Maxys Max Media and Entertainment

Online Customer Engagement - building your online brand

This article began with a check for a Technorati ping for my new blog and grew into a checklist to help others build their online brand.

1. What is the customer need?

   Business all begins and ends with the customer or consumer - whether consumption is reading information, subscribing to a feed, creating a contanct, watching a video or purchasing a product or service

   Whether customers know they need your product or service yet is simply matter of time and three things - price, product or service.  From there it is the relationship you have with your customers that counts.
   Your goal, understand what your customer want or will need and reduce their barriers to purchasing.

2. Online Business and marketing plan
   

   1. Is building a business any different than building a house? Any business needs a direction, strong foundations and a blueprint to easily communicate your design objectives to investors, clients, staff, contractors and suppliers.
   2. Your business plan should be focused around servicing a customer need. Understand everybody has different needs and wants and you can't please everyone all the time but there are common characteristics.
      
      1. Segment your products and services into customer needs. Research - search the web, speak to competitors and ask questions of potential customers
      2. Identify the most rewarding target markets. Rewards come in many different shapes and sizes. What is important to you?
      3. Develop your marketing message - don't under or over sell. Create strong value propositions.

3. Web site design implemented incorporating SEO (Search Engine Optiminisation)

   1. Ask these questions of every page - does it Inform, Inspire, Involve, Influence?
   2. Inverted pyramid approach to web design -
      
      1. Broad to specific
      2. Maximum (attempt) three menu layers - use keywords as menu titles
      3. Keep It Simple - people are time poor
      4. Quality - first impression is very important

4. Content creation incorporating SEO

   1. Writing Copy (inverted pyramid approach). Keep it simple at the top layers. Make it easy for your reader.

   2. Images (consistent style look and feel) - a picture tells a thousand words

   3. Video (short and to the point) - if a picture tells a thousand words what is a video worth?

5. Internet marketing - blogging , online social networks and other forms of distribution etc

   1. Blogging - your voice - integrated into your customer needs and marketing plan. Strategies.

   2. Strategies - you are now a magazine producer - how are you going to get readers? (more on this later)
      

      1. Some technologies to begin with...

         1. Feedburner

         2. Technorati (Technorati Profile)

         3. Facebook
         4. Youtube

         5. Digg

         6. Flickr

         7. Delicious

         8. Stumble Upon

         9. Twitter
         10. Linkedin
   3. Email marketing and your CRM
   4. Internet advertising

To be contuinued.....

The old online advertising metrics of CTR (Click Through Rates) and Page Views are dated. New Internet advertising metrics such as user influence or a new term such as "customacy" ranking are required.

For businesses, where do you start?

This article will focus on how businesses can lay a foundation for developing strong, future "user influence" or "customacy" ranking and valuation.

What is Customacy?

Customacy is a combination or mashup of new online "customer engagement" advertising thinking and "technacy" (user technology literacy and influence) and in the future, could be used as a method of financially valuing portals and online businesses.

The highest customacy level, based on degrees of customer engagement, is for people who are highly technology skilled and literate; who are highly internet social (add friends, networks); who blog and create content and can influence trends and other user adoption.

A lower level, is for users who may simply tag an article or join a group.

Customacy for business - where to start?

A corporate blog.

For real newbies, what is a blog?

A blog is a bit like an online personal or business journal (see wiki).

According to Technorati, 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.. They estimated 175,000 new blogs are created a day and 1.6 million new posts per day. That is a lot of content!

Fran Molloy, a mum of four and freelance journalist for the SMH and ABC has a great presentation on the do's and don't s of blogging and how to be noticed.

In a nutshell

1. Mum's the Word - keep it professional
2. Make it Interesting - what is your expertise?
3. Know your Message -
   
   1. Can you explain what you do to a ten year old?
   2. Make a story and
   3. Become an expert.
4. Attract Media coverage - two strategies,
   
   1. Wait for the media to notice you or
   2. Go to them.

A business blogging perspective - WIIFM (What's In It For Me)

From a business point of view, all marketing activity comes down to a Return On Marketing Investment (ROMI)

Blogging takes time and skill. Is blogging worth the time and energy?

Expert Status - Online Branding and Internet Marketing

From a business branding and internet marketing perspective blogging is a way of personalising your site and creating you or your companies "expert status".

• "Expert status" - you are referred to by journalists and subscribed by readers and other websites.
• Adding Internet social bookmarking and tagging features to your blog articles allows you to flip the sales funnel into a megaphone
• Free, trusted, word of mouth customer advocacy IS the best form of advertising.
• Have a well written clearly defined article structure and message increases subscription - consider outsourcing to a freelance journalist

Corporate Blogging Benefits

• increased intimacy and influence with your customers
• disintermediate communication layers
• faster product development lifecycles
• increased customacy ranking/ valuation
• The more links and subscriptions to your blog the more you increase your web ranking in terms of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optiminisation (SEO)
• control information distribution - easily tell "your side" of the story

The result is a circular effect - the higher ranked on Google and other search engines, the higher your perceived expertise and credibility.

Beyond current online advertising metrics

Today the majority of online advertising space is bought and sold based on the number of page views and expected CTR's (Click Through Rates). These metrics are dated.

The new advertising metrics.

The new online advertising metrics will be based what would appear common adsense measurements.

Root metrics

Duration of visit; frequency of visit; % of repeat visits; recency of visit; depth of visit; CTR; sales and lifetime value

Action metrics

RSS subscriptions; bookmarks, tags, ratings; inquires; downloads; resyndication; customer reviews; comments; testimonials.

Internet Video consideration

This is of particular importance given the increase in online video consumption which is expected to increase 25% within the next five years

The Challenge for Google

The challenge for Google, as the online advertising market leader, is how to incorporate customacy metrics into their results and advertising offerings.

This will then flow down into advertiser demand; agency sales and website valuations.