I wrote this post a long time ago but the direction it provides is still relevant for today’s web. It got tremendous response when I initially posted it so I thought I would repost. Enjoy!

With all the buzz and media that flashmobbing gets lately – who’d a thought that this new phenomenon  would transition into a form of advertising. Here’s why it makes sense:

According to Wiki: A flash mob (or flashmob)^[1] is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and seemingly pointless act for a brief time, then disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment, satire, and artistic expression.^[2][3][4] Flash mobs are organized via telecommunications, social media, or viral emails.^[

I am sure you have seen one of the YouTube videos that highlights the occurrence of a flashmob - powerful, creative events that have substantial emotional impact on viewers. What started out to be a social experiment to poke fun at “hipsters’, flashmobs have become a cultural obsession appearing everywhere from your local mall eatery to a New York city street. Dancing, singing, random shopping requests and more are all samples of the type of flashmobs that have occurred recently and the variety and frequency of such events is only increasing.

So, flashmobbing. What does that have to do with marketing messaging? and digital marketing? Well – until recently, not so much. However, if you consider that flashmobbing has all the essential elements of a successful marketing campaign, things like buy in from participants, emotional connection with a fixated audience, an element of surprise…you could say this is an excellent addition to your next product or brand advertising pursuit.  If you consider that the majority of successful flashmobs gained momentum  – both flashmobbers and observers, using email marketing and social media – it definitely fits into the category of digital marketing – and might be something to test.

LazBro, a boutique digital agency in Los Angeles, California can tell you all about it. Using Socialmobbing or “Flashmob-ertising” as they call it,  to announce your presence in a new city, roll out your next product, test a brand message is right in line with great advertising acumen and could be the source of your company’s next growth pattern.  LazBro, who referred to themselves as “Geeks with great people skills” has launched a product that centers around Flashmobbing and using its natural promotion and people pleasing qualities to promote your brand, product or next event.

Download LazBro’s white paper on flashmob-ertising  and other new forward thinking advertising products here. Let me know how this goes for you if you test it. I think they are onto something.

Related articles

• Flashmob ‘Soul Train’ line honors Don Cornelius in New York’s Times Square (photoblog.msnbc.msn.com)
• Prepare Yourselves for More Flashmobs (sfist.com)
• Glen Mills Seniors Join ‘Fitness Flashmob’ (philadelphia.cbslocal.com)

I found an interesting article on Social Media worth sharing. It presents a compelling idea: your brand is made up of multiple human interactions with your clients. Social Media does not create a brand, it enhances and strengthens something that already exists, either in glory or dreariness.

In his article “The Achille’s Heel of the Social Media Budget”, blogger Jeffrey Rohrs identifies an opportunity with the travel industry, though there are not many industries it does not exist in, and that is the opportunity to build your brand online on top of existing wonderful customer satisfying experiences. And he suggests, and I agree that you can not create a better brand only by increasing your social media budget. You have to do the whole job of increasing your customer’s happiness. And let that customer experience be the multiple voices across the social media sphere. That is what the powerful influential growth of Twitter, Facebook and other Social Media hang outs are made of.  Joe or Josephine Consumer can be treated poorly at your place of business, be it at a retail outlet or online, and their story is potentially across the web in a manner of minutes. Or better, they are ecstatic and can’t shut up about it.

So all of this suggests, that the real work starts with the “boring basics” of good sales and service acumen. I like what this article suggests: increase a social media budget to empower more people to tell your story across the web. But creating a good story is the real work.

Take a look for yourself. He makes a good point. Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts.

Related articles

• How can we control social media? (rachelbarkley.wordpress.com)
• The Track Social Awards: Best of 2011 (prweb.com)
• 5 Ways Social Media Improves Customer Service (venpop.com)
• How Social Media Influencers Can Help Brands (adrants.com)

Image by TylerIngram via Flickr

I liked this quick post by Brian @Fit4Commerce. He includes a list of things you can change/add to your site to prepare for holiday success. I especially liked the tip to check your search data and let your strategy follow it. What are people searching for that they can’t find using your navigational structure? How can you make it easier for site visitors to find what they are looking for?

Related articles

• 4 Tips to Increase eCommerce Holiday Sales (hubspot.com)
• 9 Must-Read Articles to Boost Your Holiday Retail Sales (smallbizdaily.com)
• 67% of Ecommerce happens on Mobile Devices in India [Unbelievable Numbers?] (trak.in)

If you updated to iPhone 5.0 like I did, and your iPod app disappeared – here is a clue for the clueless. (like I was) The  iPod is now the Orange “Music” icon. Go there and click on “purchased”. Whalah! There is your missing music. You can redownload to your phone one at a time. OR log in into your iTunes account and configure your settings to sync all of your songs to your phone. This is the only way to reload all of your music all at once. (per Apple Store rep)  Cheers.

