The term ‘long tail’ comes from the shape of a line chart that reflects the habits of groups of people when searching or buying.

Here’s an example – books people buy. The most popular books sell the most, and less popular books don’t sell as much, but there are many more less-popular books than popular books.

Popular books (less books selling more) v less popular books (more books selling less)

The quantity of books sold in the long tail adds up to more than the best sellers peak at the left.

The long tail concept is used often when analysing website visitor statistics, especially what words people used to search for something before they land on your website.

In search, the long tail tends to contain more specifics, targeting niche subjects, which generally means more targeted or qualified leads landing on your website. The generic searches can be a hard sell.

Imagine you’re selling websites on the internet (I have some experience at this). A lot of people will do general searched like ‘websites’ or ‘website design’, but there will be a lot of more specific searches, such as ‘how do I get a website that works’ or ‘the biggest website designer on the sunshine coast’.

At the end of the day, all of the specific searched added together will amount to more than the more generic searches. In addition, because the people are using more specific keywords, they are more likely to know what they are looking for, and therefore be more likely to convert into a sale.

Have a look at your business and consider how you can more effectively market to the long tail.

If you’re wondering whether you should be using Twitter, here are 5 reasons why you should:

1. Follow trends – Keep track of what’s being discussed based on keywords
2. Make announcements – Use Twitter as part of your media strategy
3. Stay informed – Twitter has become the place where breaking news breaks first
4. Network – ‘Meet’ new people with similar interests and have (short) conversations
5. Generate website traffic – Always link back to your website when making an announcement

Not too long ago, self employed tradespeople and similar small businesses didn’t need a website. Things have changed. Now if your business doesn’t have a website, you’re probably missing out on potential customers and opportunities.

Take a plumber for example. Plumbers never used to need websites, people used the yellow pages or the classifieds in the local newspaper. Now people use the internet, and especially Google, to find and research services.

If you’re in small business and don’t have a website, then your competitors will get first go at getting the customer.

On your website you can educate your potential customers about your business, and let them know why they should use your services. You can use a promotional offer or specials to encourage enquiries, and you can include testimonials from satisfied customers to reinforce your message.

Tradies generally don’t require a complex and expensive website, just something basic that does the job well.

Fig Creative is offering a website package which is perfect for tradies. It’s low cost, super easy to use, and you can update it yourself with very little computer knowledge.

It has everything you need to get started on the internet right away, so you can start capturing some of those Google searchers!

Call 1300 775 182 to get started.

It can be challenging to get to the top of the search results for generic terms, such as ‘website design’. However, by combining keywords with a locality, you are suddenly targeting a niche and only competing with businesses in the same locality, and therefore have a much greater chance of ranking highly in the search results.

Local search is becoming more important, as people search for services when they are visiting a new area, and where people used to use the yellow pages, now they use Google instead. And with the increasing popularity of mobile phones with internet access, people increasingly look up services and directions wherever they are.

In business today, the internet must be a part of your strategy. Where do you start?

First, get your website in order. Your website is the cornerstone of your internet strategy, it’s the place that you want people to go to, and it should be designed to make it easy for people to find, and easy for them to achieve their (your) goals.

You want people to go to your website because that’s where your message is, and that’s where you educate people about your products and services and prompt them into action, whether it be making a purchase or enquiry, or just signing up for your email newsletter, allowing you to market to them later.

You want people to end up at your website, but they won’t necessarily start there. They may start at Google, or an online business directory. The more places your presence can be found on the internet, the easier it will be to find, or stumble across, your business.

Consider a twitter account. Twitter allows you to ‘tweet’ about what your business is doing; new products, announcements etc., and link back to your website. People will find your tweets and click through to your website to read more.

Are you passionate and knowledgeable enough about your business that you can write about it? On the internet, information is gold. Start a blog and write about things that your business does. Write regularly. People will find what you are writing about when they search or browse the internet.

Your website is available to the whole world 24 hours a day, every day of the year. It’s out there working for you when you’re asleep and when you’re on holidays.

It costs a bit to set up and maintain your website, but nothing compared to what it would cost to hire an army of salespeople to do an equivalent job.

If you’re looking to grow your business, investing in your website could be one of the wisest investment decisions you can make.