Alice Elliott's blogonline marketing | Alice Elliott's blog

How you use digital marketing is the key

Alice — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 09:00:08 +0000

Many companies are waking up to the idea that they must start using digital marketing. Many of them may already be using it – sort of – because they are aware of Facebook, Twitter, email newsletters and the like.

There are many reasons why companies have not progressed within digital marketing, but the most obvious, and controversial, reason is that the key players, the decision makers, even those that are responsible for its implementation, don’t understand it.

The trouble is, you need to start thinking outside the world of conventional marketing. Not necessarily the foundations, as they are always good, otherwise your marketing will just fall down, but many of the concepts of the top layers have flown out of the window, superseded by another way of thinking.

The old ideas aren’t working any more: how you communicate to your customers (look at us, we’ve been around for 50 years and have so much experience, aren’t we great!), advertising (banging on about the wonderful technology that went towards creating your product), hierarchy of importance (always put the company logo at the top?), self awareness (don’t assume everybody knows you or what your product is), and how should your customer find you (the size or even absence of contact details).

And then there is that mad scrap to start using digital marketing just because it’s there, but without any rhyme or reason behind the action. Great, you’re on Twitter, but what’s the point if you’re not tweeting. Great, you’re on Facebook, but what’s on your Facebook page, if you’ve got one. Great, you’ve got a QR code, but does it have to go to your homepage? And then there’s the basic element of digital marketing, the website…

Websites have changed dramatically. They have taken on a completely new dimension that has passed many companies by. Gone is the idea of an online brochure, somewhere on the web that shows what your company is and what it does. That was so last century. It’s time to move on from Web1.0.

Digital marketing requires action. It requires work from both sides, customer as well as company, in equal measures. It needs interaction, and a good reason for doing so. There must be incentives for this ‘give and take’ on the internet, or it will just fall down flat. Digital marketing opens such a huge amount of opportunities that was never available before, infinite rapidity of communication, research, concepts and interaction.

America has taken this storm with a vengeance, the UK is just starting to cotton on, Europe is only just opening its eyes. And as for the Far East – you’d be amazed! Digital marketing is a phenomenon that moves so fast, if you blink at the wrong time you’ve probably missed it, but that is no reason not to make an effort towards incorporating it into your business.

But this harps back to the beginning of this post – many are doing it wrong because they don’t understand it. In spite of the urgency, it’s worth investing in finding out a bit about it before launching headlong in. The internet is a wealth of information, all you’ve got to do is to know where to tap into it and you will learn. And going back to the old marketing foundations, plan your objectives, strategies and tactics and measure and monitor your results, and you’ll start to see a difference.

Communication, an effective business tool

Alice — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 22:47:51 +0000

As my entry into the JupiterJasper Marketing lesson blogging competition, this blog is about the one concept of marketing I think will really help your business. This is ‘communication’, which comes in many guises:

Research

Do research into how your customers think, in order to communicate with them effectively. Even before starting to trade, it’s imperative to understand what they want or desire, what makes their lives easier, what spending power do they have, what their lifestyles are, where they congregate, and what they like doing the most. Then whatever you say to them will be on the same level, and by using scenarios that they can relate to, your concept can be delivered in the most appropriate and appreciative way.

Listening

Your most effective tool is to listen. Stand back, watch and absorb how your customers react to your product. Ask questions or request feedback, comments, opinions, suggestions and requirements. Be accessible at all times, always accommodating and approachable, and provide acknowledgement where applicable. Respond effectively to the results, by adapting your business or changing your products. And continue this exercise as an ongoing process, rather than an initial burst and a reactive response.

Conversation

The main concept of Web2.0 and social networking is conversation, or in marketing terms, interaction. In this technical age we can respond immediately to whatever we see in the web, from filling in a form to contributing to a forum. Blogs, Facebook and Twitter allow visitors to react, respond and comment, to leave their mark and create an impact, to put their point of view across, to sympathise, empathise or ask for more information. The two-way, or even multiple-way, conversations that build up stimulate the search engines to index these sites, exposing them to a larger audience.

