Big Feet: Growing your online footprint

Broaden your digital footprint and try out some handy low/no-cost techniques to increase your presence online. Also, check out the companion workshops.

Written May 02, 2008, read 581 times since then.

Big Feet, a support group for retired NBA players? Nope, just a few tips on how to increase your presence on the Wild West of the Web. (Don’t forget about the companion workshops)

This article will cover how you as a professional can increase your footprint online through low and no-cost techniques.

Having a strong presence on the web means that customers, potential partners, news reporters and authors can find you easier through search engines like Google and recommendation sites like Digg. This means more contacts, sales, and a larger impact in your industry. As my spam box says “want to get bigger?”

Your online presence grows through two main efforts:

Passive Growth - Your audience grows organically

Links 
Customers link to your site because they like you
Services 
Sites list you because they like/hate you (Yelp, Get Satisfaction)

But you’re on Biznik so you’re not the passive type, so there’s also…

Active Growth - You make small efforts to broaden your audience

Search Engine Registration
Blogs
Online Communities
Service Sign-up
Web Analytics
Non-Tech / Offline

How do these active efforts fit together to broaden your step? Lets check it out…

Search Engine Registration - While all search engines constantly scrape the Internet to find information, you can also directly register your domain. Visit these links to register for Google, Yahoo and Live. This helps to ensure that search engines check out your site on their next sweep through the ‘hood.

Blogs – This is probably the most powerful single thing you could do to broaden your presence online. In addition to writing your own articles in your area of expertise (web development, insurance, banking, interior design, etc) on your blog or on Biznik, you can also comment on popular blogs like Mashable, TechCrunch or The NY Times The Lede.

Why is this so rad? Well, after you post your comment on the article – adding your pearls of wisdom and insight, or new resources, toss in your name and your business, and hyperlink it to your site (email me if you don’t know how to do this). That post then acts as a business card for folks to stumble upon AND it is an in-bound link for your site so that Google then lists you higher in their search results.

Amazing stuff huh? It works, its great, do it like eating vitamins; daily, and in a month’s time you’ll be stomping around like Shaq (Get it? Feet reference, oh boy, I get no respect)

(NOTE OF CAUTION: Don’t spam. This is not cool on Biznik or in the broader community. Only comment when you have a legitimate message or resource to add. It’s kind of like the saying …if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all)

Online Communities - I know you might be a little Bebo-Facebook-MySpace’d out by now, but outside of finding a date or discovering how many children your HS prom date now has, these networks are super-handy at introducing your skills and services to a larger community. Just think – MySpace has 100m+ profiles, Facebook 70m+ and Biznik has the most targeted community for independent professionals - so having a place at the table in these communities is just a good (and free) business practice.

Create a profile, including a description of your services and a link to your site
Import Google contacts, when available
Monitor monthly to ensure content is up to date
Push out announcements when you have a new service, your company goes public or you run for office

In addition to connecting with folks inside these online communities, the public pages of these sites add up to more in-bound links to increase your Google/Yahoo page rank for when folks are searching for you. So, go make Mark Zukerberg happy and get your Facebook Page.

Service Sign-up – YouTube, Flickr, GetSatisfaction and a myriad of other online services aren’t just free resources to support your company, they are great ways to broaden your profile online. Create accounts, upload applicable media (video/photos) or just use them as services to support your own site – (Free streaming video and photo slideshow – why not?).

Web Analytics – I don’t want to use peer pressure here, but come’on, EVERYONE IS DOING IT. Google Analytics is a free web stats service provided by Google. By inserting a small bit of Javascript in the bottom of each of your web pages, you not only get great info on who is visiting your site and from where, but Google can search your site better meaning a high Google page rank. In short, its free and great. Just do it.

Offline Options – I’m sure you’re wondering how you’re going to increase your ONLINE presence with OFFLINE and non-Web stuff. Well, it actually works pretty well. Put urls on your business card, resume and in your email signature. Toss up your logo and email address on banners and posters that you take to conferences and other events. People see it and think “Wow- she/he is awesome, I’m totally going there”.

If you’re so inclined, get a door-sized magnet touting your services and put it on your car. People spend a lot of time in traffic so it might just increase your online traffic. Enough of those off-line “impressions” generates a broader online presence and more visitors to your website. Check out the Biznik profile of Rick from Lone Eagle Digital for your printing needs.

Closing - So in short, the Web is a wild west with tons of junk everywhere. You owe it to your business and yourself to take a strategic effort to rise above the noise and connect with folks through a broader online presence. Good luck!

