Ok whatever option you choose website wise is going to be hard work , choose a set up that makes it easier (wordpress /zencart both are free to use and both are able to be made pretty using free templates ) ~

Many people spend far too much time pushing facebook and other platforms and nowhere near enough time on a website , take the time to learn HOW to make the site do well rather than fannying around on etsy and similar ,

The mistake many people make (and im not assuming you did this) is that they build a site assuming that people will automatically be found , harsh truth is it won’t , unless you put time into driving traffic to it.

The issue with sites by Vistaprint, Wix , GBBO and other providers is that there is no real consideration by the developers with regards to make them do well , as is true with many of the free /cheap options that seem like the easy way out …. add to that the fact that many are sold on their “look” and “easy” rather than performance and their ability to be “worked” with and you are immediately onto a loser , now a zencart or wordpress can be set up for as little as £3 a month if your budget is tight BUT there is still work to do , Search engines rely on certain information to define your site , without that information you will get nowhere fast ……..

Once you have chosen your software , host and a domain then you need to consider your design , terms and conditions and how you are going to market your site ,

Who are you going to market it at ,
who will your customers be
how will they find you
how best to sell your items
why if people find you will they buy from you ( your usp)

Now much of this information is free all over the place on the web , it is all down to research and wether people can be bothered to find it )

You will though have to decide on your target market yourself and its well worth doing a little leg work to help with this …. (article links to be added)

We have a forum , an article database , workshops , and loads of help available all free of charge , the qustion is , are YOU prepared to put the work in to make it a success ;o)

i know its a bit of a rant but im in one of those horribly blunt moods im well known for lol … its possible to earn a living online but its certainly not for the faint hearted ;o)

Rainee x

What is a USP ???

Your USP is what  makes you/your products  more unique, more valuable, and more visible in the market?

In our highly competitive world, you have to be able to define what makes your business stand apart from the other businesses proposing products or services to a saturated market, if you can define a unique selling point for your business then you will have a much better chance of making sure that the market you are targetting can see the value in using your service over and above those of others ……

Using a unique selling point will give you a business that is highly marketable as it does 2 things for you

1. Unique – It clearly sets you apart from your competition, making you the obvious choice for that particular service
2. Selling – It helps you to persuade others that your product is worth the money spent on it.

The ultimate goal is to use your unique selling point as part of your branding, to get it known in conjunction with your name,  if you can do that then whilst you deliver on your promise you can also build your reputation as the recognised logical choice for the provision of that service or product

Building your USP can take a huge amount of thought, time and effort  but it is absolutely essential to enable you to make yourself stand out in your target market.  Getting it right will enable you to market your products or services more effectively and so bring you more sales.

Your USP should be the very essence of your business and the service/product you provide, therefore its best to put thought into this right at the start, and put your “best foot forward” as you head into what can be a very daunting world of other businesses all trying to fight for the purses of those elusive customers.

To help you to develop your USP try following this easy step by step process :

• Describe the 3 biggest benefits of taking your service or owning your products over those of a competitor … and please do NOT use Price , Quality or Price as a benefit , those aren’t the only  important factors when it comes to choosing a product.
• Your USP should mark out the criteria for purchasing that product,  it’s a definitive reason to purchase from you.  You need to create an air of “must have” around the product/ service you offer.  Think about what is unique about your product/service …..  how will your customers benefit from your service/ product?

**Write your ideas down……. **

• Is there a performance gap in your market ? Is there a need going unfulfilled by your competitors ?

Many businesses that can identify a “gap” in the market will be successful,  think in terms of why YOU choose to purchase from others  ;o) , as an example Dominos Pizza offer a 30 minute turnaround on deliveries making it almost first choice when ordering a pizza because you are too tired to cook ;o) , it’s fast , it’s easy and it does the job , but the biggest marketing angle is the delivery time.

Realistically they arent going to turn out to be the tastiest pizzas ever made but they alleviate a huge issue in every day life , by delivering on a promise of time saving …. something many of us dont have enough of !

**write your ideas down**

•  Be exact in your promise !!

You need to make sure you are exact in your offer … so if you are guaranteeing something make sure you deliver on it, and offer proof of it if you can , so if it’s unique and only you do it make sure people are aware that it’s an original idea, if yu work on commission ask permission of previous clients and display the “brief” , demonstrate that you can do what you are promising to do.

