Raise Your Marketing IQRaise Your Marketing IQ

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

What’s the most important piece of your business’s web presence? Your website, of course.

Creating a website requires a good deal of thought; it’s important to plan what information you want on the site, what the layout will look like, and how you’ll connect each piece together.

Think of your website as your hub; it’s what people will see when they look for you. Here are four elements of a successful business web presence that can help ensure that your first impression is a good one.

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Before We Begin

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Your very first step should be to define the goals of your website. Most businesses should have at least three: to create an online presence, to differentiate your business, and to capture leads.

1. Creating an online presence is the most basic reason for building a website. This means building a site that includes your business information, highlights what makes you special, and gives consumers a way to contact you.

2. Making your business stand out takes a more advanced strategy. Maintaining a blog that portrays your thoughts and insights can help your website stand out and help consumers better understand your business.

3. A good business website can be used to capture potential leads. As the site grows it becomes a community for customers and potential consumers. Connect with potential consumers and find a way to continue marketing to them. Your website can be the elevator pitch and your connection the long sell.

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The Website

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With our goals in mind, we can begin to explore specific elements of a strong website.

The homepage will generally be the initial point of contact with your consumers. A good homepage will answer the questions “What do you do?” and “Why should I trust you?” Consumers will make a split-second decision on whether they’ll stay to learn more or go to a competitor. Don’t lose them at the start.

An “About” page can further reinforce the trust factor. Explain exactly what your company does, in-depth. I want to know who you are, why you do what you do, and what makes you special. This page should make an impact and impress your consumers.

Finally, create a “Contact” page. This page should clearly explain to your customers how to get in contact with you. Make sure it outlines your address, phone number, email address, and any other way someone can reach you. You might even want to include a Google Map with directions to your store or office.

These three pages create a basic online presence, but not much more. If you want to set your business apart from everyone else, the best way to do that is to create a company blog.

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The Blog

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For some reason, many business owners shy away from blogs. What they don’t realize is that most business “News” sections are blogs. “Blog” simply defines any continually updated news or content section of a site. In fact, this is technically a post on a blog.

So why is a blog important? For one, it shows that you know what you’re talking about. It helps you identify yourself as an expert or unique. Secondly, a blog is constantly updated. It gives readers a reason to come back to your site. The more contact you have with your consumers, the more likely they are to buy from you.

Also, consumers have become savvier and will search out information. They want more than a simple explanation of what your product does. They want to know how to use your product, examples of interesting things people are doing, and how you can make their life easier.

After you have a site with information and a blog that is ever-growing, you’ll begin to experience a growth in site traffic. It would be a shame to ignore these potential customers. Which leads us to our next step; lead capture.

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The Newsletter

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It’s here that we begin building leads from your website’s visitors.

The first and most important element is a newsletter form. I use Aweber to handle my own personal newsletter sign ups and delivery. I just write the actual newsletter and format it.

There are a number of other services you can use too such as MailChimp and ConstantContact; it simply depends on what you want. Do your research and choose a program you like. The newsletter cost quickly pays for itself. Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to generate sales.

Getting consumers to sign up for your email list means you no longer have to wait for them to come to you, you can go to them. You can offer your core consumers specials and keep them up to date on new products or changes.

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Social Media Accounts

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Another option for capturing leads is social media. Microblogs and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter can help you connect with and contact those within your core community. For this strategy to work, your blog should serve as a central hub. The hub sends consumers to your respective social media profiles to build the connection.

Businesses with a Facebook Fan page can include a Fan box on the site to make it an easy process to fan the business page. If you have an active Twitter account, consider adding the “Follow Me on Twitter” button. These two elements can help turn a one-time reader into a connected consumer.

When you’re building an online presence, the most important aspect is your website. It’s your hub and your first impression. Are you using the right elements to maximize your website’s effectiveness?

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More business resources from Mashable:

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- Social Media Marketing: How Pepsi Got It Right
– HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy
– HOW TO: Choose a News Reader for Keeping Tabs on Your Industry
– The 10 Stages of Social Media Business Integration
– HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI
– HOW TO: Use Social Media to Connect with Other Entrepreneurs

Imagea courtesy of iStockphoto, geopaul, WendellFranks, melhi

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Reviews: Facebook, Twitter, iStockphoto

Tags: blog, blogging, business, entrepreneurship, List, Lists, small business, social media, social networks, web

Recently, a lot of folks have noticed their Twitter pages superseding their blogs in Google search results for their name. Tech journalist Marshall Kirkpatrick has an easy HTML workaround to keep Twitter from becoming your primary online identity.

Having a say in what Google says about you is extremely important these days, especially for professionals such as freelancers, for whom a Google search result of their name is a first impression for potential employers. You definitely want your blog or professional web site to show up before your non-professional social networking profiles. Kirkpatrick discovered a small HTML tag that was missing from his own blog, yet present in Twitter, that could make all the difference:

So the long and short of this story is that if you want to make sure that Google understands your blog to be your primary beacon on the web, then you should add the words rel=”me” to a relevant link on your blog. I’ve added that tag to the link on my sidebar that goes to my feedback page, because that’s a good page for me. It’s as simple as making the link text read a href=”http://marshallk.com/feedback” rel=”me”.

It’s not necessarily a foolproof solution, but it should help (and certainly shouldn’t hurt). If you’ve got any other useful tips to keep your blog or personal site at the top of search engines, let us know in the comments.

The dating arena can be a dangerous place. It’s a battleground out there, and you need every tool at your disposal. It’s not cheating — it’s just using the resources available to you.

Here we’ve hand-picked 10 iPhone apps that will help you navigate the dating minefield and avoid potential disasters. From asking that special someone out, to knowing what fork to use, to how to make a hasty escape if things don’t quite go according to plan, these apps should be part of every dater’s arsenal.

