Return on Relationship (ROR) in Social Media

Social media. It’s the fresh buzzword heard from businesses all across the globe.
 
Social media is the new kid on the block that few truly know much about, and everyone has an opinion on how to work it.

It bucks the traditional methods of customer relations and marketing, and introduces new concepts of engagement with consumers that can seem impractical or unnecessary.

But at Kari & Co. - we think it's totally imperative - to keep your name in front of your potential client or target. We think it's beneficial to keep reminding folks that you're there, and to get your business name seen over and over - it's exposure.

It’s a competitive world on the web - and the edge is given to those companies that provide great products or services to communities that need them. The edge is given to businesses that have web sites and eCommerce options… the edge is given to businesses on social media.

With a variety of different social networking platforms, users can share photos, information and memories with one another creating strong online relationships where advice is trusted and recommendations lead to purchase decisions. 

People like to show their opinion, have their say and share their thoughts. As long as your company keeps social media social - and does not only share business items and constantly try to sell the user - it'll be successful for your company - at whatever frequency and intensity you do it.

Simply put, social media isn’t just your teenage daughter checking her Facebook on her iPhone. It’s where your consumers live! Your consumer is online somewhere browsing search engines, websites and social media platforms for information.

Don’t you want them to come to you? Social media provides return on relationship (ROR). Like the business term, return on investment (ROI), social media enables businesses to communicate freely and personally with their customers in order to build trustworthy and reliable relationships with them.  And - as you know, building relationships is a huge part of any industry or business - and is at the core of your success - whatever you do.

If your business provides a great experience to a user, don’t you want them to tell their friends? That favorable experience at your business goes online, across a variety of platforms and becomes that golden “word of mouth” marketing that brings customers back into your doors.

Time and time again.

So saddle up with social media, it isn’t going away.

Embrace online engagement and allow your users to put a face or voice with your brand. It’ll help your business and your consumers in the years to come.

How Much Should You Pay For A Website?

I call it 'business terrorism'.

Businesses - holding others hostage, or using fear - to charge WAY more than they should for website design, web maintenance, hosting, social media and more.

Lately - I've seen several local 'web design' and 'SEO' agencies and firms preying on small business (and doctor's offices mostly, that I have seen).  I have been watching people pay hundreds of dollars for things that take less than an hour to perform (adding links to copy on a page for example, or a new link from the drop down menu on a custom Wordpress site).

I've seen instances this year - where doctors paid more for their website - than they would a luxury car.  

I have seen cases - locally - and recently - where these webdesign and marketing companies 'host' and design the sites for the client, then do not give them access at all or full, free reign to manage their own site, AND then - they charge them unbelievable money to make small changes. (over $1000 to add a link to the navigation? really?)

Now, I'm not talking about a website that provides an interactive, multi-programming platform experience that does something AHHHHH-MAZING.

And if anyone needed that - it's not something we do - it's out of my league and skill set. I'm talking about a Wordpress site design. Or a standard HTML (page by page) small business website.

For this same type of website - which we do every day - our website design rates start at $1500.00 and go up to around $2500 - and it all depends on time involved. We post these rates directly on our website - we try to be as up-front as possible - from the start and communicate the entire way through. Of course - it can cost more - sure - but it rarely is.  We do small changes, updates for our hourly rate and a two-hour minimum. And - I can get a TON done in two hours.  We work hard, one on one try to include as much as we can - to give added value to our clients and do quality work, efficiently. 

Bottom line: we're nowhere NEAR $20k, $30k and even over $50k. (all of which - I have seen here LATELY - as in the last 6 months on more than 5 different local clients)  Makes me wonder if our prices are that far below the ballpark?

And - we don't 'host' sites and mark up that cost with another fee. We charge money for a providing a service to you. We don't need to make more money by marking up hosting. We refer our clients to our favorite web hosting company - Host Assured, and then let our client set up their own account - billing and management so that they can manage that fully moving forward. Why, you ask? We find this works best on a number of levels - 1/ they can get support directly from the host and 2/ if they choose to leave us, or go with another company - they have full freedom over their website, it's content - and who has access to it. These poor companies I've been working with lately seem to be in the dark on their access and what they are paying for. That's just wrong.

Of course, Kari & Co. is just me, and Kim - and a couple of other quality folks. We have some help from time to time with blogging and content, but for the most part we do all of the design work, we have a WONDERFUL programmer friend in Bangkok who is a brilliant jQuery ninja - but beyond that - what you see is what you get with us. We stay busy, we work hard and we feel we provide a quality end result at a competitive price.

But I see an opportunity here. As a consultant maybe - helping clients (especially medical companies needing medical practice websites) save money from the business terrorists.

New Volusion Designs - E-Commerce Websites

We'd like to welcome some new Volusion Designs to the internet! Of course, we prefer to work as a Volusion Designer - because it's the shopping cart we are most familiar with.  But we've also had some recent experience with Big Commerce Design (and it is very flexible, and has lots of potential. I would like to take a stab at another one soon!) as well as Pinnacle Cart - but of all the carts out there, for the price an support, Volusion stays on top in our opinion.

