How Do I Start Blogging

There's a lot of buzz about Blogs and Blogging. Cut through it all and a Blog is just an online diary.

I tell people to think of their website as an electronic brochure that is mostly static while a Blog is an ongoing dialog with customers or potential customers that is published to more frequently.

You may update your website a few times a month while you probably post to your Blog multiple times each month (or week, or day!).

The benefits of Blogging include:

1) It's easy to do (you don't need your webmaster to do anything for you)

2) Creates more online visibility for your company/products/services

3) Connects you to "Web 2.0" and social networking

4) Easy to create and manage

5) It's free if you use Blogger

Here are a couple links to look at for more information about Web 2.0.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsa5ZTRJQ5w

How do you start Blogging?

The easiest way is to use Blogger from Google.

Visit http://www.blogger.com and follow the directions.

I recommend you use a Google account (GMAIL.COM) to create your blog (vs. your regular email address) and consolidate all of your Google services/tools (Google Adwords, Google Analytics, Google Sitemap, GMAIL) into that account.

http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/about.html

Blogging is a smart way to expand your online visibility and to get better results from your overall online marketing to brides strategy.

Chris Jaeger
Book More Weddings
http://www.bookmoreweddings.com

"Why Are Brides Leaving My Website?"

I spoke with a Wedding Consultant yesterday who was frustrated by the poor results she was getting from her website. She had put a lot of money and effort into a new website and marketing to brides online and wasn't getting any inquiries or phone calls.

We talked about how to turn things around and there were several things she had to deal with, but here are two things we talked about:

1) A Great Looking Website Does Not Mean Great Results

Brides want information, they want what they came looking for an you don't have a lot of time to mess around before you give it to them (less than 20 seconds!).

Your "great looking" website can easily become an obstacle to an inquiry and a sale and that's why most websites don't work.

Give brides the BEST POSSIBLE EXPERIENCE and you increase your chances of turning them into customers.

2) It's All About CONVERSION

Conversion is that magic moment when a bride does something you want her to. Maybe she makes an inquiry, downloads a "take-away", or simply picks up the phone and calls you.

Everything at your website should be looked at as either a "facilitator" or "obstacle" to conversion. If it doesn't add value to the user experience, I believe it has no place at your website.

Other problems: Do you have graphics that aren't clickable, do you have confusing navigation, is your compelling offer buried too deep in your website to find?

And those are just three things that lead to poor results from your website...

Chris Jaeger
Book More Weddings
http://www.bookmoreweddings.com

Website Stats (aka Analytics)

Marketing to brides, especially online, is much more sophisticated than just 12 months ago. Without regularly reviewing your web analytics, and knowing what they say, the success of any online marketing strategy is quickly and adversely impacted. And if you think you're getting good or great results from your website now, and as a result think "I don't need to look at my analytics" then... here's some news: YOU'RE WASTING A TON OF MONEY.

Most of the Wedding Professionals I speak with don't know how to get to their website stats. Yes, you read that right. Most don't know HOW to get to their website stats. "My webmaster never gave me that information" is the answer I get to "have you looked at your analytics lately?"

Usually, if they DO know how, they take one look and they get dizzy and never look again. Actually, that part I can understand.

But reviewing your website stats, or "analytics" (i.e. all the data about your website, visitors, and advertising campaigns), is very important.

Analytics tell you things like:

How many people visited your website (for any given period of time)
How they found it
How they are using it
Are they going where you want them to go
Are there pages not loading properly
Where your traffic is coming from
If Google is crawling your website regularly
How many pages are they looking at (before they leave)
If they're finding your inquiry form

.... and a lot more.

So, what do you do? The answer is easy. Either dive in or get someone to do it for you. A professional who monitors and reports your website activity on a monthly basis will give you information that is worth gold. If you pay a professional to review your stats, provide a report with recommendations, on a monthly basis, and pay them $75-$150 - you'll find it an investment that has a very good return-on-investment.


Chris Jaeger
Book More Weddings
http://www.bookmoreweddings.com

Marketing To Brides: Is Your Google Positioning Falling?

Google is probably an important part of your overall online marketing to brides strategy. If you have a top position at Google it's like having a money tree in your backyard (unless your website has problems with conversion).

If your inquiries are off noticably, or significantly, over the past three weeks there's a good chance your organic search engine positioning at Google has fallen.

