Social Media to Aid in Employment

Each show consists of a conversation between a Career Moxie listener who writes in with a problem, the hosts, and a guest expert who offers tips and suggestions for how the problem might be solved. In our case, we had a wonderful person named Douglas who wanted to know how he could use his LinkedIn profile and blog (http://chicagopinot.wordpress.com) to move from a position as an administrative assistant to a career in the wine industry.

Listen to Our Conversation

You can listen to the full program below to hear how I used examples such as Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV fame to explain how to use the web to find and build an audience, and how that audience could help present Douglas as someone wine-focused organizations and businesses would want to take a look at connecting to!

(Click here if you cannot see the player in your feed reader)

What Else Could Douglas Do?

Would you add anything to my suggestions for Douglas? Leave a comment below?

Show Me the Data Stupid

Good marketers know the importance of putting emphasis on tracking performance. We’re data-driven people who need to show results for the programs we’ve made our leaders believe in (and spend money on!) Business owners are the same way in that they need to see what is working and what is just dragging down cash flows.

In the economy we’re dealing with today, if you cannot show a simple path to discovering what the ROI of social media activities could be, then it is almost a sure guarantee that businesses just won’t try it.

Five Simple Steps to Social Media ROI

That’s exactly what Eric and Adam provided in their presentation: a list of five simple steps to measure the ROI of social media activities. And guess what, it should look very familiar!

Here’s the quick list with my quick interpretation from the presentation:

1. Define desired outcomes – Just like any marketing program, what are your highest-level objectives for the business? And remember business objectives and marketing goals are two different items.
2. Understand your inputs – Identify what you are putting into the program in terms of people, tools, spending, etc. This is essentially your full investment in the initiative(s).
3. Find the tools and manage data flow – The importance here is on tracking and filtering everything. This is the the actual program in action with data being fed into your analytical tools.
4. Manage the team – Drive the program, manage the program, and support the program.
5. Do the math – What were your results? Measure, analyze, tweak, and repeat.

Fantastic job by these two and I am totally psyched about the future beta release of Argyle Social’s software. It’s core focus? You guessed it, tracking the performance and displaying the ROI of social media activities. Rock on guys!

Do you want to see their presentation for yourself? View the PowerPoint below or watch the video from the actual event.

PowerPoint Presentation on Slideshare

Video of Presentation on Vimeo

What Questions or Answers do You Have About Social Media ROI?

I’m a constant student and am always hearing about other individuals perspectives bout social media ROI. Do you have an answer to the question? Share it with us below in the comments?

Do you have more questions about social media ROI? Ask it below in the comments and maybe we can all come up with an answer!

Articles like this is why we ask the question: “Do you know how to get your web site banned from Google and other search engines?”

What?! You Can be Banned from Google?

We can bet that almost 99% of the time, our clients and prospects we meet will answer “No.”  This begs the thought that if you do not know how to get your web site banned, then how can you so easily trust that SEO firm that called you on the phone and said they could guarantee you the #1 spot for ALL your keywords for only $100 per month?! Sure, you may not know how they’re going to do it and you may not care (until you’re banned) but let’s use some logic here.

There are tons of SEO firms out there and many charge a whole lot more than $100 per month with most of them offering no such guarantee! So, logic would suggest that since these firms cannot offer the same guarantee, then there is two possibilities with what the firm in question is offering:

1. They have found the super secret technique that Google, Yahoo, MSN, Bing, and other search engines do not even know about that allows them to guarantee the #1 position.
2. Or, the method that they’re using is likely considered illegal by these search engines and the firm is simply trying to swindle as much money as it can from you before your site gets yanked.

Either way, their guarantee should make you think “this sounds way too good.”

So remember the old rule of thumb, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

How to Find Out if an SEO Company is Legit

This isn’t to say that there couldn’t be an SEO firm out there that could provide that result for such a low amount. It’s simply the thought that it is highly unlikely and should make you want to check out if they can and how they plan on delivering that guaranteed result.

Here’s 3 quick things you can do to check out if the firm is legit:

1. Search Their Company for Feedback

Consider this the same as running a background check on the firm.  If they claim to have any clients, there’s a good chance that one or many of them have posted a review of their service somewhere online.  Pull up your favorite search engine and run a search on their company name.  See what you find.

Do you find a lot of favorable responses to the company? If so, they could be a good one to work with.

OR, Do you find horror stories of how they went over-budget, under delivered, or got a customer’s web site banned? Probably not such a good firm to work with!

2. Ask for References

When choosing any type of service provider we recommend always asking for references.  Preferably, the references should not be clients that recently signed-on as a client, but should be a client they’ve been working with for at least 3 – 5 months.

Why is the time range important?  Simply because it can take 4 – 6 weeks just to get your site listed in the search engines. For any newly applied SEO tactics, they’d need additional time for those to take affect. So this time range gives the search engines ample time to review their web site more than once to ensure it is meeting their terms of use and that it is being placed where the search engine thinks the site should rank.

Do you see a low ranking for this client? That should make you question the firms expertise.

3. Ask for Them to Explain Their Process

We’re not talking about trying to get them to give you their secret formula, but if they will not even explain their process in a broad sense it’s possible that they’re using tactics you wouldn’t want employed on your web site.

A good rule of thumb is that if they do not talk about any of the following, they’re probably not a good firm to hire. These items listed below are at the foundation of SEO:

1. META tags (keywords, phrases, and page descriptions)
2. Frequency of new content (how often it is updated)
3. Traffic-driving techniques (submitting content, site linking, backlinks, etc.)
4. Web analytics tools (also known as site statistics or metrics)
5. Page scores, page ranks, and keyword density analysis

Once you have found a good SEO firm, don’t simply take a back-seat and let them completely drive the show.  It’s important to become educated in even the basic SEO concepts so that you can understand the results that are reflected through the reports and can make informed decisions about areas that need to be improved or focused on.

Our Rule of Thumb: If you do not have the time to take an active role in managing your search engine listings, find and connect to an expert resource who can help manage it internally for you. Without that person, there will always be the possibility that you’re still being taken advantage of even by a firm that knows what they’re doing!

