Ten Areas of Consideration for Do It Yourself Small Businesses Wanting to Get on the Web
I found an article a while back entitled “Web Self-Help for Small Business” by Bill Slawski, posted on January 18th, 2010 on his blog at SEO By The Sea.
Slawski detailed ten areas he had to study and learn in his earlier days as a Webmaster. His outline includes the following areas, with comment Accessibility, Analytics, Business, Communication, Customer Service, Coding, Design, Internet Law, Marketing, SEO, Usability and Writing. The comments by readers and his responses were also worthy of reading. One of the suggested add ons included ‘technology’.
This helped me focus on a topic for a class I just finished teaching for the Buffalo Grove Park District. The ‘Many Hats a Web Business Site Owner Must Wear’ is one of the topics I have been struggling with. I made a daunting list that quite frankly intimidates most people facing the challenge. His article reinforced my opinion.
Here are excerpts of my response:
I truly like your logical approach to organizing this thought process. And perhaps a priority rank order is required with sub topics under each category. Several of the comment issues….However I respect everybody’s opinion. That is what discourse and debate in our free speech society is all about.
It took several years for the ‘light bulb’ to go on in my head… For an established business owner to take away from his business to learn all of this is impossible. I know, I mentor and coach those willing to learn….Each person is different and their learning skills as well.
I read a recent blog about the differences between “Technical” and “Marketing” SEO. It truly explains my forte as a Marketing SEO. My personal exception to your article is grouping marketing and sales into the same category as well as allocating so little space to it. I have been a professional consultative salesperson for almost thirty years. Selling, or getting a signed contract or an oral agreement is not marketing. The applications and techiques are way different.
Getting people to notice your company, product, service or brand to learn more about it is marketing. It is your Google search engine result as well as your landing page appeal. Marketing gives notice of yourself. It is the “matchmaker” which gives salespeople the opportunity to meet and discuss their products and services with prospects. Good marketing brings qualified prospects to the same table with the sales closer. The consultative salesman’s job is to match the prospects needs to the product or service offered. Or, he says there is no fit here (as opposed to the hard seller whose goal is to sell everyone!).
The one thing I know about Web marketing is it is no different than retail marketing. Without traffic there are no prospects. Without prospects there are no sales. Without sales there is no business, or anything else! Just an outline of the facets you omitted in both categories would exceed the space allocated to the extended details in two or three of the other categories.
Read the rest of Slawski’s Article.
