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Why Businesses need a Social Media Strategy

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 21:00:00 GMT

Why Businesses need a Social Media Strategy

The explosion of digital media tools, such as social networks, blogs, video sites, discussion forums and review sites, is taking the world by storm. Consumers have moved from traditional means of sharing and receiving information to using social media as their main form of communication.

Likewise, the term “Social Media Marketing” has become a resounding concept among the marketing community. Many companies have started leveraging social media marketing to varying degrees – from monitoring their online reputation to developing and nurturing a loyal online community. Meanwhile, other companies have sat back and done nothing while social media continues to strengthen its presence in consumers’ lives.

Social Media Strategy

Most people search online to research a product, service or company before making a purchase. Often their research starts at the company’s website, but it doesn’t end there. The second step is usually to visit review sites and discussion forums. They read reviews, ask questions and receive feedback from other consumers before ever making contact with a company. The reality is people are converging online to read, chat, share and complain – whether your company has a presence online or not .

Your company needs to be there first, listening to their feedback, responding and initiating activities that encourage them to engage with your brand.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing

Affordable marketing – There’s no need for a large budget to conduct social media marketing
Viral nature – Users can easily share your messages with their friends with a click of a button
Enhances brand – Through social media you can build and enhance your online reputation
Builds credibility – User generated endorsements are more credible than traditional advertising
Increases traffic – A well-planned social media strategy will drive more traffic to your website
Engages customers – Connect with your customers and respond to their feedback in real-time

Due to its instantaneous nature, social media has the capacity to expand the reach of your company’s messages as well as attract and hold the attention of a vast demographic of people, especially those who have grown numb to traditional media.

But in order for organisations to capitalise on Social Media it needs a Social Media Strategy for both internal staff and external prospects and clients. A Social Media Strategy should define the following:

Organisations objectives
Roles and Responsibilities
Training strategy
Social Media tools
Social Media Policy
Measurement Processes

WSI – Internet Visibility has developed a Social Media Strategy Kit to help organisations understand the Social Media landscape and details all the relevant tools and processes, please contact us for more information.

Horace France is a Principal Consultant with WSI – Internet Visibility Consulting an Internet Marketing firm based in London and works with SMEs to implement best practice Internet Visibility Marketing strategies to increase lead generation, manage online reputation and customer communication with massive ROI.

Benefits of Sharing Content

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 21:54:00 GMT

Benefits of Sharing Content

Is your business using social media channels like YouTube and SlideShare? Videos have become the ‘must have’ tool for personalising your internet content, is great for demonstrations and presentations to your target audience. Videos with voiceovers work particularly well, especially for technical topics or marketing letters.

Unlock the potential of these powerful tools to build your online presence, and maximise the returns from these social media platforms.

Content has become a major asset and is the heart of an effective web presence. If your content isn’t right and of good quality, your prospects simply won’t engage with it in the way you hope. When people link to you, they’re linking to your content. When they share via social networks, they’re sharing your content.

Start with identifying what content will be interesting to your audience. Then consider which platforms and tools are going to give your articles, videos or presentations the best chance to be seen and shared, thus adding to links to your site which the search engines love. A Content Plan or Blueprint will help to identify a series of Topics that is relevant to you target market and the best ways to reach them.

Implement a timely response strategy with a commitment to engaging viewers and commentators will strengthen those relationships with your community. Take the relationship building potential of the social media community to a new level by creating individual responses to viewers who commented on the originals.

Take lessons from platform-specific social media platforms, such as what people “like” and “dislike”. Initiate discussions about what’s popular and what’s not. Your viewers are voting with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down — try to initiate a dialog about why they vote as they do.

Search for people and company profiles in your field and start “following” them. Review their content and provide them with feedback, favourite presentations or videos that you really liked. Comment on them, provide them with a link to your own content, presentations or videos on the same topic and ask for feedback.

Best Practices for Sharing Media Content Online

Quality over Quantity

Most companies get into the ‘quantity versus quality’ count of followers or fans. It’s always best to have Quality followers, they will engage with you, give you honest feedback and could even become your brand evangelists.

Engage with Customers

Customer service and engagement overall is a new and genuine form of un-marketing. Customers, prospects, and influencers are already engaging with others to contribute, learn, and discover. Try using engagement as a fast, free, and powerful way to reach and serve customers.

