Bob Johnson's Blog on Internet Marketing

In the middle of a communications capability review for a client this morning, I made a visit to Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox website in search of specific usability information. Haven't actually found it yet, but the browsing did make me realize yet again how important it is in online communications that websites tend to the basics before the bells and whistles.

We always say we know this. We don't always act like it when we plan to recraft our websites.

A 2005 column reporting the 10 most serious website design mistakes ends with a reminder that's as true now and it was three years ago:

Back to Basics in Web Design http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designmistakes.html

"There's much talk about new fancy "Web 2.0" features on the Internet industry's mailing lists and websites, as well as at conferences. But users don't care about technology and don't especially want new features. They just want quality improvements in the basics:

• text they can read;
• content that answers their questions;
• navigation and search that help them find what they want;
• short and simple forms (streamlined registration, checkout, and other workflow); and
• no bugs, typos, or corrupted data; no linkrot; no outdated content.

Anytime you feel tempted to add a new feature or advanced technology to your site, first consider whether you would get a higher ROI by spending the resources on polishing the quality of what you already have. Most companies, e-commerce sites, government agencies, and non-profit organizations would contribute more to their website's business goals with better headlines than with any new technology (aside from a better search engine, of course)."

Posted by Bob at 09:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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If you've been to one of my "Writing Right for the Web" sessions, you know that an example included in the SEO writing section is about the benefit of creating title tags on your web pages that include something specific about a particular release. Do that and search engines aren't as likely to think that you only have one press release on your website.

Now I've just finished reading a blog post by "collegewebguy" about what you can do to increase the chances that online news services by Google and Yahoo might pick up your own releases. And that involves more steps to create a distinctive identity for each release that's put online.

The post includes the important note that should motivate many people: well over half the population aged 18-29 looks online as their first source for news. And that percent is climbing for people between 30 and 64 as well. These days, if you aren't careful when you take Newsweek or Time out of your mailbox, a light breeze will blow it away. That's called "disappearing ad pages" and it has been happening for years now.

You'll find valuable tips on how to maximize your releases for Google and Yahoo at http://collegewebguy.com/2008/04/01/getting-university-news-picked-up-by-google-news/#comment-610 and you can go on from there to delve deeper at the original sources if you want.

"CollegeWebGuy" is a web designer at University of Arkansas at Little Rock. 

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Time for a little Friday speculation on a fine spring day in Michigan.

A visit to AdAge this morning linked me to an April 14 article at http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=126364 with a title that will scare some people: "It's Web 3.0 and Somebody Else's Content is King."

• The article reports on a new online venture by Tina Brown, of New Yorker and Vanitry Fair fame, to launch an "aggregator" service that people will use to find information on topics that most interest them. Consider it a sophisticated version of present-day search. And an opportunity for focused online advertising.

The scary part of this for traditional communication and public relations plans is that the "aggregation" efforts won't be limited to "just" formal websites. Instead, they will pull content about a particular topic from any place on the web that somebody is creating it. For colleges and universities, that means that it will become even more likely that when people search for something at your school, what comes back will include a Rate My Professors site, a Wikipedia entry, videos on YouTube about your MBA program, and blogs that people write about you.

Even more so than today (when Wikipedia, for instance, is almost always returned by a Google search not far below your official site), you won't be able to control the content that people see about your institution. What's on your own website will become less and less important, especially in the early stages when people explore to build a list of possible "best fit" places to study. You can continue to describe your faculty as if they have sprung forth from Lake Wobegon, but people will pay even less attention to the superlatives than they do now after they've reviewed your Rate My Professors list.

Will "aggregation" services indeed successful in the Web 3.0 world? Various people are busy diasagreeing about that now. But you can be sure that movement toward continued collapse of the Internet walls that separate sources of information will continue.

