Wake-Up Your Website! by Philip Calvert

For Brian Wilson

Introduction

For many people today, the Internet is integrated into the fabric of their daily lives. They don’t leave the house without going online first, whether to check their emails, favourite websites, the weather, news, share prices – whatever. And all too often now, they take the Internet with them – accessing it on their mobile phone or PDA.

The extraordinary growth of online shopping is also testament to our love for all things Web. Company after company reports that their online sales are growing fast – and even companies that are synonymous with the High Street are also in on the act.

Marks & Spencer is currently enjoying renewed vigour in its sales figures, with their Web sales making a big contribution to the bottom line. But note the comments of their shrewd boss Stuart Rose:

“This is not the death of the High Street. It’s the growth of a new distribution route.”

And of course he’s right. There will always be demand for good old-fashioned faceto-face retailing. Whilst Internet sales of just about every product imaginable are

growing rapidly, this is after all, just another distribution route. But if you’re not on the route, you’re going to miss out – big time.

I’m not suggesting that financial advisers should stop offering face-to-face advice, but I am suggesting that they too should explore the Internet as a new way to find new customers, engage more with existing customers, raise their profile and create new income streams from a range of Web-based services.

In time, like financial planner Keith Churchouse of http://www.advicemadesimple.com, you can indeed start creating complete online financial planning services. Purists will say that there’s no such thing as a Web-based financial planning service. Surely it’s a very personal activity that has to be done face-to-face with your trusted adviser? The current financial planning model suggests that is the case, but for IFAs to start benefiting from the Web, we need to begin thinking outside the box.

I was worried that I might be way-off track with this, but after talking to George Kinder – considered to be the Father of the Life Planning movement and one of the most influential financial planners in the world, I’m more convinced than ever that the Internet presents massive opportunities to professional financial advisers.

Most IFAs and financial planners have a great deal of technical expertise, and the time has come to start selling that expertise in new formats – perhaps in seminar form, books, special reports, white papers, audio or video.

The fact is, that many consumers know all too well that they need professional financial planning advice – but, sorry guys, they don’t always want a face-to-face service. If they can get such a service online, they’ll gladly take it – and pay for it too. But at the moment, they simply can’t get it, because the overwhelming majority of IFAs aren’t providing it.

The easiest way to provide new services is in digital form, and I look at this in detail in another book. But in the meantime, we need to take the first step, and that’s to make our current professional financial planning services very much more visible on

the Web – the consumers first choice when they are looking for information on financial matters.

Yes that’s right – most consumers turn to the Internet first when looking for financial advice, before talking to an IFA.

Please bear with me as I switch back and forth between the phrases IFA, Financial Planner, Financial Adviser and others. Whilst I appreciate the differences between the disciplines, this is more to provide variety in the text than anything else and that for the purposes of this book please take them all to mean the same thing. I hope you won’t be offended.

In fact, my own research suggests that 56% of business owners would, if they had the expertise or access to the expertise, attempt their own pension and investment planning themselves online. Doubtless they’d make a hash of it, just as people made a hash of DIY share trading when it was first possible. The point is that there is a demand and appetite for online financial planning related services, and unless IFAs start to provide them, Banks and other financial institutions will.

So how do we make ourselves more visible on the Internet? And if we are more visible, what do we want consumers to find?

Of those IFAs that have a website (and the current estimate is that around 40% of IFAs don’t have one), over 55% say that it is intended to be an ‘online brochure’ of their services. That’s fine if that’s what you want – but bear in mind that it’s not what consumers want. And why would someone want to read your brochure online any more than on paper?

These days, people want websites with great content, interaction and value. Your website needs to be ‘sticky’, so that when someone eventually finds it, there’s enough of interest to hold them there. And if people want to do their own financial planning, you need to include tools, tips, articles, downloads, links and functionality that enables them to do just that, or guess what – they’ll go elsewhere.

They certainly won’t recommend your site to friends, family, colleagues and business associates – nor will they Tag or Bookmark your site and recommend it to other Internet users.

The chances are that people can’t actually find your brochure online in the first place. If you do a search on Google for ‘IFA in Cardiff’ or ‘Reading’ or wherever, plenty of directories of IFAs come up, but very few IFAs’ websites in their own right. And the results need to be on the first page of Google too, because about 80% of people do not click beyond page two of the results.

So, even if your website is an online brochure, people don’t want to visit that sort of website any more - and if they do, they can’t find it anyway!

And just to rub salt in the wound, when people do find your site and read your brochure, it’s not getting you any enquiries. My research amongst IFAs tells me that 84% of IFAs are receiving less than 5 enquiries per week from their website. In fact 90% of IFAs receive less than 10 enquiries per week from their sites. Only 2.7% of IFAs receive more than 20 enquiries per week from their site.

You might say that you wouldn’t want or couldn’t handle 20 enquiries per week anyway. Again, that’s fine if that’s your business model, but you are missing out on income to your business, and you are missing out on building value within your business by not leveraging your use of technology. Some of the IFAs that do receive large numbers of enquiries don’t want them either, but pass them on to someone else, either by selling the leads or by taking a share of the fee/commission generated.

This is also where new services come in. Many leads from IFAs’ website will be people asking for information - information that could and should have been provided on your website in the first place and thus meeting the needs of Internet-savvy consumers.

Some of your site visitors, will if prompted do their own quotations for life assurance, PHI and Critical Illness directly on your site if you offer the functionality. Some of them will go on to download, complete and submit an application form – earning you

money along the way while you sleep. And it’s not just today’s consumers who will do this.

Permanent Insurance were doing it years ago when they made their quotation functionality available for IFAs to plug in to their websites. When they first started promoting it to IFAs, no one knew if it was going to be worth the effort, until advisers started receiving commission cheques for clients they didn’t even know they had.

The rule is – give them content, value and functionality on your website and people will use it. I recommend talking to Webline, who offer quotation functionality within IFAs’ websites. It’s quick and easy to do and could help you to not only add value to your website but add value to your existing clients.

By not making the effort to attract new leads, you are simply throwing money down the drain. A strange thing to do, if you’re building your business with a view to selling it in the future.

That’s enough of the theory, let’s look at some specific tips to help improve your search engine rankings and improve your visibility on the Internet. If you want to take this Internet stuff really seriously, then try out as many of the tips as possible. But you should find that using just a combination of ideas will make a big difference to your Internet profile. There’s one tip included that on its own will make a big difference to your search engine rankings, your profile on the Internet and which will also be of enormous value in your business.

I should also say at this point, that every now and again, Google changes the way it indexes websites. Remember that Google provides a search service, so when people using the service are searching for information, they want to make sure that only relevant results are made available. Occasionally they will change their algorithms to rank different features of a website as having less or greater value in its search results.

You don’t need to worry too much about this, as the ideas I’m going to share with you are relevant most, if not all of the time. As Google changes the way it indexes or ‘crawls’ websites, some suggestions I make may become less important, and some

will become more so. Overall, everything you will read next works to a lesser or greater degree! Some ideas work better in conjunction with other ideas, and I’ll highlight those as we go.

What I would like you to do is to let me know which ideas work well for you. You can either send me an email or post a note in IFA Life at http://www.ecademy.com/club/IFALIFE.

If you’re not yet a member of Ecademy or IFA Life, please follow the links that follow to sign up for a free standard membership.

When you join, you’ll also receive full ‘PowerNetworker’ membership free for a month, after which you can either stay on standard or upgrade to full and enjoy greater functionality. Hint – joining Ecademy/IFA Life will actually push you up the Google rankings. We’ll cover this later.

Here’s the link to IFA Life:

http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=club&c=1846&xref=53930

If you would like to know more about Google and how it ranks websites, please send me an email to philip@ifalife.com and I’ll send you an excellent article ‘Google Keeps Tweaking It’s Search Engine’ from the New York Times.

How to use this guide

This is not a technical guide, and is quite deliberately written in as plain English as possible, as I want you to be motivated to take action and get value out of it. It’s intended to be more of a marketing tool than anything else.

Please read through this guide with an open mind. There will be some ideas that you might be inclined to dismiss immediately and others that you’ll be itching to implement straight away. Different ideas will appeal to different people, so that’s

why there is something for everyone. Sleep on it all before dismissing anything, because many of the ideas reflect the very latest thinking in website design and search engine optimisation (SEO).

For example, did you know that you should ideally be looking for as much as 50% of your website’s content to be generated by your users, clients and site visitors? We’ll show you how to start thinking about how you do this a bit later.

After you have read through everything, have another close look at your website and decide what you think would work well for you, your clients, your professional introducers, other interested parties and the people you would like as clients.

Use this guide to work with your website designer or Webmaster. Most designers should have heard of the ideas in this guide but may suggest that they either don’t work or are not appropriate for you. If they like a particular idea ask them if they are using it on your site, and if not, ask them why not. It’s often a good idea to ask your website designer to detail what their current optimisation strategy is for your site.

Bear in mind that many good website designers do just that – they design great looking websites, but do not always have great optimisation skills. Remember what I said earlier – you can have the prettiest looking site in the world, but if no one ever finds it, you might as well not have one.

Let’s get on with it.

Add more content to your Website

The Internet is no longer just a big library where you go to find information. It’s now a giant communication and publishing tool. The more you publish, the more likely it is you’ll be found on the Web. Conversely, the less you publish, the less likely it is you’ll be found.

Admittedly, the Internet’s a big place and your website is just one of many millions of

pages out there. But if Google is going to serve up fresh and relevant search results for people looking for information on financial matters, it needs to find great content. Where better to find that content than on your own website.

One of the single biggest reasons why IFAs’ websites don’t appear higher in the rankings is because they have very little content beyond the usual About Us, Our Services, Company History, Jobs and Contact Us tabs. What’s more, this content is rarely updated with anything new.

