Web 2.0 and particularly Social Media are hot topics at the moment and we are finding clients are asking us how they can use it to enhance their marketing. So we thought we would put together a short overview along with some useful tips for implementing in your business.

Let us first define Web 2.0 – ‘Web 2.0 refers to a second generation of web development and design which facilitates communication, secure information sharing, interoperability, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities, hosted services, and applications such as social networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashup and folksonomies.’ (Definition by Wikipedia, itself part of Web 2.0)

Social Media

The term social media covers media which is created by people in text, audio and video formats and is shared and distributed over the web. The most well known and well used are:

Blogs
You are on a blog now! Came from the term web log and is a publishing website that provides commentary and news on particular subjects and visitors can leave comments. Click for more information on business blogs.

Podcasts
Podcasts are audio broadcasts that can be created and shared online often on a blog or web site.

Video Blogs
As you might expect these are blogs that have video posts instead of written content. Like a written blog visitors are encouraged to leave their comments about the ‘vlog.’

RSS
Short for Really Simple Syndication, RSS is a web feed format that when visitors subscribe they will be automatically informed of updates to a web site or blog

Social Networks

There are hundreds of social networks out there on the web, in fact I have unearthed many I hadn’t heard of before whilst carrying out my research for this article. The most well known and well used are:

Facebook
Very popular social networking site and the 5th most trafficked site worldwide with 60 plus million users. The majority of users are under the age of 25 but its fastest growing demographic are those that admit to being over 25. You can create a profile for yourself and/or your business and share personal and business information.

MySpace
The largest membership of any social networking site currently with over 300 million members ranging across a wide spectrum of ages. MySpace isn’t viewed as a “professional” social network such as members do with LinkedIn or, to a lesser extent, Facebook.

LinkedIn
LinkedIn is aimed at the business professional who want to network with other professionals and with possible employers and has over 43 million members in over 200 countries.

Ning
Ning offers an easy-to-use technology platform that lets you quickly and easily create your own social network. This site is growing fast with over 1.3 million Ning social networks created and more than 30 million registered members.

Other Social Networking Sites
The networks already mentioned draw on members from all social backgrounds but there are some sites that focus on a specific audience eg Hi5 is popular among Latin Americans and BlackPlanet focuses on African Americans.

Collaborative and Community Tools

Collaborative and community tools allow your customers and partners to create content with you. They are excellent ways to establish and share knowledge and can help strengthen communication between all parties.

Wikis
Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites, to power community websites and collect information from a large group of people. Wikipedia uses wikes to create its entries.

Forums
An internet forum or message board is an online discussion site and is the online equivalent of a traditional bulletin board. A forum allows members to initiate and participate in online conversations.

E-Commerce/Rating sites
A great example of this is www.amazon.com where you can buy products and you are encouraged to write reviews of the product. E-commerce sites can be effectively used in conjunction with other social media such as blogs and Facebook profiles.

Micro Media Formats

This is emerging technology and micro media formats are small “bite-sized” pieces of information that can be created and shared on your social media site, or in your social networking profile

Widgets
Widgets are codes that you add to a Web site, blog or social networking profile that pull information or media from another source and redisplay it on your blog, Take a look at Breathe’s blog where we use a widget to pull in the latest marketing news

Micro-Blogging
Micro-Blog’s allow you to send others short messages and links and can be used via your mobile phone. Twitter is the most popular micro-blogging service and enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers.

What can Web 2.0 and Social Media do for your business?

Connect and forge relationships with your customer

Social media provides a unique opportunity for you to listen one to one with your customers and create true dialogue. Find out what they are thinking and saying about your brand and engage in that discussion.

Build awareness and reach

The enormous reach of social media will substantially increase awareness of your business and its products and services.

Target distinct markets and demographic groups

The trick is to create awareness where your customers are online by carefully segmenting and aligning with the social channel that they use.

Test market your ideas

Use Web 2.0 and social networks to test market your ideas and gain valuable one to one feedback directly with your customers.

Manage your reputation online

You can use social networks to manage your reputation online but beware it is very important to be completely transparent and honest in your communications.

Some useful tips

• Don’t launch straight into Web 2.0
• Research and understand the differences between each channel
• Investigate the demographics of each social channel
• Create a strategy with goals and objectives
• Allocate enough time and resource
• Make your content engaging and encourage feedback don’t just regurgitate your sales messages

Have you used Web 2.0 and social media successfully? Please post a comment and share this information with our blog visitors.

Today 393,373,398 Europeans use the Internet, that’s 48.9% of the population of Europe. Source www.internetworldstats.com. Web sites have become the most essential element of the marketing mix and these days most businesses have a site but it’s not enough just to have an online presence you have to have an effective one.

Everybody sets out to create a well designed and effective web site so why are there so many poorly designed and ineffective web sites out there? The answer is often that the core marketing principles of adopting a customer centric approach and insightful planning are missing from the process.

Start by defining what the web site needs to achieve for your business and define your on-line strategy as to how those needs are going to be met. Next create some web site objectives and goals and make sure they are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time Bound). Research your market sector and analyse what your competition are up to regarding their positioning, branding, messaging and very important for your search engine optimisation, the keywords they are using.

