What Brings a Smile to Your Face?

We tend to think about the big things in life that are important … but what about the little things? Those things are important too, aren’t they? So let’s go small. Here’s my list - I’d love to hear yours. Please comment here or even write your own post.

1. Making every green light.
2. I love potato chips. But especially, I love the folded-over chips you find occasionally in the bag. (I wish a potato chip manufacturer would make bags of all folded-over chips.)
3. Getting an aisle seat at any major sporting event.
4. Sinking a golf putt over 10 feet long - a rare occurrence.
5. Laughter.

Bonus Question

Can you name 5 little things that make your wife/husband/significant other happy?

Make Branding Strategy Your First Move

Why Marketing Strategy Must Grow Out of Branding Strategy

My client Suzanne Tulien of The Brand Ascension Group and I violently agree about something - effective marketing comes after a firm establishes its brand identity. Suzanne talks about “Brand DNA”, which is a fabulous metaphor, because truly, the brand has to be in an organization’s bones before it can mean anything to customers.

So much of b2b marketing, alas, is a brand-less recital of features and benefits. A marketer can only do so much with that kind of raw material. Let’s take the hypothetical ABC Company that sells material handling equipment - fork lifts, conveyors, industrial shelving, etc. This company might come to someone like me and say, We’re great - here’s everything we do. We need to put it into the website!

• Low prices
• Wide selection
• Quality product lines
• Attentive customer service
• Next day delivery
• Custom engineering in-house
• In business more than 30 years
• Ten locations
• BBB approved
• Thousands of satisfied customers
• Consultative sales approach
• Extended warranty programs
• Lowest service rates in the Northeast
• Safety training seminars available

Wow, I think. What a great company! And it probably is. The problem is every material handling company on the web makes the same or similar boasts. There’s nothing here to make the prospective customer favor ABC Company over the other 10 or 20. We can translate company attributes into customer benefits all day long and pack them into each web page as tightly as we want, but at the end of the day, this company is still going to look very much like its competitors - unless it has a distinctive brand.

If only ABC Company had an overriding message. If only they had one thing they were known for, that they believed in - a value or quality every other element of their business served to support. Then you could create some powerful marketing.

McDonalds - Convenience
Wal-Mart - Low prices
3M - Innovation
IBM - Competence
ABC Company - ?

People can remember one or two attributes, but never 10 or 20 or 50. When customers know you for doing one thing they care about with excellence, they infer you will excel in all the other stuff.

Think about the leading firm in your b2b sector. I’ll bet one or two characteristics of that firm comes to mind. Those characteristics are their brand - whether they realize it or not.

What is your brand? What are the one or two characteristics customers, competitors, and stakeholders think of when they think of your firm?

Hyphens versus Underscores in URLs

Google recognizes a hyphen as a word separator, but does not recognize an underscore as a word separator. That being the case, dashes should always be used in URLs so that Google and other search engines can read each word separately.

For instance, if you are trying to optimize for the keyphrase chicago financial planner,

Google reads www.xyz/chicago_financial_planner as chicagofinancialplanner.
Google reads www.xyz/chicago-financial-planner as chicago financial planner.

Although there is debate about whether underscores in URLs affect search results, I think the evidence in favor of using hyphens in URLs is very strong. And while some SEO specialists assert that URL structure has little if any impact on a web page’s search performance, experience suggests to me that properly formatted, keyword rich URLs do matter.

In addition to SEO considerations, usability issues make hyphens the correct choice for URLs.

• Hyphens are easier to type than underscores - no need for the shift key
• Hyphens are easier to read
• Underscores are obscured when URLs are underlined

Another usability (and branding) issue to watch out for is URL consistency across the domain. Lately I’ve worked on sites that mix hyphen and underscore URL formatting. This leaves visitors with the impression the website was built in happenstance fashion. What would you think of an author who used different fonts for the page numbers in his book?

Should Underscored URLs be Converted to Hyphenated URLs?

Properly formatted URLs have search engine and usability benefits. If your pages are performing well on the search engines already and you have plenty of new and return traffic, it may not be advisable to change them. However, if you need to improve in terms of SEO, rewrite them. Here are three good reasons why.

