What is a Content Management System or CMS?

Posted by: Michael Reynolds, President/CEO in General on Monday, January 24, 2011

Many years ago, managing a website used to be a highly-specialized task reserved only for those who were skilled in HTML (the language of the web) or with complicated software and design techniques. Organizations had to rely on an IT person to make changes or perhaps outsource changes to a website company who might take days or even weeks to respond.

This business model was reasonable enough in the early days of the Internet when websites were mostly online brochures. However, today's websites function as information hubs, with interactive components like blogs, event registrations, time-critical press releases, sponsorships, surveys, email campaigns, forms, e-commerce, and more. Waiting for an IT person or a website company to make changes to your website is not an acceptable process anymore.

This is why today's websites are managed with a Content Management System, also called a "CMS" for short.

A CMS is a web-based platform that allows non-technical people to manage day-to-day content updates on the organization's website. This can include tasks like:

• Updating the text on web pages
• Adding or changing photos and videos
• Managing products and pricing
• Posting press releases
• Changing sponsorship banners
• Manage staff directories
• Sending email campaigns
• Writing blogs
• Distributing surveys
• Posting and managing events and registrations

A CMS puts the marketing team, communications team, admin assistant, or CEO in control of the website. Tasks that would have taken days or weeks under the old-fashioned brochure site model can now be accomplished in a few minutes using a CMS. A good CMS will allow anyone with basic computer skills to be a website manager.

Many Content Management Systems exist on the market today. At SpinWeb, we build websites exclusively on the Accrisoft Freedom CMS. If you are not currently using a CMS or you are not happy with the one you have, look around and make sure to choose the right CMS for you. Talk to your website design and development firm to see what they recommend and how you can take advantage of it.

A good Content Management System will turn your website into a powerful marketing tool. Invest properly and your website will grow your business.

Getting more traffic to your website: 5 simple ways to do it

Posted by: Michael Reynolds, President/CEO in General on Sunday, January 16, 2011

Would you like more traffic to your website? I think most people would answer "yes". Obviously there is a whole separate discussion to be had about targeting the right people, but in most case more visibility is not a bad thing. Whether you represent a business or a non-profit, more website traffic means more awareness of your organization and more exposure.

So how do you get more traffic to your website? It's not easy, but it's also not as difficult as you might think. Here are some simple ways to do it.

1. Blog consistently. Blogging has a number of SEO benefits and the more content you create via your blog, the more content the search engines will gobble up. Blogging on a weekly basis (or even more often) using strategic keywords can increase the amount of traffic you receive over time.

2. Place your website URL on everything you publish. This may seem obvious but I see lots of organizations that seem to forget this. Brochures, billboards, email signatures, pens, business cards, and anything else that you publish should list your website address prominently.

3. Make it easy to share your content. Many websites publish great content on their blogs, but lack the tools to make it easy to share on social networks. Make sure your content has social widgets and social commenting available to make it easier for others to share it.

4. Publish an email newsletter. Your email newsletter should contain useful information that benefits your constituents. Within that newsletter, you can include subtle links to additional content on your website.

5. Make your website an interactive tool. Many organizations are still stuck in the mindset of doing business using paper forms and documents. Convert as much paperwork as possible to online forms and your constituents will get used to seeing your website as a resource. If your customers can pay bills and manage their information via your website, you will see more traffic and have more opportunities to communicate with them.

Getting more traffic to your website is typically a good thing. It gives you a bigger audience to talk to and increases awareness of your organization. The next step is, of course, converting those visitors into prospects.

What are some ways you increase traffic to your website? I would love to hear your comments below.