Here is a list of over 100 features you should consider including – many of which we’ll cover in more detail later:

1. Articles and article archive. Whenever you write an article, post it on your website 2. Press Releases. Whenever you issue a Press Release, post it in a special section on your website 3. Press page, including high resolution photos and copies of your logo 4. General ‘About Us’ page which links to more detailed pages 5. A profile page for each key member of staff – with photos 6. Information on your qualifications and what they mean 7. Affiliations to professional and industry bodies (e.g. Institute of Financial Planning, Personal Finance Society etc) 8. Link to the FSA site 9. Useful links – both local, national and to other non-competitive financial advice services (e.g. Citizens Advice Bureau) 10. Links to your Social Network profiles (more on this later) 11. Individual pages dedicated to each of your professional introducers such as local Accountants and Solicitors 12. Information on where people can meet you outside the office (e.g. Chamber of Commerce and networking organisations where you are a member) 13. Latest news from your firm 14. Newsletter download 15. Latest financial news 16. Latest local news

17. Your mission, ethos and what you stand for 18. Your service standards 19. What services are available and how you are different 20. Explanation of the different types of financial adviser 21. Information on how you use technology and how clients benefit from it 22. Examples of a typical financial plan 23. Client list 24. Your awards 25. Links to articles in the Press and scans of cuttings 26. How your service works, including what different levels of service are available 27. How you are remunerated 28. Testimonials â&#x20AC;&#x201C; with photos ideally 29. Video testimonials 30. Endorsements from experts 31. Case studies â&#x20AC;&#x201C; ideally involving real clients 32. A summary of your green and environmental credentials as a company 33. Information on charities and causes you support 34. Information for those interested in Ethical investments 35. Information on investment theories, asset allocation and attitude to risk 36. Information on pension planning, inheritance tax and family protection 37. Information on pensions legislation, forthcoming changes etc 38. Information on SIPPS, pension transfers 39. Specialist technical sections 40. Information on corporate protection, key man, shareholder protection and group risk 41. Information on how mortgages work, the different types of mortgage available, stamp duty etc 42. Information on Buying to Let, Equity Release etc 43. Information on how Conveyancing works and what is involved 44. Information on Endowments, what they are and what the issues are/have been 45. Information on managing debt 46. Links to trusted debt management services 47. Information for same sex partners and civil partnerships

48. Information on Trusts and their benefits 49. The role of Trustees 50. Things to consider at different life stages (starting a family, pension planning etc) 51. Online fact find – either stand alone or as part of your back office system 52. Quotation facilities 53. Private online discussion area for clients only 54. Client log in tool so that they can access their fact find, portfolio summaries, performance charts etc 55. A Blog 56. A link to your external Blog 57. A Podcast 58. Recordings of interviews or radio appearances 59. RSS Feed (more on this later) 60. Tax and money savings tips online 61. Tax allowances 62. Weekly Personal Finance and Tax Saving tips by email 63. Details of your seminars and events 64. A list of your speaking topics and availability as a speaker at networking events 65. Details of your online events such as Webinars and Skypecasts 66. FAQ and Question and Answer section 67. ‘Ask the Expert’ tool 68. Jargon Buster and definitions 69. Explanations of different financial instruments and their tax treatment 70. A guide to underwriting 71. A guide to money laundering 72. Online calculators and tax tables 73. Credit card comparison tool 74. Utilities comparison tools 75. Bank accounts comparisons 76. Personal Loan comparisons 77. Guide to Tax Credits and how to obtain them

78. A range of different ways to contact you – online form, email, fax, telephone, free phone number, mobile, text message, Skype etc 79. Instant Call back service 80. Chargeable downloads such as Special Reports, White Papers, Premium Email Newsletter, Financial Coaching Courses, Audio CDs, Videos/DVDs of your seminars 81. Online Financial Planning Reports 82. A PDF download of your business card 83. Location map, directions, route planner and links to train services – plus downloadable/printable versions 84. Directions from the local station and numbers of local taxi services 85. Jobs and vacancies 86. Invite people to ‘add to favourites’ 87. A fun page (Quizzes, competitions, horoscopes, daily cartoon, pictures of staff out of the office, gadget reviews etc) 88. Links to services specifically for businesses (e.g. Business Link, networking organisations) 89. Toolbar download (more on this later) 90. Speaking characters (more on this later) 91. Quotations and Quote of the day 92. Tell-a-Friend /Recommend This Site tool 93. This Day in History 94. Guest Book 95. Guest Map 96. Surveys and Polls 97. High quality classified advertisements for local businesses 98. Amazon book store 99. Quality merchandise – pens, polo shirts etc 100.

Recommended reading

101.

Search box

102.

Site map

Don’t worry – there will be more on content before we’re done.

Clear layout

Having packed your website with content, you also need to work hard to ensure that your site is clear and easy to read.

For example, avoid over-use of dramatic punctuation……..!!!!!! Your website is supposed to be friendly and inviting, but it’s not a comic.

Employ the services of a proof reader, who will help with spellings etc, and who will be quick to get rid of your over zealous use of exclamation marks and so on.

Try to ensure that your site follows a logical route which people can follow, and include a Site Map which lists out and includes a link to every page. Quite apart from good website management, a Site Map also has some attractiveness to Google. Google even invites you to upload a site map on some of its submission services. More on this later.

Test out your site on some existing clients, and ask them to give you feedback. Take what they say seriously, remembering that they’re the customers – so they must be right. In fact, before you test out a new site on clients, ask them for their honest feedback on your current site. Ask what they like, what they don’t like and what they would like to see in an ideal world.

Try to give your site a personal feel – particularly the About Us pages. New visitors to your site want to see that you’re human, so remember that ‘people buy people’ just as much online as they do face to face.

So, when writing your profile, start with personal information such as family, where you’ve travelled, your values etc, and then gradually introduce the more businessorientated material. If possible, try to tell a story about how you came to be where you are today. People can’t resist stories and it is one of the most powerful tricks to helping them to buy you and to stay on your website.

Keeping it personal also means including a good photograph or a series of photographs. Many people recoil in horror at the idea of including a photo of themselves on their website or business card, but I highly recommend it.

The photo will tell visitors everything they will ever need to know about you, so make it a good one. Whilst I’m sure you’ve got some very nice pictures of you on a beach or cooking a barbeque last Summer, unless they are recent and of a very high standard, keep them off your website.

Having sad that, if you are willing to employ a professional photographer to take some pictures of you relaxing with family, playing sports or whatever, that is fine.

The key is professionalism. Just as sport stars, actors and celebrities are careful to manage their image – so should you too. You’re a professional after all.

If you want to talk to one of the best portrait photographers in the UK, I recommend that you see my brother David, who you will find at http://www.calvert.biz.

Use of Flash animation

Many website designers are skilled in the use of Flash animation, and will suggest that your ‘landing page’ or home page includes a fancy animated introduction.

Many do indeed look very pretty. Unfortunately, some go a bit over the top, and there is evidence to suggest that Google can struggle to fully index sites that have too much animation on the key home page.

If you want an animated introduction, the trick is to keep it simple, short and subtle. This website gives some good examples:

http://www.123live.co.uk/example-flash-Website-design.htm

Articles and Books

I mentioned earlier that it is a good idea to include articles on your website.

This is for three key reasons. One is that it adds valuable content which includes key words that are relevant to your expertise, and the other is that articles add to the perception of your expertise. The thinking is that if you have written articles, special reports, white papers or even a book, then you must be an expert.

The third reason is that after you have written several articles, you can pull them all together into a pamphlet (either as a PDF file or on paper) and sell them. This creates a valuable new income stream and again adds to the perception of your expertise and credibility.

As well as including articles on your own website, also submit them to other sites, including newspapers, your professional introducers and other relevant websites. Most newspapers now have an online version, so if accepted, there’s a good chance that your article will appear online at some stage – again raising the profile of your expertise online.

And always try to ensure that your article includes your URL or website address for people and Google to follow. If a search engine finds your website address on a popular website (like a newspaper’s site), the search engine ‘spider’ will think that your site is important and so follow the link, and this will help to push you further up the search results.

Even better, is if you can convince the site owner to hyperlink the key words that you want to be associated with you and your website. So for example, if you have written an article on the joys of timely inheritance tax planning (because you are an expert in the area); you need a couple of relevant key words or phrases hyperlinked to your website. This is in fact more effective in pushing you up search engine results than hyperlinking your company name or website address.

In short – links IN to your site are very important for search engine optimisation particularly those from sites that have content that is related or relevant to yours. And even better if those sites have high traffic.

Here’s a tool that will help you to find who is linking to you already:

http://wholinked.com/

Also, ask your professional introducers if they would allow you to post your articles on a special area within their site, and remember to hyperlink key words back to your website. Offer to do the same in exchange as it will help to raise their profile online.

As well as submitting articles to other local websites, there are also special websites which primarily exist for people to post their articles. This is good for them, because the ever increasing content is attractive to Google and so pushes them up the rankings.

This in turn benefits you because your articles will be featured on a high traffic website. Very often you will also be able to include hyperlinks back to your own website from within your articles.

Here’s a list of article submission sites. The author of the site admits that it may not be up to date, but it’s a very good start:

http://www.ksl-consulting.co.uk/article_submission_sites.html

There are also websites that will automatically submit your articles to hundreds of different article websites and directories at the click of a button, saving you a lot of time and effort. Simply go to Google and search for ‘Article submission sites’.

Write a Book!

As an IFA, you have a great deal of expertise which could be repackaged and sold in another format. One such format is a book.

Although as an IFA you have expertise in a wide range of financial disciplines, I’ll lay any money that you believe you have more expertise in one particular area than others. This topic/expertise is the source for your first book.

