How to Write Good Web Copy

Commune Media has an article on their site that offers tips on how to write copy for the web.

The article offers some step-by-step advice on writing copy for the web and links to other tips and a free e-book. Some good, sound advice.

Internet Marketing Conference Round-Up

Corey Rollins and I live blogged the Internet Marketing Conference (September 11 and 12) for TechVibes. Links to our posts are below:

General Interest

IMC: Keynote Address by Eric T. Peterson.
Author Eric T. Peterson says that if it is worth doing, it is worth doing analytically. Why web analytics is important and what it means to your business.

IMC: Social Media Marketing Success Stories.
Capulet Communications on 5 social media tools.

IMC: Best Tips and Conference Summary.
A quick review of key points from the conference.

IMC: Shannon Ryan on Engagement Marketing.
A really short post with 5 tips for engagement marketing.

IMC: Enterprise 2.0 by Jon Husband Wirearchy Network.
Why hierarchy does not work in a wired world.

How-To

IMC: Usability Testing Without the Lab Coats by Andre Charland from Nitobi.
3 tips for usability testing.

IMC: Engage Community With Your Brand by William Azaroff of Vancity.
Excellent case study on how Vancity Credit Union used social media to create an online community.

IMC: Expert Panel Tips on Writing for the Web.
Monique and an expert panel talk about writing copy for landing pages, email newsletters, multilingual sites and more.

Search Marketing

IMC: HubSpot Website Grader.
A quick measurement of how well your website performs from a search and social media perspective. Test your own site.

IMC: Search Optimization Panel.
An expert panel on search optimization. What makes them tick and ticked about SEO practices.

IMC: Tool Demo on SEO Browser.
Really short post on SEO-Browser.com. Know what a search engine sees when it comes to your site.

Measuring Success

IMC: Website Monetization.
Why defining goals, assigning value and measuring is worthwhile.

IMC: Monitoring Website Performance by Anil Batra of Zero Dash 1.
A great presentation by Anil on why people waste their time tracking statistics that are interesting and what they should be measuring.

Presentation: Centre for Chief Marketing Executives, Kelowna BC

I was in Kelowna, BC, May 22 and 23 for the Meeting of the Centre for Chief Marketing Executives.

My fellow presenters included:

• Mitch Joel, President, Twist Image
• Bryan Segal, Vice-President, Sales, comScore Inc.
• Jeanne Houweling, Vice-President, Advertising Services, NebuAd

We talked about the growing influence of social networking websites and the implications for Canadian Marketers.

In addition to participating in roundtable discussions, I presented on “Internet and Social Media: Strategies and Tactics”. For the most part, I showed the web sites in a browser window, hence no slides to share with you. But below are my key points.

Introduction
Boxcar Marketing: how can we help your business?

We’re called Boxcar Marketing because we think about online marketing tools as boxcars in a train: you can link together any combination of online marketing tools. When used together in combinations that are appropriate for your campaign, your business, your customer base, they create momentum for your other marketing activities.

One company’s online marketing strategy might include:
Search marketing + Blogging + Email marketing

Someone else might use:
Search marketing + Facebook + Twitter + Flickr

Any combination is possible. My challenge to marketers is to go beyond your current set of online marketing tools.

Most businesses are using:
Email marketing + Websites

Some are using
Search marketing + Email marketing + Websites + Blogs + Facebook + YouTube

But what about these top social media tools:

1. del.icio.us
2. Flickr.com
3. LinkedIn.com
4. Ning.com
5. StumbleUpon.com
6. Twitter.com
7. Upcoming.org
8. Virtual worlds: SecondLife
9. Wikis: pbwiki

~~~ Monique Trottier on Social Media Marketing 101 ~~~

A) Introduction to Social Media Marketing
What is it? Why is it important to you, your business and your customers? What can you do?

Why is Social Media Marketing important?

Because the media landscape has changed. Because customers have changed.

Mass marketing is harder to do effectively because of the fragmentation of attention. Media is fragmented. There are more radio stations, more tv stations, more magazine titles, more books, millions of websites.

There is a proliferation of products, meaning customers have more things to choose from. We have more devices: video games, computers, dvd players, televisions, satellite radios, TiVo, cellphones and PDAs.

With those devices we email, instant message, Google, blog, create videos, podcast. We also Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Ning and Digg.

As businesses, we have to care about these things because interruptive marketing is harder and harder to do.

Customers are not listening. They are busy creating content. They are producers.

They are busy recommending and talking about their experiences with products and services. They are reviewers. They are marketers.

Customers are more demanding and have greater expectations about how businesses should interact with them.

It is harder to get customers to come to your site because they are busy doing other things online. We have to go to them.

No online community has ever sat around saying, you know what we need? More marketers.

We have to get better at connecting to our customers online. At joining the conversation. At being more collaborative. At being an active part of a community. At speaking with our human voice, not our marketing & PR voice.

B) A Few Social Media Marketing Tools At A Glance
What is it? What are successful business uses?

Brightkite: http://brightkite.com/

• Location-based social networking. See where your friends are and what they’re up to, in real time. Meet people around you.
• Good for guerrilla marketing, ARGs (artificial reality games), treasure hunts, location-based marketing.

Digg: http://digg.com/

• A place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. Content moves to the top based on user voting.
• Add Digg this Article to your site.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/
• A social utility that connects you with the people around you.
• Online book clubs. HarperCollins Canada has 855 members who actively discuss new books.

Note on Facebook:
As businesses we have to keep in mind the nature of the communities we are joining. Facebook is about personal networks. It became the phenomenon that it is because it’s simple, it’s fun, it has photos, it has spam-free email, there’s very little advertising. If you want to be active in Facebook, go beyond advertising. Create value-add appllications, like the TripAdvisor map. Create fun games or quizzes or tools that help users socialize.

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/

• An online photo management and sharing application.
• Example: Nikon Stunning Gallery. Nikon contacted 16 bloggers who would use the new Nikon D80 and post photos to Flickr using the tag “nikonstunninggallery”. Other Flickr users were invited to also tag photos this way in order to be entered into a contest to win a free camera. This type of contest works because the product (a camera) is directly tied to the activities of the community (taking photos).

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/

• An online network of more than 20 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries.
• Connect to me on LinkedIn. See my network of connections. Do we know anyone in common? Do you have a question that you’d like me to pose to my network? Looking for an expert in something? Maybe I can link you up to someone in my network.

Ning: http://www.ning.com/

• Create, customize, and share your own Social Network for free in seconds.
• See if members of your industry have already started social networks on Ning. Then join.
• Example: HotelNetwork.Ning.com is a forum for hotel owners, operators, and industry folks. “A wide range of topics are covered from a macro level such as the state of the industry to the property level with development opportunities, best practices, etc.”

PRWeb: http://www.prweb.com/

• Online news and press release distribution service used by more than 40,000 organizations of all sizes to increase the visibility of their news, improve their search engine rankings and drive traffic to their Web site. Watch the CommonCraft video on how PRWeb works.
• Example: See how 3M uses PRWeb.

Twitter: http://twitter.com/
• A service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

Note about Twitter: I love Twitter because it is real-time conversation, it’s easy, it’s mobile (I can send and receive Tweets from my computer and my phone), it’s business and personal. I think Twitter is the tool to watch. The integration, simplicity and mobility of this tool is key to its success.