7 Basecamp Tips for Small Business

Posted by: Joshua Brammer, VP / Product Delivery in General on Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Basecamp is an online tool for simple project management. We've used Basecamp for over 3 years to manage projects at SpinWeb. Here are some tips we've picked up along the way:

1. Basecamp is for the Team. For over 2 years, we followed an "Everything in Basecamp" mantra. All emails to clients came from Basecamp. Clients could see todos & milestones. We found is that Basecamp is great for tracking tasks, delegating, and communicating with your team. We found out that clients didn't really care to see the details. They were asking for the big picture; not the behind the scenes tour.
2. Email is for clients. Out of 80+ clients who had a project managed in Basecamp, only 3 of them played by the rules we set up. The rest would forget passwords, email us directly, or just get frustrated. Basecamp emails creeped them out. Training them on how to understand Basecamp didn't help. They just wanted a website, not learning how to communicate by our rules. 
3. Be Inbox Zero. Now we keep our communication with clients in simple emails. Using Inbox Zero for email management, it's easy to find the last reply, CC anyone who needs to know and get things communicated. I don't even have client folders (GASP!). Learn client's names; then use the search tools in your email to find the last email to / from them. It's super easy.
4. Maximize Project Templates. This is a newer feature and is the best time-saver I've found. We have a system that all of projects follow, but now I can create to-do lists, milestones, and link them together before a project is even created. You can also default which members of your company are on a project template. It's awesome-sauce.
5. Use Active, On Hold, Archive. This helpful setting gets me into trouble. When used well, it keeps the Active projects at the top of the list. On Hold projects are grayed out and down at the bottom of your dashboard. The problem is that On Hold projects don't show up on the dashboard, so they can be easy to miss if you assign tasks/milestones and forget to make the project Active again. Archive is great, it puts the projects on a totally different page and hides them away so you don't cry when you see that project that didn't go so well years ago. 
6. Subscribe to Project Updates via Email. The lack of project updates from Basecamp is the area that's almost a deal-breaker for me. As project manager, I like to know when things get checked off - or when they haven't been worked on. This feature sends me an email each morning when something happens in the previous 24 hours. It shows me any new or checked off items. Mostly, it gives me a ping to click the project link and take a peak at what happened the day before. It works OK, but not ideal.
7. Hack the companies. Once we purged the clients out of Basecamp, we realized that "Companies" are the secret for organizing projects by phase. We had struggled with this for over 2 years, since Basecamp likes to organize projects alphabetically by Company. You can still use client companies if you need to, but the follow will help you organize projects the way you want to see them.

How to Organize the Dashboard by Phase:

This tip uses the little known "File under this company" drop down (Well - I was ignoring it for years). This gives you a list of all the companies you've added to a project on under "People & Permissions". This is handy for organizing a project that has multiple companies on it.

First, create a number scheme of how many phases your projects have. Here's mine:

[1.1 First Phase]
[1.2 Next part of that phase, if it needs to be tracked]
[2.1 Second Phase]

The numbers don't really matter, so long as they are sequential. This makes the phases in order when Basecamp alphabetizes them on the dashboard. I added brackets to the names; it just looked better to me. Add these companies from the Dashboard > "All People".

As of now, you can't automatically add your project phase/companies via a Project Template (only your company/people). This is a shame, but it takes 2 minutes to add them all when you setup a project. This time is well spent getting things setup at the start.

Now, when a project moves from phase to phase, simply change which Company it's filed under on the "Project Settings" tab. Your new dashboard will list out each phase, with the project names underneath. Pretty cool, huh?

UPDATE 2/1/2010: Maximize Project Templates:

The "Hack the Companies" tip works well when Basecamp is accessed primarily from the web interface, often in a desktop environment. Unfortunately, it's not so friendly for Basecamp Extras & Add-ons mobile apps or 3rd party applications like ProofHQ.com (SpinWeb uses it to colloborate with our Web Designers for design revisions). In this case it's best to use the traditional company setup for clients, with micro sub-projects for project phases. At the request of a few team mobile workers, I changed our system to focus on project phases.

1. Setup Project Templates for phases. At SpinWeb, we split our projects into 5 phases (Blueprint, Design, Deploy, Build, Launch). Each phase is independant with it's own timeframes (Building a site doesn't start until the Design is approved).
2. Sliding milestones. Separating project phases is great for using the built in "Shift future milestones too?" feature. Start with the first milestone in the series, and you can move the whole gang with a few clicks!
3. Space your milestones in advance. The best feature of a Template is that you setup Milestones, To-do lists, and assignments in advance. Use the sidebar calendar grid to see how your timeframes stack up.
4. Link your To-do lists to the Milestones. 

Within a few minutes, you can have a pre-populated project that use your best practices. Update your template often to keep inproving each new project. 

