5 Cornerstones Of An Effective Web Strategy

Jeremiah Owyang maintains an ongoing blog post called “The Three Spheres of Web Strategy” (see below) which he is updating about every year. The original version of this post prompted our Web Strategy Basics video presentation with the hopes of building on these phases of Jeremiah’s outline into actionable blueprint for planning your own web strategy.

Here is Jeremiah’s updated “Three Spheres of Web Strategy”

And here is our Five Web Strategy Cornerstones – which we reference on any web strategy plan we create for clients at 48Web.

Technology

Technology forms the base of our web strategy plan. We encourage you use technology and the tools at your disposal to make it easy to create and manage your web presence. Don’t let technology be a road block when planning a web strategy. Use free and easy tools like WordPress that don’t dissuade you from creating but make it easy for you to use. Create automated systems that find and distribute content for you so you can become ultra-efficient at creating, distributing, and re-purposing value. Don’t waste your time managing technology either – use solutions like Google Apps & Analytics or Basecamp. Technology should be a tool in your web strategist belt – not something that needs babysat and hand held. Technology should be your facilitator – not a roadblock.

Community

Community means everything. These are your customers, colleagues, friends, mentors, muse, fans, audience and readers. Cater and nurture them because the fruit of the reciprocity economy tastes delicious. You are nothing without them no matter how niche they are. Use technology to communicate and share with them while always adding value. Listen to what the community says – whether good or bad and insert yourself into the feedback loop. Listen, Listen, Listen for it’s not “if you build it they will come”  – it’s build what people want and need. Don’t assume you know what your community wants – ask them.

Content Strategy

Some call it inbound marketing – we call it content strategy. Either way the principle is simple – create valuable “stuff” and push it out to where people are “living”.  Re-purpose as much content as possible into as many forms of consumption as possible.  Create automated distribution strategies so your content outposts are thriving centers of communication and discussion. Killer content forms killer communities (see above). It’s a win/win situation – it just takes a little dedication and a simple technology infrastructure.

Internet Marketing

Take advantage of the ability to use technology to reach highly targeted demographics for pennies. Hone your PPC campaigns to create high ROI campaigns. Use Facebook ads to reach exactly who you want to target. Develop killer Search Engine Marketing campaigns to connect with buyers that have intent. Use internet marketing to not only sell more widgets but to push your content strategy and build your community. Everything in your web strategy is inter-related.

Analytics

We save the most important for last – make data driven decisions. Track everything but don’t be caught up in paralysis by analysis. Take advantage of free and easy technology that allows you to test everything. Make goals and use data to measure and reach them.

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What do YOU think? Do you have anything to add? Let us know in the comments or jump into the forums!

5 Things Small Businesses NEED To Do Online

Today Chris Brogan put out a post called “5 Things Small Businesses Owners Should Do Today Online” which is an excellent overview on creating a basic social media strategy for a company. The jist – start a blog, listen to twitter, get involved in social networks. This post should have been titled “5 Things Small Businesses Should Do To Get Started In Social Media”. Why the suggested change in title? Chris left out extremely important facets of developing a well rounded web strategy.

Here’s our list. If you are just getting started in optimizing your website to be more than a brochure placeholder, here are our “5 Things Small Businesses NEED To Do Online“.

1. Create Goals

If you don’t have goals for your website than your website has no purpose. Goals give you something to strive for and metrics to measure. Goals give your website purpose. And most importantly – goals drive business. That’s what your website is there for right?

2. Get Local

A vast number of small businesses operate in geographic based markets. If your small business has not created a local web strategy than you are missing out on the fastest growing search market. Get listed on Google Local and Google Maps. Take advantage of the free tools out there. Use local SEO strategies.

3. Create Value

Create engaging content that helps people. Answer questions people have about you, your products, and your industry on social networks. Show off your recipes and become a resource.

4. Measure Everything

In the age of the web – all your marketing decisions should be made based on data rather than instinct. Go ahead – read that sentence again.

