The Definitive Guide To Free Social Selling Tools

 It’s no secret that social selling reps are exceeding their counterparts and each day new tools are coming out to help sales teams embrace social selling. Today I will look specifically at tools that are free of charge. Stay tuned for my evaluation of premium social selling tools this week.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the social network with the highest age, income, education and most importantly decision makers. Every sales rep and member of the organization should be on LinkedIn, which is precisely why it’s such a great sales tool. It allows you to find target prospects and connect with them. It also provides great insight into mutual relationships to get a recommendation, to show your value to prospective decision makers, and to be a thought leader by publishing posts and being active in groups.

HootSuite

The ultimate social media aggregator and platform. This is my personal social selling command center which allows me to listen, publish, and schedule messages across all of my social networks from one place. I set up all of my Twitter lists here and LinkedIn groups and have a superhuman ability to listen and engage in one view. The free version allows you to add up to 5 networks before you need to upgrade.

Twitter

Twitter is a the second most important social network to LinkedIn with regards to B2B social selling. It provides access into the personal life of a prospect, it allows you to be thought leader by sharing relevant content, provides competitive intelligence opportunities, and gives you a chance to emotionally connect with your prospect before and during the sales cycle begins.

Trendspottr

Trendspottr is my favorite content curation platform. Why I like it is because it brings in content that is trending and provides me a real-time trending score which tells me which content has the most potential of virality in my area of expertise. It really promotes thought leadership by getting you the content first and enables you to engage with others that have engaged with the post. It plugs to HootSuite via their app directory for a great in HootSuite experience.

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Have You Tried Facebook Live Chat Yet?

Let’s face it. With the advent of social media, consumers are looking for swiftness. Gone are the days when consumers were willing to be patient with brands to get their queries resolved. It’s all about ‘Turnaround Time’ now. And Facebook has been quick to catch onto this insight. With Facebook live chat services, Facebook is planning to add a human factor to your fan page, allowing your business to tell its story and solve customer issues all at once.

So what exactly is a ‘Facebook Live Chat’? In simple words, it’s your customer service reps, experts or brand advocates talking directly to your Facebook fans to resolve queries, answer questions or simply give their opinion. I guess Facebook finally seems to be realizing that even for brands, the definition of social media remains unchanged – it’s still People to People, not Brand to People.

Let’s take a look at the advantages of offering Facebook live chat for your customers: 

• Real-Time Convenience to Customers
• Cost Efficient (I will elaborate more on this)
• Stand out Amongst Competitors (this is still a very new concept and one that will allow your brand to stand out)
• Develop Deeper Customer Relationships
• Transcripts Offer Data to Improve Customer Service
• Increase in Conversions and Average Order Values (again, something that I have covered at the end)

Here’s a statistic from ‘Econsultancy’ - 79% audience said they participated in a live chat because they get their questions answered quickly. 46% agreed it was the most efficient communication method. 

When I shared this idea with one of our clients, the very first question that they came up with was, “How is this different from my customer service representative catering to a disgruntled consumer over a telephone conversation?” Well, here’s the response:

Live Chat	Telephone Line
Live chat agents are trained to handle multiple chat sessions simultaneously	Whereas telephone representatives handle one call at a time
Live chat session costs $3-$5 per session	The cost of an average customer service telephone call goes up to $10

Once you have the client’s buy in, this is the next question you usually get: "Are there any best practices?" Here they are:

• Publicize in advance the live chat date
• Train your team
• Consider hiring people with experience
• Give your customers helpful chat features
• Don’t forget to boost your social presence – you don’t want them to feel that the entire process is shady just because your Facebook page isn’t complete and active
• Share the chat after its over – don’t forget the social amplification factor

Now, let’s look at how to execute a Facebook live chat:

• Login to your Conversion Support account
  • Navigate to “Settings” and click on the “Facebook” icon at the bottom. Click on “Add Conversion Support to your Facebook fan page”
  • Choose the “Facebook page” where you want to install Conversion Support’s live chat software
  • Once you have chosen your page and clicked on “Add Page Tab”, you will be redirected to your Facebook page and will notice the “Conversion Support” icon available
  • To initiate a chat, all you need to do is hit the “Start chat” button in your Facebook page

An article is never complete without a case study. I have included a couple of them:

Case Study 1 – Facebook Live Chat

Traditionally, customers expect a response within 24 hours, but social media is bringing immediacy to interactions that cannot be ignored. Following are the examples of top 10 top brands as measured by their ‘Average First Response Time’ to customer posts on Facebook.

Following are the amount of page posts by others that have a company comment. Investing time and effort to address customer problems and queries leads to a satisfied customer, and even avoids crisis. At the end of a simple Facebook interaction companies can gain one of the biggest assets for any brand on social media that is public recommendations (read: positive brand mentions).  

Case Study 2 – Live Chat platform on website

Virgin Airlines uses a live chat platform on their website to upsell customers with other offerings, which converts customers on chat 3.5 times more than customers that don’t engage in a chat. They also found that customers who were engaged in a live chat when they visited the website had a higher Average order Value of 15%, as compared to those who did not.

