Chapter 8
A Place for Your Stuff: Primary Internet Presence

60 Second Summary

Before any appointment you ever have, you must assume the prospect will do an internet search on you. What will come up? This chapter will help you control that.

People who might want to refer you will want to know if you've ever worked with a specific type of client. They won't want to raise your expectations by asking you. Where can they go to learn more about you and what you've done? This chapter puts that issue to rest.

The CEO of a large company can't sleep and is searching the internet for a solution to an esoteric yet pressing problem. You have that solution. How will he ever know? This chapter will drive that CEO to your doorstep.

What's in This Chapter for You?

This chapter will help you develop a media outlet that you control. It will enable you to showcase your brilliance 24 hours per day, seven days per week.

The key concept you will discover in this chapter is the guide to each element of your primary internet presence. When you follow this template, your website will have everything necessary to present you to the world as an expert.

If you want to control your future, consuming the information in this chapter is essential. With a small investment of your time and money, you can create a platform that will educate, entertain, and attract new clients forever.

If you own a business, this chapter will help you discover the value in your own primary internet presence.

If you work for a big company, this chapter will demonstrate that your future is too important to leave in the hands of someone else. You must set up your primary web presence immediately.

If you are a professional, this chapter will help you realize your advanced education was worthless without a way to showcase your brilliance. Your primary web presence is the most logical starting point.

You Need a Website

Imagine you could highlight everything you've ever done and have it ready to display to anyone who wanted to buy from you. Imagine if it was available 24 hours per day, seven days per week. At any time people can explore your thinking on any subject. You could showcase your best ideas.

That is the true purpose of a website, and everyone should have one.

Differentiating yourself as a sales professional, or a business leader, or as an entrepreneur these days is easy. Before every appointment, the person with whom you are meeting is going to do a basic Internet search on you.

It doesn't matter if you are selling auto parts, private jets, pharmaceutical products, real estate, or anything else. They want to know who you are, what you've done, and if you're worthy of the time they've committed to meeting with you.

This is especially important if you work for a big company or represent a well‐known brand. People do business with other people. Help them see who you are and, more importantly, how you think.

The way you write is the way you think. You've heard me say that when we discussed the RaporMax® System. You also heard me say that when we discussed publishing. Well, it is just as important on your website.

Primary Internet Presence

These days there are dozens of social media websites to help you connect and establish and deepen relationships with prospects, clients, and evangelists. There are social media tools you should use frequently, but you should always have your own personal website. I call that your primary internet presence.

Think of your primary internet presence as your house and social media as different vehicles you drive. You may have a Rolls Royce, a Ferrari, a Bentley, and a jacked‐up monster truck, but at the end of every trip, you drive them to your house and park those fancy vehicles in your garage.

The house is your website – your primary internet presence – and the cars are all the flashy social media websites. Everything brings you home eventually. Home is where you live.

As the great comedian George Carlin riffed in one of his most famous sets: You need a place for your stuff. That place is your primary internet presence.

What does this place for your stuff look like?

First: It must have your name on the door. That means the domain must be recognizable as you. I use DaveLorenzo.com, but I also have DLorenzo.com and TheDaveLorenzo.com and DavidVLorenzo.com All of those domains take you to my primary internet presence.

Registering a domain is easy and relatively inexpensive. You may be tempted to get something flashy or cute, but focus on your name or some form of your name, because you want it to be easily identified with you.

Remember, this website will be with you throughout your entire career. Today you are selling widgets for Acme. Tomorrow you may be selling real estate, and 10 years from now you will own your own company, manufacturing widgets and investing in real estate, but you'll still be adding content to your primary internet presence and people will want to see your growth as a sales professional and business leader. They want to check you out, so give them as much information as possible.

CONTENT IS KING

The way the website looks is nowhere near as important as the information on the site. The website should look professional and it should look modern. In fact, just like you'd update your home every few years, you should refresh your personal website too and update it to make it look like you are on top of your game.

There are four types of content you need to have on your primary internet presence:

  • Articles
  • Video
  • Photos
  • Audio

Each of these types of content offers you unique opportunities to engage people who visit and want to explore your thinking.

ARTICLES

This is the most important form of content on your website. Remember the dead horse I keep beating: The way you write is the way you think. These are your thoughts. They took time to put in writing. All kinds of things can come out of your mouth when you are speaking to someone, but composing your thoughts and posting them on a website requires thought and effort.

Make sure you have a specific place on your website to post your articles and make sure they can be sorted by category. You should add all of your weekly newsletters to your website. You should also add any nonexclusive articles you've written.

