STASIA KUDREZ: Hi everybody.
My name is Stasia.
And I'll be with you for the next 50 minutes
to show you how you can grow your business online using
Google's tools.
So what exactly is this program anyway, Get Your Business
Online?
It's a program from Google designed
to make it fast and easy to get your business online.
We're providing a free website from StartLogic
for an entire year.
And that includes a domain name and hosting and the tools
that can help you manage your site, plus free online tools
and training from events like this.
So what are we going to be actually covering
in the next 50 minutes?
We're going to be talking about your opportunities
for getting found on Google.
And I'll cover a bunch of things, including search engine
marketing and search engine optimization.
We'll also talk about how you can use Google's free tools
to get insight into how people are searching online
and how people are finding your website
and what they're doing when they get there.
We'll talk about office productivity tools,
including Google Apps for Business,
which is one of my favorites.
I use it every single day to run my business.
And at the end, we'll recap and we'll
talk about that getting found on Google, insight, productivity
tools, and then we'll go over your to-dos and your homework
from today's session.
OK.
So let's start by talking about getting found on Google.
So why is this so important?
Did you know that every single day there
are billions of searches on Google?
And every time somebody searches,
it's an opportunity for your business
to show up at the moment that they're actually
looking for you.
Even if a very small percentage of that number of searches
is actually a potential customer for you,
it is your unique opportunity to connect to them
at that very moment that they're looking for you.
So we're going to talk about a few things in this session.
We're going to talk about how Google search works
to explain your different opportunities to appear
on the page.
I'll talk about search engine optimization.
We'll talk about some tips for promoting your website, search
engine marketing, and last, your website on multiple devices.
That's a lot of stuff to cover.
So grab a pencil and follow along.
And we'll go through this as quickly as we can.
I like to start by talking about why,
why you actually care about this.
Well, research shows that 97% of online consumers
are now starting that shopping process online.
It used to be that when you wanted to buy something,
you would go into a store.
And you would look at all of the products on the shelves
to see what they look like and see
which one would be the most appropriate for you.
But now there's this new idea, the zero moment of truth.
And that means that before somebody even goes into a store
and sees a product or calls up your business and talks
to a sales rep, they actually start
by doing a search, usually on Google,
to start doing that research online.
So even if this person isn't ready to buy yet,
if your website shows up and gives them the information
that they're looking for, it's your opportunity
to develop that relationship with them
right at the beginning.
And hopefully, they'll become your customer.
If you don't have a website, you're
essentially digitally invisible.
It's really, really important more than ever
for you to actually show up when people
are doing these searches.
That's why I'm really excited to be part of this program
to help businesses like yours get a free website for a year.
So let's go through some of the ways
that you can actually get found on Google.
So when you go to google.com, you
start by typing in some words or a phrase
that you are looking for at that time.
And that is called the search query.
So a lot of times, people think, well, I
did a search for the name of my business and I showed up,
so I'm done.
And that's great.
That's the first good step.
And I would encourage you all to go and try that out and see
what shows up when we search for the name of your business.
But what if I just moved to your town
and I don't know any of the businesses?
I don't know who the pediatrician is
in town or the veterinarian or what
the best Indian restaurant to eat at is.
So what you want to start doing is
start doing searches on more generic search queries.
Start typing in things that potential customers might
be looking for, problems that they need to solve,
symptoms that they're trying to diagnose and see what shows up.
These are all really important words and phrases
for your business to show up on when
people are doing those searches.
And if you don't, you have some work cut out ahead of you.
So when you do a search, you type
in those words and phrases.
And then Google is basically going to look through how many
billions and billions of web pages, trillions of web pages,
and try to create on the fly the best list of results
for that searcher at that moment in time.
And that's the really amazing thing about Google
is that they can go through so many web pages
so quickly to construct this list for you.
And so in the center well of the page,
those are the organic or the natural results.
And those are the web pages that Google's organic algorithm have
determined are the best set of results
for that searcher at that moment in time.
Now, you can't pay Google to appear in the organic results.
It's entirely determined based on the quality
of that site for that searcher.
However, you can do things to help Google understand
what your website is about, which
can increase your opportunities for showing
up higher in those results.
And we'll cover that in a few minutes.
The next section of this page that I wanted to point out
is where the advertisements appear.
And those can appear above those organic results
and to the side of those organic results.
Now the big differences here-- well, first of all,
these are ads-- is that for the results that
fall in that center well, if somebody clicks on them,
it's free to you.
It doesn't cost the website any money.
