Category Archives: Fashion
Cape Town Small Business Websites
I am sure I don’t need to convince you that getting your small business onto the internet is of vital importance.
I love WordPress.com because you can have a website where ordinary people can update their content without paying for web hosting, graphic design and web development.
As an example of this concept, I built a new website today using only a free email address from Gmail.com and a free account from WordPress.com.
My new business, Cape Town Small Business Websites, now has a Search Engine Optimized, Mobile-Friendly website with a blog section and a Contact Form.
Cape Town Small Business Websites - Creating websites for small businesses in Cape Town
If you would like my help to get your Cape Town-based small business onto the internet without breaking the bank, then please use this form:
Why you should be using WordPress.com for creating a Web Presence
and the differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org
The Yoga Factor
The quick version:
People need to Find You and Talk To You.
Finding you is called Marketing and talking to you is called Sales.
I have now just saved you 3 years of study at University.
Yes, it is that simple.
A WordPress.com website is the perfect tool for marketing and sales without breaking the bank, especially if you are passionate about your business and would like to get involved with your own online promotion.
I love WordPress.com because you can have a website where ordinary people can update their content without paying for web hosting, graphic design and web development.
Not that those things are wrong, of course, but you can always build up towards having them as your business and brand grows.
Some examples in action:
- The Yoga Factor
- The Lyzyrd Kyngs
- Blk Sonshine
- Crimson Chrysalis
- RockFest Radio
- Billy Forrest
- 1001 South African Songs
- Rhythm Records (The Label)
Some of my pending projects that will be using WordPress.com:
- Triple M Entertainment
- Stars Of Africa Football Academy
- Masauko Chipembere (from Blk Sonshine)
- The Production Person
The long version:
WordPress.com is a hosting platform that utilizes the same WordPress software that anyone can download from WordPress.org.
With WordPress.com, the hosting and managing of the software is taken care of for you.
With the freestanding WordPress.org software, you need to install it on your own server or a 3rd party hosting provider.
WordPress.com Benefits
- It’s free and much easier to set up
- Everything is taken care of: setup, upgrades, spam, backups, security, etc.
- Your website / blog is on hundreds of servers, so it’s highly unlikely it will go down due to traffic
- Your content is backed up automatically
- You get extra traffic from the WordPress.com community
- Your dashboard is secure (SSL) making it even safer to log in on shared networks
WordPress.com Cons
- Provides 170+ themes (and adding more every day), but you cannot upload a custom theme
- You can’t modify the PHP code behind your blog
- You can’t upload plugins
If you are a web developer, or you are happy to pay a web developer for their time, here are the benefits of WordPress.org:
WordPress.org (self-hosted) Benefits
- Ability to upload themes
- Ability to upload plugins
- Great community
- Complete control to change code if you’re technically minded
However, for me, the Cons far out-weigh the Benefits:
WordPress.org (self-hosted) Cons
- You need a good web host, which can get expensive.
- Requires more technical knowledge to set up and run
- You’re responsible for stopping spam
- You have to handle backups
- You must upgrade the software when a new version comes out
- If you get a huge spike in traffic your site will probably go down unless you have a robust hosting setup
Why I love WordPress.com
For no charge, WordPress.com provides web hosting, unlimited database storage with redundancy and backups, automatic software upgrades, community support forums, multi-lingual administration and themes, real-time traffic stats, comment tracking, blog and post rankings and other features not available anywhere else. These features will always be free for blogs started on WordPress.com.
WordPress.com offers paid upgrades as a way to provide premium features without forcing people to host their website / blogs elsewhere. These upgrades are optional.
- Currently over 170 themes to choose from, some are Premium, but most are Free.
- Integrated Statistics on where your visitors are coming from, and a whole lot more.
- Excellent support available from fellow users (on Forums) and WordPress staff.
- Robust server back ups.
- Multiple users, great for clubs, communities, bands and so on.
- Mobile-friendly
Resources for this article:
WordPress.com, WordPress, and WordPress.org
Like this:
Google Adwords Consultant Cape Town
Goal: appear at number one spot of Google Organic Search Results for “Google Adwords Consultant Cape Town”.
Tick.
OK you’ve got a website, so now what?
Image supplied by www.freedigitalphotos.net
Having a website to promote your brand and business is very important, but if nobody sees it then it is not much use.
It is like having a billboard next to a gravel road in the middle of nowhere.
As much as we might like to think otherwise, the world is not looking for you specifically. If they were, they could just type your web address i.e. briancurrin.com directly into the address bar of their favourite browser and up would pop your website.
What people are looking for is solutions to their problems, and if your website offers the right solution, then it needs to appear on the first page of search results.
Assuming that your website is already search optimized (though many aren’t) here are a few ideas on how to drive traffic to your website.
