No Time To Add Content To Your Website - Let Your Visitors Do It

Your company has a web site, but few visitors. You’re hardly alone, but what are you going to do about it?

This is not a post about the finer points of search engine optimization. Rather it’s about one straight forward step you can take to boost traffic. Google and other search engines look for relevant terms a.k.a. key words. More relevant key words help the rank of your web site. If your company sells ball bearings, your site will have a higher rank if it contains lots of information about ball bearings.

How do you credibly add key words to your site? You could, of course, write lots of to the point content about your products, services, and industry. Many high ranking sites do this. It pays, but it can be a lot of work. Recently, one of our clients lamented the modest traffic on his fledgling web site. Still he despaired of adding content, because it would be too much work for his start up company.

There is another way - let your customers do some of it for you. You can do this through easy to add components such as blogs, public wikis, and product reviews. This user generated content is at the heart of Web 2.0. Yes, it does mean you give us a measure of control along with a lot of labor.

You can and should filter offensive content, but this is uncommon. If your product gets an unfavorable review, you’re more likely to learn about in time. Reviews also give insight into what customers like about current products and what enhancements they want. Just let your visitors do the typing.

Too Much Video

Podcasting – audio programs, played on a website or downloaded to a player such as an iPod – can be an effective way to tell your story. Listening to a 10 to 30 minute podcast is generally easier than plowing through a white paper and the podcast may peak the interest, which makes them want to read your white paper or consider your offerings.

Because of the popularity of portable MP3 players, including many of the newer mobile phones, podcasts can connect with an audience commuting, at the health club, doing chores, and in other situations where TV, the Web, and print do not.

Podcasts are definitely not just for technology companies. Nor do you need technical skills to create them. All you need is a computer, an inexpensive microphone, and some free podcasting software. Once you have created a podcast, you can syndicate it for free through a number of services including iTunes.

Originally podcasts were just audio. The simplicity and portability of sound is one of their key strengths. More recently podcasters have added video. One reason is that video is now cheap. A decent handheld video cameras such as the popular Flip can be had for about $ 150. If that’s too much, you might get by with a $ 30 web cam. Now you too can create limitless amounts of video. But should you?

I am somewhat surprised to find that a few of the podcasts I (used to) subscribe to have changed to videocasts. This change has not been an improvement. True, most of the new portable players have small (mostly 2” or less) screens. They can play video including video podcasts. But too many of the videocasts are just talking heads and shrunken heads at that, when watched on a pocket sized player. Often video subtracts rather than adds value.

Video files are much larger than audio, so videocasts take much longer to download. On the mobile phone or solid state players such as the iPod nano, video also consumes scarce storage space. The viewing experience is often awkward and bloated. If you have important video content, such as demos or product training, by all means show it on your website. Let’s leave the podcasts alone.

Yahoo Says No

Lust, Greed, Intrigue and high drama worthy of a spy novel. These were all in the courtship of Yahoo by Microsoft. Their dance ended shortly before the alter. This deal generated lots of news coverage and buzz, buy why should you care?

The collapse of this deal leaves Google, perhaps more than ever, the undisputed king of on-line advertising. If you want one source to place pay per click, banner, or web video ads, it’s Google. Yes, you can cobble together on-line ad programs with Microsoft Ad Center and Yahoo Search Marketing. However, they don’t have the features, flexibility, analytics, and above all the audience of Google’s AdWords platform. And this doesn’t even include Google’s ad brokerage through its Double Click subsidiary.

So what’s not to like? We use AdWords more than Yahoo or Microsoft, because of its features and because it often yields better conversion and higher ROI. Google also continues to invest in and enhance it ad capabilities more rapidly than its competition.

But campaigns don’t always go well. If you are a small or medium sized business spending a few hundred to a few thousand a month and you have a question, problem, or issue – good luck. Google likes the self service model of support via automated reports, blogs, grudging email, and even more grudging account reps. For clients spending thousands not hundreds of thousands monthly they can be surprisingly unhelpful.

Competition or rather lack of credible competition may be the problem. A Yahoo acquisition, if successful, offered the hope of a rival, which would make Google more responsive and improve the on-line channel for all marketers. In the meantime, we’ll have to search for something else.

