Owen Carver

5 Design Tips for Building Your Website

Successful Web Design

The aesthetics of a website have never been as vital as they are today. Whether you’re building your website for yourself or a client, it has become crucial that you stay updated with current web design trends and market demands. However, it’s undoubtedly difficult to keep up with the pace of the internet and the ever-changing trends in web design. Web designers know that the key to a successful web design is understanding the principles of design in addition to the expectations of your target audience and leveraging them towards your specific online conversion goals while balancing these needs with your unique budget and timeline.

If you take these things into consideration, you'll be able to influence your visitor’s behavior and drive traffic to your website. In this article, we’ll outline 5 design tips for building your website.

1. Explore and Research Websites in Your Target Market

Researching other websites in your target market will help you guarantee your design is up to date on current trends and that it's in a style that your visitors will relate to. Analyze your competitor’s websites and take notes on their features that interest you in addition to those that don’t. Using these notes while designing your site will help you deliver a captivating and effective design that’s current to your industry.

2. Keep it Simple and Familiar

It’s a good idea to make use of design elements that your visitors will recognize, the most obvious are a navigation bar, header, footer, etc. This will help make certain your users can navigate your website without getting confused and will help build trust and reliability into your website. Using unfamiliar user interface elements might frustrate your users and cause them to leave your site. After all, the goal of your site is to drive your users towards a specific action, and you want it to be easy for them to quickly perform that action.

3. Use Great Fonts

Choosing a great font is a vital step in designing a captivating website. Make sure you select a font that's legible enough to make your content very easy to read while matching the style and feeling you want your brand to convey.

4. Make it Mobile-Friendly and Responsive

Mobile users are ever increasing and make up a large portion of internet traffic. Moreover, search engine giant Google has announced they're giving precedence to mobile-friendly websites when performing searches from a mobile device. This makes it very important for websites to embrace a mobile-friendly design so that they're accessible to the largest audience possible. You can test to see if your website is mobile friendly according to Google using their Mobile Friendly Test page.

5. Use Color Effectively

Color is an important aspect to any web design. Effective use of color will help you engage your visitors and encourage them to interact with your site. Because of this, it’s essential to choose your colors carefully and ensure they're appropriate to your website. Each color has a deep meaning behind it and conveys an emotion to the viewer. Although individuals may differ in their perceptions of color, you must understand what message you wish to convey with your website before you start selecting colors. For example, all colors convey meaning. And having an overall black theme and background to your website may subconsciously convey a feeling of mystery or danger that might not align with a company that wants users to feel they are open, safe, and transparent.

Staying Current is Essential

Web design is constantly changing and new fads and trends will continue to pop up and fade out. Yet it’s essential to stay up to date with current trends to avoid having an outdated website, especially if there are opportunities to improve the experience of your users and take advantage of opportunities to gain more visibility in search engines. The tips we’ve covered in this article will help you think about things to consider when envisioning a new a captivating web design for your brand.

About All in Web Pro

If you’re looking to have a website professionally designed by web designers who understand current web design trends, look no further than All in Web Pro. We are a leading Las Vegas web design company, and we’ll make sure that you’re delivered a professional web design solution that will engage your audience, showcase the best you have to offer, and drive your visitors to take the actions you desire to convert to sales and growth.

Call us today for a free web development consultation to get a free estimate for your next custom website or web application. 702-331-0650


5 Tips for Choosing a Las Vegas Web Development Company

Anyone in Las Vegas can call themselves a Web Developer

Unless you know exactly what you’re looking for, choosing a web developer in Las Vegas can be a difficult task. There are no licensing requirements for web developers and the barriers for entry are almost nonexistent. This has caused the web development market to become flooded with freelancers and companies of all skill levels, skill types, experience, and capabilities. In this article, we’ll give you 5 tips for finding the perfect Las Vegas web development company for your next website project or advanced web application.