Gather intelligence on your website visitors with Name Tag

Posted by: Michael Reynolds, President/CEO in General on Monday, January 10, 2011

Gathering data about your website visitors can give you valuable information to help you in your sales, marketing, and communication efforts. Normally, Google Analytics is the tool of choice and works very well.

However, what if you could see a simplified snapshot of where each visitor came from, which pages they looked at, what search terms they used to find your website, and from which company or location the visit occurred? Sounds useful, right?

John Nichols over at Visual Blaze has created a great new tool that does just that. It's called Name Tag.

Name Tag is very simple but very useful. To install it, all you have to do is sign up for an account (full disclosure: affiliate link), and then add a small snippet of code to your website. After that, each visitor will be tracked and you will be able to see what company or location they are from.

When you first log in you will see a list of your recent website visitors along with any search terms they may have used. It shows the organization they are from and how many pages they viewed.

You can then click on the detail option to see a view of where the organization is located, what the referring page was (such as a Google search or an inbound link), and which pages the visitor viewed on your website.

This is very interesting information to have, but what are some specific, practical applications for this tool?

• Your sales team can used it to see what sections of your website is being viewed by prospects - this can help you be better prepared for sales meetings
• You can monitor your visitors and then make LinkedIn requests to people inside those companies
• You can see what types of organizations are finding your content and how they found you
• You can see how well your marketing campaigns are doing by tracking your responses by organization and depth of visit

We've been running Name Tag on our website for a few weeks now and it works very well. To try Name Tag on your website, sign up for an account, and then send your website tracking code to support@spinweb.net and we will install it for you (assuming you are a SpinWeb client).

I would love to hear what you think. Give it a try and let us know how Name Tag works for you!

50 ways to use your website more effectively this year

Posted by: Michael Reynolds, President/CEO in General on Monday, January 3, 2011

2011 is here and with it comes new business goals, budgets, and strategic plans. It's a great time to re-evaluate and refresh your sales and marketing efforts.

Your website is a significant part of these efforts and should be a promotional, lead-generation, and conversion tool.

This might be a good time to review the effectiveness of your current website and see what changes can be made in order to increase visibility and lead generation for your business.

Not everything in this list will apply to all organizations, but rather are some ideas that will hopefully have some tips for both businesses and non-profits alike.

1. Make sure the design reflects your brand. Many organizations have a strong brand but have a website that is outdated and does not inspire trust or represent the organization's brand well. Design quality affects trust. Is it time for a refresh?

2. Make sure visitors can buy from you online. If you sell products, make sure your website visitors can actually buy your products from your website. If you don't have e-commerce enabled, you are leaving money on the table every day.

3. Integrate with social media. Does your website automatically update social networks when new content is posted? Can website visitors share and distribute your content easily? If not, consider making your website more socially aware.

4. Make online donation easy. This one is for non-profits. As in point #2, if website visitors cannot donate online to your non-profit, you are leaving money on the table.

5. Make your contact information easy to find. This should be a no-brainer but I still see websites that hide contact information and make it impossible to even find a phone number. Don't make your constituents hunt for your contact information. They will give up and move on.

6. Offer a digital download. Just about any organization can come up with a snippet of free information that constituents would find valuable. Give away educational material in the form of a downloadable e-book or white paper to help prospective customers get to know your business.

7. Get a good Content Management System. In order to stay relevant, modern websites need to remain fresh and up-to-date. A Content Management System (CMS) will make this easy so you can streamline your online communications in real time.

8. Socially optimize your website. Beyond basic social media integration, you'll want to make sure your website is tuned so that you get maximum impact from your social distribution. Check title tags, images for Facebook sharing, and Twitter attributions to maximize exposure.

9. Publish an educational email newsletter. Encourage website visitors to subscribe from your website and publish your newsletter on a consistent schedule. Make sure it is not spammer, but rather useful and informative.

10. Display information about your people. The days of hiding behind faceless logos and corporate policies are over. Publish names, photos, and contact information for the people that work in your organization so your constituents can get to know them. People do business with other people, not logos.

11. Enable Human Readable URLs (HURLs). Your website will enjoy greater SEO benefits, the ability to use social widgets, and better click-through rates on your content if you make sure your URLs are keyword-rich and easy to read.

