The 3 things to make you money from your blog

1. Know your niche audience
2. Know what they want online and give it to them again and again
3. Know how to learn from your successes and failures

This weekend I’m at Barcamp Munich. Two of the sessions on day one were devoted to this topic, and I’m sure it has been widely discussed elsewhere as is often the case at such events where bloggers get together.

For those that want to make a direct income from their blogs – and for many passionate bloggers this just isn’t the point, and others they profit indirectly from opportunities supported by their blogs – there is no getting around understanding who your audience is and what they want.

You need this information to create your own products and services to fulfill their needs, as in a traditional internet-based business. You also need it to attract or target sponsors, affiliate partners, advertisers, etc. I’d argue you need to know this information before you create your blog or internet business and define it accordingly.

I’d like to share with you three resources that have helped me in understanding the theories and techniques that lie behind these points. I’m a member of their communities, a satisfied customer of each, and as such an affiliate of each (so if you buy any of their products or services you’ll be helping to make my blog pay!) As far as I am aware, all of these is available only in English – perhaps translating and marketing key products into German would be a potential business idea for one of my fellow Barcampers. If so, I’d be happy to provide some introductions. If other good resources are available in German, I’d love to hear about that too.

Insider Secrets is the best-selling resource from the Internet Marketing Center. This is the best introduction that I believe I could have had into understanding internet marketing and, for example the principles of how to create a blog that will pay. Insider Secrets is comprehensive, well-written, and explains its concepts and techniques in an easily accessible way. It’s particularly good at understanding how to do and use research and set up and learn from web analytics. Insider Secrets consists of two ring-binders full of data, plus multiple CDs. One word of warning: I find the very American get-rich-quick hard-sell very annoying, and you may too. In my experience, once you get through the sales process this is a very professional organisation.

Internet Business Mastery Academy is currently my favourite resource. I’ve listened to the Internet Business Mastery podcasts for years, and by the time Jeremy ‘Sterling’ Frandson and Jason ‘Jay’ Van Orden launched their subscription-based community site, I really wanted to give them some money for everything I had already learned from them (as I had never got around to using their Paypal donate button). Not surprisingly, the subscription site is more comprehensive than the free resources. Internet Business Mastery Academy consists of a series of learning courses using video, audio and text, detailed resource lists and ‘how to’ videos, and has an active forum, including links to internet business mastermind groups.

Teaching Sells is a subscription-based community created by Copyblogger.com founder Brian Clark and his partners. While I don’t believe it is open to wider subscription at the moment, it is definitely one to watch.

Do you know of any other resources or suggestions that would be useful to those trying to make their blogs pay? I’ll respond to comments in English or German.

Think Global, Act Local

I'm currently reading Groundswell, which as well as laying out a sensible approach towards social media decision-making, has lots of great international case studies of what mainly well-known brands are doing. It's giving me lots of great insights.

But, perhaps as a European working in a second language outside my own country, I'm always more intrigued by examples from 'my own backyard.' So I was pleased to be invited along yesterday to Weblounge in Nuremberg, Germany, to meet more of those in my area who are interested in, active in, or even better willing to share their experiences in doing social media. This view was shared widely as the cool venue at b2 was a packed house. Attracting so much interest was a great result for the organisers, Publicis Corporate Publishing and NIK, the association for the IT and communications sector in Nuremberg.

The theme was corporate blogging, and with an audience of very mixed experience levels, German blogger Robert Basic kicked off getting everyone acting out a minute in the life of the internet, a sort of 'chinese whispers' demonstration of how uncontrollable the blogosphere is. 10 out of 10 for interactivity and chaos factor, Robert, and 3 out of 10 for chosing me to represent the face of German mainstream media, Bild. Publicis director, Olaf Wolff then picked up the topic with an overview of some of the trends and challenges. Frozen goods firm Frosta, or rather its director, Felix Ahlers, then gave some really interesting insights on how it is using its respected corporate blog as a central part of its ongoing marketing and communications to promote the value of natural ingredients, and to compete as a relatively small German player in an extremely competitive market.

So while you may feel you need to jump on a plane to San Fransisco to find out the latest in social media (and I do wish I were at BlogHer at the moment!), often there's value to be got nearer to home. As is often the case, the biggest advantage of these types of events is having the chance to talk to other people about what they are doing (or trying to do), and to learn from each other. So I am hoping that future Weblounges will be more interactive, and less powerpoint presentation (a view shared by the back-channel on Twitter, and in chatting to other attendees).

