NewsBusiness

Do you have a nagging feeling that your website is just not performing? There are ways to find out how it’s going – at NewsBusiness we use a couple of tools to assess how a website is performing. Here are the main ones we use:

Question 1 – How many people are visiting?

Website statistics

First stop of course are your website’s statistics – which you can generally access through your web host’s control panel. These will normally give you an idea of eg:

• your unique visitors
• number of visits
• number of pages viewed
• most popular pages
• number of ‘hits’
• search words and phrases that led visitors to the site
• where visitors came from (eg typed url in directly, Google, other link)

There is often some confusion about ‘hits’. Each page that is viewed will normally generate multiple hits, and so you can’t take the number of hits as the number of visitors! A hit just records a file that is requested from the web server, and most web pages comprise a number of files, such as image files, stylesheet files and the html or php file for the page itself, so hit will always be a much higher figure than real visitors.

Unique visitors is a more helpful statistic, as each person (via their computer’s IP address) that visits the your site in the month is only counted once, even if they visit multiple times in that month. It’s comparable to number of ‘readers’ for print publications.

Google Analytics

The Google Analytics system – if you install it on your site – gives you much more detailed stats than your website stats. A useful statistic is what’s called the ‘bounce rate’ for your site or for individual pages on the site. Bounce rate measures the proportion of visitors that   visit one page of your site and then leave the site without clicking through to any other pages on your site. The higher this figure, the less likely it is they will complete the action you want them to take. In other words they haven’t found your website interesting enough to stick around and see more of it.

Question 2 – How many other websites link to my site?

There are a number of factors that determine where your website (or – technically – each page) appears in the search engine rankings in Google, but one of the key metrics Google measures to determine where a page should rank, is how many other web pages link to it. A link building strategy is outside the scope of this article, but it’s easy to find what links you already have. Go to www.yahoo.com.au and type into the search bar:

link:www.yourwebsite.com.au

then choose ‘inlinks’ and then ‘except from this domain’ and ‘entire site’. You’ll then see a list of all sites that link in to your site. As a guide, if you have any less than 25 links, your site is not really getting any benefit from links in and its Google rank may be suffering as a result. You can do the same thing with a similar Google tool, the difference is that Google won’t give you all the sites linking in, just a selection. Yahoo gives you all of them.

Question 3 – How high up in Google does my site rank for my important keywords?

If you’re not number one in Google for your business name, you either have a very common name or something is seriously wrong!

The trouble is, most people searching for what you do on Google don’t know anything about you, let alone your name. So you need to rank highly for important keywords or key phrases relating to what you do. Working out what people will type in to Google when looking for your product or service is an art by itself.

Finding out your website “rank” for your important keywords and phrases used to be a laborious process of manually checking position (I used to give up if I couldn’t find the site in the top ten pages – top 100 results). Now there is a great free tool that automates the process:

www.seobook.com – Rankchecker

Rankchecker is a free download from seobook – it lets you list any number of keywords or phrases and then find out where you list for each one on Google (global and Australian version), Yahoo (global and Australian) and Bing.

The great thing about this tool is it circumvents ‘personal results’, which is where Google skews the search results based on sites it knows you have visited before – Google will rank a site you’ve visited before higher than it would do for someone else. That’s why just using Google yourself to find out where your site ranks can often give you a ‘false positive’ of your ranking – it may appear to you that your site is ranking highly but no-one else will be seeing it there!

Question 4 – How ‘popular’ is my website?

Your stats or Google Analytics results will tell you how many visitors you are getting, but won’t tell you how you’re doing in relation to your competitors. This information can be pretty hard to come by, since your competitors are unlikely to share this with you, but there is a tool that can at least give you an idea. That tool is

Alexa

Alexa is a US based service that ranks websites around the world by ‘popularity’. It’s a complex formula based largely on monitoring sites visited by millions of people who have installed the Alexa toolbar. Unsurprisingly the top sites in Australia are google.com.au, Facebook, google.com, YouTube and Yahoo.