With these advertisement results,
it's not going to cost you to show an ad.
But it will cost you if somebody then clicks on that ad
and visits your website.
But these are two distinct areas of this page.
And both give you opportunities to show your business when
people are searching for you.
OK.
So let's start with SEO, Search Engine Optimization.
And SEO is basically the process of trying
to make your website more visible to Google,
which can then increase the possibility that your site will
be listed higher in those organic results
when people are doing a search.
So what is the most important thing that you can do?
And the first and foremost thing to do is to add content.
Content is what tells Google what your web pages are about.
And the more you have and the more relevant
it is to your business, the better your chances
are for appearing higher in those search results.
Now, when you write that content on your web pages,
you want to think about what types of things people
might actually be searching for.
What words and keywords are relevant to your business?
You don't want to then write those words over and over
again 100 times on a web page.
That's not going to help.
But you do want to stay very focused on those sets of words
that reflect how people might actually be searching for you.
And then if you write to those words,
you can help Google understand that, hey,
that's what this web page, that is what this website is about.
And it can help improve your chances
for appearing on the page.
Another thing that's really important
is to keep your website up to date.
One of the nice things about the website tool that's
part of the GYBO program is that you have the ability
to log in 24/7 and make updates to your pages.
And that would hold true for any website,
no matter what platform you're using.
You want to go and keep adding content to it.
It does not have to be a lot.
It could simply be a blog where you add a post every few days
or every week to tell people what's new
or to put up a new photograph of something that happened,
a customer shot, a product shot.
But the more you put into your website,
the more you will get back.
Another thing that's a good benefit from adding content
is that it increases the chances that people will actually
link to your site.
And that's what you want.
You want to have good useful information for your customers
so that if my friend Colby sees that I put up
a great article that's relevant to her business,
she might put it on her blog.
And then her friend Whitney might
read it and say, oh, that's great.
I'm going to put it up on my blog.
And people will be linking into me, which shows me
that this page is valuable to people who are reading it.
So it's a good thing to keep adding to your site.
Now the first tool that I'm going to introduce you to you
is a free tool from Google called Webmaster Tools.
And it's at www.google.com/webmasters.
And Webmaster Tools provides a bunch
of reports that can help show you
how Google sees your website.
It can tell you things like what pages they're looking at,
what search queries brought visits to your site.
It also lets you sign up for alerts.
And alerts can tell you if there's
any kind of problem with Google reading the pages of your site.
It also allows you to submit a site map.
And a site map helps tell Google what your website is about,
which can then improve your chances for getting correctly
listed in that index.
Anyway, it's free.
It's at google.com/webmasters.
The last thing I'm going to say about search engine
optimization is that it's important to set
realistic expectations.
If you do create a website at www.gybo.com,
then that's great.
And that's definitely your first step.
But it can take time for Google to go
and actually index those pages.
And then those pages are essentially competing.
They're in the mix with every other web
page about that particular topic.
So it can take time for your website
to start appearing in the index and higher in that index.
But the more you give in to that site, the more you'll get back.
OK.
So those are my tips for search engine optimization.
Now that I've kind of depressed you
and told you that it can take a while for your site
to get listed, let me give you some tips
to help you in the meantime.
One of my favorite ways to promote my website,
my products, my services, is email.
It's fast.
It's efficient.
There are some really cool things
that you can do with email these days.
You can do things like target particular groups
of people with special content.
You can personalize it so people know that it's from you.
If anyone's taken my class out there,
you've probably heard about my bearded dragon.
Her name is Eliza and I love her.
I got her at a pet store that keeps a customer profile on me.
And they know that I have a pet bearded dragon.
And so every two weeks, they email
me a coupon for 24 free crickets.
And it's about $2 worth of crickets,
but I print that coupon out every single time.
And then I go into the store to get my free offer.
And what do you know?
While I'm there I may as will get some bags of dog food.
And, oh, I think I need some food
for the crickets, all sorts of stuff.
So using that email to get people in
and to build that relationship is really important.
One little caveat with email.
Don't send too many.
It's important to keep that relationship going.
But I don't know how many out there--
I don't know how many people are watching me.
Is it one?
Is it a million?
I don't know.
But however many of you are out there,
you probably start your day by pulling open your laptop
and then deleting the first 500 emails that you'll never
have time to read, because you've
got to do the rest of your business
for the rest of the day.
You don't want to be in that group of emails
that gets immediately deleted.
So every time you send an email, think
about the person who's going to get that in their inbox.