Once written, you can sell your book on your website, which in itself will be something else for Google to index. What’s more, your book will appear on many online listings sites and Internet book stores – thus drawing further attention to you and your website.

If you don’t write a full book, you can also write an eBook (like this one). An eBook or eGuide can be anything from 2 pages to 2,000+ pages and can be downloaded from your website – either free or chargeable. Again, this is valuable new content and draws Google to you.

Have a look at these two IFAs who have written books and who sell them on their websites:

http://www.informedchoice.ltd.uk/martin_bamford.htm http://www.martinbamford.co.uk/ http://www.nomonkeybusiness.co.uk/book/ http://www.nomonkeybusiness.org/

It’s easy to say you should write a book, but obviously it takes time and patience. So if you would like to write a book and need help getting started, I have written an eGuide for IFAs on how to do just that. It’s called How To Be A Published Author – The Inside Secrets For IFAs and you can find it at this link:

http://www.ecademy.com/club/IFA+Life+Books+and+Guides

Finally, it’s all very well having lots of great content on your website. You need to keep it up to date and to add more content. This is actually easier than you might think, once you get into the habit of doing it.

One way to do this is to update your News section on a regular basis, add new Press Releases, new articles, new services and staff news. In other words, give site visitors and Google a reason to come back to you regularly. The more new content you add, the more regularly Google will index your site.

You might be thinking that you haven’t got any news! In fact you have much more than you realise. Take a moment now to write down 10 things that are potentially newsworthy that have happened in your business this year – however trivial.

And please – if you have that little sentence on your website that says… Last updated: 1st September 1864

…please remove it. It adds no value whatsoever, and people couldn’t care less when you last updated it. They just expect your website to be up to date, and even if you last updated it just 7 days ago, they will subconsciously think that it’s not up to date enough.

And while you’re about it, get rid of your hit counter. Once upon a time the number of hits was a mark of quality, but it’s not any more and your website visitors are simply not interested.

You should be interested in your hits and there are plenty of good tools that you can use to get near real-time stats without having a silly counter at the bottom of your home page.

Statcounter.com is really excellent. Go to http://www.statcounter.com and sign up for your free account.

Not surprisingly, Google also has an excellent service called Google Analytics. In their own words: “Google Analytics has been designed to help you learn more about where your website visitors come from and how they interact with your site.

Google Analytics makes it easy to improve your results online. Write better ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives, and create higher-converting websites. Google Analytics is free to all advertisers, publishers, and site owners.”

And it really is very good.

Check your Website statistics

On the subject of checking your website statistics, it is very, very important that you take this seriously.

According to my research, over half of IFAs rarely or never check their Web stats, with almost 30% checking their stats only once a month. Out of the hundreds of IFAs I meet every month, I have only found one person who checks his stats every day.

Why is this so important?

Just as you ask clients how they found you or who recommended you, your Web stats can tell you the same thing. They can tell you where site visitors found you, which search engine they used, what phrase they used, what page they arrived on, where they went next, the time they stayed on each page and the page where they finally got bored and left.

If you don’t know this information, you have no idea how effective your website is being. When you do know which pages are not very popular, you can make the changes needed to improve things.

If there’s one thing you should do after reading this guide, it’s to start looking at and analysing your website stats on a regular basis. If you don’t want to do it yourself, arrange for someone in your firm to do it and to report to you every week with information on how your website is performing.

You will soon build up a picture which you can use to influence the design of your site and to identify the pages which need improving. You’ll also discover what keywords people are using to find your site and which search engines and other sites are referring visitors in your direction.

Blog

Blogging is one of the fastest growing and most popular activities on the Internet. ‘Blog’ is short for Web Log – a short, written piece of wisdom, comment, thought or idea on anything you want the world to know.

You’ll have heard me say that the Internet is a huge communication and publishing tool. Well, Blogging is a way to publish your content.

There are Blogs on just about every conceivable subject, and they are now proving to be a powerful way to raise your profile online, attract Google and to build the perception of your expertise and credibility.

A good Blog is fairly short – a couple of paragraphs or so, and which stimulates a response in its reader. It can just be your thoughts on a particular subject or passion you have at any given moment in time. There are now even companies that can publish your Blog as a book – a sort of modern day diary. What’s more, you can employ people to Blog on your behalf.

As your Blog becomes popular, you’ll find that people will want to subscribe to it, so that your content is delivered straight to them from wherever your Blog is hosted – be that your own website or a specialist Blogging site.

The mechanism for delivering or feeding your Blog content to people is called ‘RSS’ or Really Simple Syndication. RSS is a piece of code that your website designer can write which makes your content available to anyone who wants it. It’s a good alternative to email newsletters, as it does not use the traditional Outlook or Outlook Express email system, and so does not get caught up in Spam filters.

For someone to read your RSS-enabled content, they need a feed reader or ‘News Reader’. A News Reader is a piece of software that aggregates all your favourite RSS feeds into one page, so you can read the content from a wide range of websites all in one place. Until recently I have used the FeedDemon news reader to subscribe to and read a variety of Blogs and Web pages.

www.NewsGator.com/FeedDemon

Since upgrading my Windows browser to Internet Explorer 7, I have switched to using the feed reader that’s included in the software.

RSS is rapidly becoming the standard for subscribing to Blogs, Podcasts and News, and there even RSS search engines to help you find specific feeds.

http://www.rssmicro.com/

To learn more about using RSS feeds, have a look at the BBC website at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/rss/default.stm. There, you’ll find a wide range of feeds that you can subscribe to.

After you’ve read the BBC’s information on RSS, you should spend some time thinking how you can use this technology. Unless you use Blog services like WordPress and Blogger where an RSS feed is automatically included, you will need to ask your Web designer to create one for you.

Once done, clients, introducers and other visitors to your website can subscribe to your content.

As mentioned earlier, your Blog can be a special page within your website, or it can be hosted on a Blog hosting site like Blogger or WordPress.

http://www.blogger.com http://www.wordpress.com

Both Blogger and WordPress include a range of tools to further promote your Blog and to allow readers to bookmark or tag your content. And because there are millions of Blogs being hosted on these sites, it means that Google comes along and indexes your content on a regular basis – again helping to push you and your profile further up the search engine rankings.

To set up a Blog on these sites needs no technical skill whatsoever. You just open a free account, choose a title for your Blog (e.g. The John Smith IFA Blog), pick a template (colours etc) and start typing.

There are other places where you can Blog, called Social Networks, which we’ll get to soon. If you want to subscribe to my Blog on WordPress, follow this link and click on the orange RSS button.

http://calvertnewmedia.wordpress.com/

If your Blog is hosted on Blogger, WordPress or similar, it’s possible to have the content fed into your main website for clients to read. Ask your website designer to set it up for you, but don’t let them charge you very much, because there are some free tools available to make it easy. One is called Grazr. Go to this page to see how it works:

http://grazr.com/config.html?file=http://grazr.com/opml/recent

Just as I said earlier, you should add content regularly to your Blog. And as this will be your business Blog, make the content relevant to your expertise.

Blogs tend to be written in a more conversational style, but keep it professional and relevant. As well as your wisdom, you can include commentary on items in the financial news, tips and money saving ideas, links to interesting websites and anything that you think will add value to your readers.

And that’s the key point – add value. The more you give, the more people will read your Blog. They, in turn will tell other people who will hopefully become clients or advocates.

Although the purpose of your Blog is to raise your profile, enhance your reputation, to improve Google rankings etc, it’s also OK to blatantly promote your company and your services in your Blog from time to time. My recommendation is that for every one sales Blog you write, you should write five to ten that simply add value.

Purists will tell you that a Blog is not a place to sell. If the content of your Blog is good quality and that people feel they are getting value from it, that’s all the selling you’ll need to do.

Once you are very established at Blogging and have a loyal following, you might also think about charging people to access a second, ‘premium’ Blog. Or – giving access to this for your very top/key clients. We go into how to create new income streams like this in another guide.

Client Blogs

One idea suggested to me by my friend and Blogging expert Graham Jones, is that you set up a Blog specifically for each of your key clients. It is only available to them, perhaps through a password protected area, but it enables you to add vale to your relationship with a client by posting material that is relevant to just them.

In reality, as a financial adviser, it’s likely that much of the material in the client Blog will be relevant to more than one client, so can be cut and pasted from one to the other with minor customisation for each client. Just remember to check and double check that you’ve changed the names!

By targeting a Blog at a specific client, they will engage with it very much more than your general Blog and they will perceive it to be adding enormous value to the relationship.

Service Blogs

In addition to a Blog for each of your top clients, you could have a Blog for each service you offer. So for example, you could have a Pensions Blog, a Mortgage Blog and/or an Investment Blog. The possibilities are endless.

Another idea is to turn your frequently asked questions (FAQs) into a Blog. Each time a client asks a question, the answer to which could be of value to others, add it to your Blog – or set up a special FAQ Blog.

Graham Jones also suggests that you add a list of your favourite websites in Blog form. Every time you find a website you like and which your clients could benefit from, you just add it to your Blog.

Simple, effective and a nice way to add regular content to your Internet presence.

Here’s a tool to further raise the profile of your Blog on the Internet:

http://www.blogburst.com/

Introducers’ Blogs and Mutual Blogging

Just as you have posted articles on other websites and that you have your own page on introducers’ websites, try to find other organisations that have a Blog and ask if they could mention and link to your Blog from their Blog. I.e. ask them to Blog about you. I would only recommend that you approach Blog owners that are in a related business such as one of the Professions, and make sure you offer to return the favour.

I mentioned earlier that it is important for much of the content of your website to be provided by your users/clients and that it should be interactive. You can enable this to happen by letting people add their own content to your Blog. This is a facility that

you can switch on and off, and is not recommended for new Bloggers as you need to spend time on moderating what others write.

