Recently in Web Marketing Category

Updated: 3:45pm

I'm at the Forrester Consumer Forum in Chicago today and tomorrow. I'll be writing my thoughts and observations on the content from the conference here.

So far there have been some great speakers. The theme of the conference is around the online world, social integration, advertising, and how your company can understand and take advantage of this medium. The format of the Forum is pretty cool. Short presentation on targeted topics, then a "coffee talk" type Q&A with the speaker (literally two chairs with an end-table on a stage w/ two large video screens on each side). The dialog is great and personal to those in the audience.

Kicking off the conference was Forrester Vice President and senior analyst Charlene Li. Charlene does a lot of her research around the social technographics. Who is using the social tools, how, and to what level of participation.

Christie Hefner from Playboy had a great keynote on how Playboy has truly been able to leverage the Playboy brand in ways that most companies would drool over. It is amazing how they have been able to integrate new solutions successfully from Print, to TV, to Online, and now Mobile. They have brought the brand beyond the print publication(s) to the real world, and now virtual world with an entry into Second Life. They also have been able to leverage a key demographic and target market by launching PlayboyU, a social space for college students with an .edu email address.

3:45pm
Richard Edelman, president and ceo of Edelmen PRgave one of the most forward thinking perspectives when it comes to PR/MR. It resonates with a lot of what I've been thinking about when it comes to control of messages, brands, and the interaction with your consumers (and in my work, members and consumers). One of the biggest take-aways was the reality of how the traditional media triangle works. It used (and in many corporations still is) to be that a few influencers controlled the conversation and distributed it to the masses. It has touch points of how it got distributed and they all came back to the same message. The internet, and social media such as blogs, ratings, reviews, etc. changes that model. Today if someone wants to have information about some topic, the influencers are now bloggers, customers, like-minded individuals who publish online. Companies have to realize that there is a limited amount of influential control they have left. Now, the mass audience make up their own minds--right, wrong, or in-different.

I also got to attend one of track sessions. It was about how User Generated Content, or UGC, can have a place in corporate strategies. The panel included representatives from Dell, QVC, and Baazarvoice. Each explained how they have taken UGC and integrated it into their company strategies. From Dell's IdeaStorm, a customer feedback site that allows users to rate feedback for popularity, to how QVC uses real-time feedback to inject into their programming. UGC is a tough cookie to crack and how to use it. Let alone if it really does. Many of us have wondered how to make it work. We are fearful of the backlash and if execs can even swallow the fact that they are not in control of what goes on. But that's OK. Rather, we need to find ways that work for us. For example, customer reviews. Having all positive customer reviews on a product page in reality is just product testimonials. You need negative reviews to show authenticity. Companies have to understand how UGC works, it is written by passionate individuals (for good or bad) and it is often intended to help like minded individuals (though companies can listen and learn from them). Monetizing on this type of feedback and content is still a challenge, but models are being formed and success is in the results--more products shipped and more revenue generated.

I'll be updating this more with my notes and perceptions. This is just the beginning so I can pay attention to the presentations and blogging at the same time.

Additional Coverage
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Ryan and Gillian Carson (producers of DropSend, Vitamin, and Carson Workshops) launched their latest product yesterday, Amigo. Amigo servers a very simple, but powerful purpose — to match e-newsletter publishers with advertisers and advertisers with targeted e-newsletter subscribers. It is a win-win for everyone and it's free. Here's how it works.

Amigo is similar to any other cost-per-click advertising solution (i.e. AdWords) only it isn't a robot reading text to contextually placing the ad next to search results, it is humans searching a database of information to match ads to subscribers.

Note: at this time it is only for text-based e-newsletters, or ones who will only show text ads, no graphical based ones (yet...not sure if they will add that feature).

As an advertiser you want to reach a select target market. It doesn't matter if it is 10 qualified recipients or 10,000, we know that targeting your ads is better than a shotgun approach. So Amigo makes getting your ad in front of that target audience easier. After creating a free account you will want to add a new ad to the Amigo database. Simply add a title for the ad, a headline, body text, and a link back to your Web site (though you will want the link to go to a targeted page, not your homepage). Then choose the target audience you wish to receive this type of ad. Set a price per click you are willing to pay for someone who clicks on the ad. Once the ad is submitted you can check out the statistics of the ad through a dashboard feature. This then lets you see if your text is working for your ad or if you need to change it. Plus you can also track to see if those who do click through are purchasing from you to see if you are getting the ROI you were looking for.

As an e-newsletter owner you can add your publication to the Amigo database and identify the topic(s) it covers and the audience it is sent to. Then you can search the Amigo database for advertisements that match your criteria. Select which ones you want to display in your e-newsletter, follow the instructions and add the text to your next issue. When the clicks start rolling in from your subscribers to the ad, you make money. It's that easy.

If you want to see the progression of how Amigo was thought of, developed, and launched you can check out their Barenaked App blog which recorded the entire experience.

Tubetorial, the brainchild of Brian Clark of Copyblogger. Tubetorial is a site that features "Step-by-Step video tutorials for online success." This is one to definitely grab the RSS feed for and to check out. The video quality is great and the content is just as good.