Give to gain

Successful social media marketing programs involve listening and participation. That participation centers around giving value before expecting anything in return.

Make it Portable, Searchable & Shareable

Avoid the mindset that your content must be published only on your site and completely controlled by you. Viewers are using multiple channels and Social platforms to find relevant content and Good content should be built to travel, so users should be able to download, embed or share it as they like. This will help to build you reputation with your community and also demonstrate your expertise in your sector plus helping to build those all important inbound links to your website.

Globally, companies have recognised Social Media Marketing as an exploding marketing platform and are utilising it to creatively enhance their marketing and branding.

Website Design

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 22:42:00 GMT

Most web designers can develop a website using modern development tools. The problem is most of these websites don't provide any real benefit or achieve the benefits that they were meant to deliver to the owner. The following tips should help to take your website into a great website:

1. Make it stand out
Make sure that a viewer perceives your website to be an enlightening and engaging experience. People tend to retain information and view the source with more significance if they learn something that can be conveyed in a social conversation. This also helps with word-of-mouth and viral marketing if you create something interesting that will leave a lasting impression on your target audience.

2. Segment your target audience
Remember who your key constituents are and always bear in mind how they will most probably receive a message. If you have three broad customer groups, create visual effects that will lead the website user down a specific path through the website. Make sure you’ve got the right graphics and brand names on the right pages. It is usually not what one says, but how one says it.

3. Don’t go haywire with colour
Use colours and text that are a standard on all operating systems. Using intricate text and colours makes sense as it attracts attention but this is only usable if all computers can view this aesthetically appealing attribute. Some colours are easier to read on a screen than others.

4. Keep it simple
Don’t start adding 1000 pages if you don’t have a clear content plan. If the client has a lot of info, make sure you agree on page groupings and navigation beforehand. In this case, it is best to advise the client about how website users will see their pages. Readers only skim through web pages until they see something that is applicable to their specific search.

5. Don’t forget the basics
Some web designers get so wrapped up in animation, effects and sound that they forget some of the most basic details of building a website. Always have a section designated for contact details. It does not matter why individuals want to contact the owner of the website, as long as they are enabled to do so. The interactive aspect of the web needs to be exploited so that the positive effects of two-way symmetrical communication can be utilised.

With all the customisability of the world now at our finger tips, consumers are expecting more from organisations. They want an interactive experience of the organisation where they can actually get a feel of the culture and what an organisation stands for.

Paid advertising and how a little can go a long way

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 00:00:00 GMT

As budgets for marketing shrink, we need to make every penny pay, making each pay-per-click advert profitable. PPC is a tried and trusted marketing technique for your web presence that has been proved to attract new customers. Whether you’ve tried it or not, we have all seen paid advertising.

On all of the main search engines, e.g Google, Yahoo, when you type in a search term the listing that appears in the centre of your screen, is called the natural or organic search. To the right of the screen, and also sometimes the top few listings above your organic list, are the sponsored links or pay-per-click links. Advertisers have paid for their website or landing page to appear in this keyword search. The search engine only receives payment if you click on the link (pay-per-click).

A well-managed PPC campaign, with the best choice of keywords can bring in a large volume of targeted traffic. Start by really understanding your customers and what they are looking for by doing your homework and researching your keywords. To discover which keywords to use, there’s help online from several free sources, together with member-only paid tools. With the help of these tools you can find that the words you may use to search your site are not necessarily the ones your customers will use. The most expensive keywords, but still only costing cents, are the most searched ones.

When running advertising campaigns, advertisers bid on keywords they want to use, this has the knock-on effect of the price you will pay. An experienced and trained Internet marketing professional like your WSI Consultant, understands the value of good long-tail keywords, (a short phrase relevant to your product or business rather than just keywords) that reaches your target audience by being more specific, and also has the added advantage of not being as expensive.

Begin your PPC advertising by identifying your goals and then prepare your campaign with this knowledge. Whether your goal is to sell a product, receive calls or emails, or gather subscribers to a newsletter or online feed, decide on the outcome you require before you start. When you know your goals, the PPC campaign can be tested and refined at any stage, copy can be changed, call to action and landing page altered, to ensure your adverts help you reach your goal.

