Sep 9, 2014 | Change, Communication, Social Media
Man has always found ways to communicate, Social media is not new, it is just the tools we are using today are upgrades of those we used yesterday.
Alex Bell patented the telephone in 1876, after many inventors had played with the physics of electro magnetism and its applications to voice transmission. By the 1890’s farmers were using the barbed wire fences that were strung the length and breadth of the US to communicate. Phones in those days generated their own power by means of a crank and batteries, all you needed to do was hook up to wire, give the mail order telephonic device a crank, and bingo, a phone.
Downside was that someone had to be on the line at the other end waiting, and there was no direct dialling, so everyone was on at the same time, the ubiquitous party line, where privacy was a victim.
Sound familiar?
(Reliability was also an issue, everything from rain to the neighbours randy bull causing problems with the wire)
Point is, all this fancy new technology is no more than a new solution to an old problem: how to communicate effectively with those to whom we have something to say, from the mundane and trivial to really life altering messages.
Small businesses need to remember this simple truth, as they are bombarded with “opportunities” to expand their reach via social media. The only useful contacts are those with whom you have something in common, and with whom you can collaborate to generate value for you both. Those sorts of “friends” are invaluable, and do not just “happen”, it takes time and effort to find them and build relationships individually. Just getting a “like” on facebook is as useful as Harold Holts flippers, particularly as the organic reach of facebook is now down around 5% as Facebook seek to financially leverage their membership base.
Fancy some barbed wire?
Aug 25, 2014 | Branding, Communication, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
David Ogilvy said many things that have gone into the marketing lexicon, one that is particularly relevant to the ways we are communicating today:
“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar”.
It is disturbing for me to sped several hours creating a blog post, and then to have just a few people read it, and I find that following the rules below, my readership increases markedly.
- Lists always work,” 6 ways to build a better backhand”
- “How to” headlines always work. “How to build a better backhand” If you can actually find a way to combine a “How to” with a “list”, well, off it goes. Like “How to leverage these 6 ways to build a better backhand”
- Highlight the benefit, a WIFM (what’s in it for me) headline. “Having a great backhand increases your chances in doubles”. Sometimes a bit of innuendo or double meaning goes a long way to making a headline better “linkbait” to the body of the article or email.
- “Free” is good, “Free e-book on how to build a forehand Federer would love”
- Evoke curiosity, then deliver in the body. “How many more sets would you win with a better backhand?’
- Draft several headlines, and give considerable thought to which is the best to use in the context of the audience, and what it is you are trying to convey.
- Length, SEO experts tell me that about 60-70 characters is the limit, as the search engines cut off the subject lines at about 70.
- Learn from what others are doing. About the best source of effective headline writing lessons is in the local newsagent, spend a bit of time browsing the magazine section, there are SEO killer headlines effectively selling stuff that nobody in their right mind should buy
- The final consideration is that while it is the headline that gets people in, it is the value you deliver through the information in the body of the message that keeps them there. There is just so much content out there, so many opportunities to spend your time, that the real value is in delivering sufficiently good information and ideas to induce people to read the whole post, then return, again and again. The headline is just the icing, it is the cake that people consume.
There are many formulas, that claim to make writing good headlines easy, just like those above. However, like most things that can be broken down into a formula, you end up with some degree of repetition, a “sameness” with others, it may work, and usually has to date, it may deliver the outcome, but it is still the outcome of the same formula your competitors are using. So be different, add some humanity to the message, nothing is as good as a bit of humanity to connect to your audience.
That is really hard.
Aug 20, 2014 | Branding, Communication, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
The blokes I saw as a youngster who had outrageous success with the girls were not always the best looking, or the most interesting, or had the best cars (although all these assets did seem to help) they were the ones who were genuinely interested in whoever it was they happened to be talking to at that particular moment in time. They directed all their attention and empathy at their companion of the moment, casual or otherwise.
Why do we think we can be successful digitally with strategies that are second rate in the real world?
Websites are communication tools, they are a digital metaphor for the conversations you have at a party, in a pub, at the office, in private. Nothing more.
So, go to the home page of your site, (or your competitors) and look at it through the eyes of the person you are attempting to communicate with, and:
- Count how often you talk about yourself, using pronouns like “we”, “our”, “us”
- Count how often you talk about the problems your customer has, the ways that you are referencing their needs and challenges
- Compare the numbers, and in most cases be amazed at how often you talk about yourself.
- Repeat for every page on your site,
- STOP talking about yourself!!
- Rewrite, and reap the benefits.
Pretty simple formula really, no different to those blokes I was envious of years ago.
Jul 27, 2014 | Change, Communication, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
The single biggest stumbling block I see to successful digital marketing is not the technology, or the money, desire, or need, it is simply the unwillingness or inability to create relevant, engaging content of value that suits the context in which it is seen.
Usually it reflects a lack of a solid understanding of why they are in the business, other than to pay the bills. As Simon Sinek would say, the “Why” of the business.
Interestingly, the same stumbling block exists with bigger enterprises, they may have websites stuffed with words and pictures, but often that is all they are: words and pictures without value.
The same reasons exist for the failure in both categories.
- Lack of marketing leadership. Where marketing is seen as an expense, and customers are all those out there from whom we need to extract money. In these cases, creating content is always a barrier, and where it exists, it is usually a steaming pile of crap. Irrelevant, hard to navigate, bland, talking about themselves, yada, yada. Almost always the content improves when the customer is put as the focus of the content generation activity, answering the question “how can we better inform our market” When everybody in a business recognises that they have a marketing responsibility, you get the environment where content can be improved, and this is a leadership function, to drive the culture.
