I spend a lot of time browsing the blogs of some of my fellow Gen-Yers and am always surprised by the lack of usability. I know content is our primary focus, but I’m often surprised to find:

• I can’t find a link to your Twitter account
• You’re social bookmarking buttons don’t work
• I can’t find any contact info
• I can’t find an ‘About’ page

And the list goes on.

I honestly don’t think we pay enough attention to the usability of our websites sometimes. So this is where your mom comes in. Well it doesn’t have to be your mom, but someone outside of your little social media bubble should take a look at your blog and report back to you on how intuitive it is. Have them click around and ask questions, you might be surprised what they come up with.

It’s easy to get caught up in a whirlwind of plugin madness when it comes down to populating your WordPress blogs sidebar with cool new widgets. We convince ourselves that our readers would find them useful and we picture them gleefully playing with the little widget that allows them to feed virtual fish. Now when is the last time you played with virtual fish, well maybe that’s a bad example as virtual fish can be pretty fun sometimes. But what value does it provide to your reader and furthermore, how is it in any way relevant to the message you are trying to get across with your blog.

Now take a step back for a moment and go check your analytics (this is where someone usually, sarcastically, says “I’ll wait a second while you go ahead and open that”). Once you have your analytics open, check to see how much traffic your categories and tags are getting. Also check to see if any author pages are getting some decent traffic. If the answer is no to any or all of these questions, what value is there in putting these links in the sidebar? Especially considering that these types of widgets are usually displaying content that is already being displayed in part of the post via “This was posted in blah blah with the tags blah blah blah”.

So these are just a few examples of easy ways to waste valuable sidebar real estate. Next time you add ANYTHING to your sidebar, first ask yourself; How does my reader truly benefit from this added functionality and how does it support my goals?

Photo by sindesign

With the Internet moving at the speed of light it is important that companies keep up in an age of on-demand lifestyles. It may not be for everyone, but for most it is essential that you be kept up to date in the latest communication methods. Furthermore it is more important than ever that your company is only clicks away from your next most valuable client.

Here are a few things companies need to know these days:

1) Your website is more than a business card. The days of static websites floating out in the Internet are gone. Websites these days need to be focused on providing the most appropriate and up to date information to it’s viewers at all times. This is why it is almost essential that your website be on some sort of content management system that allows your most qualified staff to update your site with ease. It’s also important to have some sort of analytics in place so you can optimize your site based on it’s usage.

2) Position your self. Forget the yellow pages, is your site optimized for Google searches? Like I said before, we live in an on-demand world now and you need to position yourself to be found by your target audience. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing your website with keywords and easily indexable code. Some content management systems help with the SEO by cleaning up the HTML and linking structure of your site so it’s important to take into consideration when choosing the best platform.

3) Communicate. Who needs cold calling or newspaper ads when you have services like LinkedIn and Twitter ready and willing to facilitate your business networking at lightening speed. The mind shift has already taken place and people are openly talking about their lives with millions of other people from around the world. Learning how to use and leverage these tools to expand your business’s potential is a necessity in this economy.

4) Embrace your community. Companies are starting to submit to the candid discussions happening in social media. It’s no longer about controlling your image but rather responding to your communities feedback to make it better. This is a great reason to start blogging and monitoring the blogosphere for relevant conversations in your industry.

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The times are changing fast and you can either get on board and ride a long or you’ll get left behind.

Contact Magicomm today to learn how we can help you make the transition.

- Photo by boboroshi

Blogs are amazing forms of communication that allow and encourage the proliferation of information across multiple platforms. The question is are you optimizing your blog for your web readers?

We at Magicomm are planning a complete website overhaul however I thought it would be nice to give our blog a jump start. We didn’t give it a complete overhaul but rather took a close look at some of its functions and contemplated their purpose.

Social Bookmarking Links

We were previously using sociable as an easy solution however, it ultimately presented two problems:

1. No one was clicking on the links because they were small and not actionable
2. We couldn’t track who was clicking on the links

We in turn narrowed the social bookmarking sites down to Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg and Delicous as they were ultimately the most used. We also used the provided widgets from Digg and Reddit as well as custom programmed AddThis analytics functionality to the StumbleUpon and Delicous links.

Post Collections

Some of our most popular posts were part if ‘Printer Tweet Tips‘ or ‘The Dead Series‘ yet we weren’t pushing people to the series overview pages. This was easily solved with some new visual links in the sidebar.

Contributors

You can see which Magicomm employee composed a specific post by looking at the bottom of any specific page however, there was no list of all blog contributors anywhere in the site. Once again, this was easily resolved by replacing the rarely used ‘Archive’ section of the sidebar with a ‘Contributors’ section.

