Illustration credit: Luc Legay

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to speak at Freedom 55 Financial on how financial advisors can generate leads through social media and use social networks to grow their business. I couldn’t have asked for a better audience, especially at 8:00 am on a Friday! If you think that financial planners are nothing but stifled individuals with suits and ties, you only need to meet that bunch to change your mind. Laughs were had from both sides of the podium!

One thing that struck me almost immediately was that some financial advisors still don’t have a site. In fact, some of them even doubt the value of having one. What an eye-opener: here we are in the online marketing industry, presuming that every single business can take advantage of social media, when many don’t even have an online presence!

So, in true David Letterman style, The Online Strategy House presents you “The Top 10 Reasons Why You Need a Site”. Pretend you can hear Paul Shaffer in the background… and let’s go!

#10 – You prospects will very likely check you out online when deciding whether or not to become your newest client. A Web site is a perfect tool to build their confidence regarding your company.

#9 – If you choose to have your site built on an easy-to-use content management system, like WordPress, you’ll be able to effortlessly update it with new information. Imagine the possibilities: a new product becomes available to your clientele, and you can immediately let them know about its benefits. It certainly beats printing a new batch of brochures, doesn’t it?

#8 – If you don’t have a site, you can bet that your bigger competitors do. Which brings us back to #10: what if your prospects could not find you online, but saw a comparable business that offered tonnes of information about their offerings? That might create a little bit of doubt in their mind, no?

#7 – Because you want to take control of what happens if prospects “google” your name. If they find your professional-looking site in search results, with valuable content, they will likely feel more reassured — especially if they are in the information search stage of the purchase cycle. However, if all they see is the link to your Facebook profile and that comment that you left on a fishing forum long ago… that doesn’t look so respectable.

#6 - For referrals. People may not remember phone numbers, but they will recall a good domain name. Choose a memorable name for your site, and you’ll make it easier for your loyal clients to spread the word about you.

#5 – A Web site — specifically a blog — gives you a voice when there’s news that you’d like to discuss — related to either your own business or your industry. You can use this outlet to keep your clients “in the know”… which helps you to establish yourself as an authority in your field.

#4- You will probably look unprofessional if you DON’T have a site. Picture this: you’re enjoying a conversation with someone who’s taking an interest in what you do, and might even want to give you some business. He asks your Web address. You say… “I don’t have one”. See that blank stare on his face? That’s the look of disappointment.

#3 – Because it’s not as expensive as you think! If cost is what has kept you from having your own cozy home online, know that now it’s cheaper than ever to have a site created for you. There are many inexpensive services out there that you can turn to, and that make it child’s play to update it.

#2 – Because you can “SEO” (that is, search engine optimize) your site to target phrases that describe your products and services. If done correctly (shameless plug here… ask me how I can help!), your prospects will find you in search engines when they perform a query for those same terms.

#1 – Because it’s 2010! What are you waiting for?

The best time to optimize a site for search engine visibility is before it’s built. There are many design factors that affect whether your site will rank well on Google or Bing. Several of these elements should be considered when the site is planned — not after the fact.

If you’re considering finally taking the online plunge, contact me at The Online Strategy House. I’ll work with your design and development teams to ensure that it’ll help you get the online visibility to reach your goals.

This question came to me courtesy of my profile on Formspring:

“Which CMS platform do you most often recommend people build their sites on?”

To which I replied:

“Hello! I’m a bad, bad Formspring user. Just noticed this question now. Aren’t I supposed to be notified whenever there’s a new question?

I was once involved in a project that ran on another CMS called ExpressEngine. It was very challenging to make any modifications without hiring some expert – and pricey – professional help. Maybe others have had better luck with it, but that incident definitely left me with a sour taste in my mouth about Express Engine.”

Is there a CMS that YOU prefer?

So here I am, playing with Google Wave. I’m still getting the hang of it, but it seems to open a lot of possibilities.

One of the most attractive features is the ability to incorporate a Wave into a blog. Of course, this will be even better once more people get access to Wave.

I’ve found it very easy to do so by, first, installing the Wavr WordPress plugin. Then, you will need to enter a code, akin to wave id=”yourwaveid here” into the post where you’d like the Wave to be integrated. This is the only part where I had a bit of hiccup, but the solution is simple:

- Login to Google Wave using your username.
- Select a Wave, then look at the address bar in your browser. You’ll probably find something that starts with

https://wave.google.com/wave/?….

To identify your wave id, just locate everything that includes and follows the exclamation mark, minus the period and the number towards the end of the line.

You will also need to replace %252B with +. In this example, we’d end up with: googlewave.com!w+XXXXXX.

Then, embed the wave id code as per the instructions provided by Wavr.

Once the embedding is done, whoever has access to Google Wave will probably see one ugly green rectangle in the blog post. As it turns out, those colours can be reset through the plugin’s settings in your WordPress admin panel.

Don’t give me credit for these instructions. This can all be found on Wavr’s installation and FAQ pages.

Have fun! And here’s the final product…

Note: if you don’t have yet access to Google Wave, you will not see anything newsworthy.

Right after typing the above title, I remembered that, today, my friends of the Jewish faith celebrate Rosh Hashanah. So it’s probably very fitting that the title would be in Yiddish.

From Flickr, via 106fm Jerusalem. I hope that's what it says!

After four calls to GoDaddy and a few hours toasting with this hot (literally) laptop on my thighs, I have succeeded in migrating my humble Wordpress.com blog to this new home… onlinestrategy.ca. Don’t ask me how I was able to get this domain name to begin with. The stars were aligned. Or I had good karma at that point. Or it was meant to be.

At any rate, it’s done. There’s still a lot of work ahead – but that’s at least some progress.

By why “Oy Vey”, do you ask? Because it was an arduous process, at least for me! The first person I spoke with at GoDaddy intended to be informative, but what he told me was inaccurate (I was told that it was simply a question of importing content from WordPress into onlinestrategy.ca). Of course, that would have meant that the couple of links or so that I have going to onlinestrategy.wordpress.com would not be permalinked to onlinestrategy.ca. Not good. Hey, I know a couple of links may not be much, but one of them is from hummingbird604.com, from a blog post I wrote for Raul. You bet that I’ll try to maintain that link!

After that, I proceeded to make a search on Google for “redirect wordpress.com to domain”. And somehow I ended up finding this slightly outdated, but save-the-day kind of gem: a PDF by the folks at Blog-Well.com. It contains instructions on how to get redirect a Wordpress.com blog to a new domain, in terms that I could understand. And even a few screenshots, for good measure.

I will try and publish a post with an updated version of the instructions provided by Blog-Well.com. It will probably save your from having to call technical support at GoDaddy.

Thank you, Blog-Well.com. Merci beaucoup. Muito Obrigada. Todah Raba. You guys made me one happy girl. Like I said in one of my tweets – it’s an insignificant step for mankind – but a GIANT leap for me.