1. Ninety-nine times out of 100, you’ll not simply convert the underscores to dashes, you’ll rewrite the URL with better keywords - a double bang for your SEO buck.
2. Keyword rich URLs reinforce branding as well as improve long term search engine performance.
3. By setting up 301 redirects, neither PagerRank nor search performance will be adversely affected.

As important as I think proper URL formatting is, it is not an SEO quick fix or cure all. It’s very difficult to determine what factors determine how a web page will rank on Google. First of all, many factors contribute. Second, the weight of the contributing factors continually changes.

Certain factors, such as the age of your domain and what your competitors are doing to optimize their sites, are beyond your control. Therefore, content optimization factors you can control should be handled as well as possible.

Are Business Blogs Too Revealing?

Unless perhaps you’re in the media business, new media doesn’t put companies out of business, it makes them stronger. I remember when fax machines came around, and can’t think of a single company faxing rendered obsolete. Cellular phones didn’t destroy any firms that I’m aware of. And websites didn’t put any companies out of business - except those that didn’t have one.

Competitors are more worried about their problems than your opportunities. Most companies have the same complaint - we spend too much time internally focused and not enough time with customers. Is that true of your firm? If so, why should your competitors be any different? If not - kudos, you are the exception that proves the rule. Generally speaking, if a competitor has any time left over after putting out fires and rehashing their Strategic Plan for the umpteenth time, they’re going to spend their “outside the box” time with customers, not scouring your business blog.

There are better ways to get information about you than reading your business blog. Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that a competitor will take the time to carefully follow your blog and comb through comments for clients to steal. If that’s what’s happening, you should breathe a sigh of relief. The competitor could be doing a lot of other things that would be far more effective in undermining you and stealing your business.

Blog posts and comments, at their best, are genuine and informative. But they don’t reveal the back story. They are no substitute for actually talking to people. If I wanted to collect intelligence on a competitor, I’d talk to suppliers, customers, disgruntled former employees, disgruntled former customers, and perhaps, if I were daring, current employees. That’s the way to do it, but I probably wouldn’t do it, because I need to focus on building my own business up, not bringing down somebody else’s.

But a competitor could identify a customer by reading our blog comments, you say? Sure, maybe. But first, if your competitor is any good, he knows who your customers are already. If he’s not any good, why do you care what he knows? Second, if a customer is inspired to say something good or bad about your firm, he can say it on your blog, or on Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn or Yelp or a competitor’s blog. Why not encourage the customer to speak on your home turf, where you be sure to see it and respond quickly? Third, in my experience, the vast majority of customers are not going to use your blog as the first line of communication for resolving a problem or expressing dissatisfaction. If you see that happening, your blog may be telling you that your firm has serious issues in customer service or sales.

Having information and doing something with it are two different things. Granted, there are competitors out there who love to collect information. I personally have more than 1000 web pages bookmarked - and I’ve acted on perhaps 10. Collecting data is easy, but acting on it requires time, energy, and the ability to formulate a plan. Once again, if I have that kind of time, energy, and ability, I will focus it in a more productive (i.e., self serving) way. If I’m smart. If I’m dumb, you don’t care what I do.

The best example of the uselessness of readily available information comes from my own field, SEO (search engine optimization). Anybody with a web browser can see the code for any given web page simply by clicking on “View Page Source”. If you want to know how to program your site, or how not to, it’s all laid out for you. You’d think everyone would have caught on by now, after a couple decades. But the reality is, the vast majority of websites are poorly optimized, fully ignoring best practices. Sure, there are many reasons for this phenomenon, but a lack of information is not one of them.

Similarly, how many stories have you heard about companies being undone by their business blogs? I’ve heard … zero. On the other hand, stories abound of companies using business blogs to attract customers, strengthen customer relationships, increase brand awareness, enhance customer service, and open doors to exciting new collaborations.

Fear is a great motivator. David Meerman Scott, in his book World Wide Rave, observes that many companies are frozen by their fear of new media.

In an online seminar he gave on June 24, he further noted that these same executives who tremble at the thought of hosting a business blog themselves use Google and business blogs extensively to find new products, services and opportunities - just like the rest of us.

I’m not sure Scott has asked them, but I doubt very much these executives are using Google and blogs to poach accounts and disrupt competitor operations - just like the rest of us.
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Learn more about my business blog consulting services.

I’m talking about branding.