Relationships

Social networking is all about creating online relationships, finding and communicating with people you wouldn’t normally have access to. Jumping into conversations on Twitter is acceptable, and commenting on a Facebook thread is equally tolerated. Being ‘sociable’ will earn you more respect and followers, and sharing valuable information will increase credibility and expert-status. Here is the ability to find new prospects who are interested in what you have to offer, and then communicate with them to form a relationship, from introduction to advocate, to boost your business.

Publicity

Don’t overlook communication through publicity or PR. If you don’t tell prospective customers all about yourself, then how will they find out about you? No newspaper editor will print a story about your business unless they receive regular information from you. Keep a blog or regularly update your website or social networking statuses with interesting material about your business. The more activity you provide will increase your visibility, both online as well as off, through viral practices and word of mouth. Aim to achieve the situation where you appear to be everywhere, or you’re the first business they think of when your product is needed.

Become an Expert
And communication is vital again to maintain relationships in the public world. Be seen as a source of information, expertise and authority. Organise workshops and seminars to address many people at once. Attend many networking groups to enhance your offline visibility, and find the opportunity to speak at them. Share 80% of your knowledge and only retain 20%, the best part, to make money; the more you can prove you know your subject, the more likely you are to achieve the status you crave.

Alice Elliott is a digital marketer that specialises in blogging and aims to help people understand online marketing strategies.

Why your email list needs to be personal

Alice — Sun, 15 May 2011 15:14:29 +0000

One of the most annoying things about the internet is receiving spam. It’s almost as bad as those telephone calls that try and sell you stuff you don’t want, and even if you are signed up to the Telephone Preference Service, some, especially those from abroad, still slip through the net.

So considering we all hate spam so much, why do businesses still pursue buying up lists of contacts to sell their stuff? I suppose it all boils down to impatience, since they cannot wait to build up a personal communications list because it takes too long, is too much hard work and is therefore inconvenient.

But in this world of increasingly more savvy people to email marketing practices, particularly those on the receiving end, it’s not worth bombarding people who don’t want to receive your stuff, and there are, of course, mechanisms in place that weed out unwanted material and dump it in a spam folder.

If you are going to do it properly, you need to start from the beginning. How fast you progress will depend on how much you work at it, how much you are prepared to provide good quality information that readers, and those they recommend, are willing to receive, absorb, retain and act upon. I’m afraid it comes down to the fact that the more you put in, the more you’ll take out.

My point is, the list you’ll accumulate should be yours only, and nobody else’s. It will comprise of people who have signed up voluntarily, who want to read your newsletters, who value the information you give them, who look forward to next month’s issue, who will comment and leave feedback so you can improve what you provide, both in your business as well as your newsletters.

And the reason for all this communication? To win your readers’ trust, opinion, understanding, appreciation. You extend your expertise and increase your reputation, convince them of your qualities and give them what they desire. After you have won them round to your way of thinking, they are then more likely to buy your products or sign up to your services. Marketing yourself and what your business provides is all about building upon a relationship with your customers, whether they are past, present and prospective, to facilitate business or develop advocates to influence others – and so the list can continue to grow.

And growing is important, albeit organically. Don’t feel dispelled to add to it with purchased lists that haven’t been obtained through natural methods, otherwise you’ll be taking several steps backwards. All that hard work to win the trust and build relationships will have been thrown down the drain. All that valuable information written for those who aren’t interested, who only press the delete or spam button, who don’t know you from Adam, who certainly don’t care a jot. Why should you pander to them, when you could be communicating with a list of people who want to know you, because you’ve managed to convince them you are worth while.

