WebSite Marketing Strategy

Well, personally I think that conversations are the core of social media, but don’t take my word for it. I just launched a new blog authored by several internal marketers from industry leading companies like Intel, HP, Cisco, Yahoo, Yum Brands and Cadence who think the same. The blog, titled “Conversations Matter: Bridging the Social Media Gap” is focused on providing a unique perspective of social media; one that I believe is not well represented on the internet today. Unlike the Blog Council, everything we share on the blog is open to just about anyone who is interested in learning, listening and even contributing. We do not require membership or registration to have access to this information. We also take it one step further and discuss a holistic view of social media strategy; with corporate blogs being one element of that strategy.  If you would like to contribute to the blog, please give me a holler and we can discuss the next steps.
We will discuss a variety of different topics revolving around social media to include:

- internal challenges of evangelizing social media
- key learnings and best practices of social media campaigns we managed
- using social media for internal communications
- our point of view of social media in general

Please stop by and let me know what you think. Feedback, criticism and praise would be greatly appreciated.

Tags: social media, conversational marketing

There are so many blog metrics tools around it can be hard to know which ones are best and how to use them. Here are three quick and dirty measurements that will often give you a good indication of your sites development.

Nothing succeeds like success and success can often be measured in popularity. Blog metrics could be just a simple measure of your popularity.

Is your traffic growing?
A simple tool like a site meter will tell you if your site is growing in popularity. They are not always accurate but as we are only after a rough indication, they will suffice. Your site may provide stats in the form of AWstats or similar. A steady growth in traffic indicates an increase in exposure.

Is your readership growing?
In contrast to visitors, this measures the number of subscribers you have to your RSS feeds. Is this number growing, falling or stagnant. A growth in numbers indicates a growth in interest either from your visitors, or from splogs looking to re-publish your content.

Are the frequency and quality of your comments growing?
As you gain more authority and your readership grows you should start to notice a distinct increase in the quality of the comments left on your posts. The number of comments should start to increase as well. There will always be certain topics that attract more comments than others, however the quality of the actual comment should become more focused and of more use to other readers. This acts bait to bring in more commenter’s .

These are very simple measurements. However if you can start to see a growth trend in all of these areas then perhaps it may be worth the effort of getting a more advanced blog metrics measurement tool - and learning how to use it.

In the short term, blog metrics does not need to be complicated. The three areas I have pointed out can be measured with a glance on a daily basis and will provide the basic information needed to determine growth. Blog metrics - who needs the complicated data?

One mistake that businesses make when starting a blog is to use a free theme rather than getting a customized blog design. Some times, when you use a free theme you are getting what you paid for.

Free themes are often written by amateur writers and while they often look good, that is all they are good for. When using a free theme you need to run several checks. The first and most important check is via any of the tools that let you look at your site as the search engine spider sees it. Many themes have code errors in the blog design which prevent your pages from being fully read and indexed correctly.

Other free themes may have links to dubious sites, or at the very least, sites that you may not wish to link to. These links often appear in the footer, one area that some search engines treat with suspicion. You can easily check for these by using your browsers view code option. Scroll through to the footer to see whether or not there are any strange links. If there are then ditch the theme and find another blog design.

Free themes are just that, free. Create a blog using a theme custom designed by a reputable designer and they will do their best to ensure the code flows smoothly and the blog design delivers everything that you need from it. After all, they are professionals and their income relies on delivering quality products - there name is on the blog design.

If you do decide to go with an off the shelf theme, pay the few extra dollars to have it customized to your needs. Run the two checks I have suggested to ensure that everything flows and can be read by the search engines and that no strange links are included. Your blog design delivers the first impression to your visitors, and first impressions count.

Most people don’t look too closely at their domain names. If they did they would probably think twice before registering them. Then again, what a great marketing idea. Find a great domain name that has more than one meaning to it.

A post by Jared Stenze at webupon.com lists a group of domain names that have double readings and certainly look interesting.

Just to give you a taste:

Choose Spain dot com becomes Chooses Pain dot com - (choosespain dot com)

Teachers Talk dot com becomes Teacher Stalk dot com - (teacherstalk dot com)

Therapist Finder dot com becomes The Rapist Finder dot com - (therapistfinder dot com)

Find the right word combination and you could have a very novel domain name. Find the wrong combination and it could prove to be very embarrassing. Blogging tips are everywhere but it is not often you come across one that encourages double readings (meanings) for domain names.