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Consumer Training as a Method to Improve Organic Reach on Facebook

Declining organic reach on Facebook has been a hot topic as of late.

Potential solutions are being offered up left and right for how to overcome this trend and earn content a valuable position in the News Feed.

The fact of the matter is that Facebook is making changes to suit its business and keep a diverse group of stakeholders happy.

As it pertains to organic reach of content and keeping businesses and brands happy:

Could they provide an unfiltered News Feed that mimics Twitter’s endless stream of recent updates? Sure.

Could they give greater priority to branded and business-related content in the News Feed? Sure.

Could they do any number of things to make marketers and business owners happier? Sure.

But you’ve got to know that Facebook is continually thinking about options to optimize the News Feed algorithm and are probably making more adjustments and testing more approaches than we can possibly imagine.

At the end of the day, they need to find a balance between what keeps their user-base happy, what keeps businesses and brands happy, what keeps shareholders happy, and what keeps any number of additional stakeholders happy.

A difficult task to say the least. But…

What if the solution for declining organic reach had more to do with user behaviour than complicated News Feed algorithms?

Let me explain.

It’s widely known that people spend the vast majority of their time on Facebook perusing the News Feed. For the most part, they accept what’s being shown to them there, and that comprises the bulk of their experience.

This is intriguing behaviour, however.

On other content distribution networks – which at the end of the day is a big part of what Facebook is – people actively make choices about what they want to see based on their interests, mood, time of day, what people have told them about, and a multitude of other factors.

On television, people surf channels, they PVR their favourite shows, they search Google on their tablets for what’s showing when… they make choices about what they want to watch.

In print media, people flip pages, reference indexes and tables of contents, bookmark pages, highlight passages… they make choices about what they want to read and look at.

And online, people demonstrate similar behaviour – they surf the web, they conduct endless searches, they bookmark, add blogs to RSS feeds, and on, and on… they make choices about the content they want to consume.

Why don’t people make choices about the content they want to see on Facebook?

My theory is that many people might simply not know how, and that many people are viewing the platform more as a broadcast channel than a personalized social experience.

Facebook has great built-in functionality to create Interest Lists that are essentially timelines of content that the user curates into custom lists. And these lists are available on the home page – right beside the News Feed – in the left sidebar.

You know all this, so I’ll not go into detail here, but Interest Lists are awesome, right?

In my opinion, the standout qualities of Interest Lists are that they’re user-created, they’re unfiltered, and they’re easy to make.

If everyone knew how to make Interest Lists, and you consistently produced absolutely killer content, don’t you think you’d end up achieving greater organic reach on Facebook? Don’t you also think that users would have an overall better experience on Facebook? If this isn’t win-win, I don’t know what is.

So, let’s make this happen.

How? I’m happy you asked.

I think there are two parts to this equation: 1) consumer training or education, and 2) the consistent publication of awesome, can’t live without it, content.

Let’s train Facebook users how to create and populate Interest Lists

Remember the early days of Facebook? When we created like-gates and huge graphics pointing to the ‘like’ button to acquire new fans?

We did those things because people weren’t used to using the platform (and sure, because we could). They needed training on how to get updates from the businesses, brands and organizations that they identified with, and train them we did!

Is there any reason we can’t get people creating Interest Lists and adding our businesses to those lists? Of course we can do that! It’ll just take a bit of time, some education and consistent reminders.

And if we all made a concerted effort to train this new behaviour, we could probably get them using this feature even sooner, and take a bite out of this declining organic reach issue we’re spending so much time talking about.

We need to live up to our end of the bargain by providing some pretty great value

Of course, if we’re going to get people to start making Interest Lists, and then have them want to add our businesses to those lists, we’ll need to give them some incentive.

So, we’ll need to be providing a solid value proposition to people to take the time to add us to their lists. This require continued energy and emphasis on producing killer content, facilitating some amazing social experiences, and of course building real relationships with these people so they feel compelled to continue checking out our businesses.

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Continuous Customer Engagement

A Social Business connects people to expertise. It connects individuals whether customers, partners, or employees as networks of people to generate new sources of innovation, foster creativity, and establish greater reach and exposure to new business opportunities. It establishes a foundational level of trust across these business networks and thus a willingness to openly share information, developing a deeper sense of loyalty among customers and employees. It empowers these networks with the collaborative, gaming, and analytical tools needed to engage each other and creatively solve business challenges.

Enagement is a great goal, but Continuous Customer Engagement is the next turn of the crank. It is about systematically interpreting and evolving a comprehensive understanding of an individual in order to engage that individual in a productive manner in any brand interaction.

The word “productive” is used very intentionally. As marketers extend their focus into customer experience and engagement, that idea of service is critical.

An offer may indeed be the right action in some cases. However, in other situations, the customer may be seeking information or struggling to accomplish a task. Marketing organizations in the leading companies that we’ve evaluated are differentiating themselves with their ability to interpret the customer’s need and determine the best possible action to take at any point in time and at any stage in the customer lifecycle.

Continuous Customer Engagement Rules: 

Those companies that practice continuous customer engagement have a set of rules.

• First, they break the typical silos and barriers to that get in the way of being customer focused and treating customers more holistically. The expand the traditional aperture of marketing and think about how they will serve best serve the customer.

