With every TV newscast, radio program and newspaper screaming about the recession, this is the perfect time to be spending.

No, I’m not nuts.

Think about it.  Everyone is saying it’s time to cut back.  And nearly everyone is.  Your competition probably is.  They’ve cut their advertising.  They’ve even cut employees.  The marketing budgets are being sliced - but why?  If everyone is cutting their spending, that means there are a lot of open markets that you can get in to.  This is the time to start building the foundation for your future.

Mom & Pop, listen up.

When you start building now, you’ll be way ahead of the big dogs when the economy recovers.  And it will recover.  That’s not a question, it’s a fact.  A year from now when companies are finally starting to put a little money back into their marketing budget, you’ll have a stronghold that’s going to be hard for them to break through.

Build now while the gettin’ is good.

I’ve posted a contest over at 99designs.com and I’m inviting you to submit your best work. Winner gets $300 bucks.

But even better, if your design is selected as the winner, there is a very good chance that I’ll have more and more work for you - work that will be offered exclusively to you first.

My last graphic designer wasn’t reliable, so I had to fire him. Are you reliable and good at what you do? Here’s your chance to make money- both now and in the future.

An open letter to all small and medium business (SMB) owners

Dear Mr. Business Owner,

I heard a rumor from a buddy of mine that you were currently thinking about getting a website going for your company. Congratulations - I think that is a wonderful thing! The future of your business very well may lie in the decisions that you make when building your website.

My buddy told me that you haven’t decided yet on an individual or company to do your website. He was asking me if I had any tips, which I do. I hope you don’t find my questions and tips too intrusive on your business, but if you want a truly functional and revenue-producing presence online, it’s going to be necessary.

1. Can you navigate the web easily?
   Sometimes I meet SMB owners who are a bit proactive online - just enough to get them through the things they need to do. They can do email and stumble through Yahoo! to find what they need. They aren’t the typical Internet user, in fact most SMB owners, in my opinion, are less computer savvy than the average Joe.
   You may want to consider taking some free classes at the local library or civic center on computers. Most of them offer keyboarding basics, Understanding the Internet, and even basic Word and Excel classes. Sign up for them all. It’ll help you and your web designer, I promise.
2. Speaking of designers, have you picked one out yet?
   You may have already started probing your business friends and family members about potential designers. Your cousin said that his neighbor’s boy is good with the Internet, so you’ve got one possible lead there. There’s also a guy in town that runs a local town-hall type website, maybe he could help you out too.
   Let me go ahead and say it now - hire a professional. Yeah, I know, they expect you to pay real money. Duh! If you bought a billboard down on the highway, would you ask your cousin’s neighbor to go paint something on it? I hope not!
   This is by far one of the most important decisions of the entire process. Choosing a web designer who can make a pretty website isn’t enough. You’re going to have to find one that understands the marketing end of web design, too. If you don’t you’re going to end up paying more in the long run. I’ll assume you don’t want to do that!
   Here are some things you should ask a potential designer:
   • Do you do keyword research prior to starting the site?
   • Do you use templates or design the site from scratch? (Using a template isn’t a deal-breaker, but it’s nice to know if your site will end up looking like other industry-related websites. You don’t want that.)
   • Do you build the framework prior to starting the design? If so, is it keyword specific?
   • Do you provide hosting, or can you refer me to a reliable hosting company? (yeah I did it)
   • After you build the site, are you done, or will there be monthly fees/maintenance? (If he says no, you may actually be in trouble!)
3. Are you committed?
   I recently had an appointment to meet with a guy who started a new taxi service in town, and he wanted a website. I talked to him a few times and we set a time to meet. Well, when I showed up, the guy was busy with another client. He told me to ‘wait here’ and he’d be back. Fifteen minutes later, I left.
   If you aren’t committed to getting a website, or you don’t have your $h!t in order, don’t waste your designer’s time. Shoving off your designer like that is like telling him/her you don’t value their time. Bad idea.
4. Speaking of commitment, are you committed for the long haul?
   Getting a cute little website up isn’t enough to run a business. Sure, you’ll have your own .com and you’ll think you’re great, but really - why are you building this site? To get accolades or to make money?
   If you aren’t willing to stick it out with monthly marketing fees/costs for at least a year, you may be simply helping out your competition. They’ll know in an instant that you aren’t serious, and they’ll steal all those hot leads that could have been yours.
5. Lastly, do you have someone that can provide content (or ‘copy’) to the designer?
   Nothing is worse than hiring someone to do a website and not providing them with one ounce of text to put on it. Do you think a web designer knows the first thing about your industry? Probably not. And it’s not their job to make stuff up. Its yours. So make sure you or someone on your staff can promptly provide information to your potential designer. Don’t make them wait.

