Rethink Your Web Presence - [chrisbrogan.com]

Rethink Your Web Presence
Thoughtful Comment Spammers Welcome
Spirit of the Stairs and Social Media
Charge For the Right Thing
What I Told ABC News About Making Money
Video from the Likeminds Conference
A Whole Lotta Trust Agents Video Reviews
Keep The Marketing Mind
Escape Velocity
Next iPad Annoyance- Google Docs

Posted: 01 May 2010 01:30 AM PDT

When I go to your website (or blog, or twitter page, or facebook page), what do you want me to do? What do you REALLY want me to do? Don’t answer that right away or glibly. What do you want me to do on your site? How do you want me to feed into your systems?

This is what I want to give you: a few questions to consider, from the same side of the fence as your prospective customer/visitor/reader/member whatever. Remember, these questions are not from your side of the fence. They’re from the other side, the important side.

Answer These Questions for Your Audience

Who do you want me to be? – In designing my up and coming new website, I had this great breakthrough. And I started working on it, and then I realized that this design I had in mind would be much more “male” in flavor and I wanted women to feel welcome. I want older people 35-60(ish) to come, so I know I want my font to be large enough and distinct enough. So, that’s what I thought about for my would-be buyer. Who do you want me to be on your site?

How will I know that I belong? – Will I be able to see “me” in your site? Will it make sense? When I go to Runner’s World, I don’t see me. There aren’t any fat trail runners there. I don’t feel like I belong there. (I probably do, but you know what I mean?) How will I know that I’m supposed to be on your site?

What do you want to show/tell me?

You’ve dragged me here. Make it easy to find what you’re hoping I consume. This is your main thing. This is where you want me to get really excited.

What do you want me to do?

I’m here. Now what? You want me to buy your something? You want me to hire you? You want me to sign up for your something? Make that really obvious. This is where things go the most wrong, I think.

How will we keep this relationship going?
– You want me here more than once, right? I’m hoping you do. How can we do that? Shall I subscribe to your blog? Do you want me to do a newsletter? What’s next for us? (This one’s pretty important too, eh?)

How shall I talk of you to my friends? – You don’t want the relationship to end with me, do you? How can we find some of my friends that will also like you? What message do you want me to carry? Is there a way we can do that together?

How Do You Answer This?

I don’t know, but I’m thinking these end up being important questions. What do you think? How does your site stack up?

Thoughtful Comment Spammers Welcome

Posted: 30 Apr 2010 01:30 AM PDT

Weird but true: someone added a spam comment to one of my blog posts. Here’s the pic:

comment spam

The link in the user’s name takes you to a site to buy something. It’s common. We get this all the time, right?

Thing was, the comment was actually good. I decided to leave it up.

So, spammers of the world, maybe you’ve hit on a strategy that works. Maybe.

Thoughts? (Or spam?)

Spirit of the Stairs and Social Media

Posted: 29 Apr 2010 09:55 AM PDT

I just met one of two drummers in the Witchita, Kansas band, Spirit of the Stairs. Or should I point you to this page? Or their Facebook Wall? Or maybe this video of them playing. Here are their search results on Google:

google search results for 'spirit of the stairs'

So, the good news is, they have TONS of great outpost coverage. The bad news? It would be SO much better if they’d built a simple presence framework such that I could find THE REAL them online, not their rental spaces on all the social networks.

It’s true that outposts improve your ecosystem, but you need a home base, too.

The band is interesting, if you like prog rock, and I liked meeting my new friend, Kyle.

Show me your home base. Okay?

Charge For the Right Thing

Posted: 29 Apr 2010 01:30 AM PDT

I just read this bit in paidContent that talks about how Fox is planning to make apps to charge for their content, and it’s got me thinking. Because I’m just recently a citizen of the iPad, I’m buying some new applications to test out what’s interesting and what’s not. I had one for the Wall Street Journal, but I deleted it (don’t feel like paying for news headlines that I get for free from your competitors). I had a few magazine purchases from Zinio (which does seem interesting), but I’m still not sure because I think they need more subscription partners.

The problem I’m bumping into suddenly is that I’m seeing publishers charge at the wrong point. They’re mistaking their mainline content as the value, instead of the value extraction that I get just a little bit more downstream. This is because they are just trying to replicate their offline model (charge a modest subscription and sell the ads) and hack it to fix their mistakes on the internet model 1.0 (charge nothing and give the ads away for cheap). Instead, the new model is even weirder (charge even more for the content and give away the ads for cheap).