• Second, they are beyond using “omni-channel” as a hype term. They are focused on building and creating a system of engagement that integrates and enables the the channels with rich, contextual customer insight and decisioning capabilities that enable them to listen and interact with customers much more effectively and dynamically.

• Third, they foster a customer-centric and authentic culture that focuses on establishing a win:win with the customer. These marketers focus on helping the rest of the company understand and empathize with the customer. They also work to ensure that the company has a clearly establish set of core values and then lives by those values in every way that it operates.

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3 Notes on Being More Human and Building Your Brand in Social Media

One of the most exciting things about social media is that we are working in a period of change. We're seeing an evolution in the way people approach work, play – life in general is absorbing new methods of interaction as social media grows into our collective cognizance. We're creating a new atmosphere and expanding our reach to the wider global community. And one of the best aspects of this is we’re all learning. Unlike traditional media where everything’s been done before, the social media landscape is being crafted by experimentation. No one has all the answers on how best to use social media for business, we’re all asking questions, trying new things. Definitely, there are processes that work, and through the research of thought leaders we’re guided, everyday, to expand our knowledge, but those leaders are as keen to learn as anyone else. We are in a period where ideas and thought are of significant value. Because no knows for sure where this road takes us next.

Whilst more people are embracing creativity and experimentation, there are some things that we’ve learned that are universally true, some aspects that, regardless of the medium, will remain influential in success. Those elements are human factors. You can’t do business without people. It's people who purchase your products, people who spread your brand message. You can’t succeed in social media without understanding the importance of building and maintaining human relationships. Whilst social media is technology based, it’s people who drive it, and we don’t build relationships with avatars and user names alone. Here are three things that will help humanize your brand and build better business relationships through your social media presence.

1. People want to connect with people. They don’t want constant brand spiels and blatent advertising. People want to know they’re important, that they’re being listened to. Businesses need to keep in mind that each of those profile images is representative of a person at the other end. You need to listen as much as you can, hear what's being said, then use that feedback in your planning. This is why social media monitoring is so important, it’s your window into the consumers’ world. The more you can tap into it, the better your company will be positioned to establish a place of relevance and trust. Stats show that people expect a brand to respond to a question posed on social media within 60 minutes. That expectation is only going to increase. Social media is an opportunity for people to have a voice – you, as a business, need to hear it.

2. Gratitude and acknowledgement are critical elements in developing community. Just as in real life, saying thank you goes a long way in building relationships. You should think of social media in the context of any other relationship. If a person recommended your expertise to someone else in your neighbourhood, you’d want to thank them for the good word. Same in social media, you should always seek to acknowledge and thank people for sharing your content, for talking positively about your brand, for recommending your offerings. Small actions can go a long way – think about how good it feels when a major influencer re-tweets you or ‘Likes’ your post. It’s recognition, it’s gratitude, and you’re more likely to feel a connection with that person or brand because of it.

And here’s a further positive I’ve noticed - as a result of social media’s culture of acknowledgement, I’m now more active in sharing my gratitude with people in real life when they help me out. It’s a small thing to say ‘thank you’ to someone who’s made an effort in your service, but it can make a big difference to their day, just to know someone noticed. This is a major part of building your social media community.

3. Most brands look at social media in terms of how it can help them, not how they can help others. While this makes sense for obvious reasons, the latter approach is more conducive to success. Actively seeking out ways your business can be of benefit goes a long way towards improving your social media results. How can social media help you serve clients better, increase your capacity to meet client needs? The more you can view things from the perspective of how you can help, the better your interactions will be. As noted earlier, people want to feel important, respected, listened to. Their social media profiles are their voice - brands that are able to listen to them, make them feel that they are valued, those are the businesses that are achieving higher levels of engagement. Social media is not a broadcast platform, it’s a two-way conversation - If you want to build your brand and have your message spread through people’s social circles, word of mouth is crucial. Approaching each connection from the perspective of how you can help, in line with your brand mission, should be a guiding principle of your presence.

There are many opportunities in social media, and the parameters of how best to utilise the various platforms are constantly evolving, providing businesses the chance to think creatively about how they engage and excite their target audience. Whilst the path to conversion is not always as direct as traditional media, the path to people is clearer than ever – you now have more opportunity to listen to what people are saying about you, to get an understanding of how your company and products are perceived. These insights are of significant value. Incorporating them into your planning, and working to help improve the consumer’s world, will go a long way towards solidifying your ongoing success.

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5 Ways to Empower Your Customers to Be Your Biggest Marketers

The number one most powerful tool to turn prospects into customers is, of course, positive feedback from already satisfied customers. Whether this happens online or offline, both are equally important. There's literally no better way to boost your company's credibility!

By turning your customers into brand advocates, asking them for a testimonial, spreading reviews on the web, or nurturing offline word-of-mouth, etc. ... you can empower your customers to become your ultimate marketing go-to.

Do bear in mind that buying is an emotional decision, and people only want honest opinions. What better way than to get it from real people who already know the ins and outs of your product? Connect your prospects with your customers and offer them information to which they can relate.

We've compiled 5 ways to empower your customers to become your biggest ambassadors.