As I write this, my London friends are enjoying a much more informal chance to meet up and discuss issues at the Tuttle Club (wouldn't mind being there either!), and it would be great to see this sort of format in my back yard too (if it doesn't already exist!)

The Challenge of Communicopia

Every time I hear my fellow business communicators struggling to come to terms with social media, it reminds me of an article I wrote in the first weeks of my new life as a public relations consultant, my MSc in Public Relations still shiny in my pocket, for the journal of the UK Chartered Institute of Public Relations in 1995.

Although, at that this (practically pre-email!) time it was the wonders of interactive CD-Roms and other such 'advanced' multimedia communications tools I was discussing, the message still holds true in the social media era:

"Public relations practitioners have little choice but to rise to the multimedia challenge if we are to compete in an increasingly dynamic communication industry, to flourish rather than survive. Ultimate success is better founded on adapting our current strengths to the ever-widening communicopia - through a highly developed understanding of clients' business, an appreciation of corporate and brand positioning, and the ability to reach specific audiences, rather than jumping on the techno-junkie bandwagon."

Please forgive a few stray allusions to 'control' and 'message' - it was a simpler time. Writing it today, my behavioural studies training would have come more to the fore ....

Greetings to all my old Citigate colleagues, now Citigate Dewe Rogerson.

The Challenge of Communicopia

First there's the baffling 'techno-babble' to contend with. Then comes the hype - never in the field of human endeavour have there been such breakthroughs, say the evangelists. Finally, you hit a fear of the unknown, the incomprehensible. It will result in a technophobic paralysis.

Despite this, few professionals can afford to ignore multimedia - the convergence of broadcasting, telecommunications and computing - which will bring a multitude of market opportunities and affect virtually every sector. This is poignantly true for the public relations industry as a contender in an increasingly high-tech communications arena, where our competitors range from computer programmers to advertising agencies. Will multimedia fundamentally change our business, or simply offer new mills for our grist? And can we survive it?

As with most issues in public relations, it depends on your definition. If the central role of public relations is to provide a network and a context for distributing information - whether through the press, speaker platforms, brochures or whatever - adapting our expertise to include the sea of new high-tech communications will fundamentally change what we do. What's more, our technology-led competitors will have a real advantage.

Alternatively, if public relations is the definer of corporate and brand messages, the multimedia challenge is more attainable: we shall be applying a well-developed core skill to the exciting new 'communicopia.' An appreciation of what is technically posible and the relative cost feasibility and advantages of a variety of communications vehicles continues to be vital. However, the difference is that technical know-how can be rightly commissioned from the technical experts, allowing public relations to concentrate on developing the 'creative software' and controlling the effective communication of messages through a medium which reaches an identified target audience.

With a solid foundation of skills on corporate and brand positioning, the Citigate Group is monitoring developments in multimedia to expand and add value to the service it offers clients. According to Reginald Watts, deputy chairman of the Citigate Group, its forays into multimedia fall into three distinct areas: "Our first is to offer clients informed advice on the use of multimedia as a business and communication tool and to develop in-house expertise to support the design and development of products for clients.

"Next, we are concerned to understand how wider multimedia industry issues will affect our business and that of our clients, in real terms over the coming months and years. Lastly, we plan to use multimedia and new technologies to improve our service and efficiency.

Specialised projects
A key task in public relations is to identify the most effective, cost-feasible communication medium to suit a situation. With an increasing complexity and number of media on offer, will we still be able to advise on a comprehensive range of options, or too easily fall back on traditional methods?

To guard against such complacency and to build on their creative design services, Lloyd Northover Citigate set up a new media unit in May 1994. Projects include the deign of multimedia presentations, interactive multimedia projects on CD-Rom and on-line communications for clients. One project is developing the brand identity and graphics for a multimedia shopping kiosk, where the graphic designers will work hand-in-hand with the software designers and hardware manufacturers to integrate the brand's image throughout.

The wider issues
Monitoring the possible impact that wider multimedia issues could have on our business and that of clients - in industries ranging from utilities through pharmaceuticals to automotive components manufacture - is important. As advisers to senior management, public relations practitioners must be able to offer counsel. What effect, for example, could multimedia have on a development corporation?

As part of a full-service public relations programme for the Cardiff Bay development on the South Wales coastline, Citigate Corporate is working with the corporation to develop a solid 'product offering' attractive to the media sector. Based on an understanding of the business needs and resulting property requirements of such companies - developed through focus group discussions with experts - Citigate Corporate is helping Cardiff Bay to promot itself as a European centre of multimedia excellence.

