Strategy (check), Goals (check), Ideas (check), Check (check)!

Let’s see what muscle I pull first.

• There’s just too many versions of too many browsers out there to deal with. Chances are, that there’s a lot of them coming to your site. You don’t want to suddenly blow off 1000+ visitors a month do you?
• Browser adoption is slow.  There’s still millions of people using Internet Explorer 6. A browser that was released 10 years ago.  Some of them are just lazy, but many are corporate users locked into IE6 due to some proprietary web application they must use on a daily basis.  They are probably used to the web looking kinda weird, but the site should at least be readable for these folks.
• Choice is the spice of life.  People switch browsers and they do so frequently. I currently use Chrome on a day to day basis, but still have Firefox and IE8 installed just in case. You never know.

One thing you shouldn’t overlook is mobile testing.  do you need to have an iPhone friendly version of your site? How will your site render on the iPad?

From a business standpoint, it makes no sense to plant a stake in the ground on a single browser or version. Check your analytics, see what’s coming to your site and support it as best you can.

I’ve been spending a bit of time over the past few days cleaning out my email boxes and getting rid of a lot of my Bacn. The opt out process is often a torturous ordeal that you go through to attempt to remove yourself from the clutches of some current or potential product or service provider. Everyone wants you to subscribe to their newsletter. One company I signed up with when I opted into what I thought was 1 email, started sending me several every day.  Sorry (name redacted), I’m just not that into you. When you send me more email than my wife, we may have a problem.

So, there’s been a lot of dragging the scrollbar to the bottom of email messages in order to hunt for the opt-out link.  I think I can safely classify any email company into one of three camps.

• The sketchy – You’re not sure you’re never going to hear from them, they don’t explain the process, and you leave not 100% sure that you won’t receive another email from them.
• The normal -  You’re reasonably sure that, barring some technical glitch, your inbox door will no longer be darkened by their messages.
• The classy – They make it fun. They make you laugh a bit. They fill you in on what’s going to happen, they explain that it may take a few days to remove you and you go away feeling almost bad for unsubscribing from their newsletters (I’ve even changed my mind on one of these).

Which camp is your organization in? I’m not going to point out the bad examples, but I will throw a bone to one of the better ones I’ve run across recently. Skype.  Thanks, Skype, for making our relationship more than just a simple transaction.

Don’t believe me?  How are your organic traffic numbers?  Do you even know what organic traffic is? It’s traffic from search engines from people that found you by searching for something besides you.  It’s the way you go from driving traffic to your site by cracking a mic, to driving ears to your station by putting stuff on the web.

If you’re currently thinking about, budgeting for a website redesign in 2010, I implore you to take the money you were going to spend on a designer or a developer, and instead do some research with your audience to find out what you could actually do to serve them in the future. Chances are, if your listeners are interested in something, then you have an opportunity to find a way to serve them.  Not to sound all Yoda or anything, but “Become the Hub”!

If you haven’t looked at your site on a mobile browser, I suggest you do so.  More people are going to start hitting your site with mobile browsers in a very short time. Apple and Google have it right by allowing you to see the page as-is, but zoom in on the important bits. Good for them. RIM and others may not be quite so forgiving. For the short lesson here, there are basically three things you need to worry about.

• Does my site use semantic markup?
  Is everything in it’s proper tag?  Paragraphs, H1-H6?  List items?  If you view your page with CSS turned off, it should still be readable, content up top and navigation below. Even on a smaller screen.
• Do I have an alternate Style Sheet for mobile browsers?
  Currently I have a special plug-in for Wordpress that allows mobile browsers to see a simplified version of the site that is easier to read.  I recommend this highly.
• Does my site rely on images for important bits like navigation or branding?
  Your brand should be there in text as well as your logo. Good navigation is almost always text-based (or using a CSS replacement system) so that it degrades gracefully.

Talk to your designers/developers about this. More importantly… Take a look for yourself. Check your stats, see how many mobile visitors you have and act accordingly.

So here’s a list of things you should be blogging about:

1. Industry news
   If it’s important enough to affect you, it’s probably important enough to affect your customers.   Product changes, new products, discontinued products etc. This not only ads keywords to your blog – thus helping search engine traffic, but it also works towards creating the “expert badge” you’re looking for.
2. News about you/your company
   Did you just hire a new person that’s an industry name? Promote someone within the company? Change things up?  This is a great place to put that information out there. Doesn’t help with the “expert badge”, but rather the “transparency badge” – which is an important one as well.
3. Arcane industry issues
   Pure expert badge stuff here.  Talking about an issue that may only affect a small percentage of people, but those people could turn into big clients/customers.
4. Political issues that may have an effect your industry
   This one may be a little bit tricky to pull off.  Careful discussion of political issues is a great way to let people know about your problems and things that are affecting the industry in general. This is a great conversation starter as well.
5. Responses to consumer issues
   This one is almost a no-brainer. Has a customer raised a stink with the BBB or, worse yet, The Consumerist?  This is where you can not only make it right by the customer, but turn it into a big win for you.   Showing that you’re an organization of human beings, and you’re more than willing to make things right for people goes a long way towards the “transparency badge”.

So, have you successfully blogged about any of the above things?

