Triune Designs Blog: Web Design, Development, & Marketing

David, over at Marketing Integrity, wrote a good post on the necessity of making your website helpful to potential church members (or clients/customers).

The only thing I would add to the aspect of being helpful on your business’/church’s website is being helpful for existing clients also.

This is where a blog, for example, comes in handy. Having fresh, helpful information on your website will provide an incentive to continue returning to your website. If customers or anyone else visits your website on a recurring basis then they have an increased chance of spreading the word about you and your site. That, in turn, increases your visibility.

Check out David’s post: Be Helpful

The Jeep Community
Last fall, my wife and I bought an old Jeep Wrangler. Our thought was that it would be a fun vehicle that our family could enjoy driving. (Ah, driving with the top down and the doors off – awesome!!) Little did I realize that we were joining a community. Having only owned 4Runners, Civics, and Explorers in the past, I was never truly exposed to communities built around cars.

Driving around, I immediately started to notice people in other Jeeps waving to me. After a while, I began waving back when people waved at me even progressing to where I was the initiator many times. I noticed other occurrences of the Jeep community. Other Wrangler owners began talking with me when I parked. Friends who own Wranglers offer to help me with various repair projects on the vehicle – more so than when I worked on my previous vehicles. And I am just touching the surface leaving out Jeep festivals, off-roading gatherings, etc.

I have learned that people are passionate about their Jeeps and this passion has developed a great community.

Communities All Around
What is great is that there are communities all around us and oftentimes we never see them. Some are obvious – motorcycle riders have an avid member community; some are not – have you ever seen the Mazda Miata community? Believe me, it is there (one of my old roommates, Chris Crumpton showed me that). And these examples are just dealing with cars, there are thousands of other communities out there centered around church, sports, computers, movies, occupations (just to name a few).

The definition of a community is a group of people with common ownership, common agreement as to goals, or a body of people in a learned occupation. I argue that a community is also built around people with a common passion.

Communities & You
As a small business, you are very passionate about what your company creates or sells. So, use this passion to your advantage and help build a community centered around your business.

You have two options for building a community. You can either get involved in existing communities that are related to your your passion (and/or business) or create your own. There are people who are passionate just like you, it is just a matter of finding them. Once you are involved, you can help that community develop. The other option is to build your own community (using platforms such as blogging, Facebook, or Twitter) and begin showing your passion. Make it easy for other like-passioned people to join you and help the community grow.

Have fun with your passion-based community… and if you happen to see me driving around in my Jeep make sure to give me a big wave. I will throw one back at you.

Web marketing is very similar to how you accumulate wealth. When done properly, both activities require discipline and time in order to grow and be successful.

This aspect of web marketing is its biggest hurdle and yet its biggest value. Why? It means that everyone cannot just swoop in, make a half-hearted effort and then subsequently succeed.

This gives small businesses owners, like us, leverage. If you are willing to commit your time and effort to steadily growing your online presence, over the long-term, it will begin to provide the results you are seeking.

Your Very Own Compound Interest
When dealing with savings, you add some money to your account on a regular basis. The interest then goes to work on your constantly-updated balance and increases your overall savings. Over a period of time, you will begin to see the realization of the compound interest.

Three factors determine your success: you adding money, the interest working on your balance, and time allowing the interest to build upon itself.

Your web marketing is very similar. When dealing with blogging, your job is to write frequent posts. Write posts that have good content and that do something for your audience. At first, one or two people will read your blog. As these few readers find interesting information on your blog, they will tell a friend or two. This process will continue upon itself, creating “compound audienceship.”

Similar to above, the key factors here are your effort (i.e. writing posts), your engaged audience telling others about something they read on your website, and time allowing the growing audience to build upon itself.

What You Can Do To Help Yourself
When dealing with savings accounts, there is not much you can do to help accelerate the growth. Mainly, you just try to find the best interest rate that will allow your money to grow a little faster. Luckily, there are a few things that you can do to help yourself out with blogging. None of these are quick fixes, but they will help your cause.

• Continue writing… do not stop.
• Engage your audience. Try to reply to their comments as much as possible.
• Read other people’s blogs and comment on them. Get involved in the community around you.
• Stay focused on your audience and write material that is oriented towards them.

If you want to read more about blogging being a long-term investment, check out my article relating blogging to a marathon.

The 3D Bar Graph Meeting image above is courtesy of lumaxart on Flickr. You can also find their work at thegoldguys.blogspot.com or lumaxart.com.

My good friend, and excellent Charlotte, NC realtor, John Paul Soto and I were talking a few nights ago. A good discussion came up about how to get listed higher in Google’s rankings for various search terms. This conversation echoed many I have had with our clients over the years. In fact, I would probably rate this concern as our number one small business web marketing question.

Since it is always such a big question for small business owners I thought I might use a few blog posts to give you Google’s own advice for improving your own search engine rankings.

First, the what not to do. This will help you know where Google draws the line so you know what is recommended and what is not.

Your Own Litmus Test

Google provides a few rules of thumb to help you if you are ever left wondering what is right and what is wrong. Ask yourself these three guiding questions:

1. [Do you] feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you?
2. Does this help [your] users?
3. Would [you] do this if search engines didn’t exist?

The Recommendations

Here are some suggestions on what to avoid:

Google’s General Guidelines

• Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.”
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings.
• Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
• Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

From Google’s webmaster guidelines

Google’s Specific Guidelines

• Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
• Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.
• Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

From Google’s webmaster guidelines

Check back later to read about Google’s recommendations for what you can do to help improve your rankings.