Magazine and news publishers of earth: please observe the success of GigaOM (run by Om Malik’s team), and observe some of their models (free content, expensive ads, premium subscription benefits), and also the Huffington Post (free content, celebrity draw, expensive ads, blanket acquisition of eyes from other spaces).

I wrote about the audacity of free before. It’s a tricky thing, considering pricing models. But it’s the only thing. Because as you’re getting new potential readers/subscribers (me!), you’re also losing them just as fast by putting the price wall in the wrong place, or around the wrong parts.

What I Told ABC News About Making Money

Posted: 28 Apr 2010 01:30 AM PDT

I don’t know when I suddenly became the person people would start asking about how to make money. I’m not John Chow or Shoemoney, or even Lynn Terry. I make money via the web, but I’m not exactly “that guy” about it. But hey, if ABC News wants to ask me about it, I’ll answer. But then, I’ll answer with the way that *I* think about money making via the web.

Want to know what I told them?

If you want to make money via the web, my five tips would be:

Grow bigger ears (listening) – the best way I’ve found to help people make money via the web is to “listen at the point of need.” The idea is that people are offering up their interests and requests and desires via the social web every day. If you have what they need, there are opportunities to get into the selling cycle on the spot, instead of waiting.
Be protective of your community – this is how Oprah succeeded. She grew a community around content that was helpful to the people consuming it, and then she attracted sponsors who wanted access to those people. She then stayed fiercely in between the two groups, making sure her community was always protected, and that sponsors had access on her terms only. Own the relationship, own the money.
Add more value than promotion – selling is often heavy-handed and based on wanting to close. The real winners are relationship-minded people who make not only the first sale, but all the subsequent sales thereafter. By giving your community much more value (more content, more things they can use) than just promoting your stuff, you win longer term sales relationships.
Promote and recognize others – in selling and marketing, we talk too much about ourselves. People want to be seen and recognized. Use your platform to point out the good stuff that would appeal to the rest of your community. Mention them. Talk about your customers more than you talk about yourselves.
Be clear on your ask – when you finally have a hard ask, a request for a sale, then be very clear about it. Don’t ever sidle up to the sale. Never let there be a confusion between your goodwill efforts and your direct need for a sale. Never flinch about it, and never make it a mushy mix of community warmth and indirect sales requests. Just like relationships, short and clear is better than long and convoluted.

Oh, and want to watch the video? Here’s my spot on ABC News money matters.

It’s how I’ve done it here, and it’s how I talk about it when I talk to others about making money. Have you done it in similar ways? How has it worked for you?

Photo credit Kevin Dooley

Video from the Likeminds Conference

Posted: 27 Apr 2010 03:52 PM PDT

Here’s a nice little interview I did at LikeMinds in the UK. Honestly? I just really like how nicely edited it was. Reminds me of the really cool work that Brandtailers did with their day in the life of Chris Brogan video.

So, what do YOU think?

A Whole Lotta Trust Agents Video Reviews

Posted: 27 Apr 2010 03:34 PM PDT

I was just watching Shawna Coronado’s video review of Trust Agents, and then I saw lots and lots more reviews. Whether this is useful for you to evaluate whether Trust Agents is for you, is uncertain. Here are several people’s take on the book (and Julien and I speaking about it at Gnomedex).

The book is Trust Agents, and it hit both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller list, as well as being a top 10 book for Amazon and Inc for 2009, for Soundview in 2010, and for 800CEORead in 2009. Not bad, eh?

: )

Keep The Marketing Mind

Posted: 27 Apr 2010 08:30 AM PDT

I want to talk about your marketing mind, and why it’s important.

I just saw a really decent ad placement for Field Notes, a little writing pad that looks like everyone’s favorite Moleskine products. It was on my Twitterific for iPad app, up at the top. I liked the look of the ad. I liked the tag line they used. I clicked through and checked out the site and found that it was themed really nicely, and that it compelled me to want to buy some.

After I experienced all that, I stopped and asked myself why it worked so well.

The ad copy was simple and hit me in my emotions. From memory (a good test of whether the copy was effective), it said something like this: I don’t write down things to remember later; I write them down to remember them now. Whatever it was exactly, the thought was a personal thought, felt like a David Ogilvy mindset, and got me interested in the product.

