Hi! I’m Michael Pollaci and I’m on a mission to rid the world of website shame.
I spent over 25 years in the construction industry and now work tirelessly to help contractors, tradesmen, builders and other service related industries bring their websites and their marketing into the 21st century.
In the construction and home improvement industries, it used to be that word of mouth was all you needed. Now, with enough technology in the palm of our hands to land Apollo 11 on the moon, word of mouth isn’t enough. Your website and your messaging has to be spot on or you’ll lose all of those precious word of mouth referrals.
If you want to stop losing to your competition, hop on a call with me now: Website Success Call
Creating a marketing plan doesn't have to be complicated or take a long time. You can easily create a simple marketing plan in an afternoon at the office. A simple plan is better than no plan. If you would like some help with a marketing plan and or a website for your home builder or contracting company, contact us at (540) 318-1800.
If you’re like most contractors and builders you’re reflecting on 2021 and questioning why you didn’t hit your goals. We’re all good at setting goals but most of us suck at planning for them. Maybe the question should be, did I create a marketing plan, and did I stick to it?
The problem is marketing plans sound a lot like work. Who the heck wants to create a marketing plan after a long day in the field? Who has the energy? Who has the time?!
It doesn’t have to take much time. It doesn’t have to be complicated. It just has to be a plan.
Do yourself a favor in 2022, decide on your goals and create a plan to reach them. Here’s four simple steps you can follow:
1. Goal? Is it a sales goal or a revenue goal? Whatever it is, write it down.
2. What? You may be able to do everything but choose one you love to do and makes you the most profit.
3. Who? If you are trying to market to everyone you will market to no one. Be specific: Upper middle-class females in their 50’s living in Spotsylvania needing windows is a lot better than anyone with a house and a wallet.
4. Where? Are they on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube?
With this simple exercise you know what your goal is, what you’re selling, who you’re selling it to, and where you can find them. Now go talk to them!
It really doesn’t have to be complicated but remember what Benjamin Franklin said: If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.
Need some help? Contact us for a Builders Brand Schematic. We’ll help you layout and plan to reach your 2022 goals.
Here is a list of the best image vendors we use on the regular. Some are paid and others are free. You will find that the paid image vendors truly have the best images, but if you’re willing to spend some time, you can find some golden nuggets with the others.
So, without further ado…
The Best Image Vendors:
freepik
Definitely our favorite. We use freepik regularly and 90% of the images, vector illustrations, and photoshop files we use on our websites, marketing collateral, presentations and more come from freepik. Plus, they have a sister site, flaticon, where you can download all the icons you will ever need in one lifetime.
You can get some downloads for free on both sites but the paid for plans give you so much more. We pay $17.99/mo. for access to both sites plus there new site where you can get free presentation templates for Powerpoint or Google Slides, slidesgo.
stockunlimited is our second go to. If we can’t find something useful on freepik we can usually fill in the holes with stockunlimited. Plus, you can get vectored illustrations, music to use in your promotional videos, fonts, and more.
We purchased our stockunlimited plan from AppSumo several years ago at the incredible price of $39.99. We are up for renewal in 2022 and we will definitely be renewing.
P.S. Hey! You can stop paying monthly for software by using AppSumo and getting the best deals on tools to help you and your business grow. Use my referral link and get $10 to get started. You can thank me later 🙂
Pixabay
Pixabay, now owned by Canva, is a great resource for not only images but also, music and videos. Our third go to, Pixabay has a lot to offer. You can find some great videos to use in your page heroes as well as incredibly high quality images.
Pixabay is free and you can reuse anything you find on the site. They do encourage you to buy a ‘coffee’ for the artists using PayPal, but other than that it is free.
When we were first looking for royalty free images, Unsplash was the first website we found. To be honest, we are underwhelmed with this website. We have from time to time found some items that are usable for websites or marketing, but most of the images are too ‘artistic’ for use. Especially since we do most of our work for people in the residential and commercial construction industries.
