First of all my utmost respect to the organizers of the conference for putting up such a great event. Given the fact that it was the first one I can only give my biggest kudos to the iStrategy crew.

See the web as a marketplace, not as a marketing instrument!

One of the primary things I have taken away from the event is that hardly any organization pays attention to what their website visitors experience once they have arrived. And even though this event was promoted solely around social media strategy, thus of course perceiving all the social media channels as marketing instruments, I can only repeat what I stated in the MeetTheBoss.tv interview: Please try to put yourself not only into the situation of the customer, but also move forward and start seeing the web as a marketplace, not only as a mean of marketing.

In my interview (for those that had to depart early or didn’t manage to make it to this great event at all) I stated a pretty plastic example; that what is being done now compares to running the energizer bunny through the city, catching everyone’s attention.

Those people will definitely visit your store, but if there is no sales staff there to engage with them your products can have all the value proposition they want and no one will buy, thus rendering the marketing efforts invested in this campaign(s) obsolete.

Wikipedia describes a market as “any structure that allows buyers and sellers to exchange any type of goods, services and information” and this is where you have to go people… the level of the web are customer centric web presentations allowing both customer initiated and proactive engagement from the side of organization running this web operation.

Real time website analytics, backed by behavioral targeting will allow you to pinpoint interested visitors, mark them as prospects and allow your sales staff to directly speak to them through a chat window which will appear on the visitors screen.

Just to give you an insight: I have been experimenting with proactive customer engagement instruments for the past 5 months and have seen two extreme results:

1. Once you initiate the chat window on your visitors screen roughly 40% immediately shut it and leave your site because they perceive their privacy to be invaded and they have never seen something like this before. Due to the fact that I see this kind of interaction to spread magnificently in the next months because of its simplicity however, I think that this rate will drastically reduce over the next 18 months.

2. The other 60% accept the chat request simply because you introduce yourself to them on the fact that you have seen their interest in the specific product/page they’re currently viewing and giving them the opportunity to ask questions they may have in context to this product. Questions which they would have not asked if you would have made them access the contact form (if you offer points of contact at all).

For those of you who would have expected the all healing solution in the post: I’m sorry to disappoint you at this point, but it’s not out there simply because your organization is too unique starting at the vertical you’re in and ending with factors like the mindset inside your company or enterprise and how willing the employees are to embrace new things or how keen they are to engage others.

Utilizing social media as an instrument for internal communication!

Social media has so much more to offer than what it’s primarily being (mis)used for by the companies out there today.

Another very interesting aspect is the internal usage to gain and preserve intellectual property, preventing/reducing the risk of – for instance – re-initiation of projects which have been worked on prior reducing process faults and costs resulting thereof.

An internal blog made available to the whole organization can not only enable horizontal communication which will allow you to spread innovative ideas immediately (and improve them through the discussions which inevitably are going to happen over time) but also catch other ideas for improvement of processes and organizational purposes.

As I have pointed out above, there is no all curing prescription drug which will take care of all your needs. And nor is Microsoft’s Sharepoint!!!1

Corporate Online Reputation Management (CORM)

Nothing is as bad as leaving something uncommented. And why should you? I have just recently found out that pretty much none of the fortune 500 companies of the world listen to what is being said about them on Twitter.

While I could understand that not all channels can be monitored (which is also a lie) Twitter is one of the “hottest” portals.

Don’t see it as negative energy being spread about you on the web but see it as an opportunity to engage with a customer, thus strengthening your relationship with them. Don’t believe me? Well, give it a try. It works, trust me. John McCrea does a magnificent job with it on Plaxo, so why shouldn’t you or Lufthansa, or Bose, or Allianz Global Investors?

Beside the fact that you directly engage with the customer however, you can catch a lot of FREE!!! (That’s the thing without paying millions for people collecting market intelligence for you) customer feedback. Not only what your customers think about your products but also where you should go to have a look for more info about you which you may have not been able to assess which may be stashed in a third party discussion board, blog, etc. Oh yeah, did I mention that THIS INFORMATION IS FREE?

