Who is your website for?

Your website primarily is to provide visitors with an accurate image of your company and what you offer.  But is it for you or is it for the visitors?

Most companies will say that the website is for the visitor, but that isn’t what the message on it says.

Let me go off at a tangent for a moment.  If you go to a business meeting and you meet someone you haven’t met before, it’s common for one of your first questions to be ‘what do you do?’

If the person you ask then talks about themselves and their company for several minutes and show little interest in you, what is your response?

Most people maintain a polite interest for a while, but then start to tune out.

How different it is if the person replies “We help businesses to grow, but before I tell you the boring details, what do you do?  What kind of clients are you looking for introductions to?”

You feel they have a genuine interest in you and the narrative is more about you than them (and, of course, you will repay this courtesy as the conversation progresses).

When it’s your turn to answer the ‘what do you do?’ question you can answer in a number of ways:

“We make widgets for gizmos.”

“We help gizmo manufacturers to produce top quality products.”

“You know how gizmos need a number of components?  Well, with our widgets gizmo makers get the components they need and they get them exactly when they need them with a just-in-time delivery system.  It makes their life easier and they value our reliability, both for the product quality and the deliveries arriving on time.”

Which is more interesting for the person who asked the question?

Short is not always best – and certainly not always the most interesting response.

Inward v. outward

Marketing copy – on a website or any other publication – that is peppered with ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’ is inwardly focused.  It’s less interesting for the reader.

If the words ‘you’ and ‘your’ lead the message, people are likely to pay much more attention.  The message is focused outwards – on your reader.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t say what you want to say, it just means you need to position it differently.  So instead of:

We do business accounts

The words might be

You’ll get accurate, prompt figures to help you plan ahead to grow your business.

The difference is noticeable and you’re writing copy that people can relate to more strongly as it’s all about the benefits they’ll get.

Take a look at your website – does it need some attention?

News or not?

If you send out a regular newsletter what do you put in it?

Many people think that a newsletter is an opportunity to tell people what’s going on in their business?  It’s not.  Let’s be honest are YOU likely to read an incoming newsletter that kicks off with:

• A new team member
• A move to new premises
• A new product or service (unless you can see the benefits to you)
• A big contract won
• The designer décor that’s just been completed in your workplace

No, I thought not.  It may be what the newsletter owner considers ‘news’, but it’s not of interest to anyone outside their organisation.

If you’re thinking ‘it’s hard enough coming up with content for our newsletter – now you’ve just made it much harder’ here are some ideas that ARE likely to interest your audience.

How to ...     Share your expertise and explain something your potential clients will find useful.  This could be a series of numbered tips, a step-by-step outline of a process, a list of things you need to do something with.  These are all helpful – providing you know what your clients want and stick to delivering something around that.

A topical take     What in your industry – or that of your target audience – is in the news?  What’s your take on it?  Is it being unnecessarily complicated – and can you cut through the complexity?  Is it something people should be taking notice of – and why – or can they safely watch from the sidelines for now?

A case study     Take your best client and tell their story.  What was their problem and what was the pain they were experiencing from it?  What solution did you put in place to fix it?  What was the outcome?
Best of all – include a quote from your client (with their permission, of course.  This provides third party validation – always valuable.

An explanation     If you offer something that makes a significant difference to your clients, explain what happened before this was available and how organisations have benefited (or will benefit) from applying it to their business.

This is not an excuse to get technical, in fact, quite the opposite – explain things in simple terms that a layman can follow.  Focus on the benefits.

Lead with value

Your first article should always deliver value in some way.  Don’t be tempted to start with a chatty intro, most people simply tune out and many won’t get past this.  Get stuck into the meaty bit and keep your reader.

If you’re writing good blogs – use one as your starting point (I usually put in the first 2-3 paragraphs and a read more button linking to the blog on my website).
If you have a special offer or something you are promoting, by all means add this as the next item, but keep it short and sweet.

Remember it’s likely to be read on a mobile device so even 3 paragraphs can seem long.

Get the habit of noting down anything that occurs to you at the time that would make a good lead for your next newsletter – because when it’s time to write, you’ll probably have forgotten about it!

As with everything you write, while you’re scribbling (typing) away, keep thinking ‘what does my audience want?’

What kind of social media user are you?

I met a guy who tweeted 80 times a day once.  It was in the early days of Twitter and he was virtually addicted.  He got a lot of followers initially, but what action did they take in response to his posts?