Related articles

• Planned Obsolescence and the iPhone, Consumer Christmas List, iOS 5.0.1, Dolphin Browser, and More, iOS News Review (lowendmac.com)
• DOWNLOAD Using iOS: Your Guide To The Latest & Greatest Mobile Operating System (makeuseof.com)

Well.

It sounds much more interesting to write about England, beer in Germany or the new WordPress themes. And yet, I reflect still on what it is I love about digital media – and even the web itself. I know one thing for sure that it’s ability to build instant community and bridges across cultures, color, causes and most other differences, especially intrigues me. The web has also introduced an element of fairness to the commercial world that is surely unmatched. Allow me: Mom down the road can market her product against Target in less than 6 months. 3 months if her friend knows how to build web site. Product and service review boards

post real live feedback – talk about making  businesses work hard for their money.

I was talking to a friend yesterday who has a brilliant idea for a kid’s product. She says, “Oh, I just need to study my accounting book and watch less TV” (so that she can learn the accounting complexities necessary to run the business model she is facing with fear and trepidation.) To which I replied “Why don’t you just collaborate with another business owner who has faced this model before?” Huh. Her face says.

Enter Google, type search for blogs in this children’s  product category. Peruse sites, ping new friends. Pick up the phone.  She is collaborating and moving forward. Starting something new is never easy, but you have to admit that the web is great fuel to entrepreneurs of all walks. I love it.

I don’t think the web or anything about Social Media will ever completely replace the value of face to face “go have coffee” type social behavior. We need these types of connections. But the web has become a significant and valuable addition to what almost seems like a limited means of connecting now. How did that happen?

Where would we be without it? “Just fine”, you might say. (If you are my 80-year-old mother, God bless her) Or you might say, “completely unfortunate” as would I. Okay, so counting my digital blessings. I wonder where it will take us next? I am in.

Related articles

• We all need another set of eyes (directmarketingobservations.com)
• How digital media can transform charities’ reach (guardian.co.uk)
• Digital Media Moves Quicker Than Twitter (digitalvegetarian.com)

This is an updated version of another post I wrote a long time ago. Enjoy, Jennifer

Writing Solid Web Copy

Whether you are authoring a blog or copy for a web site there are some things that make writing for the web unique. People reading on the web, whether on a lap top, iPad or other device typically scan as opposed to reading every word. Because of this, organizing the copy in an easy to scan or read format is key to good web copy. Designers lay out beautiful graphics and images only to fill the page with barely-thought-out-not-so-strategic copy. Keywords, links and catchy header copy are just some of the opportunities to engage your web site visitor and lead them down the path to conversion to lead and a closed sale.

Below are some basic rules of thumb for authoring effective web copy:

1. Create a keyword strategy for your site and implement it.
   Solid strategy typically uses your top organic and paid keyword terms in your headers and key paragraphs. Use 2-3 words per paragraph, see how the page does, make changes and test again.
2. Write copy that reflects what consumers call your products, not necessarily the way you or your industry calls your products. Ask your clients how they talk about your products and services. Use the words they are using in your copy.
3. Write marketing copy, not just straight facts. Web copy needs to compel people to read it.
4. Include links to relevant areas within paragraphs; don’t bounce visitors all over, but do what makes sense to navigate the consumer to what they need and where you want them to go.
5. Chunk copy into small bites, online readers scan pages looking for topic headers that interest them.
6. Add short descriptive headers to key and large paragraphs.
7. Edit down copy to the fewest words possible.
8. Use your spelling and grammar checker.
9. Make sure calls to action are consistent, visually appealing and in easy to click areas so that the visitor can respond quickly and easily.
10. Each page should have a minimum of 250 words, 450-500 words are best.
11. Repurpose other’s copy for your site but be sure to give credit where due. No harm in using other’s copy but make sure you add a name and link to the author. If you don’t, this is stealing and search engines will black list your site. 
12. Give the search engines at least a month to index your new pages. Start studying your visitor activity stats on Google Analytics or a similar tool, for opportunities to delete or change copy that is not working and add more of what is.

 Give a few of these tips a try and let me know how it goes. Happy Writing!

