Marketing Mojo for Small Business | Building a Better Website

Inbox Diaries: Preview Apple OS X Yosemite, iBeacon Comes to Lord & Taylor, and Twitter Experiments with Comments

The Inbox Diaries is a series designed to help busy entrepreneurs keep up with all the latest news in small business, marketing, and social media. I’m scouring my inbox every day for interesting tidbits – so you don’t have to.

This Week’s Stories:

Just Can’t Wait? Join The OS X Yosemite Beta Program
While Apple debuted it’s latest operating system in June, it won’t actually release Yosemite until “Fall 2014.” If you’re an avid Apple user and are finding the wait unbearable, take heart; you can always download the preview! All you have to do is sign up for the OS X Yosemite Beta Program, and you can try the new toys out for free.

In order to maintain an energetic social media presence and an ambition content posting schedule, sometimes we really need to think that every person who sees and engages with our social posts is a power user; those all-important industry influencers who have the power to make your content go viral.

And while that fantasy can certainly help keep you motivated, it’s important to be aware – even if only in the very back of your mind – that it’s not really the case. Do I say this to dishearten you or rain on your parade? Certainly not. But it is important to be mindful of the need to make every interaction with an influencer on social really count.

When you find a good new restaurant or store, you share it with your friends, right?

Same goes for us here at Webs! When we come across a great web product, we love to share it with our readers here on the Webs Blog.

A while back, we talked about how you can use surveys to get feedback from your customers, but wouldn’t it be great if those surveys were quicker, easier, and less intrusive?

Qualaroo helps you serve your customers and site visitors better by easily collecting feedback from them on targeted website pages. The best part of Qualaroo is that your visitors never need to leave your website to respond! At Webs, we’ve seen that Qualaroo surveys typically get response rates of 3-5%, almost 10 times higher than our normal survey response rate!

We have already talked about why your small business website should be mobile and tablet optimized. Not to mention, we just rolled out 450 new mobile-friendly themes for you to choose when building through Webs.

So why are you still hesitant to go mobile?

If you just need a little more convincing, the folks over at text marketer got you covered.

After reading stats like “90% of adults have their phone within arm’s reach 24/7” (Nielsen) and “9 out of 10 mobile searches lead to action” (Search Engine Land), we feel the importance of mobile marketing will be hard to ignore.

As of this week, Webs Pro website owners have a new tool with which to grow their online businesses: coupon codes!

The ability to create customized coupon codes is one of the most frequent feature requests we see. If you are among the business owners who requested coupon codes, you most likely already have a good idea of how you would use them. But if you haven’t considered this option before, here are a few examples of how you might use coupon codes in your own business:

After reading The Definitive Guide to Social Marketing from Marketo, one quote really stuck out to us:

“And I think the one mistake that most companies make, even mature companies in the social media marketing world right now, the one mistake they make is they don’t plan to measure.”

- Jason Falls, CEO of Social Media Explorer

So we decided we wouldn’t leave you, our Webs readers, in the lurch. We know social media is a tricky channel. And while email has click-through rates and delivery metrics, many aren’t sure where to start in measuring a platform that depends mostly on brand awareness and “word-of-mouth.”

This Week’s Stories:

The Atlantic Wants You To Go #Tabless
In a tongue-in-cheek video that serves as a public service announcement about multi-tasking, The Atlantic’s senior editor James Hamblin, MD, implores you to join the #TablessThursday movement. Saying that “single-taking is the new multi-tasking,” Hamblin takes a look at how our tendency to leave dozens of browser tabs open while we work is ruining our ability to actually DO work. Interspersed throughout the comical interview are a few hard facts about focus and productivity:

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon this article describing the connection between ballet and business. Instantly, I was eager to read its contents based on my infatuation with dance and my admiration for all those who committed themselves to the art and “made it.”

As I continued to read the article, I found myself making connections and comparisons between sports to business I had never made before. For instance, I realized an athlete’s career is fleeting, with most and their careers end within a decade. On the contrary, an entrepreneur’s career can begin as a start-up and span twenty or thirty, hell even forty years – and then their business’ legacy could even be timeless.

Today we are delighted to announce a project that our design and product teams have been hard at work on for the last few months – a new collection of website themes! Today on the Webs theme browser you can search, browse, and filter over 450 new premium themes, many with several color variations available.

Why add hundreds of new themes?

You asked for it, you got it.
One of the bits of feedback we hear most often from users is that they want more design choices. Whether you run a small business like many Webs customers, or maintain a personal blog, you want your website to be one of a kind. We hear that, and want to do everything we can to support that objective. Just like our original website templates, these new themes are all highly customizable, allowing site owners to choose their own fonts, colors, background images, and more.

We’ve talked before about creating a LinkedIn Showcase Page for your small business. And what that’s definitely an important milestone in any business’s marketing evolution, what about the entrepreneur who started it? In many cases, businesses start out as one person offering a product or service – like a photographer, accountant, blogger, or a wedding planner. In these cases, the first step might be to make the most of something you should already have: your personal LinkedIn Profile.

Inbox Diaries: Preview Apple OS X Yosemite, iBeacon Comes to Lord & Taylor, and Twitter Experiments with Comments

Tools We Love: Qualaroo

7 Reasons You Need to Go Mobile [INFOGRAPHIC]

A Game Plan for Success: From Athlete to Entrepreneur

ANNOUNCEMENT: Webs Adds 450 New Website Design Themes!

Webs makes small business marketing simple.

Explore the Webs online marketing platform below.

STYLE SWITCHER

Layout Style

Header Style

Accent Color

Webs makes small business marketing simple. Explore the Webs online marketing platform below.

STYLE SWITCHER

Layout Style

Header Style

Accent Color

Webs makes small business marketing simple.

Explore the Webs online marketing platform below.