2. Who else in your church is already using social media and networking? What networks are they using? Connect with them. In our church we have a social network for the unemployed. The network physically meets biweekly, and connects on Linkedin between the meetings.

3. Keep the content active. Blogs need to be updated at least weekly, a Twitter account at least daily.

4. Target your posts to the needs of the reader.

5. Encourage dialog. Ask questions, introduce conflict. Keep your motives and values pure.

6. Let others in your congregation know about your networking. Encourage them personally to join in.

7. Reference your church website.

8. Use additional tools to enhance your efficiency. For Twitter, for example, use TweetDeck or Hootsuite.

9. Learn from the others. Saddleback Church has a special area on their website to train their congregation on using social media to invite others to church. Also see Steve Fogg’s http://stevefogg.typepad.com/blog/2010/02/killer-church-marketing-ideas-which-wont-cost-one-cent.html.

10. Contact us if you need help. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes.

If this is too confusing, we will list for you the best-selling top 10 themes over the recent Christmas/New Year’s holidays in descending (most popular first) order:

1. Agentpress – for real estate agents.
2. News – This is a good theme for content-heavy publishing in a newspaper style.
3. Enterprise – This is a very popular theme for business applications. We used it for this site.
4. Lifestyle – This is a very flexible theme for many applications

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5. Magazine – For creating an online magazine – content-heavy publishing in a magazine style..
6. Generate – Use for growing an email list
7. Associate – Professional and projects a strong company image.
8. Modern Blogger – for the modern woman (contemporary).
9. Minimum – This a simple theme, with a black & white layout.
10. Driskill – clean and contemporary, works for personal and professional use.

Contact us to get started on your Web site.

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I stopped by a client a few weeks ago who was using my hosting, with a Web site from somewhere else. He was keeping the Web site up; but it wasn’t drawing customers. What was wrong?

The rules for getting a Web site working today are dramatically different from those a few years ago. Sure, the small business needs a Web site; but the reality is you need a Web presence. What does that mean? Here are eleven pages of top-level advice. All free. Get your copy today just by contacting us.

I recently surveyed 30 small businesses near me to see if they had Web sites on the Web. Of the 30 small businesses near me, only 11 had Web sites. I found 19 of these businesses, or 63%, had no site. A Web site is essential for almost business today. Over half are losing dramatic market share without that site.

If you ask these businesses without Web sites if they had a site, they would probably tell you they did. Search those 19 businesses without sites using their business name on Google, and a listing for them would pop up. The listing would show their business name, address, phone number, email address, and maybe a photo and a small map with directions. So they thought they had a Web site. Not really. They had a listing; but that’s not a Web site. Phone companies and others create directories on the Web. Your listing may be a part of one or more directories. For those companies without a Web site, you will still see their listings on such directories as citysearch, yellowpages, local.yahoo, superpages, and dexknows. These are often paid for by the business.

When a potential customer does a search in an attempt to locate your business or more particularly your product or service, they will generally search by category – not by your business name.  For example, if I search in Google for “Allen Shoes” (without the quotes) at the moment I will find NO stores listed with links from directory sites listed in the returned result listing on the first three pages with the exception of two links from the manta.com directory. The links returned by Google on this search are to real Web sites.

What really happens is that in the various categories (such as the “Allen Shoes” category) only the top pages in that category are spidered by Google. Google isn’t looking at the entire directory listings in that category.

For serious search engine optimization, you need that Web site. At the deeper level, for good search engine optimization (at least on Google) you need strong content, and you can’t do that with a simple listing. You also need strong incoming links from high quality sites. If you have strong content, you’ll get those links. Finally, you need a dynamic Web site. That means you need a blog and lots of people commenting on your blog. Your goal is to create a dynamic environment that draws potential clients into your site. Working the social media often is very important.

We can help with this. Why not contact us and let’s get started.

You can either order one of our Econoweb sites or – if you are a do-it-yourselfer – put the website together yourself with our tools.

Here is an example site we did selling books.

But you need to start NOW. The sooner you have the site, the sooner you can advertise, fill orders, and ship.

1. Use niche marketing in your social media sites. Know the needs of those you post to – their persona. Targtet those needs. Use keyword phrases when networking. Meet their needs anyway, even if it doesn’t relate to you goals.
2. Identify the influencers that are already networking. What social networks are they using? What groups in those networks? What are they doing? What are their keyword phrases?
3. Identify the people that need to hear your message. What network are they on? How can you reach them?
4. Lead from ideas. Be a thought leader Don’t try to “sell” anything or force something down their throats. Identify a hungry market, jump into it, and lead from ideas to draw them in.
5. Encourage people to contact you. Ask people to comment on your blogs. Raise questions in other postings, asking people to reply. Set up polls. Make it easy for people to reach you, providing multiple methods. Follow up with people quickly.

6. Create lots of links. When using Twitter, link people to your blogs and (if you have it) your Facebook and/or Linkedin account and others. Use tools like http://bit.ly to shorten your URLs in the links. Pull traffic into your web site or blog to get them more involved.

7. Contribute. Join groups in the networks, create groups and contribute, contribute comments to the blogs of others.
8. Try new things constantly. Use tools to monitor what is working and what isn’t.
9. Encourage links into your site and/or blog. Identify subject directories and get in these. Make it easy for them to bookmark your site. Use del.icio.us., DIGG. StumbleUpon and others.
10. Use RSS to enable people to monitor when you update your web site or blog.