Get Educated Yourself to Improve Your Results

One resource that can help you learn more about SEO and search engine marketing is the local industry association called Search Engine Marketing Charlotte (or SEMCLT for short.)  This group holds numerous seminars and workshops covering topics such as: SEO, search engine marketing, blogging, social media, and more.  Most of their events are free or may have a nominal fee.  To learn more about the, go to http://www.semclt.com.

Horror Stories Anyone?

Do you have an SEO horror story that you would like to share? Post it in the comments below!

• Can an outsider understand my business?
• Can a ghostwriter sound like me or like my business?
• Will it take more time and effort to manage a ghostwriter than it would to do the work myself?

All three questions can be answered in a word. “MAYBE.”

I ghostwrite for financial professionals — primarily advisors, accountants and attorneys. When someone asks me whether they’re a candidate for a ghostwriter, I ask questions of my own:

• Who’s your audience?
• What are your key messages?
• Do you have an editorial calendar?
• What’s the “voice” of your business?
  • Is it edge-y because the business develops cutting edge technologies?
  • Is it reassuring because it’s in health care?
  • Is it frisky because it sells to teens and tweens?

If you can’t answer these questions, you’ve got work to do before you begin your search for the perfect ghost.

Start with an editorial calendar

No matter what kind of product or service you provide, if you’re going to publish anything — from a newsletter to a social media update — you need a plan. Start with key messages and an editorial calendar. If you need help with this or other marketing/public relations tasks,  look for a writer who can provide that expertise.

A ghostwriter should have a working understanding of how search engine optimization (SEO) works, but beware the writer who tries to convince you to write in a stilted style to feed the search bots; this does not serve you well with human readers. If a prospective writer says something like “I  write according to a formula — I’ll put your top three key words in the title and front load the first two sentences with the top ten,” you’re not talking to a ghostwriter, you’re talking to a copywriter. There’s a difference.

Create a pool

Key messages and an editorial calendar in hand, tap your professional circles first. With so many corporate communications departments being downsized, domain experts who write well are a LinkedIn search away. I focus my practice on financial and economic topics because I know them best and don’t require any ramp up time. If someone called asking me to write about biotech I’d decline.

Whether a domain expert can effectively ghost for you is another matter. You’ll need to refine the search by chemistry, mutually-acceptable work styles, pricing, etc.

Audition

A good ghostwriter is in demand. Plan to interview a few potential writing partners and perhaps audition one or two of them.

Already writing a newsletter? Give the writer an earlier version and ask what they’d do differently. Never written one before? Give the writer three news topics and ask how they would propose to learn your voice before delving into the writing process. I use a voice recorder to interview my client on the topics (more on that below).

I will sometimes offer to do an audition piece on spec with the understanding that if the client hires me I’ll bill them for the work, but only if I feel the chemistry is right and there’s no risk on my side that they’ll love my work. If they don’t hire me they can’t use my audition piece in any shape or form.

Getting the voice right

If your business is more than “you” I recommend appointing a spokesperson for whom the ghost writes.  A spokesperson need not be a real person — think Geico gecko. The ghostwriter needs to slip into the spokesperson’s persona so if you don’t want to appoint a spokesperson you don’t need a ghostwriter, you need a copywriter.

I ask my clients to use a digital recorder when working with me; the digital file is easily attached to email. Listening to their recordings, I  glean from their inflection what matters to them most and pick up key words or phrases that they favor. I also find that people say more when speaking than when writing.  Clients may think they have two articles for their newsletter but when they start talking about the subjects I might “hear” three articles and a blog post.

One final note: In a ghostwriting relationship there’s a fair amount of front loading before the ghost can successfully get into a productive rhythm.  Hire someone who already knows your business/industry/profession so they’ll hit their stride more quickly. While a current staff member might be qualified for the job, don’t foist the job on an insider if they’re not the RIGHT person. The right hire will save time and effort.

For more on this topic, here’s my blog.

Good luck.

Tamela Rich, “An MBA Who Writes like an English Major,” lives in Charlotte, NC. Follow her on Twitter @TamelaRich or sign up for her monthly newsletter.

Well, let me give you the short answer that I know you’re going to hate… it depends.

No two web solutions are exactly the same mainly because no two businesses are exactly the same.  So, rather than give you a range that is mere opinion and based on our own experience (which… I might give you at the end,) let me help you understand what we see are the four main components that help determine the cost of a web project.  With that, I’ll also tell you at least one way you can help lower the cost.  Listen and listen well and you should be able to find the right firm that can deliver the results you want at the price you’re willing to pay.

So, let’s get started…

Design

Good design costs money and a great looking website helps communicate professionalism, stability (surprising but true,) and a certain level of trust. Think of your website as where you will likely make your first impression with your prospects. Do you want to be found wearing a nicely trimmed suit or a raggedy set of jeans and a t-shirt?  A good designer will know how to build the suit, but will be more costly than the person who just delivers the jeans and t-shirt.

One way to lower cost?

Be prepared before starting the project by having a list of example websites that you like in terms of the style, layout, and overall structure. Also, be sure to have a good idea or an already solidified color palette for your designer to use.  This can help firms cut back on hours allotted for research and the design process included in their quotes, saving you some cash.

Functionality

There are two major components of a website that make up the “heart” of the website: your content and the functionality.  Functionality can be anything from content management systems, web contact forms and user accounts to social media integration, blogging capabilities and photo galleries.  However, just like buying a car, the more features you want the higher the price.

One way to lower cost?

Know what you really need before you approach a web development firm.  Oftentimes prospects begin naming their wish-list for inclusion in a quote because they have not thought in detail about what they really need.  Then sticker shock hits them when they see the cost.

By knowing what the minimum capabilities that you need are, you can start small and build big later, thus starting the project with a much lower quoted price.  Again like buying a car, if cost is a concern, know what features are your chassis, engine, wheels, and controls and start with those first.