12. Start a blog on your website. Blogging demonstrates your expertise, can bring SEO benefits to your website, and helps your website visitors get to your know your organization. It also gives you great content to share on social networks which can bring more traffic to your website. Blog to educate and inform and you may build a following of new potential customers.

13. Enable online registration. Not all organizations host events, but online registration is a must if you do. If you make people call or send in paper forms to register, you are leaving money on the table (see a trend here?) and will lose prospective attendees.

14. Link to your other resources. Make your website a destination point for all your online resources. If you have other web applications or services that you use, list them prominently on you website so that you only have to give one URL to your constituents.

15. Conduct online surveys to see how you are doing. Getting constituent feedback can be a valuable way to improve your service. Set up periodic short surveys on your website to gather data that you can use to improve.

16. Respond to comments on your blog. When you get comments on blogs that you publish on your website, that is a good sign. Go a step further and continue the conversation by responding to your readers. This shows that you listen to your constituents and encourages trust.

17. Go even a step further and start a group of comment buddies. By helping others and asking them to help you in return, you can create momentum and social proof on your blog can encourage additional conversation.

18. Sell sponsorship space on your website. This one is mainly for non-profits. Your organization can create a stream of revenue by inviting sponsors to place ads on your website and charging a monthly fee for the exposure.

19. Check your website load time. Websites that are slow to load can incur SEO penalties. If necessary, invest in better hosting.

20. Convert your paper forms to online forms. Nobody wants to fill out a bunch of paperwork. Move your paper forms to web-based online forms so that your constituents can fill them out from any computer or iPad without wasting time and paper.

21. Stop printing a paper newsletter. This one is for non-profits and associations that typically print a regular newsletter for members or constituents. Consider saving money by eliminating the newsletter and communicate using online tools.

22. Look for ways to optimize your calls to action. Whether you want people to subscribe to your newsletter, fill out a form, or click "buy now", make sure your calls to action are clear and easy.

23. Consider an investment in ghost blogging. Having a blog on your website is not always enough. In order to connect with your constituents and optimize your permission marketing efforts, your content must be high-quality. Ghost blogging relieves you of the worry of creating content so you can focus on running your business.

24. Invest in high-quality photography. The quality of the photos on your website can make or break the design and affect the trust your constituents feel toward your organization. If your website photos are not properly reflecting your brand, invest in professional photography.

25. Facilitate customer service online. Thought you don't want to lose the personal touch with your constituents, you can improve customer service by publishing tools online that allow them to get answers to questions, access documentation, and learn how to use your products and services. Wikis, knowledge bases, and video-based learning centers are great ways to provide support.

26. Tune up your error messages. This may seem like a trivial thing but a well-written error message can salvage a sale. If there is an error during a checkout process or payment form, be sure your error messages are written in a way that instructs your customer on what to do so that the sale is not lost.

27. Publish a new press release once a month. Posting press releases on your website demonstrates activity within your organization and gives you more content to distribute on social networks and for SEO.

28. Invite guest bloggers to write content on your website. By having other bloggers contribute content, you can each leverage your audiences to cross-promote your organizations.

29. Display your work. It puzzles me that so many companies don't utilize their websites to display their work online. Whether you make products or provide a service, listing your work and your clients on your website helps your prospects trust you because they can see what you've done for others. Includes case studies, if possible.

30. Analyze your content for SEO. Along with social media, Google is still one of of the top research tools for consumers today. Utilize a service like Scribe to tune your website content for greater search visibility.

31. Start looking at your analytics. Google Analytics is a snap to install and tells you a great deal about your website visitors. By looking at this data periodically (once a month, for example), you can make better decisions about how to promote your content and what is working or not working.

32. Publish customer testimonials online. Surely your customers have great things to say about you. Collect their testimonials and (with their permission) publish them on your website to give prospects confidence in your company.

33. Invest in SEO. Though you can do a lot on your website to increase your search visibility, a true SEO campaign from a company like Deep Ripples can really boost your rankings in a significant way by making use of external campaigns and techniques.

34. Promote your customers. Along with testimonials and case studies, look for ways to promote your customers on your website and link  to their websites, as well. They will appreciate it and it shows your commitment to them.