PPC is inexpensive and a fully measurable method of advertising. WSI Consultants are trained and certified to use advanced tools and techniques like Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter to help you make money through paid advertising online. Contact your local WSI Consultant to utilise the power of PPC for your online business.

Social Media as a B2B Marketing Tool

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Even as the Internet generation move from email and surfing to social and embrace instant messaging, networking and podcasting, don’t be fooled into thinking this social media explosion is only for individuals. Figures from a survey in 2009 showed that 88% were using Social Media for marketing purposes.

In the past B2B marketing required elaborate studies and test surveys to find their audience. Now with the immense potential of social media, greater insights into consumer perceptions are readily available. Having an online community discuss your merits, not only is word of mouth, it’s word of many mouths. A small snippet of 140 characters spread on Twitter can launch your products and services far more efficiently and widely than before. To know more about how your business strategies can benefit from social media marketing, watch our webinar within the free WSI Member Zone: Leveraging Social Media to Enhance Your Marketing Strategies.

With the many ways of contacting your target audience, integration is a key aspect of your formula, which will combine all areas into a marketing campaign. A regular and systematic approach will increase the impact of all that you do. Combine your online social media with content available offline and any other online marketing. Coordinate your content so that all areas complement, it will then be more easily recognised. Online community discussions that you participate in, forums, blogs and brand-relevant video help to maximise your presence on line, creating results that can be measured and increasingly, become profitable.

Because it’s all happening now, you have instant feedback, about your product or services. This allows insight into what the consumer wants from your product or service, giving you the opportunity to change things, if needs be, and expand on the good aspects while modifying or rectifying problem areas. The advantages of having so much insight into the customers mind just has to be utilised. Whether a positive or negative response, it provides an advantage, which you can build on.

Don't be overwhelmed by all the talk about online community building and social media marketing. Yes, it’s not easy to get it done right on your own, but nothing your local WSI Consultant can’t get you started on. Get in touch today.

Giving your website a healthcheck!

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 00:00:00 GMT

When you have achieved the website that ticks all the boxes, looking good and really pleasing to the eye, then we need to check how healthy it is.

It may look good but is it able to draw more traffic and then influence customers to buy?

We need a site that is being found by the right people, those that want your product or service, and can then deliver what they need efficiently. A healthy site will be effective in attracting customers and will influence customer conversion keeping them returning time and time again, bringing others along with them. Today, there is a plethora of design software, skills and multimedia technologies available to help make your website look good. Putting everything in order before you invite people in is a must, as nothing is more off-putting than a site where links are broken and care has not been taken in producing a copy free of errors. A site that’s easy to navigate with clear instruction and information that is up-to-date all add to a visitors’ experience, making it a success for you and for them.

You site should lead the way and by defining your business objectives and matching them to your target audience you can optimise your site accordingly. Always monitor and measure your results so you can determine whether your efforts are having the results that your require, to convert visitors to customers. If you find that your site isn’t bringing people to your door and conversion rates are poor, here are a few things that you can consider:

Offer estimates for delivery times
Offer in-stock information on the product page
Answer e-mail questions within 24 hours
If you have a physical store, offer in-store pick-up
Free shipping for certain areas, bulk orders or special packages
Provide shipping costs in checkout process
Customer Reviews
Four clicks from find to finish, in the checkout process.

Web statistics can tell you how many clicks you have on a button but a WSI Webscan will suggest actions for improvement. Using the WSI WebScan™ report, your WSI Internet Consultant can give you an accurate picture of:

Your business' ranking in the top search engines as compared to your competitors'
Key elements on your site that may be preventing your customers from staying and converting
Recommendations on how to improve your competitiveness on the Internet

To secure your competitive advantage, contact your local WSI Consultant today to request your WSI WebScan.

Landing Page design to increase customer conversions

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 00:00:00 GMT

With the statistics telling us that we only have between 2 and 8 seconds to impress our prospective customers, we need to make sure that our website landing page really attracts and doesn’t turn people off. After all the time spent building a website and getting people to view our site, the last thing we need is for them to disappear in the first click.

That's why we need our landing page to not only be attractive but it must be effective and work as a conversion tool. It needs to attract, creating a good first impression but go beyond this and hold their attention, so that they stay and purchase or leave their details for follow-up. Today’s new web design tools and technologies open up a world of creative design with which effective websites can be built that achieves results. Your landing page needs to attract new customers but then to translate into positive action, which leads to conversion.