Timeline

Building a website takes time and most firms have developing time lines down to a science.  We also know that for some of our clients, it’s just not fast enough. When you need something faster than a standard project, you can be sure that you’re going to have to pay for it.  An expedited project typically requires a higher rate applied to the pricing and that can quickly increase the price of your project.

One way to lower cost?

Plan ahead for the time required to develop your project.  In our experience, a typical web project can take a minimum of 30 business days.  To avoid your project requiring an expedited time line, plan to have that much time available before your desired launch date.  If this isn’t possible, then be prepared to potentially pay the extra cost.

Experience

I’ll be as direct as I can here. If you want the best, you will have to pay for the best.  The key to determining who the “best” is, in my opinion, is centered around what your definition of “experience” is.

Typically, we think of experience as the number of years you have been performing the service in question.  In the world of web design and development this should not be your only criteria for determining who is good and who is bad.  Focus instead on the results their completed projects generated for the served businesses.  Be sure to ask each web firm you are looking to contract with if they can give you a few examples of work they have completed and the end results it provided for the business.  Then make your judgment about their level of experience by what they have consistently delivered.

One way to lower cost?

When price becomes the primary concern, remember you can always contract with the “next best” firms.  They may not be considered “the best” to you, but they certainly good at what they do and sometimes can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

Wrapping It All Up in a Price

So at this point you’re probably thinking, “He still hasn’t told me how much a good website should cost.”  Well, that’s true, but hopefully I’ve helped you understand some of the core elements that are taken into consideration when pricing your project.  You will be forced to make some decisions about what you want, what you expect, and what you’re willing to pay that will ultimately have a great bearing on the overall success of your website.  So be sure that you are giving yourself a large enough budget to reach the success that you desire and expect to gain from your website.

Are you ready to make the investment?

P.S. – Okay, for those of you that need a price range, let me give you a quick idea of what we’ve charged for web projects.  We’ve built websites from $1,500 up to $30,000 and they’ve all helped businesses grow (some A LOT faster than others and in more ways than just bringing in new business.)

In my opinion, be prepared to pay between $3,000 – $5,000 for a good website that generates positive results for your business.  If right now you are all excited about how you got yours for less, good for you… as long as you’re actually getting some sort of return from it!  Otherwise, you might just have a glorified digital brochure and that rarely does anything for your business.

That’s not the case anymore.

The new web is all about content, but not just any content… fresh content.  In the new web, the websites that get the most traffic are those where the content is constantly changing, being added to, and improved.  Users want and expect to see or learn something new each time they visit your website and they view those websites that do so as more valuable.  Think about it, you actually give them a reason to return!

With that in mind, let me give you just 3 quick reasons why you should consistently update your website:

1. Search engines reward websites that update often by moving them up the rankings

The value in search engines is that you can find just about anything you are looking for on the web.  But, we don’t want to just find anything, we want to find the “right thing.”  So in order to remain a valuable tool to users, search engines needed a way to identify what listings are considered “good stuff” and what is not.  One identifier, a term called “frequency,” is used to determine how often your website is updated.  If a website is updated often, then search engines consider it a consistent source of new information and awards it some points that can help move its listing up in the search results.  This is very beneficial as it can bring more traffic to your website.

Think about it.  If your local newspaper delivered this Sunday’s edition, then next Sunday they delivered exactly the same thing, then again the next Sunday and so on and so forth, eventually you’d just cancel your subscription. Why? Because there is no longer anything of value. The content is exactly the same so why would you want to keep receiving it?  Its the same with your website in that if it never changes, why would someone who has already read it want to come back? Search engines know this and could penalize you by moving you down in the rankings.

Benefit #1: You have the ability to make updates instantly

This absolutely is the #1 reason for using content management systems.  I don’t know how many times I have heard our clients and prospects tell us, “We want to be able to make updates ourselves, without having to call you.”  Well guess what, with a CMS system you can make all the updates you want, and most systems have an interface that looks similar to your favorite word processor so you can add formatting like bold, italics, bulleted lists and so on.  The best part? You don’t need to know HTML code.  The good news for us?  You often still need someone to set it up for you and train you on how to use it, but it can cut the costs of a developing a website in half!

Benefit #2: It’s easy to add new pages making your website easily scalable

The main purpose of a CMS tool is that you use it to manage all of the content on your website. That alone is already fantastic, but what’s even more fantastic is that most CMS systems allow you to add brand new content pages with just the click of a few buttons.  So when you need to grow the amount of content on your website, you just use the system to add the new pages. There is no longer a need for a skilled web programmer to create the pages, link them into your website, then send you a bill. You simply add the new pages using the system itself and pass on receiving that extra bill.

Benefit #3: You can add additional functionality quickly

Behind almost every CMS system is a framework for adding new functionality, which can be anything from a photo gallery, to a message board, to integrating social media tools.  This allows you to expand what your website is capable of and thus offer visitors and users new tools that may provide additional value or aid in persuading them to engage your business. What makes this a great benefit is that for most CMS systems, all it takes to add these new capabilities is to upload a few files and flip the “on” switch.

Benefit #4: Redesigning your website is a piece of cake

It seems like every year businesses feel that it is time to completely redo their website (and to a point, we agree.)  Most of the time all they really want is to “freshen up” the look and they’ll reuse most of the content.  While we believe that the content is MORE important, it’s worth to note that most CMS systems use what’s known as “web templates” to control the structure and design of an entire website. So when you want a new design, you simply create a new web template, install it into the system, and activate it. Voilà! Your old site gets a face lift in mere seconds! The best part?  No need to start building the whole website from scratch!

Where can I get one of those?

Hopefully by now you can see why we’re so passionate about using content management systems to build our websites.  It’s easier for you, it’s easier for us, and… well… we like to make the web easy!  Now if you’d like to get your hands on one, we’ve listed a few of our favorites below with links to learn about them. If you need help with actually building your site using a CMS system or simply want us to train you on how to use one, give us a shout! We’d love to help!

A few CMS systems we like:

1. Joomla!
2. Drupal
3. Wordpress
4. Typo3

Are there any you would like to list?  Post them in the comments below!