Related articles

• Search engine optimization Concepts for Website Design (thediamondringreview.com)
• Search Engine Optimisation Basics – Meta Tags (blogcritics.org)
• 10 Simple Ways to Increase Conversions by Reducing Friction (kissmetrics.com)

Consider these Socialware study results:

• Business use of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networking tools is expected to increase 10%-30% within the next year. (CIOinsight 2010)
• Social network users surpassed the number of email users in July 2009: 820 million social network users compared to 800 million email users. (Morgan Stanley, 2010)

People struggle with how much time to spend there because they don’t know what return they are gaining. The answer is to measure your time and response to the social media efforts you are involved with. Social Media can be approached and executed as a direct response medium or a means to promote your brand, or both. If you are investing in Social Media to gain traffic, leads and sales, then a good strategy, measurement tool and optimization process is your best approach.

If you measure this powerful media type, you will do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. Now couldn’t we all benefit from a little prioritization of how our time and money is spent? Exactly.

Related articles

• Tech talk-what is social media? (morejoyforme.wordpress.com)
• ComScore: Mobile Social Networking App Audience Grows 126% In Past Year (bjconquest.com)
• Social Networking Savvy (onlinecollege.org)

Image by George Eastman House via Flickr

I am remembering that happy morning when my web developer showed me the 27% increase in traffic to lead form completes from one small change we made to our form.Yes, our silly form. Amazing.

We all (digital marketers, I should say) spend so much time and effort, and dollars, driving traffic to our web site form. For some it is your product order form for others your contact us form. James Pietz shared an analogy with me years ago that has stuck and that I use over and over again with my clients to explain the importance of “form fit”. When you go on a first date (or visit a site for the first time) are you ready to ask that person to marry you? Of course not. Then why would you ask a first time visitor to your site for all the personal information you would like about them (name, address, phone number, email address, title, budget (that one is really bad), time line)? Many sites do this. It’s not good.  They make this mistake of asking for too much information on their form, and guess what? The site visitor or “new friend” we will call them, leaves their site – so they get zero information. If you are thinking “hey that’s us, I need to do something about this quick!” , here is a simple path to resolving this need for a better “form fit”.

1) Measure with a heat mapping or other tool, where people are abandoning your form. This is much less expensive technology they it was when it first surfaced. Try this article for a few heat mapping options – one is even free.

2) Use the heat mapping data to make changes to what is required on your form. The points where people are dropping off your form are the ones to watch for. What might be irritating them? Is the form confusing? Asking for too much information? Make changes. Take the information they are willing to supply and court them with more information, an email or two, a free gift. (That’s another article for another time.)

3) Enjoy increased traffic -> lead conversion rates.

I will be surprised if by addressing the areas where your visitors are abandoning your form, you don’t see vast improvement in the amount of traffic that fills out your form. And hopefully you are following up with efficiency and converting a good percentage of these completed forms (your new friends) to customers!

Consider adding different types of forms to your site as well – a name and email address form only, a longer form for all the details you really want,  forms for white paper downloads, email newsletters and free stuff are all good forms to try.

Let me know if you make some changes and see results. Even if you don’t. Have fun.

Related articles

• 8 Important Rules in Website Design (salliescreativemarketingblog.com)
• 5 Best Practices for eCommerce Abandoned Cart Nurturing (hubspot.com)
• Top 5 Tips for Creating Effective Forms (hubspot.com)

One answer, is to establish a company blog and post to it, at least weekly. Even an inexperienced team can make good guesses at the keywords that prospects are using to find their business type or company on search engines, and those are the keywords you can test by posting to a blog.

Here is a simple way to get started:

1. Pick 10 keywords you think your audience is using to find you or your business type on www.google.com. Think of the conversations you had with your prospects this week, and how they refer to you. What words do they use?

2. Write out 10 blog topics that will focus on those keywords. If they are searching on the name of your city to find you, for example, post on the local Job Fair or other event for one post.

3. Assign a team member to write each post. Remember, no over production here: clear, pithy writing with a punch is required. Not too formal, not too long.

4. Work your plan, post weekly.

5. After 10 weeks evaluate the comments and clicks on the posts.  (Most Blog Tools offer a simple way to check this)  What was hot? What was not? What links worked which did not? (WordPress is hot these days, but TypePad is another Blog authoring tool to try)

This is a fairly simple way to get started in the blogosphere with limited time investment. The next steps include developing a more sophisticated strategy development, more formal keyword research, Google Analytics set up and monitoring to watch your traffic and increasing your posting frequency. More on all that, later.

Give it a try. Your audience and your bottom line may like it.