Thursday, March 6, 2014

Improving Your Reach by Keeping it Simple & Easy


I was asked by the Glory House of Prayer church to review their site and give input on how I think they can improve. After reviewing their site and how they managed some events, I had a meeting with them to go over what I thought worked and didn't work to their benefit. But when organizing my notes for this meeting, I realized these points would also make a great post to help others improve their businesses and organizations as well.

See, a church, to an extent, is a business, trying to reach an audience who often doesn't already have a huge interest in who you are and what you're offering, just like any other business. No matter what kind of business you're in, you have certain audiences you want to draw in to be interested in what you have to offer. But having a website, social media page, or even having people visit those pages aren't necessarily enough to make them interested in your organization, company, or product.

It takes humans about 7 seconds to make many major decisions about someone or something upon first being introduced. In fact, as Lori McNee mentions in this short article, "Studies have shown that a visitor to your site takes an average of 6 to 8 seconds to assess whether or not to stay and go deeper or move on." This means your site or page has about 6 to 8 seconds to make a good impression on a visitor. And if you make a bad impression within that very short period of time, you will most likely lose your chance of gaining that person's interest in you.


A key way to avoid making a bad impression is keeping your site (or page) simple and easy for anyone who visits it. I find that when it comes to any kind of marketing strategy, it's important to try to think like the ideal audience you're trying to reach; using your own experiences can help with this. Have you ever been on a site that just took way too long to load, or, just could not figure out how to get to the page you want to be on? If you have, I'm sure in most of those cases you ended up losing some interest in whatever the reason was for you going on the site in the first place.

An example I used to explain this was an experience I recently had helping someone prepare for a trip to Nigeria. This person had me help them with applying for a Visa to enter the country. Now I've never been to Nigeria and can't say I know what it's like there. However, the site you have to use to go through the visa application process was rather unclear with instructions and made it take a lot longer than it really should have. Even though I had never been to the country and am not sure if I would like it or not, the difficulties and bad experience I went through just to get the Visa to enter the country made me disinterested in visiting there. Now, for me personally, if an opportunity came up, I probably would still go because I know that just because I had problems with that entry process, doesn't mean it's a bad place to visit. However, many people won't give that second chance.

Someone who is already interested in something may be willing to jump through hoops to get it. But if you're trying to expand beyond the people who are already interested in you and what you're offering, you need to make sure it's a very easy and pleasant experience upon introduction to it. Here are a few suggestions that can help make your site more simple and easy:

1. Optimize images and graphics used on your site. Your goal should be to keep them at a decently high quality but at a small file size so they don't take long to load. Remember, if you only have up to 8 seconds to make an impression, your images need to be able to load quickly. If you don't have Adobe Photoshop to do this, you can use sites like PicMonkey.com and Pixlr.com.

2. Simple Navigation. It shouldn't be difficult for a visitor to find a page. Make sure the links to pages are clear and easy to find. If you have a lot of pages, it may be a good idea to include a site map on your website.

3. Provide the right amount of information. Avoid clutter. As said by John Maeda, “Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.” You want to make sure all necessary information is available and easily accessible without using too many words and without providing more than needed information. The 'About' Page is one of the most visited pages on a business site, it's how visitors learn what you're all about. And it's a great way to humanize your business so people don't feel like you're only after their money. But you have to keep in mind that most people don't want to read an about page that's as long as a novel.


Aside from making sure your site is simple and easy, here are a few other business tips in making your introduction to new potential supporters a more easy and positive one.

Video: Having some kind of promo video is a great way to provide info about what you're doing and/or offering. Instead of visitors having to search for the info, it is neatly presented to them in a single visual format. However, focusing on only visuals in a video isn't always the best idea. Audio is very important and makes it easier for people to pay attention. Keep in mind that there's a good chance that people who are finding you on the web are probably multitasking online. Studies have shown that when it comes to multitasking, you actually have a higher attention rate with mixed audio and visuals rather than just all visuals. Think about when you're watching a movie. Many times people don't pay attention to all of the visuals but still understand what's going on because of the audio. But if you've tried watching a movie with it's sound off, you're usually pretty lost.

So, in my opinion, having you or another person speak in the video rather than having graphics with words pop up is more likely to get people's attention. However, make sure to speak very clearly. If you do decide to take the "typed out" route, make sure everything is short and quick to read. A lengthy amount of words makes it difficult to read quickly. Also, still include some audio, like an instrumental music piece, to keep it interesting.

Web Presence: Having a good web presence makes it much easier for people to find your business/organization and therefore makes you more likely to gain their interest. Have you ever seen a sign for, or maybe was told by someone, of a local business, and when you searched for them online, you hardly found anything on them? This past Christmas I ran into that type of problem. There was a sign near my new apartment pointing out a direction for a Christmas Tree Farm. I got excited because it meant that I didn't have to go very far to get a tree this year. However, there was no address or name on the sign. So in our free time, we decided to drive the direction of the sign, saw one or two more signs, and eventually followed them to the spot where it seemed the signs were leading too. But, they were closed at the time that we got there. So I tried to remember the place so I can search them online, and then decide if I wanted to buy the tree from them or not. But after searching and searching, I hardly found anything except a very old facebook page with hardly anything on it. We ended up going back to that tree farm and getting a tree from them anyway because of how close it was, and it actually ended up being a decent deal. But I can't imagine how little of customers they had with how difficult it was to find them. Where I live is by no means a high traffic area either.