You never know. You may find a nugget or two here…
The Stocks is an interesting place. There are all sorts of image aggregators listed here. In fact, some of the websites I mentioned above were found on The Stocks. Having said that, it can be a bit frustrating trying to find the perfect picture for your website or marketing here. I think the trouble is too many choices. Too many rabbit holes.
Still, this is a good resource to have in your back pocket.
There are so many more options out there. These are just the ones we frequent the most.
One thing I would like to say before we sign out here… PLEASE be sure what you are using are truly royalty free. There is nothing worse than getting that letter from a copyright lawyer.
It was around 9:30 AM and I was on my way to one of the two siding projects I had going. I wanted to stop at the nearby convenience store/gas station to get myself a Yoo-hoo (love that stuff!). As I am pulling up, what do I see parked in front of the store? One of my trucks, and, to make matters worse, my entire crew were sitting on the bed door laughing it up and smoking cigarettes.
Just at that moment my phone rings (yes, my phone looked just like that – it was the 90’s!). It’s the customer (let’s call him Mr. Smith) from the home my crew is supposed to be at right now.
This is not gonna be good, I thought to myself.
“Mike what the hell is going on?! Where the hell is your crew?! They up and left me high and dry. They left my house without telling me what was going on and THEY LEFT THE DAMN RADIO BLARING!“
“Mr. Smith – I uhh, I’m not sure…” I said fumbling for words.
“NOT SURE OF WHAT MIKE?! I trusted you with my money and my home and this is how I get treated? I could’ve went with Triple A. They were twenty bucks a square cheaper but I went with you instead because Larry [A great customer who talked about me all the time] recommended you. WHAT THE F*** IS GOING ON MIKE?!”
“Mr. Smith I am about to talk to me crew now and find out what happened. Can I get right back to you?”
“Five minutes Mike or I’m throwing all your crap in the street!”
That was pleasant.
I was a bit wary of Mr. Smith from the beginning. To this day, whenever I see the movie Monster House (if you haven’t seen it you should!), Horace Nebbercracker reminds me a lot of Mr. Smith.
A landscaper friend of mine had done work for him and told me the guy was a bit nuts (red flag 1). I also had to lower my price for the guy even though I came highly recommended by Larry (red flag 2). Plus, during the proposal meeting, Mr. Smith felt the need to control the conversation and to repeatedly tell me that he has a lot of influence in the neighborhood and the job “…better come out right” or he would be sure no one else around here would sign with me (red flag 3).
I wasn’t sure if he was serious or playing around – he was serious.
Anyway, back to the guys…
“Frankie what the hell are you guys doing here? I just got reamed a new one by Mr. Smith – he’s not a happy camper.”
“Boss we had to use the bathroom and instead of letting these guys take the truck one at a time I figured I would get to a good stopping point and we’d all come together.”
“WHAT?! Why didn’t you ask Mr. Smith? What the hell Frankie – I thought I could trust you to run this crew.”
“Boss, we asked him. He said no. He didn’t want us in his house making a mess. He wanted us to go out behind the fence and pee.”
Alright, this guy was crazy. I knew it at the onset but I needed the cash and the guys needed the work. I rationalized that it was just me being super critical of the guy and it would all workout. Gotta sign ’em while they’re hot, right?
The whole job got worse from there.
Mr. Smith proved himself to be the worst home improvement customer I’d ever had. At the beginning of the job he refused delivery of material because “…I don’t want that crap sitting in my yard for a whole day. What if you don’t show up tomorrow?” He was constantly rude and belittling to me and my crew. He wouldn’t let us use the bathroom. He wouldn’t even let us sit in the shade on his deck to eat lunch. The man was impossible.
I saw it coming and I took the job anyway.
The best part… at the end of the job he forced me to give him a $500 additional discount because he felt the color sample was misleading and the siding was ‘darker’ than the sample led him to believe.
