Wysiwyg, or ‘what you see is what you get’, was a great revelation back in the ’80s (ooh, that dates me), when suddenly all this meaningless programming with mind-boggling code was replaced with a visual of what you were trying to create. I suppose I was advantaged when my Mum insisted on using Macs, and these new-fangled little boxes with their tiny screens and smiley faces blinked out exactly what you were trying to achieve, without any horrid green writing in sight!

Over 25 years later and you’d expect wysiwyg to be common place. But why do web developers fail to realise this phenomenon is still vital for those who don’t understand code (which is, actually, the majority of us)?

I have been battling with a particular CMS recently. It is supposed to be wysiwyg, but the programming has gone so awry I don’t know what I am seeing. For me it is OK, because once I’ve fathomed it out what I’m supposed to be working on, I can make the necessary allowances. But if others are to be trained in how to use the system, and the wysiwyg has gone by-the-bye, then it’s going to be all that much harder.

In this world of visual capacity, you’d think wysiwyg would be second nature. People expect to see exactly what they are working with, so why should a ‘preview’ provide you with something totally different from the end product? I can see why so many people are battling to understand the system, and that a suitable ‘teacher’ is required to help them.

So perhaps web developers should raise their heads above the code and formulations, and spare a thought for us mere mortals who are willing to understand, but are totally flummoxed when we view something that isn’t, especially when we don’t know what we’re supposed to be seeing, and have no way of sorting it out for ourselves!

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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.

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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.

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1. How effectively are you using LinkedIn?
2. How to use marketing within LinkedIn
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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?

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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?

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In my last post I wrote about how to increase the opening rates of your newsletter, and for this post I am concentrating on newsletter content and how that can increase the likelihood of it being read.

Related posts:

1. What makes a good e-newsletter?
2. How you write depends on how it is read
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One of the features of Appletree’s newsletter system JAC shows how many of your newsletter’s recipients have opened it (and there is also a new feature that shows you who has opened it too and how many times). One statistic is that newsletters with large mailing lists seem to show a low open rate. So how can this be improved?

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In this particular local magazine I regularly receive through my letterbox I get a chance to purvey various attempts at designing advertising. I do feel sorry for multiple trades who have to compete with each other, all trying to attract the same customers from the same page:

Look! Four plumbers jostling with each other to capture the same audience!

(Actually it think it’s a bit cruel of the magazine compiler to do this, but the thinking behind it may be to make it easier for customers to find the plumbers’ ads quickly if they are in an emergency!)

So how do you make your ad stand out from the others?

What all these plumbers are doing are trying to raise customer awareness that they exist. They are relying heavily on reputation, how well they are known in the community, the longevity of their business or even how quickly someone answers the telephone!

They are all keen to tell you their features: what they can do, how many years’ experience they have, even that they can do anything! One does mention his speciality, and another lists what works he can undertake. Not one mentions any benefits they can give their customers, or any testimonials or case studies from satisfied customers.

None of them have reassured their customers they can make their lives better in an emergency, that their focus is to provide a quick and easy service with the least fuss and immediate response. There are no headlines to capture their customers’ attention with empathetic questions or statements that they understand their customers’ pain and can provide the solution for it.

One does say he is a specialist at bathroom refurbishment – great! He needs to grow his reputation in this area to gain a following, then he can tell his satisfied customers he does other plumbing work as well. Just a tiny testimonial saying “I had trouble with X and this plumber sorted it out by doing Y” will speak volumes on an advert. Don’t think to have to mention everything – if you do specialise in other areas, take out other similar adverts for those niches later, using the same principles.

There’s no mistaking the fact that these are all plumbers though, the word plumbing appears at the top of each. But it needn’t be in their names, you can rely on the word appearing in the headlines or solution filled subheaders. If you establish you understand your customers’ predicaments at the top of the adverts, put your company names at the bottom along with your logo, straplines and qualification logos, followed by your contact details in large, clear numbers and letters. Telephone numbers obviously need to be big, as that is usually the main source of contact customers look for, but don’t undermine your email or web addresses either.

List your benefits in bullet points, or failing that a list of features you specialise in, this is why the one that sticks out the most is the top left hand advert. His image of a tap also aids as a focal point. The top right advert has too much text because he has to list everything he works with, so it looks too confusing to someone in a hurry. The bottom left puts his speciality too far down his list, it should be something he crows about. And the bottom right is just plain boring!

And some food for thought: what incentive can you give your customers to make them choose you from the other three, such as a percentage discount or special offer if they quote this advert, for instance? And is there any guarantees you can give your customers, like a response within a certain time? Remember, the customer always comes first… without them you don’t have a business.

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1. But what is this advert really saying?
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This was the topic of conversation I had at a CIM course on marketing trends the other week. Of course the speakers were stressing how important it was to get into social networking, in order for our businesses not to get left behind, but one particular lady next to me was not convinced.

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Gone are the days when customers came to you. The internet may be compared to a massive shopping-mall, but it is, of course, so huge, there is no way anybody could possibly walk pass your shop (website) unless they knew it was already there.

Related posts:

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