When Tweetdeck, Buffer and Hootsuite were launched lots of busy people cheered and automated all their posts.  Did it work?

I know lots of people who spend their lives on Facebook chatting with people.  Many of them are business people, but not all of these professionals are getting business from their chats.  Why are they doing it?

Many business people set up a profile on LinkedIn – but don’t use it effectively and wonder why it ‘doesn’t work’.

The answer to these issues is that there is a big difference between broadcast, chat and engagement.

People buy people

Relationships are the key to doing business.  Most people want to work with people who they like.  There’s an argument that lots of people buy from online vendors where they have no idea who they’re dealing with, but there is still a level of loyalty in play.

Do you look first at eBay or Amazon, when you’re looking for a book or a household item?  Which clothing platforms do you visit most?  Are you a fan of Group-on, Wowcher or one of the many other similar platforms?

At some point you will have decided – almost subliminally – that you like a particular platform.  You probably don’t even know why, but it appeals to you in some way.  Often because you’ve got to know your way around and it feels familiar.

So what’s this got to do with social media?

You can’t have a relationship with a social media account

I talk about RAVE marketing.  RAVE stands for Reputation, Authority, Visibility, Expertise.  Broadcasting tips and useful information ticks those four boxes, but it stops short of ‘relationships’.

That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use broadcasting at all – it just needs to be part of the mix.

I see lots of chats on social media, but few people who leverage those.  This is especially true on Facebook, where chats are more likely to happen on a personal profile than on a business page, unless the page owner has really worked hard to create a community.

On LinkedIn many people ask a question to generate comments and it’s good to get involved in this kind of discussion to raise your profile and demonstrate your knowledge (visibility and expertise).  But then what?

Clearly you can’t maintain relationships with all your connections – especially if you’ve been building your profile over several years.  The secret is to actively look to connect with the people you particularly want to have a relationship with and  go beyond the initial connection.

Delivering information in your updates that will interest, engage and entertain your target audience is a good first step.  However, when you take it to a more personal level it takes more effort to get a conversation going and start building that relationship.

Some people will respond and some won’t, but if you don’t make it a practice to send a personal message when you connect with someone, you’ll never find out who your next client might be.

A good social media strategy is to take all three elements – broadcast, chat and engage.

Beam me up, Scotty!

Everyone talks about blogs, bloggers and even vloggers – but where did this word come from?  Being a wordy person I know the answer!

Originally blogs were a sort of on line journal or diary – and known as web logs.  If you ever watched Star Trek you’ll remember the voice over at the beginning “Captain’s log, stardate ....”  Blog is simply a contraction of ‘web log’ – as if the English language isn’t already rich enough, we love to add new words! 

A log is simply a place where you record information, usually about events or data that relates to an event.  For instance, a driver’s log shows the miles travelled and start and end points. 

However, as with all good words, someone has transformed ‘blog’ into ‘blogger’ as in someone who writes web logs.  So a logger is no longer someone who chops down trees and transports them by river to a new destination – it’s taken on a whole new persona.   

Bloggers and vloggers

Now to add yet another word ‘vlogger’.  This, of course, is a contraction of ‘video logger’.  So bloggers write and vloggers make videos of their content.  So does that make people who post podcasts ‘ploggers’?  What about people who post photos?  Are they ‘phloggers’?

Content is KING

Regardless of the medium you choose for your blog – or whether you use a combination of all the above – you’ll only get engagement if you post content that people want.

You’ve probably heard of ‘professional bloggers’.  These are usually young people who have generated an audience so large that big organisations are prepared to pay big bucks to advertise on their blog.  That’s how they make their money.

You may have taken a look at some of their blogs and wondered how they’ve generated so many followers.  The answer is that – regardless of what YOU think of their content, they have an audience who love it.  It’s all about knowing your audience and giving them what they want.

If the blog is about lifestyle tips for a teenage girl – and you don’t fit that profile, you will almost certainly think it’s a load of drivel.  However, the blogger doesn’t care – they’re not writing for you.  And there is your lesson – who are you writing for?

If you’ve only got a vague idea and write generic blogs for ‘anybody’ don’t be surprised if your audience remains relatively modest.  Get to know your target audience really well – what they like, what they hate, what keeps them awake at night, what they want to know – and write/video/podcast/photograph about the things that are important to them.  You might be surprised at the results.