1. Find a Professional Web Development Specialist

Many web developers, (web dev&39;s) claim that they can do it all. In reality, most web developers are primarily either graphic designers, web designers, content specialists, or programmers. Each of these fields are very specialized, and it’s uncommon to find people who are experts in more than 1 or two of them. When looking for a web developer in Las Vegas, we suggest asking them who will be doing the graphics, where the text content will come from, who is setting up the website in the online CMS platform such as WordPress or SquareSpace, and who will be providing the programming or coding work if at all. If it’s the same person doing two or more of these things, we recommend paying close attention to their previous work in their portfolio and asking to see live examples of their work online that's actively being used by past clients of theirs.

2. Check Their Portfolio

A web developer’s portfolio is a good indication of the type of work you can expect from them for your own website. When reviewing their portfolio, keep an eye out for aspects that you might want incorporated into your website. If you are looking for the latest in design trends or cutting-edge technology, look for those types of designs in their portfolio, or find them on other websites and ask them if they can build something similar. On the other hand, if you’re looking to have a website developed that involves complex programming, ensure the developer has examples of this as well and ask key questions about cost, timelines, and what to expect.

3. Be Marketing Minded and Ready to do SEO

In the early days of the internet, simply having a website was enough to be found by both current and potential customers. In 2016, having a website is just one aspect of your overall web presence. It’s important to make sure that the web developer will create the site in a way that makes it easy to perform SEO (search engine optimization) tasks, such as updating meta data, or that automatically incorporate search engine friendly tags on images, links, URL page addresses, and that link internally and externally appropriately. This will help you increase your rankings in search engines and make it easier for customers to find you, especially if you are going to be blogging, launching an SEO campaign, or hiring a separate company to do your SEO afterwards.

4. Have a Long Term Web Development Strategy

Another thing you should consider when choosing a web developer in Las Vegas is the scope of ongoing maintenance and the charges the site will require and incur after initial development is complete. It’s also important to understand at what point your initial projects ends and the maintenance phase of your relationship begins. If your website id being developed in phases, having a clear roadmap and expectations for ongoing work is even more important.

5. Have Excellent and Convenient Communication Channels

Once you’ve narrowed your web developer choices down, it’s a good idea to speak with the developer directly, and in person or on video if possible. This will help you understand how well they communicate, how well they understand your vision, if your get along well with them, and it’s a good indication of how well you can manage and maintain your positive working relationship when important and detailed communication is needed during your project. It’s also one last measure of safety before you invest in having the web developer begin working on your project. We don't ever recommend hiring someone who doesn't speak your native language, or who comes from a cultural background that is different than yours as this may dramatically change the way they interpret your instructions and vision for the project.

About All in Web Pro - Las Vegas Web Developers

All in Web Pro is a premier web design and web development company in the Las Vegas area. We focus on providing custom web design and development solutions to the Las Vegas area and beyond. Whether your project is a blog, custom web application, or business website, we can take your web presence to the next level.

Call us today for a free web development consultation to get a free estimate for your next custom website or web application. 702-331-0650


How to Update your Sitemap.xml file for Google and Bing

Your Sitemap.xml file might not be up to date

Recently I've become inspired to create a multitude of new pages and blog posts for our All in Web Pro website to add a wealth of new content to our site to bring helpful information to our clients and site visitors, as well as to boost our ranking in Google searches. This week after publishing several new blog posts in a row I wanted to double check our sitemap.xml file to make sure Google & Bing had the most up to date list of all of our old and new webpages.

We'd been using a WordPress plugin called "Google XML Sitemaps" which had worked for us in the past and is designed to automatically update the sitemap.xml file anytime a page or post is created or updated on your WordPress website. This is important because you want all of your new webpages to be announced to search engines as soon as they're live on your website. And although search engines automatically rescan your website to look for new content and pages, submitting it to them directly can speed up the process and help those pages get indexed and seen by search engine users faster.

So after checking our sitemap.xml file that the Google XML Sitemaps plugin was generating, I noticed the blog posts I'd submitted a week earlier weren't appearing. I'm going to update our WordPress core and activate the plugin to see if it will start working again. But in the meantime I needed a way to update our sitemap quickly and manually to make sure it's appearing correctly with all of our links. Which is where the following short tutorial on how to update your sitemap.xml file begins.

What is a sitemap.xml file?