I know what you’re saying – you wouldn’t have given it to him. You would’ve fought him on that. Let me tell you it was the best $500 I ever spent! This guy was a nightmare and I never wanted to speak to him again.
Believe it or not, I had to go back about a month later because he found a small 3 or 4 inch piece of J-channel in his bushes and I had to clean his property. Another story for another time.
I Learned My Lesson
Mr. Smith became my best customer to date because of the valuable lesson he taught me. A lesson I carry forward into every business I’m involved with. He is my cautionary tale and to me his lesson is invaluable.
In all the work I’ve done with contractors since I got into website development over ten years ago, I’ve heard the same story from every one of them. They hate some of their customers and wish they didn’t have to work for them but they needed the money. I always answer with this same anecdote about Mr. Smith and my experiences.
They inevitably ask what I did to solve the problem moving forward.
I tell them the same thing I would tell you now. I never again went against my gut. If I didn’t get a warm and fuzzy from the beginning I wouldn’t do work for people. I also learned I needed to change my sales process. I needed to put systems in place to avoid these types of customers. I needed to build an Ideal Avatar.
What are you doing to avoid these types of customers?
Do you have systems in place for your sales process or do you ‘sign em while they’re hot’?
What Can I Do Right Now?
One of the things that worked well for me immediately, and something you can do right now, is to list out the attributes of the worst customers you ever had. If you recognize any of those attributes in one of your prospects simply walk away.
Will it cost you a few projects and maybe some money at the beginning? Maybe. But you’ll never again have a Mr. Smith in your life who will cost you money in lost production, discounts, personal time and, worse of all, your sanity.
I know this sounds a lot like ‘work’. It is. But, it’s the kind of work that can save you time, money, headaches and just a little bit of sanity. Your company will benefit by not having to deal with ‘bad’ customers. Your bottom line will improve and, more importantly, your mental health will be much better.
A master at marketing and sales that I follow said it best, “There is no such thing as a bad customer. A bad customer for you may be a great customer for someone else. You just have a bad process to acquire them.”
I’ve gotta tell you though, my father said it even better. He told me when I started my first business at 17 years old. He said “Michael, sometimes the best jobs you will ever do are the ones you walk away from.” I’ll tell you what, this golden nugget is something that has stuck with me even 38 years later.
Back then there was not much we could do to pre-qualify people except go with your gut. The great thing is that nowadays our websites and digital marketing campaigns can help with this problem from the onset. We can build marketing systems that qualify customers at every touchpoint and, in the end, produce highly qualified leads of people you want to work with – your gut has to do the rest.
If you’d like some help avoiding the Mr. Smiths of your life creating an Ideal Avatar or customer persona is the at the very core of any well functioning website. A website design firm specializing in contractors can help you with that (a shameless plug for you to use my services).
Until you get serious about this and contact someone who can help, you’ll have to trust your gut.
[UPDATE: September 08, 2020: I was reading through some old blog posts from a website I may or may not retire, ContractorWebsitesPlus.com, and found this gem I wrote about 18 months ago.
This particular blog stood out because I am going through some introspection on how I am presenting Digital Marketing in 60 Seconds or Less and who I am trying to attract (it’s amazing how things just seem to work out) and the subject matter here was a great reminder to take a step back and start from the beginning. I hope it helps you as well.]
How The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and CNBC’s The Profit are a Lesson in Knowing Your Audience
I’m watching one of my favorite shows, The Profit. Marcus is trying to help two guys who had a line of fishing apparel. One of them is also a radio DJ and Marcus found the man offensive. In truth, I do as well but I think Marcus is being a bit harsh as he sometimes is.
Marcus ended up walking away from the deal (I doubt they survived) and they continued the show with him visiting one of his past success stories. By the way, a great representation of working with people you like as I discussed in an earlier blog.