As with all good marketing, you need to know what you want to achieve before you can build your route there. Whether your customers come via PPC, email newsletter, or online banners they have made the decision to do this and arrive at your website. It’s up to you then to make your landing page take them where you want them to go. You do need to know where that is before you start writing copy or designing. Through the process of persuasion, with your compelling copy and not-to-be-missed offers, you will succeed in converting your browsers to customers.

(here's an example of a landing page, optimised for email list sign up)

You’ve got the customers there and buying but a landing page doesn’t stop at conversion, you need to monitor results so you can tell whether the page is working at full potential. Your investment in the site needs to be carefully assessed to ensure good ROI and that your time and money isn’t being wasted. Holding their attention may mean a small tweak of the site and be the difference between click away or buy.

Increasingly the number of visitors to website homepages is decreasing and is expected to reduce further. Therefore a landing page must cater for all types of visitors. Don’t leave your customers with any doubt about how they obtain your special offers, free offers or products/services. If the way is too convoluted, messy or indistinct in any way, they may well disappear never to return. With a well thought out landing page you can differentiate between your visitors, learning what motivates them, their likes and preferences until you get the right mix and conversion.

To know more about the essentials and best practices for landing pages, read the WSI Whitepaper titled "Landing Page Design: Common Mistakes and Tested Techniques" (available for free at our WSI Member Zone).

With the complexity of media vehicles and Web user trends, testing the efficacy of a landing page is critical to ensure your ROI. WSI Consultants have been trained by industry leading firms like Google, Yahoo and MarketingSherpa to design and test revenue generating landing pages for businesses like yours. To make sure that your landing page speaks to your audience and leads them to conversion, contact your local WSI Consultant today.

Why relevant content can boost your visibility across both Search and Social Media channels

Thu, 18 Nov 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Internet users are growing more demanding - they want relevant information, easily and quickly. They are no longer content with surfing and searching for information on search engines. They also now look to confirm their online findings by interacting with other folks using social media.

For instance, the latest interactive multimedia game may show up on the first page of search engines but the person searching will most likely proceed to blogs, forums and Twitter type of channels to hear what people are saying about the game.

As a company, you can take the critical step to ensure that the information you provide about your business or brand is put across in a user-friendly and relevant manner - not just on your website but also via blog articles, blog posts, Tweets, a Facebook page, perhaps even a video presentation on YouTube. If "content is king" was true in the past, it just got further reinforced!

The important thing to remember is that while you may know best about your business, you may not always figure out the best way to communicate it to your target audience. Your best bet is to employ the services of a professional web copywriter or Internet marketing consultant who offers expert help with search marketing content. Compelling, persuasive copy with clear call to action can effect higher conversions from your search marketing and social media campaigns.

Content that drives results can mean the difference between whether your audience surfs your online space or turfs it.

Your local WSI Consultant is trained in both search and social media marketing and can help you discover that critical common ground between these two advanced Internet marketing fields. Call now to set up a free, no obligation consultation.

The Ins and Outs of Email Marketing - Part 2

Sun, 14 Nov 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Last week we looked at why email marketing is so important for small business owners in today's tough marketing environment. . Surveys have shown that email marketing earns the highest return on investment over search engine marketing and direct mail. It offers lower costs and a broader reach than most other marketing formats. Email marketing can help small businesses stay competitive with larger companies, since it encourages real relationships with their customers.

This week we will publish our top strategies on how to make email marketing a success in your business.

Know Your Audience

The first stage of planning a successful email marketing campaign should be to determine your target audience. To make an email campaign effective, you must understand what your audience truly wants and needs, not simply what you would like to tell them. Many marketers mistakenly make their message too broad, thinking that it will help them reach a wider audience. The truth is the more specifically you target your audience, the more they will relate to your message. If your product or service would best suit homeowners, don’t spend your time marketing to those who live in apartment buildings. The easiest way to learn these details is by asking relevant questions on your sign-up page.

Don’t Let Your First Impression Be Your Last

Even the most carefully thought-out email content will go to waste if the subject line doesn’t persuade recipients to open the email. Your subject line is the first part of your marketing campaign that your audience sees, yet, more often than not, it is the least creative aspect of the entire campaign. Learning the number of opened emails sent in a marketing campaign is a testament to the effectiveness of the email’s subject line. The best subject lines are short, mention your brand name, and create interest in the content. The subject line should answer the “what’s in it for me” question for the recipient; it should appeal directly to them by stating the benefits of your offer or information contained in the email.

