Build My Online Presence (Front Range First Defense)

We are all about helping small business and entrepreneurs figure out how to make things happen. And so today, it is our very first examination, breakdown, and critique of website and social networks. Stick around, check it out. How's it going everybody? I am Dan from millennialmotivator.ca, helping you to create, engage, and inspire. If you are a small business owner or an entrepreneur, this channel is for you. That's right, you. We put out videos here Monday through Saturday, so that's 6 videos a week about sales, marketing, digital marketing, social networks, engagement, you name it. If it has to do with small business and being an entrepreneur, we do it here. There are some new things that we are trying on the channel, so if you want to keep updated on the next video coming out, what we're doing, what we're up to, Click that subscribe button down there and click the little bell and you'll be off and running. You'll get notifications whenever our next video comes up. But today I am super excited because we're starting a new thing on the channel. So once a week, guys, I'm going to take a website and a social network attached to it for a small business or an entrepreneur, and we're just going to examine it. Nothing, nothing mean, nothing nasty. Really just looking at it, taking a look at it, breaking it apart, being honest, uh, giving some feedback on how you can improve, how you can take the website and the social media to the next level. So super pumped to get this ball rolling today. As always, we'll showcase links to the business that we're examining down below. So if you guys see something that you like, you guys can check it out. I'm in no way receiving kickback or sponsorship. I need to say that disclaimer, disclaimer, not getting a kickback. These are people that just said, yo, I'd like you to take a look at it. Let me know what you think, see how I could grow. And so I'm happy to do that. I love seeing businesses trying to grow and get better and improve day by day. So Without further ado, let's hit it, let's get into it, let's go! Okay guys, so for our first website social media review, we've got Front Range First Defense. Okay, so what we're going to do when we do these breakdowns is we're going to take a look at the website. We're not going to go into analytics unless somebody makes that available to us. What we are going to do is we're going to take a look at the website. We are looking at Appearance, is it relevant? Is it frequent? Is it eye-catching? Is it moving? How do they display themselves? Is everything there that we want to see as far as bits and pieces go? So let's roll right into this here, guys. First and foremost, a couple of the things that I want to do on this: pros and cons. Okay, guys, so anybody that volunteers their business for this, it's not about shredding you apart. Any of the criticism that I'm giving you is just to help you guys improve. And as well, for you guys that are just watching this, it may not be your website. Look at your own website and use some of these tips for yourself. So right off the bat, what I'm seeing that's grabbing my eye are 3 things, okay? The first one is this right here, this Front Range First Defense script. This is just a blank script and it looks like there's a lot of blank space up here. So I think there's an opportunity there, uh, depending on the layout you're using, depending on the tool that you're using to build your website. I— this just feels like a lot of dead white space that you could be using on your main landing page. So I would take a look at the template that you're using and see if there's a better way to just pronounce these images that you have here and have those be placed further up on the page with the, uh, navigation tools and bars underneath in some way. That way you're not, you're not using this prime real estate on your landing page for kind of dead zone space. This text doesn't really do anything for you. If I click it, it's just going to bring me back to the main page. So it's not a great direction. It is an unfortunate use of space. Next, this is fine, the stuff that you have here. Home, Shop, About Us, Important Links, Contact Us, that's fine as a typical navigation bar. Account, Shopping Cart, this kind of stuff, that's pretty typical of these sites. The next thing that we are going to look at here though is the timeliness of this. So this is letting me know in December we have a sale for fire starters. So being at the end of January, almost February, I would recommend that we update this if the sales are still available. Another thing that I am not seeing in this initial page that I would like to see are your social media accounts. It would be great to see that. This also lets me know that you do have an Amazon page, so a link to your Amazon page would be phenomenal here. So either here with these logos or somewhere here after the Contact Us to insert a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Amazon, all of those links there so people can easily access that. And again, so you want this image up top, you want this down underneath it somewhere here, and some social icons to help direct people right to it. Now, as far as these logos go for Front Range First Defense and and the subsequent image here. Now this image here has some graphic editing done to it. I see one image overlaid on top of a winter image with the logo that you've chosen for it. This is— I'm not terribly opposed to this. This does come across as a little bit blurry, so I would go into Canva with this image, and what I would like to do here is probably make sure that it's optimized for that resolution that you need for that. It does seem a little stretched and a little pixelated, but that's not a huge thing, that's easily changeable. I do like that you've got this image in here because it immediately makes me want to scroll down to the next portion of the page, which is great because the product is, bam, it's right here, the survival tool. It's an all-in-one Titan Cord, like it's got all the features here, I see everything that comes with it. It looks like a great toolkit for anybody that's a survivalist, anybody that's a camper. You've got the Survivor Cord, 4 light