Marketing
Pacific Studios was built specifically to help those building or maintaining websites and the associated photography and video that are so common online now thanks to the proliferation of related online services, broadband internet access, cheap and easy-to-use digital cameras and video cameras, and hosting solutions that are easier now than ever before.
Internet Business Marketing Tip #1: Evaluate Your Competition
A first and very simple tip is this: Start out by sizing up your competition. Do see what the other guy or other guys in town are doing. Look at the information they're providing. And check out the number of links that point to their site.
In a nutshell, you need a better site than your competitors in order to beat them at the Internet marketing game. You need more pages of on-topic content. And you need more inbound links pointing to your pages.
You can check the number of inbound links pointing to your web site by visiting the Yahoo search engine page and then typing link:www.yourcompetitorsdomain.com into the search box. (Replace the smooshed together word yourcompetitorsdomain with the real domain name.) Yahoo then lists the number of links pointing to your competitors' sites.
By the way, if competitors' web sites provide only a few sparse pages and a handful of crummy in-bound links, you'll find it very easy to make your site a rip-roaring success.
Internet Business Marketing Tip #2: Pay for an Inexpensive Professional Design
Another quick and easy tip: If you have an extra couple hundred bucks for marketing, spend that money on a professional web designer.
In other words, once you have a few pages of text about your business--perhaps a welcome letter, a page that provides directions and then a page or two that describes your products and services--pay some professional to setup your web site.
Web sites like elance.com make it pretty easy to find extremely talented designers who can create outrageously attractive web sites for modest costs.
Internet Business Marketing Tip #3: Get Smart about your Domain Name
One caution: You won't want to make the mistake that I made. In other words, if you can avoid it, you don't want to name your business using your name or some meaningless if clever phrase.
For my Seattle area CPA firm, I named my domain name stephenlnelson.com and have spent the last dozen years telling people, "No, with a 'ph'...not a 'v' and don't forget the 'l'...."
Rather you want to use search words, also known as keywords, in your domain name. For example, if you operate a drycleaner located in town named Pine Lake, try to get something like PineLakeDrycleaners dot com.
Putting search words in your domain name will make your website easier to find when people use those search words. In other words, search engines are more likely to display a website named PineLakeDrycleaners.com when someone searches on phrases like "drycleaning pine lake," drycleaners in pine lake," "pine lake dryclean," and so on.
Internet Business Marketing Tip #4: Add Your Site to Google Maps
If you include your business address on your web pages--and you should--Google will probably, eventually, display your business's website when people search for a local business like yours.
If your business's web site isn't appearing when someone searches for local businesses like yours, you can visit the Google maps page and then click on the Put Your Business on Google Maps link to begin the process of adding your business to Google's local search results.
Internet Business Marketing Tip #5: Win the Local Links Competition
You're going to need to get more inbound links pointing to your site than point to your competitors' sites in order to rank highly when people look for a local business like yours.
If you've done a bit of research on your competitors as suggested in the first tip, you already know how many and what sorts of links you need. With that information in hand, try the following:
1. Request that your site be added to free directories. Free directory links are not worth very much, quite honestly, but in a local search competition they can help. Search Google or Yahoo on the phrase "líst of free directories" to get a decent, reasonably-fresh listing of freebie directories, and then begin submittíng your site to the directories listed. Also, note that you can pay a directory submission service like DirectoryMaximizer.com to submít your website to around a thousand free directories for about a hundred dollars.
2. Grab, beg or pay for links from the websites of the local business and community groups you're associated with, including the chamber of commerce, community organizations, the public library, the local newspaper if you advertise there, and so forth. These links, especially when coming from a trustworthy local web site, can help your search engine visibility a lot.
3. Attempt to duplicate the links that your competitors show. In other words, if your principal competitor in town has purchased some links in paid directories like Yahoo.com or Business.com, do the same thing. If the competitor participates in and gets links from social networking sites like facebook and linkedin, do the same thing. Imitating your competitor will eliminate rather quickly any link advantages he or she possesses.
Internet Business Marketing Tip #6: Experiment with Pay-per-click Ads
A final quick though general tip: Pay-pay-click ads like those offered by Google can be quite costly. But the ads also often work wonderfully well for certain types of businesses.
If you can pay $2 for a click and 15-20 clicks usually seem to turn into a customer, for example, that means you can "buy" a customer for $30 to $40. In many businesses, acquiring a customer for $30 or $40 may be a steal of a deal. For more information about how Google's pay-per-click advertising works, visit adwords.google.com.
Building Websites
Building a website is often a painful experience. It can be expensive in terms of both time and money. Many put it off after becoming overwhelmed with the jargon like domains, ftp, SSL, ASP, javascript, flash, jpg, gif, SEO, etc. The truth is that you need a team to create and then run a successful website. What exactly is a "successful" website? A site that helps you achieve your business goals is one answer and probably the most important one. A site that helps visitors achieve their goals is one I like better and if done properly coincides with your business goals.
In this section I will share what I know about building websites from deciding to building one, picking a domain name, deciding on emails, creating the site structure, planning content creation, generating photos and video, testing and optimizing it all, and launching it on the Web as well as ways to generate traffic. Once your site is live, the work then really begins. I'll share what I've learned to help you keep your site fresh and proactive in terms of responding to visitors feedback, statistics, error logs, reviews, etc. Once a site is live it's in the public realm and if you let them, they will help guide you to even further success. Let's get started...
Online Photography/Videography
In this section I'll explore first taking great photographs and video. "Garbage in Garbage out" is a saying I like, which means simply that if you start with bad photos or video there's little you can do to make them great and you might as well not even bother trying. I have wasted untold days trying to "fix" bad photos and video and the results are almost always the same, the delete key. Taking great photos or video or paying the experts for their skills is the way to go and today it is cheaper than ever to find great photos and videos online for reasonable prices.
Knowing ahead of time what you plan to use your photos and videos for helps in numerous ways as well. Using them exclusively for online purposes greatly reduces your requirements for camera gear and computer hardware to convert them to multiple formats. Most of the classic rules for taking photos and video apply for online media and we'll explore them as we learn about what's needed to produce world-class online photography and videography. This way to the studios...
Hardware & Software
Computers, cpus, RAM, video cards, firewire, scanners, monitors, flash media, etc. What's required, what's recommended, and what's new? I'll share where I go, who I ask, and what I use to produce what I need for marinebio.org and the other sites I manage. Hardware can be expensive, a real pain to work with, and even dangerous when it fails. I'll start with the basics that I've learned to help you keep your data safe and your black boxes of hardware happy. It starts with an understanding that there are no ghosts in the machine.... Bring your tea, you'll need it...
Software... hmmmm. The good thing is that software is now better than it's ever been and only getting better, for the most part. I'll share what software I use, how I use it, and most importantly why I chose what I have. We'll explore alternatives and the deep resources online that are simply priceless to everyone using software. Software central, next stop...
Articles & Resources
This site will always be a work in progress, as are all good sites. I'll add articles by myself and others as time goes on to help you (and me) keep abreast of the latest developments and news concerning building successful websites and working with photos and video online.
I have used many of the same resources online for years and will share all I have and then keep an eye out for new ones. Most of what I've learned concerning building websites and working with photos and video online came from online sources and books and people I've met while working in the industry. One of the most beautiful things about the Web is that it is our collective mind and so many freely share what they know for no other reason than to share in the hopes to make the Web, and therefore our world, a better place. I hope, in some small way, that I can also contribute my knowledge to help make our world a better place too.
If you have suggestions, comments or would like to contribute to this website, feel free to contact me.
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