore it.

Keyword Referral

A keyword referral is when someone typed in a phrase into a search engine, and clicked on a result that sent them to your website. Google sometimes blocks the information and you’ll see “(not provided)” here, and if you advertise with Google Adwords sometimes this will say “(not set)”.

How You’d Use This:  If you’re doing any search engine optimization work, I sure hope the words you are working on show up here. If not, you got problems.  (Also: there will always be weird things here. I can’t explain it.)

Multivariate Test

A multivariate test is different than an A/B test (see above) in that you’re changing multiple options on a page at one time, trying to determine the best conversion outcomes. An A/B test is changing one thing at a time, whereas multivariate test involves changing multiple things at a time and using sophisticated analytics to track.

How You’d Use This:  Google Website Optimizer offers you the ability to do this, but it isn’t the best tool.  I wouldn’t get into multivariate tests until you’ve mastered A/B testing.

Pages Per Visit

This figure tells you, on average, how many pages a single website visitor views on your site during a single session. For example, if I looked at your homepage, a blog post, and then two of your package pages, that would be 4 pages for my visit.

How You’d Use This:  The higher the number, the more “sticky” your website is.  Most sites are in between 1 and 4.  I wouldn’t worry too much about this one.

Pageview

A pageview is a  single person (“visitor”) viewing a single page on your website.  So if you had 100 visitors and each looked at 4 pages, that’s 400 pageviews.  This is the most common “traffic” measurement used currently.

How You’d Use This: Just like I mention below on visitors, this figure is a common way to measure traffic, though I always say it isn’t about how much traffic you have but what that traffic does.  For a business owner, this is only meaningful in giving you trend information (example: “wow, we get twice as much traffic during the holidays, with another peak in April. We should rotate our deals and ads before those periods.”)

Percentage (%) of New Visits

This is the percentage of the total visits that came from new visitors. A new visitor is simply someone without your site’s cookie present in their browser.  As you can imagine, then, this figure has room for error.

How You’d Use This:  Use this in conjunction with your marketing efforts; a high number of new visits is fine if you’ve just done a lot of SEO work, paid for some advertising, or other outreach efforts.  It isn’t the percentage that’s important here, it’s why.

Referrer

The referrer is the website URL that sent a user to a page on your website.  Facebook, Twitter, Website XYZ, Newspaper column ABC are all types of referrers.  Traffic that has no referrer information (they came from your business card, or their browser bookmarks) is called direct traffic.

How You’d Use This:  This is important to see where your website traffic is coming from, and if it matches up with where you are spending your time/money.  If you just paid big bucks for a Twitter ad and you aren’t getting any traffic, that’s a problem.  You want to watch this for unexpected traffic, like a media/blog mention you weren’t expecting.

Segments / Segmentation

Analytics can result in a glut of data, for sure.  Segmentation is breaking that data down into smaller piles so you can  spot trends.  For example, you could segment based on country or mobile phone users versus standard desktop users and maybe you’d see that 1) you have lots of mobile traffic and can justify site upgrades, or 2) nobody on a phone buys anything, what does that mean.  Or you can segment off traffic from particular region to see the buying behavior of types of customers.

How You’d Use This:  This depends on your business but take the opportunity to break down your traffic into meaningful groups if you can.  Some ideas:  Direct traffic vs referral traffic;  New traffic versus repeat visitors; US/Canada visitors versus UK/Europe visitors; Mobile traffic versus desktop computer traffic…

Time on Page (or, Time on Site)

Time on Page (or alternatively, time on site) is an average that tells you how long a visitor spends on a page or the site overall.   Most sites have a widely variable figure for each page – homepages have short on page time as you’ll probably enticing them to move on – while other pages like where you’re making an offer will have longer times.  So, careful with this one.

How You’d Use This:  Overall, time on site is useful as a trend, but to make this data meaningful, you must drill down into specific pages and review the data.  For example, if someone only spends 30 seconds on your about page, but 5 minutes on your sales packages?  That’s not a problem.  So it requires some thought to actually make this data useful.

Visitor

An individual visiting a web site (excludes search engine spiders). Sometimes a media buyer or ad agency will call these” uniques” – short for unique visitors.

How You’d Use This:  Just like I said above on pageviews, this figure is a common way to measure traffic, though I always say it isn’t about how much traffic you have but what that traffic does.  I’d get more into the details, like “we have the same number of visitors each month of the year, but our Google traffic spends a lot more money than our paid traffic.”