Grab the RSS Feed
Visit Tubetorial

Larry Bodine reports that some of the clients he is working with are just not getting it right when it comes to their Web sites. In fact, he says 80% of the traffic for his one example came from internal traffic! I've mentioned before here that you must look at your Web site traffic to see where your problem spots are. To review, check out my April 2006 article from LLRX on Is Your Web Site Successful? Tips and Techniques to Get More Out Of Your Web Site.

If you want to learn more about building valuable Web sites, come see me on August 28, 2006 at the Hyatt Regency at the National Business Seminars Internet Strategies for Legal Professionals where I will be discussing Basic Considerations for Marketing Your Firm on the Net which will include a lot about your firm's Web site.

The following are my top five reasons why your Web site will ultimately be unsucessful and be useless stagnant bits and bytes on the Internet.

5. The IS department is in charge of design and content creation/publishing.
The IS department does not know your content better than you, the content contributor. Unless you have a very specific workflow that facilitates the content creation process and how it interacts with your IS dept. for publishing, it will never work.

4. Your content is "brochure-ware", static and stale.
Have you ever heard this in your office?

"Hey Bob, let's just put our brochure up as content on our web site. It is the same marketing copy we would use anyway, so why re-invent the wheel."

This conversation should never happen. If it does, please..PLEASE say "no" and make sure your content for your web site is written for the Web (yes, there is a difference) and it is reviewed on a regular basis if not changes on a regular basis.

3. The majority of your senior managers and middle managers don't "get it" when it comes to the web.
Your management sees the Web site as a something that you "had" to do to keep up with the Jones', but never saw the value in it and will not put more resources to improving it.

2. You have decentralized content creation without standards and rules.
Can you say Silence of the Lambs? Wild, rabid kids without any supervision will fend for themselves which gives you a fractured, inconsistent mess for your visitors to wade through to find the content they are really looking for. Without explicit standards and business rules, decentralized content control and creation can become unruley and very difficult to manage globally.

1. You don't understand your audience and how they interact wit your brand and company.
Rule number 1: Know thy audience and thy will strive. If you don't know who you are providing content/services to how can you build something they will use or come to?

Fellow BlawgThink attendee Michelle Golden has some great tips on phrases not to put on your firm's Web site. Phrases inclue:

• Collectively, we have 2,864 years of experience
• We're large enough to...yet we're small enough to
• We partner with you

There are more as well. One of the common themes with these phrases is that they are of the "we" mentality when in reality to get the best bang for your Web site marketing copy buck is to use phrases that indicate how your firm can help "them" or the visitor. So use phrases like:

XXX can help guilde you through the divorce process....

Michelle also gives a great list of proactive words that avoid the "we" mentality. Remember, content is king and content that engages your visitors to feel comfortable with your company and interact with you is even better.

I'll be speaking on a panel this fall on Web sites for legal professionals at Internet Strategies for Legal Professionals hosted by National Business Institute Seminars. Here are the details as of now.

I'll be speaking on:
Basic Considerations for Marketing Your Firm on the Net
A. The Elements of a Valuable Web Site
B. Getting Started - Maknig a Plan
   1. Selecting a Hosting Company
   2. Creating a URL
   3. Cost-Effective and Free Means of Attracting Visitors
   4. Creating Email Addresses
C. How to Get Visitors Active on Your Site
D. Your Firm's RSS Feeds, Blogs, and Podcasts

Internet Strategies for Legal Professionals
August 28, 2006
Chicago, IL
9:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around, does it make a noise? Now, if you write an article that is on a topic, but don't include words that will get picked up in search results, does your article get indexed and consequently read? When it comes to writing for the Web (and really, what isn't written to be syndicated in some way, shape, and form, on the Web these days?) articles, blog posts, essays, reports, registration pages, should contain words that visitors will most likely search upon. More often than not I will see pages that have great content, but are heavy on technical words and/or phrases, not the common man's word for the same thing, which is more likely what will be searched upon. So if you write great content and do not use the rich keywords that are most likely to be searched with, will anyone find your published content? The answer is probably no more than yes.

What sparked this whole line of thinking was the article This Boring Headline Is Written for Google(TimeSelect Article $$) by Steve Lohr from the New York Times. In the article Lohr discusses how newspapers are experimenting with their headlines to make them more search engine friendly. Some are going through the practice of using two different headlines for articles. The "marketing one" where it grabs the readers' attention from the main news page and a more SEO one that is published on the deeper article location, which is more likely to be picked up as the link in search engine results.

This is an interesting approach. Of course newspapers are all about getting readers to read columns. Thus writers are coming up with crafty titles for their stories. Where the problem comes in where the headline has nothing to do with the content if taken out of context, something a search engine is great at. And because newspaper's headlines on their homepage change daily, if not hourly, they essentially can do this without consequence from the search engine algorithm changes. So how can you get your content indexed by the search engines so it can be read more often by Web searchers? Here are some tips.