BOTTOM LINE!

Yes, the iStrategy is definitely worthwhile, especially to those organizations which have not undergone any efforts of implementing social media into their marketing strategy. (IMPORTANT: the marketing strategy is only ONE PART of what you should do. Don’t forget the: the objective of social media marketing is to drive customers to you. Don’t make the mistake and leave alone in your desolate virtual warehouse, a. k. a. your website!)

Should you join the next one? Pretty much so.

The value proposition is there, loud and clear and it will most likely give you important insights into the market (and hey, I’m probably going to speak there).

And if you don’t learn anything there is still the possibility to network with some really big people there from several industries.

Even if I repeat myself: there is no golden rule. The more individual your strategy is the more authentic it will come across. Copying is not really the solution. But copying for inspiration and then making it better definitely is an idea to pursue.

For any questions you may have please comment them to this post and/or use my contact info to reach out to me. Or follow @lars_hilse on twitter.

Enterprise Content Management for internal communication, knowledge management and conservation of corporate intellectual property – yes, also for small and medium sized enterprises!

The nature of ECM or enterprise content management is – as the name reveals – to make data once worked on accessible to future projects in order for the organization to save money. At least if they’re not being misused for communication purposes dedicated to reaching out to the customers. There are better solutions out there for that.

One of the primary advantages should be that the access to information is easier than it would have been on paper.

While this proves to be true from a decentralization aspect and that the data is accessible even in the most remote branch office, a lot of organizations don’t or hardly dedicate time and budget on installing sufficient search servers in the system which make finding the information, once it’s been archived, easier or possible in the first place.

Another problem is presented to organizations through the lack of understanding by their team, who simply don’t acknowledge that value of adding search words when archiving the documents or – if forced to do so by the systems setup – will enter no more than rubbish just to get rid of the error message.

As to many problems I’m confronted with in my work there is no one-size-fits-all-solution out there; especially in context to the factor of human failure I’ve outlined above each situation is unique, as is the organization I work with.

However, some general advice would be that upon deployment of an ECM platform make sure that you’ve checked with the vendor and maybe with someone that knows their stuff around search engines (not necessarily your IT-staff) that the search engines included in the ECM are good enough to meet your needs.

Another important factor would be whether documents (PDF, Word files, etc.) can be search natively by the system and actually show up in search results. The alternative would be to mark the documents with keywords upon uploading them which bears the risk of employees not taking this seriously or important words not being included thus making the whole effort invested obsolete.

I’m thinking of dedicating a whole white paper to the whole corporate intellectual property management section in the future.

Let me know whether there is raised interest on this issue.

I’m going to be guest on a show called Internet Business Strategies.

The show airs on several stations in the United States and will be streamed here.

Feel free to ask questions on +1 303 872 0503 or post your question on Twitter @rcrn .

Airtime is 3 P.M. eastern, noon pacific.

Here we go for another Book Monday in which I reveal excerpts from my book “Adding the ‘E’ to your Business Strategy” ( Ebook | Paper Version | Amazon Kindle ) which was recently published.

While last week we touched the topic of corporate online reputation management, this week we’re going to focus on a more technical topic called “search engine optimization” and why it’s so important to understand it.

So here we go:

I guess you are familiar with the fact that Google has become the most used search engine in the world with far over 40% market share in and over 1 billion searches submitted daily.

What you may be wondering about is why your company’s website does not show up on the search results for certain search terms and what you can do to influence this to show up before your competitors.

The practice involved here is referred to as search engine optimization, short SEO. Actually it is not a practice but more of a science that relies on the try and error principle.

A lot of search engine specialists have evolved from nowhere and proclaimed to have understood Google and their algorithms, which is partially true.

