3W Design Group – Media

Posted on October 07, 2009 6:46 AM

By Kay Plantes

I am writing from in the future, thanks to a day with the University of Wisconsin Madison’s E-business Consortium conference. Experts are presenting the implications of Web 3.0 for marketing, supply chain management, IT infrastructure and information security.

Aged-old assumptions underlying many business models no longer hold true as Web 3.0 technology changes how we communicate and communications infrastructures.

First, for the uninformed (count me in):

* Web 1.0 – One-way Internet sites for commerce. 10M users. Gave birth to Amazon and other on-line retailers and information sites.

* Web 2.0 – Two-way conversations. 100M users. Gave birth to Facebook/Linked-in and collaboration.

* Web 3.0 – Real-time instant communication. 1B users and rising. Started in 2006, it gave birth to Twitter, video, location-aware applications and cloud computing.

So what? Web 3.0 will obsolete entire industries.

Traditional media got into economic trouble because with Web 2.0 it no longer controlled the distribution channel for news and entertainment. Media channels fragmented into thousands, then tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of internet sites.

Access to other information has similarly been controlled by other industries. Instantaneous communication coupled with cloud computing applications and services will shatter these industry monopolies as well.

Here is but one example: You can now track all the on-line information for your competitors (e.g., Trackle.com) and connect to customer and outside groups to unearth and evaluate new product ideas with live chat rooms, video conferencing and on-line surveys. Do companies need external market research firms?

With the Internet making supply chain performance easier to accomplish, customer satisfaction is no longer the differentiator that it once was. Many satisfied customers shift their loyalty as soon as a better deal shows up. And customers are increasingly using word of mouth, not marketing messages, to decide which brand or product to purchase.

In a word-of-mouth economy, companies should be focused on Net Promoter score, a concept introduced by SATMETRIX.

Ask: “On a 10 point scale where 10 is highly likely and 1 is not likely at all, how likely is it that you would recommend (our company) to a friend or colleague?”

The answer: Promoters (percent answering 9 or 10) minus detractors (percent answering 6 or below) equals a net promoter score.

The higher the score, the more positive your long-term revenue and customer retention. Very few companies have high net promoter scores. What’s yours?

Just as the Internet made sales forces and brick and mortar locations obsolete as barriers to entry, cloud computing will likely eliminate high IT investments as a barrier to entry.

Cloud computing significantly lowers the cost of IT and turns fixed costs into variable per use costs. The presence of a public cloud means that existing company’s significant IT investments will not automatically trump a new entrant’s cloud-based IT. Rather, companies had best use their IT investments to create advantages that lower costs or deliver benefits other companies cannot easily match.

IT can become a competitive advantage if your organization thinks about what internal and external customers want to do with information and you make that information easy to acquire. For example, new cell-phone applications stemming from location features of Web 3.0 are endless (e.g., an immediate list of restaurants within a two-block radius of where you stand with your screaming toddler).

The new organizational structure is flat and organized around customers vs. around functional silos. Everyone owns customer loyalty.

Vertical and hierarchical organizational structures emerged from a need to communicate information not readily accessible. Today, these structures interfere with creating customer loyalty and are no longer necessary. I have argued this before: If everyone in your organization is not aligned with your value promise, your competitors can easily catch up and beat you. Alignment matters far more than the excellence of any one part of your company. Organize around processes and customers (and not functions) to create alignment.

The customer is now in control of the conversation. Successful companies will be highly relevant and have permission to communicate with them.

Forget standard marketing messages focused on features and benefits. Customers have tuned out to traditional messages. You must now offer customers compelling content, highly applicable to their lives, when and where they want it. And you must be credible – lying about a value promise you have no intention of fulfilling will get you nowhere fast.

Social networking has become a requirement for companies to communicate with their customers and prospects. And the conversation must be two-way.

On-line is the place to sell. On-line purchasing is growing much faster than brick and mortar, and once you extract Amazon’s growth, manufacturers are driving the gain. Many manufacturers have decided to add on-line as a channel, no longer relying on retail stores/distributors and dealers to reach customers. At last, a way past Wal-Mart!