Examples: Social bookmarketing site Ma.gnolia.com uses Twitter as a customer service and help desk. Instead of emailing the company when service is down or bugs are detected, you can follow the Twitter feed to see if they are aware of the problem and what the fix status is.

Upcoming: http://upcoming.yahoo.com

• A community for discovering and sharing events.
• Add your event. Check for networking events in your area or social media sessions or marketing events such as Case Camp.

YouTube: http://youtube.com/

• Easily upload and share video clips across the Internet through websites, mobile devices, blogs, and email.
• Example: Nick Haley, student at University of Leeds, loved his new iPod Touch so much that he created a commercial for it. Apple saw it. Was impressed. Flew him out to New York to re-create the ad, which now plays on television. Watch Nick Haley’s original Apple iPod Touch ad.

Conclusion
Where are we going? What should we take away from this presentation?

1. We understand that the media landscape has changed.


• Newspaper readership is down.
• Direct mail success is down.
• TV viewership is down.
2. We understand that 80% of offline purchases are a direct result of online window shopping (JC Williams Group).
3. We know that the use of social networks, blogs, websites continues to hold steady or rise.
4. We are going to see more social media tools.
5. There will be greater integration of devices.
6. There will be more conversations online, definitely between customers (and hopefully between customers and companies).
7. There will be more collaboration online.
8. The changes in the media landscape will continue to fragment the market.
9. Smaller, more personal campaigns will have greater success and impact than larger, mass media campaigns.
10. Community, conversation and collaboration will continue to win over controlled, closed networks.
11. As businesses we need to remember to be human. Humans are tool users. Find the social media tools that are right for your campaigns.

About the Centre for Chief Marketing Executives
CCME is an exclusive network for Canada’s chief marketing executives that addresses marketing’s role at the corporate strategy level.

About Speaker Monique Trottier
Monique Trottier is President of Boxcar Marketing, a marketing and communications firm with expertise in online marketing, web design and search marketing. Monique is experienced at bridging social interactions on the web with offline conversation. She’s adept at helping companies understand and respond to how their products or services are represented online. Talk to Monique about in-house consultations, public speaking and presentations.

3 Web Design Mistakes to Avoid

In our new Boxcar Marketing website it was important for James and me to implement as many best practices as possible. We wanted to start with a solid design based on usability. Here are 3 mistakes we often point out to clients and how we avoided them in our design.

Design Mistake #1: The About Us page is an About Me page.
Why is About Me a mistake for a business About page? Although we are pretty pleased with ourselves, the primary purpose of our About page is to establish what we can do for YOU. Too often About pages are nice corporate histories but are not valuable in terms of closing a sale, building trust and establishing credentials that are relevant to potential clients.
Look at our About page for ideas on how you can move beyond About Me and towards About You.

Design Mistake #2: No Author Photo or Company Photo
For companies like ours, where the primary contact is James Sherrett or Monique Trottier, the photo is important. In general, photos of staff or key employees are important for two reasons: photos offer a more personable impression of the company and photos connect the virtual and physical world. For example, people who meet me at a QuickLearn session or see me on a Lab with Leo episode will immediately recognize that they have come to the right website. And in reverse, people who read the Boxcar Marketing blog are more likely to recognize me when we meet in person at a conference or for a meeting.

Design Mistake #3: More-on Links
I posted in September a marketing tip on link text: “Don’t Be a More-On”. In short, more-on refers to hyperlinks that say things like, “Read more” or “Click here.” James and I think these types of links are pretty useless and we aim to write hyperlink text that is persuasive or at minimum tells the visitor where they are going. We are not 100 percent perfect in our link text, but you can see 2 examples in this post. The link directing you to our About page is an example of a persuasive link. It identifies the benefit: Look at our site and borrow ideas for improving your own. If our site was sales focussed, I would enhance that text further by saying something like, See how Boxcar Marketing doubled sales by improving their About copy. Much more persuasive than “Click Here”, right?

The above hyperlink text, a marketing tip on link text: “Don’t Be a More-On”, is the second example. The text gives you an indication of where you will go if you click on that link. On the web, life is too short to click on uncertain links.

What do you think? Do you use your About page differently? Do you have photos? What text do you use for the majority of your links? Share your thoughts.