But in time, when your Blog has a loyal following, you can open up your Blog to your clients and use it as a general feedback mechanism. You’ll be amazed at how powerful this is, and the feedback that you’ll get will be rich in its value to you and your business.

Your clients will tell you all sorts of things in your Blog about how they feel about financial issues. They’ll tell you what you’re doing well, what you’re not doing so well and they’ll give you ideas for new services. At first thought you might not be comfortable with this, but it is the way forward.

Whether you like it or not, there are already a wealth of websites where consumers are commenting on the service they receive from shops and professional service providers. And they are doing it behind your back right now. It’s better that you are in control of this and provide a Blog or client forum where you can interact and engage with them.

This is your first step into creating your own ‘Social Network’ – a place where you can build Community around your Brand, your company or your service. More on this later.

In short, Blogging can be a very powerful tool for IFAs, and can be used in a variety of different ways to add value. One IFA I know even uses a Blog as a kind of project management tool. It is password protected and only visible to himself and his staff, but they use it to add notes, ideas and messages to each other. It can be accessed from anywhere in the world including on mobile phones.

Even if you don’t have a website, you can go to Blogger or WordPress right now and have a Blog set up in less than 5 minutes. Post comments (and even pictures) on it on a regular basis, and be amazed how powerful it becomes as a marketing tool, as a communication mechanism and as a vehicle for adding value to clients.

And yes, you can even post audio to your Blog direct from a telephone or mobile.

http://www.audblog.com

Just as you promote your website address on your business cards and your notepaper, I would also add the URL or address of your Blog there too. You can also use a ‘Ping’ service which alerts search engines to the existence of your Blog. There’s a good one at Blog Explosion which is a Blog Directory:

http://www.blogexplosion.com/

Other Blog Directories include:

http://www.blogcatalog.com/ http://www.bloggernity.com/ http://www.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/Directories/ http://www.blogdirs.com/ http://dir.blogflux.com/ http://www.britblog.com/

It’s worth remembering also that one of Google’s search tools is Google Blog Search. Increasingly Blogs are used as sources of information by consumers, journalists and others, so if you don’t have a Blog you are lessening your chance of being found on the Web.

http://blogsearch.google.com/?tab=wb

One thing you can do to kick-start Google into finding you is to register your website address at Google.com.

http://www.google.co.uk/addurl/?hl=en&continue=/addurl or here:

http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

You can also check first if your site is already being indexed by Google here:

https://www.google.com/Webmasters/tools/sitestatus?hl=en_GB

And at this link, there are other tools you can use to get your business listed on Google Maps, Google Base, Google Video and Google Books:

http://www.google.co.uk/services/

iGoogle

Another clever trick you can do is based round iGoogle at http://www.google.com/ig or http://www.google.co.uk/ig where you can create your own Google home page that is populated with the content that you want – including RSS feeds of news, weather, Blogs and a wealth of applications from jokes to funny videos, gas prices to information on healthy eating.

If you have an RSS feed on your Blog or website, you can feed the content into your iGoogle home page. The theory is that because it’s a Google Web page, Google will index it. This is a new one on me, so I don’t know if it works yet, but Internet expert friends tell me they are trying it too.

Again, it’s very easy to do and needs no special skills. It took me twenty minutes maximum to set up my own iGoogle home page, and I’m now watching to see if it has an affect on my search engine rankings.

You can also do the same thing at Yahoo. If you go to http://www.yahoo.co.uk and then set up a My Yahoo! Account, you can create your own page by pulling the content of your choice, including your own RSS feeds from your Blogs and websites.

Amongst the iGoogle tools is a ‘Gadget’ tool. Here you can create a Gadget that you can share with friends and colleagues and have pieces of information about yourself appearing on their websites. It feeds information that you provide to them, so they can keep tabs on your news.

I’ve not yet seen this used in a business context, but I’m sure there are applications for it. Again, because it’s a Google product, the theory is that your content in the Gadget will be indexed and help to make you easier to find in search engine results.

The Open Directory

The Open Directory is a directory of Internet resources at http://dmoz.org/, and you’ll find instructions for submitting your site at http://dmoz.org/add.html.

The directory is managed and updated by real people but they don’t accept every site. However, many Internet experts feel that it’s worth submitting your site, so give it a go. I’ve submitted all my sites to the Open Directory.

Identify your Keywords

Earlier we mentioned the importance of hyperlinking key words that are associated with your business back to your website (e.g. from a page on an introducer’s website). So it’s important that you spend time identifying what these words are. From here on I’ll refer to them as ‘keywords’.

In short, these are the words that summarise your business activities – and which you would expect people to type into Google when they are searching for expertise like yours. Brainstorm all the words that you associate with your business, and then boil then down to around fifteen that really sum up what you’re about. Then try to imagine how people searching Google might write them. Some suggestions: •

IFA in Dorking

•

Financial planner in London

•

Fee-free mortgage advice

•

Pension planning expert

•

Experts on inheritance tax planning

•

Buy-to-Let mortgages

•

Commercial property loans

•

Etc

If you have niche expertise in a specific area, try to work out the words that people will use in the search engines.

Having chosen your keywords, it’s important to get them into the text on your home page. Try to weave them into a good welcoming statement about your business. Ideally, your most important keywords should be within text that is near the top of the home page of your website.

Google reads website pages from the top down, and some experts suggest that your first 200 or so characters on your website are the most important. Those 200 characters include any text within drop-down menus, so if you have a menu bar at the top of the page before your keywords, the chances are your keywords may not be picked up. I’m not saying they won’t be picked up by Google, but you do need to have them as high up the page as possible.

Remember I said earlier that Flash animation can impact your home page’s visibility to Google? Again, the animation may look pretty, but check with your website designer that it’s not getting in the way of your keywords.

You should also consider a different or varied set of keywords for each page of your website. Yes – each page. Of course, if you have articles and a Blog on your website, try to make sure that they also include your keywords. Some people write articles specifically to get their keywords onto the page.

Whilst your keywords should be included within the text of each page (particularly your home page), you also need to get them into the ‘meta tags’ within the actual code of your website. If you have any knowledge or skill at all in creating Web pages, you’ll probably have at least some idea of what I’m talking about, but if not it doesn’t matter. Simply ask your website designer if he/she has optimised your Meta tags, and if not give him/her your keywords to include in the code.

Some say that your tags are not as important as they once were in optimising your site for Google, but in my experience, every little trick helps. And to be quite honest, my own experience suggests that having optimised tags is better than leaving them empty. I have one website that’s been up for years, and the tag content alone consistently keeps the site high in search results.

If you want to have a look at your tags right now - go to your website, place your cursor over your home page, right-click your mouse and click on View Source. A window should open which shows a load of computer code. Near the top somewhere you will see something like this: <html> <head> <meta name="Description" content="John Smith IFA Limited, experts in pensions, investments, mortgages and financial planning."> <meta name="Keywords" content="IFA in Manchester, Pension planning experts, Investment experts, etc etc <title>Professional, friendly and approachable independent financial advisers in Manchester</title>

Each website looks slightly different, but basically these are your tags. If you’ve got nothing in the “Description”, “Keywords” and “Title” tags, I suggest you add something soon. Again, try to match the keywords in your tags with the keywords on the visible page. The Title tag carries a reasonable amount of weight with Google, so if nothing else make sure you’ve got that one done.

Keywords within headings – both page and paragraph - are also important, so think carefully when putting your pages together.

Do not just list out your keywords on your Web pages – make sure they are integrated carefully into your paragraphs and text. Some people try to cram multiple keywords onto their Web pages in the hope that Google will index you higher than other IFAs. This does not work, and if Google spots you trying to trick the system, you could even be banned from the listings. I’ve known some people type the keywords in white onto a white background to try and make the words invisible to the human eye but visible to Google. Don’t do this either!

AdWords

Google also offers a service called AdWords where you can make sure that your website appears high up in search results.

These results appear on the right hand side of Google results under Sponsored Listings. With AdWords, you are advertising your business, but only pay when someone clicks on your listing. This can be an excellent way to get you high up on the listings, but my personal feeling is that most people searching the Web are aware that these are sponsored listings and would rather initially click on the natural results that appear on the left.

At the moment, there are very few IFAs that use this Pay-per-Click system, so it could be a good use of your budget. You don’t even need to have a website to use AdWords! Have a look at this link to find out more: https://adwords.google.com/select/Login?sourceid=bizsols&subid=uk-et-bizsols_newF&hl=en_GB

Again, it is believed that if you put some of your keywords in bold on the page, they are more attractive to Google. Personally I’ve not seen this make any difference, but lots of people say it works.

‘Keyword density’ is something you’ll hear mentioned from time to time. You can waste many hours trying to get your key keywords mentioned more than other words

on the page, and placed in the right place – at the risk of ending up writing a page of nonsense that your readers can’t understand.

Readability is important. It’s no good if someone finds your website at the top of Google, but goes elsewhere because they don’t know what you’re talking about. If you’re sweating about keyword density, go to Google and type in ‘free keyword density tools’ and you can enjoy hours of fun analysing your site.

But what is worth spending some time on, is finding out what words your target market are actually typing into Google. Yes – you can find out what the punters are searching for.

Here are some tools you can try (some are free):

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal http://www.wordtracker.com/ http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/keyword-suggestion-tool.html http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-list/ http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/

Tag generator:

http://www.promotemylink.com/tools/metagen.cfm

Google search for keyword tools: http://www.google.com/search?q=keyword+tools&rls=com.microsoft:en-gb:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7SNYK

Keyword list generator:

http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-list/

Google traffic estimator:

https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox

Two more things on keywords

If you have a Blog – either on your own website or on sites like Blogger, WordPress or on a Social network like Ecademy.com (more on this later), make sure that you have a signature which you include at the end of each post you make. A bit like the signature you have at the end of an email.