SEO Lets You Brand with the Big Boys

By comparison, SEO is an affordable way to generate brand recognition. Research varies, but many of us view organic results as being more credible than paid advertisements on search engine results pages (SERPs). What’s great about using SEO for branding is that you kill three birds with one stone. The cumulative effect of optimizing your site creates brand awareness, and in the process, every appearance of your web pages on a SERP creates an immediate conversion opportunity. SEO serves your short and long term marketing interests.

The Third Bird - Establishing Leadership Position with Qualified Prospects

I said three birds, and number three is not to be overlooked. When you achieve strong position on keywords that represent the heart and soul of your business, you will impress prospective customers who Google you for those terms to check you out. In my case, “business blog consulting” is a central part of what I do. I want clients to see me ranked highly for that term, not on Google page 10 or 20. If you sell cement mixers or advise corporate leaders on strategic planning and are invisible for those terms, will customers trust you enough to do business with you? Obviously the answer is not always the same, but if a strong search profile makes a difference a few times a year, that alone may make SEO worth the investment.

Over to You
Are you thinking strategically about your search engine optimization activities?

(Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons)

More Content Optimization Information

Learn more and discuss content optimization in my LinkedIn Group, Improve Your Google Ranking.

Learn more about my content optimization consulting services.

Flyer Design

A few days ago, I found a leaflet under my windshield that was so cluttered and confusing, I spent about half an hour studying it. Maybe that’s what the creators wanted - a leaflet that was so difficult to read, readers would not be able to resist the challenge of reading it.

Let’s start with the content. I’ll show you the raw content first, then show you how they styled it.

Raw Content

Invitation
Blessing Our Community Through Giving
Free!
Come Early To Register!
[images of bicycle, iPod, gift card, gas nozzle, camera]
This Sunday 2:00 pm
You will not want to miss this awesome display of giving back to our community! You must be present to accept your prize! We will be giving away free Wal-Mart gift cards, gas cards, MP3 Player, Digital Cameras, a new bicycle and other gifts!
We would like to invite guests to come and try the most exciting church in the Joliet area! We are giving away prizes to bless people in our community!
We ask that you and your family attend!
For Transportation or Information Call:
PH# xxx-xxx-xxxx
This Sunday!!!
xxxxx Church
xxx yyyy Road, Joliet IL
__________________________________

Setting aside grammatical errors and the whole notion of a church giving away prizes to attract members, I think we can agree the general approach is appealing, especially in this working class community. However, let’s see how they muddle the message with their formatting.

How Content Is Styled in the Leaflet

INVITATION
Blessing Our Community Through Giving
FREE!
Come Early To Register!
[images of bicycle, iPod, gift card, gas nozzle, camera]
THIS SUNDAY 2:00 pm
You will not want to miss this awesome display of giving back to our community! You must be present to accept your prize! We will be giving away free Wal-Mart gift cards, gas cards, MP3 Player, Digital Cameras, a new bicycle and other gifts!
We would like to invite guests to come and try the most exciting church in the Joliet area! We are giving away prizes to bless people in our community!
We ask that you and your family attend!
For Transportation or Information Call:
PH# xxx-xxx-xxxx
THIS SUNDAY!!!
xxxxx Church
xxx yyyy Road, Joliet IL
___________________________

I’m not doing the design justice, so here is the actual leaflet.

Leaflet Design Made Simple?

What do you think? Does this look more like a flyer or a ransom note?

• At first glance, the leaflet seems to be offering a free invitation - but to what?
• Identifying the sponsor is difficult
• Too many font styles and sizes make it nearly impossible to focus on any one part of the leaflet
• Too many exclamation points make everything seem equally unimportant
• Gift images belong at the top, where they will not disturb the flow of reading
• The explanation of the event and the hook are the hardest things to find on the page

Here’s how I would highlight the content -

Invitation
Blessing Our Community Through Giving
Free!
Come Early To Register!
[images of bicycle, iPod, gift card, gas nozzle, camera]
This Sunday 2:00 pm
You will not want to miss this awesome display of giving back to our community! You must be present to accept your prize! We will be giving away free Wal-Mart gift cards, gas cards, MP3 Player, Digital Cameras, a new bicycle and other gifts!
We would like to invite guests to come and try the most exciting church in the Joliet area! We are giving away prizes to bless people in our community!
We ask that you and your family attend!
For Transportation or Information Call:
PH# xxx-xxx-xxxx
This Sunday!!!
xxxxx Church
xxx yyyy Road, Joliet IL
_________________________________

Copywriting Issues

Make Your Value Proposition and Call to Action Clear

What is this leaflet asking me to do, and why should I do it? These are questions every leaflet should answer in crystal clear fashion. Let’s examine this bit of text, which contains the right elements, just not in the right places.