Here is what a website can do for you:

1. Helps other people find you. People use the Internet to find stores, organizations, and people now. If you aren’t there, they can’t find you.
2. You can reach a much larger local and global audience.
3. Saves your time by answering those off-repeated questions people ask. In launching a website for a PAC, we used a website to store all those news articles and related information. We could often refer a newspaper reporter directly to the website, which was dynamically following everything.
4. Target your audience better (your market niche). This is where the Internet really shines.
5. Take control of your website layout, content, and search engine optimization. (With social networking sites, someone else owns the site and the rules.)
6. Network ideas with clients and members and create synergy.
7. Better objectify your web presence.
8. Get strong analytics on your traffic.
9. Differentiate yourself from your competitors.
10. You are accessible 24/7, even when you are on that beach in Mexico.
11. Save on advertising and an affordable website.
12. Brand your company
13. Establish your credibility and authority.

In the emerging paradigm today, the flow of information for making decisions is very fast and very dense. We are becoming more and more dependent upon social networks, blogs, and websites. Yet when I look at the market statistics, I see small businesses very often fail to take advantage of this.

• One source says 46% of the small businesses today don’t even have a website(1).
• Another source says more than 50 percent of small U.S. businesses (those with fewer than 200 employees) do not have web sites (2).
• Chris Brogan, Human Works Works President, says his research shows 60% of U.S. businesses are not online in any fashion(3).

Most small businesses still live in the Dark Ages and expect to survive. They won’t. The speed of change has become so fast that the electronic and immediate flow for information for decisions is almost a necessity. That’s the paradigm today – and it’s moving fast. The web site is essential not only just for selling stuff – it is essential for branding and selling your company, or organization as an authority, for support, and marketing.

So the bottom line today is that even if you have only a small business, an organization, or even a personal vision you should have a website. An effective website. Period. No question about it. Without a doubt. The website should also be professionally done if you wish people to take your message seriously.

Also (citing Chris Brogan) the website not only must be professional in appearance and content, and optimized for the search engines. A page on Facebook or a commodity blog won’t do it. A page on Facebook is like calling a hotel room home. Sure, you need the social networks; but you also need that website to sent ‘em to from Facebook when they get serious.

Last year, with a recession killing small businesses, most small businesses found the professional website was out of there budget. We were doing websites for small businesses starting at $4000 – $5000 for a professional website – too much for the small business. Carl went to work to find a solution.

With our new Econoweb program, Carl found a way to create affordable and professional websites for clients for less than $2000. That includes hosting (one year, renewable), domain name, and the development. Development time can be as little as 1-2 weeks, depending on our work load. What’s more, the website is dynamic. That means you can update the content or layout yourself without knowing anything about programming. We set up the initial content and layout for you based on the material you give us. You take it from there. If you don’t have the two grand and a little web experience, we can show you how to do it yourself for much less.

Econoweb gives you a website with a very professional look, a beautiful layout that is easy to read, and high-quality search engine optimization. You can focus on creating your content and layout, not the programming. You have a dynamic website that changes with your needs.

The question is not “Can I afford a Web Site”, but rather “Can I afford not to have a Web Site?”

Why not contact us and let’s get started on YOUR site?

1. http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007431
2. Gary Schneider, Electronic Commerce, 9th edition, 2011. p.14
3. http://smartblogs.com/leadership/2011/05/16/chris-brogan-on-why-every-business-needs-a-website

As an Affiliate of Studio Press and their Genesis Framework, We provide over 40 themes that work with Genesis. You can see samples of the entire layouts here. These are the preferred themes for our Econoweb sites, themes that can help a small business or organization have a professional presence on the Internet in a short time and low cost.

Each of these themes requires the additional purchase of the Genesis framework. A combined purchase of the Genesis framework and one theme is $79.95 and can be ordered from the StudioPress icon at the right if you wish to build the site yourself. You also need a host, a domain name, and a (free) copy of WordPress. Or you can contract us to build it for you using these tools. It’s affordable.

Which of these are the most popular? StudioPress provided us with the five most popular during the month of September.

The AgentPress theme now has 5 color styles, IDX integration, and simplified posting for the listings. This one is specifically designed for real estate professionals.

This a new Associate theme was introduced in July of 2011 and was instantly popular. It incorporates a slider plugin, a choice of 4 color styles, and many other customization features. It is specifically targeted to the professional business website market.

The Magazine theme is an updated theme that now has support for up to 7 color styles, 6 layout options, a slider plugin, and more!

The AgentPress theme is specifically designed for real estate professionals. It features 5 color styles, IDX integration, slider, and simplified postings for listings.

The Enterprise is a premier theme layout for businesses. This the theme we use for our own home site. This theme was the #2 seller in September. Very popular.

Our personal favorite is is the Church theme, which we continue to use for our ministry site. Although StudioPress no longer sells the Church theme (although we can still can provide it for you from our license with them), StudioPress says they evolved that theme to this new Lifestyle theme. You be the judge. Now with 10 color styles, Google web fonts, and more. It was the #1 seller in September.

Why not get started with one of these high-quality layouts now? Just contact us or, order the tools by clicking the blue StudioPress icon at the top or in the sidebar.

Carl’s been doing this with his http://www.creatingnewworlds.org web site for years. Click on the banner ad at the top, and you are off to the order page that will sell you his book using PayPal. In fact, by choosing “Store” off the menu line of that site you can shop for all three of his latest books through PayPal.