Only partially because a lot of them are complete idiots who will try to draw money out of your pocket for doing close to nothing in regards to making your company appear first on the Google search result for the query of your companies name.

This is complete bullshit because if you submit an explicit search for your company name on any search engine you have to show up first.

If not, you have seriously done something wrong choosing your web design firm who should have created the site in a search engine friendly manner.

Search engine optimization means understanding Google and learning by doing because their search methods are almost as secret as the recipe for Coca Cola.

If Google were to reveal their algorithms and the search techniques they use it would not only diminish their market position but also open the gates for everyone to influence search results, which would have a disastrous outcome.

So why should you optimize your website for Google and co.?

Simple: the return of investment (ROI) of your website increases with the amount of business you draw from it.

This requires you to have a certain amount of visitors to it, which will convert from prospects to leads to business, which consequence means more business generated from it. And hey, you have already invested lots of money into the design of the site itself, so why not make this investment worthwhile?

While we’re at it: you should immediately dispose of the thought that you will be on the first search result for every term you wish to have. It’s not going to happen simply because there are other competitors of yours on the web who will have had a similar idea and it’s going to be hard and cost intensive to replace their positioning with your own.

You should rather seek innovative ways to reposition yourself for search terms, which are not as frequently used, but therefore increase the number of search terms.

Logically, this will get you higher positioning for these terms.

Since you’re not going to go for the one big fish, but plenty of little ones, you’ll not starve and don’t have to waste your breath trying to keep up with the big guys.

Note: Please do not try SEO yourself since it’s highly unlikely you will get the same results that a professional firm will be able to achieve for you.

Like I have mentioned a couple of times before it is inevitable that you combine all efforts to really get the most out of your eBusiness campaign. And eventhough my book “Adding the ‘E’ to your Business Strategy” ( Ebook | Paper Version | Amazon Kindle ) may sound like the howto guide on achieving market leadership it simply isn’t.

This book shows you strategic approaches analyzing the current situation and how you can execute plans which have derived from your analysis.

Stay tuned until next week when we’re going to lay hands on our last topic “Customer Information Management (CRM)”.

So long,

Lars

I hope you are as excited as I am about this chapter from my book “Adding the ‘E’ to your Business Strategy” ( Ebook | Paper Version | Amazon Kindle ).

My editor (not the one that disappeared ) called this a true eye opener and upon  the idea founded the company Online Reputation Management, which I am a part of.

It is truly amazing how many people are unaware of how fast bad news can spread about a company online. And how fast it can endanger the whole brand and image.

So here we go on to the chapter “Corporate Online  Reputation Management”:

Remember the good old days when – if negative news were published by a credible newspaper – you would contact your legal counsel and tell them to take the appropriate measures, which would consist of a restraining order or something of that nature?

These times have been replaced by a potential grave danger to your organizations reputation. A danger you can’t counter with the conventional methodologies utilized back then because its nature is not conventional either.

The threat I am talking about is called social media and can ruin your reputation in a matter of days.

It was in early 2008 and a tool called Twitter at the brink of its breakthrough when I first mentioned what is today known as corporate reputation management.

Back then I closed the link by suggesting that upon negative news popping up about an organization on the web, one assigned person will take action by immediately contacting the person complaining, regardless if their complaint was legitimate or not.

To illustrate this process with an example let’s just say that one of your clients is dissatisfied with the service provided by your organization and boasts out a complaint about that on the web.

Now, this can be through their blog in the best case because you have time to react and they can remove or alter that entry when your reputation management staff picked up on and resolved the issue together with the client.

Worse would be if they published their opinion on highly frequented places like micro-blogging platforms where the viral effect is way more likely to take effect simply because they can’t be stopped and even if the clients problem is solved, the good news are unlikely to pick up with the same magnitude.

In all cases the ideal outcome for everyone involved would be that the person who complained in the first place replaces what they have written with the story of how great your customer service is because they got back to them immediately.