As I was blissfully getting lost and trying to turn the day off in my brain while watching the show I didn’t even notice the commercials. It’s amazing how you can switch things off so easily while decompressing. One commercial however caught my attention.
They played a Nickelodeon commercial for the newest installment of the TMNT series.
Why did this catch my attention?
Although I love me some Michelangelo swinging a nunchaku and a good “COWABUNGA!” every once in a while, the commercial caught me off guard.
I was watching on-demand (by the way, one of the best human inventions since sliced bread) and this meant that a media buyer out there somewhere thought a commercial for Nickelodeon’s new TMNT would resonate with the ADULT audience watching an entrepreneurial centric show.
Now, I’m no Einstein, but I’m pretty sure the audience for both of these shows are on opposite sides of any spectrum. I know there is the occasional crossover, an audience member of The Profit, me included, that may watch an episode or two of TMNT, but that is purely for nostalgic reasons and, I would venture to say, rare.
After all, I don’t plan my viewing schedule around TMNT anymore.
To my point.
If you don’t know your audience and you don’t know where to find them, you’re wasting your time and your money.
Knowing your audience is the basic component of any marketing plan, campaign or website. If you don’t know who your audience is, how can you know what problems they are trying to solve and how to create website content that resonates with them?
I can tell you from experience, this is a huge problem in the home improvement market. There is money being wasted hand over fist on a daily basis. The shame of it is, it doesn’t have to be this way.
Do you know your audience?
Do you know who your ideal customer is?
If your answer to both of these questions is something like “I’ll sell to anyone with a heartbeat, a home and a checkbook” you are like 75% of the home improvement contractors out there. And, like them, you’re wasting money too.
Figuring out who your audience or your Ideal Avatar is, isn’t hard. All it takes is some understanding of your market, a little bit of insight into your past clients and a little bit of introspection.
Stop running with the herd. Stop wasting your hard earned cash. Be in the 25% of home improvement contractors who get a pretty good return from their marketing.
Well, I have to get back to watching my show. In the meantime, do some thinking about your ideal avatar. Maybe you can start swinging a focused and targeted nunchaku at your market instead of a shotgun filled with pellets and get yourself some COWABUNGA’s.
Get More Conversions From Your Website’s Homepage.
“Your homepage is for branded searches and business cards.”
I said that the other day in our blog about why you shouldn’t try to rank on Google for your website’s homepage. I further said “It’s job is to direct them to the right place where they will find the answer to their problem or question.” Here are three simple steps to help your homepage do its job.
Avoid Clutter
One of the biggest conversion killers on a homepage is clutter. There’s just too much information on the page because most people are trying to rank their homepage in Google search results. Finding the solution to your problem is like trying to find Waldo and his walking stick. People just don’t want to burn through that many calories to find out if you can help them.
Now that we know this tactic is not a good one we can get rid of the clutter. Here’s how:
Leave the navigation out of the header.
I know this is counterintuitive to everything you think you know about website design but it’s true. Navigation in the header causes an interruption to the Z pattern scanning of a website our brains naturally do to help us survive and thrive. It draws visitors away from your call to action and causes squirrel moments where the potential customer may never see your message before abandoning your website.
Highlight important messages.
Embolden or italicize words in the text or use headers to help people scan through your website’s homepage and see the important messages you want to send.
Use images.
Use images that portray success with your product or service or happy people doing happy things. The old adage “A picture is worth a thousand words” is true. Images help people picture themselves using your product or service. Use this to your advantage and use bright images to highlight your messaging.
Use short, easy to read sentences.
Use freshman in high school level vocabulary with short, easy to read sentences. Your content will have a better chance of being read. Large blocks of complicated text are difficult to write, difficult to read and, more importantly, difficult for your readers brain to scan. Make reading your website an easy task and stop asking your readers to burn unnecessary calories.
Call to action
Your call to action buttons are the most important thing on your website. DON’T HIDE THEM! The only outcome you’re looking for is for people to contact you and hire you or buy your product.