One piece of marketing advice given out says it’s easier to sell to existing customers than to find new ones. Think about it…

Interaction is vital in social networking

Alice — Fri, 13 May 2011 16:30:06 +0000

When you’re dealing with social media, one of the most important things to consider is interaction.

Interaction is when your readers, audience, fans, friends or whatever are compelled to respond to your social networking activities. This will happen when you post up something that is worth commenting on, full of value, beneficial and helpful, entertaining or educational, or even controversial, just begging for a response to counteract it or confirm their approval or agreement with it.

Blogs thrive from comments. Spiders register a comment as new material, so it can enhance a post by making it more attractive to the search engines. It also adds to the conversation because the reader is presented with new ideas and concepts that contribute to the subject matter or interest factor. Ideally posts should be written to encourage a comment, or contain a call to action to remind readers to leave feedback or their point of view.

Facebook works on interaction, as every time you post on your profile, or ideally on someone else’s profile as a comment to their status update, Facebook sees this interaction and clocks it as a match. The more interaction you have with your Facebook friends, the more likely you are going to see your posts or blog feeds on their profiles. If you don’t partake in lots of interaction on social networking sites, it’s not only the search engines that deem you to be inactive, its the social networking robots as well, which can be detrimental if you want to create interaction to help promote yourself or your business.

Twitter is the master of interaction, of course! It is all about interacting with your fellow Twitterers, chatting, commenting, retweeting, sharing in real time – generally forming relationships with your followers as you interact and find out what they are doing. Really this is not a place to be doing business in the old sense of the word, it’s about communicating and making friends, networking by being sociable, asking after their health, family or latest event, having a giggle over a piece of news or notification from elsewhere, exchanging information about each other as if you were face to face and not separated by the web in between two computers. It is a place to find out information, learn from a blog feed, gain trust and credibility by giving and sharing, having a conversation with real people who respond readily – in other words, interacting.

Using social networking sites, and also social bookmarking sites, needs commitment to fine-tune your interaction with your followers and friends. It’s no good having a fantastic blast one day, and then forgetting to continue for the next few days. Even if your followers forgive you, the search engines and social networking sites won’t. Robots don’t understand like humans do, and they see inactivity as exactly as what it is, and immediately your ratings go down, you loose those slots on your friends’ profiles, your stats take a plunge and your Twitter streams are dark and empty.

I know it’s hard to keep it up indefinitely, so it’s worth working out a social media diary to help you keep the momentum going. Plan in advance what you are going to say that month, or week if you think short-term, so that there is always information available to use when your inspiration dries up. It’s much easier to provide content, leading onto to some beneficial interaction, if you have a focus, goal or objective towards your social networking activities – get more leads, raise your profile, extend your expertise, collect more fans or ‘likes’, increase your subscription rates, develop your visibility on the net – need I go on?

And above all – it’s so important to have fun!

LinkedIn: Answers can spread expertise

Alice — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 10:30:29 +0000

At the end of your navigation links in your LinkedIn profile is a tab called ‘More’. At the top of the drop-down menu that appears when you mouse over it, is the option ‘Answers’. I often wonder why it is tucked away like this when it is, in my mind, an integral part of effective use of LinkedIn.

The Questions and Answers section of LinkedIn is an almost forgotten area that could make or break your expertise status. There is a myriad of different subject matter, easily one for every kind of profession, that provides two purposes: to ask a question (for inquiry, research, information or whatever) and to answer those questions (therefore spreading your expertise in your chosen subject).

The quality and substance of the questions vary (as so does the answers), but social media users today have developed skills in skimming through the unnecessary stuff to focus on the worth-while. This also reflects the methods of asking and answering questions, with certain skills developed to make your response stand out above the rest; a trait that is necessary with today’s noisy internet usage.

‘Answers Home’ shows the most recently submitted questions in no particular order or subject matter. There are some LinkedIn users who make a habit of answering any question that appeals to them, whereas others will prefer to concentrate on their areas of expertise.