5. Don’t Give Up

In the latest episode of our internet business podcast (will be posted this week) we talk about paralysis by analysis with internet marketer extraordinaire Brian Kaldenberg. He says most businesses give up on their web strategy prematurely – whether it be their content strategy, keyword research, or PPC campaigns. The world of internet marketing and web strategy can look unconquerable to the DIY small business marketer just getting started.

Don’t give up and let data lead the way.

What advice can you give small businesses who are getting started online? Let us know in the comments or forum!

2 Tips Before You Launch Your Internet Marketing Campaign

Before you launch a product or website you should do some research in the niche you are targeting. Here are two research techniques to hone your internet marketing campaign – before you launch…

1. Keyword Research

• Google Insights
• Google Keywords
• Search For Competition

2. Social Media Research

• Twitter Search
• Facebook Search
• FriendFeed Search

These techniques can help you determine the need in the market and if there is heavy competition – both very important to know before you start your long uphill battle.

13 Pillars of Internet Marketing

The 13 Pillars of Internet Marketing

5 Ways To Not Be an Internet Marketing Spammer

There’s a fine line between trying to gain maximum reach for your business on the web and becoming a spammer. Here are five guidelines to help you avoid becoming an internet marketing spammer.

1. Don’t Use Social Media as A Marketing Bullhorn

Finding and building community around your business, industry, or niche can be a great way to increase your reach to your target audience. But with these ease of interaction and increase in transparency you need to concentrate on the message you are broadcasting. In order to build relationships you should try to become a resource for your audience and community rather than using the platform as to broadcast your marketing messages. If you are uncertain if your activities are spam behavior or not you can usually ask your community for feedback. Generally if you are providing value to the conversation then you should have no problem.

2. Use Permission Based List Building

Building marketing lists are essential for any businesses. One common misconception with these lists – which are generally used for email marketing – is that building a massive list is your best way to increase sales. I disagree with that and find it the quickest way to becoming a spammer. That’s why we teach businesses to build opt in lists using permission based marketing tactics. This guarantees that your message is delivered to an interested, targeted audience rather than a blasted message that has no relevance to the recipient. If you purchase or manually build lists you will experience low conversion rates.

3. Respect Your Community’s Time

If you have an email list or have built followers on social networks be sure to respect their time. Don’t blast them with emails, updates, copy, or blog posts. A general rule of thumb is to provide quality over quantity. One really good email a week is far more effective than 3 unthoughtful blasts a week. You don’t want to annoy your audience – you want to provide value. As long as you are doing that you will maintain respect with your community and build loyalty. This will pay off over time as you become a resource for your audience.

4. Optimize Your Landing Pages

The page where your targeted audience and/or community land is very important. If your landing page is not engaging you will likely lose your viewer. If you are interested in optimizing your landing page there are several resources. You should first figure out where on your site traffic is landing – homepage via advertisements or blog post via search engines are two examples of entry points to your website. If the bounce rates (you can find in web analytics) on your most popular landing pages are high you need to tweak those pages to retain those visitors and provide them the ability to browse to additional relevant content on your site. Also – use your landing pages wisely and perhaps you should setup different landing pages for different traffic avenues – ie: create specific landing pages for your Twitter account, advertisements, Facebook link, etc.

5. Advertise Contextually

If you are advertising online the quickest way to waste money is to pay for clicks and impressions on pages and in copy that is irrelevant to your business or topic. We recommend not buying links or advertisements on sites that do not pertain to your business. If you do receive a click the conversion rate will be very low because the visitor is has little intent for additional information on the topic of your site. If you do proper keyword targeting in PPC advertising campaigns you will see higher conversion rates as the content you are targeting is optimized to your business website or product.

Is Your Internet Marketing Campaign Spam?

So you’ve been working hard on the internet marketing plan for your web strategy but have you stepped back to look at it from the user’s perspective? Are you a spammer? Online marketing is very community focused and it takes time to build a trusting relationship. You need to seriously reflect on your internet marketing campaign to avoid losing that trust. Last Friday at a Lunch & Learn session my company co-sponsors, our speaker Brett Trout said “Reputation takes a long time to build and a second to diminish” in regards to business ethics. The same idea holds true with a community building and internet marketing strategy.