You will not want to miss this awesome display of giving back to our community! You must be present to accept your prize! We will be giving away free Wal-Mart gift cards, gas cards, MP3 Player, Digital Cameras, a new bicycle and other gifts!
We would like to invite guests to come and try the most exciting church in the Joliet area! We are giving away prizes to bless people in our community!

The message contains good ideas, but does not flow logically, making it difficult to understand just what’s going on. We could rearrange and slightly edit the copy to make it more clear.

We invite you to come and try the most exciting church in the Joliet area! We will be giving away prizes to bless people in our community - but you must be present to accept your prize!

We will be giving away Wal-Mart gift cards, gas cards, MP3 Player, Digital Cameras, a new bicycle, and other gifts! You will not want to miss this awesome display of giving back to our community!

Give Your Leaflet a Powerful Title

Even though the edited copy is much stronger, unless the leaflet has a strong title, chances are slim people will read it. You’ll notice that this leaflet doesn’t really have a title, other than by default, “Invitation Free!” Imagine how much more interesting this flier would be with the right title. Perhaps something like -

Win Free Prizes at xxxxx Church This Sunday

Yes, “free prizes” is redundant, but both words are powerful hooks. Everybody likes free, and everybody likes prizes. Everybody likes to win, too. The point is, a strong title, combined with strong header images, draw people in and make them want to read further. I’ll sacrifice a little grammatical correctness if it doubles or triples the chances that someone will read my flyer.

If nothing else, this case study demonstrates the importance of design and content in creating an effective leaflet. You need both, and you should overdo neither. This designer has gone way overboard and in doing so, obscured his message. Likewise, adding several more paragraphs of content would not attract interest - if anything, a lengthy message would put more people off.

I started by asking, can a leaflet design be so bad, it’s good? What do you think? I say “no”, because the only people who will take the time to decipher this type of flyer are content nerds like me and people with way, way too much time on their hands. Following best practices for leaflet design is not only safe, but successful.

JJL is a group blog where we write about all things related to learning. JJL is personal, educational, sometimes amusing, often times quite serious. If you’ve never checked it out, please take a look.

Does Your Image Match Your Words?

To illustrate, here’s a story a friend of mine from the world of advertising told me. Apparently this is a famous story in advertising circles.

Imagine you are driving down a tree lined country road. You see a dirt road leading up to an old, somewhat run down farmhouse. On a weathered, old piece of wood, you see a sign nailed to a tree - SWEET CORN.

Now, if you had a little time and a little appetite, you might stop and buy some corn, right? But now image the same sign, only it says this - FLYING LESSONS.

Would you stop? If so, you’re a whole lot braver than I am.

So the question is - does your website’s design match your message? If it doesn’t, the most well written copy in the world may not help you.

• If you’re selling executive consulting services, your website should not look like it speaks to garage mechanics.
• If you’re selling industrial shop rags, your website should not look like it speaks to executives.

Here are examples of websites where message and motif are well aligned.

New Pig Corp. is one of my favorite companies, because they use humor. Here’s a company that sells shop rags that looks like a company that sells shop rags.

Here’s an executive consulting firm I found at random … that looks like an executive consulting firm.

Examples of No Motif Whatsoever

Here are three banking websites. Can you tell them apart? Does anything in the design speak to anyone?

Capitol One
Harris Bank
Chase Bank

Stop and reflect. Take a look at your website design - what does it communicate? Does it make your target customer feel comfortable, uncomfortable, or unmoved?
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(Photo credit - Maxwell’s Farmstand, by lydia63 on Flickr)

Thank you, one and all, for making Word Sell a place for lively conversation. Many times, your conversation is far more helpful and interesting than my post, which is A-OK as far as I’m concerned. Over the last year or so, the Word Sell community has begun to feel like a real family. I miss you when you’re away, and I can’t wait to read your comment when it pops up in my email box. Getting to know you has made me a better writer, a better marketer, and a more well rounded person. You share brilliant ideas, yourchallenges, your achievements, your pithy observations. I can’t wait to see what the next 5000 comments will hold.