Within consultancies
How to use new technologies to improve our internal working methods and communications? Susy Frith, managing director of Northampton-based Citigate Technology, warns against the dangers of investing in technology for technology's sake. "There should always be a demonstrable benefit to our customers." she says. "Does it make us faster, promote accuracy or improve accessibility? The new systems must also be user-friendly, otherwise what would turn 'filing time' into 'thinking time' is instead a technological nightmare.

Public relations practitioners have little choice but to rise to the multimedia challenge if we are to compete in an increasingly dynamic communication industry, to flourish rather than survive. Ultimate success is, however, better founded on adapting our current strengths to the ever-widening communicopia - through a highly developed understanding of clients' business, an appreciation of corporate and brand positioning and the ability to reach specific audiences, rather than jumping on the techno-junkie bandwagon.

Long vs. short articles as a content strategy

By Robin Good at Master New Media. What's better? Writing short summary posts with the essence of the info you want your readers to get or long, in-depth articles and reviews like the ones I often feature here on Master New Media?

I am sure I am not the only independent online publisher asking himself these questions, as traffic, credibility, advertising conversion rates and costs to produce long or short content can vary a great deal depending on this one choice.

The majority of successful blogs and sites I know that perform well in terms of traffic and monetization are generally made of relatively short posts. Rarely, if ever, these sites engage into in-depth reviews with truly original content, in research topics or analysis that has not been discussed and conducted elsewhere.

The much less numerous sites sites that do in-depth, long-winded article writing, do not seem to apparently enjoy as much exposure and notoriety as the other group, but given my own traffic and revenue data, I can't say we are doing bad either.

So if I was to judge superficially, I would tend to think that the long style approach used here at Master New Media, at Ars Technica and on few other online resources, while it could possibly feel more prestigious or providing extra credibility to the site it is definitely a lot more costly, time consuming, error-prone and therefore not as good solution as going for shorter content.

But would these intuitive assessments really reflect the best way to go about making a wise choice?

How do I tell whether it is best to write long or short content for my site?

Internationally respected usability guru Jakob Nielsen dissects in this in-depth analysis this very issue by utilizing "information foraging" models to analyze scientifically the type of "information diet" that readers are most likely to follow on a blog or web site.

"More precisely, diet selection is a modeling tool that tells us what food animals will eat and what articles users will read. In both scenarios, animals and people decide what to consume in a way that optimizes their benefits relative to the costs."

What counts for online readers is in fact the cost/benefit ratio between having more information about a subject (long content approach) or being able to read more articles and news (short content approach). "A long article might contain more information, but if it takes too long to read, users will abandon the website and read shorter, easier pieces elsewhere."

How much information is enough?

How much is too much? And, most importantly, how much information is optimal? Jakob Nielsen answers all of these questions with a good rational analysis. Here his full report:

Long vs. Short Articles as Content Strategy

By Jakob Nielson

Summary: Information foraging shows how to calculate your content strategy's costs and benefits. A mixed diet that combines brief overviews and comprehensive coverage is often best.

How much information is enough? How much is too much? And, most importantly, how much information is optimal?

Information foraging gives us a way to formally model user trade-offs in deciding how much to read on your website. More precisely, diet selection is a modeling tool that tells us what food animals will eat and what articles users will read. In both scenarios, animals and people decide what to consume in a way that optimizes their benefits relative to the costs.

For example, say a forest is inhabited by large and small rabbits. Which will the wolf eat? The obvious answer might seem to be "large rabbits" because they provide the biggest benefit in terms of filling the stomach. But if the big bunnies run faster and are harder to catch, the benefit decreases. Much better to eat lots of small tasty bites if tiny bunnies are easier to nab.

So, basically, the wolf must eat more calories than it expends pursuing prey. The real question is not which prey provides the most food, but how you get the most food relative to the cost of chasing it down.

The cost/benefit ratio is what matters, not the benefit alone.

Exactly the same is true for informavores. A long article might contain more information, but if it takes too long to read, users will abandon the website and read shorter, easier pieces elsewhere.

Cost/Benefit Metrics for Reading

To formalize the model, we must quantify the costs and benefits of reading different articles.

Cost is easy to model: we calculate it as the amount of time it takes to read an article. For an intranet, this would be a direct cost in dollars, because we're paying employees for every minute they spend reading stuff during working hours. For a website, time is a more indirect cost, because users don't get paid to surf the Web. But still, life is short, and you only have so many hours in the day. Even if users don't get paid, they're still conscious of their time and don't like wasting it.

Benefit can be modeled by hypothetical benefit units that represent whatever value users get from online information. For a B2B user researching a company purchase, the benefit units translate directly into dollars, because they represent the extent to which the company gets a better deal or decides to buy a better product as a result of that user's time on the Web.