Blog marketing can be interesting particularly as we humans are a strange race. If there is a road accident, we cannot help but slow down and take a look. When it comes to many of the social sites, the same can be true. When a topic becomes popular, people will have a look, even if the subject matter doesn’t particularly interest them.

The best place to undertake any blog marketing campaign is when you have a crowd gathered. Sometimes you need to be a little like a hot dog vendor who always seems to know where a crowd is going to develop.

Perhaps your blog marketing hasn’t reached that stage, however you certainly don’t want to be marketing to an empty room. Being able to get into any of the social sites and read where the trends are going, what topics are heating up and which ones are cooling off can be a worthwhile art to learn. Being able to place yourself so that you capitalize on any opportunities is an even harder art to master.

Master these two areas of social bookmarking and you will find that blog marketing through social sites is much easier and the results more than worth the effort.

And with WordPress there is always more. One of the reasons that WordPress remains as the number one blog software platform is due to the fact that it stays up to date and constantly releases fixes to any known problems.

WordPress 2.5.1 has been released to block a possible security breach and patch 70 (yes 70) known bugs. These bugs include:

[sourced from WordPress.org]

• Performance improvements for the Dashboard, Write Post, and Edit Comments pages.
• Better performance for those who have many categories
• Media Uploader fixes
• An upgrade to TinyMCE 3.0.7
• Widget Administration fixes
• Various usability improvements
• Layout fixes for IE

Depending on your installation, you may be able to upgrade through your web host particularly if you are using cPanel. If not, you will need to download the upgrade and install it manually. Full instructions are available with the download.

In today’s mult-media world your blog content needs to include more than just the written word.  First it was pictures and images followed by podcasts that took the blogging world by storm, at least in certain circles. Now people looking for videos to satisfy their online needs.

Along the way there was a brief flirt with live feeds which are still popular with some online sales  sites however as a general blogging experience, it has not taken off. Gone are days of pages full of rich content, at least, written content. It seems that visitors to blogs have moved beyond the information gathering stage and are now looking to be entertained at the same time. If your blog content does not entertain, the visitor will move on.

Inserting graphics and videos has never been easier particularly if you use WordPress and you have upgraded to the latest 2.5 version. You can easily insert a video or graphic into your blog content with a few simple clicks of the mouse.

Add to this the wealth of videos and images available through sites such as YouTube and there should be no reason why your site should remain bland. Your blog content is no longer about what you say - it is all about how you say it. Perhaps I should be throwing in a few videos of my own here.

Remember G.I. Joe and those pretty awesome public service announcements, where one of the Joes would give an important safety lesson to a group of kids engaged in questionable behavior? They always ended with the famous exchange: “Now we know!” “And knowing is half the battle.” Well I say that “listening is half the battle” but I am willing to compromise. How about:

“Knowing when to listen is half the battle”

However you arrange the words, it makes complete sense when you apply it to social media. Listening and responding are only half the battle when engaging with consumers online. The other half of the formula is acting. It’s like being in a relationship. If my wife is upset that I leave my dirty socks on the living room floor every night; and I listen to what she is saying but continue to leave my socks there … well, you catch my drift. There will be hell to pay if I don’t “act” on her politely spoken “recommendations”. ; )

Case Study

Here is a real life case study when I launched my first community back in 2004 that illustrates this point effectively. A few jobs ago, I worked as an Interactive Marketing Manager for 8×8. They are a consumer and small business VoIP provider branded Packet8. At that time, the company was growing pretty strong with close to 100K subscribers. The CEO Bryan Martin expressed concern to me that he wanted to launch a blog. I thought this was a perfect opportunity to create a community for our subscribers at the same time. We had three objectives for this community:

1. To provide an infrastructure for our CEO to speak to our users and the media
2. Allow the community members (subscribers) to leverage the communities’ collective knowledge and help each other troubleshoot minor issues. (note: the call center was also based in Santa Clara; and the cost per call was astronomical)
3. Listen and engage with our subscribers, personally. Each 8×8 employee had a profile at that time.