Again, because Blogs are an online publication, try to include some of your keywords within your Blog signature. If your Blog is on Blogger or a site other than your own website, hyperlink the keywords back to your website. All being well, Google will follow those links.

Finally – it’s a simple fact of life that not everyone can spell! When choosing your keywords, take a moment to think about which words might be spelt incorrectly when people are searching for them on the Internet. And it might not be that they can’t spell – they might just be typing in a hurry.

Whilst Google has a system for recognising words that haven’t been spelt correctly, you should also consider including subtle variations of your keywords to include within the keyword tag as described earlier.

For ‘Inheritance tax’, you could consider any of the following variations within your keyword tag:

Nheritance Iheritance Ineritance Inhritance Inheitance Inhertance

Inheriance Inheritnce Inheritace Inheritane Inheritanc Ibheritance Ihheritance Ijheritance Imheritance Ingeritance Inyeritance Inueritance Injeritance Inneritance Inberitance Inhwritance Inh3ritance Inh4ritance Inhrritance Inhfritance Inhdritance Inhsritance Inheeitance Inhe4itance Inhe5itance Inhetitance Inhegitance Inhefitance Inheditance Inherutance Inher8tance Inher9tance Inherotance Inherltance

Inherktance Inherjtance Inherirance Inheri5ance Inheri6ance Inheriyance Inherihance Inherigance Inherifance Inheritqnce Inheritwnce Inheritsnce Inheritxnce Inheritznce Inheritabce Inheritahce Inheritajce Inheritamce Inheritanxe Inheritande Inheritanfe Inheritanve Inheritancw Inheritanc3 Inheritanc4 Inheritancr Inheritancf Inheritancd Inheritancs

Obviously, donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t put words that are spelt incorrectly on your home page where they are visibleâ&#x20AC;Ś

There’s even a tool you can use to generate misspellings: http://tools.seobook.com/spelling/keywords-typos.cgi

More on Website content

Earlier we listed out some things you should consider including as part of your website. As a reminder, the objective is to add great content that is attractive to both Google and consumers. Once the latter have arrived at your site, you want them to find it visually appealing, well set out and ‘sticky’ to hold them there as long as possible.

One of the key tricks to hold people there is to give them things to do. For example:

Surveys and Polls

A short poll or survey on some aspect of financial planning – a great way to discover the issues people are concerned about.

Search Box

Not only can people search your site for specific information, but you receive an email telling you what people are searching for. This will help you to provide the content they are looking for.

Recommend This Site or Tell-a-Friend Box

If someone likes your site, you want them to tell their friends, family and business colleagues all about it. Again, every time someone uses the tool, you receive an email telling you who they have recommended you to.

Quote of the Day

There are many sites that will send you a motivational quote every day in your email, such as http://www.quotationspage.com/qotd.html or http://www.coolquotes.com/.

You could also use a service like Brainy Quote that feeds them straight into your website. See http://www.brainyquote.com/link/

Guest Book

Encourage people to leave a message just like in a real Guest or Visitors Book. This way, you can build a list of possible new contacts.

Guest Map

Another tool is a Guest Map, where people are able to place a pin in a map whilst leaving their contact details.

Client Map

You could also have a Client Map with pins to show where people are based around the UK/World. This also has the affect of helping to create a sense of Community amongst your clients and around your brand. More on this later.

Email newsletter Opt-in

Offer a regular email newsletter in exchange for people leaving their email address. Keep in touch with them, your existing clients and professional introducers with a

high quality email newsletter. Don’t worry if you haven’t got the design or technical skills to do this – simply use a free service like http://www.constantcontact.com.

All you need to do is upload your contacts, choose from one of a wide range of high quality email templates, add your logo, upload your contacts and away you go. You even receive a range of valuable statistics showing how many emails arrived, how many were opened, how many bounced, how many people clicked on links within your email and much more.

Constant Contact is the service that I use and I have been extremely pleased with it.

They are currently offering a free 60-day trial for new users – after which you can use the service from as little as $15 per month depending on the size of your mailing list.

After you have been sending out your email newsletter for a while (several months), you could consider offering a Premium Newsletter. If people have been used to you sending them a good quality newsletter on a regular basis, and after a while you offer an even better one at a small charge, it is very likely that many will want to upgrade, thus giving you a new income stream.

The best place to position your Email Newsletter registration box is towards the top left of your home page. It’s not compulsory to put it here – it just gets more take up in this position.

Many of the tools I have described above are available as free plug-ins to your website. If you have put together your own website using Microsoft FrontPage http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/frontpage/default.aspx, or Adobe’s Dreamweaver http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/, you will have some knowledge of how to add plug-ins, but if not your website designer will.

There are many websites out there, where you can pick up a rage of free tools and resources, and one of my favourites is Bravenet at http://www.bravenet.com.

Testimonials

A little more on testimonials. It’s very important that you include comments from happy existing customers on your website. Many IFAs are not comfortable doing this, but it is essential that you do, and is part of helping to build your profile and reputation on the Web. Very often a testimonial will get picked up by Google, and if it includes a couple of your keywords in it, there’s a good chance that it will appear in a Google search result.

This is important because testimonials – i.e. something that someone has actually said, come over as having greater weight and authority – thus increasing the likelihood that it will be clicked on.

Testimonials come in varying degrees of quality. For example:

Poor testimonial:

“We met John Smith IFA for the first time last week. They came over as professional and made us feel very welcome with a nice cup of tea. Thank you.”

Good testimonial:

“We’ve been clients of John Smith IFA for five years. They are clearly experts in investment, and our portfolio has increased by 900% in value over the period.”

I’ve over-cooked the examples deliberately to try and get across the point that testimonials must say how you have helped people. This, after all is what you do.

Whilst I’ve said that ‘people buy people’ is all important, a testimonial must focus on results. Take a look at advertisements for weight-loss products to see what I mean. A good testimonial must say how much money you made, how much weight you lost, how much further you can drive a golf ball, how much tax you’ve saved… You get the picture.

If necessary, consider writing your own testimonials and offer clients a selection to choose from. Very often they will be happy for you to choose one yourself, or they will write something very similar. Again, you might feel a little uncomfortable doing this, but it’s done all the time – particularly in the publishing world.

Also – you’ll always get some testimonials, but very few IFAs actually ask for them. Again, this tends to be a British thing in that we often don’t like to trouble people, but testimonials are important.

Get into the habit of asking for them and build a referral mentality. The ultimate book on how to do this is Get More Referrals Now by Bill Cates. Bill is an expert of generating referrals, and his specialist market if financial services. You can find the book in the IFA Life Bookstore at http://astore.amazon.co.uk/ifalife-21

You should be aware, that given the interactive nature of the Internet today, many people may be leaving you testimonials (or exactly the opposite) without you knowing about it.

The growth of online forums and rating sites is enabling consumers to comment on service providers themselves. Until recently, only journalists and professional reviewers would comment on and rate products and services, but now anyone can do it. So it’s important that you take steps to be aware of what people say about you online and are in control of it. You can do this with Google Alerts.

Firstly, go to Google.co.uk. Click on More and then on Alerts (i.e. here: http://www.google.co.uk/alerts?hl=en) .

Go to the box that says Create a Google Alert and type in your own name as your first Alert. Set it to Comprehensive and As it Happens. Do the same for your company name and for your colleagues’ names.

Google will now send you an alert by email every time one of your Alert terms appears anywhere on the Internet. If your name is John Smith, this may not be particularly valuable to you, and whatever your name or company name, you will

initially receive a lot of alerts that are not relevant. But after it settles down, you will find this service quite useful. And if anyone does write about your service somewhere online, you will pick it up and receive a link to it.

If you write articles, or send out regular Press Releases, this tool will also help to tell you what publications your material is appearing in.

Online Reputation

You should also seriously consider offering your clients and site visitors the opportunity to write about your service.

There are three ways to do this.

1. Ask for testimonials and constructive feedback in the normal way 2. Create an online forum for your clients 3. Open an account with RapLeaf or another reputation management tool

RapLeaf provides a ‘button’ which you can place on your website or your profile in a Social Network, which people can use to rate their experience with you. You can also look up other people’s reputation with the system and you can challenge comments that people have made about you (if necessary).

http://www.rapleaf.com/

This might all sound a bit scary, but the system works well. As Rapleaf say on their website, if you leave feedback for others, they will leave feedback for you.

It will also be commonplace before you know it. In fact, if you have ever bought or sold anything on eBay, you will probably be aware of the rating system they have. By using this you can see which people have a good reputation before you enter into a transaction with them.

Ecademy - the Social Network for business people also has a simple reputation tool, where members can give someone a rating for a variety of good deeds.

Online Forums and Business Clubs

I also mentioned starting an online forum as a place for people to leave you feedback. And now we’re getting into the really clever stuff, and what is the future for both the Web and for IFAs to market themselves, add value to their clients and to obtain valuable feedback on a whole range of different areas of their business.

What is a forum?

Your forum can be a part of your website where you, your clients (and anyone else you invite) can interact with each other. It can either be visible to anyone who visits your site or in a password protected area where only (say) your clients can see it.

Depending on your service proposition, you might want to make your forum available to just a select group of clients. It’s up to you – but if you segment your clients, you might want to make the forum available to just your top clients. You might even offer access to the forum as a chargeable service. There are no hard and fast rules.

Your website designer can create a forum from scratch, or they can get one off the shelf from somewhere like Bravenet. Some are free too! Alternatively, you can create a forum or club within a Social Network like Ecademy or Facebook.

