Chris Ducker

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The Easy-to-Follow, 9-Step ‘Small Business’ Website Checklist

April 30, 2013 by Chris 84 Comments

website checklist

Having a bad looking website, or having a site that doesn’t convey the message businesses should be truly wanting to preach to their prospective tribes, or customers is still something I see happening daily. It’s a shocker!

The New Business Manifesto clearly states, for example, that we now have to be content creators, rather than just marketers. So, it’s important to get the balance between marketing, selling and engaging, right.

All this leads to the following 9 main elements, which makes up the following website checklist, that I believe are imperative for every website to have, in order to become successful and sharable in today’s very social online landscape.

1. Great Looking Header & Logo

Great looking doesn’t mean using ‘flash’ technology, with all the bells and whistles from 2006! It means that your header is simple, clean, effective and above all – memorable. Be sure to utilize your logo properly, and make it the center-piece of your overall header image. Branding is more important today (especially online) than it has been for a long, long time. Note: If you’re building a personal brand, have the focus of your header be on your name – like I do.

In this example from TheMarketingAgents.com we see that the owner, Rich Brooks has utilized great graphical elements to be remembered and talked about. I first heard about this site when Chris Brogan mentioned it on Facebook, than met Rich at NMX in January this year – hes as colorful in person, as his website is (watch out for an interview with Rich coming up soon on the podcast!).

marketing agents header

2. Simple Navigation

Anyone landing on your site shouldn’t have to ‘look’ for the navigation area of your site. Use a simple menu below your header to allow people to bounce from one important area of your site, to another. Be sure to not include any more links than is absolutely necessary. I try to limit all the menu’s on my business sites to no more than five links, to allow people to really ‘click’ and not ‘think’ too much.

thin traffic navbar

In the example above, from the Think Traffic site, you see very clearly that the focus is on being very clear on what each of those links provide. I love the simplistic approach that this brings to not only the design of the site, but also, as a visitor, the way I use it.

3. Opt-In Offer

vsf-opt inIf you’re doing business online in any way, shape, or form, then you need to create an opt-in offer to make sure that people have a way of giving you their email address. As I mention in Day #6 of the New Business Bootcamp (my free opt-in course!) eBook’s are a simple opt-in offer than are easily created and marketed nowadays. Situate your opt-in offer in an easy-to-locate area of your site, so no matter what page people land on, they have the ability to find it.

You’ll see in the example to the right, pulled from my Virtual Staff Finder business site, we give away an eBook, which is 11-pages in length, and does the job brilliantly with an average opt-in rate of around 20 a day. See how the cover of the book ‘pops’ out of the blue border? Just a little effect to catch peoples attention. The absolute perfect place to put something like this is at the top of your sidebar, which leads me onto the next item on our checklist…

4. Sidebar with ‘Sticky’ Content

As you will see from surfing around this site, the information that is in the sidebar on my site is always there (except for a couple of ‘conversion focused’ pages, which we’ll go into in a moment). Regardless of what page visitors land on, or what page they navigate to the information in my sidebar is always there. Always static. For my site this includes my opt-in form, a quick ‘about’ blurb for those visitors that may by visiting for the first time, links to my most popular content and an advert to one of my services. Finally, I finish up with a plugin for my Facebook Community, which is growing steadily into an entrepreneurial resource all on its own.

5. Conversion Focused Pages

These are pages that are set-up with one main reason in mind, and no other. To simply convert.

Examples on this site include the ‘New Business Bootcamp‘ info page (see below for a quick screenshot), and my ‘About‘ page. If you click on these links (wait until you finish reading first, okay!), you’ll see that the pages load up in a slightly different format to the rest of the site. These pages are a lot more ‘plain’ looking. They have a more simpler looking header with no links, and the sidebar is complete missing, along with the footer.

bootcamp opt-in

The reason behind this is because these pages are there to convert people to my mailing list – nothing else. And they work!

Another perfect example of this ‘conversion focused’ page could be a landing page for a webinar offer, or a product sign-up page, such as this one from Darren Rowse over at Digital Photography School – where he is selling his iPhone photography eBook.

6. Video

Video is massive. It’s bigger and badder online than it EVER has been. The ability to show your real personality is never any easier than it is in video. This is the exact reason why every good small business website should contain at LEAST one video in a prominent location – perhaps the ‘About’ page, maybe the ‘Homepage’ – but, please start using video.

social-triggers-derek

In the example above you’ll see that my buddy, Derek Halpern from Social Triggers shows his true personality (anyone that knows Derek will KNOW this is him!), at the same time as promoting an event – and ultimately making money. Just be yourself, offer value and be a little entertaining, and you’ll be off to the races with video.