My overall take on Web 3.0? Potentially daunting yet certainly exciting. What will you do differently in a new world?

via Will Web 3.0 shatter your current business model? – BizTimes.

By David Smith (c) 2009

We believe you don’t start the design of a new or revised  website by sitting down with the designer and coder of the  website. Rather, we recommend you review the approaches, ideas,  processes and other methods listed below to determine if they  apply to your situation.

Think about your audience. Are they looking for immediate  answers and solutions? We bet they are. Most likely these  visitors to your website are very much like you. Chances are you  use the Internet more than other types of media to search for  information. If a web page doesn’t “grab your interest” within 8 – 10 seconds after landing on it… you move on!

As a “first step” we suggest that you start by reviewing the  questions listed below. We are convinced that once you get to  the last question… you will have a list of action items  identified that will greatly improve the productivity of your  current website. The success or failure of the site and/or  business may very well depend upon the decisions you make after  reading these questions.

What Do You Know About Your Clients and Prospects State of Mind?

When visitors land on your website, they have very little time  to read what you say. They have a need for information or a  product and don’t want to listen or read verbose descriptions  and comments. You have about 8 seconds to engage them and get  them to take action. Do most visitors land on your website  wanting:

1) information,
2) a “quick fix”,
3) a bargain,
4) a large selection,
5) or a phone call, etc.?

It is imperative to know the answers to these and many other  questions BEFORE you design the pages within your website.

Do You Make Website Visitors Feel You Can Satisfy Their Wants  and Needs?

Landing on any page within your website [especially the  Homepage] must make the visitor know that you understand their  needs, business, wants, and desires. The more you put yourself  into the “mindset” of the website visitor, the better chance you  have of converting their visit into something you want to happen  i.e. buy, complete a contact us form, bookmark the page, pick up  the phone and call you or any other method of measurable  conversion.

What Approach Do You Take When Developing Pages Within Your  Website?

What do you think you would want from your website if you were  the prospective visitor or client? Assume you don’t know as much  information as you want in order to make an informed decision.  Talk to these visitors in a language they will understand. If  visitors want more insight or information, tell them to click on  the more info link or give you a call. They will follow your  direction ONLY if you have built some level of trust or  understanding.

What are You “Selling” to the Website Visitor?

Are you focused on telling them about your product or service or  are you making them understand that choosing your firm will  deliver that special feeling they are seeking by making the  purchase? Are you sure that you made the visitor know that you  understand their needs, wants, problems, etc.? What techniques  did you implement to get your points across?

How are You Going to Get the Visitor to Stop and Think About  Your Service or Product?

Remember… they are ready to pass by your website in a blink of  an eye. What are you going to do to engage them? The answer you  come up with will be critical to the success you have in gaining  their confidence enough to buy or call you. Make sure what you  say is NOT the same old thing they are used to seeing or reading  on other websites. Be boring and you lose! Address the issues  that appeal to the visitor and they WILL STOP! This is hard  work… but worth the effort.

What Kind of “Call to Action” Statements are You Placing on Your  Website?

Turning a visitor into a prospect or client is one of the most  critical actions of your website. How will you engage them? Once  they know that you understand their needs and wants, they are  more inclined to follow your CTA direction. Call to Action  statements are critical to the success of any website’s  conversion. Guide them in a manner that is more telling, rather  than selling. Don’t be afraid to be assertive.

How Does Your Website Address the “Who Are We” Issue?

Again, it is about making the website visitor feel confident  that they are choosing a reputable firm or organization with  which to do business. They need to read about your success. This  can be done by exhibiting your affiliation with associations,  awards won, satisfied client statements, client success stories,  examples of your work, etc. Show them you are a “player” in your  industry.

Are You Prepared to Answer: “What Makes You Different”?

What have clients and prospects said about you and your company?  Have they applauded you for your approach to doing business? Did  they say you made them feel like you understood their needs and  wants? Think back to the reasons clients buy from you. How did  you meet their needs and wants? Give your prospective clients  reasons to do business with your firm.

