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Hi everyone and thanks for joining us for podcast #42! In this episode we will be looking at what may be holding you back from being where you want to be online. It’s a common thing that people go through periods of frustration and often don’t take the action that is required to get things going. We’re going to take a look at some solutions for anyone who is finding getting online to be a frustrating process!
What did Andrew & Heather learn this week?
Andrew has been looking at yet another change made by Google to their search algorithm! Additionally, keyword research as we know it is about to be gone. If you have your analytics set up, you may notice ‘not provided’ next to some of them and results are not shown. Basically if you are logged in to your Google account and searching keywords, Google will not report them but will for users who are not logged in. Keywords are shifting to be provided by Google which will make it even more difficult to rank well for them. This means that having the right content and social strategies will be more important than ever. There will be no more ‘cheats’ or ‘tricks’ to attract search engine traffic!
Another thing you should know about Google is that they are integrating the comments function on YouTube with Google+. This means that Google+ is gearing up to be an even more powerful engine than what it already is so it is important to get on there if you aren’t already!
Heather has been following the news around the ios7 software update for Apple products. People have been complaining that the new version has given them motion sickness due to the icons jumping around a lot. This highlights the importance of waiting a while before upgrading with any software updates – wait and see what bugs they need to iron out first!
So, what holds people back?
Desire For Perfection
The example of the Apple software updates is actually a good one for what holds many people back. Apple don’t wait for their product to be absolutely perfect before releasing it, if they did they’d never release anything new! At the same time, many of the frustrated people we come across are those that want to try and have everything lined up perfectly before they launch online. You don’t need to have everything perfectly in place! Take a leaf out of the books of the big companies and launch earlier but be prepared to make changes later.
Branding, Logo and Colours
Many people become so stuck on their branding to the point that it can take six months just to develop a logo. Remember that customer experience is the most important part of your branding – they will go away remembering the experience they had rather than how great your logo is! While you spend time trying to achieve ‘perfection’ with your logo and colours, you could be losing time which could be spent building your online business. Focus your time on that customer experience.
“Why would people listen to me?”
This is a huge one which we hear often. Many people are intimidated by the idea of putting out podcasts etc, but you really need to just do it and not focus on the numbers so much. One of the best ways to really be identified as an expert in your field is to teach something to others. If you have an area of expertise that you are able to teach, there will be people out there who are interested in knowing about it. You may not even need to have as much material as you think! Often as business owners we can get caught up in explaining out processes to people; they don’t really want to know this stuff, they want to know what’s in it for them or how your product can help them. Focus on delivering the kind of information that people want to know about. If your business gets FAQs, these can be a good place to start.
Also remember to keep it simple – don’t try to cram too much in or you may lose people. Take a bite of information and create your article, video or podcast around that. Beware of falling into the trap of making it all about you – your site should be about the person visiting it and what will be helpful to them rather than all about you. Make sure you do have a good ‘About’ page in place so that if people want to know more about you they can find it.
When you are creating the content for your site, put yourself in the shoes of the sceptic who is saying “why should I listen to you?”. This way you can gear your content to answer that question. It is also important to be very clear on what it is you are offering. People are put off if they go to a website and can’t identify what it’s about right away.
“I don’t know how to get people to come to my website”
A lot of people we come across are comfortable with setting up a website but are really unsure when it comes to getting the traffic to go there. We suggest that Facebook ads are one of the cheapest and easiest ways to get traffic to your site. You are able to easily segment the audience for you ad so that only those who fit in with your specified demographic would see it (for example, if you have a basketball product you might segment the ad to only be seen by people who have ‘liked’ basketball). A common question we get is ‘what is the difference between campaigns and ads?’; basically if you look at campaigns as the the bucket for which all of your related ads are held. You may set a spending limit per day for the campaign so Facebook will show your ads from that campaign until your spend limit has been reached.
Remember with websites that unless you have some kind of massive advertising budget on Google, success does not happen overnight. Resources like Facebook are great for testing to see whether people like your stuff and allow you to make adjustments to see what works the best.
Doing things backwards!
Have you tested to see whether people want your product before creating it? For example, create one or two modules and see whether people want to buy before creating a whole course! You don’t want to waste time creating something that doesn’t get bought and testing the product gives you the flexibility to change what you’re doing and gear it to what your customers want. There are many people out there that run ads and sell tickets or products for things that they have not created yet but they just want to get an idea of whether people will want it if they create it.