Mr Business Owner, I really wish you the best with your endeavour. Don’t get discouraged by the overwhelming amount of pre-work that goes into getting a website.

Like your Dad probably told you, It’s better that you do it right, than do it twice.

Sincerely,

Will Hanke
WillHanke.com

Here’s a couple quick ways to keep up with the latest trends in your industry.

Set up a custom news feed with Google

Go over to http://news.google.com and type in your phrase. This will bring up all the latest news that mentions that subject. If you need a specific phrase, make sure you put it in quotes.

Then click on the RSS button in the lower left corner and sign up for this custom news feed. Now every day you’ll have the latest news about your industry right there in your RSS reader.

Over time, you’ll see mentions of related items that you don’t want to read about. I suggest you go back to the Google News page and rewrite your query, using delimiters such as the plus and minus.

Get Google Alerts

While the Google news thing is cool, it’ll only give you updates on actual news items that have been submitted. Since many people are publishing items in formats besides press releases, we want to be able to capture these additions to the web, too.

To do so, we’ll set up a Google alert with our same phrase(s).

Go to http://www.google.com/alerts and you’ll see this page:

In the “Search Items” box, put in your same search criteria that you used on the news site. You can use quotes and other delimiters just as you did above.

Depending upon how often you want these alerts, choose the correct option in the “How Often” area. If you’re running a news site, you’ll want to put the “How Often” to “As it happens”. That way you can get that info onto your website as soon as possible. If you are just trying to keep up with trends, leave it at “once a day”.

Now plop in your email address. Now every time Google indexes a new page on the Internet that includes your specific phrase, you’ll get an email.

You can use these same methods to keep an eye on your competition as well, your own business name, or even mentions of specific products that you carry. Watch for bloggers that are mentioning your business and drop a comment on their site. They’ll be blown away that you visited their blog and you’ll have an even stronger chance of getting future referrals from them.

By the way, this should not be confused with Google Trends, an online way of watching search trends over time. That’s a nice tool too, but not what I was going for here.

For the first time ever, last week I had a potential client ask me if I currently did work for any of her competitors. It was a question I’ve long anticipated but never expected.

Her question was just the right question to ask me prior to signing on the dotted line. But did she go far enough? Is a simple “no” from me (or your SEO of choice) enough to settle your nervousness about hiring an SEO? (more…)

Recently I stumbled upon a nice money making idea, and after a few weeks I mentioned it to another guy that I know online. I said too much, and now he’s doing the same thing, taking a good chunk of the traffic I had.

Stupid me.

Learn from it, and keep quiet when you find a small (or large) gold mine.

Certainly over the months or years you’ve been marketing your wares online, you’ve come across a few key competitiors that you’d love to keep tabs on.

Part of keeping in tune with the niche you are in is watching the competition to see what they’re up to. Visiting their site(s) all the time trying to find their new content can be a real pain.

Enter the wonderful site: command. This little ditty can be used to our advantage.

When you use the site: command, you are asking the search engine to list out all the pages that it has indexed for a website (well, not all of the pages, but close).

Google alerts, on the other hand, lets us know any time a new phrase or word shows up on the Internet. For instance, if I want to know who is mentioning me, I may run a Google Alert for the phrase “Will Hanke” (with the quotes, of course). Every time someone mentions me (hopefully in a good way), Google will index that page, and it will send me an alert letting me know about the new page, and will provide me a link to said site.

So we can use the alerts in this manner, but instead of being alerted to a certain phrase, we want to be alerted every time there is a change to the list of indexed sites Google has for our competitor.
First, sign up for Google Alerts

In the ‘Search Terms’ box, type this exactly as you see it: site:domain.com

The domain.com should be replaced with your competitors website URL. There are no spaces.

Keep the Type as ‘Comprehensive’

Set your preferences and email. Now any time there are new pages indexed by Google, they’ll send you an alert letting you know about it.

Keep in mind, search engines only crawl low-level pages every 4-6 weeks, so don’t expect a bunch of updates in your email. They’ll more likely trickle in, but at least you’ll know what’s new there!