Make it Memorable

Once your email has been opened, your content must speak for itself. Just like your subject line should speak to your audience directly, your content should answer the most important question the reader has: “Why should I care?” Make your content memorable. Each email should deliver something useful to your audience, be it details about an upcoming promotion or information they would find interesting or entertaining.

An important key to email marketing success is keeping your message short. Long emails will be put aside to ‘be read later,’ and will most likely wind up in their deleted folder. Keep it short and keep your audience interested. If you have a lot to say and don’t feel you can edit down, give a brief overview of the most interesting and relevant points, and then direct readers to your website for more information.

Determine what you want your audience to walk away with or do after reading your email, and end your email with a “call to action” that will prompt them to do something. Ultimately, if your email is relevant to them and keeps them interested, they are more likely to turn into your customer. After all, that’s why you sent them the email in the first place!

For a no-obligation consultation on how email marketing can enhance your business call WSI Top Visibility today!

The Ins and Outs of Email Marketing - Part 1

Thu, 11 Nov 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Marketing techniques are constantly evolving – what was once considered effective may not be current with today’s best practices and customer demands. Businesses that choose to ignore these changing trends by not updating their marketing strategies are not in tune with their customers – for small business owners, this can mean the difference between marketing success and marketing failure.

The Move to Email Marketing

An important trend in marketing today is the move to email marketing. Telemarketing, once a top choice for many companies, is gradually being phased out worldwide, as ‘Do Not Call’ legislation is being passed in many countries. Companies with lower marketing budgets need to find alternative ways to get their message to their potential customers. Email marketing is becoming an increasingly important part of the marketing tool box for small businesses, as it is a proven method to level the playing field between them and their larger competitors.

Since mass media advertising is undisputedly expensive and difficult to measure the results of, email marketing is becoming the logical choice of small businesses. Surveys have shown that email marketing earns the highest return on investment over search engine marketing and direct mail. It offers lower costs and a broader reach than most other marketing formats.

Email marketing can help small businesses stay competitive with larger companies, since it encourages real relationships with their customers.

One important advantage of email marketing is its measurability.

For companies whose marketing budgets are small, it is necessary to ensure that all funding is spent on campaigns that can be proven effective. There are many different email campaign metrics that can be measured, however, the most popular metrics are:

Number of successfully delivered emails (delivery rate)
Number of opened emails (open rate)
Number of recipients who responded to the email (“click-throughs”)
Number of recipients who unsubscribed (unsubscribes)

Want to find out more how to make email marketing a success for your business? Come back to this Blog next week, when we will publish our top tips on how to make your email marketing super-successful. Or call one of our WSI Top Visibility consultants today for an in-depth consultation, specific to your needs.

How your business can engage audiences with online video

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Judging by the astounding growth of online video viewership (close to 125% in 2009), there is no doubt about the tremendous opportunity that has emerged for marketers. Sure, online video still has a long way to go before it gets close to television viewership but eMarketer predicts that online video viewership will nearly double to 11.8 billion total hours in 2010.

As a business owner, you strive to educate your customers and prospects about your products and services. Now think about one of the most effective ways that people learn - it's the interactive audio-visual medium (a.k.a. video)! There can be no better way to show the use of your product, make a presentation about a new concept, share information and ideas to encourage better utilization of your products and services, promote an event, discuss a client success story or case study, and so much more. Using the combined power of voice, text, image, music and perhaps, a little bit of drama (for effect!), a simple video can engage your target audience like nothing else can.

If you're thinking, "Video is expensive", "I don’t have time to create videos", "Video marketing is too slow", "Video takes too much technical knowledge, skills and effort"... STOP! From schoolteachers to chefs, MLM pros to fitness instructors, chocolate makers to computer manufacturers, everyone has used online video and very successfully at that. You don't need to hire an expert videographer or have fancy cameras, lights and software. There are ways to create and market online videos quickly, affordably and efficiently. You just need to know what market trends prevail and which best practices yield the best results.