Put your users at the centre of your planning

The user experience is a critical success factor for the site and it is important to appreciate that they will have different needs. As in any marketing communication initiative the target audience should be analysed and segmented into groups of similar needs and the navigation, messaging and content should be targeted accordingly.

Planning the content and navigation needs to be carefully considered before pen is put to paper or the first mouse clicked in the design phase. It is a good idea to draw up a site map which shows every page in the web site focusing on navigation and sub navigation. Include search engine optimisation as part of your plan as it is much more effective to optimise the site from the start. Your keywords affect the site structure and navigation and influence content.

Choose the technology to fulfil the web site objectives and don’t use the latest hot techniques unless they serve the needs of the site and enhance the user experience. Flash animation and video can be very effective but they are no substitute for a well thought out and easy to navigate web site.

Perception is Reality

Consider how your brand image is going to work online and the impression it is going to create in the minds of your users. As marketing gurus Ries and Trout say ‘perception is reality in the minds of your customers.’ If your brand is creating a poor image of your business then consider a re-brand (or brand refresh) before launching your new web site. Below is an example of a brand refresh and website re-design created by Breathe Marketing for Opex (the original site is on the left and the new one on the right).

Your web site should be at the heart of your marketing communications and it is important to make promotional plans at the beginning of the web site redesign process. If you don’t promote your site no one will read the fabulous new content you have spent hours preparing! Look at an integrated approach using creative online and offline tactics to drive traffic to your site.

Minimise your risk and maximise your return

Your web site is probably the most important element of your marketing communications mix. Web technology is becoming increasingly complex and it requires a high level of understanding and expertise to design and build effective web sites. Hire professionals who can demonstrate the right marketing, technical and design skills to deliver your web site objectives and be wary of trusting this critical task to anyone else.

Effective web sites result from the right planning, the right marketing approach, the right branding, the right content, the right design matching the right technology.

You just need to figure out the objectives of your business blog first, is it to:

• increase sales
• act as PR for your business (media relations, reputation building or to get quick information out in a crisis)
• be a point of  product information (not contained on your main site ie user reviews or technical data)
• drive traffic to your main web site (and increase its ranking with search engines)
• add a tone of voice and personality to an other wise faceless corporation/business
• as a general awareness exercise about your products and services
• establish yourself or your company as an expert in your business area

Blogs have the potential to reach a much larger audience than conventional marketing means. Because an individual  post could be linked to from other blogs, can inspire comments and create a dialogue with customers and there is nothing quite like the buzz of word-of-mouth. Also you and your customers will gain a better understanding of each other and this will allow you to more effectively and efficiently market to them in the future. Your marketing mix can be greatly enhanced by generating candid feedback in the casual  and totally open setting of a blog.

Increasing Traffic to your Business Blog

Make sure you have a link from your main company web site to your blog also if you or your friends or employees have a Facebook page a Twitter account or their own blog, see if they will give the company blog a link. Look at your site traffic and when it is busiest and try to post new content at these busy times. Try to encourage subscribers to your RSS feed so customers get new information and news as its published. Add your blog URL to your company business cards, literature and email sign-offs. Also try to encourage frank feedback, ending a post/article with a question is a good way to inspire comments and dialogue. Remember if you do get negative feedback do something about it as quickly as possible and follow up to ensure a positive resolution.

Getting Started With Blogging

The nice thing about blogging is you don’t have to have any knowledge of HTML or programming knowledge, all the blogging software around will do it for you. At Breathe we prefer to use Wordpress as we have found it to be easy to use and it has plenty of plugins and widgets to add extra functionality to a blog, it’s also very customisable style wise. To start you could just use an off the shelf template (Wordpress have loads to choose from). But there’s nothing like carrying over your brand image to your blog. We’ve done that at Breathe Marketing and plenty of big corporates do it too it helps to give a consistent tone of voice to all your marketing and borrows your brand values to add credibility to your blog from the start, it needn’t be that expensive either. A customised template can also be tailored specifically to your own marketing needs and can better achieve your marketing aims.

Other things you may wish to consider:

• who will blog? (sounds silly I know but someone has to be responsible for it)
• who will tackle negative feedback?
• and  who will moderate the comments?

I hope this has helped you to gain a better insight into the benefits of a business blog and the powerful impact it can have on your marketing strategy and business in general. Who out there wouldn’t have a need for one? And who can spot benefits to their business that I haven’t covered?

Just a quick reminder that IE8 is on its way bring with it new controversy and development puzzles all of its own. Prehaps MicroSoft should stop fighting against all the other browsers and start joining them in making the web a much more enjoyable place to spend time for the user. A place filled with web sites that all support the same coding standards and don’t break in certain browsers.

Make this your first step in web design!

I brought this book shortly after buying Dreamweaver 8. It got me up and running quickly and efficiently and gave me enough confidence to put together my first website (while I was still reading it). It takes you through everything step by step, doesn’t confuse you with techy terms and is friendly and informative in its manner. It also encourages you to look at and change the code and not rely completely on the design view in Dreamweaver and after a while it just seems more intuitive to do things in the code view. Which reaps benefits as you progress with website construction. Friends of Ed have released books on Dreamweaver CS3 and CS4 since this book, but the others tend to go too techy, too quick and also cover PHP and MYSQL to some extend, which is trying to run before you can walk. I’ve brought several Friends of Ed books since this one and would totally recommend their books to anyone as they all have a friendly easy to understand writing style.