A sitemap.xml file that sits on your website's hosting server which tells search engines all of the pages on your website that exist, what priority you rank the pages in, when they were last updated, and how frequently you update them. This information helps Google & Bing know how often to rescan your website's pages for updates and which pages on your site are more important to show in search results. It's also a good way to announce the creation of new pages on your site to Google & Bing. The file is written in XML, which is similar but different from HTML, another type of "Markup Language, which is what the "ML" are abbreviations for. So it's important that your XML file is created correctly with no errors in the XML format.

Why is my sitemap.xml file so important?

If you want to have the best chance of showing up on the first page of a Google or Bing search when your potential customers or audience are doing relevant searches you need Google and Bing to know all of the pages on your website, which ones are the most important ones you want appearing, and also to include your most recently created content. If your sitemap is not up to date it will tell search engines that maybe your website isn't being updated and therefore might not have the most relevant and current information on it. Many other factors are taken into consideration, but when you know sitemaps have an impact on your search rankings and are an important part of SEO, why not be safe and make sure it's correct?!

5 Steps to Updating your sitemap.xml file

Here's a quick list of steps you can take to manually update your sitemap.xml file. Once finished you'll know it's live by simply go to your website homepage and add '/sitemap.xml' after '.com' or '.net'. (e.g. www.domain.com/sitemap.xml)

1. Generate your XML Sitemap file

There are several websites you can visit to generate a sitemap file for your website. I did a Google search for "sitemap generator" and found XML-Sitemap.com which worked well. Just enter your website URL and download the free files generated. The file we need is sitemap.xml.

Sitemap xml file

2. Upload your sitemap.xml file to your website's root server

To get your sitemap.xml file onto your website's hosting server you'll need one of the following 2 things. A) The login & password to the hosting control panel for your website so you can utilize a file manager tool that your web hosts provides to upload the sitemap.xml file to your website's root (/) folder. B) You can download a free FTP (file transfer protocol) program to your computer, such as FileZilla, which will enable you to upload files directly to your website's hosting server. You'll still need to have an FTP user account created on your hosting account, which will have a username & password along with a hostname. For hostname you can usually just type your website domain name (e.g. allinwebpro.com), otherwise you can use the IP address of the web host server where your website's files are located, which your hosting company provides you.

3. Make sure sitemap.xml is in your server's root folder

The sitemap.xml file should be uploaded to the root folder of your website. This is usually the folder labeled '/', and is also usually the same folder where you'll find usually also see the 'index.php' and '.htaccess' files.

sitemap website URL address

4. Verify your sitemap.xml file is live

Now go to your website and add the '/sitemap.xml' suffix to your website's domain name, like this: 'www.mydomain.com/sitemap.xml'. If the page you see looks something like this then it worked!

5. Submit your new sitemap to Google & Bing

Both Google and Bing have an advanced Webmaster Tools service where you can create an account and manage all of the different websites that you administrate. You'll need to verify that you control your website by following their verification instructions, which usually involves adding a snippet of code to the header or footer of your homepage. Once verified you can navigate to the 'sitemap' area of Webmaster Tools to submit or resubmit your sitemap.xml file. Both search engines have advanced tutorials and help information to help you complete this task, and both provide advanced reporting tools to let you know more about your website including any broken links, or how many pages are currently indexed vs what was submitted.

Other Options

Although this method works, it is a little time consuming and it would be much easier to simply upload a plugin to your WordPress dashboard that would automatically update your sitemap.xml file anytime changes were made to your site. I'm going to do some plugin tests and see if any are reliable and will update this blog post accordingly. But it's helpful to know how to manually create your own sitemap.xml file in the event that plugins become buggy or aren't picking up all of the links to your site, especially if you start using a subdomain which may be tricky for some automated plugins to read.

What Sitemap Tools Do You Use?

Please comment below if you found this sitemap.xml guide helpful, or if you have other websites, plugins, or tools that worked well for you.

