Not to mention, if the point of your site is to convert sales, and sell items, then that sort of goes against the things that your content SEO provider is probably telling you to do on your site.  After all, if you are building your site for search engines, then it is hard to also build it in a manner that will make people want to buy things from you.

Fortunately, there are some SEO experts that have lived in an e-commerce world, basically as long as we’ve been doing SEO.  Very rarely have we had the luxury of just doing SEO for a content site without any real need to show that the work turned into real revenue.  In an e-commerce world, everything is measurable in real dollars and cents analytics.  The best SEO in the world won’t mean a thing if your site is horribly built and can’t convert a visitor once they arrive.

At KaLor, we know SEO.  And we know e-commerce.  We’ve launched e-commerce sites for some of the biggest online retailers in the world, with strong SEO wrapped around rock solid e-commerce platforms.  We’ve also launched neighborhood mom and pop retailers, also with world class SEO wrapped around usually a smaller, easier to manage e-commerce platform.  All have been successful, because e-commerce SEO is what we do best.  Give us a call and see what we can do to improve your e-commerce SEO.  You’ll be glad you did.

I know, coming from the e-commerce strategist that probably seems weird.  After all, people in my “industry” tend to sell social media to anyone and anything willing to spend a dollar with them on a social media campaign.  But coming to you as the independent e-commerce strategist that I am, I am telling you that more than likely, you do NOT need a social media presence. At least, not a significant one.  Now, by all means, if it fits you, go for it.  If it benefits your customers in some way, great.   If you can inform your customers or potential customers by sharing timely information, then you should definitely take advantage of the proper social media tools to do so. A Twitter account is probably something you should have for your business, regardless of size.  A Facebook page for your company is probably not as important for many businesses.  If it means taking time away from other important things, then it should be prioritized rather low on the list of things you need to do today.  

The example that set me off tonight and forced me to sit down at my Vaio and crank out this article was the commercial for Fancy Feast cat food.  I remember the company only because I was so annoyed by the horribleness of the spot that I needed to know who to blame for such a social media debacle.  The commercial was a very uninspired and not very entertaining spot showing a guy about to get married, and gets a message to run home, perhaps because his cat is missing.  The guy breaks out the cat food, and voila, the cat appears with a pendant around its neck that the guy grabs and heads out the door.   There was no conversation, no real story, and it would have blended in as just another terrible TV commercial if not for the words displayed on the screen at teh conclusion of the commercial:  ”See how it ends on YouTube” or something to that effect.   See how it ends?  Seriously?  I’m ticked off that I had to see how it started.   That was 30 seconds of my life wasted on a poorly written cat food commercial.  You want me to spend more time looking up a video to see more that stuff?  No thank you.   And I’m pretty sure you are a cat food company.  Let me say that again – YOU MAKE CAT FOOD.  Do you really need people to be your “friend” on Facebook, or read your Tweets? Or go out of their way to see your horrible TV commercials?

People in marketing for companies need to remember something that they all live when they are sitting at home on the couch.  Nobody wants to watch commercials unless it is during the Super Bowl, and even then, you better bring your ‘A’ game and have something funny and memorable.  Nobody is sitting around the water cooler the next day talking about the cat food commercial, I can assure you.  And if I am around the water cooler, and someone brings it up, and adds in that they went to YouTube to see the rest of the commercial, odds are that person doesn’t have too many “friends” on Facebook to share their story with. 

So now that I’ve vented a bit about the unnecessary cat food social media effort, I’ll try to bring this back in to a level that will help small and large businesses alike.    People don’t want to watch commercials.  They really don’t want to have anything to do with your company UNLESS IT BENEFITS THEM DIRECTLY.   Give me a coupon, give me a free gift, give me some valuable information, heck… just make me laugh.  Going to YouTube to watch a commercial that I didn’t want to be forced to watch in regular television isn’t going to happen.  

I think if people keep that in mind for their business they can be very successful with social media.  And know that perhaps the correct answer is that you don’t need social media after all.   If you can’t provide value to an intended audience, then don’t bother wasting your time with it.  If you have coupons or gifts or good information or even a funny joke, then sure, send a Tweet with it.  Post it on Facebook.  Make a video that may go viral.  But don’t do it just because some marketing firm told you that you need to engage with your customers.  And definitely don’t do it because everyone else is doing it.  That creates bubbles, and bubbles pop.   Those that do things right will benefit, and those that do things wrong will benefit only the marketing firm that talked them into signing that social media contract in the first place. 

And if you still want to know more about what I think, and want to see how this article ends, then just visit YouTube and search for something until you find something I probably forgot to even upload anyway.   Just kidding, don’t waste your time.  And that goes for running your business as well.