To use the Alexa tool just type your URL into the search box and it will give you your website’s traffic rank globally and in Australia.

Alexa admit that the accuracy of their list declines the lower down the list you are, but it is a good general guide. As a very general rule, if you’re in the top million your site is reasonably popular, if it has ‘no rank’ then it has not been picked up at all by Alexa. Once your site has been picked up by Alexa, it can then give you an idea of whether your site has become more popular or less over the previous one month and three month periods – a green arrow is good, a red arrow bad.

If you’re in business, you should have! But are you saying it, and are you being heard?

It never ceases to amaze me how many businesses have their websites set up to put news stories on them, but then either don’t put up any news at all, or the ‘news’ is over six months old – not really ‘news’ any more. And just putting up news stories on a corporate website is really not enough – news is meant to be spread, and email is the best way.

The main problem with putting a regular email update or newsletter together is actually setting the time aside to think about what to say and then to write the update itself. And of course it needs to be interesting and engaging and – subtly – include a sales message.

There are really two challenges – one, actually deciding what to write about and what exactly to write and two, mastering the technology of setting up the email and sending it.

At NewsBusiness we spend a lot of time talking to businesses about doing this, and we actually produce and send newsletters and updates via email for many of our clients as part of our PR marketing services. But we are so convinced that this strategy is vital to all businesses to drive business and sales, that we have just launched a new service which actually does all that needs to be done to produce and send this email.

Called ‘Something to Say?’, we help you to decide what topics to cover, we interview you to find out what news your business has, we write the articles, and once you have approved them, we load them up to your website and create and send an email to your database for you. If you don’t currently use an email marketing system, we can recommend a few (they are very reasonably priced), and if you don’t have a mechanism for loading news stories to your website, we can also recommend one. And unlike other copywriting services, we’ve made Something to Say a fixed price service.

For more about Something to Say? jump on this page on the main NewsBusiness website, or call us on 07 3103 5764.

PS We’ve written before about how to decide what to write and how to write here:

The Art of the Start* (or how to put pen to paper to write that newsletter!)

We are talking here of course about blogging*. Unfortunately there is no cast iron rule and it also depends on why you are blogging and who your intended readership/audience is.

If you are ‘blogging for profit’ ie making money from your blog itself, then clearly the more blog posts the better and the more frequently you post the better.

If however you are blogging as a way of showcasing your business or your business experience/expertise, then how often you should post a blog will be a function of how often you need or want to be in front of your audience.

At NewsBusiness we have found that the more often you email your list, the lower the ‘open rate’ – ie more people open an occasional email than open a weekly email. You also have to be careful that your communications – whether blog posts or email newsletter items – do not suffer in terms of quality because you feel you ‘have to’ put something out.

The other part of the discussion concerns the profile of your blog on the web, as Google and other search engines favour more frequent output over occasional output. Also if you want to build a body of work on the web – and Google again favours more over less (how discerning it is about quality is a moot point) – clearly the more frequently you post, the quicker you’ll have more content on your blog.

Bloggers who have moved from monthly to weekly to daily posts have invariably reported a sizeable increase in their readership from the web alone, but this can put a strain on your ability to do this if you need to do other (sometimes referred to as ‘real’) work as well!

Our advice
If you have decided to embrace a newsletter or blog approach to engaging your customers, prospects (and other interested parties) – which of course we wholeheartedly endorse – we strongly recommend you post or send something at least monthly.

When you are comfortable with monthly, look to move to fortnightly before making the leap to weekly. Remember that each post does not have to be a full length feature article, it can be a tip or topical observation, so writing workload does not necessarily have to increase.

And at the same time monitor open rates, subscriber rates and click through rates to test and measure the correct interval for you and your business.

*this applies to email newsletters as well – in our opinion it’s all content!

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NewsBusiness helps you find the news in your business and offers a complete creative and technology service to make sure you get your monthly (or more frequent) communications out on time every time. It’s a lot better than a generic newsletter service – it’s your news and your expertise. It’s just that we write it – so you don’t have to.

