Many of our clients come to us with questions about strengthening their business’ image (or their brand). As always we’re very happy to help out and offer some advice based on our experience and success in putting these methods to work both for Parachute and for our clients. If you’ve ever wondered if your brand is working at it’s full potential, read on to find out how well you’re really doing.

1. Brand All Your Materials

We all send emails, swap business cards, send invoices or submit proposals that are golden opportunities to strengthen our branding’s impact with our audience. Whether these opportunities are shared with new clients or existing clients, the key is to take advantage and make sure your materials are branded successfully.

All of your electronic and printed materials should contain your contact details, and social media links to ensure maximum impact. Evaluate what leaves your office. Is it properly branded? If not you may be missing out on valuable opportunities for new, referral and repeated business.

2. Optimize Your Website

One of the greatest tools you have on your site is your website. By ensuring that your website is optimized for the web you can rest assured that you are getting maximum exposure in relevant web searches. For more information on optimizing your website, check out our guide: How To Be Best Friends With Google.

3. Social Media

I feel like a broken record stating the obvious here, but believe it or not, there are still many businesses out there that have yet to hop on the bandwagon and take advantage of social media. Just signing up for the obvious social networks isn’t enough. To make effective use of these amazing tools you need a plan. For example, when launching a new product, be sure to write up a blog post building on the excitement and follow up with tweet on Twitter, which links back to your blog and also hits related trending topics. This will surely attract attention from an audience who shares interest in your business or product.

4. Start A Blog

If you haven’t done it already, start a blog! I have heard many clients over recent years grumble and say “I don’t have time to write a blog” or “I can’t write,” which are both poor excuses. With a little practice and taking the time to read other blogs you will easily get the hang of it. Eventually when you have built up a following, invite other people to write for you. Blogging will do so much for your website ranking; attract more viewers and ultimately more queries for business.

5. Join Industry Websites or Networks

Depending on what industry your business falls into, you may have significant opportunities which can develop by joining networking websites. These websites often allow you to showcase your product or services and sometimes include your rates or prices and company details. All of the above will help create more exposure for you and your brand.

6. Write Guest Articles

Another surefire way to get noticed and strengthen your brand is to write guest articles for other blogs. The higher ranking these blogs are the better. Using these opportunities will give you a platform to share your experience and professional views, which will help generate more interest in your business and brand. If you’re not comfortable writing a full article, be sure to participate in conversations and leave a link back to your website attached to any comments you may offer up in the thread.

7. Create A Contest Or Competition

This idea operates on value, which requires more effort form you, but can yield great returns for your brand and business in the end. Social media is a great way to gain more attention to your brand, for example “If you are one of the first 100 people to tweet this promotion you could win…” Be creative and come up with your own unique idea and you will get more people interested and talking about your brand. If you’ve already set up a blog, we can easily setup a contest system integrated with your blog to make things manageable for you.

8. Free Content

This method can be very simple, but be sure to follow the cardinal rule and make sure that whatever you are offering is of value to your audience. It may be an eBook, a program, a sample of your product, or even professional advice (kind of like this article!). Think about something that requires some level of effort and something that your potential customer will find value in. Remember the more you put into this idea the more you will get out of it and it’s great for making your brand more viral.

I have read, “95% of web users do not read 80% of your content” (Seven Commandments of User Experience, by Minds Eye Web Design) and couldn’t agree more. With these odds stacked against you, you’ve got to be on the ball when delivering your online content and committed to creating the best user experience possible for your reader.

Be Sure To Use Sub Headings

Sub headings are a lifesaver for people in a rush. Consider the fact that most people will scan your website or blog looking for specific information. By using sub headings you will give your reader the opportunity to quickly find the information they’re seeking. Ensure that your sub headings are concise and descriptive of the content to follow without being too wordy.

Remove Superfluous Content

Overly descriptive language and run on sentences can create confusion for your reader and oftentimes deter them from digging further into your website. When writing your content, ensure that you are specific, direct and only offering what is essential to making your point.

Make The Most Important Information Stand Out

Remembering that readers will scan the pages of your website for specific information rather than reading the entire page word for word brings us to our next tip. When offering information that should be emphasized, be sure to do just that. Making use of bold, italics, pull quotes or graphical elements is a surefire way to grab the reader’s attention and drive a point home.