Phew! Now that we’ve got all that sorted, hopefully next time you’ll not feel so stressed out about checking your website stats and figures. Speaking of which, have you taken ourFREE website assessment? It’s pretty cool, if I don’t say so myself – and jargon free!

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Before I get started with this review of Online Community Management for Dummies, I have to provide a hearty disclosure. That’s because one of my best friends wrote it – one of first people I ever met online, Deb Ng. So heck yes, my review is biased, but when your friends do great work, you tell people about it.

Deb’s book is the first “for dummies” book I’ve read. Not that I have anything against them. I was not surprised that the dummies format makes things very digestible and also well organised so you can just read the sections most applicable to you – and Deb includes some recommendations on where to start in her introduction.

So what’s a “community”?

You might be wandering what we mean by community. It’s a tricky noun, but thankfully both Deb and I agree on this one: whether it’s a forum or a Facebook page, if you’re gathering multiple customers, or potential customers, in any one area for dialogue and discussion, that’s a community. Doesn’t need to be complicated to be a community.

Community Management Tips

This guide is chock full of tips, and its written in Deb’s jovial style that I’ve come to love over the years. (I’d make a comment here about Deb’s famous penchant for typos, but somehow I don’t think she’d find it funny – and a shame, I found none in the book.)

I hate to give away all the good stuff, but some particularly useful sections:

• Recognizing types of community members, both good and bad – not all users are the same. The Heckler, The Newbie, The Rabble Rouser…. I think this is common sense. If you are in an office, you know that there are personality types and each needs to be approached differently. Same thing online.
• You’ve also got to get people talking - it’s your job to spark some dialogue, and Deb offers some questions to ask people – like fill in the blank questions – but I’m curious to try Deb’s suggestion of community poems and haikus!
• You have to have goals. Deb has lots of tips for how to decide what your goals should but, but she’s right – how do you know if you’re successful without stating the purpose and hopes of building a community?
• Maintaining stamina. Every day for year’s I’ve seen Deb’s daily “how’s ____day working out for you” tweet, even when I moved from being several timezones ahead of her to being several behind. You have to be in it for the long haul to have a successful community.

The book author, Deb Ng

Who’s this Book For

If you’re very new to creating a social online space for your biz, then definitely Online Community Management for Dummies is a great read. You can start with some of the initial chapters, then dive back in with the followup pieces as necessary.

If you’re having trouble with some of the “hard stuff” in communities – getting engagement up and dealing with troublemakers – then I suggest reviewing some of the later chapters where Deb goes into some good suggestions.

If you’ve got a community that’s already thriving, you’re already using tools like analytics & alerts, and you feel like you have an effective moderation policy (that you actually follow, if necessary), then this book is probably too basic for you.

If this book sounds like it’s up your alley, click here to learn more about it and grab a copy direct from Amazon. If you have any community management questions, please – drop a note down in the comments and either myself or Deb would be happy to answer them.

(And congrats again to my friend for a job well done!)

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Here’s a question I get a lot – I thought I’d just answer Joline’s email today via the blog (thanks Joline!):

So, we’re doing the Facebook thing, and the Twitter thing, and we wanna make sure that we’re really being targeted to how users interact on those platforms.

I read the recent post on Should I take travel bookings on Facebook – that was helpful, thanks, we’ve decided “not right now.”

Ok, so my question is, I’ve seen other people have special links on their Twitter and Facebook pages.  Like, maryslovelyinn.com/welcome-from-twitter, or, joestours.com/facebook-friends.  Should we do that? And what would we put on those pages?

Great question.  My opinion is no, 99% of the time, no special links.

FYI, a special link doesn't make you stand out in a crowded space.

Are you a different person on different social networks?

I was asking a friend about this issue because I wasn’t sure what to title this post, and he said, it sounds to me the question is, are you a different person on different social networks?

My answer is I certainly hope not.

While yes, what you share, how often you share it, and when you share it might be different on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc etc., what you stand for and what your expertise is doesn’t change.

Reasons Why You Would Use Special Links/Landing Pages

So why would people a special link for special people?  Let’s walk through it.