A final thought…

Make it your primary goal to understand the potential client.  Look at your website through that client’s perspective. Who are  they? What makes them different? What do they individually want  and need? Be informative… do more telling than selling. They  will “get it” and appreciate that you have made them an educated  buyer. Finally, tell them what you want them to do next. Get  them to take the first step and be ready to deliver on the  expectations you have set throughout your website!

Finally, be sure to hire Internet marketing professionals to do  the job if you don’t have the capabilities in-house. Too much is  at stake to leave this part of your business to chance! We are  pleased to provide you the insightful comments contained herein.

Article printed from SiteProNews:   HTML version

Of course we all know how to use search engines. Using them smarter is important however, and Danny Sullivan reminds us all of some great tips. From Advertising Age:

Danny Sullivan on Search Marketing

By Danny Sullivan

Published: June 29, 2009

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak found Microsoft’s new search engine Bing to be “astounding” after seeing a demo. I found it astounding that someone as tech-savvy as Woz didn’t realize much of what Bing does isn’t new to Microsoft — or even other search engines, for that matter.

It’s a reminder that many people could use a refresher on search tips. So this month, I take off my search-marketer hat and put on my search-professor one.

Photo: Jason Meyer

Danny Sullivan has been covering the search-marketing industry for more than a decade and is editor in chief of SearchEngineLand.com.

DIRECT ANSWERS. Want sports scores? The local weather? A stock quote? The major search engines have long offered “direct answers” or “shortcuts” that answer these and other questions directly within the search results. Google’s just freshened up its instructions about these in an “Explore Google Search” page. Interesting how that came out right after everyone seemed to rave about Bing’s magic tools!

SPECIALIZED SEARCHES. Beyond images, the major search engines all offer the ability to search for video, run shopping searches, tap into maps and search only news content. Bing and Yahoo both offer travel-search features. Yahoo has a Yahoo Answers community where anyone can put out a question and get responses back from people who know the answer. Bing has a medical-search service. Google offers book search, a “scholar” search using academic articles and more.

The key to finding these services is typically to look at the top of the search engine’s home page or search-results page. Also click the “more” link to get to, yes, more options.

QUERY COMMANDS. Time to dazzle your friends with handy commands you can enter into all the major engines. Want to find pages that have an exact phrase? Add quotes — such as “steve jobs” — and you’ll get pages that have only those words in that exact order vs. pages that have those words but not necessarily as part of a phrase.

Getting material that doesn’t match the topic you’re looking for? Use a minus sign to “subtract” pages that have certain words from your results. A search for “cars –movies” means to bring back all pages with the word “cars” on them but not any pages that also say the word “movies.” You can subtract as many words as you’d like.

SITE SEARCH. Here’s a final tip publishers will especially like. It’s the site command. Take the “http://” part off your domain name and insert site: in its place — such as “site:www.mysite.com” — and you’ll only see results from within that site.

Can you ever imagine a search engine upending Google? O.K. neither can I. However there is a challenger that adds a new twist to the search process. It’s called Wolfram/Alpha and it’s differences from Google are outlined in CNN’s SciTechblog today:

There’s been lots of buzz in the tech community about a site called Wolfram|Alpha, which is set to launch in about a week — likely on May 18, according to a spokesman.

On first glance, Wolfram|Alpha looks like a search engine: it has a box where you type in a question or query terms. That’s about where the similarities end, though, because, unlike Google or Ask, Wolfram|Alpha is kind of like an enormous calculator. It takes your question and crunches out an entirely new answer, even if the answer isn’t something that’s been posted on the Web before.

Confused? You’re not alone. An example should help.

Say you’re an investor and you want to see how two companies are faring against each other on the market. You could type in “IBM versus Apple” and Wolfram|Alpha will generate graphs and tables to compare the stocks over time. It also give you the Web-based sources used to generate the data, so you know where the numbers are coming from.