Ecademy.com is a global business network with something approaching 200,000 members all over the world. Ecademy also has over 3000 clubs and groups, and members can create their own which are either open to all to see and join, or which are kept strictly private.

I run nearly 40 clubs – most of which are my own, and some which I run on behalf of others like Reuters, Zopa, Passion for the Planet DAB Digital Radio and the sales

recruitment company Simply Sales Jobs. I also run an online club and forum for ECVV.com – China’s leading B2B online marketplace.

Of course, just setting up a club is no guarantee that anyone’s going to join. But as long as there is great content and things to read and do, people will join – guaranteed! If you already have a good reputation for adding value with your clients, why wouldn’t they want to join your club?

The companies that I run clubs for, all have their own products and services to sell. But they are setting up these online business clubs or ‘Mini Social Networks’ as a smart way to interact and engage with their target customers. They could just as easily plaster banner advertisements for their services all over the Internet - but by adding value and engaging with people in a club, they: •

Make themselves look good

•

Enhance their reputation and

•

Build a compelling profile on the Internet.

And IFAs can do this too. You can set up an online business club for the benefit of your existing clients and/or anyone who wants to join. You could call it (say) The Sussex Money Club or the John Smith IFA Money Club – or whatever works well for you.

If set up on Ecademy, all the functionality you need for a good club need is provided. Within your club, you can create Blogs, post articles, ask questions, create links to other resources and generally add value to the community.

Adding value is what it’s all about. And the more people that see what you are doing in your club, the more people will want to join it – so it acts as another powerful referral tool for your business.

Within your forum/club/mini social network, you will be amazed at what will happen. People will respond to your postings, they will tell you good things about your

business, they will tell you what other services they would like from you and they will tell you things you are not expecting. Whatever they tell you, the information will be incredibly rich in its value to you.

The icing on the cake is that because of all the good content and activity going on within your club, Google will make regular visits which will help to push you further up the search results.

Having said that, if it is a private client forum, you can keep it just that and set it so that Google does not index the content. Clubs that are set up on Ecademy have this facility.

After a while, you could also consider taking selective advertising within the pages of your club – perhaps from local businesses. And again – remember to ask your business introducers to create links to your club. If your club is hosted somewhere like Ecademy, it is often not long before it shows up higher on Google than your own website!

Soon your online club becomes integral to your business. Some people who start clubs also host offline events to complement what they are doing online. They will arrange networking events for local businesses, occasionally hire speakers and invite clients and professional introducers.

And so you start to build loyalty and create Community around your brand – every marketers dream. It won’t happen overnight, but if you would like advice and consultancy on how you can do this within your business, please don’t hesitate to get in touch at philip@calvertnewmedia.com.

More about Ecademy and Social Networks as tools to raise your profile online

A link to Ecademy is further down the page, but in the meantime, Ecademy was probably the first online Social Network. As I write (June 2007) it is 9 years old.

The idea is that you set up a profile page containing information about yourself. No technical skill is needed, though if you have a basic knowledge of HTML, you can do a few extra things – though Ecademy provide some tools for you to make your profile look a bit smarter.

It does not provide a spell check – so write out your profile details in Microsoft Word first, spell check, then copy and paste it into Ecademy. If you fail to spell check your profile or your website, what do you suppose goes through readers’ minds about you and your business?

Remember as you write your profile, that ‘people buy people’ online just as much as they do face-to-face. So make your profile friendly and personal. Tell a bit of a story about yourself and gradually work in your business activities.

Upload a good quality photo (as mentioned earlier) and include all your contact details. Don’t forget your keywords and try to get them into the first two lines of your profile.

Ecademy also suggests that you include 50 other words in a special part of your profile page that sums you up as a person. That’s 50 individual words – not phrases. Most new members make the mistake of writing 50 words that are straight from the jargon handbook of their industry. That’s just plain boring to readers. Include personal stuff like Chocolate, Beer, Manchester United, Tennis, Africa, Rhubarb and so on – whatever excites you. Yes – include some business related words, and guess which ones they should be? Your keywords.

Out of 50 words, include about 15 to 20 business related words maximum. The point of the 50 words section is that many people will find your profile page simply because they have something in common with you, and when they do, they naturally want to find out more about you.

You can then start to use the search tools that Ecademy provides to find other people – perhaps people like yourself, local professionals with whom you can strike up a relationship and perhaps some new clients. As you look through other people’s

profile pages, you will naturally be drawn to their photo, their 50 words and the story they tell about themselves. I’ll say it again – people buy people.

You’ll start to receive messages from people. Some will be people trying to sell you things, but the majority are people looking to try and help you. And that’s good networking. If you’re not interested, politely say so.

You’ll also see that Ecademy has around 400 events around the UK every month, where members can meet, listen to speakers and network with other people.

On the Ecademy system, you can post Blogs and articles. And as we said earlier, this is a great way to raise your profile, to enhance the perception of your expertise and get spotted by Google.

There’s also a MarketPlace facility where members can post classified advertisements for their product or service. Google picks up these too, and before you know it, you are building a powerful and compelling online profile, reputation and marketing machine. The MarketPlace facility also has a space for your keywords which you can add as part of the advertisements. These are ‘pinged’ to Google, and have proved to be extremely powerful in pushing people up search engine results.

If you create a new advertisement on a regular basis, Google will pick up each advertisement and it is actually possible to have a Google entry for each and every advertisement – and so dominate search results. I’ve done it myself.

You have to be a little careful not to post duplicate content each time, as Google can sometimes penalise repeated content.

Local IFA Clubs

There is one other idea I would suggest, that can help IFAs to raise their profile at a local level – and that’s to set up an online club for a group of local IFAs. By hosting it online at (say) Ecademy, Facebook or a Yahoo Group, you can debate local issues

and opportunities, exchange ideas and debate ways to engage with the local community. Your club could also be a useful hub for interacting with the Press and raising your profile in your region.

I’ve set up a service to help you do this called IFA Life Local. Drop me a line if you would like to learn more about this.

I don’t want to overdo the significance of Ecademy – suffice to say that the platform is a very powerful tool for raising your profile, building your reputation online, marketing your business, finding new clients and introducers and building Community around your brand. What more do we want?!

Much of the functionality that Ecademy has is also available on Facebook, MySpace and Xing. You can even go to Ning.com and build your own Social Network if you have the time.

The point is that Social Networks represent what the Internet is really all about today. Interaction, communication, community building and self publishing. As I said earlier – the more you publish (Blogs, articles, comments in clubs etc), the more likely it is that you will be found. The less you publish, the less likely you will be found.

Whilst the Internet is a ‘very big place’, if you know how and you know where to be seen, it’s quite easy to become highly visible online.

If you would like an invitation to Xing (see below), please send me an email to philip@calvertnewmedia.com

To find me on Facebook and sign up free, go to http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=635911160

To find me on Ecademy and also sign up for basic membership free, go to http://www.ecademy.com/user/philipcalvert&xref=53930

Xing takes itself quite seriously - not too many laughs but loads of useful business contacts around the world. In the short time that I’ve been a member, I’ve made one contact that will potentially prove to be of huge value to my business. And they contacted me out of the blue after finding and reading my profile page.

Facebook is more for fun than anything else – but there are some excellent networking groups and tools worth looking at. Many business owners are using it as their online networking tool of choice. You’ll even find some IFAs there at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2549415341

My networking tool of choice is Ecademy, which is packed with amazing functionality that will help you to do everything I’ve just described. The Club functionality is superb – and a perfect way for IFAs to create their own client forums. Drop me a line if you would like help and advice.

To network with other IFAs on Ecademy, join free at http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=club&c=1846&xref=53930

Business Scene

Business Scene is another Social Network of sorts which you can use to build a presence locally and to raise your profile. I say a Social Network of sorts, because it has some similar functionality, but is more of a high quality, interactive business directory where you can find events and content that is relevant to your profession.

You can also post articles and classified advertisements, and Google is visiting on a regular basis. Membership levels are growing fast and I predict big things from the site. In short – excellent if you want to use it as a business resource and to help build your profile online.

Go to http://www.business-scene.com, sign up and use the code IFA6 for 6 months free membership. Once you’re in, navigate to the Financial Services group.

There are increasing numbers of online local Business Directories. Seek them out and join as many as possible. This link will help: http://www.google.com/search?q=Local+business+directories&rls=com.microsoft:en-gb:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7SNYK

Craig’s List

One of the most popular sites in the World is called Craig’s list. It’s not the prettiest site you’ll ever find, but millions of people (particularly) in the USA use it to find and to sell products and services.

The UK site is at http://geo.craigslist.org/iso/gb. There, I told you it wasn’t pretty!

It’s not used much by the financial services community just yet – but it will in due course. Get in early.

eBay

Whilst you’re thinking about using Craig’s list as a promotional vehicle, you might as well get your head round using eBay too. Again, it’s very early days for financial advisers to be using eBay, but I just found 108 references to ‘Mortgage’ there, and that did include some mortgage brokers.

I guess the point I’m making here, is that today’s Internet-savvy consumer frequents sites like this constantly. They are looking for goods and services – and the websites are integrated into the fabric of their lives. So why shouldn’t an IFA use them too as a way to find new clients and to raise their profile?

Again – use sites like these to drive people to your main website – where perhaps they will find services that will be attractive to them.

Edgeio.com

While we’re talking about listings sites, you should know about edgeio.com. This is a site that lists listings. Yes – it lists listings.

If you place an advertisement on (say) Ecademy’s MarketPlace (mentioned above), edgeio will often re-list it at http://www.edgeio.com. In their own words:

“The edgeio platform aggregates, organizes, and distributes listings of all types. edgedirect enables content owners of all sizes to distribute their listings across the edgeio network and generate qualified leads.”

