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.

I stood there watching this spectacular high-bandwidth display of color and motion, while my friend basked in the glow of his creation. My only thought was how absolutely annoying this was going to be for just about every single web visitor that came to this particular website, with the possible exception of his mom.

I did my best to express my concern to my friend however, it was to no avail. In fact I just went and checked on this “spectaculon” and it’s still there. Fortunately my friend had the good sense to put a “skip-intro” button on the animation. Hopefully this company’s web visitors will find it quickly. Besides being a time waster a flash introduction immediately alienates those web visitors still using low-speed connections, and that’s still quite a few people in the US today!

Words, words, words…
Words are the most powerful communication tool known to mankind and the Internet is the great facilitator of this tool. In his somewhat eclectic, yet enlightened book, The Medium Is the Massage (Bantam Books, 1965), Marshall McLuhan stated, “Western history was shaped…by the introduction of the phonetic alphabet, a medium that depends solely on the eye for comprehension…” “Its use fostered and encouraged the habit of perceiving all environment in visual and spatial terms.” In the words of Yvonne DiVita, book publisher, author and Social Media expert, “Words count! The Right Words Count Double!”

All of the rules of good typography still apply. In this case, the more things change, the more they stay the same. (A quick search on “rules of typography” will produce several sources of information.) Keep this in mind as you develop your web content. As an example, bolded text and subtitles command more attention than pictures or fancy graphics and animations. Other things to think about are, spacing, font size and style… Don’t ignore a large demographic that is flocking to the Internet baby boomers. Remember that they don’t like small script and they want information up front, top down!

2 Points on Good Web Content
As you develop your web content there are a couple other basic concepts for you to keep in mind. First, Be Brief! In most cases online — Less Is More. Don’t say in two paragraphs what you can say in ten words. Second, the contents of your web site should reflect the real and measurable benefits that you provide to your customers. In other words, your copy should be about the unique value you provide to your customers and NOT about your marketing ego. The more you can build on your unique qualities, and their benefit to your customers, the better.

Statistics
Several final notes on the development of your web site: It is a known fact that 70% of Internet users will NOT re-visit a graphically rich website. This most definitely supports the point made earlier that web visitors are coming to a website with an expectation of gathering information, i.e.: reviewing a document. 59% of online shoppers want MORE product information not less. In addition, web site visitors demand speed and gratification. 40% of Internet users will not tolerate web pages that do not load quickly. The eight-second rule still applies – “Capture my interest in eight seconds or I’m gone!”