Is it something they need?
Is it something that they'll want to open?
Is it something that will get them to open it the next time?
But if you do this right, it can really work for your business.
Now, social media is another great way
to develop your relationships with your fans.
Yesterday we talked about creating Google+ pages
for your business.
If you weren't able to check that,
you can go back and review the videos.
And you can actually download the workbook from yesterday
to get that information.
Social media is a great way to put that personal face,
that personality behind your business.
It's also a great way to do practical things,
like, for example, fill last-minute cancellations.
My friend Kim-- Hi, Kim-- in Nashville, Tennessee
is a massage therapist.
And if she has a cancellation for say an afternoon
appointment, she will go to every social media platform
that she uses.
And she'll say I'll give you $25 off if you take my 3 o'clock
appointment.
So there are some really practical ways to do it.
Another thing that you can do if you're just
creating your website today or this week with
Get Your Business Online, you may
have been only using print material to run your business.
So now take a look at what you've been doing.
And then add the URL to your new site there.
That could be your receipts.
That could be your business cards, your estimates,
your invoices, your packaging material.
You can put those stickers on the windows of your car.
But you want to let the world know
that your new website exists.
Now when you start building your new website,
you'll think about the obvious pages.
You'll think about building your home page and maybe
your Contact Us page.
But I want you to also think-- and this
applies to existing websites as well.
I want you to think more long term.
I want you to think about not this week,
but next week and next month and next year.
Why would somebody, after they'd visited your website once,
want to come back?
Because that is what you're trying to do.
You're trying to develop that relationship
where someone says, OK.
Here I am a month later.
And I need to know this or I need an answer to this question
or I think I might need this product or service.
And they think to return to your website
to go find that information.
And again, that might be adding a blog
to your website with useful information and tips.
That might be having your specials
for your restaurant up every week.
But you want to give people an incentive, a reason
to come back to your site.
And last but not least, invite people.
Tell them about your site and say, hey.
You know, if you had a good experience, leave a review.
Tell people about my business.
The word of mouth, online and offline,
is a very powerful way to market your business.
OK.
So that finishes SEO and some tips for promoting your site.
Let's go to our next topic, which
is Search Engine Marketing.
I'm not going to talk a whole lot about this,
because we have an upcoming session.
We'll do a full half an hour talking
about SEM, which stands for Search Engine Marketing.
You can advertise using SEM on Google.
And Google uses something called a Pay-Per-Click model, or PPC.
And in a nutshell, it means that you're not
going to pay Google for the privilege of showing
your ad on Google's web pages.
You're only going to pay if somebody then clicks on that ad
and visits the website.
There are two options, Google AdWords and AdWords Express.
Again, in the next session, we'll
really break down the differences between these two
models.
They both work in essentially the same way, though.
I'm thinking about something.
I want to buy something.
I want to learn something.
I'm trying to find a good restaurant here
in Mountain View, California.
I'm trying to find a clothing boutique, because my shoes are
uncomfortable up here.
So I type it in.
I'm like, OK, I'm looking for a clothing boutique.
And voila, I see a Google search engine results page.
And it gives me those lists of results, including those ads.
And I may see an ad at the top that says, hey, look.
There's a clothing boutique that's
in walking distance from where I'm giving today's shoot.
So I could get over there.
And I click on that link to visit the website
to see their hours or to get their directions
or to see what their phone number is so I can call them.
The important thing here that I want to drive home,
though, is that Google's job is to show an ad when somebody
does that search and to then send
that person to the website.
So when they get to that website, it is your job,
it's your responsibility to then make that sale.
That website has to get somebody in and say, look.
This is where that information is.
Here are the products and services.
That's one of the reasons that I really
like the website that we're offering from StartLogic,
because it gives you these really professional templates.
And your website will look great.
But it has to be professional and easy to use,
because if a visitor can't figure out
what they're supposed to do on that website, then
it doesn't matter if Google actually sent them there.
You'll probably lose the sale.
OK.
Again, an advertiser is only going
to pay for the click on an ad.
That's why it's called PPC.
So you do the search.
The ad appears either at the top or on the side.
And then it sends them to the website.
We'll do another full session on AdWords and AdWords Express
if you have more questions about that.
And we'll be back for the Q&A.
All right.
Last but not least in this section,
we'll talk about making your website
work on multiple devices.
How many of you out there don't have a cell phone on them?
I'll bet it's very few of you.
Almost everyone who comes to my classes
has a phone in their pocket.