‘Advanced Answers Search’ focuses your attention on the subjects you would most like to concentrate on. The category mechanisms provides access to your preference, but sometimes going down a different route will lead you to unexpected subjects that might be of interest. Once you have chosen your subject matter, LinkedIn remembers so you don’t have to do it all over again.

For easy access to relevant questions you might want to answer, you can set up Google Alerts for the questions within your chosen criteria, and these appear as a cookie on your Google homepage or within your RSS feed reader page. Now you can keep track of all questions as they are asked, and be one of the first to answer, or watch them while the discussions develop.

Go to ‘Answer Questions’ and you’ll see that questions are either open (available for answering) or closed (there is usually a time limit on questions which you can extend if necessary). The ‘Expert’ tab shows the most promiscuous answerers, but there is no reason why you can’t become one yourself! If your answer is approved by the questioner it will either be marked as ‘Good’ or, if you’re lucky, ‘Best Answer’. Whatever alocade you receive will be listed on your profile page in the right sidebar, and ‘Best Answer’ for each subject will be shown in your signature when you answer a question.

And if you have a question to ask, the ’Ask a Question’ tab provides easy to use fields and menus to publish your question. It is great fun waiting for the answers, which will be emailed to you when they are submitted. Sometimes they are not what you expected, but all are enjoyable to read. When your question has closed, then is the time to select those that are ‘Good’ and finally your ‘Best Answer’, a respected and polite way of saying thank-you, though some questioners have emailed me personally to request more information as well as expressing their gratitude.

LinkedIn: socialise through the groups

Alice — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 10:30:35 +0000

A great feature of LinkedIn is the groups. There are literally thousands to choose from, in a similar myriad of subjects, levels and sociability.

Locate them through the ‘Groups’ link at the top of your profile page, and you will automatically go to the list of groups you have joined. These vary from open to closed groups, depending on the whims of the administrators, and subgroups can be created out of a parent group, especially if it has grown too big or commands splitting up to cover further aspects of the group’s subject.

To join a group, either click on ‘Groups You May Like’ where a selection of groups that marry up to the keywords you have provided on your profile page (another reason to complete your profile as fully as you can) will be offered to you, or you could search out relevant groups via their categories (alumni, corporate, conference, networking, non-profit, professional or other) and in whatever language you prefer (LinkedIn is, of course, international).

Choosing a category will concentrate the selection, and the search field above that will focus it further. The more succinct you are with your keywords, the better the results. The groups are listed with the most popular (or with the most members) at the top, and closed groups show a little locked sign before the title, which means you will have to be accepted by the administrators before you can contribute.

Once you’ve entered a group, you will see a status update field for you to add in your own contribution (a comment, discussion, question, link to blog post, article or newsletter issue, or whatever you want to share) with the other entries listed below. There is a moving gallery of the latest discussions entered by members, and a discussion hierarchy can be allocated by the administrators for extra promotion.

You will also get email notifications of new discussions whenever they are entered, and when you have contributed to a particular discussion and others have commented so you can follow the conversation and reply if necessary. Discussions thrive on interaction, and some provide a lot of knowledge on particular subjects that I have found to be very useful.

You can check out the other members of the group to see if they are worth connecting with, or to read their profiles if their contributions was particularly noteworthy. There are other links to publicise promotions and a job board to find new recruits or better employment! The ‘Search’ link allows you to view all the discussions made on the group to backtrack a particular subject or find a comment that is useful to you. And the ‘More’ tab reveals ‘Updates’, ‘My Activity’, ‘My Settings’, ‘Subgroups’ and ‘Group Profile’.

If you are so inclined, you could start your own group. It is very easy to create one, and much enjoyment, knowledge, interaction and opportunities could be obtained through accomplishing such an activity.

How complete is your LinkedIn profile?