Two other places are worth a visit if the this topic interests you:

• The Wikipedia page for Web 3.0 for various definitions and predictions of what's to come at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_3
• The Pew Internet report on "Financial Woes Now Overshadow All Other Concerns for Journalists" (not about salaries but the survival of the business model) at http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=403 

Will individual college and university websites remain important? Yes. But their value as an early marketing tool will diminish in Web 3.0. People will visit your sites in the future because they have already put you high on their list of possible places to enroll. The experience they have on your website at that point, and how it compares to your competition, will play a major role in sustaining or diminishing initial interest levels. Two elements will rise in importance: 

• More than before, strong marketing sites will be built around knowledge of the content your future students want to find and the tasks they want to accomplish on your site. That includes, for instance, information about real college costs similar to what a handful of colleges are providing with online cost estimators (see a list of 7 at http://bobjohnsonconsulting.com/blog1/2007/12/5_online_financial_aid_scholar.html).
• You'll have to engage people with web-friendly language when they visit your site. Web editor positions will proliferate in a Web 3.0 world. And that is a very good thing.

Enough for now. More later. A great weekend to everyone.

Posted by Bob at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Nancy Schwartz at http://www.nancyschwartz.com/ is an experienced marketing consultant specializing in not-for-profit organizations. She wrote today looking for assistance with a special 2008 project to help people build strong taglines that improve marketing effectiveness.

Take a few minutes for Nancy's survey. And when you do, be sure to request a copy of the results that she's promising to share with everyone who helps on the project.

From here, best to use Nancy's words:

"In today's competitive marketing environment, nonprofit taglines must be strong enough to get attention and provoke questions.

Effective taglines complement an org's name, convey the unique value its delivers to its community and differentiates it from the competition? (Americorps' "Getting Things Done" is a great example of a tagline that works on all three fronts.)

But more often, nonprofit taglines are vague, ambiguous, over-reaching, too abstract or simply non-existent.

Unfortunately, there’s little available guidance for organizations striving to strengthen their taglines. That's why I'm making a special effort in 2008 to help nonprofit orgs craft better taglines.

Please help me launch this research project by asking your readers to take a few minutes to complete this short survey:
    http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=zjXNjEU9fh1wCcHCZelFYQ_3d_3d

Bob, my report back on responses (which I’ll be glad to share) will highlight trends, best practices and tips. All survey respondents (who request it) will receive a copy.

Again, you’ll find the survey here http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=711542996299.

From my own website reviews, its clear that many colleges and universities can use help with taglines that indeed are often "vague, ambiguous, over-reaching, too abstract or simply non-existent." Indeed, sometimes "non-existent" might be the preferred approach.

Take Nancy's survey now. Her report might help you craft a better tagline when that challenge next arises.

Posted by Bob at 02:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Nancy Schwartz has posted a blog entry with summaries and links to the thoughts of several people involved in online marketing, including yours truly. You'll find an interesting and valuable variety of thought here that will result in stronger video marketing in your communications mix.

The links are in her report on "How to Use Online Video to Strengthen Your Nonprofit Marketing Impact -- Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants" 

Visit http://www.gettingattention.org/my_weblog/2007/09/how-to-strength.html for the review.

Nancy notes that part of the discussion is about the value of amateur vs. professional videos in the marketing effort. I agree 100 percent with her assessment of this:

• "There is an active debate what quality means, and adds, in online video. Some Carnival bloggers hold out for the authenticity of amateur video. My take -- that amateur video will soon become tedious as the novelty of the medium erodes. Expectations for higher-end production values will begin to increase very quickly. I've watched this cycle before, most recently with blogging."

When you visit the blog, be sure to sign for Nancy's "Getting Attention" email newsletter.

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Nancy Schwartz, who writes a fine blog at http://www.gettingattention.org/ about marketing and not-for-profit organizations, is gathering the thoughts of various marketing consultants about the role of video in online marketing. That question fits right in with my recent post listing several college presidents who have videos on YouTube and with various uses of video I've found on college websites over the past year.