1. Boost Offline Word-Of-Mouth

Customers are never passionate about you, they're passionate about what your product offers them. That's why companies need to reach out to people that do magnificent things with their product and help show them off.

Don't use influencers (or influencer marketing) alone to put the spotlight on your product, use existing customers who are already die-hard fans of your product and shine the spotlight on them.

For example, Chevy organized an interview with a man who had little influence but a great passion for the product. Afterwards, they handed the video to him, and didn't ask for anything in return. He spontaneously posted the interview on several sites and earned 12,000 views. Within months, he was already an influencer in the automobile industry.

2. Build Die-Hard Brand Advocates

Social media has made it pretty easy to build brand advocates for any company. With people constantly sharing their experience on social media, it's up to you to chime in with help and get them excited about your brand.

Companies that reach out to customers with helpful information score high social points and successfully nurture brand advocacy. Real-time help can turn a negative situation into a winning customer experience and help develop a strong connection with customers. It's the next step in making your customers become active advocates.

For example, Zappos is a company that heavily focuses on responding to customer issues in real-time. Its warm and genuine tone-of-voice makes them receive an incredibly high amount of positive feedback.

3. Encourage Customers to Give Testimonials

No one enjoys reading web pages that are boring and full of dry statistics. Try using testimonials to revive them! They are a great sales technique if you don't push it too much. Inevitably, your website contains some sales material without going overboard.

The right testimonial gains trust of customers and creates credibility with prospects. Clearly show your website visitors that other people dealt with the same issues and were able to overcome them by using your product. This way you can show your visitors that your ultimate goal is to help them.

To give you an idea of what testimonials should look like, take a look at the example below. This clearly shows that testimonials should come from people working from within a company, not from companies themselves. They should be short, easy-to-consume, and genuine. However, never just include quotes like, "I like your product and the price is great." Let your customers be specific about your product's key features.

4. Dedicate a Page on Your Websites to Use Cases

In order for your testimonial to really gain attention, you should showcase those particular cases on a dedicated page on your website. You can really make that content come to life if you add quotes, important feedback, or even include a short video. Think of your website as your business card: instead of having to hand them out all the time, let the customers come to you.

A dedicated use cases page puts your customer on the spot to tell a story from their own perspective from customer acquisition, to purchase, and on to engagement. Just like you do offline, you'll want to represent your business online in the best possible light. Let your customers do that for you.

A dedicated use cases page is a way of extending the brand you've worked so hard to create. Your website use cases page is an extension of that branding project in order to make it a seamless whole and not just an add-on feature.

5. Ask for a Much-Wanted Review

Focus not only on your own website but widen your scope and concentrate on external online resources. Reading a positive review from an existing customer can only bolster confidence for a right purchase.

There's no amount of advertising, tweeting, or direct mailing that has quite the same impact on customers the way an objective peer review does. What you say about your brand doesn't matter. It's what others say that counts!

It's important to remember that soliciting reviews from customers should be handled with delicacy. The biggest challenge is actually getting them, and not dealing with negative ones. It's definitely not abnormal to think it will turn off customers. So, make sure you make the reviewing process as easy as possible, or offer a small yet appropriate incentive (like a 10% discount or similar offer).

In summary, think about how you further want to leverage your customer relationships. Nothing sells your business more than great marketing for your customers themselves. Any kind of review from a brand advocate influences approximately 90% of a prospect's buying decision. So, make sure it's a positive one!

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24 Things to Consider When Designing and Developing a Website

From functionality and appearance to navigation and coding integrity, a lot goes into creating an eye-catching, user-friendly website. It doesn’t end there, either. Web developers and designers must work together to produce websites that will be located by search engines, engage customers, and stimulate conversions. Whew! That’s a lot of pressure. Fortunately, the following 24 tips will guide you through the process of creating a unique user experience that inspires viewers to become loyal brand advocates. 

1. Choosing a Domain and Host

Great domain names (take a look at Google and Yahoo, for two) say so much while saying so little. In addition to being memorable, a domain name needs to accurately reflect your brand’s voice and be nearly impossible to misspell. Finding the right name for your brand is crucial, because incorporating a combination of SEO, simple spelling, and brand identity into the domain name leads to a higher chance of being located in search engine results. Simply put, businesses that are easily accessed online get more customers.

When comparing hosting packages, it’s vital to consider the nature of your website and business. Will the website be media-rich, with loads of pictures, videos, and presentations? Do you have technical support in-house, or do you need reliable, responsive support from your hosting provider? Also think about the amount of traffic your website will receive. Does the hosting company offer scalable solutions? What backup, security, and additional features are offered? Don’t forget to research reviews about the company’s performance on social media and third party websites before making a final decision.

2. Backend Services (CMS “Content Management System” / Software)

It’s impossible to develop a great website without a functional program taking care of the backend. If you think of your website as a car, you can understand why. When friends see your shiny new sports car, they look at the sleek paint job, glistening tires, and luxurious leather seating. In the world of websites, this equates to the part of your site a user experiences directly. Just like the powerful engine in your sports car, the backend of your website is where the magic really happens. Without strong backend services, your website won’t be able to “wow” your guests. Similarly, a sports car without an engine is rendered useless. One of the best “engines” for ecommerce sites is Magento, while WordPress is a customizable CMS ideal for informational sites. 