Some of this was a calculated effort on our part, as there were some very cool features we felt were worth waiting for from the latest WordPress releases.  Most of it, however, was because we have not had much free time to work on our own site, let alone actually publish any content to us since oh, about January.  So this Labor Day weekend, we made a new (fiscal) year’s resolution to try and make time to make this site look much better, and to share more of our e-commerce and SEO knowledge with our friends out there in the world.

So, while the new look and feel is something we are only partially releasing today (the rest, and much better part is still to come), we want this to be more in line with our new approach.  We’ve taken steps to begin hiring a few people during the rest of the year, and we’re looking forward to continuing to position ourselves as an e-commerce industry leader by making our online storefront a much more presentable place for guests to come and learn, more of a learning destination than a brochure.

While walking down the street in Milwaukee earlier this week, I noticed a hand painted sign on a piece of wood outside of a sketchy looking house, which said…  “Cliff’s Web Site Design”.  I tried to imagine how Cliff could ever expect that sign to generate any business for him.  Heck, if someone found him in the yellow pages and were going to do business with him, I think they would change their mind as soon as they saw this sign in front of the “office”.   A bad image can do more to hurt your business than no image at all, and the same goes for a website and a company logo. 

Big companies can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to have professional designers create a nice image and “brand experience” for them.  But as a small business owner myself, I can tell you that you do not have to spend nearly that much money to get a truly professional image for your business.  As a matter of fact, I’ll be proving it to you shortly.  The logo on the top of this site is one that I made up myself using Adobe Fireworks.  It’s not terrible, but I’m not a graphics guy. I would like a much better and more professional image for what may very well be the fastest growing company in Central Ohio.  Not just e-commerce company, or internet company, or Columbus SEO company… but company. Period.  (just a guess, but 2010 was a good year for KaLor). 

And since I have an extra $100 burning a hole in my pocket, I might as well put it to good use and build a new 2011 worthy image for KaLor.  Yes, I said $100.  And I’ll still have plenty left over to buy dinner with tonight.   One of my favorite web sites that I do business with at KaLor is 48HoursLogo.com.  At 48HoursLogo.com, you can post a project such as a new logo for your company, submit a few details about things you like or don’t like, and within hours have lots of examples from graphic designers competing to win your project.  You rank each as they come in, provide feedback, offer suggestions, request revisions, and work directly with the designers working on the image for you.  And as the name of the sute suggests, you can select a winner in a few as 48 hours.  And your cost for all of this work?  Just under $90.  I submitted a project for the new KaLor Technology logo last night and already have received over 15 logos, 4 or 5 of which I would accept right now if I had to.  They are that good. 

So, needless to say, you will see a new logo on KaLorTech.com probably at some point before this week is over. And I’ll probably also do it on the SEOColumbus.com site as well, pending some exciting company changes that we are likely to be making on that site this month.  But for now, I’ll be thrilled to have access to such talented graphics designers for under $100.  

I can’t recommend them enough, so much so that I am recommending them without even adding my affiliate link to this page.   I signed up as an affiliate with them, and I could add it (and maybe I still will in time), but for now, I just want to share the awesomeness that is 48HoursLogo.com.

Make a difference for your business tonight, and create a project there.  You will have a new image, and to be honest also a little rush of excitement and energy about your company, all within a couple of days.   So set it up, look better, and thank us later.

I’m fortunate to have my family and our health this holiday season, and I hope we are as fortunate to have that for many, many holiday seasons to come as I hope you do as well.  With that in mind, and with our business doing very well this year, we’d like to take this opportunity to give back and help others have a special holiday as well. 

If you know of a family that could use a little help this time of year, please use our Contact Us form here  and send along the details of the person or family you are nominating.  Perhaps we can help them in some way, perhaps food for a special Christmas dinner and toys for the kids, or something that they might need to get through a difficult time.   We’ll take stories up until December 17, and we’ll pick as many folks as we can, to try and help them. You can remain anonymous in your submission if you’d like.

Thank you for sharing and helping us help someone special to you.

Again, you can submit your suggestion by using the form here.

- Joe Rozsa
President
KaLor Technology

This is also my first attempt at embedding a powerpoint presentation in WordPress using the Google Doc Embedder plugin, so bear with me while I configure it properly, and very soon I will have my presentation available to you to view directly below.  Only registered users on our site can download it though, so if you don’t want to register with us, you can still view the presentation.  At some point soon, I’ll put some audio to the presentation so that you can know exactly what I was saying to go along with the slides.