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Filed Under (Social Media Marketing) by Donna-Lee on 30-03-2008
Social Media: The Instant Brand Killer With the increasing uptake of social media sites such as Digg, Technorati, Slashdot, YouTube and MySpace, together with community bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, Reddit and Ma.gnolia, companies the world over can reach their target markets via a whole new channel. Social networking is like viral marketing on steroids. Companies can release a new product in the morning and have it talked about by millíons of users on thousands of sites by the afternoon. The good news is that social media is user driven. The bad news is that social media is user driven. Yes, there’s the rub. Users are fickle creatures - they can love a product one minute and then drop it like a lead balloon the next, depending on their experience with the product, a rumor, or whether they have had their morning coffee yet. And if their experience is bad, the noise is generally louder. To protect their reputations it’s not just journalists that companies have to impress these days. It’s anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. Love it or hate it, the user community now has enormous power over the online reputation of a company or brand. Not surprisingly, businesses and individuals alike clamor for the attention and mostly enjoy the limelight that social media can bring. Others hate the intense scrutiny that often accompanies the popularity. An example is usability blogger Kim Krause Berg’s unpleasant first experience of Digg - I Don’t Digg Being Dugg. Online communities can even bring a site to its knees. Marketers are calling it the “Digg Effect” or the “Slashdot Effect”. Buzz for a site can cause more than good or bad publicity. As Kim found out, the effect can cause traffíc overload sometimes resulting in site downtime and lost business. Social media can also kill the reputation of a brand instantly. Take the Microsoft Windows Vista Laptop Scandal for instance. No stranger to the benefits of social media, Microsoft had allegedly tried to exploit the power of the blogosphere at the end of last year, by sending a number of A-list bloggers a frëe Acer Ferrari laptop loaded with the yet-to-be-released Windows Vista and Office 2007. The pitch was a request for the bloggers to “review” the new Windows software in their influential blogs. Many bloggers did write a review, but some did not disclose their frëe gift. When this fact was discovered later, the bloggers were hammered by large portions of the blogosphere for what they saw as a clear conflict of interest. Microsoft were tagged both literally and figuratively as bribers and Windows Vista was widely panned with parody tag lines such as “Vista: So Bad We Had to Give it Away“. Not a great start to an online product release. Another example of the damage that social networking can do to a company’s online reputation is the National Pork Board of America’s recent battle with breastfeeding advocate and well-known blogger Jennifer Laycock. Jennifer was sent a harshly worded letter from the Pork Board’s representing counsel, threatening her with legal action for allegedly stealing their pro-pork slogan “Pork: The Other White Meat” in a pro-breastfeeding t-shirt she had designed that read “The Other White Milk“. The letter suggested that their case for trademark infringement was probably solid. Unfortunately for the Pork Board, the poorly-worded letter also suggested that they were insensitive to breastfeeding mothers and the plight of starving infants. The Pork Board didn’t count on Jennifer’s influence in the blogosphere and the power of social networking to carry her defiant response to the world. The Pork Board ended up receiving bags of hate mail and thousands of flame emails via their online contact förm, forcing them to issue a public apology to Jennifer from the Board’s CEO and a generous donation to the Mother’s Milk Bank of Ohio in order to save face. To their credít, the Pork Board did the right thing. They also made sure that all persons who complained about their approach to Jennifer received a polite, measured email response from the CEO. As a former PR consultant myself, I tip my hat at them. Having the apology come from the very top is smart. It demonstrates how seriously they took the complaints. The wording of the complainant response is polite and restrained. Addressing each and every complainer personally is impressive. It would’ve been tempting to ignore all the flames and issue some stöck standard release. Their choice of legal team may have been questionable, but the Pork Board’s public relations team mobilized quickly, upgraded to full damage control mode and did a great job of mopping up the PR mess before it spread too far. Social media might have damaged them, but the Pork Board’s reputation was ultimately salvaged by quick thinking and a swift online response. Such situations underscore the growing importance of online reputation management (ORM) in our Web 2.0, social media-driven world. Companies should be tracking their online reputation on a daily basis to chëck for negative commentary via social media in order to avert potential PR disasters. Major search marketing players such as Andy Beal recognized the potential growth in ORM a long time ago. But I wonder how many PR/Search Marketing agencies currently offër this service? With brand reputation increasingly at risk, you can be sure the smart agencies will be adding ORM to their service offerings faster than you can say “Can you Digg it?” About The Author Bookmark to:
                         
Filed Under (Marketing, Web Design) by Donna-Lee on 29-03-2008
