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I got into a huge argument last week with one of my biz partners who said we should start spending more time networking. Like attend 3 events a week. Ugh.

This isn’t bad advice. But I’ve gone down that road before. I used to be on boards and committees, planning events, meeting, greeting and promoting every chance I got. I was the president of my BNI chapter, organizer with Toastmasters, and of course involved with the Chamber and a variety of marketing, women’s, and coaching groups.

Networking can become a full-time job if you’re not careful. And I’m not convinced the payoff is worth it. That may be because I live in a big city, so every event is a new adventure of meeting people I’ve never seen, connecting Jane with Joe, and finding the centers of influence.

I envy small-towners who can rocket to big fish status in a few months.

Of course I’ll keep at it. Networking can be fun. Meeting new people, building rapport, trying out new approaches and elevator speeches…and years ago my first marketing coach told me it was a great way to get a date! Truth is…I have more fun and success making cold calls. But that may just be me.

I’ve had some incredible mentors in my life…in my business and personal life.

But most people associate mentors with helping them get work or introduce them to the important people in their industry. My mentors have helped in other ways.

What does it mean to be mentored?

First, it could certainly mean important introductions. Your mentor probably has connections to industry people it might be useful to know for work.

Second, a mentor can help you improve your skills, specifically in the context of actual projects. If you’re confronting a challenging task, you might want to seek the advice of someone trustworthy.

Third, a mentor can lead you to increased confidence. Encouraging and honest feedback plus a reminder to brush yourself off when you hit a roadblock go a long way toward keeping your self-esteem up.

So, clarify exactly what you’re looking for in a mentor. Most experts are great at one of the three types of mentoring, but rarely can one person meet all needs.

INCREASE SITE CONVERSION WITH RELEVANT CONTENT

High traffic rankings mean nothing if visitors aren’t converting. In fact, it means you’re wasting a lot of time and money soliciting useless traffic. I’ve spoken to dozens of clients who have spent hundreds – make that thousands – a month on pay-per-click campaigns. Traffic is huge… Visitors click by the dozens!

And then…nothing.

That’s a lot of time and money wasted.

If you want to increase your site’s conversion you have to have relevant, interesting, and useful content for your visitors.

And the only kind of content that’s relevant is content people can find and use.

Website visitors don’t window shop. Most traffic is there to find something – usually a solution to a problem…

What do I buy my new girlfriend?

How can I get higher paying clients?

What’s the best resource for building traffic?

If your visitors can’t find what they’re looking for immediately they’ll click out. And they won’t be back.

If your site is too general your online conversion rates will plummet, although you may be getting plenty of traffic to your website. 

Here’s a tip I see violated a lot: too many links.

The goal is to develop pages that immediately address the visitor’s problem or concern. You want your readers to immediately find what they’re looking for. That means having one clear message or point to each page, and not cluttering it with a lot of suggestions to “click here” or “check out what Joe’s doing”.

 Make sure your pages have one specific focus. To find out more about keeping your visitors coming back for more info, you’re welcome to download your Free Report “The 7 Keys to a Profitable Website” from http://www.FocusCopywriter.com

You’ll get key strategies to turn your website from a brochure floating in cyberspace to a dynamic and profitable business partner.

You’re also welcome to contact me at Stacey@FocusCopywriter.com to sign up for a FREE Strategy Session, where we’ll talk about your site goals and how to achieve them.

Read a random small business website, and you’ll find yourself yawning.

Look past the home page and you may even be offended. I reviewed a few interior design sites recently, figuring decorators would have an eye toward aesthetics.
 
Forget it. 

Here were some of the more obvious problems: 

Colored Font – Usually unreadable. It’s never ok to sacrifice clarity for aesthetics.

Flashy Colors – Such a distraction! Why not focus on your message rather than your great eye for color?  

Pictures of Sofas – At least 8 of the 10 sites had the gratuitous picture of a sofa on their home page. Well, it’s not awful, but if everyone’s doing the same thing how can you stand out?

Bottom line: these sites were boring, hard to read, and didn’t address the prospect’s problems.

But let’s start small. 

One of the easiest ways to immediately fix up a website is to format the text.
 
Interesting formatting makes the content more inviting and easier to read. Subheads, bullets, and white space all help to make the text more inviting to the reader.
 
A big brick of words is intimidating. Reminds us of our old high school textbooks.
 
What are some of the key elements to include in websites, articles, and even emails to increase readability?
 
Bolding – Bolding helps text stand out, and says “This is important”.
 
Subheads – A few good subheads can tell the whole story. A good rule of thumb is to include at least one subhead per page on paper, two per page online.
 
Italics – Similar to bolding, but more subtle and sometimes more powerful. Great for introductions or summaries.
 
White Space – Essential to making online text more readable. But be careful. Some copywriters suggest making sentence lines really short, like 1-5 words! To me this is distracting and takes away from the flow of the piece.
 
Punctuation – The next best thing to being there. One of the biggest challenges with email is that it’s so easily misinterpreted. The most benign comments can cause a furor, hence the development of emoticons. I wouldn’t rush to add emoticons to business correspondence, but do feel free to use appropriate punctuation if it makes your meaning clearer.
 
Underlining – This one’s tricky when used online, because it looks like a link. But it can be used for headlines or subheads.
 
Color Fonts – Again, used sparingly color can be very effective. Black should almost always be your primary text color, but throwing color into headlines and subheads helps them stand out.
 
Bullets – I love bullets. They’re easy to read, help organize information and give your visitor a different perspective.
 
Some of these site elements are particularly search engine friendly, like headlines, subheads, bolding, and the words around hyperlinks. Search engine crawlers love this stuff too.

It’s all about making your text easier to read for your visitor. If it even looks boring you’ll lose them. Bad website copy is a waste of time to you and your visitor. To find out more about keeping your visitors coming back for more info with great website content, you’re welcome to subscribe to Copywriting Strategies.