Make bold statements.
Don’t use wishy washy (I’d love to know where that came from…LOL!) statements like “Learn More” or “Find out More”. That’s too much work. Give people an action to take. Use bold statements like “Schedule a Call” or “Start Today”.
Make your call to action standout.
Like the language you use, the button itself should stand out. I’m not saying to use neon green, flashing buttons but be sure your buttons stand out from the rest of the content. Use contrasting colors and bold text. You should also use an arrow or caret to ‘show the way’ forward.
Give them a plan.
Most people are like the Russians, they don’t take a dump without a plan. Provide people with a plan and show them how to work with you.
Give them 3 steps.
People like plans but they like really easy plans better. Don’t complicate this. Give them the 30,000 foot overview of how to work with you. Make the language simple and unintimidating. Below is an example from our website’s homepage:
Show them how ‘easy’ is is to work with you.
Remove obstacles and objections by showing potential customers how easy your process is. Use light language and avoid words like ‘work’. Give people an easy path to follow and they’ll follow it.
Using these three steps you’ll make your website easier to read, you’ll give people a clearly defined and easy plan and you’ll show them how to get started.
Easy Peasy!
These are just 3 simple steps to get more conversions from your website’s homepage. There is more to do but. if you start with these three, you’ll be well on your way to homepage success.
How to Optimize Your Website for Z Pattern Scanning
We’re busy. It’s just a fact of modern life. We have things to do and people to see and we don’t have time to waste on a website that isn’t going to solve our problem. That’s alright… we have a built in mechanism that protects our time. It’s called scanning.
No, not the kind of scan Kirk would order from Spock to see if there were any dangerous life forms in the Omicron Delta region so they can take a much needed shore leave but, close.
Why do people scan our websites?
Our brains are hard-wired to thrive and survive. Our brains do anything they can to help us and scanning is part of the survival mechanism.
Time is incredibly valuable to us and we protect it like we would protect water in a desert. This is why the brain automatically kicks into scan mode when we are presented with a new website. We scan it first to get the okay from our brain to spend our valuable time reading the rest.
How do people scan websites?
Different parts of your website are scanned in different ways. The hero section or top of your website is scanned in a ‘z’ pattern. The main content of your website may be scanned in an ‘f’ pattern depending on how you have the content setup.
Today we’ll explore the hero section since this is the first thing people see and is the determining factor in whether or not they continue through the rest of your website.
How do I optimize for Z pattern scanning?
When someone visits your website their eyes scan the page from top left to top right, then down diagonally to the bottom left corner, then from bottom left to bottom right. You can see this in the graphic below.
This is why the information ‘above the fold‘ is so critical. We want to be sure website users get a chance to scan all the important information. This will allow them to make a better informed decision as to whether or not the information they will receive on the rest of the website is worth spending their time reading.
This decision is made in a split second so optimizing each part of the Z pattern is critical to your website’s success.
Let’s take a look at our main page as an example and take you through the importance of each part of the Z.
Top left:
The first thing people see. We want to be sure we are telling them who we are and, if possible, use a tagline to let them know what we do. If you don’t have a tagline that’s okay. We’ll let them know what we do later on as well.
Scan to the right:
DO NOT CLUTTER!This area should be clean and simple, don’t clutter it with navigation. Navigation is confusing and a hurdle to scanning. It interrupts our brains natural desire to help us survive by scanning. Besides, you’ve spent a lot of time creating a beautiful web page, why would you want to send people somewhere else before they’ve had a chance to read it?
Top right:
Call to action. Give people a chance to contact you right away. If they’ve done a branded search or they typed your URL directly into the web browser, this is probably what they want to do anyway. We’ve shown them their in the right place with our top left logo now we need to tell them how they can get started doing business with us.
Down and to the left:
This is the most important part of this pattern. This is where you want to tell people what you do, how you do it, who you do it for and how to get started. The catch. You have to do it quickly and in the simplest easy to remember way you can.