Here's what you need to know: http://www.bookmoreweddings.com/members/279.cfm

Targeting the High End Bride

Almost weekly someone asks me "How do we reach the high-end bride online?"

There's no doubt that finding and exclusively targeting the online "high-end" bride is nearly impossible - certainly difficult.

My position has always been "cast your net" wide, get as much quality and qualified traffic that you can, expect some of it to be not exactly what you want, but in the mix expect to find three or four of the high-end brides you want.

Alternative, or additionally, take a look at Wedding Salon (http://www.weddingsalon.com), a new approach to bridal shows and one that exclusively targets the high-end bride.

One way they do this is by charging brides $75.00 to get into one of their shows!

At first, when Sheenah Parker, Marketing Manager at the Wedding Salon, told me this, I sat back in my chair a bit and scratched my head.

But then, it set in - and it makes perfect sense.

* Produce a high-end bridal show that is unique, sophisticated, fun, and elegant

* Present the Best of the Best wedding vendors

* Target the locations where the high-end bride can be found (NYC, LA, Miami)

Their next show is at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills, September 26th, 2007.

For more information visit http://www.weddingsalon.com or call Sheenah Parker at (212) 631-7777.

Mention my Blog (Chris Jaeger, Book More Weddings Blog) and receive a complimentary upgrade to your program.

Google and Universal Search

Everyone wants to be top ranked at Google. Being one of the top ten listings means brides can find your website and you'll get more traffic.

If your website does a good job at CONVERSION, you'll get inquiries and you'll book more weddings.

Google's "Universal" search will impact your organically top ranked website and not necessarily in a good way.

In my opinion, it dilutes organically top ranked websites.

Simply put, Universal search is the term used when Google shows more than just websites in it's search engine results pages (SERPS).

You've probably seen it recently.

Not only do you see listing for websites, but you see images, maybe even a video, almost always "sponsored" links, and also news and local maps.

Say goodbye to straight website links and descriptions and sponsored links (top of page sponsored links). Say hello to additional search results, non-traditional results, including:

Images
Video
News
Local Maps

Why should you care?

Because it will put your organically optimized web pages further down the page. In some cases it may take 8" to 10" of scrolling before they find your site.

Not good news.

How do you optimize for "Universal" search?

Stay tuned...

Summer Computing Tips

I don't professionally do technical support anymore, but I did in days-gone-by. I actually enjoyed it and supported over 1000 desktops.

Here are a couple things I thought I'd pass on, thoughts that cross my mind related to technical support, as the summer settles in here in Gloucester, MA:

1) Heat Kills Computers

Not only does it kill computers, but it kills monitors, flash drives, hard drives, graphics cards, and especially laptops. If your computer is in a room that is above 85 degrees you have an accident waiting to happen.

What can you do? Air conditioning certainly, but think about getting a small fan just to blow air on the back of your computers/laptop. I got a small $8.00 fan that runs behind my laptop and it keeps my laptop nice and cool (and I rarely use the air-conditioner for cooling).

Too bad I didn't get it last week... before my $800 graphics card crashed!

To add insult to injury... I'm two weeks out of warranty. Ugh.

2) Dust Kills Computers

Dust kills computers because it usually clogs up the air vents in your computer housing that are required for effective cooling. Look for where the air can come into your computer and make sure dust isn't plugging up the holes. Usually, you'll find these air-holes on the sides of your computer. Remember, there is a fan in the back of most computers that effectively creates a vacuum for dust to find its way into your computer - to be sucked INTO it!

Dust can also create static electricity problems and in a worse-case scenario - a fire.

Where does all this dust come from anyway? Yikes!

3) Back-Up

Backup the most important files on your computer at least once a week. Backup your FLASH drives too. These cute little plug-in hard drives work great - but do fail.

And they do get lost. I love mine but back it up regularly.

4) Bad Weather

Lightening strikes are almost guaranteed to cause problems for any electronics they can find there way into: modems, cable modems, ethernet cards, home networks, PCs, laptops, smart phones plugged in and charging. When I see those big boomers approaching I run and disconnect everything. Call me crazy, but I haven't lost a thing yet. My neighbors have lost a computer, their Internet connection (cable modem), and a printer.

5) The seasonal change is also a good time to make sure you're anti-virus, anti-spyware, and anti-spam filters and software is up-to-date. Trust me, it will cost you a lot more than $200 to have a computer fixed after a virus attack or a spyware removal.