The look of the product makes one nostalgic. Nostalgia often sells. We have this passion for paper in an iPad world. This worked, too. The site design matched the product exceptionally.

The call to action to order the product was simple and direct. ( I think Christopher S. Penn would maybe recommend the “buy” button be a better distinguishing color for a better call out, but otherwise, it was delicious.

The Marketing Mind

We go from this into the mode of asking, “So how can I learn from this and apply it to what I’m doing?”

In this exact case, the answers would look something like this:

Make sure your ad look and feel matches the emotions intended to be stirred by the product.
Use copy that hits our gut, not our analytics.
Make your online presence an extension of your product’s promise.

We could add more, but you get the point.

The larger point, because this isn’t a post about a set of notepads, is that we all (not just marketers) need to keep our minds open to understanding the mechanics of how such things work. If we need to convince people to make a decision, what can we apply from the above to that cause? If we see something that appeals to us, how can we learn to emulate it for our own needs? If something appeals at first, but you catch on to the deception, how can you defend against it?

Even higher up, can you see the market? What’s the market for the above product? Maybe it’s trendy 30-somethings. Maybe it’s hipsters. But I think it’s more likely the perfect product to offer to those who have had enough of the over-screened world we live in. I think it’s an emotional appeal to paper and pen (or dare I say, pencil).

Keep your marketing mind. It will deliver so much to you, if you leave it running in the background more often. Oh, and make sure to try/execute something with such discoveries when you can. Collecting recipes is no longer part of the plan, remember?

How does your marketing mind work?

Escape Velocity

Posted: 27 Apr 2010 01:30 AM PDT

Since I spoke at Disney a few months back to the “social media moms” group ( Murray Newlands has a write-up), one thing has been on my mind more than anything else: people are hurting out there, economically. Financially, folks in the US (and probably everywhere) are doing a lot worse off than we used to be. Families are cutting into their savings to cover bills. Many people have been out of work for 18-24 months, instead of the typical few weeks that used to be the norm. It’s rough out there. I’ve been thinking a lot about escape velocity.

It’s Hard to Achieve Escape Velocity

My definition of “escape velocity” is “the ability to leave a situation that isn’t helpful or desired.” So, in lots of cases, this can be applied to the jobs people take. If you’re not happy where you are, but you need the money, that means you’re not able to reach escape velocity. (You can use this in lots of ways, such as having trouble with relationships, with a change in your habits – it’s the same mindset).

With financial matters, it’s really hard. Money tensions impact a lot of other things. If you hate your job but you need it, you’re kind of stuck. Or, in lots of cases, financial problems cause us to make “deals with the Devil.”

For instance, I once had to get out of a car loan in a hurry, and had to roll it into a new loan. That new loan was horrible, and I ate that bad decision for about four years. For a while, I also chose to be late on a mortgage payment here or there, in service of attending conferences, where I hoped to make connections that would bring in more money. My credit had (has?) some serious dents in it, but the strategy paid off after a few years (a few itchy-scary years, mind you).

Some Future Positioning

Over the next few months, there will be some changes to my business. (Nothing will change at New Marketing Labs, just to be clear.) I’m going to work on helping people understand how to make human business – and by this, I define “human business” as sustainable, relationship-minded business practices. I’m building a whole bunch of information to that effect, and I’m also retooling my outreach and coverage methods to ensure that we talk here about the various businesses that we think are doing a good job at “human business.”

Part of this will be to help families and smaller businesses achieve escape velocity. I want to help you understand how I found my way out of the trap, and I want to help you find ways to add a little more to your own efforts. It won’t be a very hard turn in the road. I don’t think you’ll run away from the site if you’re a marketer from a huge company. But instead, you’ll see even more that you can do for yourself along the way.

Does this make sense? Are you struggling with those challenges in some way or another? What do you think?

Photo credit Steve Jurvetson

Next iPad Annoyance- Google Docs

Posted: 26 Apr 2010 12:13 PM PDT

I just realized that I can’t actually START A NEW Google doc via my iPad. I guess this is a Google annoyance, as it sees the iPad as a mobile device so it thinks I’m just hoping to read existing docs.

Um, no. I’d like to edit my doc, and/or start a new doc.

How this is useful to you: if you’re a business, make your mobile apps create-able, and not just read-able.