Sometimes you’re so focused on getting the media coverage, it’s hard to think beyond the actual coverage itself.

It’s tempting to think that getting coverage is the final objective, but you have to remember that most print media is thrown out that day – newspapers generally get binned fairly quickly and you’re lucky if a magazine hangs around longer than a few weeks.

Coverage on the radio and TV is even more ephemeral – one minute you’re there, next you’re gone!

What are the chances that your target market is reading that newspaper article, watching that TV report?

Many businesses assume that the feature itself will generate instant enquiries, but it often doesn’t happen that way.

What you need to do now is make the most of the coverage in your regular marketing. This means, as a minimum:

• next time you send out an email to your list of clients, prospects and email newsletter subscribers, make sure you point out where you have been covered and when
• if you can, get a copy of the article or clip of the TV/radio item and put it up on your website*
• put a small news item/image referring to the coverage on the home page of your website or at the very least put up something on the home page that says eg “As featured in…” and that shows logos of the news/media outlets where you have featured – this must be ‘above the fold‘

The thing to bear in mind is that your customers and prospects may not have seen your coverage, but the fact that you featured in the news or the media will (generally) enhance their perception of you. And may prompt them to become clients, or stay as clients, or recommend you to someone they know. This is why you have to tell them!

The other benefit of getting media coverage is that you are now more appealing to other media outlets, since you have proven experience. From this point on, when talking to other journalists you can drop in where you have been featured and reinforce your (new) status as an expert or industry commentator.

So many businesses see the first piece of good media coverage as the end result. In reality it should only be the beginning.

*this is why media monitoring is a good idea

photo caption: NewsBusiness client Alistair Hill of Bushfire Risk Reducers being interviewed for Channel 9 news by reporter Sarah Harris

So you’re spending money on a stand at a tradeshow huh? It’s not cheap, is it. Here are some tips from a public relations perspective to help you get the most out of your spend.

by NewsBusiness senior consultant Anna Day

1    Free publicity from stand organisers

The trade show organisers will be looking for news items to promote their show to pull in the crowds. So as soon as you agree to participate, contact the organisers’ PR person and start pumping out stories. They will then promote your stall for you for free. You should also be promoting your own stories in the media, so you need to be prepared at least a couple of months before.

2    Position and size of your stand

It is better to have a small stand near the entrance or the pathway to the catering or bathroom facilities, than to have a large stand that is in an area that the crowds file past. It is also better to spend money on promoting you stand than on the size of the stand.

Top tip: Provide free coffee and tables and chairs – people linger and sit because it’s hard work visiting a tradeshow.

3    Collect people’s names and contact addresses

Your primary aim is to collect contacts. This can most easily be done by collecting business cards. The number of these can be increased by offering a a prize for those who leave their cards.  That prize can be drawn at the trade show two or three times a day – not just leaving it until the last day when everyone has gone home.  The organisers will generally offer you free use of the microphone to announce the prize winner, but there might be a fee.  Every time you announce the draw and winner, it is a free plug for your business.

Warning: If you ask people to write down their emails you will cut down the number you collect dramatically, as you’re unlikely to be able to read their hand writing – so write it yourself.

(editor’s note: some conferences and exhibitions now issue coded passes to all visitors; for a small fee you can rent a scanner and just scan details into your database – much quicker than writing contact details down)

4    Offer something for free that keeps on coming

Don’t just fill up people’s show bags. Offer people a free newsletter that will provide information they want to receive. That way you get to be in contact with them every month.  I once offered doctors a newsletter on research into vitamins. They signed up in droves, helped by a prize of a bottle of great wine for one lucky person.

5    Wear a promotion polo-shirt – with a hook to your stand

Most people have shirts with tiny print that you have to squint to read. Print your company’s name large and on the back offer a hook to pull them into your store. That way when you are walking around looking at everyone else’s stand, you are promoting your own.

6    Think outside your stand

Be creative. I know one chap who never paid for a stand. Instead he’d walk around pulling a bag on wheels full of information sheets and product samples, wearing a t-shirt promoting his company. That’s not ethical. But if you do have a stand you might do something similar.

