It's not so much as whether you are online, but how you make your presence felt that counts when you're looking to get customers via the World Wide Web.

Bangalore-based Vini Gupta is a post-graduate in child development, now working for an international consulting firm. In the past, she has also taken up other tasks related to her field, like working for a children's Web site, architecture firm, and NGOs. But Gupta didn't always work in an office. When her first child came along, she found herself spending a lot of time at home. Nevertheless, her energy and desire to "keep doing something in life," as she says, led her to search for work online.

Tap the virtual sea of opportunity

Gupta's move was smart. As any Internet-savvy person knows, the World Wide Web represents a sea of opportunity, much akin to a second world for entrepreneurs to tap into. Gupta shares that after much effort, she got her first contract work through naukri.com - to write freelance articles for a US company. They asked her for a sample, she obliged, they liked what they saw, and the rest as they say, is history. Gupta's confidence levels spurred - as she says, "there was no looking back. I knew where and how to find work. Basically, I subscribed to many alerts, newsletters and kept browsing by using better and better keyword searches. I applied to as many places as possible simultaneously because everything doesn't work out."

In doing so, Gupta was making the most of online marketing. After all, how many business calls can you possibly perform in one day in the real world? Irrespective of how efficient you are, the answer is ‘no where near the number of prospective clients you can reach out to online, where geographical distance is no longer a hurdle.' As a result, Gupta worked for several companies in India and abroad as a freelance content writer, choosing to write only for the ones who paid well. While Gupta did not land her current job through online marketing (it was a referral), she believes the online jobs she did were extremely valuable in landing her this opportunity as she had acquired good work experience over two years that helped her build a powerful CV.

Speaking of a powerful CV, most freelance professionals have realized the importance of having a permanent online presence, usually in the form of a Web site; or a personalized page on a social network like Ryze, Linked-In or Orkut; or customized GooglePage; or business blog.

While the options are many, fact is that most businesses zero onto a Web site, and many spend a lot to create a site that works for them. Sadly, there are many myths prevailing about Web sites that stand in the way of instant online success. Internet marketing consultant Samir Jhaveri, who has several successful Websites of his own and a global Web hosting business (http://www.AwareINDIA.net), believes that the biggest myth about Web sites and an online presence in general, prevailing today is the understanding that "If I build it, they [meaning visitors] will come." But unfortunately, as he explains, "A Web site isn't something that will start receiving traffic by default once it is built, irrespective of the money you've sunk into building it. You need to ensure that you generate good traffic by deploying various methods of promotion. These include but are not limited to: search engine optimization, traffic funneling, using PPC (Pay Per Click), using squeeze pages, using blogging, RSS and Web 2.0 technologies like social bookmarking, social networking, etc. You must aim to build not a fancy Website that takes ages to load [who's got the patience to wait, nowadays?], but one that loads fast, and instantly grabs the attention of your prospective client by being customer-centric. This means you've got to clearly communicate on your product or services benefits - what pleasure does it give or what pain does it relieve? In short, tell your visitors what you can do for them, so that they convert into clients, pronto!"

As a tip, Jhaveri suggests you judge how well your website will convert by counting the frequency of the use of the words I, we, ours, us, my name, my company name, etc. Then count the occurrence of you, your, etc. If you win, you've lost!

Is your Web site a non-starter?

Evidently, it is not so much being online, but being effectively online that matters. What does this imply? Anuj Gupta, director, Dimension I, opines "Effectiveness is servicing the purpose!" To achieve this, he explains you must start by asking - ‘What is the purpose of my having an online presence'? Most often, the response is ‘to grow my business.' If such is your aim, your company's online presence will serve the purpose of attracting and gaining new customers if it is well-designed and full of fresh, original, engaging, and relevant information that encourages repeat visits. As is often said, ‘unique content' is the king! Further, by well-designed, Gupta does not suggest having a flashy Web site, but one that has a distinct and clear navigation scheme so that visitors and search engine spiders can easily move around it.

It's all very well to talk about an effective online presence, but if your ultimate focus is online marketing, you may well be confused by common Web-speak that includes jargon such as search optimization, site rankings, online conversions, etcetera. What exactly do these terms mean, and how do they relate to one another?