You can see from the example in our website hero’s center, we take the user through each step in short, easy to read and easy to remember language. If possible, show someone enjoying your product or service or what success looks like after using it. It’s hard for us to do that so we show a happy guy who represents our target audience pointing to our content. By pointing, he’s telling the user to take action and they can be happy just like him.
Back to the right:
Now that we are at the bottom of the screen we will go back to the right. This is a great place to show the benefits or the value you provide. You want the last thing users see before making the decision to continue to be positive and focused on the value they will receive if they continue and use your product or service.
What can I do now?
You should rework the hero section of your website to optimize it for Z pattern scanning. It’s not that difficult when you follow the formula. Write ad copy focused on the customer, keep it clean and eliminate the navigation, leave them with the value they will receive.
People come to me all the time, excitement radiating from their faces like sunbeams, to tell me they have their homepage ranked number one in Google.
Now imagine the shock when I tell them they’re doing it wrong.
Their next sentence is always accented by their bewilderment and exasperation… “What do you mean?”
Two reasons you shouldn’t rank for your homepage
There are several reasons not to rank for your homepage including wasted time, money and effort but I’ll give you two that we see all the time that you can take immediate action on.
1. Give the people what they want!
There is nothing worse than doing a search on Google and finding exactly what you’re looking for only to find out when you get to the website you have to do more digging to find it.
Here’s an example:
If I’m planning a July 4th barbeque with dozens of my friends and neighbors I want my deck to look great. The problem is my deck was built about the same time my house was built and it looks it. I can’t even go out there without shoes for fear of getting a splinter from the chewed up flooring.
I get on Google and I search for ‘deck builders’.
One would assume that I’m looking for a deck builder and one would be correct, I am. I want to land on a page that focuses on deck building. I want to see pretty pictures of beautiful decks with someone barbecuing delicious looking burgers and chicken wings while a group of people are mulling around in their little clicks laughing and generally enjoying the heck out of their day.
I want to find a company that is going to solve my problem of needing a deck before July 4th so I can have my barbeque without the side of splinters.
Why the heck am I landing on a page that talks about roofing and siding, windows and doors, basement remodels, gutter installation, concrete pads and, in the bottom right corner of the page, decks? The word is placed over a small picture of a deck (the same picture I saw on 4 other websites), and it’s in all caps and bold type – I guess they want me to know they are deck experts, right?
This is the problem with ranking your homepage for search terms. Unless you do one thing well and only one thing it is confusing for the person searching and finding your website. They will get confused and abandon your website or they will get lazy and not want to do the work finding your tiny image of a deck in the bottom right corner and they will abandon your website.
Either way, GREAT job on ranking your homepage for the ‘deck builder’ search term – you’ve just lost a customer.
It is…kinda. But not in the human being on a spit kind of bad. It’s the ‘I’m losing customers but my homepage is number one‘ kind of bad.
Keyword cannibalization is when you optimize several different pages, blog posts or articles for the same search term. You end up cannibalizing your chances to rank for either page and compete with yourself needlessly.
Sometimes you can’t help this. You write posts about topics you’re an expert in and naturally your subject matter is similar so you may have some overlap in the search terms you use to optimize each. It happens all the time and it happens to us too.
However, purposefully using the same search term on your homepage as you do on your inside service page and then actively trying to optimize them for Google rankings is a mistake.
Google can’t tell which page it should return to the user searching for ‘deck builder’ so Google will probably rank both pages lower.
To see if you are cannibalizing search terms I have a quick trick for you. Open a Google browser and type in site:(your website address) and a search term. You’ll see all the pages on your website ranking for that search term.
EX: site:staffordtechnologies.net websites
Homepages are for branded searches and business cards
Your homepage will be found. It will be found by the people you send there or by the people who search your company name. It’s job is to direct them to the right place where they will find the answer to their problem or question.