7. Blog Section

This’ll probably not come as too much of a shock, but I’m a big fan of blogs and blogging for business. The simple fact that it’s the easiest and quickest way to build reputation, authority and personality in what you do as an entrepreneur and business owner is all you really need to know, to force yourself to get started. And that’s exactly what you need to do – if you’re not blogging already that is. Having a blog on your small business website is an absolute must in today’s market place. Make it happen, and enjoy the benefits of creating original, inspiring and helpful content for your customers, and prospective customers.

8. Social Media Integration

sales-lion-social-linksAlong with blogging, and utilizing video, social media has revolutionized the way that we communicate with our customers. It allows us to be ‘on the pulse’ of our industry, the products and services that our customers crave for – and most importantly, it allows us to be able to communicate with with our customers in a quick, easy, relevant and memorable manner.

Simply putting your social media links on your site somewhere (usually the header, sidebar, or footer (like me!)) is sometimes enough – but, there are several ways to stand out online, and you’ll see in the example above, how my friend Marcus Sheridan has decided to get his website visitors excited about connecting with them hime via Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – as well as how easy he makes it, too!

9. Contact Information

One of the easiest ways to build credibility on your website is to include an address, telephone number and any other information needed for people to get in touch with you and your business. By making a point of focusing on this info, you’re sending a message to your visitors that you’re real and ready to hear from them. If you’re a local business, be sure to include a map on your contact page, too – doing this means that people will be able to find you easily, if they are wanting to come and actually visit you at your place of business – just as LevelBrand (a reputation management company in the USA) has done – example below.

level-brandcontact-us

The great thing about your contact page is that you control the way people will get in touch with you. If you want to minimize email, for example, simply don’t include your email address or a contact form – instead, highlight a telephone number, or social media platform that you manage daily.

Need Advice? Want to Pimp Your Website?

Have you recently put together your own small business website? Has this website checklist helped?

Tweet me… and let me know!

Join Me and Pat Flynn for Our 1-Day “Business Breakthrough” Event in July!

April 21, 2013 by Chris

chris & patAs some of you may know I’ll be in the States for the entire month of July, firstly for Chris Guillebeau’s ‘World Domination Summit’, and then later on in the month for my speaking slot at the National Speakers Association’s Annual Convention in Philadelphia.

This is actually going to be the longest period I’ve spent in the US for the last 6-years, so I wanted to make the most out of it. Whilst thinking of things to do with my time while I’m there, the first thing that popped into my head was my buddy, Pat Flynn.

Myself and Pat met initially online, in early 2010. We then got to hang out in person for the first time in November of that year at BlogWorld Expo – and an instant friendship was formed.

Since then we’ve become closer, both as friends, but also as one another’s sounding board for anything related to business, marketing, parenting, and pretty much anything else! There isn’t a week that goes by where we don’t hop onto Skype together at least a couple of times!

We’ve often said how much fun it would be to do ‘something’ together, but have waited for the right something to come along.

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3 Content Marketing Tips That are So Easy to Follow, that They Actually WORK!

April 17, 2013 by Chris 44 Comments

content-marketing-tipsGetting involved with content marketing is one of the easiest ways to create a tribe of fans and followers online, which in turn helps you market your products and services, as well as help potential customers and clients by answering questions, providing support, etc.

I’ve already touched base on the subject on a couple of episodes of the New Business Podcast, with guests C.C. Chapman and Jay Baer. I’m also in the process of putting together a complete guide to working with virtual assistants to help you with the research, creation, publishing and marketing of content online – watch this space!

In today’s video I give you a few tips that have worked really well for me. I mean, this simplistic approach to content marketing REALLY DOES WORK. Check it out below, and please feel free to share it with your buddies if you like it!

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13 Tips for Building a Remarkable Brand With a Podcast

April 4, 2013 by Chris 29 Comments

remarkable-brand-podcast

I recently published a post detailing the strategy I used to get ranked No.1 on iTunes in two different categories with a brand new podcast. It was a very well received post, and I felt it important to elaborate on this subject a little further.

That post focused on the HOW, in this post I’m going into the WHY. 