And some people have multiple devices,
whether that's multiple phones or a tablet
and a cell phone and a laptop.
But more and more people these days
are carrying these phones that are called smartphones.
And they are connected to the internet.
And if you look at your website reports--
we'll talk about Google Analytics
in more detail-- you can actually
see a breakdown, a percentage and the raw number
of how many people are visiting your website
from these mobile devices.
And I'll tell you it is increasingly significant.
So not only do you need to have a website for your business,
but you need to have a website that
looks good on a mobile device and is easy for somebody
to use on that small screen.
Some of the big rules of thumb for a mobile website,
first, make it thumb-friendly.
You know, it's kind of ironic.
I've been an internet professional for a long time.
I practically-- you know, I feel naked
now because I don't have my phone on me
for this presentation.
But for as much as I use that phone,
I still have a little trouble with that tiny keyboard
trying to figure out and clicking on the buttons.
So the easier it is for that website for me
to navigate by pressing with those thumbs, the more likely
it is that I'll actually interact with that business.
Another thing-- and I can't believe
I'm going to say this-- all right.
I just turned 40.
And so it's really true.
When you turn 40, or at least for me,
I have trouble reading that little screen now.
So you want to make sure that your fonts are large enough
so people who don't have those reading glasses on
don't have to squint or do that to actually read those screens.
So make sure that your fonts are large enough and clear enough
for people to actually understand that information.
And you want to write clear, concise content.
If you're working on a laptop or desktop computer,
you have a fairly large screen available to you
to read those words.
But on a mobile phone, you have a much smaller screen.
So it makes sense that when you write your content,
you want to get all of the most important information up
at the top.
Back from my journalism days, we would say don't bury the lead.
And that's essentially true for the smartphone audience.
You want to make sure that that critical information,
whether that's your address or your phone number or your store
hours, are up there at the top where people don't have
to scroll down over and over to find that information.
If you want to learn more about mobile advertisement,
mobile devices, websites on mobile phones,
you can go to Google's resource website.
It's at www.google.com/think/multiscreen.
OK.
What's next?
Let's talk about getting unique insight.
So we're going to talk in this section about why
tracking matters to your business.
I'm going to give you an introduction to Google
Analytics.
I'll talk about Google Trends.
And then I will talk about Google Alerts.
All right.
You ready?
So let's start off by why?
So look at this screen here and imagine
that this entire red box represents
people who visited your website.
And at the very bottom of the box, you see that blue line.
And that blue line represents people who visited your website
and then completed a desired action.
In online marketing, we call that a conversion.
So let's take the easiest example of a conversion.
If you are an e-commerce website,
meaning you sell products on your site,
you basically want someone to visit the site,
go and find a product, put in the shopping cart,
put in the credit card, and then check out and buy it.
And that's it.
That is a conversion.
It can be a little trickier, though,
because I'll bet a lot of folks out
there don't have e-commerce sites
or don't plan to have e-commerce sites.
So what is a conversion for you?
Well, I'll put it out there.
You need to have something, because if you aren't putting
a goal for your website, if you aren't defining a goal,
there's no way to measure whether or not
it's actually working for you.
So let's take an example.
Let's say that you are a service provider here in Mountain View.
Your goal for your website could be
to have people fill out a form on your site
to request a quote for services.
If you are a restaurant, your goal
might be to have someone email you to set up
a reservation for dinner for tonight.
If you were a software provider, and it was a much longer sales
cycle, maybe someone wouldn't buy it right away,
maybe a conversion would be someone
to actually call you on the phone
or to schedule an appointment to talk to one of your sales reps.
Whatever your goal is, your business goal,
you need to figure out how you're
going to measure that and apply that to your website.
Once you do, here's where we get back to our slide,
the line at the bottom typically reflects
the people who actually converted.
And so that big red area at the top, those
are the people that came to your site.
But then they left.
Those were your low-hanging fruit that for whatever
reason didn't actually complete that desired action.
So here is the challenge for every online marketer.
It's to bring that blue line a little bit higher so that we
get more conversions from the people that
actually visited our website.
So enter our next product, which is Google Analytics.
It's a free tool.
You can get it at www.google.com/analytics.
And so what exactly is Analytics?
It's a free, easy to use web tool
that provides reports that show you how visitors actually
found your site and what they did when they got there.
And it can measure the effectiveness
of your online and your offline campaigns.
I used to use this way back when in my agency days
when it was a product called Urchin.
And Google actually bought the product.
And then they made it freely available for people.