35. Utilize video. Not every organization should use video but many can benefit from high-quality videos of things like product demos, facility tours, or customer stories. Consider talking to Green Sky Media or Focal Point Studios for great video work.

36. Experiment with Facebook Ads. Facebook has an ad network that is very easy to use and laser-targeted. You can focus on people in your demographics by drawing on the massive amount of personal data that Facebook collects on its users. Surprisingly, not many businesses are using Facebook Ads yet so the service is lower cost than AdWords and less competitive (at least for now). We've posted a tutorial in our Learning Center that will get you up and running in minutes. Facebook Ads can bring lots of targeted traffic to your website.

37. Publish a FAQ. A Frequently-asked Questions (FAQ) page is a super-simple but incredibly useful tool for helping your customers get to know your producer or service before contacting you. It can shorten the sales cycle and save time by letting people self-filter.

38. Give your customers private access to relevant information. It's always annoying when you need a form or a piece of information from a provider and you have to call or email to get it. This year, resolve to move as much of your relevant customer-specific information into an online portal that customers can log into to retrieve documents and information.

39. Arrange your website content according to priority. Jakob Nielsen has demonstrated that website visitors scan content in an "F" pattern. Review your content and, if necessary, re-prioritize it so that the most important elements on your home page fall into this pattern. Good candidates include email newsletter signups and other calls to action.

40. Go mobile. Many people access websites via a mobile device, such as an iPhone, Droid, or Blackberry. Though these devices will render your website normally, it can be harder to navigate on a small screen. Create a mobile-only version of your website that displays only the most high-priority content and strip away most of the graphics. This will give mobile users a much better experience on your website and maximize the chances of a conversion.

41. Link to your website from every other source. I still see Twitter accounts, LinkedIn profiles, email signatures, and other communication tools that do not link to a website. Every communication tool available should be an opportunity to link to your website.

42. Commit to a 100% permission-only email newsletter database. Make this the year that you finally stop doing mass imports of your local chamber database and therefore annoying 90% of the businesses in your city by spamming them. Ok, I'm sure that you aren't doing this but I'm sure some other people out there are. Either way, be sure you read Permission Marketing by Seth Godin.

43. Stack your form fields instead of aligning them side by side. Stacked form fields make it easier for your website visitors to fill in data which creates a better user experience by saving them time when they fill out your web forms. Picky? Yes. Hard to do? No. A nice touch? Absolutely.

44. Lose the marketing-speak. Many websites fall prey to the marketing-speak epidemic. Their content is full of fluff and made-up words and doesn't really tell their visitors what the organization really does or sells. Take some time this year to audit your website content and make sure it reads simply and easily. Write in a conversational style that makes sense to the average person.

45. Encourage RSS and email subscriptions on your blog. Publishing a high-value blog on our website is great. However, it's even better if your readers can subscribe to it via email or RSS. This ensures that your content always reaches them via their preferred method of delivery.

46. Learn more about your website visitors with Name Tag. John Nichols at Visual Blaze has created a very cool app that gives you detailed information about which company your website visitors are from and what they looked at. Check out Name Tag and give it a try. This can be a very cool method for gathering intelligence about your website visitors.

47. Do some A/B testing. The way you think your website should be structured may not always be the way your constituents would prefer it. Get the real scoop by testing your content with different variations and see what leads to the best conversions. Optimizely is a great tool for this.

48. Create a referral or affiliate program. Make it easy for customers to refer you to others via your website. Offer them incentives or rewards for doing so.

49. Allow customers to pay bills online. Even if you don't sell products, you probably send invoices and collect payments. Make it easy for your customers to give you money by allowing them to pay online with a credit card. The easier you make it to pay, the more likely it is that you will receive it.

50. Give your constituents a reason to go to your website. Above all, make it useful. Figure out what your constituents want and give them a reason to go get it from your website. This will not be the same for every organization. At SpinWeb, we give away free online marketing training on our website, as well as give prospects information they need to evaluate us. Other organizations will offer different value items. The days of online brochures are over. Your website must be a modern, well-tuned, networked, and value-packed online toolset that connects your organization with your constituents.

Naturally, not everything here will apply to every organization but hopefully many of these tips will be useful as you review your website this year. Anything to add? I would love to hear about it in the comments below.