In other words, why, as entrepreneurs in an increasingly active ‘P2P Economy’ (my philosophy for doing business in todays ‘people to people’ business world) we need to be podcasting in the first place – and how it helps to build our brand even further.

That’s my podcasting set-up, in the image above, right.

Podcasting allows us to realize the benefits of presenting information in audio or visual format. This in turn allows you to convey your personality in a much stronger way than is possible through the written word. That clarity in your message is seen and felt through your actions (on video) and the tone of your voice  – all allowing you to emphasize important points within the podcast session.

There are hundreds of millions of people walking around with smartphones, and all of these are podcast-enabled.

The evolution of small business marketing and the onslaught of podcasting as a medium which allows you to reach a far larger audience, has never been anymore blatant, let’s face it – everyone at it!

Podcast subscribers are after information, real life stories, case studies and advice from their peers, and those they follow. Building either your personal, or business brand with podcasting creates a huge viral affect for the brand, and can also generate lots of relevant links to your website.

Remember – you can’t personally be awake and in touch with your audience 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

However, your online brand can!

Podcasts are easy to create, portable, and users can listen to them at any time, anywhere. This is what makes building your brand with podcasting so beneficial, as it engages with people in all walks of life – no matter where they are. They may want to listen in the car, on a train, in the gym, or while working.

It’s time to jump on the podcasting bandwagon people.

Screen Shot 2013-04-04 at 11.17.14 PM

13 Tips for Building Your Brand with Podcasting

1. Get started. Do not just sit by and watch the competition build their audience with great podcast content, while you twiddle your thumbs thinking ‘what if’. When you do get started, be sure you produce high quality, clean sounding audio.

2. Be unique. Successful brands speak with a unique voice. Check out these podcasts to see exactly what I’m talking about. Think about the brands you admire – what makes them unique? There must be a reason for people to listen to your podcast ahead of other similar shows. This will come down to whether they like your personality, topics covered and the method of delivery. Don’t be scared to be yourself.

3. Consider your audience. What do they want to hear about from you? You are creating the podcast for them (not yourself!) so think carefully about the topics they would like you to cover. Answer previous questions you have been asked, or the most common problems facing your business today as a starting point. The rest will come along naturally.

4. Be consistent. Stick to the schedule you decided – weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, people will want to know that every Tuesday, for example, that yoursite.com has a great new podcast session released for them to download and enjoy.

5. Have cool looking artwork. Professional looking art is an integral part of brand recognition and it’s no different when it comes to building your brand from podcasting. When using iTunes, the recommended specifications for the artwork that will be embedded on your RSS Feed is 300 x 300 pixels, in either JPG or PNG format. Keep your image the same across all channels of your online brand. This makes it easy to recognize you in search results – a perfect example is my podcast artwork.

6. Use tags on your iTunes submissions, and set-up your RSS Feed. This will help your podcast get found in the iTunes store easier, converting casual passers-by into subscribers, and ultimately, fans.

7. Reach out to other podcasters. This may seem like getting into bed with the competition, but really, you need to be as involved with your ‘competition’ as possible. This provides you with the opportunity to learn from them, hear what they are talking about, and as with mastermind groups, you may even get great ideas by listening to their podcasts.

Screen Shot 2013-04-04 at 11.16.14 PM

8. Promote your podcast everywhere. This means submitting your channel and RSS Feed to podcast directories not only in the iTunes store, but in other places like Zune Marketplace, Blackberry Podcast, Miro Guide, Stitcher, DoubleTwist and Blubrry. This is a new one for me, and I’ve already got featured on Stitcher – the rest are happening currently.

9. Go one step further – create your own App. One huge step forward would be to create an overall app for listeners to download. This would be automatically updated with your newest podcasts, blog posts and information about your business. After seeing the success that Pat Flynn has had with this model, I’m considering itself. Would you download and use a free ChrisDucker.com app, if I was to create it? Let me know in the comments.

10. Interview successful business owners. This could mean sit down interviews, recorded Skype conversations, or even a chat over coffee somewhere quiet. Have plenty of questions prepared and also some extra ideas for filler content. If you’re on location somewhere, make sure you’re both mic’d up well, so as to provide good quality audio to your listeners.

11. Be creative. Many businesses and entrepreneurs are experimenting with podcasting now and you need to be memorable, exciting and full of fresh ideas. This will include everything from the intro in your podcast, to your associated brand artwork, website design, as well as the use of social media. Be memorable.