Make your homepage simple. make it a converting engine for the rest of your website. No, it probably won’t rank well and that’s a good thing. If you stop worrying about where it ranks you’ll start worrying about how it can help your visitors become paying customers.
Website shame is a real thing. You’ve experienced it yourself or you may be experiencing it now. You’re not alone.Most small businesses go through it at some point, including our own.
What’s website shame? Have you been handed a card with a scratched out website? Have you ever been handed a card by a business owner who tells you to give them a call “…but don’t look at my website. The information is wrong.” or, “…don’t look at my website, the pictures haven’t been updated in ten years!”
That’s website shame.
When we decide we want people to avoid our website.
Why is website shame a problem?
Most small business owners build their businesses on word of mouth. In simpler times, we built our businesses on our good reputation. That’s all that was needed. A good deck guy or lawn care provider could flourish by *word of mouth alone and their marketing budget consisted of a stack of business cards. That’s no longer the case.
*We explored this topic in an earlier blog about referrals
Today’s world is much more complicated. People are much more suspicious and have enough computing power in their hands to land Apollo 11 on the moon. They can easily investigate you and your company within minutes. This is why having a poorly built, poorly written and aesthetically outdated website will have a negative effect on your business.
In addition, you have no idea how many word of mouth customers you’re losing because of this. There’s no way to measure this. There’s also no way to measure the effects of it for the long term.
Look at it this way. If each customer you gain and do a great job for will account for 5 or 6 future customers because of their recommendations, how many of those additional customers have you lost? How can we measure that? The answer is we can’t.
What we can do is ensure we have a great website in place to convert as many potential word of mouth customers as possible and stop losing to our competition.
How can I get rid of my website shame?
Well that’s a loaded question, isn’t it?
There are a three ways to get rid of your website shame. You can ignore it. You can do it yourself. You can hire someone to take care of it for you.
Ignore it
For some people this is a legitimate answer. Some say they’re too busy and there is no value in spending the time to take care of it. Others are at the end of their career and don’t need to worry about it.
You’re never too busy.What if you were busier? What if your calendar was so booked that people were fighting to get on it? What if your calendar was so booked that people were fighting to get on it and willing to pay anything you asked for the privilege?
Unless you’re in the ‘ready to retire’ group ignoring it is a poor decision.
Do it yourself
Why are you reading this? How has DIY worked out for you so far? Isn’t DIY what got most of you here in the first place?
Look, this isn’t rocket science but there is an art to it. If you have the time to grow your business and learn the website development and coding, SEO, digital marketing, content writing and the website design business, I want one of those little clear pills you got from Bradley Cooper too.
The truth is, you’re too busy to do this and do it well. Your company’s future depends on this. Why wouldn’t you want it to be the best it can be?
Hire a Website Design Agency
If you want this done professionally, expeditiously and correctly you’re going to have to hire someone to do it. The website design agency you choose should have the tools and the skills to create an aesthetically pleasing website but also have the ability to write content that will convert word of mouth referrals to paying customers.
Maybe you’re reading this because you’ve had a company that can create beautiful websites working for you. The designs they showed you while courting your business were beautiful. In fact, your website looks great but no one is buying from you. The problem is, no one has ever bought anything because a website looked good. Ever.
It’s the content that sells not the look. If your chosen website design agency are just designers then you’re not getting the full package. Look for companies that can handle all three components: website design, website content, and website development.
Alright, alright. You knew the shameless plug was coming…!
I happen to know of a company that can handle all three aspects of creating a website.
Hold on… I’m trying to find their card on my desk. Under my post-it tray…no. Under my desk blotter…no. AHA! top draw…no.
Kidding aside, if you want a website that tells people what problem you solve, who you solve it for and how you solve it, give us a call at (540) 699-3286.
*UPDATE 8/14/2020: I ran my first Instagram post with no hashtags and my ‘Reach’ was down to 37 and ‘Impressions’ down to 40. That’s as low as it can go so I am going to add Instagram hashtags to our next post – I think I got my baseline…LOL!