Want custom answers on how to advance your online presence in your specific field of work/expertise? Register for Josh & Joel’s Big Feet Workshop. Also – check out our upcoming Simple Search Engine Optimization worshop.

If you have any questions or would like to share more resources, let me know and I’ll toss them up.

Best-

Joel

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UPDATE May 3, 2008 - Great questions brought up by Elge. See comments below.

Learn more about the author, Joel Ballezza.

Comment on this article

Posted by Elge Premeau, Portland, Oregon | May 03, 2008

Hi Joel,

Hate to break it to you but I've learned the hard way that the vast majority fo the time links in blogs comment don't count as a link to your site in the search engines because they are no follow links.

Elge
Posted by Dan McComb, Seattle, Washington | May 03, 2008

That depends on which blog you're on. I'd say it's the other way around - the vast majority of them do follow the links. Popular sites like Wikipedia have instituted no-follow links to cut down on link spammers.

Biznik Business Networking
Posted by Joel Ballezza, Seattle, Washington | May 03, 2008

Elge,

Great point Elge. Lets check this out...

A link in a blog provides both an impression (advertising term for a "view") for your brand and an inbound link to your site (a boost for your results on a search engine query).

For some sites with "no-follow" tags, you lose the value of only the latter of the benefits, however most blogs (like a self-installed Wordpress, Drupal, or posts on a certain handy alt-biz social network, hehe) are not discriminated against by search engines.

This means that comments are a great tool to increase your presence online.

In fact, because of the XML structure of some blogs, search engines find it easier to scrape blogs than that of other forms of web pages.

So, in closing, blogs rock, just be picky and check the source code in the header for a "no follow" tag.

Thanks again Elge!
Posted by Barry Hurd, Seattle, Washington | May 05, 2008

Actually... if you are worried about the no follow attribute, you can install vaarious browser plugins that identify if it exist on the comment sections of most social media platforms (whether that is Biznik, Myspace, Wordpress Blogs, Stumbleupon, USAtoday, etc)

While SEO is nice, I actually prefer to use social media linking and commentary to drive relevant traffic with good thoughts. Some blogs and community sites produce and excess of a 1000 readers for a well thought comment, which means you can expose them to your branding and message when you check them out.

A good tip is to make sure that you send them to a good landing page about what you were commenting on, or that simply applies to the demographic you were conversing with. Most of my links on blogs don't point to my main domain, but specific articles that relate to the topic I was commenting on.
Posted by Nancy Griffin, Canonsburg, Pennsylvania | May 06, 2008

Great tips! Though, I have heard many of these it helps to hear it again and again. I am interested in your teleseminars. Love your sense of humor. I laughed out loud on the spam comment. I'm just starting my first blog.
Posted by Elge Premeau, Portland, Oregon | May 07, 2008

Hi Joel - Yup. Totally agree. Having links that count is one of the benefits of hosting your own blog. But for folks who are commenting on a Blogger blog - and there's a lot of Blogger blogs out there - it's important to know that links in comments don't count.

Hey Barry - All right. Cough up the names of those plug ins! I totally agree about the SEO thing. After doing it for 5+ years, I've come to the conclusion too that social networking is a much better way to build relationships and ultimately sell products or services online. The funny thing is that when you do social networking right, your rankings improve!

Elge
Posted by Linda Moore Kurth, Vancouver, Washington | May 08, 2008

First off, I want your suit!

I've just started this social networking thing. Since I'm the creative, not the techi, type, it's a challenge. but I'm beginning to see that once the tech is mastered, there's lots of room for creativity. Your article has done a great job of summarizing all the doznes of articles I've been trying to learn from. Great job!
Posted by Laura and Scott Brooks, Seattle, Washington | May 15, 2008

I like the article ... And the suit!

(Kind of a James Dean meets Paul Revere thing)

Anyway, the mere fact that you have put this information out there has started a chain reaction of creative thought and ideas that I have benefited from greatly.

As a total novice to the world of SEO just a few months ago, I think it's important to remind some of you, that many of us are still total novices in the world of SEO. To be quite honest, I'm not a computer person ... And I seriously doubt that I ever will be. What I am learning to do, however; from groups such as this, is to work on some weak areas. As a friend recently commented when he searched for "yoga in seattle" ... "You don't exist!"

So for me it's not a question of whether SEO is a more effective tool than social networking or vise versa. It's about learning from others and putting that information into action in a way that helps me to make a difference in the world.

In short, from where I stand; You're all right ... And I'm loving every minute of it.

Thank you all so much for your contributions.

Cheers,

Scott