Search engine optimization is a distant second to sharing your thoughts with the people who want to get to know you. SEO is a massive industry in the United States and elsewhere, and the people in it want you to believe you can manipulate search engine results. Maybe you can, maybe you can't, or maybe everything can change with a shift in an algorithm. We all have an interest in making sure the search engines can deliver the best relevant content to people who need it. Right now, the written word is the most important aspect in a search engine's ability to index your website. Write a lot. Post it on your website.

By the way, I work with a search engine optimization company to make sure my website is always on the good side of the rules. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about keywords or ways to manipulate rankings. I focus on having a clean website with good code that loads quickly and is doing everything the way the search engine bots like to see it.

On content: When in doubt, write it out. You'll never go wrong posting another article.

VIDEO

Just like writing is critical to showcasing your thinking, video is critical to making an emotional connection. Put as much video on your website as you possibly can. Remember to do three important things with your videos:

  1. Categorize them with your written content. Then people searching for a topic will get a mix of video and articles. They will consume all of it.
  2. Transcribe all videos and post the transcript in the same article right below the video. This can be a raw transcript. You don't have to make it pretty. The key is to help the search engines understand your content and also to help hearing impaired people connect with your video.
  3. Always save a copy of any video you upload to a service. Use whatever video‐hosting service you like to embed your videos in your website but always save a copy of your original, either on a local drive as a backup or in the cloud. You never know when the video‐hosting service you love will disappear, merge, or simply decide they don't love you anymore.

There are a number of ways to shoot and edit video, but the quality of the content is much more important than the quality of the video. Don't get me wrong – you can't look like a homeless person on a three‐day crack binge – but you should be yourself. You should speak like a normal human. And you shouldn't spend an enormous amount of time editing your videos.

To get started, push record on an HD camera or on your phone, start talking, and edit out your finger pushing the button to start and stop. It's as simple as that.

Use your topic calendar in your RaporMax® System as a guide to video content. It will help you stay on track.

PHOTOS

Every article must have a photo. People are attracted to things that are visually appealing. Use photos you take yourself. If you must use professional photos, subscribe to a stock photo service. Don't use photos posted by someone else on the internet – that's copyright infringement, it is unethical, and if you get caught, it will cost you money.

I like the Oprah approach. In her magazine, Oprah is always on the cover. Why? Because it's her magazine. Have people take photos of you at different times and in different locations and use them.

Also, take photos of your clients and use them (with their permission). People love seeing images of themselves.

Remember that your website is an additional way to develop and deepen relationships with people. It is perfectly fine to include photos of family and friends. Keep in mind that you want to make sure you are putting your best foot forward, so the photo of you in a bathing suit contest on vacation is probably not a good idea.

AUDIO

Many people like to include audio interviews on their websites. This is an excellent way to provide great content for people who want to learn more about you. If you can attract talented people and interview them, and you have time for this type of commitment, I recommend doing it.

Just like with video, you always want to include a transcript with every audio program you post on your website. The words are necessary to help people search through your website for content they want to review.

Frank Rodriguez: Website Case Study

Frank is a commercial real estate broker. He focuses on selling hotels. One of his clients buys distressed hotels, fixes them up, and converts them into one of the most successful hotel brands in the world. He incorporates website content into the day‐to‐day activities of his business. Here's how he does it.

Frank has three hotels he is reviewing with his client. The first step is a financial statement review. Frank sends the financial statements to his client and receives feedback.

Frank writes an article for his website about the importance of the financial review in purchasing a distressed real estate property. He details criteria investors should use when making decisions.

Next, Frank visits the three properties with his client. They take pictures and the client shares thoughts on ways to add value to each property.

Frank posts the photos on his website and writes an article on the hidden value in distressed properties.

The client selects one of the three properties and makes an offer. Frank interviews the client on video and finds out the reason why he selected this property and what his plans are for upgrading it. After the deal is closed, Frank posts the video and transcript on his website. The video is outstanding educational content on how to select a distressed property and how to make an offer that is accepted.

During the next 18 months, Frank visits the property, takes photos, and writes articles on everything happening to increase the value. Everything gets posted on his website.

After the property is reflagged, Frank does a recap of the entire process from beginning to end. He interviews the owner for an hour and posts the audio on his website.

During this process, Frank has used his activity as an opportunity to create great content. He's sent many of these articles out to his network in the form of his weekly email newsletter and monthly print newsletter but he's also posted them on his personal website – his primary internet presence. (He's done everything with the client's permission. Anytime you interview someone or post information about them or their business, you need permission.)

As Frank looks to expand his client portfolio, he can send links to the articles he's written to new prospective clients. When they review his body of work with distressed hotels, the prospects will see he is clearly an expert in this area. He has compiled more information derived from experience than anyone else in real estate.

Think about that for a moment. You've pulled off some amazing deals in your career. These deals required you to educate yourself on your clients' businesses. That information is currently stored in your brain (until you forget it). Future clients cannot access it to see how brilliant you are. Give them access by writing articles and posting photos, video, and audio on your website.