Chances that this happens are fairly high because the people are – up until now – not used to this kind of behavior and reaction by support staff.

While back then it took a few hours the tools available today make information surrounding your organization available to you the instant they are published.

Through so-called real time search engines, to which you can submit searches and are informed the instant someone, somewhere says something about you, and this whole topic becomes even more interesting for you as an organization.

This immediate access allows you or your representatives to take immediate action against negative issues being published about you on the web.

Ok, this is my favorite chapter of the book “Adding the ‘E’ to your Business Strategy” ( Ebook | Paper Version | Amazon Kindle ) simply because if there is one industry out there on the web which really has to compete it’s the porn industry.

This implies that they really know their stuff when it comes to branding, search engine optimization (another topic appearing in a few weeks), search engine marketing, etc.

So here we go:

It’s sad but it’s true: if there is one industry on the planet that is fighting for market-share more than any other, it’s the porn industry.

Naturally they are the ones you want to look at when it comes to doing good search engine campaigns, link building, link popularity etc.

Yet the issue we will be focusing on is another impressive and innovative thing they have done to get the attention of the customers they want to sell their non-free products to.

If you do a bit of research on a specific sexual practice, kink, fetish, or whatever you will find out that a lot of the highest-ranking search results are forums or other internet communities containing user contributed content.

User contributed content attracts a lot of search engine traffic because 10000+ users registered on a website with a discussion forum, personals, pictures, etc. can generate a lot more content a day than you will ever be able to. And the best part is that this content is highly diversified and free.

The reason these pages rank so high is because they appear to be informative communities, which have nothing to do with any company trying to distribute products over the web. For non-observant people this is true.

But if you pay attention to the advertisements placed on this website, you will soon find out that most of the links, banners, and what not link to one specific provider of sexually explicit content over and over again.

Ok, let’s get away from the nasty section and move to the good side of life again and what you can learn from this practice.

No, please do not go ahead, cash out a life insurance and create a porn portal. You’re lacking the experience, trust me.

Furthermore, let’s not forget the fact that advertising postage stamps on a website for shoe fetish will hardly have the effect you’re going to be expecting.

So let’s stick with the example that you are a retailer for specific, rare, regionally limited postal stamps. We now go back to draining that life insurance of yours and creating a portal for philatelists where they can discuss insights, share information, maybe even find interesting people over the web in other parts of the world.

Since you’re a philatelist and not only a philanthropist, we will have to create an ROI somewhere along the line to make this whole thing worthwhile.

This we achieve by using any available free space to place links, banners, and other advertisements to your online presentation which will not only lead 100% relevant traffic to your shop.

Also, your relevance in Google’s view will significantly go up because the portal we have created is linked throughout the web on several other portals, websites, and blogs through articles your community users have generated for you (free) and other users have posted elsewhere (free). See the win-win-win-situation here?

Since you have links there to the online shop where you sell your stamps, you will gain visibility too and may end up higher in search results.

The fact that you advertise on this platform will in the near future lead to the fact that other people from related businesses will try to buy advertising space on this website which will again increase the demand of this platform and increase the return of investment of this venture even more.

Just a side note here, but an important one: since you officially have nothing to do with this portal you could not care less what the people do on this portal.

Interested? Keep in mind that in my book “Adding the ‘E’ to your Business Strategy” ( Ebook | Paper Version | Amazon Kindle ) I point out that it’s inevitable that you have to combine all efforts pointed out therein to really make your appearence on the web count.

If you have questions please feel free to discuss them here or ask them directly be contacting me.

Remember how last week I told you about website analytics? And the week before that about diversifying operational risk through web campaigns?

While we go through the chapters of my book “Adding the ‘E’ to your Business Strategy” ( Ebook | Paper Version | Amazon Kindle ) please keep in mind that you will not be able to achieve web leadership if you don’t combine all instruments I mention herein.

Every single one is important, yes. But only the combination of all of them alike will bring you the success your competitors are having.

