The intuitive website blog

I was listening in on a discussion between Internet Experts. Speaker A was making the point to Speaker B that every website owner needs to build an email list. They said that the average site visitor spends just 46 seconds on your page. You need to collect a name and email address from them before they leave so that you can market to them in the future. I have mixed feelings about this.

Now you can just ask people for their email and name. You could say, “Hey, can you give me your email address and name so that I can try to sell you my stuff through personalized emails?” That would be the most honest approach, don’t you think?

Maybe you aren’t just trying to sell people your services and products. Maybe you are completely altruistic and just want to give away great advice and tips. Maybe you have truly useful information to share with them. Then you can say, “Sign up to receive my useful tips and advice”, and that way you might get people interested in your tips and advice signing up, because you are giving them something that they consider valuable.

When people give you their name and address, they are giving you something of value. You need to give something back. Don’t solicit emails from people unless you have something of value to share. And make sure it is valuable. Be it a free e-book if they sign up, or useful advice, or a promise of the information that they are looking for, make sure that you are giving something of value. Otherwise people will unsubscribe faster than they signed up, and you are just adding to the obesity of our spam layer.

Back to Speaker A, she said that when you send out your emails to this growing list they should be 75% content and 25% sales. I disagree. I think that if you send emails out to a list of people they should be 90% valuable content and 10% sales. In fact, I don’t think you should ever send an email unless you are offering value. I do believe that email lists are important, however, unless you have something of value to offer your list in addition to advertising, I want to discourage you from sending emails. My point of view might not be the most marketing savvy opinion, however, as someone bombarded with hundreds of email every day, I would urge you to not add to the empty calories. I want nutritious email landing in my inbox. I want them to feed my intellect, or my curiosity, or my spirit. I don’t want the internet to be a huge commercial. I want to believe that the internet is a vehicle for communication and sharing ideas.

That said, I do enjoy an occasional notice from amazon.com about my favorite author - so how is that different? The key word, I think is “occasional”.

Speaker B asked Speaker A, “How often should you send out emails to your list?”. Speaker A said that in the past experts have suggested sending an email once a month, however, she urged, recent studies show that you should send an email every week. “you should be contacting them once a week .. be it with a newsletter or a tip … the reason is that people purchase for different reasons .. emotional … does no good to do it only once … you need to continually be staying in front of your list - broadcasting - it doesn’t have to be lengthy … send a benefit … tie it into current events … share a tip, then at the bottom of the email mention your information.”

Now, I have issue with this again. I recently attended the Social Media TeleSummit, and each of the speakers had a free gift for attendees that required filling in your name and email address (They ALL must be listening to these experts!) Caught up in a flush of enthusiasm about what I was learning, I naturally signed up for ALL. I was then bombarded, literally bombarded with email.  The variety of the email that I received in response to my action of signing up for their gifts covered a range of useful to down right annoying. One speaker  bombarded me almost daily with emails that were transparently just a framework to sell me. Other speakers have been sending me an email once a week, and although some of the content is useful, most of it is just a sales pitch. They might have ONE sentence that is good advice and then point me with an affiliate link to another class or teleseminar that is happening. ONE sentence. That is just plain lazy.

What I am trying to say is, if you are going to start broadcasting email to an email list, put time into it. Don’t cut corners. Give value. Don’t sell products with every email, unless you space them way out, (so people have a chance to forget they were annoyed by the balance of value content to sales in your last email. )

And no matter what Speaker A says. Please don’t send an email every week unless there is really time sensitive information that you need to communicate. If the emails are just a vehicle for a sales pitch, keep it to twice a month, or once a month.  And no matter what you do, make sure you send emails that are well written and contain 90% value content. Don’t do it, unless you are willing to take the time to do it right. You expect your recipients to take the time to read them, after all. You should be willing to invest the time thinking about what you are sending.

Social Media is the new buzz word hitting the internet, though it has been around for years. It includes blogging, facebook, myspace, podcasts - all the ways that people reach out and connect with each other through the web.

Social Media is a great tool for promoting your brand, products and services. However, there is such a barrage of options available, and sometimes learning the ins and outs of how to utilize all the different tools to your advantage, (or even which social media tools are best for your business) seems an incredible amount of work and time. THEN finding the time to write those blogs and create and post those videos and podcasts - it could appear an insurmountable challenge.

That is why I have signed up for the THE 2008 SOCIAL MEDIA TELESUMMIT where I will be listening to and asking questions of Leesa Barnes and over 2 dozen other guest speakers for the first 2008 Social Media Telesummit.

I am really looking forward to learning Cutting Edge Social Media Tactics From Bestselling Authors, Millionaire Coaches, World Class Speakers, Success Gurus and Social Media Experts
I will bring what I learn back to my clients and my blog, however, if you would like to attend as well, sign up today!

Before you hire a web design company, here are some important questions to ask:

1. Who is going to be designing and programming my site?
   If you are approaching a large design firm, you may very well be paying top dollar for an entry level designer, or, if it is a small company that you are researching, they may outsource parts of the site. You have a right to know exactly who is going to be working on your project, and what their credentials are.
2. Ask to see examples of work done by current staff.
   A web design company may have a very impressive portfolio to show you, but are the designers who contributed to that portfolio still working for that company? Sometimes they aren’t. Ask to see examples of work done by the current staff, so that you can make an informed decision about who will be designing your site.

When you work with goffgrafix.com, you are hiring Heather Goff to program and design your site. Heather brings years of experience in programming and visual design to your project. If there is a piece of the site that needs to be outsourced, Heather will put you in direct contact with a selection of qualified professionals, and you will choose the best fit for your company and work directly with them. Plus, Heather specializes in sites with content management systems. What does that mean? It means that once the site is built, you can manage all of the content on it through an easy browser interface. See examples of web sites designed by Heather Goff. 

Here are a list of important resources for before you start designing your web site. These resources answer many initial questions.