Would you like us to test and review one? Send us a Contact Request and we’ll give ‘er a go!

1. Have identified goals as to what is to be accomplished

This one should be obvious, but the years of people hearing “You just have to have a website” have taken their toll.  Many websites do not have any more purpose than to merely state the same message that can be found in their other marketing literature.  This is a horrible approach.  You have so much more power in what you can do through the web that to do nothing more than state who you are and what you do is like a salesman walking up to a prospect and saying, “Hi, my name is Rick and I’m a salesman.” and then walk away.  Defining what you want your website to accomplish in the form of goals is what should control every aspect of how the website is constructed and those goals require something to be done. What are they?

To help identify the goals for your website, simply answer questions like these:

• What do I want the website to do?  Why?
• What do I want visitors to be able to do on my website?  Why?
• What do I want my customers to be able to do on my website? Why?
• What do I want media outlets to be able to on my website?  Why?
• What do I want my partners to be able to do on my website? Why?

Right now, I want to talk about 3 pieces of gold that will help you know what is bringing in the traffic, where and who your greatest supporters are, and what your visitors think about your website overall.

These 3 pieces of gold actually come from 3 sets of metrics, which are:

1. The overall site usage statistics
2. The list and data for your most visited pages
3. The list and data for your traffic sources

Site Usage Statistics

The site usage statistics is actually a grouping of multiple data points that when combined, give you a clear understanding of what website visitors think about your website.  When analyzed, you can quickly determine what visitors think about your website (could be a combination of performance, aesthetics, or content,) how long you have captured the attention of your visitors, and if your traffic building programs are working.

This grouping consists of the following:

1. Visitors/Unique Visitors (otherwise known as hits and visits)
   The visitors/hits data point tells you the number of times your website was viewed during a specific time period and includes multiple visits from the same individual. The unique visitors/visits data point tells you how many actual people came to your website.What’s the gold?
   Watch the ratio of unique visitors to visitors (or number of visits to hits depending on the terms used.)  If you see that the number of visitors/hits keeps growing proportionally to the number of unique visitors/visits then you know that something on your website is causing a lot of individuals to keep coming back to your website over and over again.  This is awesome because each visit is another opportunity to convert the visitor to a customer.  So if these two numbers are very close to being equal, then apparently there is not much of value or nothing that is causing visitors to return to your website after their initial visit.  So they came… they left… and they never returned during that time period.
2. Pages per visit
   This data point shows you on average how many pages a visitor looks at before leaving your website.  To understand the importance and value of this data, you need to know how many active pages are currently in operation on your website. With this, you will know how powerful your content is.What’s the gold?
   If this number is low, then your visitors are not looking at much of your content before they are deciding to leave. This means they’re either not finding what they are looking for, they did find the information they were looking for but it didn’t cause them to engage you, or maybe they were just glancing around your website.  You want this number to be proportionally high to the full number of pages on your site. If it is, it would tell you that your content has enough appeal and value that your visitors click through quite a bit of it before they leave.  So out of a 10 page web site, you would love for them to read 6 or more pages.  If this isn’t happening… it’s time to review your content!
3. Bounce rate
   This data point shows you the number of times people came to your website and left from the same page they arrived on.  This essentially means that they did not look any further than the page they landed on. This can easily be a metric that is looked at negatively since for the majority of websites, it is a high percentage.  For us, it tells us if our inbound marketing strategy is working!What’s the gold?
   If this number is extremely high when compaired to the number of visitors (the percentage is 80% or higher,) you know immediately something is wrong with the website and you need to make some emergency changes. People are telling you that either they can’t figure out how to access the rest of your pages, whatever they’re reading is not what they’re looking for, or something is completely turning them off about your website (potentially offensive material.)

   If this number is slightly high, then it may mean that visitors are not finding what they are looking for on the page they arrived on.  This could mean that your inbound marketing strategy has some flaws in it.  For example, the links that show up in the search engine results or on your online marketing ads are pointing to a page that is not converting visitors. So does it have the right content? If you are paying to send traffic here… you’re wasting money!  Cut off the spending and fix the page first!

   If this number is low (say below 40%) then it means that on average, your visitors are at least looking around your website a bit before leaving. This is a pretty good metric and is about the average.

What’s the overall gold?
The combined gold of the site usage statistics is that you can immediately determine the overall performance of your website, knowing how many visitors come, how long they stay, and what they think about your website overall. Consider this a quick snapshot of the overall health and growth of your website.

Your Most Visited Pages

The statistics that make up the most visited pages listings focus on the content of your website and can include data points such as how many of your site visitors viewed that page, how long they stayed on that page, what page did they come from and what page did they go to next.

What’s the gold?
This list shows you what content on your website attracts the most eyes to it.  So if you see certain pages attract the most visitors, you would want to build on that content to include more like it or change other pages to mimic its layout, its wording, and its structure to help increase the page views of all your pages.  This may also identify the content that is the most important to your visitors, so you would want to be sure to make this content even easier to find, access, and read.

Your Traffic Sources

This statistic helps determine the reach of your website. It helps you understand where the majority of your visitors are coming from. It is typically broken down into three categories: direct traffic, referring sites, and search engines.  Direct traffic means that they entered your web address directly into their web browser address bar, referring sites are all sites that have a link to your website somewhere on their pages, and search engines obviously lists traffic that came from the different search engines.

What’s the gold?
This statistic tells you who knows about your website, how they are getting there, and where you need to improve in order to get more traffic.  If the bulk of your traffic is coming from search engines, then you are potentially missing out on additional traffic that could come from other websites that link to you.  It also means that your offline activities (marketing, advertising, networking, etc.) is not causing anyone to come directly to your website.  Ideally, you would like all three to be equal, but it’s not likely.  Most traffic comes from search engines, but there is great benefit in having other websites link to you (as they could be a source of your greatest fans) and having a large amount of direct traffic is a clear indication that your offline marketing activities are doing well at bringing traffic to your website.  So work on these two sources just as much as you would want to have the #1 spot on Google!