We Tube -They Tube - You Tube

Suppose you make a video at little or no expense and transfer it to a video sharing site such as Peekvid, Ourmedia, Yahoo Video or, of course, YouTube. This video might be crude or in questionable taste. It might only be a long form commercial or shameless plug. So far you’ve got company – lots of it. There are dozens of such sites hosting millions of videos. Let’s stick with YouTube. It has not only the brand recognition but also the audience. Nielsen estimated over 66 million unique visitors in January 2008.

Now the hard part – getting someone other than friends and family to view and respond to your latest media marvel. The double appeal of YouTube is a potentially large audience combined with a low price. On line videos have the potential to become an epidemic as friends email links to friends, who in turn mail to their friends and so fourth.

A now classic case is that of Blendtec and its series of “Will It Blend” videos. For example, the industrial strength blender shows it can, for example, reduce a garden hose or a small appliance to granular residue. The company reports substantially increased site traffic and conversion to sales of its blenders, the least expensive of which is $ 399.95.

The Blendtec videos vividly illustrate the products value while providing amusement and a viral tidbit, easily emailed to a friend. Such cases are also quite rare – the fate of most online videos is instant oblivion. Still, online video is certainly worth a test, as long as you control costs. Two current distinct YouTube campaigns come to mind.

To promote its budget priced Corolla brand, Toyota sponsored a YouTube video contest http://www.youtube.com/sketchies2. This seems ideal for the younger budget oriented market. The contest videos have attracted an audience. The top 10 finalists combined have been viewed about 408 thousand views in the past month.

This is good traffic, but much of it by passes Toyota’s YouTube site (its so called channel) and goes directly to the entries. The Sketchies II channel received only 84 thousand visits in the past month. It also seems not to have helped Toyota’s own site, which curiously contains no references to Sketchies.

Regardless of how well you like the entries, they seem unrelated to Toyota or its Corolla. They neither tell nor show the benefits of Corolla, nor do they promote association to its brand.

This still might have made sense as an experiment. Have an idea – spend a few bucks and test it. The automotive category is crowded and boring. There are far too many shots of similar looking cars traversing similar mountain roads. The problem is that Toyota is reported to have spent $ 4,000,000 (Wall St. Journal, 3/10/08) on the campaign. This is not a lot compared with Toyota’s total marketing spending, but it’s a lot for a promotion which doesn’t promote.

GetSmartContest

Boomers, students of TV history, and fans of re-reruns may remember Get Smart – the 60’s comedy series about the misadventures of clueless counterspy Maxwell Smart – starring the late comedian Don Adams. A key prop of the series was the, for the time, futuristic shoe phone. This was a mobile phone before its time imbedded in a shoe. Max had to remove his shoe to use it, and it usually rang at an inopportune time.



To promote it release of an upcoming feature movie version of Get Smart, Warner Brothers sponsored a YouTube video contest. Unlike Sketchies, the demands of this contest are slight – 20 seconds using a shoe as a phone. This should increase participation. Heck, I might make an entry using the webcam built into my laptop.


This YouTube event may or may not help the movie. Its incremental cost is slight and it is a potentially effective way to recruit a new generation of Get Smart fans. Its You Tube channel has received over 610,335 views this month. Excuse me, my shoe phone is ringing.

Confessions of a Control Freak

Those Who Can Do
- the rest give seminars

Rather than rail against the legions of puny pundits, who can give marketing advise but can’t really market; I’d like to acknowledge one who really can. He is Alan Rosenspan. Alan is a veteran copywriter and marketing strategist, who now runs his one marketing agency (www.alanrosenspan.com).

I recently stumbled upon his book, Confessions of a Control Freak. It’s 324 pages consist of bite sized cases and highly actionable examples across many markets. The title refers to control, as in comparing new programs and promotions with a prior performance benchmark. The goal is to appropriately measure outcome and beat the control.

The book’s perspective is direct mail. His cases and advice, especially in copy and offer development, translate easily into on-line media and integrated programs. No Olympian perspective here, the advice is concrete and specific. I found it definitely a good read. You can find more it at alanrosenspan.com/control_freak.html