What is the purpose of your web site?

The purpose of  web site explained

From a FUFISM based marketing perspective your web site is the primary hub of your online presence, and needs to be used as  the core element  of your customer  /  supplier / client communications network.

Every business needs to examine their business plan, and understand the purpose, aims and objectives of their business as laid out in their  business plan.   This purpose aims and objectives of your business or organisation  is then used as a basis to design a marketing strategy, where your online presence needs to be the central point of your marketing strategy.

Your website should be viewed as an essential asset that is used as a communications tool, and forms the core of  all your marketing, advertising and customer interaction platforms, both online and offline.

Online marketing has\many different components, and these all need to be considered when planning your marketing. The trick question is how will you integrate these into your website and your total marketing plan.  

YOUR ONLINE MARKETING SHOULD NOT BE SEPARATED FROM YOUR OFF LINE MARKETING 

Your online marketing and offline marketing should complement each other and work as a team to get your branding and related business  issues noticed by your intended target market audience in a manner that is not intrusive, objectionable or disruptive, but is pleasant, memorable and  sticky  so that your brand will be in the thinking patterns and thought processes of your intended target market audience when they are looking for your products, services or related information.

So keeping the above stuff in mind, what is the purpose of your web site?

Well this is a very loaded question, and your website has a multitude of purposes, but  it is our view that the primary purpose of your web site  is to serve as a communications hub, that is customer focused and services the information flow needs of   your intended target market audience as well as but not limited to :

• your marketing  department
• your Public relations management team 
• enhance your sales team and  sales related administrative staff
• enhance your customer care and  related Public relations needs
• solve  after sales queries and offer  product  information updates
• interface between your various social media marketing teams and administrative staff
• act as an online brochure 
• act as a cold calling business rep.
• act as a lead generation source
• So many more purposes that are at first hidden and not very obvious at first glance.

The HOA (Hangout On Air) embedded below where +Ammon Johns  and +Vincent Messina  discuss QUALITIES OF AN EFFECTIVE BUSINESS WEBSITE  is  very helpful  in expanding the issues that you need to consider when determining the purpose of your web site. Take note that the purpose of having an online presence and a website will vary  considerably from company to company.

This HOA helps explain the PURPOSE of your web site!!!   Watch and enjoy.

Remember to document what you think is the purpose, aims and objectives of your web site, and be sure to share this with your marketing team.   Then ask that other departments in your business read over this document and ask them to comment where they think their department fits into this document, and what they feel that you need to add to this document,  discussing the purpose, aims and objectives of your web site.

Do not ignore this input, but act on it and take this feed back to your design team asking how this new perspective can be integrated into your existing website in ways that enhance your customer experience.

Be sure that your social media team are aware of this document discussing the purpose, aims and objectives of your website. Also ensure  that your social media marketing team makes good well balanced use of this information when doing their stuff within the social media environment.

It is vital that your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) team  are aware of this document and make use of this when working with other departments  as well as your various different  marketing teams.  This will help to ensure that your SEO is better integrated into your total marketing plan.

Your document discussing the purpose, aims and objectives of your web site needs to be reviewed and updated at least once every month, then the revised document should be discussed with all your marketing teams, asking how these changes impact on their work.  If there ARE NO CHANGES  ask your entire marketing team WHY ARE THERE NO CHANGES because things are constantly in flux, and many of your aims and objectives should have been accomplished within one month.  You may also have thought of a new purpose that is not listed, but not added it.  Be sure to add all new purposes identified, as this will have an impact on the content of your web site, and may give your content marketing team new perspectives that they can exploit..

Do you have a web site policy document for your business?

If not then make a plan and develop a website policy document as part and parcel of your business policy documentation that is part of your business plan.

Your web site should be updated regularly and maintained  property by the same team who designed your web site.  Your web site is your primary online asset, and needs to be treated with the same respect that you treat your office space, taking into account that this is the digital entrance to your business, so your web pages should display the appropriate style and branding that your customers would expect to find when they walked into your offices.

Your website serves a multitude of purposes, and each of these purposes needs to be listed in your business plan, and then also listed in your marketing plan, as well as in your business policy documentation.

Business to community webcasts and your business

Webcasts can be very effective as a social media supplement, and add value to your social media posts. web casts are very effective marketing tools, and have good results in most search engines. placing a page within your blog space with your web cast links is the most effective way to go, as this will be  a static page with many references from

• your web site, 
• internally within your blog
• your various social media campaigns
• your subscriber base at YouTube
• Your subscriber bases within your various social media platforms

The site to learn about the techniques and procedures involved in web caste is http://www.business2community.com/   It is realy worth your while to check out this site and consider becoming a member. their tips and tricks as well as associated learning materials that they link to are trully informative and helpful.

check out these links within their pages
http://guides.business2community.com/ - how to start up guides
http://research.business2community.com/ business to community research library
http://training.business2community.com/ business to community elearning center
http://www.business2community.com/ building better business relationships through engaging communities

remember to think about FUFISM when using social media, as this helps get perspective on what you are doing, and what results to expect as well as who should be monitoring your responses and what actions they should be taking.

Your target market needs serious evaluation and must be researched properly before you set up your webcast. Your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is dependent on your target market selection,  and should be integrated into your whole marketing strategy for each separate webcast.

Remember that marketing is a team effort and that everybody within your company and organisation must always be prepared, as strange things can happen very easily and any one of your web casts or other social media posts could go viral at any time, and if you have applied FUFISM then you will be well rewarded

SEO for startups in under 10 minutes Plus other reading material.

The links below will add some value to this video covering basic SEO - Search Engine Optimisation, and should be read only after you have viewed the video, as the video will still be fresh in your mind, and you will be able to tie the pieces together with a deeper understanding of the many complexities of SEO or Search Engine Optimisation.

