What Do People Want Online?

June 15, 2010 By 4 Comments

If you’re setting out to develop your online marketing and communications strategy you should ask yourself an important question: What do people want online?

what do people want onlineThere’s no point filling a website, blog or twitter account with endless sparkly online content unless you actually know what your audience is looking for.

Understanding Consumer’s Motives for Being Online

One of the most significant reasons for web-usage is that people get online because they want to accomplish something. They are goal-orientated in the sense that they want:

  • information
  • help
  • ideas
  • inspiration
  • examples
  • entertainment

and so on.
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Liverpool FC Are a Brand with a Communications Crisis

May 4, 2010 By 29 Comments

Anyone that knows me will tell you that I love two things: my four basset hounds and Liverpool football club. Thankfully the woofs are fine, but Liverpool FC are in an utter mess. Sunday’s defeat to Chelsea condemned us to one of the worst seasons I can remember in a lifetime of following the Reds.

liverpool fc

You'll never walk alone

It that wasn’t bad enough the British and Swedish press have been savaging Rafa Benitez, the club’s manager, left right and centre; it seems that every time my RSS feed updates there’s more speculation that Rafa is going / staying / having a tantrum and that the club is about to implode under the burden of financial debt.

Caught in a Media Firestorm

Following Liverpool fans on Twitter, Facebook, and in various online forums you can see that speculation is mounting about what’s going to happen. Worse than all the rumours is the overriding feeling of frustration at the secrecy and lack of openness coming from the club. Even players like Yossi Benayoun and Lucas Leiva have publicly admitted the players are frustrated at being in the dark.

Following a season of boardroom shenanigans and poor performances on the pitch with practically the same team that finished second in the League just 12 months ago, the club needs to hold its hands up, admit its mistakes and communicate clearly how it expects to turn things around.

The club has one of the most popular football websites on the web, but unfortunately it’s not making use of the web to engage with its fans. The official Liverpool FC website makes no mention of the problems and has the feel of a poor marketing ploy to sell more replica shirts with plenty of glossed pics of fan favourites Fernando Torres, Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher than placate its anxious fans who’ve stood by club and manager all season.

Frankly, this is a prime example where social media should be used to build bridges and lift the gloom surrounding the club and ultimately the brand.

Imagine Rafa Benitez appearing in a vlog or YouTube video, talking directly to fans, admitting the frustrations of the campaign and outlining where he hopes things will go. A sense of passion and determination could lift spirits, and meet some of the detractors head on.

Even if Rafa leaves the club, as many commentators seem to think, it would be refreshing to see a manager talking directly to the fans about his motives for leaving instead of mediating his position via the media, who level their own commentary and agenda on top of everything they print.
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Online Communications Consulting

February 28, 2010 By 4 Comments

If you’re not getting the right message across to the people that matter – whether it’s customers, potential clients or colleagues – you might want to take a look at the way you’re communicating.

Communication is a massive part of daily business, but what with the rapid pace at which things are changing online, you might be missing the opportunity to communicate effectively with the people that matter if you aren’t making the most out of the tools that are available online.

Blogs

I’m a massive believer in the value business blogs can bring to your strategic communications.

Over the years, I’ve witnessed firsthand how they can:

  • generate regular traffic to your website
  • improve how you perform in Google search results because they’re pretty much SEO-friendly – straight out of the box
  • help show customers who you and what you do
  • give you a channel that’s easily helps you publish and promote text, video and pictures
  • enable you to communicate directly with customers through comments
  • make crisis management easier

If you’re looking to find out more about business blogging as a communications strategy, please download my free ebook.

Also, check out my 10 Essential Posts for Business Bloggers or Six Must Haves for Business Bloggers
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Is Your Business Social?

February 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment

smug fellow

Are you smug about your social media efforts?

With all the talk of social media in recent months a lot of companies have jumped on the social media bandwagon in an attempt to kick their online marketing and communications into the twenty-first century.

Maybe your business is like this?

You know: you’ve got a Facebook Fan Page, a Twitter account; you’re maybe posting pictures to Flickr, and monitoring realtime streams for mentions of your brand.

Trouble is: Just having the gear, doesn’t make you the belle of the ball. The tools per se don’t make you social: it’s what you do with them.

Successful online marketing with social media is about your mindset, and the communications strategy you use!

10 Questions to Ask Yourself About Your Business

Do you:

  • never answer questions on Twitter just to be helpful?
  • forget to respond to comments on your Facebook Fan Page the same day they’re posted?
  • find yourself erasing the comments that don’t make you look good?
  • conveniently forget to be honest when you mess up in public?
  • police every move your people make on social media?
  • always – bottom line – focus on selling more stuff
  • jump in with social media tools before thinking about your communication goals and desired outcomes?
  • forget to measure success and failure and fail to learn from it?
  • feel insecure when promoting other people’s services and products online?
  • never bother to look for new and emerging channels ?

Bonus Question?

  • Do you think you’ve got social media totally nailed?

So what about you?

If you’re answering YES to lots of these, you might want to think again about your online marketing and communications strategy.

Maybe you’re missing the point. Or maybe you’re not quite seeing the return on investment (ROI) you thought you’d be getting once your business went social.

Go on: take another look at your online marketing and how you’re using tools like Facebook, corporate blogs, Twitter and so on. Is your business really social ?

Image:FlickrCC

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YouTube Crisis Management

February 17, 2010 By 2 Comments

As the owner of a Toyota Verso I’ve watched the latest crisis to hit the motor industry with more than a passing interest.

Based in Sweden I haven’t really heard very much from my Toyota dealer but from surfing the web I’ve seen Toyota respond in different ways to the crisis.

Toyota USA went on YouTube which struck me as particularly shrewd. It made me think about how:

  • They’re talking directly to the client
  • You can “read” all the paralinguistic information along with the copywriting being spurted by the talking head
  • YouTube is now a massively important a channel / search engine

With YouTube now the second biggest search engine online, it makes sense to put your crisis management communications on the site.

In times of crisis you need to communicate your message out there, no matter what.

Your online channels should include:

  • Your business blog
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • YouTube

or which ever social media site your target audience / customers are hanging out at online.

Don’t you agree?

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