And it's not a stripped-down product at all.
If anything, it has just grown and it
has become more and more powerful over the years.
If you advertise with Google AdWords,
Google Analytics is an absolute must,
because they have now integrated those reports.
So you can really see how well your advertising campaigns
are doing in Google Analytics.
OK.
So what do you do with Google Analytics?
You answer questions.
And if you were to set this up, it's
a fairly simple process to do so.
You simply create the account.
And then you put a little piece of code
on the web pages on your website that you want to track.
You then go in and you see these reports.
Now, how many out there in the audience, how many of you
are web analysts?
Anyone?
I'm guessing that very few of you are.
And so the most common reaction that I
see from someone who's looking at it for the very first time
who's not in the internet industry is, oh my gosh.
You know, maybe I get what these reports are.
But I have no idea what I'm supposed
to do next with this information.
So what I encourage businesses to do
is to approach it from a different angle.
Instead of going into the reports and digging
in and trying to figure out what those numbers mean,
instead think about some of the business questions
that would be helpful for you.
And maybe a good business question is, all right.
Well, I want to know what people are actually
typing into Google that bring them to my website.
And so you can use that information
to get a sense of what people are interested in.
If everyone who is visiting your site
is interested in this topic and you
don't have a lot of information about it,
it helps you figure out what maybe your next content
plan will be, what kinds of sections
you want to build out in your website,
what kinds of specials, what kinds of coupons, what
kind of offers you might have.
You might also see, all right.
Well, when they look at the website,
what pages are they actually reading?
And you can see even where they leave those pages.
So you can say, all right.
They looked at these pages.
But then 90% of my visitors are actually leaving here.
And that can give you a clue why.
Maybe that page isn't written as well.
Maybe that page there's no obvious next step for them
to take.
Maybe that is the obvious endpoint
of their visit to the site.
But then you can see that, all right.
I'm going to close up the call to action
and tell them what I want them to do next,
or add my phone number.
If you have an e-commerce website,
there's some really cool built-in features
where you can actually see things
like how far a customer got down in that shopping cart.
You can see where they added the products and at what point
they abandoned it.
And that can help you figure out where
you may need to make improvements
to make that check-out process more efficient so you're
less likely to use your customers.
And you can use it to improve your site interaction.
I do a lot of work for a non-profit, a few non-profits,
actually.
And when we set up Google Analytics on their websites,
we learned some really interesting things.
For one of the non-profits, she was absolutely certain
that all of her visitors would come
in to the home page of her website,
because that's where all of her new and most interesting
information was.
But when we finally set up Google Analytics,
we found that in actuality the most popular page
on her website was a reprint of a Maya Angelou poem that
was buried so deep in her website you would have never
been able to find it unless you had done a site search
or you knew exactly where to go in and click on that link.
And so what did that tell us?
That told us, well, all right.
People are really interested in getting more
about Maya Angelou.
It also told us that we should not delete that page.
And we should also take that page
and make some obvious segues into other parts
of the website.
So these are the types of things that you
could learn by using Google Analytics.
And it's free, at google.com/analytics.
Tomorrow we'll be talking for two full sessions about how
you can set this up and the types of reports
that you can access to help you grow your business online.
OK.
Let's talk about the next one.
This is Google Trends.
It's a free web page at google.com/trends.
And this tells you not what's happening
on your website like Google Analytics.
But it tells you what's popular on Google as a whole.
So if you can see in this screenshot, what I've done here
is I've actually compared two terms.
And that could be hybrid cars versus SUVs.
It could be anything that you want to look at.
If you are a service provider and you're interested to see,
well, are people looking for ventilation cleaning
or are they looking for HVAC tune-ups, whatever
types of terms are relevant to your business,
you can go in and compare their relative popularity.
And the report will actually show you
over time, dating back to 2004, when
those searches are popular on Google.
You can refine your results by geography as well.
So if you only want to look at data in the United States
or in a particular state in the United States
or a particular region of a state in the United States,
you can really refine your results.
Now this is the same web page.
It's just farther down on the page.
But I wanted to show you here how you can also
get geographical information.
So you can see if there are parts
of the world or the country where particular searches are
more or less popular.
And you can use that information by targeting
advertising campaigns.
So if you know that this particular product is
really popular in the State of California but not popular
where I live in Nashville, Tennessee, then you might say,
all right.
I'm going to allocate this advertising budget
for California and this advertising budget
for this product which is popular in Tennessee.
It will also give you other suggestions
for other popular searches that are related.