modes, batteries, knives, lighters, all of this stuff. Perfect little toolkit. Direction to the shop, images of the device. That's fine. 8-in-1 multifunctional fire starter. Okay, so this stuff here is all well and good. Um. One of the big things I find with camping is, and again, I'm always gonna be big on this, guys, no matter where I look on your site, I wanna know who's using it, why they're using it, and what that kinda feels like. So what I recommend for you guys is always have pictures of people using the tool. So while this is good, these generic images of the item out in the wilderness, I would recommend actually showing people using the product. It makes it a lot more relatable, it gives you a feel for who can use it, what age range. You show kids using it, you show adults using it. That would be a little bit more ideal, I think, as far as navigation goes. Let's see, is anything broken? No. You've got all of these different options: the 12-in-1 survival flashlight, the 10-in-1 fire starter, 8-in-1 fire starter. So it's great that it's there. The spacing on this is something that I might work on, where you have— you've got these 3 narrow item exposure tabs, but you don't really have This whole area here is blank space that if you're not going to use it for something else immediately, I would recommend that you make these slightly larger so it fills this space and it gives us more of a viewpoint on this. Another option might be slideshows on this. Again, this is on every page, this outdated December thing, so we should work on getting rid of that or updating it. This could be filled out. So About Us is an opportunity to really showcase who you are. So an image of who you are or your team would be great here. A little bit more on the copy, so I'm thinking probably about 500 words minimum on this copy. Let you know why you do what you do, what the product is, why that matters, why you care, why the niche should care, and how you're involved are usually great ways to go. It's a simple breakdown. You do about 100 words apiece. Hi, this is who we are. This is what the brand is about. This is why we're passionate about it. This is how we're involved in the community, and here's why our product matters. Those 5 things, you drop out 100 words into each of those. Take you about 15 minutes, and then you've got a great little About Us section there. Plug in an image of who you are, who your company and team are, and you're off and rolling. Okay guys, there's nothing here. You've got your About Us and Contact page separately. Sometimes I recommend you put those together as one, but I'll leave that to personal preference whether or not that's something that appeals to you. Important links. Okay, so we do have some YouTube videos here, and again, spacing. I I would say really look at the template that you're using, because it seems like the spacing on the template is off. That the video gallery can't be more evenly spaced, so that you have both videos side by side here, and you're using this side of the page, or you've got 4 videos, 1, 2, 3, 4, that would be useful. And again, with these boxes, it's great that you've got a purchase item here. I think important links, rather than important links, I might rename this to something else. Front Range First Defense in Action, or tutorials, something of that nature, something that lets people know that this is essentially a video page to help people learn how to use the tool. Important links, I'm not too sure that that would— I would look at this, I'm not sure exactly why these would be important outside of they are helpful videos. Again, the layout is the big one for me, guys. This dead space is space that we could be using or narrowing down. As you see, I've gotta scroll down to see these sales options. If these 2 were side by side, those sales options would be here and prominent, and I wouldn't need to scroll down. That's pretty vital for most sites. The message us is fine. It is there. When I click it, it functions. It takes me into another page. This is a long load time for this Messenger screen. It's gonna take me into Facebook Messenger. So that's that. Let's see here, Contact Us, that's well and good. Again, you want some personality, guys. Whenever possible, if you can include images of yourself, images of your product, it just helps people relate a little bit more to who you are, and putting a face to a brand is often very helpful. Take McDonald's for example, Ronald McDonald, or Coca-Cola, you have the Santa Claus Coke guy, right? Budweiser, you've got the puppies that everybody knows, or the Clydesdale horses that go with them. Having just that image of a person or a brand symbol that goes along with it showcased on the pages, it gives it a little more feel, makes the site feel a little less cold. All in all though, the site functions. It works. If I go into the shop, I can— What's up, man? See, it gives me the option to view. I click through, it's here. I add to cart. Great descriptions here. This is well loaded out. Breakdown of what's in there. I love that. I love that. This is all well and good. Cart functions properly. I go to the checkout. No special instructions. So I don't know if that needs to be there. There's no special instructions. PayPal is an option. There's no credit card. Account is there. Canada shipping. This all looks like it's well and good. So nothing on the functional side of it that I have a particular issue with. Down here you do have notes for Visa, MasterCard, JCB, Discover, all these different pay options. But when I was in pay, the only thing I saw was PayPal. So it would be good to clarify that it's only through PayPal that those options are available, or actually give an option to click through to these on the pay cart. Now with follow us, this is one that I'm gonna touch on. I feel that you do have YouTube videos available, so I would put a YouTube link here. As well, and again, I would like these social links up here for people somewhere so that they're able to connect with you there. That you're not in Twitter, I would recommend that you be in Twitter for something like this. It's an easy network to be involved in. You can promote your content there; that wouldn't be a problem. Facebook, Instagram are