For home users, benefits might also have a dollar value. For example, if you're looking into buying airline tickets, the benefit of checking one more site or one more alternate departure time would be the average savings on the airfare that resulted from using a richer data set to decide which ticket to buy.

If people are browsing the news or reading an entertainment site, the benefit units would represent the amount of enjoyment they got from each page.

Example: Long vs. Short Articles

Let's work through an example, using the following values for our cost-benefit metrics:

• Short articles:
  600 words, meaning a cost of 3 minutes to read (assuming a reading speed of 200 wpm)
  7 benefit units gained from reading each article
• Long articles:
  1,000 words, meaning a cost of 5 minutes to read
  10 benefit units gained from reading each article
• Finding a new article to read: 1 minute. The top chart (above) shows how the accumulated benefit units increase as a user keeps reading short articles (blue curve) or long articles (red curve):

The dots on the curves represent points of change — that is, when the user stops reading one article, starts searching for something else to read, and starts reading the next article. No benefit is gained during the user's search time.

(Here, I use the term "search" to indicate any user activity aimed at finding the next interesting article, whether it's using a search engine, a site's navigation system, or any other method of finding the next thing to read.)

The chart clearly shows that users gain more benefit from sticking to a diet of short articles. The cumulative benefit is as follows:

• Short articles: 105 benefit units per hour
• Long articles: 100 benefit units per hour

The conclusion is clear: people prefer to read short articles. This is also what we've found in empirical studies of users' behavior while reading websites. People tend to be ruthless in abandoning long-winded sites; they mainly want to skim highlights.

Benefit of Cutting Word Count

If you read my assumptions carefully, you'll notice why the math favors short articles: I assumed that short articles were 60% of the length of the long articles but still provided 70% of the benefit.

Is this realistic? In most cases, I'd say yes. A good editor should be able to cut 40% of the word count while removing only 30% of an article's value. After all, the cuts should target the least valuable information.

When Long Has Value

Now, let's change the assumptions and assume that every third long article is 3 times more valuable than the previous two. In other words, 2/3 of the long articles continue to provide the user with 10 benefit units' worth of information, but 1/3 of the long articles now have a benefit value of 30.

This scenario corresponds to the occasional situation in which you really, really need to know everything about a problem.

For example, consider a rare disease in which sufferers risk death if they eat 6 particular foods: 4 common foods, and 2 foods that almost nobody eats anyway. If you're reading about the disease out of idle curiosity, you'll probably be satisfied with a short article covering the four common foods. If you just got diagnosed with this disease, however, you won't be content reading an article that says: "there are 6 things that'll kill you, but we won't talk about 2 of them because they're rare." You'll obviously want the long article that will warn you about all the things you need to avoid.

The second chart above shows the cost-benefit curves under this new assumption.

The blue line shows the progression of gains from reading only short articles (the same curve as in the previous chart). The red line shows the gains from reading long articles under the new assumptions: for every third article, the benefit jumps up and thus considerably outpaces the blue line.

The obvious conclusion is that long articles are better now that they're sometimes more valuable.

But there's a third behavior users can choose: a mixed diet, where they sometimes read short articles and sometimes read long ones. The green line shows this reading behavior.

For the mixed diet, we have to change the assumptions about the time needed to identify the next article to read. I'll assume that this now takes 1.2 minutes, versus 1 minute for the simpler scenario in which people always read a single type of article. This increase accounts for the extra overhead of having to consider both types of articles and decide when to read what.

Decisions take time, which is why it's often best to offer a simple user interface rather than one with many options. Every extra thing users can do requires consideration, which takes time away from actually using the features.

In this case, the green line is even better than the red line, because users don't waste time on the 2/3 of the long articles that aren't sufficiently valuable.

In the new scenario, users' cumulative gains from the different reading strategies are:

• Short articles: 105 benefit units per hour
• Long articles: 167 benefit units per hour
• 2/3 short articles + 1/3 long articles: 181 benefit units per hour

Mathematical Models vs. Real Life

Of course, in real life, you don't need in-depth information exactly every third time you read an article.

But the general idea in my model is extremely realistic:

• Reading benefits vary, depending on user circumstances.
• Most of the time, short articles contain more value per word.
• People sometimes gain higher value from complete or very detailed information about a problem. The exact numbers in my calculations are merely assumptions for the sake of the exercise. You can run similar calculations for your type of material and your type of users.

What Should You Do?

So: should your website have concise or in-depth content?