3. Clean Design

One of the most important things to remember during the process of website development is to create a clean, appealing design. A quality design is attractive and easy to read with intuitive navigation. Most importantly, a clean design helps viewers focus on the value of your brand and content instead of distracting graphics and large amounts of text. Often, customers associate website designs with the quality of a particular company or product. Hence, a clean design is vital to providing a positive user experience that encourages customers to return.

4. Effective Color Scheme

Color schemes are more important than customers realize. Different colors have the ability to evoke emotional responses, such as calm, happiness, or frustration. When it comes to using colors in your website design, it’s essential to consider your company’s niche, target audience, branding, and the elements of color theory. What colors will your target audience respond to? If your color scheme is similar to your logo and branding, is it overwhelming or pleasing to look at? Are you trying to convey your brand’s voice with a bright and spunky orange or a professional, calming blue? Regardless of your choice, spending the time to research the best color options will give your visitors a good impression.

5. Branding

Branding is important to all businesses, both large and small. The design and placement of your brand’s logo contributes to a viewer’s overall opinion. Professionally designed logos successfully catch the customer’s eye and provide a clear picture of the brand’s unique voice. Choose a location on your site that is readily visible to visitors, such as the upper left corner, since this is where the eye naturally begins to scan a website. To further solidify your brand’s identity, consider using the same logo on packaging, print advertising, and branded apparel. When a business is consistent with branding, it provides customers with an integrated and memorable brand experience.

6. Functionality

When thinking about functionality, there are a few matters to consider. Namely, is the website functional in the literal sense? Are there loading issues or broken links? Are the site’s security features adequate for your business’s needs? In addition to these operational issues, it’s crucial to view your website’s features from the user’s perspective. Are the contact forms, surveys, and customer feedback sections of your site working properly? One or all of these functional issues can prompt a customer to leave your site. 

7. Navigation

If a website is confusing and difficult to navigate, your customers may leave and never return. To increase the efficiency and appeal of your site’s navigation, conduct an in-depth site review as if you are a new visitor. Note the navigation streams that make sense and those that do not. One way to improve a visitor’s ability to navigate your site easily (and help search engines crawl your site) is to add a site map. Furthermore, streamlining navigation by eliminating unnecessary or underperforming pages may decrease load time while improving the quality of your brand’s online presence.

8. Usability

Websites that are easy to use are more likely to garner customer interest and encourage business. Usability can be increased by displaying product and service information in a clear, concise manner. Make sure your website has all the features a customer would need for the site to be easily accessible. If a viewer is reading your blog and wants to subscribe to an email newsletter, do they have to hunt for the opt-in form? Is your contact information clearly displayed? Does the layout of your website encourage social sharing and further interaction with your brand? These key elements are essential to review when optimizing the usability of your site. 

9. Call to Action

Placing calls to action on your website encourages customers to contact your business. A friendly suggestion, such as “Contact us today!” demonstrates that your business wants to develop a relationship with its customers. It’s important that calls to action are appropriate for a visitor’s level of engagement with your company. If they’re just discovering your brand, invite them to subscribe to your email newsletter. If they’re already a loyal customer, perhaps they’ll enjoy participating in your brand’s loyalty rewards program. Regardless of what you’re asking visitors to do at your site, always include a call to action at least once on each page.

10. Short Loading Times

When looking for information online, nothing aggravates visitors more than slow loading times. Customers can be turned away completely due to this issue. Testing your website ahead of time will help you pinpoint any loading time issues, and these can be fixed before your site’s official release. To increase customer retention and provide a positive user experience, periodically evaluate your website’s loading time once it has launched. Short load times give customers the information they want when they want it. If your site can’t deliver, a competitor’s site will.

11. Active Blog

An on-site blog helps keep customers informed about the latest products, company events, and industry-related information. Featuring a blog on your website is a great way to connect with them, especially if your posts encourage readers to interact with your brand. Keeping your blog regularly updated informs customers of your brand’s values and desire to promote communication. By regularly providing readers with fresh, helpful, engaging content, your brand becomes a trusted resource and an industry authority.

12. Clean, SEO-Friendly Code

Whether you’re developing new webpages or optimizing existing ones, it’s critical to have clean, SEO-friendly code. By taking the time to improve your site’s code, you can increase the overall return on investment. SEO-friendly code acts as a guide for search engine spiders by providing a clear picture of your site’s content. Certain CMS services, such as WordPress, provide plug-ins designed to simplify the process of cleaning up code and increasing search engine rankings. Since it requires little coding knowledge (if any), WordPress is a great resource for companies struggling to drive traffic to their websites.

13. Compatibility with Multiple Browsers

As technology progresses, the number of internet browsers is steadily growing. From Internet Explorer and Chrome to Firefox and Safari, it can be frustrating to keep up with them all. When creating a website, it’s vital to ensure that your website is reachable from multiple browsers. Specifically, your site should load properly on all major browsers – including older versions. Failing to take this step may exclude a large section of your customer base, which can be a costly consequence for a growing business.