Let’s move on to todays chapter, which is called “Taking your business from local to global for a few thousand bucks”:

Fifteen years ago it was mandatory to set up physical shop if you wanted to expand your business to another country; heck, even if you wanted to do business in another city or state.

You as a business owner are blessed with this situation in the current technological era.

And I say this in reference to the fact that you have the internet as a global and most cost-efficient market place, giving you access to 1.2 billion potential customers worldwide.

You further have the friendly logistic professionals in their purple/orange, brown, or yellow cars and planes who will bring your goods to any given destination on earth – if need be within 24 hours, sometimes even less than that. And that’s not all.

So what’s involved when taking your business international?

As I pointed out earlier you really have to sit down and do your homework.

For instance: different countries have different laws and legal issues, which can easily break your neck. Yes, I mean break your neck.

So figuring out whether you are allowed to export/ship your goods to the country you’re targeting is really helpful to know.

Another, probably the primary factor, is that you have to attract business in this country. Since you have decided to set up shop without a physical shop, we have to raise awareness of your products otherwise.

This can be most easily done through direct or indirect search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns.

While a direct SEO campaign will involve the translation of your complete website and the services and widgets it may include, an indirect SEO campaign will try to attract new customers or prospects to your services via so called link bait.

Let’s take an example: your website is available in the languages English and Spanish and you target the US domestic market with its 300 million citizens, a majority of those being potential customers to your business.

Beside that you are already reaching out to a significant part of the world’s population because those two are the most spoken languages.

Naturally though, hardly anyone from a country with a dominant language, for instance France, will submit their searches to Google in English or Spanish but in French, even though they speak English and/or Spanish fluently.

So what you do is an analysis of this countries habit in reference to entering search terms.

After having ascertained the results from this study, you will most likely want to go ahead and create bits and pieces of bait on the internet.

In our example these will be terms searched for by the world’s French speaking population.

So when someone submits a search query to Google in French, they will wind up not directly on your website, but on a website you have put bait on and which has a link – let’s call it the hook – back to your website.

This way, you’ll be able to attract this specific person to your website, products, or services in your native language without having to go through the hassle of translating your online presentation entirely, but can just profit from an indirect SEO campaign.

By taking this approach and only translating to the most dominant languages (as the buying power of these countries inhabitants will be higher), you’ll reach Europe’s 500+ million citizens and pretty much the rest of the world.

If you want to find out how you can make this plan happen for your organization please don’t hesitate to buy my book “Adding the ‘E’ to your Business Strategy” ( Ebook | Paper Version | Amazon Kindle ) where you will find out how you can analytize the current situation and make the right decisions.

Next week we’re going to move on my favorite chapter, “learning marketing from the porn industry”. That one is so exciting because the sleazy people really know their stuff when it comes to web marketing. So stay tuned people and make sure to tell your friends about me!

Welcome back.

Last week we started with the introduction and are now moving on to the first chapter which is called “Diversifying operation risk of domestic market behavior” from my book “Adding the ‘E’ to your Business Strategy” ( Ebook | Paper Version | Amazon Kindle )

E-Business can be the specific thing you have been looking for to make your operation independent if – for instance – your “home-markets” screw up.

While the recent recession struck the US and devastated a vast amount of market segments, other parts of the world remained pretty relatively untouched, some even totally intact.

Before we go on we have to differentiate though because the memory of the masses is pretty widely subjected to Alzheimer’s.

In the 1920s we’ve had a similar situation on the global markets. Back then the governments and banks decided to take money out of the market to stabilize the system which proved to be wrong as we can all see in the history books with awe; the outcome being the great depression.

In 2008 when the situation reoccurred, the governments and banks, which had learned from the devastation they caused in the roaring ’20s, are starting to flood the markets with money in hopes that this will help the world stay out of disaster.

This opposing reaction can be the chance for your business to take off.