And so here are my speculative thoughts based on what I've seen so far:

• The spread of broadband access in the home is making it easy for people to access video on their home computers. Broadband access is in large part responsible for the tremendous growth in YouTube, at a much higher rate than other social networking sites.
• Comcast, Yahoo, and similar websites have already made video an everyday expectation for websites. When people visit the websites of non-profit organizations, including colleges and universities, they will expect to find video used to help "tell the tale" of the organization.
• What kind of videos? Best are real examples of the organization at work building houses or saving animals or improving water quality or helping orphans or placing students in internship experiences.
• What videos won't work well? Don't spend time having your president or CEO or volunteer head filmed reading the equivalent of a "message from the president" or "our mission statement" or anything else that isn't "real" information that interests real people outside your organization. As with any effective content on the web, videos are best produced with the interests of the external audience in mind, rather than those within the organization.
• Invest in quality production. You'll find great and horrible videos on YouTube. You definitely want to be as near to the "great" end of the scale as resources permit. Just like the photography used in print publications, this isn't a place for amateur efforts.

Let me close with three examples of strong video use in higher education that can be adapted for any not-for-profit organization:

• Boston University uses videos on the home page at http://www.bu.edu/ under the heading of "Learn More about Boston University" to let faculty, students, and staff introduce academics, social life, and the Boston area to visitors. Much better than the usual "About Us" content on college websites.
• At the University of North Carolina, the Kenan-Flagler Business School at http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/programs/emba/advance/roi.cfm uses video to let students talk about how they advance their careers. This is a good examples of "story telling" content that's more effective delivered in video than written out as text.
• Don't be too serious. Check this video from the president at Dickinson College on how to tie a bowtie at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unmiqRbEIUc (Dickinson has an elaborate plan for the use of video on YouTube that you'll find at http://www.dickinson.edu/news/video/)

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Reading through my email newsletters this morning and found a valuable entry from DM News reporting the successful use of email as part of an overall marketing campaign. The goal was increasing participation in fund raising events for breast cancer research sponsored by the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and the National Philanthropic Trust Breast Cancer Fund.

The complete article is at http://www.dmnews.com/cms/dm-news/e-mail-marketing/41350.html

Note these highlights:

• Email was part of an integrated "multichannel" campaign that included direct response TV, radio, billboards, newspaper, direct mail, lead generation, and search.
• Email recipients were selected according to demographic and geographic criteria to build as accurate a target audience as possible of people who were likely to take part in fund-raising walks.
• A preliminary email was sent (that included an opt-out choice) announcing people would receive "a few marketing messages over the next few weeks."
• Emails were then sent every second week over an 8 week span.
• Results of the email component were tracked every two weeks by matching email registrations and requests for information against the master file of people receiving the email messages.

All of these steps can of course be used for email campaigns by colleges and universities, particularly that first step announcing the campaign and giving people a chance to opt-out right from the start.

Posted by Bob at 09:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Late on a fabulous Friday afternoon here in Michigan. I've just read an article by Sean Carton prepared especially for non-profit organizations that know what they should be doing on their website but often don't have the money to do it. Or think they don't have the money.

Years ago in Baltimore at an AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education, Sean gave a refreshingly different keynote talk using nothing but a few notes on cards, a lot of insight, and quite a bit of charm. Since then he's done a stint as a communications dean at Philadelphia University and now he's back in the consulting world. And he's still refreshing.

In an April ClickZ article, Sean repeats "Seven Ways to Get the Most Out of the Web on a Budget" from a presentation communicators at non-profit organizations with limited budgets.

Two of the points are especially noteworthy:

• "Your Website is your most important communications vehicle, Period."
• "If you have a dollar to spend on communications, spend it online."
• "Stop printing. Just stop."

To move in this direction of course takes Courage and Fortitude. And also a basic awareness of what's happening in the communications world today. Let's not argue about whether or not print is dead. It isn't. But let's also not argue about the consequences of clinging too closely to old print communication patterns and then not having resources to create website capabilities expected by people today. If you don't have the resources for both, then you have to cut back on print budgets to help build the web communications budget you need. And just maybe, that reduction will be drastic.