The “do not cross the line” photo is courtesy of Rob Gallop on Flickr

Are you ready to really begin marketing yourself on the web? Well forget about the old methods and jump into today’s more effective means of getting your name out there. These new methods employ the beauty of today’s web marketing solutions: people will want spread your message for you.

If you plan on marketing yourself, your company, your church, etc., David Meerman Scott‘s new book, World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories, is a must read.

A Word Wide What??
A world wide rave is similar to viral marketing, but with one distinct difference. Unlike viral marketing, a world wide rave does not try to trick or fool people into looking at your products or services. Instead, David says that world wide raves center “on valuable content that spread because – and only because – people want to share it.”

Here are a few reasons why I suggest you should read his book.

Teacher, teacher
David’s newest book is part teaching instrument. World Wide Rave lays out various methods for creating your own such rave. A few examples of recommended techniques include creating e-books, embracing social media and allowing your employees to do the same, and creating triggers that encourage people to share.

Catching A Glimpse
World Wide Rave is part magnifying glass. This is because David provides real life examples of businesses and individuals who created their own world wide rave. For each recommendation, David provides an in-depth view of what these people did to succeed with that respective marketing tool. These examples assist in understanding how to implement his strategies in our own marketing.

A couple of real-lifers that he included as examples are the Grateful Dead, the New York Islanders, and Girls Fight Back!.

Get Some Motivation
World Wide Rave is also part motivational book. By the end of the book, David succeeded at getting me fired up to go out there and try my hand at building my own world wide rave. He is a persuasive author and empowers you to get going with your own web marketing.

Another Resource
If you find World Wide Rave useful for the advancement of your web marketing, I also suggest checking out The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott.

Happy reading!

Identity – (ī-ˈden-tə-tē)
1 sameness of essential or generic character in different instances; oneness
2a: the distinguishing character or personality of an individual: individuality
2b: the relation established by psychological identification

The Big Question
So, what is in an identity? This is the question we have been asking ourselves at Triune for the past few months. And I propose that everything depends on your identity. When done right, your identity serves as the foundation for your thoughts, actions, and goals.

The problem for a lot of people is that they are confused about their identity. A person may say they are one thing and then act in a way that is not in alignment with that aforementioned identity.

The Identity Crisis
This identity crisis is at the center of our discussion of who Triune Designs truly is. We want our company’s actions to be in alignment with who we say (and believe) we are. Ask yourself the same question: who are you? Once you determine who you are, look at your services and see if they line up with this image.

The Benefit For Web Marketing
So, how does this relate to web marketing? Well, once you determine who you are you can accurately create your web marketing message. You are better enabled to create a message that is memorable and easy to transmit to others.

David Meerman Scott‘s new book, World Wide Rave says it this way:

… your message has to be supertight and easy to transmit in as few words as possible. “1,000 songs in your pocket” is the answer to “What is an iPod?” Before that, the Macintosh was introduced as “The computer for the rest of us.” If you can boil your message down to just its syrupy goodness, you can achieve lift – the irresistible force of millions of customers selling your product for you.

What Is Yours
Do you already have your identity? Are your formulating yours now? What about your message? Do you already have your memorable, syrupy-good message ready for people to spread? I would love to hear them.

This week I am writing about David Meerman Scott‘s newest book titled Word Wide Rave, which s being released on March 3, 2009.

If you have been following this blog for a while you will remember that I have referenced him in a couple of my posts. His book The New Rules of Marketing and PR is a must-read for anyone thinking about utilizing web marketing for their business.

David’s Own World Wide Rave
In his blog, David describes the concept of a world wide rave.

A World Wide Rave is when people around the world are talking about you, your company, and your products. Whether you’re located in San Francisco, Dubai, or Reykjavík, it’s when global communities eagerly link to your stuff on the Web. It’s when online buzz drives buyers to your virtual doorstep. And it’s when tons of fans visit your Web site and your blog because they genuinely want to be there.

A Little Help
David asked his readers to take a photo of his book’s poster with a backdrop representing our city (or country). You can read more about helping him.

My Hometown
I live in Charlotte, NC and wanted to do something creative to represent our city. I thought about some of the people down here in the Queen City (of the South) and came up with taking a picture with our fire department.

Charlotte has one of the best fire departments in the nation and its employees really strive to provide a high level of customer service. This great customer service is representative of the southern hospitality the South often brags about.

Charlotte Fire Department
I chose Charlotte’s Fire Station 8 (specifically) because, after a discussion with some of their firefighters in September, they started a blog. Station 8′s blog helps the public see some of the calls the firefighters handle and also gives them a glimpse of what goes on at a fire station. The station blog also aims at providing training resources for other firefighters.

With their blog and a new Twitter account, the firefighters of Station 8 are quickly becoming solid web marketers.

The Pics
Here are a few pictures of David’s poster in action in front of Station 8. The two firefighters pictured below are Adrian Cornette (FFII) and Jason Almond (FFII) on Engine 8 C-Shift. Charlotte Fire Department Station 8 is located at the intersection of The Plaza and Commonwealth Ave near downtown Charlotte, North Carolina.

Update (01/14/09) – Check out the guys from Station 8 on the World Wide Rave blog. Nice job Adrian and Jason!