Offer Links Within Your Content For Advanced Users

If your content starts off too technical or advanced for the average reader, you risk scaring them off right from the start. A good rule of thumb is to start off simple, but offer links for more advanced readers to jump ahead to the meat and potatoes. This is also an excellent way to urge people to dig deeper into your site.

Keep Your Content Up To Date

No one wants to read a website with stale content. We’re all in too much of a rush to waste our precious time reading something we already know or that has become out-dated. Read through your content periodically to ensure that you are offering current and relevant information to your readers.

Make Sure Your Content Is Readable

Typography

Not everyone has been trained in proper typography, but most of us have remember the basics from elementary school. On top of what you already may know, here are a few extra pointers to remember:

• Break up large portions of body text so that you don’t overwhelm your reader. Seeing a few short paragraphs on a page is much more inviting than a full page of text.
• Despite what you may have heard, there should be only ONE space following a period before beginning a new sentence.
• Most people read in the classic “Z Pattern”. That means that we start in the top left corner of a page and scan left to right moving down the page. The optimal line-length for text is approximately 86 characters. Any more than that and you’re making it more difficult for your reader to scan across the page and jump down to the next line.
• Line-height (also called leading) is crucial. You don’t want to crowd your type and make it difficult to distinguish the words.

Fonts

We all love being a little different from the crowd, especially when we’re trying to draw attention. Making use of ornate or overly active fonts can do just that, but keep in mind that these fonts should be used sparingly. A headline or pull quote can sometimes benefit from a unique font, but using these funky fonts for body copy is a big mistake. If your reader has to struggle or make an extra effort to decipher your content, you will most often lose their interest. Be sure to set your body copy in a clean and easy-to-read font.

Summarize And Conclude

This should still be ringing in your ears from high school. There is a reason this method of writing was drilled into us as students – it works! When presenting ideas and information to your readers it’s always best to offer your argument and then summarize your points in conclusion. Be sure to keep your summary short and concise to maximize its lasting effect.

Double Check… And Triple Check

We’re all guilty of it; rushing something out the door without giving it a second read through or having someone else take a quick peak. There’s nothing more distracting to your reader than encountering typos in your content. Be sure to read, and reread your content to avoid these situations. It often helps to read your content out loud and get a sense of the conversation you’re ultimately having with your reader. Don’t forget the beauty of online content is that it’s never final. You’ve always got a chance to make corrections!

One of the most common questions that we receive when working with business owners who are developing their own website content is “how can I get my website on the first page in Google?“. Although there are many factors at play in this equation, following some simple guidelines when preparing your website content will definitely boost your website’s performance in relevant searches and ensure that your website gets noticed.

Create Current and Interesting Content

Your content is the meat and potatoes of your website and is the best way to attract attention to your website and keep users coming back for seconds, thirds… and hopefully fourths. Make sure to continue adding great content to your site over time while archiving the old to expand your knowledge base and provide the a variety of relevant content to your user.

Search Engine Optimization

The term “SEO” or “Search Engine Optimization” has become commonplace in our vocabulary. By ensuring that your website is fully optimized for search engines will help your site appear in relevant web searches. By using descriptive page titles, content headings and back-links to your site you’ll ensure that your website climbs the search page rankings to its full potential. For more information, see our article on How To Be Best Friends With Google for more in-depth tips on this process.

Create A Blog and Play A Role In The Online Community

By creating a blog and keeping it up-to-date with current and relevant content you’re adding to the wealth of knowledge online – Google loves that! People want information on a more personal level than ever before. It’s not enough that 9 out of 10 dentists recommend a particular brand of toothpaste. People want to know what other people think about products and services and what type of experiences they’ve had with them. Blogs also offer us a quick and easy way to share and access information. By playing a role in the online community, you can create attention and awareness around your website.

Social Media & Networking

In the last year or two, social networking has become the be-all-to-end-all in the online community. By creating a Facebook page, or a LinkedIn profile you can take part in social networks and share your wealth of information and contacts with others allowing you to expand your own list of contacts.