Where do you find gold?

What about you? Where do you find gold nuggets of information in your web statistics?  Share with us below in the comments!

With the rise of social media (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) came the beginnings of the demise of traditional media (magazines, newspapers, TV, radio.) More advertisers are moving their marketing budgets from offline activities to online activities. A report by eMarketer projects that the online ad spending will continue to grow at a rate of ~1% from where it is today in 2009, at 9.9%, to 15.2% by 2013.

That begs the question of what affect this has on the media outlets that have always survived by garnering a large portion of a corporate marketing budget?

The Bleeding of Traditional Media

I call this the “bleeding” of traditional media. It was something that they actually saw coming, but seem to never guess would affect them and their $1,000,000 one page print ads. Traditional media marketing was always about hitting numbers. The number of impressions, the number of viewers, consistency, and frequency. Hit as many people as you can with your message and that will translate into a certain percentage of consumers converting to customers.

The problem is we’ve been marketed and sold to death! We’ve actually learned to AVOID ads. We walk, read, listen and look right past them! There are all sorts of reports and studies talking about “ad avoidance” from the likes of AdWeek, Huffington Post, and even the World Advertising Research Center! You people with Tivo, you know what I mean! Fast-forwarding past the ads! Shame on you!

But hello! This is the financial foundation of traditional media! So what are they to do?

Learn to Adapt or Die

Just like TV did not kill radio and video recorders did not replace TV shows, traditional marketing will not be replaced by the likes of social media marketing… unless they do not learn to adapt. It’s time for traditional media to move into the next phase of their existence. What that is we do not currently know, but what I do believe is that there is still a use of traditional media. They just need to figure out how to combine the concepts we love about social media: connecting and forming communities, relationships built on mutual trust, openness and honesty consistently communicated, and always looking for feedback that is applied not just requested.

These mediums are still great tools for connecting and disseminating information to large audiences of people. They just need to learn how to become a part of our communities of influence rather than trying to be the global dictator of them. So it’s learn to adapt or death is just around the corner.

What are your thoughts?

So what do you think? Do you think traditional media is dead? Dying?

How do you think they could adapt to form a sustainable medium?

All of these examples of people I am connected to, have paid money to, and religiously follow have one thing in common… they’re all engageous!

Engageous is my term that means “perpetually engaging without pause.” It’s the idea that in order to build a true following or community, you must constantly be engaging your followers, customers, fans in constant communication and interaction. Now this doesn’t mean every second of everyday, but it does mean that in some form or fashion you try to engage your audience daily. If letting them know that you will not be available still can engage them. Give them something to talk about while you’re away!

How They Pulled Me In

I learned about Brian Clark’s “Teaching Sells” online membership site through a professional connection. I was already following him on his blog at Copyblogger, and read all the hype about this new upcoming service. Constantly being engaged by his concepts in his posts and the free information given at Teaching Sells, I was almost instantly sold and was one of 300 people who actually got in the first year’s enrollment that sold out in 24 hours. I paid $1,000 for that access and it has been invaluable!

Chris and Julien did this through Twitter, Facebook, and their own blogs to both conduct research for and promote their book Trust Agents. That’s how they sucked me in. I followed a tweet that took me to the Trust Agents landing page, that took me to Facebook where Chris and Julien were constantly updating the followers there as to the status of the book. On top of that they asked engaging questions and created open discussions about the topic of trust, being a trust agent, and the changes in this new trust economy. Guess what, that only made me want the book more! As of this writing, it’s sitting on a UPS truck waiting to be delivered to my door! HURRY UP!

Pamela Slim is a new person in my little world. I heard she was visiting Charlotte for a week and was invited to an event of thought leaders around the topics of entrepreneurship, new media marketing, social media, and connectivity. After sitting down with her in a fantastic discussion about supporting entrepreneurship in the Charlotte area with other business owners, professionals, and public officials, I became an instant follower and bought her book, followed her on Twitter, and read her blog.

Still Think Social Media Cannot Generate Sales?

These are just a few examples of people I have exchanged money for what I deemed valuable from them. But what each one of these had in common that pulled me in was this, they were engageous. They knew it was about the conversation not the conversion.

Are you engageous? If you are, share your story with me. What are you engaging people in?

In my work with small businesses, the concept of customer evangelist is always at the forefront of any marketing strategy being contemplated. Why? Because word-of-mouth referrals is still the #1 way to convert prospects to customers. Not to mention, with these businesses oftentimes having a much smaller ad budget, the idea of something that can generate free advertising is very attractive!

5 Steps to Connect and Grow Customer Evangelists

It’s amazing to me that when this concept is first brought up in my work with my clients, that it is oftentimes viewed as one of the most difficult and time-consuming activities. In reality, its actually quite simple to find and engage your customer evangelists. The difficulty comes in how you interact and how you build your relationship with them.

Here’s five simple steps to connect and grow your customer evangelists:

1. Identify your customers who reflect the traits of an evangelist

These customers are the ones who have shown the most passion towards your brand, your product, or service! They tell everyone about how you helped them in some way and why they think you are the best. Take note, these may not be the customers who have spent the most with you! To find them, perform a Google search on your company, product, or service. FYI, they’ll be the ones talking about you! Capture as much information about them as you can with the focus being on how to contact them.

2. Get to know your customers better by getting them together

Plan an event to bring together your top customers in a smaller, more intimate setting where you can focus on getting to know each one individually. These will include both the current “evangelists” you found in step #1 as well as your top customers based on sales. If your customers are all over the United States and it would be difficult or too costly to bring them all together at one location, find a way to either have multiple local events or create an online portal where you can interact using multi-media tools (web conferencing, phone conferencing, instant message, etc.) We prefer and recommend that this event be in-person at your facilities or local meeting facilities.

3. Give your evangelists deeper access to your organization

You need to create an “evangelist support team” who act as exclusive points of contact for these individual customers and who offer additional access to information than what you would publicly share. People love exclusivity. It makes them feel a part of a special group and much more likely to continue engaging your organization. Having more information and access to write about will ensure your evangelists continue talking up your offerings.

