I had always wondered how it seemed like EVERYONE knew how to create their own website to build their portfolio or for a side project. Well, now I have discovered one of their secrets!

Someone introduced me to a little site called ThemeForest.com, a great compilation of different people’s work that provide customers like you and me (who aren’t so html-savvy) with beautiful, customizable pages.

They are available in easy-to-format designs like WordPress and relatively inexpensive, so you can have the creative freedom without needing the in-depth knowledge to build the website by yourself.

I have explored this site for hours taking a look at the many templates. They are categorized for easy navigation, including creative, corporate, retail, technology, non-profit, entertainment, personal, specialty, or admin pages among others. The pages are able to be previewed and have are user-reviewed.

Here are a couple options I am looking at that for a personal online portfolio:

These are all available at under $10 each. It is tough to choose!

If you were looking for something along these lines (like myself), I hope this gives you a push in the right direction. Happy hunting!

So now that your business has moved into online territory, it is time to get the conversation started with your consumers. Building an online community has great benefits including being able to directly interact with those that use your product or service and creating a real sense of togetherness.

Some members of your community will be self-motivated to share their thoughts through pure love and loyalty to your brand and product, but others may need a little push. According to Richard Millington, the founder of FeverBee Limited, members can be motivated by a few things your company can offer: fame, money and power. Here are tips on how to provide these rewards.

Fame

• Have a hall-of-fame or special mentions for people who achieve something
• Organize competitions to recognize people in your community
• Let loyal members write their own columns or blogs
• Continue to refer achievements by members
• Interview the top members
• Have a member of the week/month
• Hold awards nights
• Have popularity ratings

Money

• Don’t pay members with actual money
• Invite related recruiters to participate in your community
• Encourage members to develop products for the community
• Mention members that have been hired by their work in the community
• Keep a list of members who have been most successful in their work
• Tell you members about job opportunities that may not be advertised
• Let your members arrange events that have entry fees

Power

• Give top members projects and initiatives they can run
• Ask top members for advice on key issues
• Give top members the ability to approve comments/pictures/columns by other members
• Create a list of members who have these power for the rest of the community to see

Use these rewards generously. They cost very little to your company, but provide huge benefits.

Search Engine Optimization: A loaded phrase that floats around the online world, but the ‘how to’ part is like a foreign language to most people. Do you want to figure out how to achieve a higher ranking on search engine results page? Here it is, laid out in 9 simple steps:

1. Brainstorming – write down 20-30 phrases that best describe your business. What products or services are most important and most profitable? Make sure they are suitable for online  sales
2. Search Popularity   – the next step is to see what phrases are the most popular in searches by your potential customers. A great tool to use is Google’s Keyword Popularity Tool
3. Competition – don’t forget to research your competition and see what is working for them
4. Choose keywords – after your research on popular, relevant keywords, it is time to make a decision. The most important phrase should be used for your homepage, while other phrases (10-25 depending on the size of your site) should be chosen for the remainder of your website
5. Site Structure – the best case scenario would be that you are building your website and incorporating SEO site from the beginning. Each important phrase should have a separate website page. For instance, if you are a site promoting soccer services, one page should be devoted to each of your services. Eg. Soccer camp, soccer conditioning, and soccer apparel should each have their own page
6. Domain & URLS – your important phrases should be placed in the URL of each page. Eg. ‘Soccer Camp’ should appear in the beginning of your URL with no words preceding it
7. HTML tags – on top of your domain and URLs, the keywords should be placed in the title tag, alt tags, image title, meta description tag, keyword meta tag, H1/H2, and strong tags for greater searchability
8. Keyword density – the important phrase should be mentioned several times on the page of the site. This includes the text heading, text subheading, copy, and internal links.
9. Link building – Finally, the last step of SEO is to increase links to your page. This could be done by building great content, submitting your site to search engines like Google and Yahoo/MSN, exchanging links with relevant sites in industry, becoming a member of various relevant associations or advertising on other sites.

I hope that these steps helped to demystify the world of search engine optimization for you. Enjoy those extra views and clicks!

Since most of my posts have been about what I have observed, I thought I’d switch it up today and share something I have learned. Now back to the question:

Do you have an e-marketing strategy?

If you answered ‘no,’ then today is your lucky day! I am going to blow your mind with six steps to crafting a digital marketing strategy. You might ask, ‘why do I even need one?’ Well, let me ask you this: Would you put up a billboard in an area no one drives in? Would you sell good old traditional bread in a gluten-free store?  Would you promote water-wings to the Canadian Olympic swim team?

Probably not. So why would you spend thousands to create a beautiful site and have no one visit?

Having an e-marketing strategy can help you increase your online presence to your target market and ultimately increase profits. So let’s get down to it with six steps to help you get started:

1)      Context – the first step is to examine the context of your organization. Be clear about who you are, what your identity is, and what makes you valuable. You also need to find out who your customers are and what they want. Doing research on competitors, both direct and indirect, is helpful seeing the broader scope of the industry. Finally, figure out the social, political, and economic factors and the likelihood of change in the future.

2)      Objectives – keep in mind that your online marketing goals should be in line with your brand’s greater strategic objectives. These goals need to be SMART – specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time bound.

3)      Value-Exchange – In this phase, you need to determine what value you are adding to the market. This is also the stage to take a look at other goals that support your main objectives. Exploring all options before focusing on a direction will result in a more successful path.

4)      Tactics and Evaluation – With your SMART objectives in mind, you can choose from a variety of tools and tactics to help you. Here are some popular tactics used: email marketing, online advertising, affiliate marketing, SEO, PPC, Social Media, ORM, and WebPR.

5)      Metrics – digital marketing should start with ROI in mind. Setting up analysis and measurement tools in conjunction with the value-exchange stage will help measure returns from the beginning. Depending on your goals, you could use Click through rate (CTR), Cost per click (CPC), or Cost per Acquisition (CPA) as some of your measuring tools

6)      Ongoing Optimization – the last step is misleading because it is not a last step at all! Since your organization and the online world is a dynamic space, continuous refining and adjusting needs to take place for your business to stay relevant and successful

Now it’s your turn. Get on it!