About All in Web Pro

All in Web Pro is a Las Vegas Web & Graphic Design company that has been helping small and medium sized businesses unlock the power of the internet to accelerate their brands since 2010. If need help with your website or have want to know how to get more value out of your website, call our team today! 702-331-0650


Graphic Design for the Web

Graphic Design for Digital Media

Graphic design for the web refers to the process of creating digital visual media assets used on a website or other digital platform. The graphics may be used to enhance or enable the representation of an idea or a feeling in order to reach a virtual or in-person audience. Graphic design services for the web may be used for everything from enhancing the appearance of web pages to serving as the presentation and user interaction layer for dynamic and data rich web applications.

Designing with a Purpose

Graphic design for your website is performed by a graphic designer and implemented into your digital medium by a web design expert or digital marketer. The main job of a graphic designer is to design visual elements for the web or for print that convey a message, emotion, or move viewers to take a specific action. All of these purposes can be achieved with graphical layouts for websites, posters, brochures, flyers, advertisements, social media graphics, and much much more. The goal of a digital graphic can also be as simple as catching someone’s attention, or it could aim at making them interested in purchasing a new product, clicking a link on a website, or performing a specific conversion action such as signing up for a newsletter or sharing a link on social media.

Graphics of All Shapes and Sizes

At All in Web Pro we provide every kind of digital graphic design service that your business or brand might need, among the other services we offer. We are focused on providing the best graphic design services for your brand in digital and print formats, as well as web design services. Our custom graphic design solutions cater to businesses of all sizes, no matter if you need a website layout, logo design, custom letterhead, flyers, business cards, outdoor banners, billboards, or even car wraps.

Get Started!

All in Web Pro is a graphic design and custom web development company based in Las Vegas, Nevada. We know that well designed graphics can be the key element that makes your brand stand out online and grab your users’ attention, and are critically important since every design has the potential to serve a valuable and specific purpose for your brand.

Call us today to schedule a free consultation and quote for your next graphic design project. We’re excited to hear from you! 702-331-0650


Las Vegas Website Design Company Tips: Less is More

As a Las Vegas Website Design Company we like sharing tips to help you improve your online business and brand. As Google and user behavior has evolved over the past few years, the theme of 'less is more' has never been so important as it is today. A website with too much clutter can become difficult to navigate, while a more stripped down look can appear more sleek and modern. This direction of minimal and simplified web design has been trending for a while now, and it's important to take the potential benefits of this design philosophy seriously. Here are a few tips on how a more simple website design helps improve the user experience of your visitors.

1. Only the Essentials:

One of the first things to do when seeking improvement in your website design is to limit your website to the essentials. The process of trimming down the website can be a challenging one but is definitely a process worth some attention. A good rule of thumb to follow is the 80 - 20 rule, which states that 20% of what’s on a page should give 80% of its value. Consider what content on your pages are most essential and where you want your visitor’s attention to really be.

2. Number of Pages:

Having enough pages on your website is important for SEO purposes, however, along the same lines as what’s been said above, you don’t want to go overboard. You want to make sure your website design is user-friendly, don’t make it too difficult for your visitors to navigate by giving them too many choices of where to click to find what they need, it might make them not want to return. One way to still have lots of pages and content while still keeping your web design clean and organized is to utilize categories and sub categories within your main site pages and blog to minimize the number of options a user is presented when first deciding where to go to find what they’re looking for.

3. Consider What’s Above the Fold:

When a user loads any page your website, the first things they see is the area of your website usually referred to as “above the fold”. This refers specifically to the area of your website that appears in a user's browser before they scroll down. This area often changes depending on the size of the browser window you view a website on. But being aware that this area is the first impression your visitors see, it’s best for a website’s design to carefully consider the first impression and type of content you want your visitors see at first glance. Although it’s been shown that most users naturally scroll down webpages to view additional content on websites, it’s important to consider what information, media, or call-to-action you want your visitors to see first. It could determine whether they stay or click-away.

4. Fewer But Carefully Selected Colors:

Don’t go crazy with too many different types of colors for your website design. When in doubt, find a small handful of colors and stick to those, anything else may become a distraction or complicate the user’s visual experience. Consult with a professional web & graphic designer when selecting your website’s color scheme and background elements.

