posted by Nicolette Beard @ 12:27 PM
One of the most challenging aspects of owning or managing a website is the consistent need for new content.
Unless a website is frequently updating its pages with new product information or service offerings, it will see its influence, with both readers and search engines, decline over time. We talked about the hazards of becoming a “tombstone” web property in a recent post.
I’d like to share ways to generate content that not only will help you maximize your website’s visibility, but also improve its usefulness to your visitors.
Leveraging Your Digital Assets
I’ve borrowed a page from the so-called “Internet marketing gurus,” who’ve mastered the art of re-purposing their “must-have” e-book. You, too, can leverage your existing content and enjoy better search results at the same time.
There are portions of your site that are easy to forget: a letter to shareholders, pictures of the company sales convention, a podcast of a new product demo, etc. You may not realize that this content can be optimized for more search value. These are your digital assets. They took just as much time and money to develop as your user-friendly navigation or your killer app.
Optimizing Images
If you’ve paid for professional photography and own the rights, you need to start earning back the money you paid by optimizing those images for search engines. Allow the search engines to reach the directory they live in, and offer a plain image behind any that are displayed in Flash enhancers, so they can be indexed.
You can also leverage your images in social media profiles such as Flickr or Photobucket. I knew a photographer who had a limited budget but wanted to showcase his fabulous portfolio. His web developer set up an account and linked the website directly to Flickr. Unfortunately, the images were named 0700154scl.jpg – not search friendly at all.
Ideally, you want to include alt tags, a link title tag, a proper title (not some number useful only for filing) and metadata inside the images to better associate them with branded and non-brand keywords.
Re-purposing PDFs & Documents
Besides being a great B2B lead generation tool, white papers can enjoy a shelf-life beyond their initial post date. Most companies spend hours developing sales materials, press releases and collateral material as well. Not only do your visitors see this as valuable content, but search engines do too! They are capable of crawling and indexing this content if you provide a pathway to it.
When you post your PDFs, or similar documents, to your site, make sure they contain at least one link back to your site inside the document, preferably with anchor text pointed to specific pages. This is a great way to leverage “free” downloads of your case studies. You’ve now created an incoming link from web properties that have downloaded and shared your content, which helps lift your pages in search engine results.
YouTube No Longer “Kids Only” Content
YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and a marketing channel not to be ignored. The Diet Coke & Mentos experiments went viral with 11 million views in 3 years. I’m sure every B2B has a “how-to” video just waiting for an audience.
Post the video to your website, and let the search engines get to the files. Give your video its own page with corresponding copy, and submit a simple video sitemap via your robots.txt file.
With these three tactics, you’ve solved the problem of creating new content on a regular basis. Make re-purposing your digital assets a way of life for your business website.
Additional Resources: Optimizing for Universal Search
2.07.2010
posted by Robin Tooms @ 10:56 PM
Super Bowl Sunday is supposed to be one of the biggest pizza-consuming days of the year. Unless all of these advertisements have been lying to me, you’re supposed to eat pizza today. A lot of it. And for some reason, $10 is the sweet spot. Did you order pizza today and contribute to keeping this economy afloat?
So, how is Domino’s Pizza Turnaround campaign going? Well, it depends on who you ask. In the end, it looks like they’ll measure the success with the same store sales numbers. Boring. Personally, I would like to see them correlate the positive and negative mentions on their social media sites as well. It would be great to know if a certain “sentiment” ranking could be tied to the numbers.
This excerpt really sums it up:
Truly engaging in social media necessitates this kind of imperfect back-and-forth. It requires that companies hand over some control over their brands to their customers publicly. There are enormous benefits to doing so. Endorsement of a product by a large group of strangers, or, better yet, people whom you know, is arguably much more valuable than a one-sided advertisement. But with the advantages of social-media engagement come the downsides. For example, when a customer rants about what may be an isolated incident of lousy service on that company’s Facebook wall, everyone can see it. When a bunch of people don’t like a new product or policy, they can rise up against it together.
Part of Social Media 101 is that when you ask for comments, you will get some negative comments, but you can’t ignore these.