No, we don't work for Volusion. They don't give us kick-backs. It's just a robust tool for the money. If you're looking to sell online - Volusion is a one-stop solution. It certainly doesn't look easy at first, and it's a HUGE learning curve - but it's packed with features from email campaign management to customization and flexibility - to the fact that it's very SEO friendly. (Speaking of which, did we mention that we are now partnered with Vestal Media to provide SEO services? Learn more on our web page about Search Engine Optimization services.)

So pay our new clients a visit, whether you're looking for some YUMMY smelling soap, a lift chair to help with a loved one's mobility, or skin-whitening/lightening products - we've launched some new designs in the last couple of weeks that we're thrilled to share. Pay them a visit! 

WELCOME TO THE WEB:

Candace and Kids Soap Company - Hand Poured Organic Soap

Tonique Skin Whitening Products

Discount Lift Chair .com

Competition Sabotage? Hacker? What You Need To Know About ROBOTS.TXT and SEO

 

Does your site have a robots.txt file? Mine does. In fact, my website has had the same robots.txt file since 2008, barring adding or removing a non-relevant directory from the search bots.

But suddenly - this week - my rankings for ALL my keywords on ALL search engines disappeared. The nice page breakout and descriptions in search results that I had earned for services, contact and other pages that had been stewing online for the last 7 years were gone too. SHIZZ NITS!

So Karebear started freaking out. Went into my Google Webmaster Tools to see an alert, from this last week, to inform me that Google could no longer access my site. Do what? I had made no changes to this file.

I've either been a victim of a hack, or perhaps negative SEO. So let's investigate this Robots.Txt Mystery.

Nutshell - What is a robots.txt file? This is a text file in the root directory of your site that tells Google and other search engines whether they have permission to crawl your pages. It looks something like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /directory-you-do-not-want-to-be-crawled/
Disallow: /file-you-do-not-want-to-be-crawled.html
Sitemap: http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml 

It is a best practice to have a robots.txt file, even if you allow your entire directory to be crawled. Here's what I found last night:

User-agent: *
Disallow: / 

This file is telling Google, and ALL other search engines - NOT to crawl ANY of my site. Disallow from the root directory onward. Not good.

So I went into panic mode, and made some edits and am now hoping, praying that this resolves itself quickly and will be watching closely over my analytics accounts. I'd like you to say a prayer too, please. :)

So now, my next question is - why did this file change? First thing in head - could file have been hacked? Short answer - yes. Could a competitor hack your robots.txt file? Yes, by hacking your robots.txt file so it blocks the site and then submitting a removal request to Google - your competitor could theoretically block your site from search results. Entirely. 

First, there's this article on gaining 'competitive intelligence' by reviewing directories of competitor websites. And even better - is this story from a few years back on how a hacker used proxy hacking to effect a site other than their own. But this one, takes the cake. It's about negative SEO and how it can dramatically reduce your rankings on the internet. Here's an excerpt written by Scott Langdon, contributor/author from www.HigherVisibility.com:

For those who are unfamiliar, negative SEO is when one website either hacks into your website and makes negative changes, reports your website to Google for no reason, or purchases spam links and then points them to the sites of competitors. The idea is that your competitor will be penalized by Google; thus allowing your site to rise above. This is seen as unethical and in most cases it is considered worse than any of the other black hat SEO tactics.

What can you do? 

Your first step is to understand that robots.txt is an important file - and if not done correctly, or if there is a change - it can effect your SERPS in a HUGE way. That is, eventually dropping you completely if bots can't access your content.

Then - DO NOT let your robots get lonely. Or your website reporting for that matter. CHECK Analytics and Webmaster Tools Site Health regularly. If you see any changes, or decrease in traffic - as usual - take appropriate measures.

Use your webmaster tools to check your back links and do searches on yourself and your company. People are mean, try to stay on top of them. If people are wrongly linking your site, stealing your work (I just pasted in the first paragraph of my homepage in quotes to Google and found my copy stolen VERBATIM on another web designer's site. Nice.) or trying to sabotage your efforts in some way. A good side benefit of this is also checking reviews and for online reputation management.

Bottom line: I'm not sure yet what happened. I only have my guesses. I'll certainly report back and let you know everything I find out. If you find you've been a victim - it could be too late as it takes time to index and rank sites. You've been working hard for your positions - and especially if you depend on your rankings for income, this can be devastating to your business. So to me - the most important part of this is to stay on top of your positioning. If you notice a drop, investigate. Check your analytics and webmaster tools regularly, and if it's been several weeks - seek the help of a professional.

**UPDATE** - some nice folks on the Google Webmaster Tools Forums advised me that it is VERY rare for someone to hack your site and only change a robots.txt file. They would be doing other things, and wreaking havoc elsewhere. Negative SEO and Google Proxy stuff wasn't mentioned - and it's too over my head anyway. They did mention that the google bots 'crawl' your site and it has nothing to do with indexing. I guess this means that they just can't access the information to display, and that hopefully the index / search results will not be effected since I caught it early. They pretty much chalked it up to user error. Whatever the case - I will from now on check my rankings and analytics VERY regularly - so I can stay on top of this.