A very cool thing is that you can ask questions that involve number answers and Wolfram/Alpha pulls the correct info for you:

The site is also interesting for academic queries. Type in “Internet users in Africa” and you’ll get the total number of Web users there — 51 million — as well as lists of the number of users by country plus graphs of this information. If you’re in the fisheries business, or if you’re an environmentalist, you could type in “fish produced in Italy versus France” to get an idea of how that sector is faring. The answer includes specifics, like how much of the fish crop was farmed versus what was captured. Such data could be used to argue policy points or to debate whether or not certain industries are sustainable.

Sound magical? Many people seem to think so. CNET and the New York Times have informative posts about the site and what it means for the way we generate and digest information in the Internet age.

Read the whole article here.

Google is probably watching with interest and planning their counter-offensive. I am very pleased with the development as I think Google controls too much of all web information. And they control it because we allow them to do so!

Stay tuned.

How to make blogging work for your business
by Chris Garret: blogger and tech consultant. You can find out more, and grab two free ebooks, by visiting his blog at chrisg.com

Are you looking to grow a business? Do you want to break the demoralizing cycle of cold-call, pitch and knock-back, while attracting the custom, respect and recognition that you surely deserve?

The good news is you can, and many people are doing just that every day. Even better, the answer is simpler than you might have been led to believe.

Gary Vaynerchuk (see image below) channeled his enthusiasm and passion to communicate a love of wine and powered his family store into a $50million business.

Woot was launched July 12, 2004 and sold its 1,000,000th item, a 4GB micro hard drive, on February 5, 2007. Customers stampede to buy its products, and the company does hardly any advertising.

I advise business owners all over the world and, fortunately as an introvert, I do not have to do any sales or ever have to pitch; people call me for internet marketing and blogging advice.

It’s not just mail order and consulting businesses who benefit from this approach. Thomas Mahon is a tailor working from the world-famous Saville Row in London, and sells bespoke suits using only articles on his website, and word of mouth, as marketing. He is constantly booked and has suited up celebrities from Prince Charles to Brian Ferry.

What do all these stories have in common? Blogs.

Now I realize there are some ideas and perceptions about blogs out there. Some of them true, most of them wildly inaccurate. Like most buzzwords, ‘blogs’ and ‘bloggers’ have taken on a fair amount of baggage that we need to cut away to get to the truth, and most importantly, get to what is in it for you and your business.

What are blogs really?

Watch TV news pundits, or read a newspaper, and you might be forgiven for thinking that all bloggers are armchair quarterbacks, chugging back beer, gobbling up mountains of salty snacks, while offering the world choice cuts of their ‘wisdom’. Anything from which football coach should be sacked, to demanding a say in Mr Obama’s first 100 days in office.

Another distorted and slightly disturbing view of bloggers is that they are amateur diarists, offering daily entries with such fascinating nuggets as what they ate for breakfast, fascinating things their many cats have brought into the house, and that strange dream they had last night.

Thankfully, while folks like this do exist, this is not what blogging is about when it comes to business!

For business, think of blogs as online content and information that attracts your target market in growing numbers, keeps them engaged and interested, and produces leads and sales for you and your company.

Best of all it doesn’t cost you anything but a little time and creativity. If you have a website then you are likely to have paid for everything you need already.

The benefits of blogs for business

As I mention above, there are sound business reasons why you would want to have a blog, but to really understand what this is all about, I need to go deeper into what having a blog really would mean for your company and for your profits.

Attraction versus interruption

Traditionally most businesses that want to increase their sales will do so by buying up some (what they hope will be) well placed advertising with compelling creative. It makes sense, it is what has been done for years, and it seems to work. OK, famously fully half of advertising is a waste but we do not know which half. If the sales come in, and the advertising is not too expensive, then it kind-of works out in the end.

In fact most advertising is a waste. If for every $1 you spend you don’t get more than $1 back into your business over the long term then it is a waste. Further, if you do not know what your advertising is doing for your business it is worse than a waste, it could actually be doing real damage.

