Sharing the things that we’re learning here at Exothermic with all of you lovely people
For a small business and sometimes even really large businesses, forms are an afterthought or overlooked.
Web forms, however, are one of the most important components of your website. They are the vessel for which people can get information to you, whether it’s about a purchase or a question or anything in between. It’s a simpler method of communication that’s often overlooked.
But it shouldn’t be.
In the US, the primary law you want to familiarize yourself with if you’re doing email marketing is the CAN SPAM Act of 2003.
Each and every separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $40,654.
For the most part, the law is in line with common sense and helps your relationship with your customers in the long-run. But here’s a breakdown of the main components.
Search engine optimization (SEO) has had a mixed rap for many years now. Several people claim to be SEO experts while failing to effectively help sites boost their search rankings. On the flip side, small business owners have been intimidated by the a lack of HTML and technical knowledge in order to utilize the basics of SEO.
There’s also a fear of messing things up and Google (or other search engines, like Bing or Baidu) “punishing” your site.
But truth be told, for most businesses…experts aren’t needed here. If you’re a small business owner with a small team running the majority of your operations, there’s a simple way to manage SEO.
Your website.
I’m tempted to just end this article here…but I guess I’ll explain why.
As a business owner or a marketing team, you want to spend more time on the properties you own versus the ones that you rent.
You own your website. At no point will the Internet say to you, “You can’t do this on your site” or “The permissions on your site have changed” or “We are not going to promote content from you as regularly.”
SEO algorithms may change, which may affect your traffic and your rankings in subtle way. But for the most part – you own this property. An entity telling you what you can and can’t do here is limited.
I am consistently asked by business owners, “Should I make a Facebook page?” or “What keywords should I use for my SEO?” or “If I want to increase sales, what ads should I spend money on?”
My most consistent answer: I don’t know.
With a follow-up question: What are your business goals?
If your marketing tactics aren’t flowing up to your marketing strategy and if your marketing strategy isn’t flowing up to your business goals and strategy, that Facebook page is going to be a complete waste of time.
In 2012, I wrote an article on Gamasutra, one of the leading game industry news sites, about gamification – “Gamification: the Misunderstood Dirty Word”
Surprisingly, it still holds up. Half a decade later, here’s the overview along with a few recent revisions.
Gamification is still pretty misunderstood.
“Gamification” is, in essence, the process of using game mechanics and game design to enhance things that aren’t games.
In the marketing and startup world, this concept is being heavily embraced and making a lot of people a lot of money right now, whether they have experience in game design and deserve that money or not. Similar to the buzzword of social media, the true experts at social media are the people who were experts at communication and social mechanics that took their knowledge and applied it to online networks.