New Plugins

There is always someone working on something that’s going to bring social media to a new level. It’s everyone else’s job to find these new services, plugins and products and put them to good use. We feel passionately about providing more value to Tweets about blog posts and therefore installed the CommenTwitter plugin. The idea is that people can tweet their comments to a post right from the comment form. This generates traffic to that users comment as well as the blog …. basically a win-win.

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So when is the last time you looked at your blog and made some changes for the better?

Photo by Jake Sutton

Ready…..Shoot…Aim. This makes about as much sense as playing with knives but this is exactly the type of mind set many marketers have adapted these days. Who is to expect anything else from a culture that has placed such little emphasis on being patient? Knowing your customer is the name of the game and it is a major problem for marketers today. This problem is so prevalent that Marketing Management Magazine listed it as the #1 challenge facing marketers today. The article explains that sales and marketing professionals say that they know their customers but in actuality suffer from a “Depth Deficit, by failing to think deeply enough about customers.” The article goes on to call for advancement of rudimentary marketing research techniques and introduces the thought of “blending ethnographic and quantitative perspectives.”

The fact of the matter is that marketing and sales initiatives are relying too heavily on assumptions. Just thinking you know the truth is not only lazy but it comes back to haunt you after you have expended every marketing resource ($) into billboards for the entire continent of Antarctica. Marketing research done correctly is supposed to allow your marketing efforts to be direct and effective. The Spray and pray approach drives executives crazy and forces them to cut marketing budgets.

According to a study by Emarketer inc., published in Marketing News, only 5.56% of total worldwide advertising spending in 2006 went towards marketing research. This integral part of marketing campaigns seems to be overlooked these days. If you are disregarding marketing research, think again, done correctly it can make your marketing efforts more directed, efficient, and cost effective. Instead of the spray and pray approach (wasting valuable resources over a large spectrum), adopt a smarter approach where advanced marketing research is done and your marketing efforts adopt a Ready….Aim…Shoot approach.

Image by FotoDawg

At a time with so much economic turmoil, it is widely understood that marketing budgets are the first to go. While I don’t agree with most of these decisions, there are many variables that go into the decision making process for these companies. My feeling is that marketing yourself is one of the most important things a company can do. With marketing budgets shrinking and the the pressure on marketers increases, it is time to fight back. As a marketer whose success is hard to pinpoint, it is now time to show your organization what you are worth. In the age of declining marketing budgets it is time to do more with less. Don’t be worried though, through shifts in today’s marketing world your job can become easier by adopting new tactics. If you are faced with the dilemma of a shrinking budget and your boss breathing down your neck you need to do two things.

1. Just like you are doing in the stock market, it is now time to diversify your marketing budget and it’s time to shift to a new form in internet marketing.
2. Show people what you are worth, tighten up your Marketing metrics

Shifting your marketing dollars to the internet is all you hear about these days, but it is inevitable. Internet marketing costs less than traditional marketing (in most cases), is more direct, and is trackable. Developing a strong internet presence combined with pr efforts can be very successful for the audience searching for your company or product. In a poll by Epsilon 63% of the senior marketing executives polled predicted an increase in interactive/online marketing. Showing your target audience quality information is more important than the soccer mom who drives by that billboard about the latest Seth Rogan movie every day. Instead, there are many places on the internet that would be better suited for this advertisement. In this instance, advertisements on Facebook, Myspace, google ads, etc. would probably capture the target audience more appropriately and yield better results. As I noted before, internet marketing is growing and it is time for you to jump on the bandwagon before everyone else does.

Marketing metrics is your friend. Narrowing down your marketing metrics will turn that yelling and screaming conversation with your boss into a calm discussion about how your favorite football team did last weekend. If you know how successful you have been and you can prove it, there is no way you will be the bad guy anymore. In an article “B2B Marketing’s Balance Act” in Marketing Management it lists marketing metrics as the number 4 challenge facing marketers today. This should lead marketers to plan out their marketing budget more appropriately. Marketers need to invest in methods that promote their company or product effectively and can be tracked. If your efforts lead to millions in sales and you are not getting credit for it, there is something wrong with that. Internet marketing is a trackable solution through Google Analytics, Alexa, Technorati, etc. Boosting your companies internet presence combined with effective internet marketing techniques can make your efforts trackable and more effective in the long run.

Overall, the ability to track your marketing efforts is a problem that most marketers find with traditional marketing efforts such as print ads, billboards, etc. Being able to shift marketing dollars to the internet and reach a directed audience combined with the ability to track your success will save you a lot of hassle. The best way to tackle your decreasing marketing budget and untrackable success is to attack it and think through the process. Making these necessary changes can save your company money and increase the impact of your marketing department.