If you need a trusted, Las Vegas website design firm, look no further than All in Web Pro. Our experienced web and graphic design team will work with you to find your brand’s voice and help you translate it onto your webpages. If you are ready to take your brand to the next level, contact All in Web Pro today.


Benefits of Professional Website Design

Professional Advantage

One of the best ways to give your business an advantage and give your brand the best foot forward is to hire someone to create a professional website design for you. If your business or brand doesn’t have a custom website design, many potential customers may not even give your website a second look, or may lose confidence in your brand. For the best possible results, it’s a good idea to hire a professional web design company, such as All in Web Pro in Las Vegas, to create your company’s new mobile-friendly website.

Custom Designs

Hiring a professional web design company to create a custom website design will broaden your marketing opportunities by creating a custom experience for potential customers. Not only will a professional website design help you reach more potential customers, but it also provides your business or brand a more professional reputation that will help your customer feel at ease when doing business with you. In addition, a professional website design will also help your business compete against other companies that offer similar products and services in the ever competitive online marketplace.

Unique to Your Brand

Professional website designs generally include more uniqueness and creativity than your typical business site, and hiring a professional web design company like All in Web Pro is your best option. All in Web Pro will work closely with you to find out your individual preferences in regards to the particular website design you’re looking for. Our professional website designs will help your business or brand stick out in the memories of both current and potential customers alike.

A Competitive Edge

Website design is not something for amateurs or students if you have a serious business to promote. In order to get a competitive edge in the business world, it’s in your best interest to hire a professional website design company like All in Web Pro to make sure you’re staying current and not missing critical business opportunities or the latest security measures online. We have years of experience providing high-quality website design solutions to businesses in the Las Vegas area and beyond.

Call us today for a free consultation! 702-331-0650


Google Web Design Update: Removes Right Sidebar Ads

Without publishing an announcement Google has removed right sidebar ads from desktop browser search pages, now showing up to 4 paid ads at the top of searches before organic search results and up to 3 at the bottom of SERPs (search engine results pages). I'd like to think Google's update was inspired by the latest web design trends of 2016 which are shifting towards minimalism, simplicity, fewer simultaneous choices, and other feng-shui-like principles.

The change will significantly affect click-through rates and likely cost per click paid by advertisers for existing Google Adwords campaigns, especially for high traffic commercial keywords. The SEM Post reports that Adwords staff have confirmed that this change will be worldwide and permanent.

Google Search with no right sidebar ads

Previously high traffic searches would have 3 text ads at the top which will now change to 4 for highly commercial searches. The term 'commercial searches' will likely be any searches that yield high advertising revenue such as high CPC (Cost Per Click) and high volume search results with commercial intent.

Mobile search browsers won't see any changes for the time being and still display 3 text ads at the top of the page with up to 3 ads at the bottom of each search results page.

Google has been making lots of subtle changes to their search results page for a long time now, often performing many different experiments simultaneously across millions of users to optimize the experience of users based on changes in behavior patterns.

The removal of right sidebar ads, which are often ignored by savvy Google searchers, may be part of a longer-term strategy of Google attempting to make the right sidebar more useful and eventually more profitable through other forms of enhanced and more trustworthy content delivery. So just when you were about to sit back and enjoy the new whitespace of Google's new search page web design, you may need to start getting used seeing new more useful content there.

Google Search SERP Music Artist Sidebar Massive Attack

Examples of these shifts can be seen when searching for popular music groups which produce a wikipedia type fact chart where the right sidebar ads used to be. The change may also be partly associated with revenue models Google has calculated related to trends in revenue from ads in the sidebar compared to ads placed above organic content.

Either way, I'd like to say a big AMEN to whoever at Google had the smart idea to remove a little more clutter from our lives. They've done a great job of keeping their homepage clutter-free for so many year. Perhaps Google is now making this change in response to new trends in web design that are moving websites towards more simple, light-weight, and less cluttered designs for people searching for valuable information online.


New Website Launch: Café do Paraíso

In 2010 our founder, Owen Carver, visited Brazil for a business conference which led to an opportunity to sell specialty Brazilian coffee beans in the U.S. market. Over several years the business model evolved into a U.S. based coffee roasting operation importing farm-direct Brazilian coffee beans to be roasted in Las Vegas Nevada and sold online.