Website Content - Every week I get asked to look at business websites and tell the owners why they’re not getting the results they want. Some of these sites are straightforward brochures, others are e-commerce catalogs, and some are those direct-mail-style pitches reminiscent of old mail-order magazine subscription schemes ported-over to the Web. Some have incorporated do-it-yourself audio and video and some even had this media professionally produced; still the results stink. Why? ‘The Close’ Is Always Found In ‘The Why’ Certainly part of the problem stems from a very narrow definition of what a website is: by casting your site in terms of a brochure, catalog, e-commerce-site, blog, or portal, you are falling into the trap of concentrating on ‘The What’ rather than on ‘The Why’. This focus on ‘The What’ is exacerbated by some search engine optimization techniques intended to drive traffic, not to brand product, sell services, or convert traffic into customers. Don’t get me wrong, traffic is important, but converting that traffic into paying customers is more important. Even the best and brightest search engine optimizers will tell you that their job is to deliver traffic not orders - closing the deal is your job, and anybody who tells you that closing can be done by means of some automatic never-touched-by-human-hands method is just plain nuts. What you want to be careful of is search engine tactics and second rate media that actually gets in the way of effectively delivering your marketing message, of telling your business story, of creating a memorable brand image, and above all of generating profitable business clients. Web-Video is a Presentation Marketing Strategy If you pay any attention to what’s going on, you must be aware of the shift in Web-thinking and the acceptance of Web-video as a fundamental Web-marketing tool. But like most things, there is a right way and a whole bunch of wrong ways to do it. Web-video is a presentation marketing strategy thats strength and power comes from its ability to overcome the Web’s natural sterile, isolationist environment, by incorporating verbal and non-verbal human elements that effectively deliver bold, well-crafted memorable messages. Can a Web-video campaign cure everything that’s wrong with your company, or even your sales departments deficiencies? Of course not, but the right message based on ‘The Why’ using appropriate cost effective presentation techniques can position your business, brand your product, and generate sales leads. Don’t fool yourself: you and your sales staff have to close the sale. Do not expect to sit back and count your profíts while your website runs your business by default. Automatic pilot may work for sites that sell commodity items and nationally branded merchandise backed by millions of dollars of advertising, but unless you fall into that category, it’s time to get real. A New Web Paradigm Here’s a new way of looking at your website and if you ‘get it’ you will be able to refashion your site and reinvent your business in a way that gets you remembered and initiates action by your target market: Start thinking of your website as a stage and all the content on it as players you direct in order to deliver your message and tell your story in a memorable manner to a relevant audience. So let’s breakdown this Web-presentation model and analyze how it meets your marketing needs. Your Website Is a Stage Businesses who want to use their websites as a marketing vehicle have to get past thinking of them in terms of merely digital print media. Just as damaging is the over-reliance on search optimization or IT technical solutions that have little or no relationship to marketing’s primary goal of delivering a memorable message that initiates action on the part of the audience. Knowing the age, sex and hat size of the last ten thousand visitors to your site may impress some, but reams of statistical information on your visitors doesn’t necessarily mean you know what that data means or how to use it effectively. In the same vein, tons of traffic generated by the latest SEO manipulation doesn’t necessarily translate into business. Start thinking of your website as a stage, a presentation and performance platform that allows your company to present your message to your audience in an entertaining, informative, and memorable manner. Tell Your Story In A Memorable Manner There are many ways to present what you do and why your audience should care, but the most effective way is to deliver that information in a story format. When people come to your website they are putting you on trial, judging everything thing you present to see if it is relevant, convincing, and if it resonates with their needs. The article, “Evidence Evaluation in complex decision making,” in the ‘Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,’ by Pennington and Hastie explains when prosecutors tell their version of events to a jury in story-format they are able to achieve a 78% conviction rate, whereas lawyers who do not use a story-format to communicate to juries only get a 31% guilty rate. When visitors come to your website they are putting you on trial for your Web-business life. Memorable Communication is All About the Performance Effective communication begins with the campaign concept. If you don’t have a well-defined, focused concept that deals with ‘the why anybody should care factor’, your communication will be muddy and irrelevant. Far too many marketing campaigns try to do too much, and in an effort to get your money’s worth say everything and anything that comes to mind. Unfortunately, all you’re really doing is confusing people and your core message never gets heard, let alone understood or remembered. You need professional presenters who know how to use both verbal and non-verbal performance to get your message across, and of course you’ve got to give the presenters a script that is well