• Special Links to “Welcome” People.  NAH. I’m not a fan. Your website should be so well organized and clear at first glance, that you don’t need any special welcome.  If your website requires an introduction or “how to” manual, you’re doing it wrong.  (I saw a hotel that posts special offers nearly 15 times a day.  Way too many.  And yet, they have a special link from Twitter that tells you that they share special offers.  Uhm, yeah, I saw.).
• Track where People are Coming From.  NAH. You don’t need to be an analytics jedi to know that the “referral” data will show you where people are coming from.  Twitter is terrible to track (between twitter.com, m.twitter.com, t.co, and then a lot of traffic that comes from apps like Tweetdeck that will be marked direct traffic), but this is not a fix.
• Give Special Offers.  OOH YAH BABY. Out of all the reasons people use these special “welcome from twitter/etc” links, this is the only one I like.  I know a local hotel that uses this to default in your Free Wifi code, a perk for being a social media fan.  Now, you can find that on their site too, the link just makes it easier – after all, the hotel wants you to book, not just go play around on their blog.  So, if the link makes peoples life easier, or if it makes it one step closer to the sale, that’s certainly worth considering.

NOTE: I’ve seen profiles that use shortened urls, like bit.ly links, which is great for the tracking, but many users like me are leery of clicking on them because of the proliferation of spammers who use this tactic.  I wouldn’t recommend it – instead, learn your analytics program and figure this stuff out – tracking stats isn’t your customers problem.

Bottom line: when someone comes from Twitter or Facebook or WhateverSocialNetworkisEnVogueToday, your site should be warm, inviting, and friendly.  And you don’t need a custom welcome page to do that.

What do you think – do you have a special URL you put on your Twitter or Facebook page?
If you do, what’s the landing page content?

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My good friend Becky McCray from Tourism Currents always is a pithy tweeter, and this weekend was no exception, especially when I saw this gem pop up in my Twitter stream:

Promotion Probably Isn’t the Problem

I see this a lot – you could easily change the word restaurant to”website” or  ”tour” or  ”bed and breakfast.”  People jumping up and waving frantically, trying to flag down traffic to get people to stop for something they aren’t interested in, and isn’t that good anyway.

Looking at what people say when taking our free website self-assessment, it’s clear that everybody wants a little more traffic, a few more leads, a bit more visibility – ok, heck, wouldn’t we all love a LOT more of those things.

But sometimes – most of the time – that isn’t the problem.

• You’ve got too many choices so I can’t decide, and I choose none…
• I have a question, and you never replied to my email via the contact form…
• Your reviews are terrible – regardless if they’re true or not, I’m not taking the risk….

Fix your real problems, and promotion gets a heck of a lot easier.

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Yup, it’s that time again.

It’s time for myself and the TOP team to take some of our own advice.

One of my personal pet peeves is when someone tells me “they’ll do anything.”

What does that mean? It’s really hard to refer clients to someone who “does anything,” because when you do anything, you kind of… well, you do nothing. Nothing special anyway.

Going Back to Our Roots

One of our first packages was our website evaluation package.

It was very successful.  It was based on the work I’d done for years when my work at PeopleSoft transitioned from desktop applications to the web (ooh, shiny!)  I was able to provide the kind of feedback that a traditional usability lab provided, but at a fraction of the cost.

Then my designer Craig came on board, and my assistant Mari, as well our stable of contractors.  We were a formidable team.  We expanded our packages include all the social media bells and whistles, because it was en vogue. We made sales.  Life was great.

That is not to say those packages weren’t good – they were.  But they weren’t us.  We were too busy trying to do anything for everybody that we lost focus of the stuff that we were really good at.  The work we loved doing. The work that really made a difference.

This is our Best Work.

As of today, we’re closing down the bulk of our social media work and focusing only on our best work, which is in the content strategy and website evaluation area.  You’ll notice some spiffy new branding on the site, as well as some very important changes:

• We’ve reworked the team’s decade of website knowledge into a very, very cool website self-assessment.  Despite only being a few questions, it is very comprehensive.  Seriously – try it, it’s free.  Why not?
• Please take a look at our new consulting packages – you might see just the thing you were looking for.

I’d like to thank Doug Anwelier, Marissa Bracke, Margo Millure, Mary Jo Manzanares, Mary Rarick, and Brandie Kajino (all clients and community friends) for their help in feedback & support in helping us downshift back into our sweet spot.

I’m not at all scared. I’m excited.  This is the work we love the most.  This is our best work. And I don’t think anyone else in the industry can help you improve your website better than my team can.  Whether you opt for our free self-assessment or our comprehensive evaluation, I look forward to you joining us on this journey.

And, it’s worth asking the question,while you’re here:  are you doing your best work?

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Kimpton Hotels is willing to go all out in the name of hospitality and customer satisfaction. This email chain a customer posted online is proof.

That’s why Kimpton has experienced significant growth, profits, and heaps of praise from their customers, WHO LOVE THEM SO MUCH.

Question is, how far are you willing to go in the name of hospitality and customer satisfaction?

Image Source: Reddit

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