So it's a great research tool if you're
starting to do that initial research to figure out
what people might be searching for when they're searching
for businesses like yours online.
Again, it's a free web page at google.com/trends.
OK.
If you don't do anything else that I talked about today,
if this is the only thing that you get out of my session,
please set up a Google Alert for your business.
It's free.
It's at google.com/alerts.
And I like to think of this as being my own personal online PR
manager.
Here's how it works.
You have to be logged in with your Google account.
That can be your Gmail address or if you
register your email with Google.
And then at Google Alerts, you can enter up to 1,000 things
that you want to track.
So some of the obvious ones would
be the name of your business, your products or services,
maybe your name, your employees' names.
But it's not limited to just that.
You can track anything you want.
That can be your sports teams.
That can be your competitors.
That can be your children, your exes, anything
that you want to keep tabs on.
And then you can get an email as it happens,
once a day, or once a week that includes
the title and a little description
and then a link to where Google found that new content
and where you were mentioned online.
Again, it's a free tool at www.google.com/alerts.
OK.
So let's talk about the last topic, last but certainly
not least, office productivity tools.
And in this section, I'm going to be
talking about Google Apps for Business.
This is a tool that I use every single day of my life
for both business and for personal use.
It is available at www.google.com/apps.
And so let's talk about what this is.
So Google Apps, if you were going to define it,
is a cloud-based productivity suite.
So how many of you out there have been hearing about cloud?
Everything is cloud, cloud, cloud.
I actually had a gentleman ask me, where is this Cloud
And it's a pretty valid question for people
who aren't in this industry who don't actually know what it is.
It basically means that you have a network of computers
out there.
And your stuff , all of your stuff, your documents,
your emails, your contacts, they no longer live on that one
individual device.
My sister, who lives in Sacramento--
I hope you're watching today, Sis-- she actually
spent several years in the rain forests doing research.
And one of the things, one of her challenges
at that time was that it was way back in the day and cloud
computing wasn't in use at that time.
And she would actually carry around
her laptop clutched to her chest,
hoping that nothing happened to it, because she
had years of research on it.
And if something happened to it, then
that would have been really a terrible thing
as far as her research went.
Now, if she was going to be doing the research again,
it would be entirely different, because as long
as she could get access to the internet,
she could actually store on all of that data up in the cloud.
And so if, you know, it rained on her laptop or a jeep
ran over it-- which actually did happen at one point.
The laptop did survive.
But if that happened, it wouldn't matter.
As long as she could get to another computer
or another device that had internet access,
she would be able to get all of her stuff back.
OK.
So let's talk about five reasons to use Google Apps.
First of all, your work is always backed up.
I don't know how many of you out there
have had that terrible thing happen
where your hard drive may have died.
That actually happened to me this holiday season.
And thank goodness I had backed everything up,
because my computer was completely fried.
If that's happened to you, it doesn't
have to happen again, because now you
can take all of those documents and store it securely
in Google Apps for Business.
And if your computer does die, you
can go and get your stuff, as long
as you can get any other device.
Grab someone's smartphone, their tablet, their computer.
All you need to do is log back into your Google
Apps for Business account.
And all of your stuff is there.
Collaboration is very easy.
I work from my home office in Nashville, Tennessee.
And all of my colleagues are all around the country.
A lot of the folks that I work with
are here in Mountain View, California.
Some of the folks I work with are
in Ann Arbor, Michigan, or Des Moines, Iowa.
But we are all basically able to work together not only as
if we were in the same room, but as if we all were working
on the same computer, because with Google Apps for Business,
we can now easily collaborate on any document.
If Whitney is working on a document,
I can actually see her when she has it open.
And I can watch her type it in.
I can communicate.
I can chat with her right on that document.
I can create a version history, so if I accidentally
overwrote-- sorry, Whitney.
If I overwrote something you put in there,
I could then go back and get it so I didn't overwrite her work.
So it makes that whole process of working
with the team very, very easy.
Now, the fourth benefit of Google Apps for Business
is that it's private and secure.
This data belongs to you.
One thing I'll talk about security,
though, is that it's secure assuming
you have a good password.
I'll just put a little tiny plug in there for Friday 15.
It's our resources section at gybo.com.
And we actually do a lesson on password safety.
Unfortunately, the most common passwords
that are being used in the United States
include things like password and 12345 and 123456.
Most people out there-- and up until
embarrassingly recently, including myself.
Most people use the same password
for every single website that you have an account with.