We're living in a age where technology and the internet is a huge part of our lives and a high source of information. Having no web presence makes you almost invisible. Don't get me wrong, word of mouth is still a very important part of marketing. But the web is an important part of promoting word of mouth. And yes, having a website is a large part of building your web presence, but having that alone is generally not enough to give you a very large boost in your presence. You need to have ways of directing people to your site. Social media sites are perfect tools to do that. Almost everyone nowadays can be found on at least one social media site. There are so many that can be used: Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Google+, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and more. And they all offer different types of options and have a certain audience reach. It can be overwhelming with all the choices, so do your research and choose the ones you think would be most useful and most enjoyable for you to use. Here is a good article discussing the 6 types of social media. My advice is NOT to try to sign up for every social media site you can find in an attempt to extend your reach. Because doing that will either lead you to spending ALL of your time online updating all of those pages, or having a bunch of inactive pages that aren't used to their full potential and are kind of useless.

In the end, which sites you choose to use all depend on you and what you're looking to do with them. But I will bring up the importance of one certain social media site. Facebook. Facebook has become one of the most visited sites on the web and has been announced as the number one visited site in the U.S. If you're looking to tackle online marketing, facebook is pretty much a must. With facebook making it free and rather simple to make a business page, it's very much something to be taken advantage of if you're any kind of business owner.

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There are two free tools I find extremely useful on facebook: 1. Facebook events. This is extremely useful to bands who are playing shows or organizations that are having some kind of seminar or event. It allows people to easily invite others to events and is a decent way to get an estimate of how many people will show up. You can put all of the information needed on the event page, including time, location, prices, links, and more. 2. The share button. If you successfully post appealing content on your facebook page, people may choose to press the little share button that allows them to post this content on their own personal page or on someone else's page. This is an important action to encourage as it basically sums up to free advertising for you.

Facebook can also really help increase your SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO basically boils down to how often you appear in search engine results. If someone goes on Google to find something related to your business, you want to be one of the top ten results. Facebook pages often come up as higher results on searches, which is why having one can be a good boost in SEO for a business.

Now, I've seen a few businesses make the mistake of creating a personal facebook account instead of a facebook page. This is not a wise option. First off, you're limited to the amount of friends you can have on a personal account, and may be blocked if you accept too many friend requests. While on a business page there is no limit on how many people can follow it. Also, people are much more likely to want to go through the simpler process of pressing the 'like' button on your page rather than sending you a friend request and waiting for you to approve it. Lastly, with a business page, you have the option to pay to boost your posts and have advertisements show up to targeted markets. Their rates are on the cheaper side and they're great options to serious business owners.

Organize: This is more general advice that applies to both online and offline work for your business. I cannot stress the importance of being organized. If you can't handle the following you currently have, how can you expect to handle expansion? I see so many businesses unable to move forward and expand because they're just so unorganized. I would say my greatest advice in staying organized is write everything down and file it. This will help make everything easier for you, and in turn, make it easier on potentially interested people and anyone involved. This includes having a calendar and having all important events marked down on it. It also means having all important information regarding those events written down and stored in one place. I even had all of the information for my meeting with the church written down beforehand and before writing this post. Doing so made sure that all involved parties got the most out of it. I have a great memory, but, I also constantly have a lot running through my mind, as I'm sure most of you do. If I hadn't written everything down, I guarantee I would've forgotten some things.

There is much information that I know doesn't feel important to write down. Some of this information may include your goals, the mission of you or your business/organization, your reason for starting it, people/groups you look up to, inspirations, etc. I know that these often don't feel important to write down because I'm guilty of not writing them down myself. When I first started my art business, that was all information I just kept in my head. But after I had all of that information written down for my own business, it turned out to be of much benefit. One of those reasons being because it helped me stay on track when having to make business decisions. It also helps as a great reference when you're writing the 'about' section on your website or social media site. It is also a great reference for when you need to communicate what you're about to other parties who are getting involved with you and/or your business. In fact, if you were to hire a graphic designer, including myself, you would most likely be required to fill out what's called a creative brief, which has you write out many of those types of information.

Speaking of communicating, communication is a key part to being organized. And writing information down is part of clear communication. I can't count how many times I've seen an organization discuss an event or something important coming up with others, and there end up being some sort of chaos because people misunderstood certain information. Have you ever played the telephone game? Spreading information through word of mouth often gets twisted and tainted with false information. Having the information communicated through a written form (whether its a print out, email, or even a text) can help prevent that. Also, always try to aim to provide information ahead of time. Meaning, don't provide info to an event the day before and expect a large amount of attendees or volunteers. I'd say at least a month is a good amount of time to promote an event and to give your employers or volunteers notice and information.


So this all sums up some of my advice on ways to improve your reach through simplifying and keeping it easy. I hope this was of good use to you! There are many links included throughout the text to help further explain certain areas that you may have more questions on. If there's some information that you have questions on that do not contain links, leave a comment and I'd love to further explain. Or if you have any information that you think should be added, let me know in a comment as well. Thank you for reading!

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