**Write your ideas down**

• Condense

Condense your unique selling point into one clear , short & snappy sentence , make it count, choose your words carefully. Take all of your ideas written down using the previous steps and create a sentence that  compels people to look further at the same time as encapsulating the essence of your business.

•  Integrate

Marketing materials suddenly come into their own when you use a strong USP to identify yourself and your business , standardising your advertising materials , business cards and letter headings will ensure that the message is always there associated with your comapny name.

Once you have the right mindset to sell your business effectively using a USP (tagline), you will find writing the copy for your website easier as you will already be thinking about the “angle” you are using to market yourself.

Make it bold , make it compelling and make it count !!

This is a very quick guide to wordpress …..

below is an image of your wordpress admin screen ….. to the left is the main menu , to get going you need the posts section and the pages section , if your site has been built for you , you should already have several pages made ………… if not the start by creating a home page (plus any other pages you may require then see this post for the main set up, if your site has been built for you this will not apply**)

Your posts can be categorised by topic , you can use these in any way you like,  you can move these categories around making it easy to reorganise as you go on so dont fret if some turn out to be in the wrong place.

The above image shows add post , add page , widgets and categories , if your site has been built for you do NOT touch the options outlined in red , these are some of the design files for your site , you will break it if you edit something wrongly !! … in effect these are big red buttons you dont go near …. for fear of a bang !!

**Click the image to enlarge it**

**Click image to enlarge**

**Click image to enlarge**

HTML Links

(Hyperlinks)

An HTML link) is a word, group of words, or an image that you can click on to navigate to another page or new content on the same or another (external) site.
When you move the cursor over a link in a Web page, the arrow will turn into a little hand, the text may change colour or the link may appear underlined , or a combination of these.

Links are specified in HTML using the <a> tag.

Writing a Plain Text Link

This will create a link to another document, by using the href attribute.

The code for this link is quite simple

<a href=“url“>Link text</a>

The part in Red is the html code which specifies the destination page of the link , which is entered into where the Blue text is shown on the above example, the Orange text relates to the actual words that will be displayed as the clickable text (anchor text)

So a link to this members area would be written like this:

<a href=“http://www.rssbn.co.uk/members-area/”>Small Business Network Members Area</a>

and will appear on a page as shown below :

Small Business Network Members Area

The basic HTML for the clickable picture (picture hyperlink) is:

<a href=”address of the page you wish the link to refer to”><img src=”the address of the image (where it is stored online)”/></a>

 

So when placing an image in a post or on a page where you wish to display it these are the steps you need to follow

• Upload the image either to a folder in your sites root , OR to a free image storage site like flickr or photobucket
• Make a note of the url of that image (right click view image should put the address of that image into your browser bar to copy )
• Make a note of the page you wish to link to using that image
• Add the relevant information to the above code example

For my example i’m going to use the rssbn image and link to the directory as follows

(you can follow this too and add a link to your website if you want to )

upload the image ……. for this exercise i have uploaded the image to a folder in my sites root :

this is the image
If you right click and view image you can see the address of where that image is stored it should read

http://www.rssbn.co.uk/templates/arfooo/images/rssbn-badge-200.png

In the browser bar ……. you can add this to the code as follows

<a href=” address of the page you wish to send people to !><img src=”http://www.rssbn.co.uk/templates/arfooo/images/rssbn-badge-200.png”></a>

Then you can add the address of the landing page (the page you want to send people to) …

For this example I want to send people to the RSSBN Directory so this is the landing page address

http://www.rssbn.co.uk

We can add this to the code as follows

<a href=”http://www.rssbn.co.uk/”><img src=”http://www.rssbn.co.uk/templates/arfooo/images/rssbn-badge-200.png/”></a>

The above code needs to be added into the HTML view of your site , so anywhere that you can add html to , most software has html edit screens for content and a fair few will allow you to make a picture clickable by using the icons within the editor , but it’s better to know how to write these as you can use some really cool little additions to it to give google more information , these will be covered in the next tutorial in this series

Don’t want to confuse the issue just now …….

I am about to write the same code i have shown you above into the html editor for this page

There we go a clickable image …..