TECHNICAL DETAILS

Every time I discuss primary internet presence with a client, I get a boatload of technical questions because people are intimidated by the process of web design, coding, search analytics, and hosting. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of things to think about related to this, and none of them is worth your time. The technical details of your website should not take up one minute you could spend selling. So here is the least you need to know to get your primary internet presence up and running.

Look at your clients' websites. Find one you like. Ask your client for a referral to the people who set up the website. You can pick a template website and have it customized for your purposes. There's nothing wrong with doing that, and it will save you money. The most important thing is the content management system. Select an open source system (a system with code any competent web designer can change). This is where you will post your articles, video, photos, and audio.

You need the following pages on your website:

  • Articles: This section may also be called a “blog,” which is short for “weblog.” Let me emphasize, this is the most important aspect of your primary web presence and you need to have it set up for ease of use. The platform, called a content management system, must be user‐friendly because you're going to be posting things on it a few times a week. Although I've titled this page “articles,” you can call it “content” or you can call it “my thoughts,” but it will be the place where you put all the media you create.
  • About page: This is the page where you post your bio (bio is short for biographical sketch). It is a narrative about who you are, the value you provide, and who you help. This isn't a resume. It's a story. It's your story. Make it compelling and write it so people will want to learn more about you.
  • Contact page: This is a page where you have your address, telephone number, email address, and any other relevant contact info. Some people also have a form that visitors can fill out that is emailed directly to them. The form is fine, but do not omit the other information. Display it prominently. A note about your phone number: Put in in the header so it is displayed on the top of every page. Don't make visitors search for a direct way to reach you.
  • Home page: Typically, the page your url (web address) points to is a home page. Do not stress out over the content on this page. The information on the page should have one purpose: Help the website visitor find what they are looking for.

HOME PAGE CHOICES

Your home page should have a few photos – preferably, you with happy clients – and it should offer your visitors a few choices.

  • Home page choice one: Content (they click on that link to go to the section with all the educational info you've created).
  • Home page choice two: Find out more about you and contact you (but remember, your phone number is in the header on every page).
  • Home page choice three: Get your honeypot. This choice should be as a form where you make an offer – a five‐sentence “pitch” to the website visitor to get your honeypot. They enter their name and contact info and the honeypot is automatically emailed to them. Plus they're signed up to your email system so they receive your weekly newsletter. After readers opt in to receive this information, you should also immediately call them and send them a personal email.

This third choice – offering your honeypot – should be a part of the template of every page of your website. It should be posted at the bottom of every article. You must offer visitors an opportunity to go right into your RaporMax® System. Your web designer can help set this up (see Figure 8.1).

Flowchart illustration depicting how primary Internet presence builds visibility and credibility.

FIGURE 8.1 Primary Internet Presence Builds Visibility and Credibility

PLUMBING – BEHIND THE SCENES

Your primary internet presence cannot go down. Nothing will hurt your credibility more than someone putting in your web address and having it display a message that the site is down. In addition, your website must display quickly. People cannot get a spinning beach ball or some other delay symbol when they enter your domain name. Use a reliable host for your website. Pick a service like Amazon Web Hosting or another reputable service with redundant servers. Also, contract with a company to monitor your website and give them permission to make adjustments if it has any issues. This doesn't cost a lot of money and it will save you headaches.

Do not complicate this process. If you have a limited budget, pick a template website with a predesigned blog, secure your name as the domain, and use that. It will cost you less than $500 to set up (with everything I've outlined here) and less than $20 per month to maintain. One new relationship will return this investment to you.

Even if you have a website for a business you own, you still need this primary internet presence.

Even if you work for a big company, you still need a primary internet presence.

Even if you are a professional – especially if you are a professional – you need a primary internet presence. As an attorney, CPA, architect, financial advisor, real estate agent, or anyone else who sells advice and expertise, you must differentiate yourself from your competition. Providing educational information and entertaining content that helps people get to know you is the way to do this.

Professionals in big firms are particularly deaf to this message. Someday you will not be at a big firm. Someday you will want to be able to attract clients on your own. You need to build a body of work, and you need to have a place to showcase it. Don't hide behind ethics rules. You can write articles and post great content in a way that is compliant, educational, and entertaining.

There are two perfect times to set up your primary internet presence. The first was the day you started your career. The second is right now.

60 Second Actions

  • Search for your name as a domain. Purchase it.
  • Select a web designer and get your primary internet presence up and running ASAP.
  • Make sure your phone number is in the website header.
  • Put an opt‐in box on each page so people can get your honeypot directly from the website.
  • Add content to your primary internet presence at least twice each week. This includes articles you send to clients as part of your weekly newsletter.