Alice — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 10:30:09 +0000

The social networking site for business has to be LinkedIn. Anyone in business should have a profile that is properly completed and updated. Failure to do so is like submitting your CV with gaps and omissions, which would certainly not impress a prospective client or employer – since it is both these targets you should be presenting to.

Let’s examine a profile. Apart from your name (and it is you that the LinkedIn profile should be about, not your company) there should be picture of you. Any decent head and shoulders photo will do, so that your profile visitor can see what you look like.

Under your name is a brief description of your profession/job, which acts as your signature throughout your LinkedIn activities. This short phrase could be regularly revised to see what response it brings.

Next comes the status update, where you can write your latest comments and provide accompanying links that you would like to share with your LinkedIn community, and on Twitter if appropriate. It will default to your latest activity, such as your blog feed, if you don’t update it regularly.

The next area resembles your CV, which should be fully completed to list your current and past positions and your latest education status. It extends to show how many people have recommended you, how many connections you have, links to your websites and blogs (which can be optimised), a link to your Twitter profile and your LinkedIn URL (which can be personalised).

Below that is a summary of what you do in your current role. This is something that should be carefully constructed, consistently updated, and written with your prospective client or employer, not to mention search engine optimisation, in mind.

LinkedIn also provides applications that allow you to show your latest presentations and feed your blog posts and tweets into your profile. All this activity shows your online proficiency outside of LinkedIn, plus extra exposure to your business and expertise status.

Don’t forget to fully complete the experience area. Here you can describe in detail about your present and past positions, which should be regularly revised. Attached are links to ask for recommendations, which are listed below prominently showing what others say about you, your business and your effectiveness in performing within your industry.

If you are members of any groups, these will be listed with the latest connection at the top. It is all very well being a member of a group without some sort of contribution, which is listed in your activities section in the right column.

As well as listing your latest activities in LinkedIn (your updates, new connections, blog post feeds, plus any questions you have asked or answered and groups you have contributed to), the right column also lists any groups you share with others, recommendations you have given recently, and other profiles that the viewer has also visited.

A particular section is revealed once you become an expert in an Answers section (I am privileged to have given a best answer in graphic design, search marketing and blogging).

You can see examples of all this in my LinkedIn profile, built up over a number of years. There is no reason why you cannot have something similar, it just requires time and effort to update and improve it.

Why should you bother to tweet?

Alice — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 09:30:44 +0000

To the uninitiated Twitter may be considered a useless pursuit. The idea of reading these little ‘messages’ that rapidly zip past your eyes, all seemingly unconnected with each other, blathering on about nothing in particular, would seem like a waste of time.

Until you analyse why people do twitter. Social networking is about being sociable, and forming relationships with each other. It’s about spreading news, sharing information, meeting new people, learning what’s happening, finding out what others are doing or have achieved, reading what others have written – all enabling you to engage without the expectation of gaining.

You could trundle along with your business totally unaware of what is happening outside your doors, or you could, from the comfort of your computer chair, be alive to all that activity online. It can be focused within certain areas: local issues, your niche, a particular subject, your competitors, your friends or enemies, your hobbies, political news, the latest gossip – and you aren’t expected to be able to follow everything, or it will drive you mad!

So how does it help your business? Of course raising your company’s awareness online is always good, and you can feed your blog posts onto Twitter to reach a larger audience, link up to your website to bring in more traffic, and connect from your other social networking sites (Facebook, LinkedIn) where you can write more than 140 characters. You can undertake market research by asking questions or following trends and topics, tweet your problems to receive immediate solutions or a link to relevant resources, find out the latest news before it breaks, and learn about other people’s thoughts and aspirations on particular subjects.

But all this twittering would be a waste of time if you didn’t have a focus (this is true for all marketing activity). Are you using it for brand awareness, or for research purposes? Do you want more visitors to your website, or to increase the subscriptions to your blog or newsletter? Are you curious enough to keep an eye on your followers, or just chancing on interesting conversations? Many networking meetings have been arranged through Twitter, with business formed from the results. Many conferences and workshops have gained increased attendances through focused twittering, and skills and expert statuses raised from poignant and relevant tweets.