This short video discusses the very elementary basics of SEO (search Engine Optimisation) and gives some very good tips to beginners in the SEO business.

What is not discussed is the fact that SEO or Search engine Optimisation starts with defining your target market, and choosing your web site content and the COPY with great care to ensure that your target market group  forms the core base of all visitors to your site.


After all your hard work you dont want a bunch of visitors to your pages who are not interested in what you are discussing, and feel that they were some how tricked into clicking on your link.  So think this through clearly and remember that SEO or Search Engine Optimisation should form an integral part of your complete marketing strategy.


Reading previous posts in this blog http://4uband.blogspot.com will also help in understanding how to integrate SEO into your marketing strategy at the top level and why it is essential to ensure that your SEO manager has a good working relationship with your whole workforce.

what is SEO and who cares

SEO -as described by  Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Webmaster academy - tools and tips  

Bing Webmaster Tools Revamped, Better?

BING web master tools

 SEO - best practices

Mobile SEO – Just How Different Is It?

Reasons for social media integration!

I have been a bit busy with the issues around the IMPLEMENTATION OF THE IWPA (ISIMANGALISO WETLAND PARK AUTHORITY) IMP (INTEGRATED MANAGEMENT PLAN) AND RELATED PPP (PUBLIC PARTICIPATION PROCESS / PROCEDURE)

This issue is very problematic and full of political interference from many levels. There are many thorny issues that need to be discussed honestly in the public domain, which the iSimangaliso Wetland Park Authority are deliberately sidestepping. See this blog for details http://iwpappp.blogspot.com/

So lets get back on track and discuss the value of integrating your social media efforts with your other marketing efforts, keeping in mind how your prospective customers first find out about your products or services. If you operate in a closed community then you have no problems, as everybody will be aware of what your products / services are, what they cost and how to contact you for more info or adsvice.


If on the other hand your business relies on the public or a niche market, then you know that your customers / followers / clients first find your web page by using a search of some type. Most used Search system (called a search engine) is Google. others are improving and a list can be found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_search_engines 


Search engines are tricky things to master, and no search engine will volunteer their algorithm that they use to sort out the returned list of possible matches that you need to evaluate and choose from. So what should you as an owner of a web site, social media profile or blog do to ensure that your information is located by your  intended target market ?.


The answer is quite simply apply SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) techniques when creating your pages and writing your copy. I am sure you are thinking  "I don't know what that is!!!" but you are wrong, because you use many of these techniques already in you basic marketing plan any way.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) starts with defining your target market, and using words that your defined target market are familiar with when writing your copy. If you do this you are over half way there already. The next step is to ensure that your information has some inbound links, that is ensuring that other websites, blogs, social media pages or forums link to your information in some way. In Facebook clicking a like or share button does this automatically for you. So by loose definition, the more likes a post has in face book the more inbound links the post has. placing a link in Facebook to some remote page  (out side of the FaceBook domain) creates an out bound link in face book which is an inbound link at the remote page you referred to.


The search engines use this data and much more information that they collect about your information by using what they commonly call spiders that crawl the web, looking for webpages and collecting all types of data from the page and storing this data for the Search Engine algorithm to use according to the search engine engineers instructions. 

When you type a word or combination of words into the search box and press enter the search engine processes this request according to the instructions in their algorithm and displays a list of probable matches for you to choose from. 

So taking the above info into account and evaluating what needs to be done so people find your information you need to ensure that you have at least 2 but preferably more places where you discuss your business online, and link these together by cross referencing  your various online information portals.

example : you have a website, a facebook profile and a twitter profile.

step 1 is to create a fan page in FB and write about this fan page on your  wall and link to it on your wall.
step 2 write about your fan page on twitter and place a link to your fan page in your tweets


Step 3 write about your twitter profile on your facebook wall and place a link to your twitter profile on your face book wall.


Step 4 write about your face book profile in your website, and link your webiste to your FB profile with a FB badge 

step 5 write about your twitter profile in your website and place a link to your twitter profile with a twitter badge / banner


step 6 write about your fan page in your website and place a link to your fan page using a FB badge.


step 7 write about your web site in your face book pages, and refer back to your twitter posts.


step 8 repeat steps 2 to 7 on a regular basis, and keep adding extra pages to your website. ensure that each new page in your webiste gets a mention in your facebook effrots as well as in your tweets. keep mentioning your tweets and facebook posts in your web site and update regularly (at least once a week - preferably more often)


Step 9 get your friends and others to mention your info in their facebook pages
step 9 get others to retweet your tweets about your FB pages and your web pages.


step 10 regularly go over what you have done and check for errors that may have crept in. adjust and repeat steps 1 to 9. then repeat step 10 as often as is needed.


If you do this then you will have some success. once you have the hang of this you can expand and really improve your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) by using HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) in your website and in all your social media where you are allowed to. this will improve your SERP's (Search Engine Results Position / placements)  drastically


The value of integrating your social media profiles with your web site and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) efforts  will become evident as your online business picks up due to the organic listings generated in many search engines by your hard work and thoughtful use of your key words as used by your target audience.


before purchasing a domain name for your website, or when purchasing a new domain name to expand your online branding consult with at least 3 or 4 different SEO specialists and ask for branding advice related to domain name purchases. If the SEO specialist does not ask you to define your target market before discussing further, be weary as he / she still needs to learn a lot. The primary issue when doing SEO is to know the target market and their vocabulary and terminology used within the target market group.


When integrating your different online marketing segments remember to keep you intended target market in focus and write your copy accordingly. this will generate the most value for your efforts.