written, entertaining, and informative. What you don’t need is complicated sets, props, and locations that increase the cost of production. The Web is not television, and there is no need to absorb inflated expenses based on ad agency cost-plus-pricing fees that bare little relation to effectiveness. Expensive movie-style productions are just not necessary and lose their impact when delivered in relatively small Web-friendly formats that need to be easily integrated with additional collateral material used to present more details and to answer frequently asked questions. Last But Not Least We can learn a lot from children, not the least of which is their relentless quest for the answer to ‘The Why’ of things. We often forget that this is the central issue in our lives, and it is only after we’ve been told by parents, teachers, bosses and numerous other authority figures to shut-up and do what we’re told, that we sublimate this need and replace it with the far less meaningful and convincing ‘What.’ But if we as marketers can put our faith in delivering ‘The Why’ using the most people-friendly techniques of verbal and non-verbal digital communication, then we will have learned how to present a convincing memorable Web-marketing presentation. About The Author Bookmark to:
Filed Under (Search Engine Optimization) by Donna-Lee on 16-02-2008
Search Engine Optimization or SEO - The  Critical Components to Great Search Engine Rankings When people with websites find out I’m an Internet Marketing Consultant, the first question I’m often asked is: “why isn’t my website ranking in the search engines?” There seems to be this assumption that “if you build it, they will come“. Many website owners are often disappointed once their site is up that the site is ranking poorly or not at all. They question me why it isn’t and what they can do about improving the site rankings. If you want to improve your, or your clients’, website rankings in the search engine results of the major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN, you must learn what makes a site rank well. Not knowing what makes a page rank well is why your competitor’s website is at the top of the search engine results and yours is not. Search engine optimization or SEO strategies are the critical components that help your site rank well. If you want your site to rank well in search engine results, your page must have these 4 essential factors of search engine optimization: 1. The first element to search engine optimization is the web page copy and content. Search engines look for good quality, relevant pages with the keywords your audience uses when they search online. Each of your website pages should have the keywords and phrases your clients are searching for on each particular page. If your site is about “Internet Marketing Strategies”, then you should have those keywords in the web copy of that page. The more relevant your copy is to the targeted keywords your audience uses, the better the relevancy of the site in the rankings for those search terms. 2. The second critical factor to help your search engine optimization tactics are meta tags. Meta tags, often overlooked and misunderstood, are elements of HTML coding on a website. Search engines use these meta tags to help them determine what the site is about and assist with indexing a website. Most meta tags are included within the ‘header’ code of a website. The most important tags are the title tag, description tag and the keywords tag. Different search engines have different rules about how these tags are used and how many characters they should contain. Of importance to the process is if you know how the big three - Google, Yahoo and MSN - review the tags, then you’ll be targeting 90% of potential web surfers. 3. The next component in your site search engine optimization strategy is internal linking. By optimizing your linking structure, you’ll be creating a rich web of interlinking within your site. Whenever possible include links to related products, articles, and information. The navigation menu plays a key role in passing deep link gain into your site. This will help pass on your page ranking. To help out your internal page ranking, create a site map that can help search engine crawlers find all the rich content and related pages on your site. You should also use anchor text when internally linking within your site. Instead of using “click here”, use keywords or phrases like Search Engine Optimization as a text link. 4. The fourth factor to good search engine ranking is off page tactics. The most common tactic is obtaining quality back links or inbound links to your site from relevant websites. Initiating and maintaining linking strategies is a core factor to getting your site in Google search results. Google expresses the quality and quantity of these back links as PageRank or PR. PageRank is a function of the quantity and strength of inbound links. PageRank estimates the likelihood that a given page will be reached by a web user who randomly surfs the web, and follows links from one page to another. In effect, this means that some links are stronger than others, since a higher PageRank page is more likely to be reached by the random surfer. Some great ways to get quality inbound links include: Links from your industry peers, business partners and associations. There are also industry directories, such as web designer directories and more general SEO directories where you can submit a link to the appropriate category. You may want to consider writing and submitting topic relevant articles to article directories like ezinearticles.com. With every article submission, you are allowed to include your resource box. Your resource box can contain a link to your website. Press releases are perhaps the most underrated tools to acquire one way links. All you have to do is to write an objective, newsworthy press release announcing your website, and thereafter, submit the same to press release wires throughout the internet, such as www.prweb.com. Press releases are also an excellent way to gain direct visitors. With these 4 essential tactics, you’ll be accelerating your search engine optimization strategies and on the path to higher search engine ranking. SEO is not about tricking search engines, but making it easier for them to spider your site or client sites to determine the relevancy of the site. With just a few SEO adjustments to your website and content, in no time you could soon find your site at the top of search engine results for your targeted keyword. About The Author Bookmark to:
Filed Under (Press Releases) by Donna-Lee on 09-08-2007
By Craig Cannings I was recently having breakfast with a good friend of mine who is in management with a large Brick and Mortar Company and the topic of Press Releases came up in our conversation. My friend questioned the real value of this medium and pointed out that Press Releases, while certainly apart of his company’s communication strategy seemed to have little impact or value on their business as a whole and were rarely picked up by major news publications. Well, in my last online press release campaign, I can honestly say we did not receive an enthusiastic call from the Business editor of USA Today or the New York Times or even the Grand Forks Herald for that matter! However, this recent Press Release campaign did result in a top 5 listing for one of my keywords in Google, multiple top 20 listings, strong placement in Yahoo and Google News, many new quality in-bound links and a significant Increase in our overall web visibility. The campaign proved to be a roaring success in driving quality traffic and gaining great exposure for our site, even though we were largely ignored by all of the mainstream news publications. So, how did we do it? Before I outline the key steps we took in our own online PR endeavors, let’s first review the key benefits of an optimized Press Release campaign: High Quality One-Way Links to Your Website Top Listings in the News Search Engines Improved Natural Search Results for Particular Keywords Increased Web Visibility Enhanced Brand Awareness Promotion in a Rapidly Growing Medium Low Cost Means for Increasing Exposure and Web Visibility Quality Exposure to Industry Specific Editors So, the big question here is how do you actually optimize the Press Release in order to achieve some of the results we experienced in previous campaigns. Let me roll back the curtain and show you the basic formula we employed. 1. Targeted Keyword Research and Selection I would recommend narrowing your keyword selection to approximately two to three words for your Press Release with a primary keyword and a couple secondary words. You will decrease SEO potency by trying to incorporate too many keywords into one 500-800 word Press Release. 2. Strategic Keyword Placement in the Press Release It is also recommended to maintain a keyword density of approximately 3-5% for the main keyword and 1-2% for secondary keywords. (Keyword Density refers to the percentage of words on a web page that match a specified set of keywords) I must emphasize here though that while it is important to be aware of your keyword density, it should not come at the expense of relevant and high quality content. That will ultimately defeat the purpose and desired result of your PR campaign. 3. The Effective Use of Anchor Text 4. Relevant and Optimized Website Content 5. Tagging Strategies In summary, I believe an optimized Press Release using some of the above strategies can be an excellent marketing channel with a good viral effect and great SEO potential long-term. I would highly recommend making the small Ãnvestment through popular PR distribution sites such as Prweb.com, Prleap.com and Pr.com in order to maximize the potential for yielding top keyword listings, high quality back links and great long-term exposure for your business. I should note that while the optimization of your Press Release is paramount, it is essential to provide a newsworthy and journalistic feel to the release as well. Great content combined with skillful optimization will yield the best results for your PR campaigns. About The Author
Technorati Tags: success strategies, optimizing your press releases, press releases economically, press releases, increased web, natural search, top listings in search engines, increasing exposure, keyword research, optimized website Bookmark to:
Blogging has opened website creation to almost everyone, as it takes very little know-how to get a blog up and running. In fact, many service business owners are using a blog platform as their primary website, with some of them creating static pages as you would find on a traditional website, while others are using the platform as a blog and are posting updates regularly. There are several advantages to using blogs instead of ezines or traditional websites:
Are ezines and traditional websites dead? No, because people consume information differently. Some are auditory learners and prefer to hear the info (great audience for podcasting, an audio förm of blogging), some prefer to receive updates as they are published (blog readers), while others like a stable, stationary medium to which they can refer when they’re ready (readers who archive ezines or bookmark web pages). How do you begin to blog? Here are 10 simple steps you can follow:
Every service business can benefit from blog technology. Few other marketing strategies provide the quick immediacy that blogging provides.
About The Author Technorati Tags: create a blog, starting a blog, blogging, how to blog, marketing strategies for your blog, Bookmark to: |