To find out more, read the WSI Whitepaper titled “Online Video Marketing: How Video is Changing the Way We Find Prospects and Convert Sales Online” available for free at our WSI Member Zone.
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How Pay-per-click (PPC) and Web Analytics work best together

Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 GMT

An overview of PPC and Web Analytics

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising can also be described as Point of Interest advertising - you are aiming to catch your customers' attention at their highest point of interest - right when they are searching for you! It is an advertising model in which sponsors acquire online ad space, but are only charged by the host when a search user clicks on the ad.
Web Analytics gives you data that you can leverage to better understand how visitors are interacting with your website. It enables you to gauge metrics such as the percentage share of industry visitors to your site; the campaigns competitors are running and how well they work; benchmarking search marketing; industry conversion rates, and more.

Web Analytics reports primarily throw light on: Visitors, Traffic and Web Content. You can measure data with regard to critical factors such as:

Time spent on site
Site bounce rate
Direct traffic
Referring sites
Search engine traffic
Unique (first time) visitors
Average page views per visit
Top landing pages
Top Exit Pages
Paid and Unpaid Keywords / Phrases

You can group your visitors by paid search and organic traffic, geographic regions, by separate landing pages, genders (if you have products that cater to specific genders), age, etc. A big plus that’s common to both Web Analytics and PPC is segmentation - the process of looking at specific groups of visitors, analysing their behaviour separately and targeting their needs with different PPC ads.

At every stage of running a PPC campaign, you can test the results to tweak and refine your ad copy, landing page or conversion mechanism and call to action until you achieve the set goals. Web Analytics equips you with the insights you need to be able to do this.

WSI Top Visibility consultants are trained experts who can generate comprehensive reports using your analytics program. These reports will show you the actual search phrases people used before finding your PPC ad and eventually getting to your website. By using advanced keyword research tools more phrases and long tail keywords can be identified for your campaign to bid on. You can literally take a PPC campaign, expand the keywords from dozens to hundreds and watch the traffic increase dramatically. Best part is, you will also see your average cost-per-click (CPC) go down. More revenue, more savings, more conversions! Call us now to set up a free, no obligation consultation.

Public Relations and Social Media: combining powerful forces to boost credibility

Tue, 02 Nov 2010 15:03:00 GMT

An overview of Public Relations

Public Relations (PR) is defined as the art or science of establishing and promoting a favourable relationship with the public. "Art" because it takes trained skills and finesse, "Science" because it requires a methodical, strategic and consistent plan of action that is proven to deliver success. Unlike advertising where publicity for a company or individual is paid for across select media, PR is unpaid publicity with an unmatched power to influence your target audience. Being a third-party endorsement of your business credentials, PR can have a huge impact on your brand reputation - but it needs to be managed strategically.

Reputation is a Result of Perception

...hearing and seeing is believing

Image management or reputation management is really a case of managing perceptions. How your target audience (public) perceives your brand is what decides whether positive ties (relations) will emerge, grow and flourish. An airline may have a long-standing safety record with no major accidents in its history. And yet, bad food, discourteous service on board or even seemingly insignificant elements like poor sound quality of announcements can lead passengers to doubt the pilot's skill or aircraft's technical quality. Unreasonable perhaps, yet true and not much anyone can do about it without good PR management!

Effective public relations, both offline, online and in combination with social media must follow a cyclical approach of:

Research - Make an informed choice of which PR and social media channels are best suited to get your message across. Different stakeholders for your organization will frequent varied media based on their needs, interests and solution seeking efforts. Thorough research can help you decide on critical factors like timing, reach and forum / platform for interaction.
Strategic Planning - This is the stage where you analyse your research to gauge audience motivations. Plan your PR messaging or work on an action plan of what to say, how to say it, when and where.
Skilful Implementation - Any good PR exercise leverages a positive voice. This could be a leading news publication writing an article about your company, your CEO (or official spokesperson) being interviewed on TV or radio, a YouTube video of a happy customer offering a testimonial while demonstrating the use of your product, bloggers expressing their satisfaction (excitement?) about your service, and so on. No matter which one or combination of many voices it is, PR doesn't just happen; it needs to be supervised. Of course, you can get lucky and a great PR piece may come out of nowhere; but if you let it go nowhere after that, you've lost an opportunity!
Evaluation - You plan your PR strategy with specific goals and objectives in mind. So after each PR deliverable is complete, it makes sense to evaluate the effectiveness of your exercise in relationship building.
Measurement - How far does your PR campaign take you towards achieving overall brand reputation enhancement? Even if you didn’t spend money to garner PR and social media publicity, account for your valuable time and resources. Measuring ROI with criteria like media touch points and outreach of positive messages helps determine what's working and what's not.
Continuity - Sporadic or random PR exercises can only generate short-term and short-lived publicity. Reputed brands are built on consistent and sustained PR initiatives.