• If you want many readers, focus on short and scannable content. This is a good strategy for advertising-driven sites or sites that sell impulse buys.
• If you want people who really need a solution, focus on comprehensive coverage. This is a good strategy if you sell highly targeted solutions to complicated problems. Typically, people who really need something are the highest-value users because they're more likely to turn into paying customers. That's why I recommended writing articles instead of blog postings.

But the very best content strategy is one that mirrors the users' mixed diet. There's no reason to limit yourself to only one content type. It's possible to have short overviews for the majority of users and to supplement them with in-depth coverage and white papers for those few users who need to know more.

Of course, the two user types are often the same person — the one who's usually in a hurry, but is sometimes in thorough-research mode. In fact, our studies of B2B users show that business users often aren't very familiar with the complex products or services they're buying and need simple overviews to orient themselves before they begin more in-depth research.

Hypertext to the Rescue

On the Web, you can offer both short and long treatments within a single hyperspace. Start with overviews and short, simplified pages. Then link to long, in-depth coverage on other pages.

With this approach, you can serve both types of users (or the same user in different stages of the buying process).

The more value you offer users each minute they're on your site, the more likely they are to use your site and the longer they're likely to stay. This is why it's so important to optimize your content strategy for your users' needs.

Learn More

More discussion of information foraging and the implications of user behavior patterns for website design in my course on Fundamental Guidelines for Web Usability at the User Experience 2007 conference in Las Vegas (December 2-7).

The conference also has a two-day tutorial on writing for the Web.

Jakob Nielsen - Reference: Useit [ Read more ]

Learning to Web 2.0 - but from teachers or other student?

As is probably evident from this blog's posts, I draw on a fairly eclectic mix of sources to inspire my views on strategic online branding. This is really no surprise given the potential impact on a decision's success of a wide range of skills. Not exclusively, these span business strategy, via whatever lable you happen to apply to your view of marketing, and a confusing array of technical applications.

Although traditionally my work has been in corporate and marketing communications, I'm getting a great deal of personal satisfaction out of learning about lots of new things that wouldn't previously have been in my responsibilities. Core skills need re-focusing for Web 2.0:

• Although I've always written, now I'm learning a copywriter's art.
• I've studied and practiced marketing for many years, now I'm learning from experts in internet marketing.
• While 'news' and 'stories' are stock in trade, social media works very differently.
• While I'm trained in 2-D communications (words, and to a lesser extent image), I'm working with a pretty unique group of people to create 3-D communications (adding sound and music).

Listening to one of my favourite podcasts this morning - For Immediate Release : The Hobson & Holz Report (#294) - I was interested in a comment about the value of social media tools and community as an integral part of training programmes (themselves inevitably flourishing also online). It made me think back to when I was a raw graduate, and as an account executive at a City of London agency, I'd leave on time on Monday evenings to go and lead PR student tutorials at a nearby university. Then, as now, the best way to learn is to teach.

One example to feed into FIR of where I find I'm seeing the benefits of building a community forum as an integral part of a well-developed online training programme is in copyblogger.com's Brian Clark's new venture, Teaching Sells. Designed to help internet entrepreneurs to replicate such learning environments within their own niches, I have to say that I'm learning as much from the 'noisy minority' you find in any 'classroom' than I am from the great course resources.

If you are interested in finding out more, you can download a Free Report from Teaching Sells in the sidebar.

Corporates can learn a lot from bloggers

If you're in charge of a B2B (business to business) corporate web site, you may have wrestled with the decision of whether or not your company should create a blog. If you'd rather not engage in blogging, there are alternatives that can still help you drive qualified traffic and leads to your corporate Web site, as a blog might, and to get the search engine ranking benefits a blog might bring.

You don't have to be a blogger to take advantage of the latest blogging techniques. In fact, you can learn a lot about promoting your company's products and services online by "doing what the bloggers do."

The corporate world has traditionally been very slow to adopt blogging. After all, adding a blog to a corporate Web site is a big decision – and could have an impact on the company's brand, as well as how the brand is perceived. Additionally, there are a lot of maintenance requirements of a blog. For example, who in the company will be responsible for the writing and posting on the blog? How often will it be updated? Will the traditional blog "comments" be added as a feature? If so, whose job would it be to "moderate" those comments?

The United States Government recently launched their "GovGab" blog, in an effort to reach out to more citizens. Several managers are assigned a day of the week when they're responsible for posting on the blog. Each manager is charged with posting something on his or her designated day, and with moderating any comments left by the blog's readers, which could quickly become a full-time job in itself. A few other managers serve as backup bloggers.