It's really important these days to have a very secure password
that you keep private and that you
don't use across multiple websites.
So you can go and watch our Friday 15 lessons
for some guidelines about how to create a great password that
will keep your data safe.
And last but not least for Google Apps for Business,
it can save you money.
Let's go into the pricing for that.
OK.
So the first thing is that there's
a no-commitment 30-day trial.
You can go in.
You can sign up.
And you can try it out and see if you like it.
If you do like it and want to continue
using Google Apps for Business, the pricing after that
is $5 a month per person, or $50 a year per person.
And within your organization, you're not limited.
So you can have one person.
You can have 1,000 people.
It's whatever makes sense for your business.
Every single account gets a lot of storage.
You get 30 gigabytes of email storage.
Now, it's kind of hard to wrap your mind
around how much that is.
How many emails does that actually include?
If it gives you any context, I am an internet professional.
I get a gazillion emails every single day,
many with very large attachments.
And I think I'm only using 11% of my total storage
at this point, years into it.
So it would be very difficult for you to actually use up
that storage.
And if you do, you can buy more at a very reasonable cost.
Another thing that you get is 30 gigs of Drive storage.
So the thing that I want to differentiate
is the difference between Docs and Drive.
Within Google Apps for Business, you have your documents,
which I'll show you in a minute.
But you also have a place where all of those documents
are kept.
You can also keep things like your images and other files.
And so think of that as sort of that overall storage folder
where you keep all of your stuff.
And again, you get 30 gigabytes of Drive storage
included as part of that account.
Now with Google Apps for Business,
you get 24/7 support.So you can call.
You can email.
And there's a 99.9% uptime guarantee.
It's a service level agreement.
It basically means as long as you can get to the internet,
you can get your stuff.
One other thing to put out there about Google Apps for Business
is that there are special editions for different types
of organizations, education, government, and non-profits.
So if you are a non-profit in the world,
you can actually go and apply.
And you may be able to get Google Apps for Business
for free for your non-profit.
It's at google.com/nonprofits.
OK.
So let's look at some of the apps.
The first one is Gmail.
I'm going to bet that just about every single one of you
out there has either used or seen Google's email
program, which is called Gmail.
And you know that because your email address
ends with an at gmail.com.
Now if you're going to use Google Apps for Business,
it is still going to use that Gmail platform, that software
that you're familiar with.
But there's one big difference.
With Google Apps for Business, you
are now able to then associate your own domain name with it.
So instead of the email being from Stasia at gmail.com,
it would be from Stasia at stasiasbakery.com.
And all of the folks from outside, unless I told them,
would have no idea that I was using Gmail or Google
Apps for Business to power my business.
So that's the big differentiating factor.
And I believe that it actually does make your business look
that much more professional, that much more technically
savvy to then be using that email address that
is connected to your website domain name.
So that's the first big benefit from using
Google Apps for Business.
The second are those documents that I referred to.
Now, with Google Docs, it's going
to give you the ability to import documents made
from other types of software, to create documents from scratch,
and also to export documents.
So say for example you made a document in Google Apps
for Business.
You could then export it as a Microsoft Word document
if you wanted to.
It includes things like word processing
and spreadsheets and presentations, forms
and drawings.
And just like I said before, with all of these,
it's a very collaborative tool, where other people
can go in and work on those documents with you.
Now, you still have control.
You're able to keep a document private to yourself.
You can share it with particular people.
You can share it with your entire organization
or particular people outside of your organization
or make it public to the world.
So you really do have very granular control
over who is going to be able to see and edit
any of the documents that you then create within Google Docs.
All right.
Last but not least is Google Calendar.
And Google Calendar, I'm assuming that many of you
have used it before.
I really like this tool, because it really pulls together a lot
of the things that you're using in Google Apps and some stuff
from Google+.
So now when I schedule a meeting with the folks
that I'm working with, I can-- first of all,
I'm going to create an event.
If those folks have shared their calendars with me,
I can actually look and find available times,
appointment slots when none of us
have a conflict, when none of us have an existing meeting.
And then I can send out an invitation to all those people
to say, hey, can you meet today at 3 o'clock
Pacific Central-- Pacific Standard Time.
I'm from central time.
I can also do things like attach documents
that I have stored in my Drive.
So I just showed you in Google Apps for Business
how I could make that word processing document.
I can then add that to my Calendar invitation.
So now when everyone joins that meeting at 3 o'clock,
they don't have to go-- I don't have
to email that document separately
or they don't have to look for it.
It's part of that Calendar invitation.