Café do Paraíso has been an ongoing project which has only been made possible by the long-term hard work and dedication of Owen, the All in Web Pro team and Brazilian business partners. Café do Paraíso was officially incorporated in 2013 as an LLC in Nevada and aims to become a major player in the specialty coffee market in Nevada and hopefully all of the United States.

All in Web Pro played a key role in the development of the Café do Paraíso brand through the development of its logo, brand assets, product packaging and layout, and e-commerce website. After conducting a soft-launch of the coffee in December of 2013 selling coffee to friends, family, and early adopters, Café do Paraíso is now looking forward to launching its full roasting operation in the 2nd quarter of 2016 after new plumbing installation is completed to ensure the coffee roasting warehouse is fully compliant with Nevada Health Department codes.

If you drink coffee you have to buy a bag of these amazing coffee beans and taste them for yourself! Please go to http://CafedoPariso.com and sign up for the newsletter to be updated by email as soon as the coffee is ready for purchase on the website.


AiWP Writer's block

Web Design Tips: 5 Ways to Beat Writer’s Block

Here are 5 Techniques for Overcoming Writer’s Block:

Creativity is necessary for some much of what we do every day. When we’re “in the zone” our newest web design, web development concept or client presentation seems to flow out of us and all the dots connect seamlessly. But we’ve also experienced the other extreme. The clock ticks incessantly on an impending deadline, the more you try and force your focus the more distracted you become, until you feel incapable of stepping up to the task at hand. You’ve smashed into that impassible wall known as writer’s block. The good news is you’re not alone. Every one of us has encountered this obstacle, threatening to obstruct our path to productivity and success. And the better news is, there are ways you can climb right over the wall and continue on your way to completing your project.

1. Get the blood pumping and oxygen circulating.

Take a walk. It sounds too easy to be true, but it is an exceptional way to clear your head. It is even more effective if you make an effort to be “in the moment” by paying attention to your surroundings on your walk instead of visualizing your deadline as an anvil about to drop on your head and bust it wide open like a watermelon at the hands of Gallagher (http://gallaghersmash.com/). A walk also packs the added punch of getting your blood pumping, which increases blood circulation and oxygen, and this is vital to achieving peak brain function. Sedentary lifestyle habits, like sitting at your desk all day, inhibits effective blood circulation and can have the same stifling effect on your creativity. Many times a momentary change of scenery, coupled with some physical activity and movement, is all you need to reinvigorate your creative mojo.

2. Take a mental break to switch gears and recalibrate your focus.

Occasionally, you hit a wall and all you need to get over it is to step back from the project for 10 minutes and let your focus recalibrate. The key to not getting mindlessly sidetracked is to limit your breaks to a specific amount of time, not exceeding 10 or 15 minutes. It is best if your break involves reading or writing. Perhaps you indulge your guilty pleasures, that celebrity gossip website or check the scores on ESPN.com or go on your social networks and check out what your friends and family are up to. But again, be disciplined or this won’t work and could become just another way to procrastinate.

3. De-clutter your environment to reduce distractions.

Whether you believe that your surroundings can physically block energy, as in Feng Shui, or you just subscribe to the general principle that a messy work space is a needless distraction, it seems to improve clarity of focus when there is not “stuff” scattered haphazardly where you are working. Keep disorder to a minimum and it will enhance the process of organizing of your thoughts. A scattered work area can easily lead to scattered thoughts.

4. Limit outside interruptions.

This goes beyond your physical setting to include outside distractions such as phone calls, emails, social media and messaging notifications, television, interruptions from family, friends and co-workers, to the alluring temptations of the world wide web. Whether it’s eBay, Facebook, Zappos or cat videos on YouTube that entice you to drift, you have to empower yourself to just say no when you need to buckle down and produce a finished, quality project. Turn the phone on silent, adjust your settings to off, let those around you know you’re “off limits” for the next hour, or three, and close your internet browser. The world will not cease to turn if you go “underground” for a few hours.

