Pick The Proper Vehicle For Your Message

If you own a small town butcher shop, you probably don't need to post on Twitter every 15 minutes. (I can see the gruesome tweets as we speak!) Your clientele has probably never heard of Twitter and they could probably care less about how many pounds of sausage you just ground anyway. On the other hand, your customers are probably much more likely to log on to the local newspaper's website to check the weather, classified ads or read the forums. Your valuable time would be much better spent focusing your advertising and marketing efforts on local business websites such as your local newspaper's website. Being an active member of the discussion forums on these sites will benefit you much more than Twitter and Facebook ever would. For instance if there's a cooking forum on a local online hot spot, you could answer meat related questions using the business as your username/identity. Just be sure to speak in a tone that is familiar and comfortable to your demographic. There are many different social vehicles to get your message across including, Linked In, blogging, message boards, Digg, YouTube, StumbleUpon and many many, more. Remember to pick the outlets that your users actually use.

Speak The Language of Your Target Demographic

Everyone and their brother is on Facebook these days and it's a great way to keep your brand in a potential customer's mind. However, you can't just throw up an Acme Widget Corp. facebook page, post once per month and expect to see results. Users want something of value and if they're going to spend five minutes interacting with your brand online, do you really want them reading irrelevant internal company news? nope. Ideally, potential customers would be engaged with the brand through an appropriate message that evokes the desired feelings and responses. For example, if you're running an animal rescue and targeting animal lovers (who are generally a kind-hearted folk), you'll want to tug at the heart strings a bit more. Post relevant content about the injustices happening in your town and stories about beating all odds. Another scenario would be that of a large company selling wholesale rubber gaskets. You can bet that your target demo is going to be a bit more responsive to blue-collar humor and they'll be looking for something to brighten their day (I can't imagine that the world of rubber gaskets is terribly exciting without a little help. Though everything is relative I suppose!). Perhaps in this situation, you might post a joke of the day or even tweet about how Doug just tried to use a 3/4″ gasket at the convenience store by mistake.

Don't Tweet Too Much, But Don't Let Things Get Stagnant

There's a fine line between being active with social media and being obsessed. Conversely, if you're only updating your status or engaging in forums once every two months, you loose customer/user interaction and interest. Some users will update their Twitter status or their facebook photos every 15 minutes. I have to wonder how much a person can get done while constantly thinking about and looking for their next tweet or kitschy photo status update. On the other hand if you're too busy to interact with social media on at least a semi-regular basis, then perhaps you should focus your marketing efforts elsewhere or hire someone to help out. There are many freelance copywriters and social media experts who will help out on an hourly basis.

The ROI of Social Media

Return on Investment (ROI) of social media is often a hard metric to track. You may spend 20 hours per month focusing on social marketing and not see a single lead. The key thing to remember is that your brand is in front of people and when those people need your services, you'll at least have a portion of their mind share. You can always track click throughs and keep track of referring sites that lead users to your website and ultimately to your goal whether that is an online purchase, user education or anything else. Having proper analytics running with assigned goals is a crucial part of measuring the ROI of your social media marketing efforts.

Keeping all of these things in mind when working with social media in your marketing plan will help you successfully market your brand to your target demographic in a very valuable and personal manner.

Up next: Building an Online Presence – Part 3: Knowing The Competition. Subscribe to the RSS feed or signup for spam-free email updates to get notified about new posts immediately.

The html markup…


<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="640" height="348" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><param name="FlashVars" value="xml_path=xml/news2.xml" /><param name="src" value="preview.swf" /><param name="flashvars" value="xml_path=xml/news2.xml" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="640" height="348" src="preview.swf" flashvars="xml_path=xml/news2.xml" wmode="transparent" quality="high"></embed></object>

The ActionScript code…

root.loaderInfo.parameters.xml_path;

(or if you need it in a variable…)

var xmlFilePath:String = root.loaderInfo.parameters.xml_path;

Hope that helps someone.

In this series of posts, I'll be discussing thoughts on how to create a better online presence through various channels.

Start With Your Own Website

The vast majority of people I talk to aren't happy with their website (the ones that have websites anyway). Web users are much more savvy than they were even 3 or 4 years ago. Even less "savvy" users know the difference between a good website and a terrible one. People are much more likely to respond in a good way to a well designed website. Aesthetics are important but website design involves much more than making a site look good. It also involves Information Architecture, User Interface Design and User Experience Design. What the heck does all that mean? Put simply, it means that when users come to your website, they get where we want them to go and they feel comfortable enough to hang out for a while. This is hard to achieve when your site has no continuity in it's presentation of information, navigation, links, styling etc. Would you enter your credit card information to make a purchase on a website that looks like it was built in the late 90′s using free templates that have been hacked together? Would you put much stock in a company that isn't willing to spend time and effort on their own website? Probably not.

Hiring the right person (or people) to design your website is key to building an online presence that gets results. Although your nephew may be able to put a website online and he works for peanuts, is he really the best person for the job? (Nothing against using relatives for web design. I have relatives too!) Do your research and figure out who will work better for you. More often than not, smaller web design shops hold advantages over larger agencies: agility, speed and quality of service.

Some things to look for:
- the designer's/company's portfolio. Are there example projects that fit your vision or is there evidence of being able to create many different aesthetics? Is there a wide breadth of work even though you don't see something exactly like what you have in mind?
- available services. Is there a wide range of services available that can fit potential future projects like print advertising, logo design, SEO/SEM, marketing, etc.?
client testimonials. (if available) Are there happy clients singing the praises of this potential website provider?
- SEO services. A website with no traffic isn't a good tool. Can this company/person get your site found via search engines? Did you find them through a search?

All of these will help you get a feel about whether or not they're a good fit for your project.

Up next: Building an Online Presence – Part 2: Using Social Media. Subscribe to the RSS feed or signup for spam-free email updates to get notified about new posts immediately.

Another factor is that people who aren't artistically inclined can be intimidated when confronted with complete freedom of design. It could be that the average user felt that Facebook's simpler approach leveled the playing field. No longer are users forced to "compete" for the cooler looking page. With Facebook, everyone is playing by the same rules. It's more about the content than the unique presentation of information. Both Facebook and Myspace have powerful platforms for social interaction though Facebook is very easy to use and has much less clutter than Myspace which in my opinion is why it has become the leader in online social networking.

You should identify your target audience immediately and speak directly to them in an appropriate tone. Slang and LOL's are fine for facebook, but a user base of potential and current customers might write you off as being unfit for professional use. Do a little research and tailor your site content to your target demographic.

Sounds good but how do I do that? Via a content management system.

A good website should empower clients to create and update their own content. Content management systems are all the latest rage in web design for good reason, they're great for frequent content updates. However, CMSs are like any other piece of software and require some effort and time to learn. All too often Content Management Systems go unused by businesses and individuals because of the lack of training or effort to learn how to use them properly. Everyone wants users to come back to their site right? In order to do that, the site has to have fresh, relevant and useful content. While a CMS can give site owners the capability to create and edit content, a huge percentage of those site owners don't take full advantage of the tools available to them. All too often, I get calls and requests to make site updates that can easily be handled by a CMS.

If you're running a website with a content management system, (and you should be in this day and age) make sure that your web design firm provides you with at least initial training on how to use it. If that's out of the question, most open-source CMSs have documentation and forums available online. The open source community is very good about helping people learn.

So the moral of the story is: a CMS is a terrible thing to waste.

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