More money in the markets means that the buying power of the people is secured. It will of course have an effect on their buying behavior, but will lead to the fact that there will always be money in their pockets for necessities. And this covers the first group, the middle and lower class.

The upper class of course was hardly affected by the recession because they were able to diversify the investment risk through spreading their wealth to several investment channels.

This leads us back to your business.

When I say operational risk this includes a vast variety of factors. Some of which you can influence, most of which you can’t. So let’s be realistic about diversifying your operational risk.

The conclusion of the above mentioned could be to go international which will leverage the risk of a domestic market screw-up significantly.

Meaning, that if you’re a retailer in the US and with your operations limited to that specific region, you will probably be pounded by a market downturn in the US.

The fact that the economic downturn in the US has happened will also lead to a destabilization of the dollar in comparison to other currencies which will make the margin on the products you have in stock even higher.

So let us for a short while, imagine that you would have already made the investment and your website or e-commerce portal available in the other major languages around the world, which are Spanish, French, German, and now: Chinese.

You would instantly have access to the markets speaking those languages because if someone were looking for the products there they would not care where the product they are buying is from if they’re looking to save an extra buck.

Of course you’re right – I only mentioned the retailer in the US but this model can be applied to pretty much every business vertical in these times.

This chapter contains several examples of applied eBusiness models. If you want to read more, please consider buying “Adding the ‘E’ to your Business Strategy” ( Ebook | Paper Version | Amazon Kindle ).

Nothing is more nerve-wrecking than having to scroll on a website. In fact it is a key factor for me to leave a site the instance I arrive.

Avoiding this is obvious to most of us, but hardly anyone knows the majorities screen resolution.

The pie-chart on the left points out a blue, 44,46% big field which indicates 1024×768 pixel resolution. This trend is continuous throughout a significant amount of the websites I follow.

But don’t be prejudiced about your users. An older demographic will most likely tend towards a higher resolution because the appearance of the site will conceivably be bigger. While younger users will most likely tend towards a smaller resolution because of the billions of other applications they will have to monitor aside from the website they are currently reading. Furthermore, we have to think of national issues in reference to visitors from less wealthy countries, who will most likely not have access to high resolution displays.

The ultimate compromise would seemingly consist of creating a variable width template which would take care of these issues once and for all, right? Wrong, because you (or your designers) will experience devastating limitations in terms of creativity and enriching your web site’s content with appropriate imagery. This resulting out of the fact that the images would either be not wide enough for big displays or too small for mobile devices.

The conclusion and only way to be least screwed is to take a fixed width design which is under 1000px of width and to provide barely enough content to make it obsolete to scroll vertically.

Did we forget something? Oh, yes… the constantly growing amount of mobile users. The simplest way would be to create an alternative template or landing page for them with browser recognition.

Now we’ve got pretty much everybody served and happy

When it comes to political elections I personally trust no one and – like pretty much always – base my opinion on the independent media sources, which are primarily internet based.

When I was looking into who was going to make the race in the US presidential elections I was upon my search on Google, directed to a German news site of a conceivably free television station.

I was presented with the result that McCain was supposed to have around 46% or the electoral votes as of October 18th.

Having been made aware of the Islandic project “If The World Could Vote“, which is in part managed by my good friend Hjortur Smarason, I also checked there, expecting that the results would be at least similar. The project, by the way, assumes that anyone of the over 6 billion citizens of the world could give their vote, electing the next president in the USA.

Rolling my cursor over the USA revealed a staggering 18,8% of the voters who had given their voice to McCain.

The initial question which arose was whether one of these sources had somehow miscalculated the information because of the massive discrepancy between the results found.

Investigating further sources on the mass media presented similar presentations of the percentages while looking more into the independent media scene showed a clear trend towards McCain’s opponent Obama.

Of course we have to consider that “only” a small minority of the US citizens had voted on the independent platform. Maybe these, apparent internet users, are the more educated because of their web access?

Have a nice weekend

Lars