Another thing that I can do is I can create a video.
I can schedule a video to automatically happen.
So if the folks joining me have a web camera--
and most people do built into their computers--
it can launch straight out into a Hangout.
We can have a video meeting, looking at the documents
that I created in Google Docs and I'm sharing that way.
So all of these products integrate really, really well.
So that is why I love Google Apps for Business.
If you're not sure about it, try it.
It's free for 30 days.
And at that point, there's no obligation.
You don't have to put a credit card in to try it.
And if you want to continue, it's then just $5
a month per person, or $50 a person per year.
OK.
So if you want to learn more or if you've
got questions about it, you can go and register for a webinar.
It's on the Apps website.
The URL is google.com/apps.
And what you'll want to do is click on the Webinars & Events
tab, which is at the top.
And click down to the Resources section.
And from there, you can then see all of the training events
that they have set up.
And you can register to go in and learn more.
If you want to learn more about Apps for Business,
Whitney will be leading a Q&A at the end of today's session.
And so write down the questions that you may have.
And we'll be happy to answer them.
You can also start sending them in through our website.
All right.
So let me give you a recap of all of the things
that we covered today.
We talked about getting found on Google.
So here's your first homework assignment.
I want you to pull up Google.
And I want you to start doing some searches.
Do a search for the name of your business and see what shows up.
Then, try searching for your products and services
and see what shows up.
Search for things that a potential customer
might need or want that your business can provide and see
what shows up.
These are your competitors.
These are your online competitors.
And it may be a completely different set
of competitors than your offline set.
So this is where you want to start
building that list of places where you want your business
to appear.
If you haven't yet created a website and you're not showing
up at all, the two things that you can do to get started,
the first quick option is to create a Google+ page
for your business.
And the second is to visit gybo.com and create a website
that you can get free for a year.
And those are going to start improving your opportunity
for showing up when people are doing those searches.
You can look at Google AdWords or AdWords Express.
Terry will be covering that in the next session
to explain the differences and to show you
how that can help you grow your business.
And also, don't forget.
Grab that cell phone.
Grab that smartphone and take a look
at what your website looks like.
If people can't see it, can't navigate it,
can't figure out what to do, you are
going to lose potential customers if you're not
a mobile-friendly website.
OK.
The second homework assignment is to get unique insight.
And the three things I want you to do, first of all,
try out Google Analytics.
Again, you can create your free account
at google.com/analytics.
All you'll do is put a little piece of code
on all the pages of your website.
And then you'll get those great reports to show you
what people were looking at and how long they spent
on your website and what they typed into Google
and other search engines that got them there.
Try Google Trends to do some analysis, some comparison
about what people are actually searching for online.
And Google Alerts.
Again, if you don't do anything else for today,
please set up a Google Alert so you can track what's
being said about you online.
Your third set of homework assignments
is to try out Google Apps for Business.
If you're not sure, try one of those webinars.
You can sign up for free at google.com/apps,
again under that Resources tab.
And you can see what it's all about there.
You can go to the support forums and you
can see there's lots of information about migrating
your system, your email, and your data into it.
And again, you can try it for free
for 30 days with no obligation.
OK.
Now tonight if you are thinking about all this
and you want to try some of the tools out,
the first thing that you'll need to do
is to create a Google account if you don't have one already.
A Google account, if you have a Gmail account,
that's automatically a Google account.
Make sure that that's the Gmail account
that you use for your business.
Some people have a personal Gmail account.
And some people have one that's just for business.
So when you go and you create particularly
like your Analytics or your AdWords
or your App for Business or your Webmaster Tools account,
you want to go in and set that up with your business account.
If you don't have one already you can set it up for free
at google.com/accounts.
And you don't have to use a Gmail address.
If you already have an existing email address
that you use with your business with your other domain name,
you can then register that as a Google account
and use that to sign in.
OK.
So now that we've covered that step,
here is your last slide, where I've
listed all of the resources of all of the products
that I've talked about today.
So if you're up at night thinking about,
oh, Stasia went over that tool and it was so great,
I can't remember where to find it, pull open your workbook
and go to this slide.
And I've listed all of the URLs here
to help make it easy for you to find it.
If you're interested in trying out Google AdWords or AdWords
Express, which we'll be covering in more detail in just
a few minutes, you can also get a free consultation and set-up
by calling 855-607-0426.
OK.
And with that, my name is Stasia.
And thank you so much for staying with us
and being part of Get Your Business Online week.
And I will talk to you soon.