Facebook Brand Pages
Creating a Facebook Brand Page is essential now. These pages work very well for big corporates, but are also proving highly effective for small businesses. A Facebook Page is another portal to your website and when you post comments and status updates on your wall you can include links to your website.
http://facebook.briancurrin.com
Paper.li
This portal allows you to create your own online newspaper aggregating information from the Twitter, Blog, RSS and Facebook sources that you choose. Paper.li automatically produces daily news, which means every day there is at least one new quality link to your website.
http://paper.li/briancurrin
Google Adwords
Over 90% of searches done on the internet use the Google search engine. Adverts appear above and on the right-hand side of search results which try and match what it is you are searching for.
Google Adwords provides a very effective pay-per-click method of driving traffic to a website, and they also supply extensive analytic information to help with the adjusting and tweaking of this online advertising medium.
Are you using any of these tools and platforms to help grow your business?
Like this:
Interview for Rands & Sense magazine (via Michael Currin’s Blog)
Michael Currin interview for Rands & Sense magazine
Social Media in a nutshell
- Twitter is for minute-by-minute news.
- Paper.li creates daily news from the people you follow on Twitter.
- Facebook profiles are for day-by-day news and conversations.
- Facebook pages are for promoting your brand and business.
- Blogs are for important information that gets archived and can be found by search engines.
A blog can also be your website. - Youtube is for watching videos.
- All of the above are also great ways to drive traffic to your website.
Like this:
How to build a cost effective web presence, part 1
This is the first in a series of articles on how to build a cost effective web presence, or how to get your name out there without spending too much money, if any at all.
This series has been expanded from the talks that I present on this topic.
I focus on helping people in the South African music business establish a presence on the internet, and market and sell their music to the world, but a lot of what I discuss can apply to almost any business or organisation. I have clients in various industries including Fashion, Tourism, Travel, Leisure Boating, Event Staffing and more.
What you don’t need
Here is a list of things that are not required for building a web presence.
Remember you are trying to save money, so some of these things are nice-to-haves, that can be added later.
- Web Developer
- Graphic Designer
- Domain Name
- Web Hosting
- Computer
- Understanding of web coding
OK, I hope I have your attention now.
Part 2 to follow soon, but while you wait, please go and create a Facebook profile for yourself, if you don’t already have one. To have a Facebook profile you need to have an email address, so go to Gmail and create one there. If you already have Facebook, but don’t have a Gmail account, please set up a Gmail address any way.
Then we can talk.
Please subscribe to my blog (using the easy form on the right-hand sidebar) so you will know when I next update.
Like this:
The secret of getting permission to share your ideas.
Think of marketing on the internet like attending a conference.
Firstly you could choose not to attend and hope that people will track you down by traditional methods.
Or you could stand in the corner with your business cards and really flashy (and expensive) brochures and wait for people to come up to you and speak to you.
That’s like having a website.
No matter how beautiful it is, you are still waiting, wishing and hoping that people will find you. Of course your graphic designers and web developers are happy because they’ve been paid to create this masterpiece.
Or you can move around the conference and talk to people and hand out your brochures.
Now you are starting to actually keep your website up-to-date and search engine optimized.
Or you can stand up on the stage and talk with passion about your business to a captive audience, people who want to be there and hear your opinions.
You now have permission to share your ideas. And you can engage with people.
But how do you get invited onto that stage? And how do you get invited back?
That’s social media marketing, and it doesn’t happen overnight.
It requires passion and perseverance.
But it is so worth it.
Like this:
The 8 Keys To Success For Facebook Marketing | Jeff Bullas
Facebook has now passed 500 million users and it is a social media platform that cannot be ignored. Many companies are struggling with their efforts to use it effectively. – Jeff Bullas
via Jeff Bullas
Like this:
12 Reasons You Need a Facebook Fan Page and 5 Easy Steps for Creating One
1. There isn’t a limit to the number of fans you can have. This makes fan pages especially valuable for Facebook users who reach, or are approaching, the 5,000 friend limit.
2. It’s free.
3. It gives you a way to talk to and get feedback from your target audience, because like a user profile, you can update your fans with statuses that will appear in the news feed.
4. You can promote events.
5. It’s an SEO boost. Facebook is currently the second most popular site on the Web according to Alexa.
6. You can customize the design using FBML, Facebook’s version of HTML. Check out the Static FBML app for more.
7. You can create brand advocates.
8. You can easily promote it with tools provided by Facebook.
9. The Facebook Pages Insights analytics tool gives you useful information about your fans and their interactions.
10. You can build a community for your clients and prospects.
11. It’s another funnel to your website.
12. You can add unlimited photos and videos.
via 12 Reasons You Need a Facebook Fan Page and 5 Easy Steps for Creating One.