14. Mobile Sites vs. Responsive Sites

Statistics indicate that the use of mobile devices to conduct online searches has increased significantly in the past two years. In fact, approximately 95% of mobile device users count on their devices to search for local products and services. To effectively reach this growing population of mobile users, businesses need to be sure that their websites are available from any device. For a large company with an existing web presence, it makes sense to develop a separate, mobile-friendly website designed to perform well on any device. On the other hand, a business planning the launch of a website would be better served by choosing a responsive design capable of adapting to any device.

15. Integration with Social Media

Integration with social media is no longer a novelty – it’s a requirement. As technology makes information sharing more convenient, businesses lacking social media integration fail to take advantage of what has been likened to modern day word-of-mouth advertising. Social media provides a venue in which customers can promote your brand, provide reviews, and stay in-the-know about your company’s latest news. Written and visual content, including product images and branded video, are easily distributed on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn with the addition of social sharing buttons on your website.

16. Captcha Tests

Spam, spam, and more spam. That’s what some businesses receive in their comment sections, contact forms, and site forums that don’t have captcha tests in place. These tests (you’ll recognize them as the random letters and numbers typed before submitting a web-based form) differentiate humans from robots. Adding these short tests to your contact forms will ensure that only humans are able to use your site’s resources – saving your business time and money.

17. Effective Security

With the evolution of technology, newer and more advanced security risks threaten to compromise your website’s integrity. From malware and viruses to malicious apps and the threat of hackers, websites must prevent security breaches on both the front ends and back ends. Websites built to conduct online transactions, such as ecommerce sites, need additional security measures to protect customer information. To reduce the potential for browser-based threats, businesses must add SSL certificates to their websites. During development, it’s critical to review the security features included in your site’s framework and design. Businesses also need to conduct regular security checks or work with a provider who offers this service.

18. Offsite Reviews 

Due to Google’s search algorithm changes, greater priority has been placed on local searches. Review services, such as Google and Yelp, can be instrumental in generating qualified leads for businesses. Now, when customers search for a local business or product, they’re often greeted with reviews about a company on the first page of search engine results. Obtaining reviews on third party websites adds to your brand’s credibility, while making it simple for viewers to gain insight into customer satisfaction associated with your brand. To guarantee customers are able to leave reviews about your company, make sure to claim your business profile on third party review sites like Google and Yelp. You can than create a call to action on your website that will prompt a client to write a review and lead them to that particular third party review service.

Google offers a great way to connect your Google+ business page reviews with your website. As long as you have an address for your business that qualifies and a Google+ account, you can search for your business page and if one doesn’t exist already you can create one. Once Google verifies that you’re the owner you will see your Google+ business page linked to your website whenever it appears in the SERP’s.

19. Customer Testimonials

Similar to offsite reviews, customer testimonials can be used to promote your business. By featuring customer testimonials on your site, you demonstrate your company’s skills, products, and commitment to customers. If you already have a loyal customer base, reach out to a few and solicit online reviews. If they’re willing to provide a recorded testimonial, take advantage of this opportunity to create a branded video. The more genuine, detailed testimonials your company receives, the greater your chances of gaining new customers.

20. Google+ Author Verification

Though Google stopped accepting page verification requests (not to be confused with Google+ business page verification, which is still active), it remains essential to complete Google+ author verification for your site. Linking site content to specific authors using Google+ profiles allows the search engine to easily distinguish between content created by a human and content of a lesser quality. Completing the Google+ author verification steps also ensures that the author’s byline and photo appear in SERPs. When looking for relevant content, customers greeted with the promise of information provided by a real person are more likely to click on the link. As a bonus, claiming your brand’s byline in SERPs makes it easier for customers and peers to connect with it.

21. Tracking

Between Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools and bing Webmaster Tools, web developers have the mechanisms necessary to accurately and efficiently calculate return on investment. For both traditional and mobile websites, these instruments can be used together to monitor traffic, engagement, and conversion rates. After digging deep into the data, it’s possible to uncover which marketing campaigns work best and which are underperforming. These valuable insights into why customers come to, stay on, and leave your website help your team perfect marketing strategies and adjust engagement techniques to maximize results. Since your branded online presence acts as a 24/7 storefront, it’s essential to simplify the outcomes measurement process by using Google Analytics along with Google and bing’s Webmaster Tools.  

22. Comprehensive Sitemap

When you sit down to read a book, what’s the most helpful section to review first? Typically, it’s the table of contents. Acting as a summary of the book’s details, the table of contents provides a snapshot of material found within. Similarly, a sitemap provides visitors and search engines with the information to easily navigate your website and discover its contents. To keep your site up to date, it’s necessary to revise the site map as new pages are added. Google Webmaster Tools simplifies this process for you.

23. Original Content

When designing a website, it is crucial to write high quality, original content that is relevant to your company and products. Everything from the quality of your content to the keywords used affects your site’s ranking in search engine results. Keyword research can provide topic ideas and, if used sparingly, will help customers quickly locate the content they’re seeking. To increase the appeal, each web page should have no less than 150 words and should include links to credible resources and other pages on your website. More than providing information, the content published on your site should be written to echo your brand’s unique voice. Before publishing, use a tool like Copyscape to ensure that it passes duplication standards. Posting duplicate content on your website will result in steep penalties from Google, including possible removal from search engine results.

