The Semacraft Blog

A conflicted business is one pulled in two opposite directions by (apparently) valid desires/objectives.  They aren’t quite sure what to do with themselves.  They know they should engage their online audience better but there’s a gap between what they know and what they do.  Sometimes, to the extent of starting something and then using another to fight it.

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Jesse James Garret of Adaptive Path makes a profound comment in his book ‘The Elements of User Experience’, “Websites exist to serve one of  two purposes; to make the company money or to save the company money.”

I know the kind of website that will lose you some money. It’s easy. Here are five ways to do it effectively.

1. Have contact details that don’t work
2. Have content that is not relevant Read the rest of this entry »

‘…and we can get you on Facebook because social media is big right now!’

That’s some scary advise.  But many organisations hear it all the time from their agencies when talking about marketing or website design.  No strategy, no governance, just multiple channels where the staff can put out great information about the company and its products. Yippee!

Balderdash! I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what happened at Nestlé, although I choose to believe they went about it a bit more deliberately (being a multi-national and all).  The signs are there to show they have issues with their web governance structures. When their Facebook admin took on some fans in what became a very public and embarrassing spat, a very distressing sign became evident.

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We see ourselves as an agency that designs, monitors and manages our client’s presence on the Internet. The corporate website, I must admit, is almost always the first place we begin. However, for some brands, it isn’t always a practical approach. The way consumers are encountering brands online is changing fast and the corporate website is not necessarily the first place they look.  Or the search engines either.
Many consumers rely on what their peers say about the brand on social media platforms or regular word of mouth before they make the decision to check out the website.  This means the corporate website is now a last resort location for data (technical specs, pricing, contact info) that the consumer is unable to easily find on their peer networks.
In his post on the Six Pixels of Separation blog, Mitch Joel raises the point on whether the end of large website builds is here.  I agree with his perspective that the days when businesses built large websites where everything was centralized and the brand controlled the conversation are largely over.  That is why we should be thinking of a brand’s presence on the Internet beyond the corporate website because ‘beyond’ is where the consumer lives.

Of course this means the traditional ways of measuring ROI for online initiatives has to change.  Website analytics are now a very inadequate way of measuring a brand’s impact online.  Analytics now have to extend beyond website hits to mentions on Twitter & Facebook, views on YouTube and participation of consumers/prospects on other media such as LinkedIn.

Do you think you may be holding on to a dead website?

Social media websites introduced a new problem to the workplace. What to do about people spending all day on Facebook and Twitter. It’s not a new problem, these sites have been around for years. The solution many business managers/owners/policy makers are still coming up with is simple. Block them! Organizations responded the same way to Hotmail and Yahoo! email services.

There’s one very big difference between the workplace in the nineties and the workplace today.  There were no Internet enabled cell phones with Facebook apps installed on them.  The rationale for blocking the sites becomes fairly impractical when your staff can update their status, giggle at a funny picture or chat with their friends on their favorite social media tool. Oh, and their cell phones are connected ALL DAY.

The Nielsen Company recently published a study showing we are spending 82% more time year on year on social media sites.  That simply means, despite your business’ best efforts to block access by your staff to these sites, they spent 82% more minutes updating, sharing and giggling on them last year than the year before.  It’s a futile waste of time trying to block them.  My advice to you Mr. CEO is simple.  If you can’t beat them, join them!  They are out there spending time connecting with others, creating content and sharing it whether you like it or not.  If you could get a word in edgewise they could be creating and sharing content about your brand.  If you showed them that the brand is interested in them, they may even use their status update to brag about you.

Instead of burying your corporate head in the sand, get yourself a good social media policy, implement it and become good at playing on the social media field.  Because whether you like it or not, the game will go on without you.