Community Planning and Housing Resources

In preparation for a presentation Monique gave at the Canadian Housing and Renewal Association’s Breaking New Ground Conference here in Vancouver, I did a bit of research on resources. Public housing isn’t an area either of us possess much knowledge about, so we were curious to see what could be found kicking around the internets.

Possibly the best resource for information on urban planning, design, and the development community is Planetizen.com. The site is based out of LA, has been around for six years and is chock full of great content, media, and even professional resources related to urban planning and housing. They have been compiling an annual list of top 10 planning and development website since 2002, and this in itself is an excellent resource.

Listed below are some of the local blogs I came across with a focus on specific neighbourhoods around Vancouver. They aren’t so much focused on planning as day to day life in these neighbourhoods.

* Mount Pleasant community blog
http://livinginmountpleasant.com/mount_pleasant_blog

* Kitsilano community blog
http://www.kitsilano.ca/

* Southlands Community Planning site blog
http://www.southlandsintransition.ca/blog

* Strathcona community blog
http://liveinstrathcona.blogspot.com/

* Commercial Drive community blog
http://thedriveisalive.blogspot.com/

And because Monique’s presentation was very much about citizen media and tools the average person can use to produce content for the web, I took a look through some of my favorite sites to see what I could find related to community planning.

Flickr groups and tag search yielded the following results
* Community planning and design group
http://www.flickr.com/groups/planning/

* UCLA community planning journal group
http://www.flickr.com/groups/critplan/

* Green Buildings + Sustainable Communities
http://www.flickr.com/groups/sustainablebuilding/

* Tag search: “official community plan”
http://www.flickr.com/search/?s=int&ss=2&w=all&q=%22official+community+plan%22&m=text

Facebook groups
* City of Vancouver Planning Commission (a group for those interested in the happenings of the City of Vancouver’s Planning Commission)
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=19531853336

* Canadian Tire Money: Helping The Homeless (a facebook campaign to collect Canadian Tire money for purchasing items, such as sleeping bags, to donate to the homeless people of Vancouver)
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2361803750

* Vancouver25 (Vancouver25 is a group of young people committed to progressive policy for the City of Vancouver . Our goal is to create meaningful dialogue on important issues and to present common-sense, evidence-based policy recommendations on how Vancouver can be improved for all of its citizens.)
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=14902570116

Del.icio.us
* Tag search “community planning”
http://del.icio.us/search/?fr=del_icio_us&p=community+planning&type=all

* Tag search “Vancouver community planning”
http://del.icio.us/search/?fr=del_icio_us&p=vancouver+community+planning&type=all

UPDATE:

From Monique: Please note that this is not a comprehensive list by any means.
If you have a suitable site to add to the list, please post it in the comments so we can share it with other interested community planners.

Dan of Cyburbia | urban planning community pointed out this site to us.

Cyburbia (http://www.cyburbia.org), founded in 1994, is the Internet’s oldest continuously operating planning-related Web site. Cyburbia has served the planning community for nearly 14 years with very little funding or financial remuneration. The Cyburbia Forums (http://www.cyburbia.org/forums) went online in 1996, and today remains a vibrant virtual third place for planners, students and others interested in the built environment ; 5,800 members, 400,000 posts, and still growing.

Thanks Dan, and anyone else, please add your thoughts.

Email marketing tips on the Lab with Leo

Work Industries’ second appearance on Lab with Leo showed up online and we’re glad to share it now.

In the 9-minute segment Monique shares with Leo her top tips for creating an effective email newsletter. And she knows what she’s talking about because she’s the force behind the Underwire newsletter: full support for non-techies.

Lab with Leo episode 132 — Monique Trottier explains her top 5 email marketing tips.

And if you liked that, you might also like Monique’s post on 10 email marketing tips.

Flickr offers stats to Pro users

My friend Evan sent me a note today with a link to details on Flickr’s expanded webstats.

As a Flickr Pro user (Here I am!) I can now get access to more advanced stats — search engines users finding my photos, websites using my photos, links pointing at my photos. All kinds of good, useful information. Almost like running my own little photo website.

To get the Flickr stats activated for your account, you have to be a Pro account and logged in. Then if you click Your Stats under the You menu, you’ll get instructions on activiting the stats. If you’ve already activated the stats, you’ll get the stats.

Just a little tip to get a little more out of a great service!