4. Routinely engage your evangelists to provide more insights and request feedback

There is nothing worse to evangelists than when the organization they support seems to cut all lines of 2-way communication. You can’t stop engaging them or else they will quickly lose trust in you. Keep engaging them. Whether it be by planned conference calls, online communities, or emails, be sure to continue reaching out to them for feedback (and listen to it) and share with them new insights into the organization.

5. Repeat these steps to create new evangelists

Once you have one group of customer evangelists, it’s not time to stop! Things can happen in the lives of these individuals and some may fall away. Some may run away due to how you’ve treated them or if your product failed them, miserably. Always continue reaching out and connecting to a new group of evangelists. Doing so can increase your geographical reach, continually reinforce your value offerings, and maybe even open up new lines of revenue. You never know what one relationship can bring! So don’t stop creating them!

How have you created customer evangelists?

Now it’s your turn. Tell me how you have created customer evangelists for your organization? What did you do to connect with them? How did you empower them to share with their network of relationships?

1. Coming across a “corporate” web site that looked like $5 was spent on it, said nothing about what the organization did, and just hurt to look at
2. Having a prospect or new client give me the answer, “Well, you know, we just had to get one up there,” to our question: “How did you go about building your current web site?”

Your Web Site is Your First Impression

Okay, listen, if you answered the question above the same way or you paid less than $500 for your web site, we need to talk. That’s like saying you have an important meeting tomorrow and your plan is to rush to your nearest clothing store and buy the first suit off the rack without ever checking to see how it fits, whether the color compliments your skin tone, or if you just look like an absolute fool in Scottish plaid. Get this, your web site represents your FIRST impression to your potential customers!

Think, before you act! Do you need a web site, yes, absolutely! Does that mean you should use some cheap, “build-it-yourself-overnight” tool? Unless you have a pretty decent understanding of user interface design, layout theory, copywriting techniques, and process engineering… NO!

If you need a web site, there are some simple steps you can take to pave the way for creating a successful presence, but they need you to understand what you should do and what you shouldn’t do when building your new web site.

The Do’s of Building a Web Site

Here are some simple “do’s” that you should focus on when planning and developing the web site you will use to represent your business in the digital world. Following these may not guarantee you riches and fame, but they will certainly guarantee you that there is a much greater chance of your site’s visitors turning into customers, which could lead to riches and fame.

1. Write out your story

We so quickly want to get right to saying who we are, what we do, and how to contact us that we forget that our web site visitors are people, meaning they’re social. They want to know more about who you are and what you’re about before they want to learn what you can do for them. You need to capture the story of who you are (the owner/founders), where you came from, and how you got started and why you did start your business.

What made you start your business?
How do you plan to change the world, even if it is just the world of a particular individual, group of people, or organization?

This will be the foundation for your entire web strategy.

2. Determine your value proposition

Listen, I know we were all told that we need to develop that perfect “sales pitch.” The idea is that anytime you see an opportunity, you’ll be immediately ready to pounce on the unsuspecting person with an 10 reasons they should buy your product now! Truth is, people are more skeptical than ever. They are constantly being “sold” everywhere they go, therefore, they’ve learned to filter out these pitches. Instead, develop your “value pitch.” People react to things they view as valuable. If you can state what makes you valuable, and they can see how that would benefit them, they’ll engage you.

What is it that you bring to an engagement that someone else – your competition – simply can’t provide?
What truly makes you different and more impactful to your customer?

This turns into the main theme of your web site, both content-wise, but also supported graphically with visuals that communicate the value.

3. Create a conversion process

The goal of any business web site should be to convert a visitor to a transaction. You want sales, you want leads, you want someone to call you up and say “I’ll pay you a billion dollar for your awesomely developed product!” Here’s the main question: How do they do that?

You need to have a plan and a process for how a person will engage your organization. Sure, there’s the “Contact Us” page, but what am I contacting you for? And why would I? If you leave it up to your visitors to figure out how to engage your organization, you’ll likely lose a lot of opportunities!

How do I as a web site visitor go about engaging your organization?
What is the “next step” now that I have learned about what you offer? Even more, what is the next step if I had just called or emailed you?

This process will become the strategy for how to drive internal activities when a new prospect engages your business.

4. Finally, Meet with a Professional Web Design Firm

Ok, YES, you COULD build your own web site using cheap or free tools that are available on the web, but after doing all the work mentioned above wouldn’t you want it to be the best it can be? If you answered “yes”, then let a professional build it for you! Will it cost money, YES! More than these tools, DEFINITELY, but it is an investment in your business that you cannot afford to short-change on. A professional firm will be able to either help you develop all the pieces already mentioned, or can take this information and build what will become your most powerful solution for attracting, acquiring, and managing your new customers! Let’s be honest, unless you have some skill and experience in building web sites, the web site YOU would build, would likely chase customers away!

The Don’t Do’s of Building a Web Site

Now, based upon my years of experience, I could probably list a million different things not to do when building a web site. Honestly, it would be overkill. Why? Because there are only three main “don’ts” that if you listen, and do not do, you will likely prevent the majority of the rest I could mention.

1. DO NOT rush to build your web site or use a build-it-yourself-overnight tool

Basically, you’re highly likely to produce a piece of crap site, that would translate into your visitors thinking your business is crap, and therefore thinking all you could offer is crap. Unless you are a web development professional who is now starting your own company, just don’t do this, no matter how attractive the extremely cheap $21.95 price tag is!

Get your story together, determine your value proposition, develop your conversion process, and find a professional who can take all that and knock it out of the ballpark with a winning web site!

2. DO NOT load your web site with a lot of unnecessary information, tools, or bells & whistles

This whole idea of being a “mini-Yahoo!,” forget it! People don’t want to get stock prices, the weather, local news, and other irelevant information from your web site. So don’t try to be the “single place people would go for all their information.” That’s what search engines are for. Not to mention, all of those things are absolute annoyances and distractions that will likely turn your visitors off to your organization!