If you decide not to implement a blog on your corporate site, there are still several ways that you can benefit from using the techniques of successful bloggers. Let's take a look at the many techniques they are using today to become popular, and apply them to the online promotion of a corporate Web site.

Embrace Networking
Probably the biggest, most important "technique" that successful bloggers use today is networking. Networking with other bloggers, linking to and commenting on each other's blogs, and even "guest blogging" for others' blogs is common.

Sure, corporate America does a lot of networking. After all, that's how a lot of partnerships are made and how a lot of deals get done. But there's not enough "networking" going on amongst corporations' Web sites and those responsible for maintaining the corporate Web site, including those in the marketing department.

Bloggers link to each other and recommend each others' blogs; why not link to your corporate partners and ask that they link back to your corporate Web site? If one company is an official "partner" with another company and will work together to provide solutions to their customers, why not continue this partnership on the internet level by linking both corporate Web sites together and recommending each others' solutions?

The same goes for industry trade groups. Corporations should help promote trade groups and associations to which they belong. Likewise, it's helpful if the trade group or association lists its member companies, providing links to the corporate Web sites.

Besides your existing partners, it's important to reach out to new partners as well. Why not start networking with the bloggers themselves?

In most industries there are at least a few popular bloggers who keep a close watch on the industry as a whole – and constantly write about what's really going on. When your company issues a press release, keep these bloggers in your outreach plans. Making your news and access to company executives available to the top bloggers in your industry can pay off tenfold in backlinks and blogger goodwill.

If a blogger receives a press release directly from a company in their industry, most likely they will pay attention to it. After all, bloggers are always looking for something to write about. And it's the bloggers who have the power to link directly to the corporate Web site, which will ultimately help your site's search engine rankings.

Additionally, the publicity your company will receive is wonderful: many tech industry bloggers have thousands of regular readers and subscribers who will instantly receive notification of the company's news.

Use Technology to Get Your News Out There
Another technique bloggers can teach corporate marketers is to make technology your friend. Corporate Web sites could use the latest blog publishing platforms, such as WordPress, TypePad, or BlogSmith, to publish content to the Web site.

Besides being easy for marketers to use and update the site without IT intervention, blog software has the added benefit of automatically creating an RSS feed from the content. RSS feeds allow customers to keep track of your site's content. Additionally, the blog software sends out a "ping" to search engines and other sources, alerting them that the content of the site has been updated.

A corporate news and press release section, or a company newsletter are appropriate places to provide the content in RSS format. By doing this, journalists, industry bloggers, company employees, and anyone else interested in the company's information and news could subscribe to the RSS feed and be notified instantly whenever there's news to announce.

Adding an RSS feed and the latest blogging technology to a corporate Web site doesn't mean that the company has to have a blog on the Web site. In fact, the site's visitors don't have to know what technology is being used behind the scenes. The "look and feel" of the page is still up to the site's Web designers. Pages created with blogging technology can be made to look exactly like the rest of the Web site.

By embracing online networking and adopting the latest technology that bloggers are using, a corporate Web site doesn't have to be static anymore. You can gain valuable traffic and visibility with the search engines, and build a sense of community with others in your space by applying those techniques to your corporate site.

Source: SearchEngineWatch. Bill Hartzer is a search engine marketing, social media, and website marketing consultant. His primary focus is on the optimization of business to business Web sites. He is the founder of the Dallas/Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association (DFWSEM), and a frequent speaker at the Search Engine Strategies conferences.

Three cheers for Dell Inc.’s new IR blog

YOU know it’s a real investor relations department blog when the first thing that greets you is a long disclaimer!

But what the heck, it’s the first* — and it’s about time someone in the reluctant investor relations community had the gumption to start talking to their shareholders openly on the Web.
Dell Shares, the new investor relations blog from Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL), launched today — Thursday November 1, 2007 — about 8 years after the first modern blogs made their appearance on the Web.

Dell Shares is the first blog by an investor relations department of a public company.
True to form in the IR field, where legal constraints are both little understood and ever present, the blog is protected by a click-thru disclaimer that people must acknowledge before they can access the posts. How this will work when posts are distributed via RSS and aggregated on external sites beats me, but lets not quibble on such a big day.

As Lynn A. Tyson, Dell’s VP of Investor Relations, says in her inaugural post, this is new territory for investor relations departments. And like any good IRO she is also sure to lower investors’ expectations for how actively Dell’s investor-facing staff will be blogging and responding.