Sidenote: I actually did have pizza last week, but we ordered it through an iPhone app. Again, Domino’s where is your app? As one of my co-workers put it “lazy pizza lovers” like me are looking for this type of service.
2.05.2010
posted by Paige Hebert @ 6:06 PM
The television time slot after the Superbowl is in a word, coveted. So imagine the surprise when the slot was filled by Undercover Boss, a reality show where high level corporate executives trade in their corner offices for a day and get their hands dirty doing some of the company’s most menial and mundane jobs. In the season premier this Sunday, Waste Management president Larry O’Donnell spends the day cleaning port-o-lets at a carnival ground. It doesn’t get more real than that.
Why would programming like this be compelling enough to follow one of television’s most celebrated events? Perhaps it’s a sign of the times. Despite its title, Undercover Boss focuses on the daily toil of the working class – a significant population of the American workforce affected by today’s poor economic climate and rising unemployment rate. Many Americans blame out of touch CEOs for not knowing what is going on in their own companies. Undercover Boss is a way for executives to try to earn back public favor and goodwill and demonstrate their interest and involvement in company operations from top to bottom. So far, reactions to the show have been positive.
Let’s not also forget the show is marketing gold. The second episode will feature 7-Eleven Inc. executive Joe DePinto on the assembly line making donuts – reminding viewers via voiceover that the chain store carries a variety of fresh food products.
Historically, whatever program follows the Superbowl benefits from the game’s built in audience. It will be interesting to see if America will welcome these executives into their living rooms. I, for one, will be watching.
8.18.2009
posted by Robin Tooms @ 7:41 PM
This summer, we were invited to participate in AMA Houston’s B2B Marketing SIG event titled “Discovering the Value of Green: What is green marketing and what does it mean for the B2B community?” The event touched on a wide range of topics affecting businesses, such as the the Clean Energy Bill, making a business case for green within your company, and how green marketing needs to be built on sustainable practices and principles within your company.
When “green” is part of your core brand and communicated well, it can help to drive innovation, reduce costs and differentiate your company. So how do you make rooms for “green” in your brand?
1) The first step is to look at where green fits into your overall strategy:
– Understand what your customers, employees, investors, suppliers care about
– Identify the impact and implications of your operations on the environment
2) Get commitment from top and throughout the organization
3) Provide honest, transparent communications
– Link the benefits to your actions
– Report on progress and areas of improvement
4) And of course you have to walk the talk. Live up to your green brand promise in everything you do.
Want to read more? View the full presentation below.
6.12.2009
posted by Robin Tooms @ 10:11 PM
One interesting aspect of the Online Marketing Summit is that it travels from city to city – this is not just a single conference but rather a series of localized conversations. Having attended the Houston conference a few weeks ago, I can say that there is a large and vibrant community of marketers here. Over 300 people packed the hotel, and many of them fellow AMA Houston members. Just take a look at the blog to see what the conversations were here and elsewhere.
Here are a few of the themes (and some solid advice) that seemed to surface during the day in regards to your online marketing approach.
- Your goal should be trust and loyalty
Share knowledge and advice – be generous – and your audience will thank you for this. Not only will you be considered a “thought leader” (which is important!) you will also gain new customers and grow your network.
- Serve, don’t sell
The minute you start thinking about some of these newer channels, especially social media, as another form of advertising is the minute it will stop working for you.
- Think democracy, not dictatorship
None of your online marketing should be thought of as one-way communication. It’s a conversation in which your employees and your customers have a say in what you do. Engage them now.
- Don’t stick your head in the sand
Now is the time to get ahead while your competitors are trying to wait things out. Get out there and start using the tools to your advantage and accelerate your online marketing.
And let’s not forget about your brand in all of this. As Steve Woods of Eloqua said at the panel which closed they day, “the carrier of brands is conversation.” In order to build your brand online, you should be an active participant in those online conversations. The sessions that day showed us that there are many proven examples now of companies doing this successfully, which is information you can use to convince those who need this help to increase their online marketing to solve many of the challenges facing them now.
Below is a copy of the presentation I gave on “Online Strategies for Though Leadership Marketing.” I welcome your comments!