WSI Top Visibility consultants are trained and experienced in online PR and reputation management. Contact us now to set up a free, no obligation PR and social media consultation for your business.

eCommerce isn’t iust for Big Business: sell where your customers want to buy!

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 23:00:00 GMT

As a consumer, when you want to research a product or service, where is the first place you look? More than likely, you don’t head out to a store and compare features, prices, and benefits with the help of a salesperson. Today, most consumers head online as their first step to making a purchase decision. We do our research online, we compare prices and reviews, and today more than ever, we even purchase online.

Now, as a small to medium sized business owner, what does that mean to you? If consumers are increasingly doing their purchasing online, and you have a product or service to sell… well, it just makes sense that you make your products and services available when and where your customers are looking.

A recent survey conducted by Yahoo! revealed that approximately 92% of consumers who go online agreed that "it is important for a small business to have an Internet presence." As a savvy business owner, you have no doubt taken steps to optimise your website with keywords to ensure that when your customers decide to research online, they will find your website over your competition’s site.

An effectively optimised website attracts traffic at a crucial time in the sales decision process – during the research stage. Consumers are weighing their options, formulating opinions, and deciding what they really need in a product or service. If they have come to your site looking to make an educated decision, why not make it as easy as possible for them to decide to do business with you and purchase now, without moving away from their personal computer? An effective website with eCommerce functionality makes it easier for your customers to decide to buy from you.

When asked why they don’t have eCommerce functionality in their websites, many SMEs cite that they thought eCommerce was only for big businesses, not for businesses like theirs. In fact, this couldn’t be father from the truth. The Internet is the greatest equaliser for SMEs, since a small business’ virtual ‘storefront’ occupies the same space as their biggest competition. eCommerce can help a smaller business actually take back their share of the market from large corporations. A well-designed eCommerce website can help your business tap into this ever-growing business trend, no matter if your business has a staff of one, ten or fifty. As long as the eCommerce function is user-friendly, your customers won’t care how big your business is. If you make it easy for them to do business with you, they will. It’s that simple.

Even if they see the benefits of eCommerce, some business owners simply don’t feel their staff is equipped to assess their needs effectively and implement eCommerce for their business. In fact, when asked about the top barriers stopping them from engaging in eCommerce, the second highest answer among SMEs was “lack of skilled talent”. In this situation where specialized skills and knowledge just isn’t available internally, it is advisable to work with an outside expert.

An Internet business consultant, like those from WSI, can work with your business to determine the unique needs of your business and to provide an Internet Solution that is robust, scalable to your business, and effective. WSI Consultants have a wide range of products and services to offer SMEs that will help make their business prosper online. Contact us today to find out more!

Online video is not all about what you can show…

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 23:00:00 GMT

...it's about what your audience can imagine!

Google's 2010 Super Bowl Ad was a 52 second video. If you haven't seen it before, take a quick look now.

Lost in Paris aren't you? The video didn't do that. You did! As your eyes followed the text and online search on your screen, your mind wandered off picturing everything from chocolate to coffee, Le Louvre to the Eiffel Tower, Parisian models to French couture, and more! See how plain text scrolling on a screen and simple, really subtle, unobtrusive music can have that effect on you? No images, no photographs, no fancy graphics or use of colour, and yet, the video makes you see so much, within the realm of your own imagination! That’s the power of online video.

Sure, Google is one of the biggest, most well known companies in the world today and they paid an astronomical figure to play this video during Super Bowl. (CBS charged 3 million dollars for a 30 second commercial!). But think about it, you could create a video like that sitting in your own office or home. The most important thing is to get your brand into the mind of your customer. And to do that, you have to think like the customer and find a niche that you’d like to occupy.

Understanding market trends and following best practices in online video marketing can help you gain terrific results without having to spend too much time, money or effort on it.

We here at WSI have a wealth of experience in Internet marketing and can help your business take advantage of online video - get in touch today!