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1. Awesome Pickup Lines

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To get to the dating stage you’ve got to meet someone first. Imagine you’ve just seen the human of your dreams across the room but your mind’s gone utterly blank. There are tons of apps offering pickup lines on the App Store, with some even specializing in pirate, ninja, vampire or robot-themed conversation starters. But we like the “Awesome” offering as it serves up hundreds of tried and tested lines added by users — you know, real people like you.

Price: Free

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2. Date Smart

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You’ve aced the ask, but now need an amazing date idea to really make that crucial first impression. Based on your location or the input of a zip code, Date Smart will generate tons of ideas for what you could do on your outing. Categories include cultural, outdoors, adventurous, romantic and novel, with “first date” options offering suggestions for the yet-to-be-properly-acquainted.

Price: $1.99

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3. Romantic Recipes For Dinner Dates

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He/she has just taken you up on your casual suggestion, “Why not just have dinner at my place?” Now, assuming your noodle sandwich special is not going to impress, this app will provide you with particularly romantic dinner recipes, advice on creating a great atmosphere, as well as some random dating tips thrown in, which we’re less sure about, such as: “Women will ask questions about your prospects. Even if they pretend it isn’t important, it is”.

Price: $2.99

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4. Fine Dining Etiquette – Mind Your Manners

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You may have been dragged up rather than brought up, but your date doesn’t have to know this. Remember the scene in Pretty Woman with the silverware confusion? That will never happen to you with this handy app, as it will guide you through the pitfalls and perils of fine dining. There’s advice on how to order your meal, and that all-important section on “napkin usage.” Good manners are free, you know. Well, technically they’re 99 cents if you get them from this app.

Price: $0.99

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5. Conversation Starter

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When the small talk runs out and you’re a little tongue-tied from sitting across from such a stunning specimen, you may need a bit of assistance to keep the conversation moving forward. This app promises provoking, intriguing and challenging conversation starters that you can use to spice up the dialogue. Having topics readily at hand will also stop you from blurting out what should really be a third date revelation (”Did I mention I collect airline sick bags?”) just to avoid an awkward silence.

Price: $0.99

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6. AnswerWiki

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Everything’s going well, the conversation is flowing, but in your eagerness to match tastes, you’ve just found yourself agreeing that Bob Dylan is God’s gift to music. It’s not technically a lie, as you did own a Bob CD way back when, but the finer points of his huge catalog are lost on you. This sticky situation calls for AnswerWiki. Just excuse yourself for some digital brush up. In minutes you’ll be explaining why you’ve always loved Nashville Skyline, and who knows? In years to come you could both be laughing about it together.

Price: $0.99

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7. Excuse Me

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“Oh really, Robert/Roberta, I had no idea there were so many ways to preserve insects in formaldehyde. Oh, there’s five more methods? Oh, hang on, my phone, sorry… Hello, what’s that? Trapped in a well, you say? I’ll be there right away.”

Fake call apps are a dime a dozen, but this one lets you set a timer, displays the “slide to answer” screen and even offers an indistinguishable male or female voice. It’s ideal for those times when you absolutely, positively have to leave.

Price: $1.99

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8. Taxi Magic

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After a date’s gone well (or if it hasn’t, see #7 above) you want to make as smooth an exit as possible in order to maintain the positive impression. Avoid any awkward hanging around on street corners and get you and/or your date safely in a cab faster than you can say “back to my place for a drink?” Taxi Magic lets you book a cab with the tap of the iPhone’s screen, and offers live updates on where the cab is on a map.

Price: Free

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9. Cover Up

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You know how when you first meet someone you pretend you generate no gaseous bodily emissions? This app will help you keep up that polite pretense. Not to put too fine a point on it, a press of the screen and the app will generate socially acceptable bathroom noises (flushing toilet, running water, hand dryer) to mask any more unpleasant audio.

Price: Free $0.99

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10. 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover

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To use a cliche, breaking up can indeed be hard to do. If you really can’t think of the words, then this app offers you the proverbial 50 to get you out of an unwanted romantic entanglement. With audio clips (so you can hear how bad it sounds aloud, perhaps?) there’s letting-them-down-gently lines as well as harsher options, presumably for those that have done you wrong. If you’re still indecisive, then the “random” feature will present you with one option out of blue. That, or just slip out the back, Jack.

Price: $3.99

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More iPhone resources from Mashable:

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- iPhone TV: Top iPhone Apps for Live Streaming Television
- Top 10 iPhone Apps as Judged by Mashable Readers
- 7 iPhone Apps That Can Save Lives
- 5 Must-Have iPhone Apps for Wine Lovers
- 20 Creative Apps For Your iPhone

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, CREATISTA

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Reviews: App Store, iStockphoto

Tags: dating, iphone apps, List, Lists

We all know that first impressions are powerful things. Billionaire Steven A. Cohen makes the most of first impressions taking a deep breath and holding it before he enters a room. How about you?

Poorly named weblog The Art of Manliness rounds up a few tips for commanding a room, including this interesting nugget from Cohen’s playbook:

Before he makes his appearance, he takes a deep breath, filling all of his lungs. He then holds his breath and walks into the room. As he talks, the air is naturally exhaled. This simple action increases blood to your face and makes you look “more radiant and lively,” and consequently more confident.

By taking a deep breath you force yourself to not only stand up straight, but also give a quick rush of blood to your head, giving you a slightly flushed and cheery look. It might sound silly, but people are always interested in meeting someone with energy and spunk. Just remember to exhale, because no one wants to talk to a corpse—unless it’s Halloween.

Do you have a ritual when meeting people for the first time? Share your first impression rituals in the comments.