12. Be sure to promote your other platforms. Utilize the opportunity to  mention your Facebook and Twitter profiles, as well as your blog or company website at some stage during your podcast. This gives you more ways to reach your audience and potentially generate more subscribers, listeners, revenue and grow your audience with viral sharing. Don’t overdo it though – it’ll become very ‘old’, very quickly.

13. Provide value and be remembered. Overall, this should be your number one focus. It’ll guarantee your brand will grow through podcasting. Once you establish yourself as a leader in your field, a go-to person, expert (whatever you want to call yourself!), listeners will keep coming back and downloading your podcast – as well as mentioning it their friends.

Not Considered Podcasting Yet? C’mon, Already!

As you can tell, I’m a big fan of podcasting.

Screen Shot 2013-04-04 at 11.16.51 PM

Thousands of people tune in to listen to me and my guests impart business knowledge every week. That is something you should not ignore. That many people, all with you injected into their earlobes! That is untouchable, as a brand builder.

It allows your readers and listeners to feel your personality, passion and hear your enthusiasm when you speak about your topic and business. 

Podcasting is here to stay and creates a valuable element to building your online brand. Since it was added to the Oxford dictionary in 2005 – ‘Podcasting’ has grown to become a much bigger success than most believed it would be. I saw this with my own eyes in January this year, when I attended the Podcast Awards that were held at New Media Expo in Vegas. The room was literally not big enough for the crowd!

Getting started with a podcast will help build your brand in a whole different way, to a whole different audience. I hope this post has helped you see that a little.   

So get out there and start your first podcast, if you haven’t done so already.

Got any questions on podcasting? Thinking about starting, but not pulling the trigger for some reason? Share ’em below, I promise to help in anyway I can!

PS. Thank you to those podcast reviewers seen in this post, and to anyone who has ever left an iTunes review and ratings for the New Business Podcast. I appreciate your support.

How to Get Your Podcast to No.1 in iTunes! (My Personal Launch Strategy)

March 9, 2013 by Chris 94 Comments

Podcast ImageWarning: This post is a little longer than most, includes statistics, numbers and a handful of images, too. If you get a nosebleed from reading it – don’t blame me!

On December 22, 2012 I launched The New Business Podcast here on the blog, with its iTunes listing popping up a week later, on December 29.

Since its launch I have been continually blown away by the download numbers, the tweets and other types of feedback and how it’s already started to shape my brand even further.

Imagine the look on my face when, after getting back from speaking at New Media Expo in Vegas, I logged into the US iTunes store to see how ranking was coming along, to discover I was in the No.1 spot in the New & Noteworthy section for both the ‘Business’ and ‘Management & Marketing’ categories – my two main focus categories.

Was I happy? Yes… Shocked? No… And today I’m gonna tell you why…

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How to Organize and Run a Mastermind Session for the First Time

February 27, 2013 by Chris 90 Comments

brian-mastermindHow did you spend your weekend? I took a break from the usual family time, and hosted a private mastermind session at my facility, here in Cebu, Philippines – and it was awesome!

I’ve been part of many mastermind sessions before, both one-off’s and regular sessions, however, I’ve never actually run one myself – ie. I’m the host.

After posting a few images on my Instagram account, as well as Facebook and Twitter, I started to get comments and questions on how to be part of such a group, or how to actually start one from scratch.

So, I thought it might be useful for you to put down a few tips on how I went about hosting my first session, including finalizing the mastermind group format and rules, so that if you decide to do it yourself you’ll have something to refer back to when the time comes around.

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How to Boost Online Audience Engagement: 3 Quick, Effective Tips! (Video)

January 28, 2013 by Chris 26 Comments

Screen Shot 2013-01-28 at 5.05.31 PMAs new-age entrepreneurs, doing business in today’s economy, we instantly become content creators.

Whether our chosen medium is written blog posts or eBook’s, online video or podcasting, infographics or tweetables, the fact is that we are ALL in the business of creating and marketing helpful, original content to help grow our brand, our business and our audience.

But, what happens after we’ve done all the hard work needed to create the content and market it online?

All too often I see people create great content and build an audience, or platform, only to not pay that audience enough attention, or even worse – completely ignore it!