Tula Hats - New Volusion Website Design

Kim and I enjoyed helping Alice from TulaHats.com redesign her website to fit her brand. What a cool brand it is too. Beautiful straw hats hand made here in Texas. Perfect for the stylish gardener, or flitting around fashionably outdoors. These SPF 50+ hats to protect your head, scalp and face from the sun's harmful rays.  As their website says - "Sun protection never looked so good". A hat from Tula Hats makes a great gift for someone you love (and don't forget Father's Day gift coming up) or something special for yourself.

Visit them online: Tula Hats

New Wordpress Website Deisgn - Diva G - Texas Party Band

♫ I gotta feeling.... that tonight's gonna be a good night.... that tonight's gonna be a good, good night....

Hit the homepage of texas party band Diva G and High Maintenance, and you'll hear them performing this hit by the Black Eyed Peas - and now, of course - it's stuck in my head!

So glad to have done a custom WordPress design for this group - Gloria (Diva G) is SO sweet, a local Dallas Ft. Worth singer and their band is so fun. This lady has so much energy!! They would rock the house as your event band or wedding reception entertainment. They also have a smooth jazz band.
 
Gloria D'Azerro and Friends, the Band High Maintenance - thank you for your business and letting us do your new website!

Three Reasons You Need To Be Blogging

With our web design clients, we hear it all the time - "Why would I need to be blogging? I'm not a blogger." But in our case (for our clients) you are either selling a product or service online, or have a business that needs exposure on the world wide web. Whatever your business is, your online presence could benefit from having a blog.

Reason Number Three:  You could be taking advantage of the opportunity to blog about yourself, your company and your products. Certainly the idea is to eventually get OTHER bloggers to blog about you, and it can seem a little self-serving to write about yourself. But truly, if you do it in a way that is informative and educational to others - specifically your client or potential client - in the form of how-to's, product reviews and tips and tricks that pertain to your industry - you'd be generating useful and relevant content.  In our opinion - content about your company, if it's done without a sales-y attitude, is a great option, even if you are writing it yourself.

Reason Number Two: Blogs are great for SEO, in many ways. First, you gain accidental traffic to the blog, that you might not get to your website. Second, you can take advantage of this traffic by optimizing each post with a great title and tags, as well as back links to your website (keep them deep, with great anchor text keywords, and they'll be more juicy.) Whether you have a Blogger blog (like this one) where the content lives externally from your website, or a WordPress blog where the content is on your server acting as bait for the search engines - you need a blog to boost your SEO effort.

Reason Number Three: Blogs are great for social media. It could be your 'hub' or 'headquarters' for socially sharable content. Or, maybe it's a way for you to easily update your website with news and events about your company. Whatever your blog is used for (news, events, or socially shareable content) it all works great for Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Linked In and other social sharing sites.

Of course, your content is best suited for your clients when it comes from you. And - it's best suited when it comes regularly. Just don't have time? If you're super busy and don't have a clone to channel your thoughts to a blog post, and want someone to do it for you - Kari and Company does offer blogging services. Just sayin'.

And, since social media is great exposure across the internet and certainly boosts SEO, you start falling into a never ending useful funnel of goodness that leads potential clients and new clients RIGHT to your website. That's the idea, right? Happy Blogging!

Web Design Company Clients Support MacArthur High School After Prom Party

I am wowed by our clients! Of course, without clients - we'd have no business. I am so lucky to get to be the one to design small business websites for them, or even do a custom Volusion design or Core Commerce design, or maybe do a some social media services for them. Kim and I work really hard to provide a great service, with a great end result, at a fair price - with some added value of good communication and the desire to go above and beyond. For our clients - I already knew they were amazing, but it's now confirmed - that they support us in s many ways!

As many of you know, my niece is graduating this year from the same high school Kim and I graduated from many moons ago. Like most kids, they are getting ready for Prom, and the parties to follow. Kim took a role to support an effort to host a huge after-Prom party - sort of a lock-in - where kids can have a drug-free, alcohol-free good time at SpeedZone in Dallas. Kids attending the MacArthur High School after prom party will be able to race through the night, drinks, snacks, games and giveaways - until the sun comes up the next morning. The idea is to keep them off the streets, and off drugs and alcohol - for what should be one of the most memorable nights of their life. The alternative is often tragic, and parents decided a few years ago that after-Prom parties were a great way to protect their kids.

So - we reached out to our web design clients, because we needed financial support to pay for the venue, as well as donations and giveaways to encourage kids and volunteers to participate in this special event. We were nothing short of AMAZED at the return from our clients.

There are more too - coming in every day - supporting this effort in various ways. We will post more as we receive. WE CANNOT THANK YOU ENOUGH. Our most sincere thanks and appreciation go out to all of these businesses. Please take a moment to visit their websites, share their info on your social networks.

If you are interested in donating a product or service to the MHS After Prom, or making a donation, visit www.MHSAFTERPROM2012.com or contact Kim - kim@kariandco.com.

Again - WOWED by our clients. You guys are the best in the world and we thank you!