And that’s fine with me, because Google is a regular visitor at edgeio, and then lists them again in search results! Why does Google visit edgeio? Because their site is constantly being populated with new content that it is picking up from sites like Ecademy.

Expert Sources

As an IFA, Mortgage Broker, Financial Planner or other financial adviser, you are an expert. That expertise is valuable. A good way to show that you are an expert and to be visible to people who need experts (like the Press, other professionals and potential clients) is to join Expert Sources.

At Expert Sources, you create a simple profile page, type in your keywords and you’re done. I’ve been asked to write several articles as a result of my membership, and this in turn has lead to speaking work.

There are currently two levels of membership – Standard and Executive. £30 and £50 respectively for a year’s registration. It’s well worth the money in my view.

http://www.expertsources.co.uk/

Squidoo

This is a bit of an odd one, but bear with me.

Squidoo is a new online tool, where you can create Web pages (they call them Lenses) on, well, anything you want. It’s a bit like setting up a Blog, but with more functionality. You can create content based around your expertise or your passions, and you can add in links to your website, Blog, network profiles and so on.

You’ll find Squidoo Lenses on every subject under the sun, and as part of your overall Web presence, it’s a useful tool to have in your armoury.

http://www.squidoo.com/

Various IFA Directories

I shouldn’t need to mention this, but I’m assuming that all IFAs have joined IFA Promotion and have a listing at http://www.unbiased.co.uk/ . This, surely is the starting place for any IFA who is vaguely interested in being found on the Internet?

As you will know, my personal view is that your own website, Blog or Social Network profile should be the first port of call for people looking for information on financial matters – but if services like Unbiased, My Local Adviser and others exist – you might as well make the most of them.

Where such a service offers an enhanced listing or similar, my advice is to take it. Just like in the Yellow Pages, people are drawn to listings that are a brighter, bigger, better. What’s more, enhanced listings on Unbiased would appear to include your website address. Check back regularly that your information is up to date, and if there is an area where you can add free text that goes beyond the standard information, then make the most of it. I checked a couple of IFAs’ standard entries just now and was surprised to see how little information these firms are including in their profile.

Unbiased have white-label versions of its service on about 50 other high profile sites, so it’s worth getting on there. I know that some IFAs complain that they don’t seem to get any enquiries through the service, but if you’re not on there you’re guaranteed not to receive any! IFA Promotion also does a lot of offline promotion as well, so they are working hard to help the IFA community.

I also like My Local Adviser a lot at http://www.mylocaladviser.co.uk.

It is a nice, simple, clear website with not too much clicking to be done by the consumer to find an IFA in the area. Again, check back to the site regularly to make sure your details are up to date. You can register or update here: http://www.mylocaladviser.co.uk/financial_adviser.aspx

The Personal Finance Society also has a good Find an Adviser service for consumers – though after you have found the site, it’s currently two further clicks until you get to the Find an Adviser tool. Note the snappy URL of the page:

http://www.thepfs.org/8_Find/8-0_Find.aspx?pageid=16&nav1=12&sid=2

It was then a further 7 clicks to find an IFA who offers holistic financial planning within ten miles of my post code. Having found the IFA of my dreams, the 8th click revealed very little information about that IFA – though it did take me to their website on the 9th click.

The PFS is working very hard to raise the profile of IFAs which is to be commended, though I think they could raise the profile of their own search tool.

It’s not perfect by a long way, but it’s worth also looking at AdviserMap at http://www.advisermap.co.uk, which offers a very simple service to find an IFA in your area.

What you get is a Google map of the UK with pins sticking out of it. Each pin represents an IFA in that area. Just one click finds me an IFA in Fife – complete with their website address.

The site is fairly new, so is still being populated with IFAs, but it is simple, quick and great use of technology. For the purists, it’s called a ‘Google Mashup’.

Professional Speakers Association (PSA)

I’ve mentioned before that the perception of your expertise is all important. For the most part, people who speak for a living or as part of their living are usually experts on something.

The PSA is a fantastic organisation which helps experts to develop their speaking skills. Why? Because speaking is an excellent way to repackage your expertise and to create a valuable new income stream with it.

You might be forgiven for thinking that the PSA is only for people like Tony Robbins, Bill Clinton, William Hague and so on. Yes – world class professional speakers are indeed members – but the majority of members are people like you. That is people who are passionate about what they do, and who recognise the considerable benefits of promoting yourself and your expertise through seminars, workshops and other promotional events.

We can take a lesson from our financial planning colleagues in the United States, who some years ago began to look closely at the process involved from finding a new client, through to commission or a fee ending up in their bank account. Many questioned the cost effectiveness of a process that required an adviser to (quite rightly) jump through multiple hoops when dealing with a client’s financial affairs.

Given all the hoops, some were heard to question why you would ever want to be a financial planner in this day and age. The answer is because you are passionate about what you do and that you are an expert. So, many financial planners decided to stop ‘doing financial planning’ and to start hosting financial planning seminars instead.

Many went from town to town, city to city, hotel to hotel putting on financial planning seminars. Some built reputations like rock stars for their powerful, energetic and exciting brand of financial education. And in this way, advisers were able to impart and use their knowledge – but without having to wade through the normal financial planning process.

At the end of their seminars, audience members almost always asked for further help or a face-to-face consultation. For the most part, the financial planners did not take on these new clients themselves, but passed them on to a senior colleague in their firm.

On some occasions, attendees insisted that they only dealt with the speaker/financial planer themselves – and were quite willing to pay very high fees for their time and expertise.

This is a long-winded way of saying – get on your feet and put on seminars.

One IFA I used to know regularly saw conversion rates “approaching 100%” at his seminars – that’s conversion from seminar attendee to client. And, like in the US, it’s not compulsory for you to look after such clients yourself. Your job is to be the front man – the expert on the stage representing the skills and quality of your business.

‘Cream off’ the top clients by all means – but once they have seen you speak on stage or at a seminar you should only be available to them for a high fee.

By joining the PSA, you will learn about the art of speaking as a means to repackage and sell your expertise in another format. You’ll meet many people from a variety of industries who are doing exactly the same - and you will learn from other more experienced speakers. Regular meetings are held around the UK which are fun, friendly and which teach you a lot.

When you become a member, you can create a profile page on the PSA website – which in turn will raise your profile on the Internet. Even better, is that when you

make your self available as a professional speaker, you will be regarded as an expert in your field and thus able to command higher fees.

In time, you will be approached by conference and meeting organisers, many of whom will pay you to speak at their events. I’m not suggesting that you become some sort of ‘celebrity IFA’ (though I can help you with that if that’s what you want) – but that you take your expertise and passion, repackage it and become in demand for your skills.

The PSA website is at this link: http://www.professionalspeakers.org/

The National Speakers Association (NSA) in the US is here: http://www.nsaspeaker.org/

I also run a Speakers Club on Ecademy: http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=club&c=1869&xref=53930

There are eGuides to help IFAs plan a successful seminar at: http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=club&c=4496

Join the Seminar Selling and Live Marketing Club here: http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=club&c=1771&xref=53930

I mentioned earlier that you should create a personal profile page on your website. I recommend that you also create a page about your speaking activities and topics. Including a page about your availability as a speaker will speak volumes about you and your expertise.

Do not include your speaking fees on this page, but make it clear that you do charge a fee and include information on how people can contact you. For example:

“For information on John’s speaking fees and availability, please contact us at…”

As part of your speaker page on your website, include a section on your experience as an IFA/financial planner and list a maximum of three topics that you speak about. Do not list more than this or you will come over as a jack of all trades and master of none.

Also spend some time thinking up snappy titles for your talks. “The A - Z of IHT” is OK for a seminar you might be running – but not appealing enough for a keynote speech.

Just like newspaper headlines, the title is all important – so spend some time on it. After you have your three titles, include two paragraphs maximum on what your speech is about and how people will benefit by attending. Not what you are talking about – but how attendees will benefit.

As a general point, headlines in all communications are key to getting anything read. Here’s a tool that can help:

http://www.aminstitute.com/headline/index.htm

If possible, include a photo of you speaking. If you haven’t done any speaking yet – have a photo taken of you in front of some colleagues in your office to show you in front of an audience.

If you have a seminar or speaking opportunity coming up, get some video coverage of it and put it on your speaking page. You can also record a talk that you are giving, copy it on to CD and make it available on your website at a reasonable price.

You could also create a Podcast for people to download. I’m writing another book on how IFAs can create new income streams like this – let me know if you would like to go on the mailing list for it when available.

In summary – if you look like you are a speaker, or that you speak as part of your business, it implies that you are an expert who is in demand. If you’re in demand by other people – then you must be a financial adviser worth getting to know. I for one would only want to deal with an IFA who is an expert – and if I see a page on your

website that suggests you are in demand for your expertise, then it’s an easy decision for me.

Podcast

I’ve mentioned Podcasts a couple of times, so let’s have a quick look at this with our friend Martin Bamford of Informed Choice Ltd.

A Podcast is an audio or video recording that you make available to people from your website or download sites like iTunes. Traditionally, Podcasts tend to be recordings of radio programmes or even recordings that people put together to sound like a radio programme. There are Podcasts covering a wide range of different subjects and until recently have tended to be more of entertainment value than anything else.

However, many people are starting to realise the potential of Podcasting as a business tool. Martin Bamford was the first IFA in the world to create a Podcast, and after launch saw weekly downloads of around 5,000 per week. There was even a week when his Podcast was featured in the world’s top ten business Podcasts.

Whilst it might sound a bit technical, Martin discovered that it was very easy to create a Podcast. You need some special software, but it’s easy to find this free on the Internet. We have created a separate eGuide called “Podcasting – a Guide for Financial Advisers” which you can find at this link:

http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=club&c=4496&xref=53930

People (i.e. visitors to your website, clients, introducers etc) can also subscribe to your Podcast using RSS (mentioned earlier), so that whenever you update it or add a new one, it will automatically be sent to their computer, MP3 player, iPod or other listening device.