After a few months, the community began to blossom and the conversations began. At first, the conversations revolved around the stock price and how low it was; but then, the community members began to ask simple troubleshooting questions to each other and others responded. I left the company before I was able to quantify whether the call volume decreased in the call center. Nonetheless, there was a ton of chatter about product related requests and recommendations. Most subscribers expressed deep concerns about having an additional RJ11 connection on their BPA (Broadband Phone Adapter) – the device that allowed them to make calls over the internet — in case they wanted to add a second line and/or wanted to connect a fax machine. Not only did we listen, but the Director of Product Marketing added that feature set into the product road map for the next release of the adapter. It was a huge success because we listened and acted. And, while subscriber growth expanded, subscriber turnover decreased.

There are also some other great examples of more well-known brands that are using conversations to innovate on future products and designs. I often talk about Dell IdeaStorm; where they ask users to “post a new idea, promote interesting ideas, discuss with Dell and other users, and see what they are planning to develop.” The keyword here is Dell. They are actually participating in the discussions.

Starbucks is following the same model “share, vote, discuss and see” and inspire their community with the following message:

Help shape the future of Starbucks—with your ideas
You know better than anyone else what you want from Starbucks. So tell us. What’s your Starbucks Idea? Revolutionary or simple—we want to hear it. Share your ideas, tell us what you think of other people’s ideas and join the discussion. We’re here, and we’re ready to make ideas happen. Let’s get started.

And, lastly Lego (yes the toys we all played with as kids) did something interesting a few years ago. The company called up a bunch of Lego geeks and asked if they wanted to help with the development of a new product. The end result was Lego Mindstorm; a very cool line of Legos combining programmable bricks with electrical motors, sensors, Lego bricks, and Lego Technic pieces (such as gears and axles). They have also built a pretty awesome community as well.

It’s great to see that companies are beginning to build communities and interact with their users/consumers. What’s even better is that they are now using this feedback to help influence future product designs, service offerings and value props.

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Tags: social media, conversational marketing

Feedburner is a handy service that enables users to subscribe to your posts through either an email or RSS client. Did you know that could also get your RSS feed turned into an audio podcast. Not by Feedburner, but my a new site that is still in beta, but working reasonably well.

Don’t get to excited. Like all computer generated voices, it leaves a lot to be desired, however to have your Feedburner posts automatically converted to a podcast does save time and makes for interesting reading.

The site, Dixero, is currently free to use. There is no information available as to whether they will charge into the future, however, free is free and the end result is not too bad. The written word is not meant to be read out aloud, that is why public speakers often hire speech writers so that the text is written as it is spoke. Feedburner feeds are the written word so the podcast does sound a little stilted.

As with all computer generated voices (you have a choice of three voices), there is little in the way of inflection or emphasis. Pronunciation is good and the finished product a true reflection of the Feedburner feed - to true, the podcast includes everything from your feed including any advertisements.

If you don’t have the time to create your own podcast, give Dixero a go and see how it converts your feed. You are not restricted to Feedburner feeds, you can grab a feed from any site and have it converted to a podcast. You can also download the MP3 version of your Feedburner feed. An interesting tool if you do not have the time to create your own podcast.

Are you proactive, interactive, reactive or just totally inactive when it comes to working with your blog and website services provider? It takes all kinds to make the world go around, or so they say, but as a service provider it can be rather frustrating when it comes to dealing with clients.

The inactive client I can deal with. If I don’t hear from the I assume I am doing the job ok and keep going. However, you are the client. Do you check and see whether or not I am providing you with the service you want? If you are paying good money for a blog and website service provider, you should.

Each client type does have a positive and negative aspect to them. I don’t mind a reactive website owners. As a blog and website provider I provide a service and as it is their site, if I make a mistake like spelling or grammar they need to contact me to let me know so that I can correct the problem.

Interactive owners are great. Every step is discussed, they show an interest in what is happening and rather than being reactive, they work together with their blog and website services provider to fix any problems and look at ways to prevent them happening into the future.

The owner that does worry me at times is the proactive owner. Generally speaking, proactive is good. Working together and finding problems before they happen makes for a much smoother relationship. However, when an error is made, a proactive owner is quite likely to jump in and try and fix the problem themselves. This is fine if they know what they are doing, it is when they don’t know what they are doing that worries most blog and website services providers. Fixing the problems they have created can often be a nightmare.

Are you a blog or web site owner that uses a blog and websites services provider? What is your owner type - tell me its not proactive -please!