both great. So YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter are the networks that I would recommend for you. Google Plus is one that I personally like to use, but that's hit or miss for some people. So. I'll leave that to you. But that's the website, guys, for Front Range First Defense. Now to bust over to their social, we'll take a look here at— break down some of these windows here. So this is your, your Facebook page for the business. I personally don't mind this. This looks good. You've got the, the 2 images we saw before, and here it feels really nice. Here this feels really good where you've got a great logo here. I like that. I appreciate that. The mountains and the house, the Front Range First Defense, like great job, love it. If this is gonna be your logo, I'd like to see some consistency on that. So this mountain image or this house and mountain image, if that's what you're using here, that would be preferable. Okay, so let's see here. I'll like the page because we're here. Let's go down to— so we don't have any— do we have any reviews? No reviews yet. So really pushing for reviews. Reviews is a great way to go with a business page. Ask your previous customers to give you a review. Find people that you know that have used the item, uh, that are friends and family. Put that in there. Frequency of posting is the big one that I want to see with a business page. Okay guys, being relevant and seeing the engagement and the frequency of posting. Now on this page, what I'm seeing is January 20th, January 20th, See all. So January 20th is it. This is looking like it's a newer thing, and here's what I'm looking for. So we have several posts on January 20th to say, okay, we're here, we're alive, we're doing something. And then the next previous one is November 14th. So that's more than a month missed, almost 2 months in between posts. So what we need to do here, guys, is is when, not just this Facebook page, every Facebook page. One is use all the tools available to us. So you wanna have reviews, photos, videos. If you've got a community, engage them, ask questions on it. Any tab that you have here, you should be using. If you're not using it, it shouldn't be there, remove it. Visitor posts are here. I don't know if you want this visible or not. If you do, great. Encourage a visitor to actually post something in there. This stuff here though, I would recommend that you do a post daily at minimum to your Facebook page. And with that, what it could look like are, because your niche is the camping outdoor survivalist, you're not really limited to your own content. Showcase some authority, showcase some passion for that— excuse me— for that community here and really plug in. So put videos of survivalists, of zero impact camping, of extreme camping, of Put videos and news articles from all over the place. I typically like to run a 1 in 7 ratio. So for every 1 self-promotional post that you have on your page, have 7 non-promotional, okay? And what that looks like is you've got a YouTube video, an article, some photos, yada yada yada. You do that 7 times for every 1 promotional. And have your promotional post pinned to the top, that's fine. But your most recent post after that should be something to do with your industry that isn't directly about buy my product, buy my product, buy my product. And the reason for that is you're actually going to build a bit of a following on your business page when you show that you have a passion for the community, you have a passion for what you're doing and where you're headed on this, okay? So as a whole on the Facebook page, you're— the business is obviously, you know, it's getting started. It's not exploding yet, it's on its way. You're learning how to grow, you're learning what to do, so I love where you're headed with this. I would recommend that if you're going to use a tool on one of these sidebars, make sure you're using it. I would recommend that if you are going to be using a business page, that you post daily to it. And I would recommend that you start getting some customer reviews as soon as humanly possible. But that is it as far as the examination of the Facebook page and the Instagram and the website. Let's go over to the Instagram page, see how we're doing here. So 6 posts, 112 followers, 280 following. So, um, when I see this, the 280 following, uh, if I go into, uh, how active you are on this— Social Blade's not even gonna pull up anything on this. So again, frequency, uh, incentivized content. You can check out past videos. Uh, for me, incentives on a small page like this isn't gonna be the way to go. The best way you could go is really showcase images of nature, outdoors, camping, survivalism at least once a day, and make sure that you're engaging with those hashtags on Instagram at least 10 times a day. So other people's posts, other people's stuff, you don't have to be promotional on it, just reach out, say, oh man, that's an awesome tent, flashlight, you know, campsite, whatever. Reach out to other people that are in your niche, have conversations, engage with the community, and And make sure you're posting daily to this. So this was posted on August 11th, 2017, July 14th, July 4th. So yeah, you want to be daily posting here at least, but that's the big thing. So if you're going to use a social network, guys, as always, make sure that you are consistent with it, daily posting to it, make sure that it's a relevant site. I know for me it's a lot easier because I put out YouTube content, so when I'm putting out a YouTube video, That goes out to all my social networks and I check that box of, great, I know I've posted original content once a day and then I engage with the community elsewhere, okay? But that is it for today, guys, on this. So, that is it for today, ladies and gentlemen. Again, if you are new to the channel, this is the first time you've seen it, click that subscribe and the bell down there. And if you have a business that you want me to check out, Feel free to leave that in the comments below. Question of the day though is, what do you think is the best thing that you saw on the website from the business today? Let me know down below. Question of the day, and we will see you guys tomorrow with another great video.