RISE #23: How To Make Your Website More Sharable & Spreadable

How To Make Your Website More Sharable & Spreadable

It is no secret the one-way, corporate-speak, personality-lacking website is dying by the day.

Here are some easy wasy to set your site up so it will be like peanut butter: Easily spreadable. A great way to build your business by being smarter, faster and cheaper.

1. Updated Content: A blog is usually the answer here. Give people a reason to keep coming back.

2. Share Buttons: Even if you don’t know the difference between Digg and Del.icio.us, your audience might. Know your audience and what buttons they use to share stuff.

3. Links To Your Social Media Sites: Let people find you on social media. Don’t worry about people leaving your website, instead allow viewers to interact with you where they feel comfortable which might be Twitter, Facebook, etc.

4. Email Marketing: Stay in contact with people. Don’t just randomly add people (SPAM), but have an easy opt-in email. Email is currency.

5. RSS Feed: Really Simple Syndication (basic article on RSS here): Quick people to read many blogs in a short amount of time. People can access your content when they want it. A must-have.

6. Social Media Sharing Buttons: Allow for retweets (Tweetmeme is a good service to use to add a retweet button), Facebook Share and other niche buttons in your niche (example, we use Biz Sugar to share content with entrepreneurs and small business owners. A great website and share button).

7. Search: We use Lijit (Thanks Chris Brogan for the idea). Allows folks to search, find, share (SFS).

8. Comments: Key to being interactive and social. Allow for comments. Participate. Have fun with it and allow all comments.

Not sure where I heard this quote, but a truly great website isn’t completed when you can no longer add anything, it is completed when you can no longer take anything away.

COOL EVENT: STL INNOVATION CAMP

The details:

February 26th-28th: Workshops, Innovator’s (not Innovation like I said on the show) Cup, Training Series.

A fantastic event for entrepreneurs whether aspiring or established. There will be some awesome speakers out there (and me, somehow I slipped into the mix). For ticket information and other goodies check out their website.

I’ll see you there!

Discussion:

I’m sure I missed some ways to make your website more sharable including mobile, etc. What has been successful for you?

Share:

Comments

BlackredXtreme

Nice post Dave. Your website acts as the core to your business. If your website is stale and old, it says something about you as a business owner. The share buttons, social media links and more all act as ways to spread the good "word" about you and what you have to offer. The more "word".. brings more conversation which will make you bigger within the industry as time goes on. It all comes down to how much work you want to put in for your business to grow. The more you read up to what is new, the more your in the lead over others in the same industy.

-John

David Siteman Garland

Exactly, well put.

And the thing is, a great looking well-designed website can easily happen for WAY under $10,000.

BetterBizIdeas

Nice points David!

As you pointed out every website should have the ability to Retweet links/content onto Twitter and the ability to share on Facebook prominently displayed. To me, that is the ultimate no-brainer. Twitter is a big place where users share their content/ideas and Facebook, to be blunt, is where the people are at the most. 350 million Facebook users vs. 70 million Twitter users and they keep adding more and more functionality each quarter. Additionally, people spend more time on Facebook each day than Twitter, with YouTube a second place as far as time spent amongst consumers.

I am a big believer in the 80/20 rule and time is the biggest constraint, in my opinion, for SMBs (small and medium sized businesses). Create the blog posts and syndicate them using Ping.fm to Twitter and Facebook, listen and interact on Twitter/blog/Facebook Fan page and, if a business has creative talent, I think that YouTube is an excellent strategy simply because of the sheer VOLUME of traffic it has. TubeMogul or TrafficGeyser could enable a business to syndicate that video to tons of websites, with TrafficGeyser offering some ability to automatically create podcasts by stripping out audio segments and transcribing the videos and sending content to article posting sites.

The tools for entrepreneurs/SMBs are being created each day. They just need to find them, utilize them consistently and, above everything else, add value to the end customer (viewer/reader) and hopefully some traction will occur.

Keep up the great show David

Dan Ross
@BetterBizIdeas

P.S. Call to Actions are important - gotta ask for email addresses, people to subscribe, etc :)

David Siteman Garland

Dan - Very much nail right on the head there.

The tools are there.
The eyeballs can be there.
It is up the Small Business Owner/Entrepreneur to become the creator and make something worth reading/watching/listening to.

And great point, on 80/20 it is the biggest setback. You can't just stick it out there (build and they will come). Truth is, no one will come.

You have to build relationships. Give first. Take time.

In my opinion, 20% of your time creating awesome content. 80% of the time promoting, building your brand, cultivating relationships, reaching out, guest posting, etc.

Chris Hughes

I've found the same thing happens when I work with businesses. They HAVE a website up, but they don't ever update content. When I start helping them develop their web presence, I stress the importance of having a blog to develop the relationships with their clients.

The share buttons are a great tip as well as we are in the age of being social with our marketing and need to be found by our audience.

I'd like to know a little bit more about how your sponsor works for you? Do you just provide the little advertisement in each video + ads on the website and what do they actually take care of monetary wise? I'm interested in possibly doing something like this with a local business in my area and looking for some tips :)

David Siteman Garland

Chris -

So true. Unfortunately, many businesses approach a website like a static ad as opposed to interactive and social.

And I'm sure the buttons will change over time, but the ability to share quickly won't.

In terms of sponsorships, we do a variety of different things. Key being it is all part of relationship that works for the sponsor, us and our audience. Meaning we would never promote something we didn't use/like/enjoy/would use/find useful (aka no crap) or something we didn't feel was a good deal for the sponsor meaning we could reach their goals.

Some of the programs we do include:

1. Mentions in the episode/show notes aka "plugs". This often works well for products, services & events.

2. Event sponsorships at our Lunch & Learn series.

3. Featured Expert: We have a featured expert program (almost sold out for 2010) which includes a variety of features including exclusive videos with the experts on the show, sponsorship of an event, featured interview, and spots to offer tips on our ABC show (which occurs in the fall)

4. Content Sponsorships: If there is a really good fit, we create sponsorships around content. For example, if Kodak sponsored us. We would do a series called (and I'm making this up): Maximizing Online Video presented by Kodak and we tie in the brand with the content.

Does that help a bit?

Chris Hughes

You are absolutely right about businesses approaching websites as static ads. It's people like you and I that need to share this information with them to TEACH them :) You're doing a great job at this.

The buttons will definitely change as everything always does, but that's the beauty of it. Always changing, makes our job more fun :)

Thank you for the tips on how to go about this! I've been curious about doing it so that I(being a college student) won't have to fund the whole thing myself as it's often outside of my budget.

Thanks again and keep up the great work David!