• You have to tell people to go there
• You search for your name or keywords on google and don’t show up until page 3 (if it’s been up for more than 6-8 months)
• Organic traffic to your site is less than 25% of your total traffic mix
• You never get email asking you about something on your website
• You haven’t talked to the person that updates your site for more than a week

It’s 2009 folks. Just having a website isn’t enough. You have to add value to it. You have to make content, start conversations and make sure that someone looking for what you have to offer can find you.  The web is the great equalizer and if you’re counting on other channels to get your message out, you’re a) missing the best opportunity to market your brand/product and b) not showing up where your customers are.

In the world of Radio there seems to be a huge gap between those that get it, and those that don’t.  I don’t see many websites that straddle the fine line between getting it or not getting it. It’s pretty clear cut.

Getting it

click for full size image

I’ve talked about the battle for mindshare in New York between Z100 radio and NowFM radio before. Now I’m going to go into a bit more depth. Z100 radio is the all time champion for ratings in New York. The big dog. They sweep the ratings and are the ones that everyone is trying to take down. Their website, however, acts as more of a reflection of their brand instead of a beacon for it. If you click the image to the right and enlarge it, you’ll see that I’ve shaded much of the site with red or blue.  Red shaded areas are areas that aren’t really important to most listeners. This includes advertisements, station promos, station news, etc.

This site screams “look at me! I’m important!”  But it really isn’t. There’s not much here you couldn’t get by listening to the station for a while. There’s not much of a compelling reason for someone that isn’t a fan of Z100 already to actually visit this site.

Click for full size image

Enter NowFM.

The up and coming answer to Z100 in the Big Apple is taking a different approach. They’re using the web as part of their branding strategy, not a reflection of it. Again, take a look at the image to the left, click for a full-size version of it and you’ll see a web page that is about the NowFM lifestyle, about the people that listen, about the things they care about. (Green = Content, Red = Station Info)

The music you play, or the station you are is only a small part of the brand that you represent. Finding the things your listeners care about and becoming a primary conduit of information for those things is what is going to separate radio brands in the future. NowFM has done that by appealing to their demographic.

NowFM give their brand consumers:

• News and information that interests them
• News and information that isn’t about the station
• frequently updated content to keep people coming back for more
• The ability to have conversations about each story

So, looking at the above information… What are you doing to add value to your brand via your website?

I’m on a comic quote binge lately, so sue me.

Hugely interesting story coming out of digitalmusicnews.com this morning as up and coming pop star Justin Bieber uses the power of social media to accomplish several goals. In a span of just a few hours he managed to:

1. Get hoards of people to show up at a mall (so many so that the mall feared reaching max occupancy): Win for the mall, win for Justin
2. Get the hoards of people riled up, by tweeting about not being allowed entrance to the mall: Win for Justin, draw for the mall – until the crowd gets really ugly
3. Get criminal charges pressed against his management because they wouldn’t tweet a message asking the crowd to calm down and please disperse: lose for Justin, lose for the mall

Now this isn’t the first time criminal charges have been pressed due to something happening on Twitter, but to me, it seems like such a wasted opportunity. If the mall PR people had done it right, been prepared for the visit and asked fans to cue up… Justin could have signed some autographs etc.  It would have been a total win/win. Social media would have triumphed, Justin would have been recognized as a great person to work with, increasing his brand value, and some people would have gotten a chance to meet up with someone they admired.

Instead, egos were at play, people that don’t understand their responsibility and some that may think their responsibility reaches farther than it should.  You can decide for yourself…

Don’t make me angry… you won’t like me when I”m angry. – B.Banner

What is it about losing control that scares us? As a web/marketing person, I too have concerns about losing control over my name or brand (such as it is) and the contents of my various websites.  But when you think about it, you have just as much (or should I say little) control over these things in real life as you do on the ‘net. Someone could spread vile, vicious rumors about you, tell people about something you did wrong, or even interject themselves and their agenda in a conversation about you.

The simple fact is: Conversations happen.  You may or may not know about them, however. Let’s try a little experiment.  Take your brand, whatever brand it is, (the bigger the better, obviously) and google that brand.  Lots of stuff comes up about your brand most of it probably what you’ve put out on the web, or at least authorized to be out on the web. Now, google your brand along with the word “Sucks”.

Chances are, if you’re brand is very well known, there’s going to be a few hits on these results pages. So, this begs the question, does it matter if you lose control over your brand on your own website?  Chances are, if someone is complaining about your product or service you might be better off addressing it instead of trying to hide it or delete the posts. Trying to control your world by deletion and hiding your flaws only results in the Streisand Effect.

I say, embrace your critics, learn from them. Allow them to vent on your site, and above all, talk back to them!  Go ahead and lose a little control. Maybe it’ll be fun. At the very least you’ll learn something.

The web, depending on who you listen to, has either already become, or is rapidly becoming a place where having and maintaining a single presence isn’t enough. The days of strictly using the web to sell widgets, or support the widgets you’ve already are over. Now you have to sell the widget, support the widget, blog about the widget (i.e. be a widget expert) and bild a community around your widget.

How many organizations are prepared to do that? Like someone setting off on a long journey, I’ll fill you in on what you might want to pack to get the job done.

• Set your goal
• Research what your customers really want
• Figure out who’s going to speak to your customers
• Plan and test your site
• Build it!
• Measure and Adjust
• Measure and Adjust

I had to say the last one twice because it’s just that important. Kind of like extra batteries or a spare tire.

Are you prepared to do all this?

Great!  Let’s get started.