24. Stock Images

Everything found on your website is considered intellectual property and falls under copyright laws. As one of the world’s leading suppliers of stock photos, Getty Images regulates the appropriate use of images online. If not posted with permission, images that are copyrighted may result in fines. When incorporating images into your site’s content, make sure to receive written permission for use and pay relevant fees, if applicable. There are also sites that offer access to copyright-free images. However, be sure to carefully review terms of use before posting them. For many businesses, the costs associated with the lawful use of images outweigh the immediate benefit of “getting something for nothing.”

Given these 24 aspects of website development and design, it’s clear that there are many factors to consider when creating a branded website. In addition to increasing traffic and generating leads, your site’s design, navigation, and content must engage customers and inspire further interaction with your brand. As you build a website, review the tools and information outlined in this guide to ensure that your site has the tools required to succeed.

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Integrate to Look Out and Over Social Media Silos

Unlike most industries, Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) manufacturing exists in an unusual business-to-business-to-consumer world where we buy their branded products -- not from them -- but retailers.  It’s always been retail that held the keys to end-consumer relationships, while suppliers stood at arm’s length from the customer experience.  Influence and insights were functions of mass media advertising to anonymous masses and focus groups as proxies for millions of consumers.  No more.

Social media has brought the consumer right to the front doorsteps of CPG companies, whether they like it or not.  CPG makers have responded by investing in all manner of “social extensions” to their businesses -- namely branded social network accounts, social marketing campaigns and promotions, social command centers and social customer support.

The Social “Bolt-On”

CPG organizations are notorious for adopting new technology without a plan for leveraging the investment across the company.  Social media capabilities are no exception.  Yet unlike most other technologies employed for internal use, social media invites consumers to become active participants in determining a company’s value.  The stakes are higher, the silos are becoming deeper and executives are starting to wonder if they are prepared to deal with the fluid – and potentially volatile nature – of social media.

Anxious executives should be able to see beyond the ways social media impacts their area of responsibility.  Consider some common ways social media is employed in CPG organizations today and the functions typically associated with them:

• As a brand sentiment or brand health monitor – brand marketing or consumer/shopper insights.
• A customer service (for consumers) or consumer affairs channel – contact center, consumer affairs.
• A marketing or engagement channel – marketing, shopper marketing, category management.
• A consumer, competitor or market research tool – brand marketing, consumer/shopper insights, research & development.

Of the four, the only one that implies an obligatory two-way interaction is customer service, an activity most brands are reluctant to support beyond cherry picking the loudest comments to respond to, good or bad.  Fact is, consumers see any brand participation in social media as tacit agreement to participate in a dynamic and conversational medium.  It’s no wonder many brands still fall victim to the out of control social media firestorm that harms brand value and sales.

Stepping Back

Placing the “social cart” before the “consumer data horse” places CPG companies at a disadvantage, but it’s not too late to course correct.  The key is to step back and develop a plan for creating an integrated view of the identifiable consumer interactions that includes those within social media.

Doing so serves two purposes:

• One, it bridges the gap between all social activities and other digital marketing channels (mainly brand websites and email).  It’s been proven that brand website visitors spend more money and buy more often than consumers who do not.  Just like shoppers this audience can be segmented according to less profitable coupon seekers who contribute to volume, versus brand champions who are more profitable because they buy based on value.  So using social channels to build and maintain direct connections with identifiable consumers drives volume and profit.
• Two, it serves to stitch together consumer interaction data from social media and direct communication channels, such as brand websites and email subscription lists.  This standardized, integrated and living source of consumer insight then serves the role as a “consumer interaction master.”  It also supports better brand website content development and curation – key to attracting, maintaining and growing an audience of consumers who spend more on your brands.

Brands struggle with the concept of “social customer support,” given the many thousands of conversations that happen daily in social media.  Even if an agency monitors conversations on behalf of brands, or commercial social media engagement software is employed, these align to silos associated with brand marketing or consumer affairs.  The resulting insights are beyond the grasp of other roles and also lack context for the brand’s history with those consumers in other digital channels.

Possessing integrated consumer interaction data helps divine social media for the conversations, consumers, shoppers, competitors and influencers that matter.  It helps address such questions as:

• Not all opinions in social media matter to your brands.  Can you identify the ones that do?  Can you discern actual consumers of your brands?
• Whether someone is a consumer or your brands or not, can you identify especially influential people who can help or harm your brands?
• Can you resolve people in social channels to those you have a pre-existing interaction history with to inform a response?
• Should your loyalty program integrate with social channels?
• How do you engage?  Are interactions handled personally or can some be automated?  Should this be assigned to your call center, consumer affairs group, or an agency?
• Social media can act as a sort of crowd sourcing proxy to test ideas: marketing messages or product concepts.  It can likewise act as a competitor and marketplace monitor to a similar end (for ideas based on competitor moves, consumer comments, competitor vulnerabilities).  Some opinions are more valuable than others – how do you know the difference?
• In the high tech industry, social media data is being employed to make supply chain decisions – not about product supply to better meet demand, but product creation input decisions based on consumer sentiment and which impact engineering, sourcing and production costs.  Again, how do you know which consumer sentiments are most reliable?