As a specialist in business development and client interaction who loves search engines (he actually named his dog ‘Google' J) Anuj Gupta heads the SEO division (www.dimensioniseo.com) of his company which caters to over 100 customers globally. He believes that all these words stand for a process, not a one-time job that pertains to maximizing your online efficiency. Apparently, in our competitive world, it's not good enough to be efficient, but you have to take concrete steps to race ahead. Optimizing a Website implies using optimum keyword-rich, appropriately-tagged unique content, design and linkages so as to ensure your site receives higher rankings on the top search engines, which will result in more traffic. More traffic, undoubtedly will eventually improve your online conversion rates (i.e. convert Website visitors into clients). As this is a specialist service, Gupta proposes you employ a specialist to handle this for you.

Let your professional blog speak for your skills

As a telecom analyst, Chetan Patil closely tracks the sector while analyzing the impact of various policy decisions on India's burgeoning telecom users. In late 2005, determining that a business blog would work as a great presentation system for his expertise, he setup http://www.gobroadband.in Patil cites blogs as a useful upcoming media. "Blogs are supposed to be focused on niche verticals depending on the expertise of the contributors," he says, while pointing out that "unlike newspapers, I take pride in saying that 99 percent of the figures / statistics published on my blog are accurate. My readers feel that I present analysis and content which newspapers or other networks don't."

Of course, what helps is that much of Patil's blog posts are excerpts of his expert analysis done for various clients. At the same time, this showcase of his skills has drawn many companies to contact him for his expertise.

We ask him to share a few words of advice about ideal content on a business blog, and he suggests - create an "About Us" page, never plagiarize as fair journalism gets an "A" from Google, be fair in your coverage as biased blogging may get bashings from other bloggers, monetize your blog with Google's context sensitive advertising AdSense or other advertising platforms but never sell Links as this is likely to hurt your blog, and try to present breaking stories. This latter effort will increase your chances of being returned as a top listing in case of related search queries.

What works online, sells online

Patil emphasizes that "as unique content will make your blog popular, update regularly if you want to continue to rank higher One can explore Web 2.0 technologies like Digg, Stumbleupon, Technorati etc to increase the reach and rank of their blog. Quite asides these journalistic techniques to get high page rankings for a professional blog, you need to focus on getting the technical issues right - such as choosing a meaningful domain, descriptive titles, ensuring your site is accessible to as many people as possible (for this do read http://www.webmasterworld.com/accessibility_usability/3548855.htm). When it comes to links, the rule is simple - the higher the number of blogs or sites links to yours, the higher is your blogs page rank. The higher the page ranks of sites linking to you, the better for your blog. Further, references from within an article will have higher weight age than static links appearing as a Blogroll."

Speaking of blogging as an effective Web 2.0 phenomenon and social media that lets a business effectively communicate with the external world, Anuj Gupta widens the scope of business blogging by saying it helps garner relevant and at times eye-opening feedback about your product or service. Blogs have thus become vital tool through which a business can reach, understand and increase its customers.

Jhaveri also suggests creating a squeeze page on your site. What exactly is this? This is a form that requires a visitor to enter his or her contact information to sign up to receive access to some information or product. For instance, you could be launching a new retail product, and choose to distribute free samples to interested clients. Acquiring the contact details of potential clients is a fine way to establish permanent contact with them, and update them of new deals, products or services.

Sometimes, if your professional blog is known to draw many regular readers, you may even be approached by companies seeking to publicize a new product on it. Alternatively, you may choose to make use of an expert's professional blog to publicize your own product or service. For instance, Patil shares that readers of his blog got discount coupons on Madhouse.in (now merged with Seventymm.com) plus a rupee two hundred and fifty Paymate Voucher to try a mobile payment system.

Fact is - unlike our real world, the virtual world is one where there are no traffic jams at any point of the day or night. Quite the contrary, increasing traffic is welcomed by one and all. But as there are ways and means of performing every business activity, including online marketing and selling, we hope that these tips from those who have made it good online help you steer more traffic your way.  

Charu Bahri is an author, freelance writer, columnist and [part-time] manager - projects and information systems at J Watumull Global Hospital & Research Centre. More about her at http://charubahri.googlepages.com

Issue BG83 Feb 08

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