3. DO NO build your web site using nothing but Flash (don’t even overuse it!)

For those of you that do not know, Flash is a technology that allows you to create stunning animations on web sites (or a fully animated web site.) Flash looks cool. It can do cool things, but it is absolutely the worst platform to build a web site on. This is because: 1) search engines cannot index them so no one knows how to find your web site, and 2) they are the most difficult web sites to manage when you need to make changes! So just don’t do it, Okay?

There, that’s it! Nice and simple! Follow these simple “Do’s” and avoid the “Don’ts” and you’re on your way to building a fantastic new web site!

End Thoughts and Questions

I’m wondering if any of you have any “horror stories” of having a web site built (or building one yourself) where your end result ended up hurting your business. Would anyone care to share?

Mark understands social media. He understands the lingo, the tools, and the opportunity in leveraging these tools to promote his business.  He understands what he needs to be thinking about in terms of his strategy for using these tools, and what he could expect to get out of their use. He understands that he should be tying in their use with promoting his ownership “story.” Mark understands social media.  He’s one of few business owners we know of who truly do. (Note: This is not a negative on those that do not understand, in fact, you’ll soon see how what I’m getting at is the failure in those of us that offer Social Media services in helping business owners understand what Mark knows.)

As a small business owner myself who teaches organizations how to develop and implement integrated marketing campaigns (including the use of social media,) I was both excited and a bit convicted when I read one of Marks’ recent blog posts called “Ideas for Social Media Types (from a Small Business Owner)” – Aug. 11th, 2009 – that gave thoughts about what small business owners actually need from us “social media experts.”

Most of us will pound the podium all day long about how you “have to be engaged in social media” and “social media is the new economy” or even “you’re old and outdated if you think traditional marketing is of any use anymore!”  Okay, okay… so I picked some statements from the extremists.  You get the idea.

There’s such a push as to why businesses need to get engaged with social media tools that we as marketers often forget that what they really want to know is how they get engaged and what they can expect from using these tools!  They’re business owners! They’re thinking bottom lines not connections and conversations!  They want accountability in their marketing and to know that pulling time out of their already busy day to engage people in a digital world is actually going to pay off for them in the form of either goodwill or what they really want, SALES!

What Mark posted really spoke to the core of us here at mPower Consulting who live and operate under the same rules of engagement with our clients that Mark spoke about.  Why? Because we didn’t start out in the realm of social media ourselves (yes, we’re older than you think!) and many of these were the same questions we had.  Owners need to know how to effectively use social media tools, not just why they should – no matter if everyone else is doing it or not!

Read Mark’s post, it’s fantastic insight for us marketers as to the mind and thoughts of business owners who we may be promoting the use of social media to!

So thank you Mark! Lessons learned!

If you want to share your feedback with Mark directly, you can comment on his site or connect to him on Twitter at @mark_hayward

“Clients are saying they want accountability for every dollar they spend, and they want cause and effect. Clients will continue to rally behind ideas that build business, and we as an industry have to accept that things will never revert back to the pre-recession mind-set that wasn’t totally focused on accountability.”

Wow! Now that’s a wake-up call if I ever heard one! Time for us to wake up to the fact that the world in which we once operated and conducted business has made some permanent changes! Interestingly, professional marketers and agencies are not the only ones who need a change in our thinking. Business owners and organizations also need to wake-up to the fact that if they want accountability from their marketing, they themselves now have to become accountable to the decisions they make and the support they provide!

In other words, the time of playful ad spending on low result producing activities is over. In comes the sternness and structure of performance-based spending.

What is Performance-based Spending?

The idea behind performance-based spending (or performance-based marketing) is that for every activity you engage in, you are tracking multiple metrics used to determine the overall effectiveness of the implementation.  In other words, for every medium, technique, and message you engage in, there should be built-in metrics that are fed by captured data that will be analyzed to determine the cause and effect of the activity.  Without the metrics, you’re just scattering money into the wind.

Those metrics, when analyzed against the established goals, will give you the activity’s performance.  From that, you can determine if the activity simply needs to be tweaked to increase the already positive results, OR you have clear indication that the activity is not producing results and therefore should be stopped. The focus is on the cause and effect… the return on the investment… the performance of the implementation.

Performance-based Spending Leads to Accountability

For our marketing strategies to truly be valuable, we HAVE to implement, track, analyze, and report results. The results do not simply include subscriber or viewership numbers, total impressions, the click-through rates, or the amount of traffic driven to our web sites, but the actions and transactions made by individuals directly with our organizations.  This processes of “implement, track, analyze, report” brings accountability into the structure of how we develop and implement our marketing strategies.

Wikipedia talks about accountability as “responsibility, answerability, enforcement, liability with the expectation of account-giving.”

Put into my own terms, here’s what I believe marketers AND businesses should be accountable for regarding how we market to our audiences:

1. Responsibility
   You are responsible for the research, planning, development, and decisions you make to engage in certain marketing activities. No pointing fingers. No “he said/she said.”  You all agreed and you all made the decision. Getting past this point helps you take quicker action to prevent any continued losses.
2. Answerability
   Both the marketer and the business are answerable to each other and themselves as to why an activity did or did not produce the desired result. If it did, hey… it’s time for a celebration.  If it didn’t, try to identify the potential reasons a failed result was produced.  This could bring to light major issues that need to be immediately dealt with!  Could be something operational with the business, or it could be a major deficiency on the part of the marketer! Figure it out by communicating with one another!
3. Enforcement
   A central step in the development of your marketing strategy should be a “Strategic Marketing Action Plan.”  This document is not just an outline of the specific activities you are engaging in, but is also a guide with planned action steps that should be followed should an activity or even a whole strategy fail.  This gives you quick, decisive actions that will be taken to begin the process of rectifying the situation.  Don’t focus on the failure, start enforcing planned actions to prevent future failures.
4. Liability
   Our decisions, our actions and our reactions are things that may prevent us from reaching success in our marketing.  They become a liability; something that restrains us from probing deeper and pushing farther with our strategies. We have to accept that these liabilities exist, but work to ensure they do not hinder us from always moving forward.  You can be accountable for past decisions, actions, and reactions… just don’t live in the past.