Social media silos cannot support these varied decisions, which impact all areas of the CPG organization.  An integrated approach to social media interaction data that includes all consumer touch points can.  Although retailers continue to own the last mile of the purchase journey, CPG direct to consumer sales are coming online every day.  Without such a rich source of interactive consumer data to springboard off of, it will be challenging to execute those strategies successfully.

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Defining Your Content Efforts Through the "Five Whys"

By now you’ve heard all about the importance of creating great content - how content is crucial to your social media and SEO efforts, how you need to be creating original, shareable work to build brand awareness and authority. You’ve gone through it, it all makes sense, now it’s time to get on with the doing. But where do you start? Writing great content is a challenge in itself, but even before that, you need to determine what you’re going to write about? You’re working on establishing community engagement and expanding reach through compelling material - it can’t be product and company news alone. It needs to be fresh, it needs to stand out. It needs to be something people want to tell their friends about.

A good place to start in your content planning is defining the mission of your brand. What does your company aim to provide? What image do you want to portray? What is it that your brand provides that others do not? These are the key questions at the core of your branding efforts – the more specific you can get, the better, as it will direct your content efforts from then on.

Defining Your Brand's Core Purpose

A Harvard Business Review paper, authored by James Collins and Jeremy Porras, identified that ‘companies that enjoy enduring success have core values and a core purpose that remains fixed while their business strategies and practices endlessly adapt to a changing world.’ The closer you can narrow down to a singular core purpose, the more targeted and consistent your branding efforts can be. For example, here are the core purpose statements of some of the world’s biggest brands (from Collins and Porras’ ‘Building Your Company’s Vision’ report):

Nike - To experience the emotion of competition, winning, and crushing competitors

3M - To solve unsolved problems innovatively

Wal-Mart - To give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same things as rich people

Walt Disney - To make people happy

One way of narrowing down to a singular purpose statement is by using Collins and Porras’ ‘Five Whys’ method. The ‘Five Whys’ are answers to a question posed to your business. You start with a statement, either ‘We make X products’ or ‘We provide X services’, then you ask ‘Why is that important?’ and you provide five answers to this question. From those five answers, Collins and Porras determined that companies could reach a better understanding of their actual purpose and, from there, narrow that down to a singular statement, enabling them to unify company activities to work towards that goal.

From Collins and Porras' report:

'The five whys can help companies in any industry frame their work in a more meaningful way. An asphalt and gravel company might begin by saying, We make gravel and asphalt products. After a few whys, it could conclude that making asphalt and gravel is important because the quality of the infrastructure plays a vital role in people’s safety and experience; because driving on a pitted road is annoying and dangerous; because 747s cannot land safely on runways with poor workmanship or inferior concrete; because buildings with substandard weaken with time and crumble in earthquakes. From such introspection may emerge this purpose: To make people’s lives better by improving the quality of man-made structures.'

The Importance of Defining Purpose

From a social media standpoint, this is very powerful. You’re looking to create community engagement, establish your brand identity and maximise reach - your content strategy will form the backbone of these efforts. Having a singular purpose allows you to focus your thinking on how you support it, solidifying your options on what content you share and create. Once you have a core aim, you can write brand stories that show that mission in action, the human side of your business. It enables you to highlight your brand’s place in the consumer’s world - what you do and how you do it - and with that consistent purpose behind each piece, you’re reinforcing your brand identity post by post, tweet by tweet. Having a clarified ambition is an important step towards establishing an authoritative and trusted presence, and can also serve as both a guide and inspiration for all team members in how they approach social media engagement and communicate with clients.

The Proof is in the Process

It's important that all your efforts, business-wide, reinforce your purpose statement. Companies are not defined by their words, they’re defined by their actions, and as noted by Influence & Co CEO John Hall, ‘when people have a clear understanding of what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, they’re more likely to take emotional ownership of the work’. Your mission statement provides that understanding and should be front of mind for all staff interacting through your social media profiles. Every post, every update, every time you share someone else's content, it should always be cross-checked against the purpose statement to ensure it reinforces the mission of your brand. This ensures consistency, but also eliminates the sharing of personal updates and off-focus information that's not relevant to your audience. If you're ever unsure whether you should post something, check it against the purpose statement and see if it fits. By aligning to that goal, you're aiming to make your brand the go-to source for your niche - your audience will know, through your content and actions, who you are and what you stand for, whether the statement is public knowledge or not.

Creating blogs, commenting, responding to queries - all of these interactions should underline the mission. In doing this, you strengthen your ties with your social media communities and build a stronger brand presence online.

A concrete purpose statement is a significant step in your social media strategy. Blogging without a definitive intention is sometimes too broad and can lead to you drifting from your audience wants and needs. Narrowing down the focus will help you stay on point in all actions, whilst also enabling you to get your teams behind a single, guiding goal. Purpose, consistency and awareness are the factors that drive great results, and you can start along that path by establishing just one critical sentence.

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