Caveat: I’m guilty of this myself!

You likely have an “About Me” or “About Our Company” or “About Us” page on your website. And you certainly have a thumbnail image that you use for your social media profiles (if you’re not using a logo or brand). Occasionally you might be asked to be interviewed on a blog, or an article may be written referencing you. In each of these circumstances, you may want a photo of yourself displayed. In a physically disconnected world, where many of your networks and connections are made online, it’s more important than ever for people to sense your authenticity and your personality.

And you don’t want a terribly lit & untouched-up photo of yourself taken at a friend’s wedding, or a snapshot of your vacation to Costa Rica to be the way you represent yourself to the world via your business. I once had a client who wanted to use a photo of himself at an event where he was clearly snozzled – yikes!

If it’s your personal Facebook profile and you regularly update it to show something recent & cute, that’s one thing, if it’s a headshot of you on the website of your business, that’s another thing entirely. This isn’t to say it needs to be stuffy, or nostalgic for Sears photo shoots circa 1981… you want it to reference your personality and that of your business. Read on to learn more about how to make headshots work for you, and see some great examples…

Recently I wrote about creating custom Twitter backgrounds to extend your brand, but what about Facebook?

In the magical triad of social media marketing (your blog, Twitter and Facebook profiles), you want to make sure your brand appears in each place – not just in your tone and message, but also in the way it looks. With so much competition for people’s attention, brand synchronicity certainly helps you stick in people’s minds.

You can customize your Facebook page to include any number of tabs, with whatever content you like, but when you stick to one or two beyond the standard “Wall” and “Info” tabs – you’re keeping your message clear and concise. Click to check out some best practices for creating custom Facebook pages…

You’ve probably seen Twitter profiles from users who have a custom Twitter background. A custom Twitter background is a background image that has some information about them, maybe a photo, information about their website, etc…

Realizing that their brand can be extended not only through the content they author, but also through the way their profile looks on services like Twitter, they had custom background images created:

• http://twitter.com/SPOONFoundation
• http://twitter.com/taxresolution
• http://twitter.com/sweetbeemagic
• http://twitter.com/cooltweets
• http://twitter.com/ijustine

This is a relatively small investment for brand synergy, and helps people already familiar with your brand know they’ve found the right person on Twitter to follow. Remember that people aren’t usually reading your Twitter feed on your Profile page, they’re reading it on their Twitter Home page, or another Twitter application (like Tweetie). So, we’re really just talking about first impressions – like when someone clicks through a reference to you in another tweet, or clicks through to your Twitter profile page from a website – people will make the decision about whether to follow your feed very quickly. Their decisions will be based on whether the content looks interesting/valuable – don’t forget that part of that perception is based on the way your profile looks!

Read on to learn more about some best practices…

User Experience comprises many aspects of a website, including the navigation, the content, the design, and the staying power.  While there are some blanket rules for web usability (from Wikipedia)…

1. Present information to your users in a clear and concise way.
2. Remove any ambiguity regarding the consequences of an action e.g. clicking on delete/remove/purchase.
3. Organize your content so that it’s obvious how to use the site.

…there are also specific usability & user experience guidelines for each web niche, including author and book websites.  Having designed many author and book websites, and tracked analytics to determine design success, here are some guidelines I’ve come up with that help create a great user experience for author and book website:  Read on to learn about usability and user experience tips for author and book websites…

We all know how it’s important to make meaningful connections with your clients and/or customers. One of the ways you can do this is by sharing with them not only through Twitter and Facebook, but also through YouTube and Flickr. Your brand is an extension of your personality, so use the great tools out there that help you bring it to life!

Putting a face and a voice to a name brings an instant connection that may not have been there previously. It also gives you the chance to share goings-on in a way that enhances your customer’s experience…

For example, if you’re opening a restaurant, add photos and videos of the process of creating the venue to your blog posts – or even create just a photo-blog as a way to start building publicity. People are often invested in and excited about what you’re doing well before they set foot in the door. Or, if you’re building a small business around dog training, offer up some free video tidbits of you and your pup in action. Be creative! If you’re reluctant to be the star of the show, collaborate with someone else – or keep yourself behind the camera. There’s no right or wrong way to go about it.

Bringing your business to life like this can make it, and you, much more approachable & lowers the bar for initial customer contact. It also allows you to spread awareness to audiences who might not otherwise have discovered your offering. With user bases in the millions, using targeted tags and linking back to your website on YouTube & Flickr is fantastic way to bring a new audience to your offering.

There are a few things to keep in mind when writing website content:

1. Keep it short: Website readers are impatient, so they scan website content – it’s often too much work to really “read” on the web & there are so many sources of information that people will find another source if yours doesn’t immediately deliver. Also, because of the nature of the medium people read more slowly and avoid large blocks of text. You can deliver a longer message below the fold or on other pages of your site, but avoid information overload on landing pages.

Read on for more tips on writing website content . . .

You’ve likely heard that people don’t read on the web, they scan – but what does that mean? Does that mean that you can’t have more than a few words at a time on your site? Well, yes & no. It means that while people are *looking for something* they’re scanning. And, most of the time, people are looking for something when they’re surfing the internet. For this reason, writing website content isn’t the same as writing prose. Writing for websites, and leveraging targeted keywords while you’re doing it, takes a little practice & finesse, but isn’t out of anyone’s reach. Try to go about it as if you were the visiting your site. This may be the first time a visitor arrive at your site & they’re trying to figure out if they’re in the right place and if they want to spend more time there – what will help that person feel confident? It also might be that they know they’re in the right place but are looking for a particular type of information – what will help them get to it? The solution is a mixture of drawing the right people to your site using targeted keywords, keeping them there by telling them right away what you’re offering to them, and then giving them easy/clear access to the information they need.

Read on to find out how to feature your site’s keywords and content to keep your site visitors engaged…

You’ve likely heard about landing pages, but just in case you haven’t, or were wondering about what they’re for & how they might work for you, this post will outline what they’re for, what they do, and how to make them work for you.

Read on…

As long as books remain as they’ve been, they’ll most often be sold by their cover. As things change the way of the Kindle, iPhone, and various online venues, however, the purpose served by a book’s cover now changes focus to the digital realm, and increasingly books are purchased based on recommendation engines or peer reviews, with a nod to a small thumbnail of the book cover as an afterthought. If we look at the evolution of album cover design, to cassette case design, to CD cover design to online presence design we see the common thread of personal branding evolves as our consumption evolves… so is true for books.

Something to consider for the digitization of book cover design is that it must coexist with the interfaces used to read — be it the Kindle or the iPhone or a web page. This means that it cannot be just about aesthetics and message, but also about functionality. Your website may be stunning, but if it’s unusable that doesn’t matter.

As someone interested in how design evolution parallels technological evolution, I look forward to seeing how book design changes given new technologies, but in the meantime, we can all revel in the following sites that catalog beautiful book cover design.

» Read on…

This week in the Client Spotlight is Web Marketing Therapist, Lorrie Thomas. Lorrie and her team of Wild Web Women (myself included) offer their clients “a full-service marketing agency – a team of ‘wild web woman’ marketing specialists with web, business, and creative expertise. [They] serve organizations and professionals as a virtual, ‘Think-Tank,’ bridging the art and science of the web with strategic expertise and execution.”

Lorrie is a true wealth of knowledge when it comes to web marketing, and along with her team bring huge success to their clients.

I wish I would have known (and I hired my first web designer in 2004) that there were SO MANY shapes and sizes of skill sets when it came to “web designers.” I learned very quickly that many graphic artists are simply “artists” (not web marketing talented) and that does not mean that their artistic abilities translate into web marketing best practices. Now that I know that, I ONLY hire web designer/developers that can take my web marketing direction for my sites or my client sites (like Kate!). My ideas are only as good as the people that execute. I will not work with amateur web professionals, it wastes my time and my client’s time.

What’s the most important thing you learned about online marketing along the way?

Just ONE THING?? Come on! I run an online marketing agency, I learn something new EVERY DAY!

Seriously though, the one thing I learned about online marketing (years ago) is that online marketing work always requires WORK! I know, buzzkill… but it’s true. Web marketing requires management. Online Marketing is an ongoing process, web marketing rules change, the need to make optimizations, test, evolve, tweak and adapt is always there, and new channels (like social media, online PR, etc) will require education, testing and staying current with trends.

What’s the best advice you have for someone just getting started now?

Educate yourself! Read blogs, ask questions, start small and snowball. If you do not understand a piece of online marketing, DO NOT DO IT until you understand if it makes sense for you and your company. Online marketing is still the wild, wild west… there are a lot of options, self-educating helps you make smart choices. Our rule at Web Marketing Therapy is STRATEGY FIRST, EXECUTION SECOND.