“Pazienza, pazienza!” That’s what my grandmother, Giovanna (or Jean for our english friends) would exclaim while she was sitting at the kitchen table with a box grater and a wheel of cheese and I was trying to grab chunks that didn’t get ‘grated’.
Those chunks of ungrated cheese were pure taste bud heaven and the most coveted prize in the house. Along with the sizzle and the thick, sweet smell of the onions sweating in a huge pot just waiting to marry the sausage, pork, braciole and tomatoes to make the most incredible Sunday gravy (yes it’s gravy if made with meat!), there was nothing more anticipated than seeing grandma sit at the kitchen table grating the cheese.
Same with hashtags… pazienza!
The hunt for the perfect set of Instagram hashtags has to be conducted with patience. Like a great Italian chef, marrying all the ingredients in perfect harmony to produce the perfect Sunday gravy, you have to patiently test differing hashtags from different types of hashtags. It takes time to get it just right but you’ll have a lot of great meals along the way.
In other words, if your patiently formulating a strategy for your hashtags you will test a lot of different combinations. Some may be great performers and some may be okay but they are all good. They’re all better than doing nothing at all.
How Patience Can Help With Instagram Hashtags
It’s real easy to get frustrated while testing hashtags. The numbers, especially for people like us who don’t have 5000 followers, are small. To make matters worse, when we choose hashtags that aren’t quite hitting the mark, they’re even smaller. VERY FRUSTRATING!
But have hope mio amico… having patience will help to make things better over the long haul.
When you’re testing hashtags you should get at the least, 4 or 5 posts worth of data spread over different days and times. This will give you a good baseline to measure against. In fact, the more the better.
If you can go a few weeks running the same hashtags you would gather more data and the more data you have the better the conclusions you can make. The better conclusions you make, the better the hashtags you use and the more you can grow your reach on Instagram.
I get it – patience only lasts so long. I’m the most impatient s.o.b. you’ll find, and it’s really hard for me to follow my own advice, but I’m going to try it now.
Instagram Posts With No Hashtags
In fact, I’m going one step further. You know, because I’m so averse to pushing things to the extreme. I’m going to post my next handful of Digital Marketing in 60 Seconds or Less videos with no hashtags at all.
Once I see how my posts perform and I log the data, I will start adding hashtags again to see if there is any change. I have no idea at this point what to expect but I’m gonna try anyway.
I’m hoping that with a baseline using no hashtags I can then use empirical data to measure the effectiveness of the hashtags and combinations of hashtags I use.
I have no idea if this has been done, although I’m sure it has, or if it’ll be effective. It’s basically a mad scientific experiment.
We’ll see.
I’ll let you know how it works out in a few weeks. Until then… a dopo!
Once you’ve caught up and you have a Professional account you can follow these easy steps or watch the accompanying Digital Marketing in 60 Seconds or Less episode.
How to Find When Followers Are Most Active
Step 01
Go to your Instagram profile and tap on “Insights”
Step 02
Tap on the “Audience” tab to the right of your screen.
Step 03
Scroll to the bottom of the page to find the “Followers” section.
The display will default for the current day of the week and will show data for the “Hours” your followers are most active on that day of the week historically.
*If you tap the graph the numbers will appear.
Step 04
Tap on “Days” to see what days of the week your followers are most active.
*If you tap on the graph the numbers will appear.
How to Post on Instagram When Followers Are Most Active
Now that you know where to find the information and what it means, you have to decide when to post your best content on Instagram.
If your followers are most active on Wednesdays around 12PM then this is when you would post your best content. You will get the most interaction and engagement by simply putting your content in front of the most eyes you can.
Please understand, this doesn’t mean that the hashtags you use will bring the best engagement at this day and time, it doesn’t. Your hashtags are for finding new followers and growing your reach.
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