As business people we get conditioned into doing things that are established practices. The Yellow Pages ad, trade journals, perhaps some radio or television. Some of it works. What we forget though is what it is like being on the receiving end; what it is like to be bombarded with these messages. There is so much noise in the marketplace, so many sales messages and so much interruption to our lives that we are blanking it out more and more from our collective consciousness in order to just get through the day.

On top of all that, some advertising is only memorable because it is just plain annoying. So it is irritating, increasingly ineffective and expensive.

The solution is to change our approach from shouting to attracting.

Instead of louder and more obnoxious methods of getting in your prospects’ faces, find ways to have them come to you; happy, pre-sold and wallet in hand.

Consider how people find products and services online. They turn to Google, they search for what they are hunting for, they do their research, make a decision, and either make a call or put in their credit card number.

Create content that answers your prospects’ questions, challenges, wants and needs using the words and language of your customers, and you are well placed to attract people looking for exactly what you have to offer. Blogs are famously effective in producing excellent search engine rankings.

Retention, trust and long-term value

But there is more.

We don’t just want one-off sales. We want a long-term business stuffed with happy, loyal customers, right? Plus, all too often we don’t get the sale on the first visit. Prospects need some warming up. They need to trust we can deliver on our promises, and perhaps they have been burned in the past.

This is another reason why blogs are an ideal business companion.

Rather than plugging away at your prospects with sales pitches, you offer them valuable tips, news, and information. Instead of hitting delete or hanging up the phone, they begin to look forward to hearing from you! The relationship changes and you demonstrate expertise and grow trust through regular, useful communication.

Get it right and not only do you convert more of your visitors into sales, but you sell more to your existing customers and keep them loyal for longer.

Be realistic

Of course I have painted a rosy picture, but it is true that not everything involved in blogging is a walk in the park.

The web is littered with blogs that were started in a rush of enthusiasm and then abandoned. People forget that it takes consistent effort and sustained creativity to keep a blog going. This is why businesses often hire freelance bloggers or coaches to keep the momentum going and share some of the load. A successful blog doesn’t happen overnight, but then neither does a successful business.

Another aspect to be aware of is that anyone who puts their thoughts out into the internet is going to attract criticism, both justified and just plain weird. The internet is full of life’s diverse characters, and they are emboldened by the relative anonymity afforded by having a fake name, and several thousands of miles protecting them.

Fact is though, the internet will increasingly be talking about you anyway. Better to have a means to answer criticism early and effectively rather than let tempers and egos boil over.

Blog checklist for success

Here are some tips for establishing a better business blog:

• Put the audience first. Rather than focus on what you want and need, what does the audience want and need? Do keyword research, talk to prospects, and answer their questions.
• Prioritize value over flair. People often say to me that they can’t blog because they are not brilliant writers. It doesn’t matter! What counts is offering something useful. People will forgive small writing issues if you do not waste their time, plus writing gets better with practice.
• Don’t overdo it. Blogging and all the associated tasks can get addictive or turn into a time suck. Allocate a certain amount of time in your week and don’t feel you have to write every day.
• Find the watering holes. Discover where your prospects and peers hang out, meet them there and bring them home to your blog.
• Network. Other people will have a profound impact on your success, from links through to advice – so networking is essential.
• Get them to subscribe. You want to keep hold of as many visitors as possible so get them to subscribe to your email list or blog feed! Give them good reasons why they should – perhaps with a freebie incentive, special offer, discount, or other goodies.
• Write compelling stories. Engage your readers with attractive headlines, draw them further in with introductions, entertain with anecdotes, and leave them with inspiration, new knowledge or fresh motivation.

Summary

Copywriting has been called “salesmanship in print”. A good business blog is like the best kind of salesperson; someone who waits to be approached, listens, offers advice and solutions, leaves you to close the sale yourself, is someone you would return to again and again, and best of all, someone you would want to tell all your friends about. Wouldn’t you want some of that in your business?

Related articles: See how iStylista used blogging to double their sales.