SmileyRose Web Solutions

Last week we discussed setting a SMART goal for your website.  This was a sample goal we created:

I would like to increase traffic to my website by 10% and begin gaining 1 new client each month by the end of December, 2008.

Once we know our goal, we can start to set out some strategies.  Marketing strategies are simply high-level thoughts on how to achieve the goal.  Here is a possible strategy we might devise in order to reach our goal:

• Revise content on current site in order to educate site visitors, increase the trust factor, and help potential clients feel more comfortable about using our services.

So this week, take 5 minutes to devise a new strategy to help you achieve your goal.  Don’t forget to write it down!

We wish you great success.

We will, at some point in the not-so-distant future, get around to discussing the recent restructuring within SmileyRose Web Solutions. One of the things we will be sharing with you is how we found an overwhelming need within our client base to help with your marketing efforts, especially online.

One of the greatest points of discussion from our clients stems from the topic of “too much to do, I have no time to read all the information that’s available”. So we are going to start this series of “Website Marketing 101” articles, with the goal of publishing them weekly, and having them take no more than 5 minutes of your time (to read, anyway).

If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there?

Do you have a goal for your website? Does it go beyond “sell more products” or “get more customers”? Goals need to be SMART:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time-bound

An example of a SMART goal for a website might be:

I would like to increase traffic to my website by 10% and begin gaining 1 new client each month by the end of December, 2008.

So take another 5 minutes, right now, and think about what a SMART goal for your website (or your business) would be. Write it down or type it in Word or Notepad or scribble it on the back of your hand. Next week we will start working on achieving your goal.

Until then, we wish you all the best.

Related articles:

•  Plan Your Journey to Accomplishment
• Checklist for a Successful Website
• Techniques of Internet Marketing

Image via Wikipedia Full story here

The First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It’s difficult to understand this judge’s thinking:

The Virginia law “is unconstitutionally overbroad on its face because it prohibits the anonymous transmission of all unsolicited bulk e-mails, including those containing political, religious or other speech protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” Justice G. Steven Agee wrote.

How can SPAM be protected under the first amendment??  Did this judge miss his history class?  Does he not understand the reasoning behind the first amendment?  It is to allow people to speak their minds and not be persecuted by the government for doing so.  How can millions of emails, sent anonymously to people (or “email addresses”, technically) be considered speaking one’s mind?  So now it’s ok to harass and annoy millions of people and hide behind freedom of speech?

As many of you know, our outgoing mail service became unusable a few weeks ago.  Emails were taking over 24 hours to arrive at their destination.  This was not a service outage.  This was a brand new server, with plenty of processing power and more memory than it can every use, being brought to its knees by SPAM.

As individual users of the Internet, we can shrug off the problem, increase our SPAM filtering on both the server side and on our computers locally, and pretend the problem doesn’t affect us.  The problem is, it has a profound impact on us as small business owners.  The costs of fighting SPAM are astronomical.  From SmileyRose’s point of view, we spend probably 20 hours a month on SPAM related issues.  Of course, the SPAM problem of a few weeks ago escalated that to about 40 hours for the month.  But if you look at how much time and money you spend on fighting SPAM, you’ll see that the costs aren’t just relegated to service providers.

We, the people, are going to have to start speaking up loud and clear.  We, as business owners, are going to have to start speaking even louder.  SPAM directly impacts our bottom line, and these days as we watch our profit margins shrink because of the escalating cost of goods, we can’t allow that to continue.

UPDATE: Here is CNET’S analysis of what happened.  Simply put, the law was too loose.  That’s a shame.

Welcome to the new SmileyRose blog.  Here we will be sharing marketing tips, ideas for getting more use from your website, thoughts on getting more visitors to your site (and making more sales), as well as thoughts on industry news and a variety of other topics.

Please feel free to comment on any of our posts, or call or email us.

Best wishes for your continued success.