If you hover over the image and look at the bottom left corner of your browser you should be able to see a little pop up that tells you where the link connects to ….. (the landing page address)

Make sure you have remembered all the little ” and / as missing these out may cause the link to not work

To add alt text and title

<a href=”address of the page you wish the link to refer to”><img src=”the address of the image (where it is stored online)” alt=”alternative text describing image ” title=”title text naming the image /></a>

go into your site via ftp and go into
/includes/languages/english and open the file called meta_tags.php

on line 11 you should see this

define(‘TITLE’, ‘Zen Cart!’);

change Zen Cart! to what ever you want, eg the name of your site.

then on line 14 you should see this

define(‘SITE_TAGLINE’, ‘The Art of E-commerce’);

change The Art of E-commerce to what ever you want, both these will show in your browser as the page title and any links to your site you put on facebook etc tend to pull these two pieces of info and displays it under the link.
so having your business name there would help.

then on line 17 you should see this

define(‘CUSTOM_KEYWORDS’, ‘ecommerce, open source, shop, online shopping’);

change ecommerce, open source, shop, online shopping to a list of keywords relevant to your website, save the file and upload it backto the server and you’re done.

Automated Status Updates

Try not to overly automate your status updates, they aren’t the best for gaining interaction as they dont necessarily make it into the feeds that your users see, also be wary of duplicating your content across all platforms that you use , your market will be different on each platform and what works for twitter will not necessarily work for facebook.

Are You Human ?

Interact with your fans and show a human side to your interactions , although it can be time consuming getting to know your fans and being aware of their input to your page will maximise the times your business page makes it into the ticker feeds as you encourage your “fans” to get involved.

If you make a mistake — admit it. Don’t be afraid of negative feedback , deal with it in a timely fashion and professionally and you may well turn a hater into a liker purely by being professional and understanding in your approach. Don’t delete the comments , just deal with them and continue.

Pictures & Videos

Media like videos and photos always perform well on Facebook. They appear to grab more attention in news feeds , you know yourself that you are more likely to take notice of a picture in a news feed than you are a text update ?
Facebook also provides a call to action to “like” your page when a non fan views the image or video.

Put Your Fans in Charge

Everynow and again put your fans in charge , ask them what they would like to se and how you could provide more engaging content , ask questions about their opinions , but remember that opinions are personal , don’t take them personal to you , if you ask a question be prepared to deal with the answers ;o)

Involve Your Fans

Make a point of targetting specific updates to specific portions of your fan base, direct questions AT them , make sure everyone is aware of your competitions and offers , ask people if they are aware of what you offer , for instances , do those people interested in your products also know that you are running a competition that they and their friends may be interested in entering , encourage your fans to share your offers. You can also target your status updates by country or language , use these functions if you can.

Post Frequency and Timing

Take the time to consider before you post, too many posts that overwhelm the news feed will incline people not to pay as much attention , use your page insights to pinpoint the most active time of day for your posts to get a reaction, many pages may find that this is the evenings when people are likely to be “socialising” on the social networks ;o)
Make your content engaging , always aim for a click or 2 with what you post ;o)

Page Image

Your Facebook page is the public face of your page , it needs a voice that stands out from the crowd , try to give your page a very unique “voice”, many business pages rely on a unique voice to get their point across. The most recognisable pages on facebook have a consistent and instantly recognisable approach t, you can spot them in the news feeds , they will be the ones you take notice of and repond to ;o) … make note of them , watch the tactics they employ …

Mix Up Your Content

How To’s , top 10 tips , jokes , images , videos , questions , polls, fill in the blanks .. all valid ways of trying to get your fans to interact , mixing up the content gives your audience more content to play with and share , facebook is all about sharing , if you can get your fans to interact and share then you will make facebook gold and end up in the top stories section of the feed …

Track the Performance of Your Posts

Study your insights and get familiar with measuring the success of your posts , your insights provide many statistics that ccan help you guage your reactions , reach and virility, use them !!

Sales Spiel and Caveman Advertising

Whilst every now and again it’s nice to see the items you are selling and the products you are promoting , try not to just litter facebook with ads for your items , the favourite status update of “”BUY MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE”" 4 times a day is off putting to even the most avid fans of facebook , go easy … building relationships with people on facebook is far more important to your success on the platform than pumping out one line caveman ads ) , have fun with facebook , it’s supposed to be a social and fun network , don’t lose sight of that in your quest to take over the world )