5. Two minds can be better than one.

Get a second opinion. Collaboration can be a rewarding way to push through your writer's block. If you are writing an article, you can call an expert on the subject for a short interview. You reap the benefit of a relevant quote that improves your work, while expanding your perspective and, hopefully, making a new valuable connection. If the project is a presentation, try asking a colleague, friend or spouse to listen to your pitch and offer feedback. It will be helpful to have someone to bounce ideas off as well as give an insight or perspective that takes your concept to another level or in a different direction that you would not have thought of on your own.

The important elements of web development, web design, SEO, graphic design, or any creative development work, all require a high level of creativity and focus. It’s vital to have strategies to deal effectively with blocks when they occur. We would enjoy hearing what strategies get you past writer’s block and back on the path to productivity. What practices help you get into your creative flow?


Social Media that Matters

Web Design Tips: 5 Ways to Make Your Social Media Matter

To harness the full power of social networks and leverage the exponential reach available through social networking, here are 5 best practices.

Social media is a powerful tool for generating brand awareness and building trust. An effective social media strategy integrates seamlessly with your web design so that your online presence represents your company with professionalism and your SEO is boosted. If you do social media the right way you can build relationships with fans and followers that will build long-term relationships by creating content that engages and brings value your audience. Your web development strategy should always include a social element so your social networks are easily visible and your content is easily shared by those interested in your brand and content.

 

1. Use your social networks to listen, not just talk.

The social interaction between people is what brings the “social” element to social media. People interested in your brand will fan you on Facebook, follow you on twitter and subscribe to you on YouTube to interact with the person behind the company. They aren't always finding you on social channels to hear a one-way message that talks at them. Rather, thanks to social media, marketing and advertising is now a conversation and consumers will demand that you talk with them in a conversation. This is an exciting evolution that allows you to develop genuine connections with your audience that were not available before.

2. Your content should create value for your audience.

Only if you entertain, inform, or in some way provide value, with your social posts and updates will your fans and followers like your posts, share your blog content and videos and retweet your tweets. How can those interested in your brand join the conversation if you are not initiating one? No one wants to be sold to all the time, not in person and not on the net. If you consistently provide content that is of educational, social, or useful value you will build a following that is loyal, engaged and enthusiastic about your brand.

3. Social is not about selling, it’s about building relationships.

You get out of social what you put in. If you use it as a platform to always be selling, making it all about you, visitors will be less motivated to come back to your sites. But the good news is that building relationships is actually more powerful than sales! If you’re a dentist you’re not trying to use your blog to sell one pair of braces. If you blog on interesting subjects related to your business, such as how to ask for a second opinion or, for those that are terrified of the dentist, a 5 minute mediation to put you at ease before you enter the dentist chair, you will begin to build trust with your audience. This trust is the first step to building a lasting relationship. You will become a trusted resource that can develop into a client bond that will outlast a one-time procedure and continue for 5, 10, or 20 years or longer.

4. Use social networks to build relationships with industry leaders, colleagues and mentors.

Social is not only about reaching out to potential consumers, it's also about participating in the conversation among your peers and industry thought leaders. Follow those agencies and individuals that are driving innovation in your field or who have influence with many people. These people have much to teach and they give away valuable information and insights through social media. Are you listening or are you missing out? LinkedIn is optimal for engaging with industry giants and experts. You can join LinkedIn groups representing your field to keep up on the latest news, updates and industry trends. Be a part of the conversation so you too can establish yourself as a leading voice in your market.

5. Track your metrics to develop and fine tune your strategy.

In order to know what you are doing right, and which strategies are not benefiting you, you need to track your performance. There are many tools, both paid and free, that will generate reports which let you know when your content resonates with your audience and when it falls flat and fails to generate interest and engagement. By playing to your strengths and understanding your weaknesses, you can develop a winning social media plan that will increase your presence, raise your SEO ranking and establish your business as a leader in your market.

We have been in the Las Vegas web design and web development industry for years and we have experienced the power of social media to make connections and create partnerships and clients in our community. It’s not rocket science, all it takes is knowledge, a passion for engaging with your audience, and a consistent dedication to the effort and consistency required to create value and build genuine long-term connections.