Here are two examples of mistakes I’ve made where I developed what I thought were value-added marketing campaigns – which turned out to be the opposite.

In an effort to increase email subscribers on GetANewBrowser.com I implemented a modal popup feature of aWeber. I thought this was a value-add feature that provided a call to action to some extra content I was giving out. Even though this subscriber drive was a resounding success – it frustrated users. So I turned it off. Conversions went way down, but my readers are much happier.

The second example I want to share is the practice of auto direct messages on Twitter. Before I switched it – you would get an auto direct message whenever you followed @WebStrategyShop or @abrudtkuhl on Twitter. This means I sent you something like the following message “Hey thanks for following me have you checked out my Internet Business Podcast at ManagingTheEdge.com?” In one instance Aaron Houssian sent me a direct message follow up alerting me to my spammer behavior. At that point I realized my marketing campaign was indeed spamming people and they did not appreciate it. So, after much debate, I turned it off.

In both instances my community alerted me to the issue at hand and, thankfully, stuck with me after I addressed the issue transparently and followed through with their requests. This brings up another lesson – you need to listen to your community. Not only can you crowd source ideas from them they will give you immediate feedback if they feel you are spamming them.

If you are interested in hearing more discussion on this topic – we covered it in the latest episode of our internet business podcast Managing The Edge.

Analytics

Analytics involves taking traffic data from your website and analyzing that data to discover opportunities and pitfalls regarding the performance of your internet marketing efforts of your web strategy.

Resources:

• Web Analytics: An Hour a Day
• Google Analytics (Free Web Analytics Software)
• Google Analytics Blog

Word Of Mouth Marketing

Word Of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) is the act of passing on information verbally or digitally from one person to another in the form of recommendation or opinions on products or services of a company or brand.

Resources:

• 5 Word Of Mouth Marketing Strategies for Your Business
• Wikipedia on WOMM
• Word Of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA)

5 Web Strategy Tips for Local Businesses

These tips are not specific to any locality and should work anywhere your business operates… These five tips for local business web strategy are for businesses whose targeted customers are local – like restaurants, service companies, and consultants.

1. Own Your Domain
There are sooo many advantages to owning YourCompany.com and for $9/year there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t take this step. Even if you don’t use it – own it. You are going to need it if you want to compete. This is your #1 marketing tool, and why we are here to help you master your domain.

2. Be On Google
There are several ways to “be on google”. The first, and easiest step is to register your business in Google Maps, Google Local, Google Knol, and others. These are all FREE and have much higher visibility than yellow pages and bus stop benches. This make you “findable”… for FREE.

3. Get A Website
A simple, optmized website can do wonders for your findability online. Use the domain you bought in the first step, setup WordPress or equivalent optimized CMS, and start adding content. Being there is the first step on being found. Now you are findable via two paths… Google and your own website.

4. Target Local Keywords
Targeting localized keywords is a great tool in an effective Search Engine Marketing campaign. This is a very easy way to optimize your website and your Google placement. This can have an exponential effect on the traffic you are driving to your website. If you are a local Italian restaurant, don’t target the keyword “Italian Restaraunt”. You want to target people in your neighborhood and there is no way you are going to get to the top of Google Search Results for “Italian Restaurant”. Use geographically targeted keywords like “Des Moines, IA Italian Restaurant”. Just think how you would search for a local service and target those keywords.

5. Engage and Participate in Your Community
Chances are there are a large chunk of potential customers for you on social networks that you can find by searching for your locality. Get in touch with these people and create a community around your business. This is an essential step in an effective web strategy. Word Of Mouth Marketing is key to success for local business and you can harness your social networks to ensure this buzz is positive.

Internet Marketing in 1994

In November 1994, Internet commercialization pioneer Ken McCarthy organized the first conference ever held that focused exclusively on the commercial potential of the web. This rare footage, which documents the very earliest days of the web industry, is an important artifact in the history of technology. After introductory remarks by Ken, Marc Andreessen, the 23 year old co-founder of Netscape, describes how the first web browser came into being and shares his vision of the future of the network which was destined to change the world forever.