The point of all this, is that there are a range of Podcast directories, which in turn raise your profile on the Internet.

http://www.google.com/search?q=Podcast+directories&rls=com.microsoft:en-gb:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7SNYK

And if visitors to your site see that you have a Podcast, it gives them something extra to do and listen to – and subconsciously tells them that you are an expert.

Expertise

This ‘expertise’ thing that I keep referring to is very important. To repeat from earlier - if you are the author of a book (particularly business and reference books); it conveys the impression that you are an expert on your subject. If you wish to stand out from the crowd of other IFAs, you need to do things in your business that are perceived as different.

Being the author of something that adds value, will give you that differentiation and help you to stand out from the crowd. Any of the following convey expertise, get you noticed on the Internet and add to your profits: •

Published or self-published books

•

eBooks and eGuides

•

Articles

•

Special Reports

•

Tips Booklets

•

White Papers

•

Podcasts

•

Video Podcasts (or Vodcasts)

•

Audio CDs

•

Financial Coaching Courses

•

Seminar Programmes

Some of these you can give away free and others you will want to charge for – it’s up to you. When you do charge, I recommend that you make some items quite cheap, and others very expensive – reflecting what you feel your expertise is worth.

When charging for downloadable services, you can collect money online using a service like PayPal or WorldPay. Amongst regular users, PayPal is not everyone’s favourite, but I have found the service excellent over the years. They accept all major credit and debit cards and offer a variety of tools to give the most modest of websites great eCommerce functionality.

I have not used WorldPay on any of my sites, but I gather that it is very reliable. The only criticism I’ve heard is that their fees are slightly on the high side.

http://www.paypal.co.uk/uk

http://www.worldpay.com/

Online bookstore

Even if you haven’t got any additional products such as the above, you can still add books to your website. Amazon gives anyone the opportunity to create their own book store which can be plugged into just about any website.

Simply go to Amazon.co.uk, sign up as an Associate or affiliate, and then follow the instructions on how to create your own aStore. You can add any book from Amazon to your store, categorise them and customise the look and feel to reflect your own branding.

You can even upload your logo, so that when people visit your store from your website, they feel that it is integral to your business.

It’s up to you as to which books are featured in your store, but I would imagine that you would want one category containing books that relate to money and personal

finances, with other categories covering whatever you think clients will be interested in. The aStore service will even suggest books for you.

Not only does an aStore add great functionality to your website, but you also receive an affiliate payment for each book sold. Now that can’t be bad.

Very easy and very simple.

In addition to an Amazon book store or affiliate scheme, you should set aside a page or two on your website for your own eBooks and downloadable guides. Make them look professional by giving them ‘virtual covers’. You will probably have seen a virtual cover for this eBook at some point.

Virtual covers also dramatically improve take-up rates so they are worth the investment. There are various designers who offer such a service, but my favourite is Yvonne Tagbo at eCover Creative:

http://www.ecovercreative.com/

In addition to Virtual Covers you can also create real covers by self-publishing your materials. We are now in an age when anyone can publish a book – even if it’s just one copy!

http://www.lulu.com/uk

If you would like to learn how to write a book and find a real publisher, please drop me a line.

Affiliate schemes

Amazon’s aStore is an affiliate scheme. Amazon pays you a small amount when you introduce people to them who subsequently buy something.

It’s very common to see affiliate schemes on a wide range of websites these days, and there’s really no reason why IFAs shouldn’t do the same. Many IFAs already do, in that they will pay local accountants or solicitors a fee or a share of commission for business introduced. However, these tend to be private arrangements.

Once you start getting higher traffic to your website, you might be pleasantly surprised at how many people would be prepared to act as an introducer to you, if you publicised the fact that you have an affiliate scheme. There are literally thousands of people who sign up to affiliate schemes every day and who are looking for new opportunities and they could prove to be valuable new sources of business for you.

Sites that offer affiliate schemes usually add a small link to the foot of their Web pages along the lines of ‘Affiliates’. A click on this will take your site visitor to a page which describes your affiliate scheme, including how to sign up and the rewards that you will pay.

As I said earlier, you may already have arrangements in place. It might be fairly formal, with an official Introducer Agreement – or an informal arrangement that’s based on trust. What I’m suggesting, is that you publish an introducer arrangement on your website. You could even go to a range of special affiliate websites which list out hundreds of different schemes that are offered by a wide range of shops, stores and service providers.

What’s more, you can even sell other people’s products on your website – a bit like the Amazon aStore I mentioned earlier. This will add value to your website – and you make money every time a product is sold.

Naturally, you should choose the types of products you sell with care, and only include products that are of relevance to your target market.

If you do a search on affiliate schemes and affiliate programmes on Google, you’ll find a wealth of different ideas. Here’s one of the best:

http://www.commissionjunction.com/

Skype

If you haven’t yet discovered Skype, it’s time you did. If you would like to make telephone calls to anyone in the world for free, then this is for you. Not only that, Skype helps to raise your profile online.

Skype uses ‘Voice Over Internet Protocol’ or VOIP technology. It is a piece of software that you can download free from http://www.skype.com, which allows you to make calls over the Internet to other people who also have Skype. The quality of the calls is very high and all you need is either headset or a special Skype phone which you can buy in your local PC shop. Even if the person you want to call doesn’t have Skype, the cost of calls and text messages is very cheap.

IFAs can save hundreds, if not thousands of pounds per year on their phone bills, and they can add value to their clients by recommending they download and use Skype too.

An extra benefit for IFAs who have Skype is that a small window on your computer shows exactly which of your clients or professional connections (who also have Skype) are online at the same time as you. For proactive IFAs this is a fantastic tool, and enables you to connect instantly with clients either through the Skype messaging system (a bit like MSN) or by phone.

If you can see which of your clients are sitting in front of their computers at any given moment in time, it also means that they can see you too – and so keep you front of mind.

Skype is also available on PDAs and some mobile phones – again saving you money. See http://www.skype.com/download/skype/mobile/.

Skype now offers a ‘Skypecast’ service at https://skypecasts.skype.com, which enables you to use the system to talk to up to 100 people simultaneously. There’s no cost for it either, and IFAs can use this service to communicate with several clients at the same time.

One application for this could be for an IFA to hold a 15 minute Skypecast (say) every Friday morning – perhaps on a different topic each week. You can promote your weekly Skypecast on your website and it will very soon become part of your regular client communications. Once a client has logged into your Skypecast once, they will be hooked and will probably listen in most weeks.

The service will help to build loyalty from clients and they will inevitably tell their friends, colleagues, business associates etc.

VOIP services are appearing all over the place – and even Tesco are in on the act:

http://www.tescointernetphone.com/

Mt personal recommendation for headsets is Plantronics at http://www.plantronics.com, though you can buy their products at a wide range of high street outlets.

If you are a member of Ecademy or some other Social Networks, you will often see the Skype symbol next to people’s names, indicating a) that they are a Skype user and b) whether they are online right now.

You can also add this functionality/symbol to your website so that visitors have the option of getting in touch with you that way. This adds a little more functionality to your website and tells people that a real person is just a call away.

There is also anecdotal evidence to suggest that Google pays more attention to people and websites that have Skype and who are indicating that you are currently online. I.e. the more you appear to be online, the more likely it is that Google will index you and/or your website.

I have absolutely no evidence that this is the case, but business associates tell me it really works. One thing is for certain, if you have Skype, you are more visible online and more people make contact with you.

Alexa Toolbar

Alexa monitor Web traffic, and publish tables showing which websites are the real movers and shakers on the Internet. See http://www.alexa.com/

Through the Alexa Toolbar, which is a free download, you can see how your own website shapes up against your competition. It will even give you a ranking figure for your website against all other sites in the world (if you’re that interested).

Having downloaded the toolbar, you can also add to the Alexa database, information about your site and other sites that people might visit. Again, this helps to raise your profile, whilst giving you valuable information about the performance of your site.

You can also read and write site reviews and see which other sites are linking to yours – or indeed your competitors’ sites. If there are websites that are linking to your competitors’ sites, then you might want to approach them with a view to striking up a relationship.

The information and rankings are not exhaustive, but you can get a very good idea of how your site is performing against others of a similar nature.

There’s another simple but useful tool at http://tools.seobook.com/general/sesat/ which will tell you how often your site has been indexed by the major search engines against other sites.

Crazyegg

Having got people to your site, you also need to know what’s working well and what’s not. Crazyegg at http://crazyegg.com/ gives you a valuable insight into the performance of your website by: •

Testing different designs that encourage visitors to click deeper

•

Discovering which content increases sales

•

Testing different versions of a page to see which is most effective

•

Seeing where people are clicking on your site in real time

There’s also a heat map to show which areas of your Web pages are most popular or clicked upon and a service called Confetti that shows you the sites people came from and what they clicked on.

There is a free version, plus subscription versions available from $9 to $99 per month. Well worth a look.

Create your own Toolbar

As I mentioned above, Alexa is a toolbar – through which you can access a variety of services – including Search, website statistics etc. You’ll probably also be familiar with the Google toolbar which many people use as a shortcut to their own Search tools.

Well now you can create your own toolbar which you make available through your website. Site visitors, clients and professional introducers can download it and so access a variety of services that you provide. Just like the Google and Alexa toolbars, once downloaded, it sits at the top of your browser and so is in permanent view – complete with your name and logo.

Not surprisingly, you can use your toolbar to communicate with people who have downloaded it. Here’s a list of some of the things you can include in your toolbar: •

Your logo

•

A search box

•

The weather

•

Internet radio

•

An RSS feed reader to read feeds from other websites

•