Recommended Reading

First, I have read a couple of books that I highly recommend when it comes to learning how to write for the Web. They include:

Net Words: Creating High-Impact Online Copy
by Nick Usborne

Content Critical: Gaining Competitive Advantage through High-Quality Web Content
by Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton.

Both will give you a great insight as to how surfers "read" and how you can adjust your writing style to accommodate for that behavior.

Tips You Can Use Today

Here are some tips I recommend you try before and after you write that next blog post, news article, report, or essay.

1. After establishing a topic, do research on the commonly used terms or keywords that are related to the topic. Understand that these terms are more likely to be searched upon than not, so try and use them in your content. Beware not to go overboard using them. You will want to use them in moderation.
2. Conduct some quick searches yourself on the topic. What do you type as your search terms and do you find content related to the topic?
3. Conduct a keyword density check against your completed content to see if your identified words are present enough.

Some Quick SEO Tips for Formatting Your Content

1. Use the title of the content as the title of the Web page.
2. Use rich keywords in your sub-headers (h1-h4 tags).
3. Use sub-headers instead of formatting paragraph tags as bold and size 4.
4. If you link to other pages on your Web site, do not use "click here." Rather, use more descriptive words for the link text. This will help visitors who use screen readers as well as give the search engine bots context about the page it is about to spider.

The ultimate goal around writing for the Web is to make sure you write for search engines and in readable chunks of content for scanners. The more you know about readers' behavior (search, reading, etc) the more you can tailor your content to meet their needs and thus the more you will get read. The only other recommendation I can offer when it comes to writing for the Web, be sure the content is of value. Value has a wide range, but the real goal for the best search engine optimization is to get your content linked to. The only way that will happen is if it is good enough to be linked to – thus valuable to somebody.

This is the first in a new category based on Web site development, design, usability, and standards.

So when was the last time you looked at your Web site statistics? Not recently? Not at all? Shame! Your Web stats are a great place to find nuggets of information about how visitors are using your Web site. When checking out your stats there will always be a ton of information with many reports. This is often intimidating for almost anyone. If you are a novice at reading Web stats, here are some tips to reports you should pay particular attention to:

Referrers. This report will tell you how visitors are getting to your Web site and from where. For instance, visitors could be finding you from a Google or Yahoo! search. They could have followed a link from another Web site that is pointing to yours. The referrer report will tell you all of this. It is important to know how visitors are getting to your Web site to better optimize it.

Top Content / Top Page Views/Visits. This report, depending on what service you use, is described in several different ways. Google Analytics calls it a Top Content report. Other packages will call it Most Page Views while other ones will call it Most Visits. What they all indicate in their own unique way is what is popular on your Web site. Knowing what is being read helps identify topics that are popular with readers.

Now, be wary of top content always being looked at in a positive light. It can also indicate content that is poor. Check your referrer log and see where those links from other Web sites are pointing to and what they are saying. You just may find out that your blog post or white paper is not as effective as you thought.

Top Exit Pages. This report is great to determine if specific Web pages are performing well. An exit page is the page where your visitor was last before they left your Web site. Google Analytics does a great job of telling you where visitors exited your Web site on many of their reports. Exiting is not always a bad thing because if visitors are coming to your Web site looking for something else, it is good for them to know up front the content they were looking for is not here. But if your homepage is getting a high exit rate, then you might want to re-evaluate your navigation or the content that is being displayed. If it won't get visitors to click through to more content, something may be wrong.

Search Terms. There are two reports you will want to pay attention to in regards to search terms. One will show you what visitors are typing into the major search engines that find your Web site. The second is where it shows you what visitors are typing into your search engine to find content on your Web site once they are here. This only works if you have search capabilities enabled on your Web site. Most blogs do by default.

These reports are key to discover what types of words and phrases visitors are using to find you and your content. This allows you to leverage this information into your future blog posts, writing of papers, and formatting of pages (headers, sub-headers, etc.).

Of course I could go on and on at reports you should look at. You should look at all of them at some point in time. Knowing what browsers, platform, screen resolution, and type of ISP is important for design and development, but not something you would look at everyday. Keep in mind that you don't have to look at these every day, but reading your Web site statistics is important and should be part of your normal routine. The Web is on 24/7/365 and that means you have a presence to customers, vendors, clients, and colleagues 24/7/365.

Not sure what type of Web site statistics you have? Check with your Web host. Most likely they have something as part of your hosting package. If you are not satisfied with those reports there are other free ways to you can gain this information. The following services all require you to add a snippet of code to your Web pages to work correctly.

Google Analytics. Free and very robust on what type of information it provides. If you use AdWords as part of your marketing campaigns, GA is a must because it can integrate your AdWords into its reporting and provide you a better ROI on those bids.

SiteMeter. Free and provides you with most of the information listed below. A pay version will give you more information that you might find useful.

StatCounter. Stat counter is similar to SiteMeter but provides you with more information on the free account side. Their reports are cleaner and you don't have to show a graphical icon that you are using their service unlike SiteMeter.

By utilizing the information found in your Web statistics you will be able to optimize your Web site to better serve your visitors and your bottom line.