Sean's other 4 points are worth reading about as well, along with his further comments on each of the points above. Find them at http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3625576

Posted by Bob at 02:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Always hard to imagine ahead of time, but 3.5 hours sure does wiz on by. In this session we covered the basics of Writing Right for the Web, Search Engine Optimization, Persuasive Web Advertising and Continuing Engagement.

Web 2.0 and Audience Content Control

Lots of questions and comments right from the start. Hard to say which topic was of most interest, but there was much discussion on the advent of Web 2.0 and the possible clash between increased generation of content by students enrolled in educational programs and an apprehension that content not generated by the organization might not be the "right" content for the web.

The good news is that most of the 60 or so people in this session are actively involved in preparing content for their websites, either placing it directly on the web or sending it along elsewhere.

2 Basic Design Examples in Continuing Education

And of course there's always the question of time spent on design vs. time spent on content, with design continuing to most often win out.

• I used the example of Ryerson University on Wikipedia to point out that while design isn't unimportant, some of the most popular websites today clearly rely more on content that advanced design features.
• Another example was from the very well designed front page of the Indiana University Fort Wayne continuing education website.

Check the Ryerson example at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryerson_University

And the IUFW front page for continuing education at http://www.ipfw.edu/dcs/

Posted by Bob at 04:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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Nancy Schwartz is a smart person who works in the world of marketing for nonprofit organizations. That includes not only the education arena but also extends out to nonprofits of just about any area. You can get a better picture by visiting her website at http://www.nancyschwartz.com/ 

Right now Nancy is organizing a "Blog Carnival" focused on how nonprofits can get people's attention in a world that's saturated and then some by the constant bliizzard of marketing messages that's out and about the land. And marketers, of course, are always thinking about new ways to increase the density of the blizzard. Keep a close eye on your cell phones and PDAs as they merge together, increase capacity, and start to bring you new marketing messages.

Thinking about Nancy's request... what words of wisdom can a variety of consultants offer to those responsible for marketing success at nonprofits... I decided not focus on activities to get attention directly from new people but instead to suggest paying maximum attention to people who are already engaged with your organization. And using their favorable word of mouth to use your stellar service in the nonpofit universe to recommend you to others with similar interests.

Let's focus on people who donate money or volunteer time. Here are some elements of online communications that come to mind:

• Increase emphasis on interactive online communications.
• Survey (short survey!) donors of every level quarterly for feedback on an issue of importance.
• Be sure to send summaries of the survey results back to the donors.
• Start a blog for donors to talk among themselves about the issues of your organization and let them talk to one another as frankly as you can tolerate. (If you can't tolerate frankness, that's another problem and you'd best not start a blog.)
• Make sure donors can get notices of new blog postings by RSS feed.
• Advertise the existence of the blog whenever solicitations to new donors are made.
• Prominently identify the blog on the first page of your organization's website.

One of Nancy's questions was how we might communicate complex new ideas.

The blog approach can give some key marketing answers to that question. First, post a question about the complex issue on your blog, including if needed a link to more information about the topic. Then, ask blog participants to offer comments and questions. Do all this before you do something more formal. And use the answers in the blog to craft the message you will prepare for the broader community. No, it won't be "scientific" but if your blog is reasonably active it should give you some key insight into what's so complex it confounds people and what might be easier to understand than you thought.

Make sure you have a place on your website for volunteers to share stories in their own words about working with your organization. Individual volunteer stories are far better than the usual press releases to send believable messages about good deeds done. Many nonprofits are already doing this. But not enough.

New people are more likely to support with dollars or time an organization that (1) gives prominent attention to others who already support it and (2) gives new prospective supporters an easy way to tap into evidence of that ongoing support. Interactive online communications today is the best way to do just that.

That's it for now. My "Comments" are turned off for now while we puzzle out some spam issues but you can comment direct to me at bob@bobjohnsonconsulting.com

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