When the Telephone Rings

Whether you are at home or on the job, proper telephone etiquette is essential. When the phone rings, stop what you are doing. Turn down or turn off the television or radio. If you are eating a meal or chewing gum, empty your mouth before answering the telephone. Be sure you have a pen and paper or your blackberry handy in case you need to write down any information. Take a deep breath and smile. Believe it or not, that smile can be “heard” in your voice when you answer the phone. Greet the caller.  Don’t multitask—give the caller your undivided attention. Don’t check for new emails or answer a call on your cell phone during the conversation.

Speak like an adult. Don’t respond to questions with “yeah” or “nope,” especially when making or receiving business phone calls. Listen attentively to what the phone caller is saying, jotting down any important key words or phrases. Before you hang up the telephone, be sure you are aware of the purpose of the call, and whether or not you will need to provide follow-up to the caller. Allow the caller to end the conversation. As soon as you hang up, write down the date and time of the phone call. Make a note of the topic of the phone conversation or purpose of the call, and the name and title of the caller.

Immediately mark your day timer or calendar if you have a deadline for following up or for completing a task as a result of the phone call. If phone calls need to be made or emails need to be sent as a result of the telephone conversation you just finished, make a list of those to be contacted.  Write down the phone numbers and/or create an email distribution list.

When You’re Making a Phone Call

Before you ever pick up the phone to make a call, jot down the key points you need to communicate. Turn off or turn down the radio or television. Multitasking should not be attempted while you’re making phone calls any more than when you’re receiving them. Don’t check for new emails or answer a call on your cell phone during the conversation you just initiated.

Be sure to identify yourself and clearly state the purpose of your phone call. At the end of the conversation, be sure to recap the key points, and that all parties are in agreement regarding the next step, if applicable. Listen carefully and pause when you’re done with your part of the conversation to ensure the call recipient is done with their part of the conversation. This also affords them the opportunity to ask any questions or seek clarification on any of the key points of the phone conversation.

End the conversation with a clear and concise expectation of the call recipient’s response to the call. “Okay, so I’ll expect to hear from you via email or phone by 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday,” is a good way to ensure everybody understands what the next step is. Document the call, noting the date, time, person you called and topic of the phone conversation.

Using these simple guidelines will afford you a more professional, authoritative persona and ensure clear and concise communication. Documenting the call and immediately following up based upon the purpose of the phone call will keep you on task, efficient and more productive.

Blog and Ping

Whenever you add a feature to your website, or update the content, post about it in a blog, and remember to include a link to the relevant page. You could have a blog on your site for that purpose, or you can register for a free blog in the service of your choice.

Follow each blog post with a ping to search engines and blog catalogs. Many blogs can do this automatically, but you can do it manually, too. Most blog search engines have a manual pinging page. Search engines will then find you new post, and follow the links to your new or updated page. When launching a new site, you could post once a day for the first week to make sure your site gets noticed. Link to different pages to ensure search engines don’t stop at your front page.

 Socialize It!

Social bookmarking sites like Stumble Upon, Digg and del.icio.us give you many tools to promote your website. The most obvious is posting a blurb about new features and content, and linking to your site. This can be made more effective, if you post about something interesting, like a competition you launch on your site, and then get some friends to vote for your post. Getting your post on the front page may mean hundreds of visitors in just minutes.

Another way to benefit is to add ‘Favorite this website’ and ‘Stumble upon’ links to your website. Then happy visitors can refer you more targeted traffic. Avoid cluttering your site with many links to different bookmarking services, though. Choose those that fit your site image best: a software site should link to Technorati and Slashdot, while a current news site should use Newswine. 

Tagging

The idea of tags is categorization of information. They are very much like keywords, and that’s how you should see them. In fact, tag lists are the new ‘keywords’ meta-tag. When tagging your blog posts, keep in mind the keywords you are targeting with search engines.

Tagging draws together both of the earlier topics. They are widely used on social bookmarking sites, but are also indexed by search engines as your page content. If you can incorporate tags well into your website, you can help both you visibility on bookmarking sites, and your search engine rankings.

Contrary to some opinion, there is no magic involved in designing your website so that others will find it in search engines. If someone searches for sites using a particular set of keywords, the sites they find will have those keywords included in the text on the sites. In a directory, a site could be found by navigating down through categories until a relevant group of websites are found, and in this case the websites could be built using any reasonable content. In a search engine, however, sites are indexed according to the words on the web page. Every word counts. This is an important point to remember when designing a site that uses a lot of images, Flash or other media content. Search engines cannot read the text on an image.

How do you find keywords to use on a website? There are a number of methods available, some formal and some informal. The simplest option is to use an informed guess. If you were to search for the products or content your site delivers, what keywords would you use? You might use a single word to find a broad spectrum of sites, but more often you would use several keywords. If you wanted to buy a villa in Fredericksburg, Virginia, for example, you might use search terms such as ‘property for sale in Fredericksburg, Virginia’. This phrase is still quite broad, and by trial and error you might use more specific terms such as ‘villas for sale in downtown Fredericksburg’, or ‘buy a condo in Stafford’.  The sites you find would contain these keywords, and this should set the pattern for your choice of keywords for your own website. By including keywords relating to focused content or product details, you will attract users who are searching for your particular content, and not general passing visitors. If your site specialises in selling ‘left handed paintbrushes’, these would be the keywords you should use throughout your website, and not simply ‘brushes’.

While you can make an informed guess about the keywords you use, it is possible to become blinded by being too close to the project. Sometimes we make assumptions without realising it. To get a more objective idea of appropriate keywords, ask friends and colleagues what they would type in when using a search engine to find your products or services. Be careful not to lead them by asking, for example, how they would find left-handed paintbrushes in Smalltown. Try to provide them with the minimum of prompting. If you run your question past several people, you should start to get a consensus on what the appropriate search terms or keywords should be.

The most objective method of finding keywords is to use statistics. A number of websites provide statistics on the frequency with which particular keywords are used, and can sometimes yield surprising results. Keywords you thought to be important may be rarely used, while others you thought to be insignificant may be used frequently. When checking keyword statistics on these sites, start by entering only one or two broad terms to see the range of phrases used by the public. Add more focused keywords based on these results. The range of statistical information available depends on the provider, and some information is free while other information must be paid for. To find suppliers of keyword statistics, search for ‘keyword statistics’ or ‘find keywords’ in a search engine.

Geographical considerations are also important when identifying keywords. A website might advertise a service available in a defined region or group of towns. In this case, include the names of the surrounding towns so that someone searching for the service in one of those towns will find your site. If you run a photographic studio in Virginia, for instance, you will not benefit from a family in London searching for ‘family photographer’. The keywords in your website should define the geographical scope of your service, be it the country, state or town.

Having outlined the importance of including focused and relevant keywords on your site, it is worth emphasizing that you should not use keywords on your site in an unnatural way. You may be penalised by search engines for ‘keyword stuffing’ if you repeatedly use keywords without good cause. The text on your site should include keywords where appropriate, and must be written in a way that is pleasing and natural to both human visitors and search engines. If you identify appropriate keywords, and include them in your site in a sensible manner, you will have taken an important step in ensuring that search engines will index your website correctly and will present it to searchers who are interested in your particular content.

Klanco has been helping clients in the Fredericksburg, Stafford and Northern Virginia area  with their website design a nd development  for ten tears. We would be happy to help you!