Plugging accountability into your marketing is step in the right direction to put a cap on wasteful ad spending.  And in tough times such as these, we need to be sure that every dollar we spend marketing ourselves is in some way producing a measurable result.  Show the result, save the dollars!

Questions for Thought

Do you have accountability as part of the structure of your marketing?

What are your thoughts or experiences with engaging in marketing activities that did not capture valuable metrics to prove its effectiveness?

Are there any horror stories of a time you spent large sums of ad dollars on a complete bomb?

During tough economic times as these it’s important to know where all of your marketing dollars are being spent.  For many companies, this becomes a time when they pull back on their marketing budgets for no other need than to simply cut costs. For others, this is a time when they increase their expenditures in an area of their business that they realize can actually increase their revenue as it has the ability to gain new customers and market share.  For either of these situations, it’s important to take a look at where your marketing dollars are being spent, the effectiveness of the strategies employed, and a firm understanding of what you will need to do to improve your strategy’s overall performance for the future.

Here’s a quick 5 step way to mapping out your marketing:

1. Create a Simple Process Map
   View this from a very high level.  If I were to ask you, “How can I buy your product or service,” how would you answer?  What are the steps you would take me through?  Though many would view this is your sales process, think “simplicity.”  If you have more than five steps in your process, try to group some together to shorten the process. Customers usually do not have patience.  Their buying decision can easily sway if it takes too long to satisfy their instant gratification that comes with the purchase.  If you have too many steps, you have too many ways for them to change their mind.
2. Take a Look at What You’re Doing
   Every piece of marketing and sales collateral that you have should be currently used to support one or more of the steps in the process you listed.  If you find an item that you feel is not doing this or is even poorly supporting a step, stop producing it! You need excellence in your marketing when times are tough! Spending the marketing dollars that are still getting you SOME prospects, but just barely simply won’t cut it in the long run!By the way… CA-CHING… money saved! You’re welcome!
3. Group Your Current Marketing Pieces into Activities
   Successful strategies are about spreading your marketing activities over multiple mediums, channels, and tools to reach the broadest representation of your targeted audience(s). Take each of your marketing pieces and group them into activities such as print advertising, radio, TV, search engine marketing, online advertising, social media, etc.Count up the number of pieces in each activity.  This is a quick way to determine how much you’re focusing on each area.  Are you evenly spread in your activities?  Or are there some imbalances? Imbalances could be a sign of wasteful activity and therefore wasted marketing dollars.
4. Check Your Success Rates for Each Activity
   Success in any marketing strategy is dependent on data that is captured and measured against your established goals.  In this case, we’re going to focus on how each activity performs against your sales goals. So, hopefully, you’ve been capturing data behind each activity you’ve engaged in.  If not, we need to talk! Without data there is a high likelihood that you are overspending in multiple areas that may be producing little or even no results.Write on a separate sheet of paper for each activity the following metrics:

    

   - Total amount of dollars (E) committed to this activity – including support/administrative
   – Total amount of transactions (T) attributed to this activity – translated sales transactions
   – Total amount of revenue (R) from transactions attributed to this activity
   – Total net profit (P) attributed to this activity

   Calculate the Following Success Rates

   Goal Achievement by Activity: R/E x 100

   Profit Margin from Activity: P-E=M, M/P x 100

   Average Revenue per Transaction per Activity: R/T

   Average Profit per Transaction per Activity: P/T

5. Determine the Adjustments in Your Activities
   Now this step requires some insight about how to move and adjust your marketing activities, but let me break this down into some simple thoughts that can help you make your decisions about how you spend your marketing dollars.Look at the “Goal Achievement by Activity” rate.  If you have some activities that are falling in the single digits, it means one of two things: 1) You just started this activity or possibly not investing much into it, OR 2) You are potentially overspending marketing dollars in an area that is not translating into transactions.

    

   If the answer is #1, you may choose to continue investing in this area, but I would encourage you to measure this again in 30 day increments to determine if it has any effect.

   If the answer is #2, then maybe you should stop investing in this activity or rethink how you are leveraging this strategy to attain your goals.  By doing so, you can move the allotted marketing dollars for this activity into another area where it can produce higher results.

   Next, look at the “Profit Margin” metric.  If this is high (say even over 10%) then this should tell you that this activity is able to not only produce results in terms of acquiring whatever it was designed for (awareness, traffic, sales, etc.), but it also has the potential to produce the best results in terms of translating into higher value transactions.

   Now, I say “has” because of this.  If this activity generates the least amount of transactions (and by quite a bit) then even though the metric sounds good, it is really not producing long-term gains.  Think of a situation where you have one transaction that had a 90% profit margin or two hundred transactions that had a 50% profit margin. In this case, consider how the activity could be adjusted to generate more high-value transactions.

   Finally, look at the “Average Profit per Transaction” metric.  The activities where this metric is high shows you potentially how and where you are acquiring your best customers – meaning those that may have spent the most with your organization!  What you may want to do here is to look at how you can increase your use of this activity to hopefully increase the number of transactions.

   Now, an important note, oftentimes this activity would be the same as that found from the “Profit Margin” metric.  Remember, we need a good balance in the number of transactions to the amount of profit gained in each transactions.  I only mentioned looking where this metric is “high” not the “highest.”  Therefore, you actually want to find somewhere close to the middle in terms of profit and number of transactions.

That’s it!  Five steps later and you will have a much clearer understanding of not only where you marketing dollars have been spent, but the effectiveness of what you have spent those dollars on!  During these tough economic times, you DO have the chance to increase your market share as well as the number of sales and revenue made from each transaction.  The important thing to start with is this clear understanding of where you are currently.  Once you have this, it is much easier to see how you need to formulate your next marketing strategy to increase your overall performance and make your marketing dollars work for you!

Map your marketing dollars and you can map your future!