- Content is not recognised as an asset to be leveraged. Knowledge is the new currency of success, in almost every business. Those who know more, and can leverage that knowledge, find success. Knowledge management is therefore crucial and where does it reside? Between the ears of employees, stakeholders, suppliers, and often customers. When that simple fact is recognised, steps can be taken to extract the knowledge, and organise it in some way to become information of value to customers. Intellectual Capital, is knowledge that can be used, and unlike physical capital, the more it is used, the better it gets.
- No process to record and organise ideas. Content is everybody’s responsibility, but there needs to be processes in place that make it easy, and encourage the contribution of ideas and information that can be massaged into content of value. The best i have seen are a bit like the traditional sales funnel, everything that comes in , and coming in is everybody’s job, is recorded, then the ideas and information progressively filtered and organised in a process that creates value for recipients at the end. You really need an idea bank into which everyone makes deposits, and deposits are rewarded, and used to create valuable content.
- No focus on content. The old adage, what gets measured gets done, is true, if it is important, and is treated as such, it will get done. One business I work with is led by a lady who sees content as important, so she devotes a part of her considerable energy to creating it, and by that simple example has tuned the place into a content generation machine over a relatively short period, and they are getting the sales to prove it works.
- Content is marketing’s job. NO. It is everybody’s job in an enterprise to assist the customer.
- You think you know it all, and why would you tell your competitors?. When this syndrome becomes obvious it is time to leave. Most commonly I see it in other wise sophisticated technical businesses, where the history tells them that keeping information to themselves, and dolling it out to customers like a drunk offering a swig at his bottle when they ask nicely is the way to gain and keep customers. Rubbish!
- Content for contents sake. Putting up any old stuff on digital platforms is counter productive. Our digital world has given all the power to the customer, if you post rubbish, it will be seen as a reflection of the business, and who would want to do business with you?
There has been a lot written by all sorts of people on the subject of “content” and there is a lot more coming. However, there are a few simple rules that should be followed:
- Make sure whatever content you put out there is a reflection of the business, its priorities, strategies, and value proposition.
- Know who your primary customer group is, and what they are looking for in a supplier in your space
- Always look at your content with the eyes of your customer, and in the context of the competitive landscape in which you are competing for your customers attention, engagement, and ultimately, money. If your digital face is not up to scratch, why should customers trust that your products and services are any better?
I would be very happy to talk more about all this over a coffee.
Jul 9, 2014 | Change, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
Last weekend the local tennis club of which I am a member had an open day. We marketed the day pretty heavily to the local community over the course of a couple of weeks, and got a great turnout. In order to ensure we could follow up, we collected the email addresses of visitors by offering entry to a raffle for a new racquet.
I have just completed transcribing the emails into our system, and considering how we may have done it better. A number of factors were absolutely obvious, and whilst they should not have been a surprise, the extent of the change evident in our collective behaviour was indeed a surprise.
- We asked for phone numbers, but did not specify mobile or landline. Every single number we got, which was every visitor except one, gave us a mobile number, not one landline.
- With one exception, every person, irrespective of age, gave us an email address.
- A quick look at the analytics on the website over the past few weeks shows that just over 76% of the hits have come from mobile devices. Whilst the numbers involved are not huge, the dominance of mobile surprised me.
I read, and talk about the switch to mobile every day, but it has been to date a theoretical fact, something I was aware of, understood, but had not brushed against directly to the extend that the general numbers indicated. Now however, the understanding of the numbers has a very personal dimension, and I have absorbed the lesson rather than just understood it.
Unusually for me I have been at home for the last few weeks, and I have been answering the home phone while my wife is away. In the two weeks, there have been quite a number of calls, every single one a telemarketer.
Why am I paying line rental? It seems it is to give telemarketers access. I think I will cancel the landline, the boss will never notice when she gets home, unless she really likes the sales calls.
Jul 8, 2014 | Branding, Customers, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
Success does not happen by accident, it comes from hard work, knowledge, insight and experimentation. In the case of websites there are almost a billion websites live (866k) in July 2014, the billion mark will probably be reached by the 4nd of 2014. This is from the first site, being put up by Tim Berners-Lee in August 1991.
This is a pretty useful universe from which to draw lessons, and we have learnt a lot about what works and what does not.
What works:
- Content that is Interesting and engaging and targeted for a specific group of people will attract their attention, rather than content that is more general in nature .
- Attractive, eye-catching design is essential. Humans are visual animals, design is fundamental to attracting and keeping attention. The more research we do in this area, the more we understand the basic rules, and they are rules that have applied from the dawn of human development. Disregard them at your peril.
- Simplicity. Also essential is a design that enables visitors to find the stuff they are looking for simply and quickly.
- Speed. Low loading speed is penalised by search engines, but more importantly, is penalised by casual viewers, who simply move on.
- SEO. At least basic search engine optimisation is both easy and essential, if you have a great site that cannot be found, nobody wins.
- Competitive. With almost a billion sites, the web is a competitive environment, and you need to be distinctive amongst your competitors. If you are selling machine tools, you need to look like you are the expert in machine tools, not real estate or life insurance, and the relative merits of your site to those of your competitors are important.
- Be there to help, rather than overtly flogging something. Your website is the front door to your business, make sure it invites people in, rather acting like a tout in a sideshow, and alienating almost all who pass.
What does not work, in a word, lots. Complicated, messy, poorly targeted, overtly sales driven sites that lack humanity. Just trawl through the sites of most of our federal governments agencies and departments to see some great examples of what not to do, while trying to be all things to all people. The easiest way to construct a list of “no no’s” is to do the opposite of the list above.
If you follow these simple guides, at least you will be on the right road.
