There’s nothing better than a fired-up client … a client eager to spend resources and energy on doing smart things in a smart way … a client ready for results and willing to do what it takes to get them.

And there’s nothing worse than having to tell that client to holster it back up because they aren’t ready to pull the trigger.

That is sometimes the situation we find ourselves in when our small business clients are interested in implementing social media strategies before they have made sure that the location they are driving traffic to – usually their Web site – is prepared to handle the traffic.

When it comes to marketing their own brand, many small- and mid-sized businesses are working with limited resources.  So a decision to increase focus in one area often inadvertently becomes a decision to decrease attention in another.

Embarking on a social media strategy is a major undertaking for any company, an effort that often manages to soak up a lot of internal resources.  This can mean that the more mundane efforts it takes to update the company Web site can often go ignored, leaving the place you are trying to drive more traffic to looking something less than its best. Why is this a problem?  Because social media efforts are just a means to an end, with your final goal being to convert traffic into sales.

It’s important that the first step of your social media strategy be taking a look at your Web site and making sure it is an effective end-destination for every tweet, blog post and shared video.

• Are there clear “calls to action” throughout your Web site?
• Are your products and service pages current, accurate and complete?
• If you are targeting a specific audience with specific services/products needs in your social media efforts, are those services/products easily found?
• Are your contact pages updated and complete?  Is it easy for customers to continue the dialog that you started with a social media vehicle?
• Is your Web site content of interest to your social media audiences?

Pages that need simple corrections should be taken care of right away.  Any section that needs more extensive effort should be avoided as landing pages for social media traffic.  Once you are comfortable that your Web site is ready and able to do handle the new traffic, your company can feel comfortable in taking its first shot at social media success.

Law #3 — Significance:

Understand this… There is a very basic law that governs information on the Internet. This law, as viewed from the recipient’s standpoint, is simply this: Information should be FREE! Break this law at your own risk.

Actually, there’s a bit more to it than that. You must first establish Trust with your audience before you can start asking them to pay for anything. Trust is a byproduct of Value and value is in the eye of the beholder.

If your audience gives your information a positive valuation, you are well on your way to establishing trust. The common currency used for this exchange on the Internet is obviously information. A key variable in this Value + Trust = Customer Loyalty equation is the significance of the information provided.

By significance I do not mean quantity. What I am talking about is the quality of your information. If you can communicate your special value to your audience in a single page, so much the better.

Perhaps you have a valuable piece of information (a whitepaper, a one-page matrix, a graph or spreadsheet, or perhaps informational tools) that would be useful to your audience. Great! Let them have it! Don’t be bashful about letting them know this information is theirs to use for FREE! There is a natural inclination (innate tendency) within all of us to return the favor. We’ve also heard this referred to as “pay it forward.”

By giving away significant information (content) you are tapping into this most basic of all human instincts. Your audience will reciprocate!

In developing your website, it is important to keep in mind that your web site is essentially a document, or series of documents, that your web visitors will be reading. Understand that this is the expectation that they are coming to your website with as well.

Recent readability studies prove that the eye is immediately attracted to text, not pictures or graphics on a web site. This may be bad news for website designers out there who have a penchant for developing very elaborate Flash animations, but it’s good news for you. It saves you the time, trouble and expense of developing such things.

Creativity Killed the Customer
Recently, a web designer (former creative director for an advertising agency) colleague called me up excited to show me a website that he had just developed. When I got to his office and saw his latest masterpiece I was a little concerned. He had indeed developed a magnificent dynamic, database driven web site. Unfortunately at his customer’s request he had also developed a 2 minute long Flash animation. This was the first thing a web visitor encountered when they went to this particular company’s homepage.