Blogging for small businesses – are you missing out?

Business blogs can be very effective for marketing, PR and branding purposes. They help differentiate you in a crowded marketplace – especially if they create buzz, eliciting feedback and comments.

To promote your business, write about something you are passionate about, something related to your business, perhaps trends, latest releases or "how to" tips, this way you position yourself as the expert in your field. Write in a personal, maybe casual manner so that you can impart some of your personality through your blog then if people like what they read they will contact you for information or to leave feedback - now you’re doing business! Just remember to put your contact details in your blog profile.

You can write about anything you love - short stories about how you got to where you are now, case studies, snippets from your everyday experience in your industry, these all help establish your brand and promote your business.

If blogging sounds like something for your business you can be up and going in just minutes with the help of either of these two popular, easy to use websites - www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com. It’s free, you can do it all online, there’s no technical stuff to get your head around and in just a few minutes you could be increasing the profile of your business – wouldn’t you like more buzz and customers!

Squeeze pages raise questions about ethics and blindness

remember the song "Mama's got a squeeze box, Daddy never sleeps at night" ? - the kids don't eat and the dog can't sleep!

Well now theres the Squeezepage! Squeeze pages are landing pages created to solicit opt-in email addresses from prospective subscribers. The goal of the page is to obtain the visitors email address.

Hyperlinks and navigation are almost always absent from squeeze pages - anything which distracts the visitor is avioded. Anything that takes the visitor away from this page is avoided - total focus is on obtaining that email address.

The method used for obtaining that elusive email address is to offer you something for free - information, access to content, secret passwords, whatever to give up your email and possibly get additional information.

I have seen many of these squeeze pages on the web and only this week found out what they are called which raises the question how do you find out about a trend or idea that you can observe and have no name for. Without a name the trend becomes blind to us - we can't search for it on Google. To not have the words to search for a trend or idea on Google ... now thats a scary thought!

A domain name you can trust

Trust is an increasingly important issue on the internet and one of the trust factors for users is the domain name of the website they are visiting. Internet users choose local domain names over .com addresses.

A survey of British Internet users showed they are six times more likely to choose a .uk rather than .com address when looking for information via an Internet search engine. 62% believe a .uk address suggests a company is local or more relevant than a .com, and 32% believe that it is important for international companies to have local domain names in order to attract local customers. 72% said they would visit a .uk web address above any other and only 5% of respondents would try the .com.

How does this translate for New Zealand companies?
Well if you are doing business in NZ than you will be more successful within the NZ market with a .nz domain name. New Zealand internet users experience a higher degree of trust when they are on a local - .co.nz, website, which means having a .co.nz domain name is essential for doing business in New Zealand.

For companies exporting you need to consider 3 things

1. Having a .nz domain name avoids the anti-US feeling in some markets
   
2. Having a .com domain name is essential for the US market
   
3. You could take out domain names in all your major markets .uk etc

You can get a domain name for each of your local markets because your web designer can point ALL your domain names at the same website.

The implication for New Zealand businesses trading in overseas markets is obvious. Having a local domain name is important in building a higher level of trust in your products and services. We have seen this in the Australian market, where .com.au domains perform better than .co.nz domains.
If your market is the UK and your company is based in NZ you would typically have two domain names yourcompany.co.uk and yourcompany.co.nz .You can have as many domain names as your wallet and your imagination allow.

See my previous post for more on how domain names are structured and check if you have the correct one for your business.

Have You Got the Right Domain Name?

Domain name, web address, URL, they all refer to the same thing - it's the way people find your company on the internet. Just as homes and offices have a street address, so your website has a web address.

Your web address or domain name typically has several levels, separated by a dot. The right-most level is known as the top-level domain and is often represented by a country code, such as .nz. Within .nz, a range of second-level domains have been created for specific uses (eg. .co.nz for commercial users and .school.nz for schools). Some second-level domains are subject to moderation and have a restricted usage (eg. .govt.nz). Using Spiral as an example we see:
* third-level domain = spiral
* second-level domain = co
* top-level domain = nz

Third-level domains are managed in New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom on a 'first come, first served basis'. Australian domains are available only to registered Australian businesses, companies or ABN holders

How do I choose a domain name?
1. Choose the top-level domain based on your market and possibly your location

2. Choose the second-level domain based on your activities

• .co or .com for companies pursuing commercial aims
• .org for non-profit organisations
• .net for organisations directly related to the NZ Internet
• .school for pre-school, primary and secondary schools
• .maori for Māori people, groups, and organisations
• .ac for tertiary educational institutions

3. Choose a third level domain based on one or all of the following

• your company name eg spiral.co.nz
• the name of your product eg wondercap.co.nz
• an easy to remember abbreviation eg nzrab.org.nz
• something made up and memorable eg Ilovemydog.co.nz any combination of letters and numbers. You may also include a hyphen anywhere in the string, except the beginning or end.

What about the www?
The fourth-level domain is also known as a sub-domain and typically we see www as the sub-domain, as in

http://www.spiral.co.nz/ . A sub-domain might be set up for something like a forum or another major section to a website i.e. our mailRoom software website is http://www.mailroom.co.nz/ and the address for the application is http://email.mailroom.co.nz/ - no www necessary.

Other factors around trust will be in my next post.

2 tips for Google Ad-words

Results from our Google Adwords had been stunning for the year. Then wamo! over three days our entire marketing budget for the month was gobbled up by someone clicking on our ad and eating up the money.

And so 2 tips for running your Google Adwords campaign are to keep your daily budget capped to a low rate and review your campaigns regularly.