Kennel Marketing – The Virtual Foundation
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Part 2
By Attila Márton
Whether we like it or not, communication today happens mainly on the internet. This is also true regarding the source of information. It’s impossible to imagine everyday life without social networks or thematic websites. Likewise, you cannot avoid using the internet if you want to communicate about your kennel in the virtual space.
Let’s step into the world of the web
If you already have your kennel name, let’s use it when appearing on the internet. Emailing is the most basic form of communication on the internet. Your e-mail address might start like myname8975@ or buythisbrandonlyfrom@, as you give your e-mail address to others so that they can contact you. The problem is that if one sends emails a lot, they collect hundreds of email addresses over the years and it’s incredibly difficult to find a bland email address that was used months ago. It looks more professional if your email address is the same as the name of your kennel. Not to mention the fact that whenever your name is written down, your brand name is being imprinted.
With the popularity of social media, it seems no longer fashionable to maintain a website, but I would advise you not to neglect the maintenance of one if you are serious about your presence on the internet.
A website is also a form of communication, even if it’s not considered to be one. As there’s information on it, it communicates with potential customers and its appearance and contents make an impression on the visitors. Consider your website as being a means of communication which has special features.
It is important that the website should have a name that can be memorized easily. If possible, it should contain the name of the kennel or it should be the name of the kennel itself. If, for example, the name of the kennel is Triumph, the name of the website should be triumph.com. Or it could be triumph-kennel or triumphkennel. Longer versions are more readable and they are easier to memorize if there’s a hyphen in the name that structures the information a bit.
If you don’t have any, acquire at least one
You must understand the concept of a domain name in the world of websites. This is nothing more than the name of the website, which follows www. The domain name should be registered at a internet service provider and the process of registration might alter depending on its ending. The moment the domain name is registered, it’s yours for the duration of the registration, until you dispose of it.
The domain name is a user’s right in itself, but that doesn’t mean that you actually have a website. That’s why a hosting service must be added as well, where the information appearing on the website is stored.
This is just like the connection between a street, an address and a building standing there. If there’s no piece of land belonging to an address, it cannot be interpreted. There should be something tangible. Our tangible element is the host of our website, and the domain name is its address.
In the case of a host contract, you can create an e-mail address based on the domain name. This way, you can have an e-mail address like this: info@triumph-kennel.com.
Should you be worried about competitors or ill-wishers, reserve more domain names for the sake of safety, which are similar to the one you have chosen. For example, register triumphkennel.com along with triumph-kennel.com. In doing so, you can prevent those visiting a website that has a name similar to yours from seeing adult or distresssing content.
Regarding domains and websites, you have another possibility that might be practical. As the aim is to make yourself trustworthy and show your knowledge of the given breed, you can create another website that is connected to the topic but is not about your kennel. You can share information and experiences about breeding or the given breed with those interested. So if you are able to reserve the everything-about-this-breed.com domain name, don’t hesitate.
Communicating with the world
To make yourself well-known, you must be noticed first. And if you’ve managed to arouse someone’s interest and they are paying attention to you, you must create an image of yourself that is positive and trustworthy, making you the first person/business they turn to, or the one they turn to later if they need a solution.
To achieve all that, communication is necessary – very good communication. Communication no longer means eloquence when picking up the phone. The appearance of the internet as a form of technology, and later on that of different user media have become special forms of communication – if you post a photo on Facebook or write the newest blog post, you actually communicate with an audience.
When communicating, it does matter whether you communicate in person or on the internet: both have different features. And just to make things more complicated, different communication options – website, Facebook, Twitter – on the internet have their own communication strategies. For instance, you must use your own website in a different way as compared to your twitter profile.
Before you speak, think this over
It has never been so easy, and difficult at the same time, to deliver information to others.
The situational advantage is that we can communicate with anyone at the other end of the world in just a few seconds. A person living in Australia sees the same information at the same moment as the person next door.
People of the modern world are used to being exposed to information all the time; a lot of it, actually. And only a fraction of this information makes viewers interested, and only a smaller fraction is remembered.
This is even more unnatural in the virtual world of the internet. As the saying goes, regarding information, the internet is noisy and you must do an extremely good job to be heard. Try to remember how many of the posts you saw yesterday on Facebook you remember.
When you speak to others on the worldwide web, you should never forget about those who listen to you. What they like, what they react to and how, what their needs and desires are. The information you put into virtual space will not be noticed and perhaps remembered because you’ve worked so hard on it. It’s important for you because what you communicate and the way you communicate it makes people pay attention, and the information is crucial to the recipient.
It’s hard to be noticed among so many pieces of information, but it can be done, although a lot of persistence is needed. The biggest disadvantage of the internet is that there’s a lot of hooey. I mean pieces of information that are not completely good, are distorted, or in many cases, utter rubbish. If you remain able to make yourself look trustworthy – and you are able to prove it – you will be able to stand out from the garbage and show the world that you are the one who knows a lot about this topic and what you write can be trusted.
Later on we’ll see what means you can use and how you can use those means, but make sure you always pay attention to one thing: be individual. Always remember that there’s a huge difference between watching someone’s ideas and copying someone. In the former case, if you adjust their ideas to your personality, you will look original anyway; in the latter case, you will convey an image that you don’t have an idea of your own at all. Open your eyes and use adaptable ideas, add yourself to them and as a result you will have something very important: an effective, individual style.
The infinite repository
The internet can be used well, or in a bad way, or with zero efficiency. Even if we use the internet frequently, we don’t necessarily use it well. Routine is necessary for effective usage, and we must be able to find a way to sort among the numerous options available to find information.
At the beginning of the history of the internet – when it was already available to the public – sending an email was the biggest sensation. Think about its advantages: if you want to mail a letter to someone in New Zealand, it’s not just the money, but also the time, not to mention the fact that you can deliver so many things to so many places with one single click.
As time went by, somewhat disturbing, fancy websites appeared, and after a while a part of reality was placed into the virtual space. Online shops, thesauri, dictionaries and so on…
A few years ago – thanks to the proliferation of smartphones and tablets – the social media boom took hold. The world became full of photo- and video-sharing sites. Via these, you can reach millions of people in various ways, mostly for free.
There are a lot of websites of various quality and usability. It’s very important which one you use. Do not use too many forms of online presence if you don’t have enough time to maintain them continually. Continuous presence is a must. As I’ve said, the internet is noisy and pieces of information are all over the place.
You must determine if you can use your website to make your kennel popular. After all, what’s the point in placing information on a site that is not visited by your target audience. It would be like distributing leaflets for a karate club in an old age home. It’s probably not your target audience!
It’s also important to take the trouble to learn the use of these sites. If you can’t, ask for help or train yourself. If you still can’t do it, don’t do it. Bungle has more drawbacks than not having done anything at all.
A life-threatening trap
When you communicate face to face, it has its style, depending on the situation and on what end result you wish to achieve. The given person or people are there in front of you.
When you are at home alone in front of the computer or you are killing time on your tablet waiting for the train, tuning out the world, you are inclined to make a mistake made by the majority of internet users, especially when they are in a conflict.
Just because nobody looks at you after you post a picture or write a comment on an internet forum, it doesn’t mean that what you have written doesn’t have an effect. Quite the contrary, it’s a bigger effect than you think. Sometimes it happens later.
Never forget this. Just because you can’t see the other party, they are still there and they have a voice too.
Short URL: http://caninechronicle.com/?p=93332
Posted by ralbee
on Nov 21 2015. Filed under Current Articles, Editorial, Featured.
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