Ignite has a home on Facebook

That's right, Ignite Media has started a Facebook profile! Although a work in progress, we invite you to a take a look and share with your friends. Check back often as we plan to keep updating and sharing information from our new page as well.

What do plan for the Facebook page?
We plan to keep the page updated with news and events related to not only what Ignite is doing but also what is going on in the search engine community. We invite you to share your thoughts and contribute to the page in anyway you feel comfortable.

Should we be on Facebook too?
Facebook is a great marketing tool if you plan to stay on top of it. With social networking sites like Facebook you have to keep things fresh and up to date otherwise the interest from viewers will fade away. Social media is all about what's going on now, not what happened 3 months ago.

How do I get started on Facebook?
You can either go to www.facebook.com and read the tutorials and articles about starting a personal profile or business page, or you can give Ignite a call and we'd be happy to discuss and work with you to get started on Facebook.

Remember: Networking and socializing are the new forms of marketing.

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization

What web based business should I start that will make money?

This post is for people who are currently looking to "break into" a web based business. Over the years I've come across many people who have asked the question "what's the most profitable web based business to be in?". The first answer that comes to mind is "if I knew that do you think I'd be doing this?". However, I usually catch myself before that comes out and I explain to them that there is no silver bullet.

Don't you just build the site and make the money?
Many people are under the impression that it is as easy as just putting up a website. As soon as you go online your orders will start rolling in. Unfortunately, this is where many people get into trouble. The website takes longer then they expected, the costs are higher than they originally anticipated and the site goes up and no one is going to it.

Just like with a brick and mortar store it doesn't just happen over night. No matter how many stories you've heard about the guy who is rich from the internet, it just simply is not that easy. I don't want to stop anyone from trying, I simply want to make sure you are completely aware of what goes into a web based business.

The website
For some reason people think that building a website is easy. That if they had a little time on their hands they could just as easily put one together. To some extent this is true, but will that site be any good? What if you decided that building a house was easy and you put yours together, do you think it will last very long? Are you an electrician, plumber, contractor, and architect? If not, you probably wouldn't attempt this. So why then would you attempt to put a website together when you more then likely do not know the first thing about the mechanics of a website?

It may seem like a cliche, or overused advice, but let the professionals do what the professionals do. You know the business you are doing and you wouldn't think twice about having someone from another profession come in and run your business, so why would you want to take over building a website?

Marketing for your website
So now you have the website, it's all built, and by a professional web developer who took the time to ensure it is SEO and user friendly. What do you do now? Now it's time to market the site. You have to let people know that your website exists. There are hundreds if not thousands of ways to do this. You can advertise in the yellow pages (online and offline), submit your site to various directories, get into Pay-Per-Click marketing, request inbound links to your site, send out a press release, and so much more.

Staying up to date with your website
Even after you have built the site, marketed it, and have customers coming in you need to make sure you are staying on top of the site. If you sell a tangible product you want to make sure you are updating your inventory and/or product information. You want to post specials and send out newsletters letting your customers know what is going on. Just like with that brick and mortar store, you have to make sure you are keeping and attracting the attention of your customers.

Remember: A website is more then just a page online, it's a business just like any other store.

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization

Remembering the people!

I recently read a really good blog post over at SEOMoz entitled "Social Media is People". The post was written by 'feedthebot', who is pretty active at SEOMoz and who's writing style is fun and easy to read and understand.

The whole point of the post is to remind people that at the end of the day any marketing efforts, especially social media marketing in this case, is not about what you have where and how many but rather who you know and how you can reach out to those you do not know yet. The people, real true life, flesh and blood people are the reason we build websites and communities, not to obtain tons of links.

As marketers and business owners we often forget what the true objective is, and are always trying to keep up with our competition. We're so worried about being on this directory and that directory and having this new thing added to our site and that other thing taken off that we lose sight of what is really important - THE PEOPLE!

I encourage you to read this post by 'feedthebot' and really take to heart what he is saying. We have to start thinking about who we want at our site and how we can get our name and site information in front of them, rather than just worrying about being on various sites and hoping that the right people see it.

Remember: Going back to the basics isn't always a bad thing.

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization

Ignite Gives Back!

Ignite Media has started a new innitiative to give back to those in need or less fortunate. Ignite Gives Back, is our program to donate 1%* of all sales to a deserving charity. "Every little bit helps" is what we strongly believe and we feel confident that the money we donate will help, if even in the smallest way.

There is no deadline, we will be doing this for as long as we can. Any project that comes through our doors will be helping a charity. The only thing that will change is the charity that we send to. Every couple of months we will decide on a new deserving charity so we can help as many as possible.

Do you have a specific charity in mind? We'd love to hear your thoughts on a deserving charity so we can put it on our list of ones to donate to. There are hundreds of thousands of deserving charties and we want to help out as best we can. If you recommend a charity please give us as much information as possible (name, website, cause, etc) so we can be sure if we do decide to donate to that charity that it goes to the correct place.

>> You can read more about Ignite Gives Back and see which charity we are currently donating to by clicking here.

Remember: Even a penny can go a long way; yes even in today's economy!

*URL Registration and website hosting are the only two services that will not be part of the Ignite Gives Back program

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization

Build, Review, Adjust, Review again...

A website is not a static thing. A website is something that should be changing on a regular basis, but not just because you feel like changing it. Those changes should be made on visitor behavior and/or new product/service announcements.

Changing based on visitor behavior
Website analytics are an extremely useful tool when it comes to figuring out what your website visitors are doing. However, the process shouldn't just stop at seeing what they are doing. You need to make sure you are adjusting your site accordingly. Lets say that your visitors are all coming to your home page and from there only 25% are moving further into the site. It's time to review and revise the home page so you can increase your conversion rate to interior pages.

What good is a site if the only page people go to is the home page? Chances are the home page is just the tip of the iceberg of what you offer, and those visitors are missing a great deal of information. It's time to make a change, and be sure when you do make the change you consult some clients and people who may not know your site well to see if the change is effective.

Other changes
A change isn't always because of visitor behavior but also because of new product or service information. If you have a new product coming out or that just came out, you want to be sure you promote that as much as possible. Put a nice area on the home page, or in the news section. Just be sure that it's visible and draws people's attention.

Remember: Change is a good thing, when done correctly.

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization

Website Testing, Testing, and more Testing...

A website is something that is constantly being updated and modified, so why shouldn't you constantly be testing it? There is nothing worse then hearing from a visitor or client that something on your site not working correctly. You want to be sure you find those "faults" first, not last.

What's so bad about a little error?
How little is the error? That's usually a question that doesn't have such a definitive answer. The error may seem little to you, but you may not know about the handful of visitors that left your site because of it. Perhaps those visitors were ready to order, or make a call but got frustrated, that's not a good thing for your bottom line. So that little error is now a very big error.

How do I catch everything?
You may not be able to catch everything, but you can certainly do things to help catch a majority of things. One very important practice would be to surf your website once or twice a day (at the beginning and end of the work day). Try different paths and make sure you can always get around and back to where you came from. Another approach would be to randomly have your employees surf the site. Just shoot John an email on Tuesday that says, "before the end of the day I would appreciate it if you could surf through our website as if you were a customer to make sure you don't run across any errors. Please inform me as soon as you have completed your surfing and whether you found anything or not." This approach gives you a fresh set of eyes that may catch something you wouldn't have.

Testing may lead to something new
During the course of your testing you may think of things, or your employees may think of things that will help to improve the site. It doesn't always have to be that something is wrong, but it could be that something could be a little bit better.

Remember: What may seem insignificant to one person, may be extremely significant to someone else.

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization