Spread the Word - build your own web site to advertise your business

Black Enterprise, May, 2001 by Holly Aguirre

Setting up a Website is the easy part of e-commerce. To be successful, you have to get customers to visit. Here's how to get the word out.

IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME, RIGHT? WELL, BEFORE YOU bet the farm on the success of your new e-business, keep in mind that generating traffic, let alone cash flow, is going to take some serious time, strategy, marketing--and money. Think of launching your Web business as throwing a party: The success is usually directly related to the number and kinds of guests attending--as well as the entertainment you provide.

Marketing on the Web is very much like that, says Noelle Wojciehowski, director of client solutions at Princeton, New Jersey-based TelecomClick, a vertical online community that provides solutions for telecommunications professionals. Knowing your audience (or worse, not knowing them) can make or break any marketing initiative. "Understand your audience: what is important to them, and how to best reach them. Introduce a marketing campaign that makes sense for the audience and the site," advises Wojciehowski.

When Deborrah Cooper launched AskHeartBeat.com in 1996, she set her goals high. She knew that attracting and keeping customers would require constant site maintenance, a strong marketing campaign, and most of all, determination. Based in Oakland, California, AskHeartBeat.com is a resource for information on male-female romantic relationships. The site focuses on the romantic dilemmas and issues specific to African American men, women, and teens, as well as those in or curious about interracial relationships. Says Cooper, "My goal was to be the first and the largest such site on the Internet, a goal we have achieved with approximately 3.5 million page views per month."

Cooper, whose main source of income at the site comes from banner ad placement, solicited help from friends and family, who all believed in the vision and the importance of disseminating this type of information to the black community. "We were able to save quite a bit of money because I do the Web development and marketing myself. Total start-up costs for the site were approximately $2,000," explains Cooper.

S.F. Barry McDonald's venture, StoryAlbums.com, is in the start-up phase of operations. Launched in September 2000, the site allows members to create and share dynamic stories and photos on the Web with friends and family. McDonald, who refers to himself as the company "CEO, president, HR manager, and janitor," chose to design and maintain the site himself. "I'm trying to make it as an out-of-the-garage start-up, the way things used to be done," he says. McDonald runs the Ypsilanti, Michigan-based company on a part-time basis.

StoryAlbums.com allows members to link the pages together to tell personal stories. Members can record birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, or other notable dates for each page in the album. "The more members join, the richer the tale. The intent is that each person can add their piece of the story and then weave it together to form an ever-expanding adventure," McDonald says.

So far, the site has attracted about 1,000 users solely through listings with portals such as BlackPlanet.com and the Black Web Portal, and through word of mouth. McDonald is analyzing the site's Web trend report for traffic patterns so he can better focus his marketing efforts. "I wanted to prove out the concept prior to mass marketing by using word of mouth to draw a small number of users. I would use their feedback to improve the product," he says. With this in mind, here are a few things you should consider.

GETTING STARTED

Now that you've created your new Website, begin registering it with as many of the main Web search engines as you can find. Some will be free. Getting your dotcom on these sites will require writing a description of the site. A descriptive title should contain only five to eight words for each page. Removing as many filler words from the title, such as "the" and "and," will help target your title. Make the site sound provocative to encourage people to click through. Sit around with colleagues and friends who may fit your target demographic and brainstorm on keywords. Don't repeat any word more than three times, or some engines will penalize you for "keyword spamming."

Once the text and Website have been carefully proofed and checked; for bugs and broken links, consider using a submission service such as 123Link (www.1231linkcom/ulinki/ form2.html) or All4one Submission Machine (www.all 4one.com/all4submit/). The most important search engines that robotically "spider," or index, your site are: AltaVista, Google, Excite, HotBot, Lycos, Infoseek, and WebCrawler. Finally, there's Yahoo!, which is technically a directory, but probably the most important site to get your name on. A helpful hint: When submitting to Yahoo, be concise. Real humans will edit your text and pare it down if you aren't.

Anyone who surfs the Web has seen myriad offers to submit your pages to, say, 300 different search engines. We've found some of these services to be a little shady, and not very helpful. Most of the places your pages will get submitted aren't actually search engines at all. These marginal directories come and go very quickly. Consider linking yourself to other industry pages, like reputable trade publications. It may cost you something, but it will help attract your target audience.