Inspirational and Empowering Child Care Business Owners To Build Successful Child Care Businesses

Posts tagged ‘Social Media’

5 Steps to a Great Website!

 Your Website Just Can’t be Good It has to be Great!!~ Shama Kabani

 

I created my first website for my childcare business in 1999. The website provided basic information about my program including: the location, hours, rates and photos of my program. In fact, the website was free, but I didn’t get much business from the site. There were many reasons why this site did not work for me, however, I prefer to tell you about the site that did work for me.

In 2003, I registered the domain name www.learningdays.com  for $19.00. It was a great investment for my business and is still paying off. I also signed up for web hosting with www.samsclub.com for only $5.00 a month.

After setting up my site, I was clueless about how to create a site that would attract visitors. Over time, I learned how to add content, how to structure the site, make it a very informative site and most of all attract more families to enroll their children in my program.

For online marketing or website building tips, be sure to check our my a e-book titled, ” An Online Marketing Plan.” One of the resources that I quoted in the book includes a book written by Shama Kabani, titled: “The Zen of Social Marketing.”

The ebook is loaded with great social media marketing tips that will drive traffic to your business. In the second chapter of the  book Kabani wrote: ” Why Your Website Can’t Just Be Good- it has to be Great!” She also includes the five elements of a Great website and they are as follows:

1.Design-When a website looks great, it sends the impression that the company or product is great. Keep in mind that your website may be your first chance to make an impression upon your site visitors, so make it a great one!

2.Structure– Have you ever been to a website and didn’t know where to start or how to check out? While structuring or restructuring your website, be sure that your visitors can easily  navigate through your website.  A confused consumer may easily say no to your service or product.

3.Content-According to Shama Kabani, Content is King!  More over, it is the heart of your website. The first purpose of a blog or website is to educate and build expertise. A really great site offers content in the following forms: written articles, audio and video. This is a great way to meet the learning preferences of your site visitors.

4.Optimization-  is a marketing tool that allows any online user to get more clicks in their web copy writing efforts for their website by improving the search engine results in the Web. Moreover, make sure that search engines can read your website. This is a great way to attract website visitors from major search engines such as Google.

5.Maintenance Your website needs to be maintained the same way that we maintain our physical building. Content needs to be changed, design needs to be updated and items may need to be moved around. I suggest that a website be reviewed 2-3 times a week to track visitors with a scheduled monthly maintenance plan that includes:  website visitors feedback.

I hope that you have been inspired to create a great website that will attract visitor, turn them into consumers and eventually transform them into customers. I wish you much success with your website!

For more marketing tips, check out my Marketing 101 toolkit!

Source:

2010. Kabani, Shama. The Zen of Social Media Marketing. Pages, 21-22

Category:

Administration, Marketing, social media, Website

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Building Enrollment With Video Marketing

 

(This blog post is a Freebie from my Marketing 101 toolkit)

According to Houston Chronicle, “Video marketing is but one option you have available as a tool to promote your business. Understanding the power of video marketing may help you to see how video marketing can be beneficial to your business and a good use of your marketing dollars.”

Moreover, Videos are easier to share over social media; it allows your website to rank higher on search engines, Video marketing helps to improve your brand, allows you to seem more engaging and is a great way to educate your parents about your program.

Today I want to share some video marketing tips with you:

  1. Consider making a video of the kids doing activities in your program (with the parents permission). Simply record the video on your cell phone and be sure that it is no longer than five minutes and upload to your social media pages once a week or even add to your website.
  2. If you are not camera shy; practice making 1-minute videos of yourself talking about your childcare business or giving parents a tour of your childcare space.
  3. You can also make cool videos of your program, by using photos with Animoto.com. I love this website and I use it to make videos of my Child Care Center!
  4. You may also want to create a You Tube Channel to upload videos of your program. YouTube is one of the top 3 websites as of January 2013 and it is great way to gain more business exposure.

Are you ready to start making videos? If not, practice first. I actually love recording my voice and adding pictures to the Video presentation with the Window Movie Maker on my computer. I would love to see your videos, so be sure to share!

For more marketing tips, download my Marketing 101 toolkit today!

Shiketa

Category:

Enrollment Building, Marketing, Online Marketing

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