7    Pull people into your stand with your smile and chatter

This is not the time to be shy. You should be greeting everyone who passes your stand, asking them questions, offering them something free, or anything else that comes to mind. Be a showman – or woman, even if it is against your nature.  If you can’t, make sure you have someone on your stand that is.

8    Follow up, follow up, follow up

Over the next week your task is to follow up all the people you met.  Most people don’t.  Get stories in the media saying how successful you were at the show.   Also, tell the PR person working for the show organisers – they need success stories.

About the author
Anna Day has been a PR person for several tradeshows from the mining industry to medical conferences and even childcare shows. She has run several highly successful stands and sold a vast array of products from apple juice, to peak industry organisation memberships and snake oil – well almost!

A British economist thinks so. He has written a new book called ‘Obliquity’ analysing successful and not so successful businesses around the world, and has come to this conclusion. Does this fly in the face of the oft quoted saying in business that, simply by measuring something (say, your gross margin), you improve it?

What do you think?

By the way, the reason for the photo of the 747 will become apparent when you read the original article at brisbanetimes.com.au

Every day we are assaulted by hundreds, if not thousands of marketing and advertising messages. They are in the newspapers and magazines we read, on the television and radio and on our favourite websites. We are called by telemarketers, we get direct mail and email spam. We have learned to filter 99% of this out.

Word-of-mouth marketing still works. Word-of-mouth can be a recommendation or a referral from an existing customer or a friend, or it can be a review on an online forum or a blog, it can be an article in a magazine or newspaper or something on the television.

The one thing that links all these things is that they are comments from (trusted) people who have no financial interest in the purchasing decision. A recent Nielsen poll showed that 93% of Australians trust recommendations from people they know, 70% trust consumer opinions posted online and 69% trust editorial content. TV advertising was the highest scoring advertising medium at 62%. See our other blog post for more on this.

The internet has changed everything

Today, people who are interested in buying your type of product or service have a wealth of information they can consult on the internet before making any buying decision. And since they’re filtering out most of your traditional marketing, now is the time to start doing Public Relations Marketing instead.

(if you think you might have read this before, you’re right – this used to be the text on the NewsBusiness home page until we changed it recently – we think it’s worth recycling)

Video is a great way to engage your website visitors and here is a new approach, thanks to a website called xtranormal. On this site you can create your own film/movie online and then put it on your blog or website, or upload it to YouTube. You might be interested to know that, after a few initial technical hitches, we ’shot’ this video in about an hour and a half. It’s a little tongue-in-cheek, but it gets the message across!

If this video does not display properly, try watching it on YouTube.

A few stories in the media/online recently* have shown that a great way to get attention for your business – whether via conventional marketing channels, through the media, or online, is to ‘throw a brick’.

Throwing a brick is all about picking a target and then, basically, laying into them. Now if you’re planning to throw a brick at an individual or a particular company, you’re probably well advised to consult your defamation lawyers first, but if you target an industry or an indeterminate group of people you’ll generally be in the clear.

And why does throwing a brick work? Because it generates controversy and gets people all het up. Whether they agree with you or not, they’ll certainly remember who you are. And the other important thing to remember is that the people who disagree with you were never very likely to buy your product anyway. It’s the ones that agree with you that are, and they’re the ones you want.

And the media loves controversy. It’s something they can hook a story on and go out and do a vox pop – ask people in the street (or in an industry) what they think.

So next time you want to get the attention of your customers/list/the media, try throwing a brick and see what happens.

*see the recent Crikey article and Leela Cosgrove on Anthill “Why PR is a pointless waste of time” (ironic really given the subject matter!)

We’ve reported on this before (see our previous post). This time it’s Crikey’s turn to let us know that half of our news is generated from public relations. The Crikey study, again in conjunction with UTS in Sydney, involved 40 students calling media outlets and asking them the hard question – where do your news stories come from? See the Crikey news item for more information. To access the full report you have to subscribe to Crikey.