Sometimes, however, we may be quiet, as there are periods of the quarter and various topics we can’t talk about, such as forward looking statements or non-publicly disclosed information (see RegFD). We hope you will understand some of the constraints and legal obligations that may, from time to time, limit our commentary. Also, have a little patience with us, because some of these limitations may also slow us down as we learn and sort our way through this new field.
Tyson, who is a member of the board of the National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI), says investors can “expect timely posts from the IR team (and sometimes company executives) on business performance and strategy.”

Investors will be able to post comments and questions, to which IR staff will respond where appropriate in a timely manner, she says.

In a 23-minute podcast interview for the The Hobson & Holtz Report, Tyson says her department faced few internal hurdles in getting the blog going.
“The ability for an investor relations organization to execute this and do it well quite frankly is predicated on how well they do their jobs every day. And if there’s confidence in their ability to exercise sound situational judgment over the phone or over emails or in one-on-one meetings with investors or group meetings with investors or drafting press releases, then there should be that same level of confidence by the company in their ability to have a dialog over the Internet,” she says in the interview.

She quickly adds that this is a good argument for other IR departments to make to their legal counsel and executives when seeking permission for their own investor relations blogs.
* We watch this space closely, so we are comfortable declaring Dell Shares the first real English-language blog by an investor relations department of a public company.

Hat tip to Neville Hobson

By Dominic Jones, IR Web Report

What is your brand's narrative?

“Your brand is not your corporate identity. Your brand is the stories, messages, experiences that your consumers have around your brand. Yes, we label it with a logo, but it means very little if there are no stories to back it up.” This is the view of social media expert Mike Stopforth of Cerebra, speaking on online reputation management at the Digital Branding conference by Knowledge Resources in Johannesburg, 30 October 2007.

What marketers need to realise is that social media and social networks is all about networked communities: communities of people with similar interests who gather to share information and stuff. The point about these communities is that they include your customers and they are very powerful indeed as they trust their peers and friends more than obvious marketing messages.

Stopforth says consumers are now participants in a brand – they want to be involved and have gone from being consumers to ‘prosumers'.

Allen Kent of Thinking Viral agrees: “Social media is about the tools of the new generation. Advertisers are no longer in control of their brands.”The power has shifted from brands to their consumers.

And if you're still not convinced, have a look at these stats – these are your new consumers – local research undertaken by Thinking Viral has shown that the life of a 12 – 24 year old looks something like this:

1. They will never read a newspaper.
2. They will never own a landline phone.
3. They are tired of watching TV on someone else's schedule: they are getting used to
4. PVR / Tivo or downloading their favourite TV show episodes from the Internet.
5. Community is the centre of their Internet experience: 87% surveyed already have a social networking page; 50% of those surveyed are on MySpace; 82% are on Facebook, with 60 – 70 contacts and over 50% have over 100 ‘friends' listed on Facebook.
6. They trust unknown peers more than the experts.
7. They have little interest in the information source. So much info is being pushed – they are using online aggregator tools to receive and filter their content. They are using RSS to read the news.
8. They can consume 5.4 different media channels at the same time.
9. Most importantly: they want to be heard.

Becoming relevant
So how and where do marketers become relevant again? Kent says it's got to do with what you do and mostly, what other people say about you. “Classic advertising is about storytelling. But today, people want to be involved: they demand participation. Therefore make the story relevant to them.”The most common questions marketers ask, says Stopforth, are:

1. Should we blog?
2. What do we populate it with?
3. What do we do when it goes wrong?

Stopforth says blogging is not for everyone. “Unless you are going to blog with real intent with an established strategy and engage directly with your consumers, then don't do it!”

But you have to realise that your customers certainly are online and blogging. So, if you're not going to be proactive about initiating a digital presence, then at least have a reactive strategy, Stopforth advises.

“The reactive space is about managing your online reputation: online reputation management (ORM). There is too much of a possibility that you will be mentioned online somewhere. And what then? How do you respond? You have to have some sort of strategy in place to act.

”Stopforth explains that ORM is about tracking social media tools to get a sense of when and where you and your brand and your competitor brand is being mentioned online. You can start yourself by setting up a Google alert, for example, for your brand name.

The issue goes much deeper, however, says Stopforth. “I think we need a new measurement as marketers: yes, there's RAMS, AMPS and cramps… but there is nothing to measure social influence.”

There is a disconnect between the LSMs (living standards measures) and what consumers are saying on the blogosphere, he says. Those social influencers that Stopforth is describing are often unemployed students raving or ranting on about your brand that they may not even own and can't necessarily afford.

So how do you find them? “You don't – they find you,” Stopforth emphasises.