And the 5000th Commenter Is …

Kay Plantes

Kay Wins …

Kay selected a copy of Groundswell for her 5000 Comment Word Sell Commemorative Prize. Good choice. If you want a better understanding of the social media marketing revolution, give it a read. The book contains fascinating ideas and research to back them up.

How Do You Encourage Comments on Your Blog?

What are your techniques and secrets? Here are a few of mine …

It was either Joanna Young or Liz Strauss that counseled me to leave blog posts unfinished. Leave something for people to add. Smart. Here are a few comment cultivating ideas I’ve gleaned from Word Sell commenters/bloggers.

From Robert Hruzek, take time to formulate questions that make you sit back and reflect on your experiences.

From Andrew, write about controversial issues.

From Karen Swim, ask questions that force you to look deep inside yourself.

From Cath Lawson, pick a fight. (Using good manners, of course.)

From Robyn McMaster, blend together an unusual set of disciplines - in her case, brain science and healthy living.

From Jan Geronimo, write as if you’re talking to your best friend.

When all else fails, here’s a little trick of my own I shared one day with Luke Gedeon. If you’re looking for conversation, end every blog post or comment with the phrase, “don’t you think?” It’s almost irresistible and I see Luke put his own twist on the technique just the other day, in a very thoughtful post.

I’m just kidding about the technique, but Luke’s post really is excellent. Don’t you think?

1. Subscribe to comments. If you want conversation, you have to make it easy for people to converse. Comment subscription allows readers to get email updates of new comments made on individual blog posts. Result? More repeat comments, real conversations, deeper conversations.

2. Full RSS feeds. Partial RSS feeds provide subscribers with a teaser snippet instead of the full post. The idea behind this is to force subscribers to visit the blog. Bad idea. Number one, if you have to force readers to visit your blog, what does it say about your content? Number two, people on the web are on information overload and are looking for reasons not to read your material. Partial feeds don’t tease, they vex.

3. Display links to your social media IDs. This would not have been on the list a year ago, but now, it’s essential to give readers access to all your online connection points. Communicating on the various social media sites strengthens the sense of community among you and your readers, builds your brand awareness, and allows for the exchange of other types of information.

4. “About this Blog” page or post. Make it easy for new readers to understand where you’re coming from, what your blog is all about. Do you want to shamelessly promote your products and services? That may be OK if you are clear and up front about it. Orienting the reader, establishing clarity of purpose, setting expectations - these are qualities of a blog that inspire readers to return and refer.

5. Author bios. Blogging is a personal, conversational, intimate medium, and yet for some reason, business blogs frequently mask the identity of their writers. Why on earth would they do that? Anonymity stifles conversation and raises suspicion. Is this blog really interested in me - or merely interested in peddling its wares? Do you really want your readers thinking along those lines?

6. Simple and descriptive category structure. Categories displayed on the sidebar give readers a quick snapshot of your blog’s content. Don’t get cute with your category labels or create 50 categories. Keep it plain and simple. Besides helping your readers understand where you’re coming from, you’ll be doing yourself a favor for improving your Google ranking.

7. Recent posts. Perusing recent post titles is another way readers can get a quick fix on what’s happening on your blog. Again, make it easy for them by displaying 5-10 recent post titles on your sidebar. Bloggers think quality posts are timeless. While that may be true, readers often value recency as much as ingenuity. What have you done for me lately? It’s a question your readers are asking.

8. Easy to read archive. For those readers that really do want to dig in and explore your quality posts, an easily accessible and browsable archive is indispensable. Here’s what my archive looks like, fully expanded. Seems to be simple enough - what do you think? Of course, a strong archive hinges on strong post headlines - another topic for another day.

9. Custom, integrated design. If branding is important to your organization - and by gosh it better be - you must avoid the temptation to go cheap with a stock blog template. Not only should your blog design be customized to convey your brand, it should be patterned after the design of your main website. You don’t want readers to view your blog as an afterthought or something you whipped together in a flight of whimsy. If you don’t consider your blog an integral part of your brand, you’re not ready to start blogging.

Over to You
I’m sure I’ve missed plenty - what do you look for in a business blog?
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Need help getting started? Learn more about my business blog consulting services.