So who now says tweeting is a waste of time?

No related posts.

How to make your website visitors stay

Alice — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 09:30:25 +0000

I’m doing several website reviews this week. The main brief is to find out whether each website attracts the right kind of customer, and whether the right message is being put across.

The first thing I look for is whether I understand what the main subject, niche or industry the website is representing. This may be obvious, but some businesses get so bogged down with trying to describe what their business is all about, flourishing as many jargonised words as possible in order to appear impressive, the true concept can be totally clouded and almost impossible to comprehend.

I have seen some websites that don’t even mention the actual subject, eg the word ‘marketing’ on a marketing site, within the first paragraph – in some cases not even on the front page! This is because the authors are so full of their business, they omit the keyword that matters most; it’s almost that because they have the subject in their brain, they assume the website visitors will also have it in their brains too!

The next thing I look for is what the website can offer me. Just me, an everyday, ordinary person who just happened to come across their site. This doesn’t mean banging on about how wonderful the business is, how long it has been running for, how much experience it has, bla bla bla – it’s about what the business can offer me to make my life better.

To be honest, visitors don’t give a tinker’s toot about your business, they only want what they can get out of it for themselves. Customers are notoriously selfish, self-centered and greedy, therefore you must take advantage of these traits and change the way you deliver your product or service. This means you must work out the benefits of what you are offering, and plug those in an easy-to-understand language and layout.

For example, if your business is about printing, why not work out, through marketing research, exactly what your customers want, and give it to them. Such as, offer a simple ordering system for quick and easy business cards, or for several thousand leaflets to promote a pizza bar; adapt your services to make it as easy as possible for customers to get what they want.

Then I assess the website’s call to actions. This involves how visitors respond to these three options:

1) the visitor goes further into the site to find out more (a conversion from the index page);

2) the visitor signs up to something such as a newsletter or gives their contact details for a special report or e-book (collection of data for future communications);

3) the visitor disappears (a bounce).

Of course the website owner doesn’t want the third option to happen, so how the index page is constructed should be geared towards the visitor deciding on one of the first two options. This means the main content should act like a signpost to the benefits the website is offering, how the business recognises the pain or problems the customer has, and what solutions it can provide.

The navigation should be designed so that the visitor doesn’t have to think about what to do next, he just clicks on an obvious link to find out more; and the sign up forms for the contact details need to be so compelling and accessible, combined with the necessary incentives, the visitor provides his information effortlessly, and receives his prize quickly and efficiently.

New-style online advertising will still annoy?

Alice — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:28:58 +0000

It’s a very common occurrence to come across advertising on blogs. Usually it’s the way these publications can keep the information they post free from charge, as the revenue generated helps pay for the expenses incurred.

But do you actually notice them? I certainly don’t. I’ve learned to gloss over them to find the information I want, a bit like the way I scan tweets in Twitter to find the ones that interest me the most.

To overcome this, advertisers have had to think of a way to get people to notice their adverts. Being extra clever with the headlines, putting animation in to disengage your attention, including hard to resist call to actions designed to pull even the hardened punter, all these are failing to get results.

So now the newest idea that’s come up is 30 second long TV-style adverts. These will be much harder to ignore, even pop-up ads. How would you respond to a short film popping up within the blog you were trying to read? Would you really stop, down tools, and watch these phenomena?

Another concept put forward by internet marketers is that even though these adverts will cost more, they will have a higher profile with a huger impact, thus becoming more effective and cost-worthy. The idea is that in the long run these ads will supercede the smaller static versions, who will gradually diminish in their intensity and numbers.

Is this a good idea? After the trial of 5 weeks on 15 carefully chosen websites, will this catch on? Will we welcome this style of advertising with open arms, or will we rue the development of technology and yearn for the old style advertising methods?