Making it work online
So then, how do you make it work for your brand online? Stopforth advises:

1. Be authentic and transparent. Don't be a persona online, Samsung's ‘Sam' blog – was slated by the blogosphere. Consumers are yearning for real brands. Samsung's latest, professional page is better to connect with their consumers, Stopforth says.
2. Have content with a call to action to augment campaigns. Make sure there is a call to action.
3. Win trust: get your hands dirty. Invest in the network. There are real word activities to enable brands to engage with those social influencers, such as the 27dinners in South Africa, the recent podcamp, and so on.
4. Respond and respond in time. You can take anything and turn it into a marketing opportunity, even those who are maliciously trying to damage your brand, Stopforth believes.
5. Give users power. If they have shown to have an interest in your brand, then support them. Identify brand champions. The best example of this are the Wikipedia champions which keep the online encyclopedia uptodate. If you give people something to believe in, they will actively champion your brands.

The tough questions that marketers have to grapple with include the following, Stopforth has found in his own contact with corporate South Africa:

- Vulnerability. It's not a word we associate with corporate SA.
- What if people say bad things? First off, people are already saying bad things about your brand, so would you rather they say it to you or behind your back?
- Will it make money? (Good ol' ROI?) No, there is no ROI for blogging. But it is a fantastic way to make money indirectly in building brand loyalty. There is a conversation going on anyways, so you need to ask ‘how do we connect with that conversation and leverage it for our own good?'.
- Can I trust my employees? (ie, banning Facebook from workplaces) You trust your employees to make million dollar deals at work and interact with clients and represent your brand daily, but not to manage their personal time? Stopforth makes an important point.
- 'Why can't my agency do it?' is a common question asked by marketers. They can and they should. You need to be encouraging your agency to push the boundaries in this regard, says Stopforth.

Achieving online brand success

Kent's seven rules for online success for marketers are:

1. Collaborate, co-create. They're out there, they are talking about the brand, use it.
2. Be relevant and connect with people. Relevance is key to motivating participation and involvement. Understand how people are creating content and engaging with content on the internet. Close to home, Engen with its ‘Endless Summer' campaign on MXit over the summer holidays targeted its future consumers in the 11 – 18 year market with a campaign which included branded Engen chat rooms on MXit with passwords for free content to share with their friends available at Engen stops on major holiday routes. It had three million messages going through its chat room…
3. Be transparent. (Don't be exposed for ‘flogs'– fake corporate blogs – your consumer will find you out and ridicule you on the Internet. There are plenty of examples from brands such as Sony PSP and Walmart who got their fingers burned here.)
4. Provide exclusivity/recognition: in communities a hierarchy exists and knowledge is power. Sharing is the new high so collaborate with uploaders of content, the bloggers. Example: the Nike website on running allows runners to track their progress, interact with other runners. It doesn't necessarily promote the brand Nike directly, but has built a very loyal following of users on its site.
5. Allow participation – let go! Traditional marketing rules no longer apply. You have to let your consumer play with your content, change it, and do what he wants with it.
6. Intrigue, inspire, entertain, surprise! Create something people want to send on to their friends.
7. Make it easy to share: plan a sharing strategy, work out the platforms to push the idea out. It is usually far easier to create an idea worth spreading than it is to spread an idea not worth spreading.

Kent's last word is: if you have a cool media idea, create context and content across as many touchpoints as you can, including the traditional media.

See also:
- Brands ‘fear' their consumers [article]
- [Digital branding] The big deal about social media for marketers [blog]
- [Digital branding] Consumers can break your brand [blog]
- [Digital branding] Answering marketer's questions [blog]

More by Louise Marsland

- Brands ‘fear' their consumers - 31 Oct 2007
- What is your brand's narrative? - 31 Oct 2007
- New insight into future ‘township' markets - 22 Oct 2007
- ABC objects to ‘spurious‘ criticism - 10 Oct 2007
- Media24: profit and performance pressure cooker - 5 Oct 2007More...

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Louise Marsland is editor and editorial director of Bizcommunity.com. She has worked as a journalist and editor in South Africa for the past 19 years across newspapers, magazines, online and in media / communications strategy, notably: The Star; Saturday Star; Progressive Retailing (editor); Retailing Africa (managing editor); Executive Business Brief (editor); Decorex Cape (editor & publisher); FMCG Files ezine (editor); Communicate ezine (editor); and Marketing Mix (editor & business manager), including the Marketer's Guide to Africa and the annual Media Owners' Marketing Awards (MOMA). She is currently in the third year of her M Com: Strategy & Organisational Dynamics.