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New Media Expo 2013 Review and My Biggest Takeaway’s from the Event

January 14, 2013 by Chris 38 Comments

chris-nmx-profileI’m currently sitting in a hotel room in San Francisco, where I have been decompressing over the last few days with my wife, following a whirlwind week in Las Vegas for New Media Expo, where I spoke on the subject of teaming up with virtual assistants to outsource the bulk of entrepreneurial content marketing tasks – it was a blast!

This was my third time to attend the conference (formerly known as BlogWorld) and my second time to speak.

I thought it would be a good idea to put together this quick post to point out a few highlights, report on my session, and to give a few mentions to those that I got to hang out with, as well as learn from myself.

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The Business of YOU… Why Now is the Time to Get Serious!

January 2, 2013 by Chris 35 Comments

the business of you

If you’ve not thought properly about investing in the business of you recently, now would be a great time to start doing so. It’s about having a renewed focus on what you’re doing business wise, and the way that you’re going about building a sustainable, future-proof business.

Along with year-long and even further afield goals and aspirations, I generally plan my business movements approximately 3-months in advance. Sometimes a little longer, but not much. Everything I do is built on top of my 90-Day Intent Planner mindset, where I focus my goals based around three key elements – sales and marketing, legacy and impact, and finally my own self development. 

This is the exact 90-day framework for goal setting (and getting!) that I coach and oversee inside of my coaching groups and programs. Why? It works. That simple.

I believe that every year going forward can and will be the year of building a strong personal brand for yourself, your business and most importantly… those that you serve.

I’ve been saying it for almost a decade at the time of writing – people want to do business with people. Not big brands, or huge companies. Because of this human need, or requirement, we have to plan for the future of our businesses and understand that building our businesses around our personal brands (and vice versa) is a good way to move forward in today’s business climate.

Which leads me to the most important part of building the business of you… relationships.

Build Higher Quality Relationships

I can honestly say that since 2009, when I became properly active online, I’ve made more ‘worthwhile’ friends that I did in the decade before. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that I’ve even made a few friends that I know I will remain friends with for the rest of my life!

The business world runs on relationships. People you want to do business with – sell to, market to, those that you need to work for you, and help you on your mission, towards entrepreneurial success.  These are the relationships that make the difference. 

These are the people that’ll say nice things about you, and talk about your products, services, online content, etc. They’ll do favors for you, and make things happen for you – sometimes for monetary gain, but most of the time, just for the hell of it – because they believe in you.

These relationships help build the collection of people that you need to succeed in today’s business world, more than anything else. 

Build Your Community

Marketing star, Seth Godin believes that a tribe is any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another… a leader, and an idea.

Boom! There you have it.

If you check out the 1,000 True Fans post over at The Technium blog, you’ll see that the author, Kevin Kelly reports that, and I quote from that article directly, “A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce…”.

Enough said.

Build your tribe.

Build Your Platform

In my book, Rise of the Youpreneur, I talk a lot about content creation and marketing and social media, in regards to building an online brand and then embracing the opportunities that come along thereafter. This is a long-game approach to successfully building the business of you.

Almost every business owner that I’ve coached and helped through this focus as an entrepreneur has seen massive gains, and in a plethora of ways, when it comes to building their personal brand, such as:

Increase in social media followers, and the engagement from those followers.

Email’s coming from people that I’ve NEVER heard from before, asking questions about their businesses and how they can help them.

An increase in coaching clients, strategy calls, product sales, service inquiries… you name it!

I truly believe that the stepping stones I’ve put in place in the last few years alone (even though I’ve been at this for much longer!) are already paying off and will continue to do so. 

But here’s the thing, I’ve been building businesses since 2004. It’s only since 2012, when I really started to focus on the personal branding element of my life and career, ultimately investing in the business of Chris, that everything became much easier. And more profitable! 

The future is bright. Because, the business of you is the future!

#NewBusiness Chit-Chat: Your Proudest 2012 Moment, and your 2013 Goal!

December 18, 2012 by Chris 30 Comments

It’s been a while since I did an ‘Ask the Readers’ post, so I thought I’d roll one out today – which we can all potentially use as a source of inspiration for each other, along with a healthy bit of motivation, going into next year, too!

2012 has been a very memorable year for me, both personally and from a business perspective, too. But, with that being said, it hasn’t been without it’s challenges, too.

Today I’m going to share my proudest moment of 2012, and let you all in on my number one goal for next year! And then I want all of you to do exactly the same, in the comment section below – we can then come back to all the comments sometime next year and see if we’ve achieved all the goals, or not.

Sound like fun? Good – let’s do it!

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