An even better way to market your website and play a role in social media is by creating a Twitter profile. Twitter has quickly become one of the greatest marketing tools for business and sharing information. By using Twitter you can ‘follow’ people that share information of interest to you, which in turn will increase awareness of your website as your network grows. Who knows, you might learn a thing or two along the way.

Track When Your Website Is Visited and How It’s Used

A great way to create and/or improve the user-experience on your website is to monitor who is visiting your website and how they’re using it. A great way to do this is to use tools such as Google Analytics. The best part is it’s free! By learning about where people are in the world are when they visit your website and how they’re using your it, you can better target their needs and interests. Ultimately, by doing so you’re bound to increase the chance of selling your product or service.

Advertising

There are countless ways to advertise your website these days. HTML newsletter campaigns, direct mail, pay-per-click campaigns, and the list goes on. A very simple and effective method – with an extremely low environmental impact – is using the pay-per-click method. Google Adwords is a very smart and intuitive tool that allows you target keywords and searches to ensure that your website gets noticed, and fast! By targeting your keywords or search terms and setting a monthly budget the system will even run on it’s own. When used in tandem with Google Analytics you can adjust your ad campaign over time to better target your audience.

Newsletters and RSS feeds

Creating a rich HTML newsletter campaign is a great way to reach your audience and draw attention to your website. These people will have already signed up for your newsletter, so you know they are already interested in your product or service. The trick is to share current and interesting information without over-doing it. You don’t want your recipients to feel smothered or bombarded by your campaigns.

There are many great web-based tools available, such as Campaign Monitor or Mail Chimp, that allow you to create and manage your own campaigns and track the reader response you receive. To increase the effectiveness of an html email campaign, talk to us about fully branded solutions.

Another effective method is by setting up an RSS feed and offering your users the option to subscribe to your Twitter or blog’s RSS feed. By doing so your audience can get the information they want delivered right to their inbox. By giving the recipient a reason to visit your website, you plant the seed of interest and will ultimately draw more attention to what’s happening on your website.

Drawing visitors to your website is, or should be the main focus when planning a web project. We believe that there are no real secrets involved in this process – seriously, this information is everywhere – so we strive to maintain transparency with our clients throughout the project. Plus, the better your website functions, the better we look!

At Parachute Design we don’t think our techniques are top secret and aim to discuss these with our clients throughout every stage of an online project. If you’re providing your own content for your new website, you play just as important a role as the web designer and developer.

Content, Content… Content!

Creating good, focused content is arguably the most important part of this process. We usually advise content providers focus on the main keywords (often services) of the business. This ensures that your website appears in relevant searches attracting the most attention from people that are genuinely interested in your product or services.

Another recommendation we have is that you keep your content fresh and interesting to your target audience. If you can’t capture their attention on the home page and entice them to dig deeper, you’ve already lost the game.

Page Titles & Content Headings

A very effective strategy to maximize relevant search hits is to match your page title with a search term that tells Google that your page contains the content the user is searching for. To take this strategy even further, we recommend that the first content heading match the page title as closely as possible which will further reinforce the relevancy of this pages content in the user’s search.

Site Maintenance & Updates

By monitoring your Google Analytics (by the way, we install this amazing free tracking code on every site we design and build) over time you will begin to notice trends and popular keywords or phrases. As these trends become evident, it’s best to update your website with similar or related content.

Google Adwords and HTML or rich email campaigns can also be integrated with your Google Analytics to further analyze and strengthen your marketing.

You can tackle this task yourself with a little bit of know-how, or we can incorporate a monthly maintenance plan into our agreement.

Inbound Links

Consider how the majority of business is done – word of mouth recommendations. By treating your inbound links or links from other websites as a way of someone vouching for your business you can further strengthen your online relevancy. The more inbound links your website has, the more of an authority on the users’ search term you are considered.

Rich Media

We try to avoid holding important content in Flash files, graphics and videos because this information is virtually invisible to Google. We include alternative text labels on these items to ensure that there is some degree of visibility to Google. This also enhances the user experience for the seeing impaired and mobile device users.

By combining these basic techniques in the right combination, we can work together to ensure your website becomes best friends with Google.