It’s what you do with the searcher, once they find you that counts!!

I was having a discussion with a business thought leader last week.  She remarked that a business person can choose the e-Conversation Solutions, search optimized video (SOV) solution rather than pay per click (PPC).  While SOV works very well when coordinated with SEO (multiple use of both content and questions), using it as an alternative to pay per click was intriguing.  She noted that either pay per click or using video to get on page one achieves the same result.

But, as a second derivative, I pointed out to her, that once you are found, it’s what you present that counts.  With SOV, you have an opportunity to immediately present your company as an expert.  A targeted video both provides information and conveys trust.  It differentiates you from the competition, and suggests additional content.

SOV says “how can I help you?” “Here is a way to solve your problem”.  Pay per click says “buy from me”.   If you are selling commodities, “buy from me” will work.  But, if you are working to establish a long term relationship, it’s about answering a question and solving a problem.

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How content is reused to create answer bits

Here is the process that is used to create content in various media.

First, we start with a question, or a set of questions. These questions should be tied to your search engine optimization plan.   It is also good to look at your frequently asked questions.

Here is an  an interview with an internet chief architect.   The overall questioning was centered around search engine optimization.  This example is focused on understanding if your website is effective.

We create a set of questions around the overall topic.  One of the questions is  “how do I know if my website is having problems”

Here is the 25 minute interview on BLIP.TV.

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The interview is then cut into segments that are posted on YouTube and can be embedded in websites, blogs etc..

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The content is also used to create a blog posting.

Ask Score: Could I get more from my Web site? Posted by Ann D. at 1/13/2010 10:11 AM CST

You’ve invested a lot of time and energy in creating a Web site to promote your small business and serve your customers. But how can you tell if you’re really getting the most out of it?

John Fairley, chief architect for Walker Sands Communications and a frequent presenter at Score Chicago workshops, has two suggestions:

First, put your business name into your browser and see what happens. Does your business name come up in one of the top three positions? If not, you have some work to do.

Second, try some key words that describe your business. If your business name doesn’t come up, that’s useful data: Potential customers aren’t finding you online.

Mr. Fairley once worked with a local moving company and found that the company’s name did well on search engines. But potential customers who searched for terms like “movers,” “moving company” or “moving and storage” weren’t likely to find this company. It didn’t rank well on searches.

Mr. Fairley went to work, revising the company’s site to highlight these descriptive words. After a couple of months, the site was ranking better.

He offers some other suggestions to make your Web site more search-engine friendly. First, make sure you have your local address on every page. Also, if you have a local phone number and an 800 number, feature your local number. The local number reinforces your company’s location, and that’s a key metric for search engines.

Finally, Mr. Fairley suggests that you list your company in the major search engines. Google, Yahoo, and Bing all offer free listing services. Check out GetListed.org, a free online resource, for details.

You can learn move about search-engine optimization from this Score Chicago CAN-TV 21 Hotline interview on Blip TV.

Score Chicago also offers workshops on Web sites and the Internet. You can find workshop information here.

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The content is then reused to create a radio spot.  Listen to the spot here.

All versions of this content can be embedded in web sites.  Selected versions can also be used in e-mails, newsletters etc.

YouTube Accounts for most video views

• 99% of Google Views are YouTube
• 170 million viewers watched an average of 182 videos per viewer
• 84.8% of US internet audience viewed one online video

How Online Video can Replace Cold Calling, Demos, Training

I don’t normally reblog someone else.  But, I thought this one was particularly good.

Home » Online Video to Replace Cold Calling, Demos, Training

Online Video to Replace Cold Calling, Demos, Training

As online video becomes a more accepted, widespread, measurable and cost-effective communications tool it is poised to enhance – and even replace – some of the more labor-intensive marketing and training functions at many businesses, according to a recent blog post by Wistia.

Wistia contends that video will likely supplement and replace the following five things in the not-too-distant future:

• Product Demos: The initial demonstration of a product or service no longer need take place in person.  Instead, prospects can watch demos on-demand and become knowledgeable more quickly – and in advance of an in-person sales meeting. This, in turn, can free up salespeople to focus on ripe opportunities, provide more in-depth demonstrations to customers at the next stage in the purchase process, and increase meaningful interactions.

• Customer Testimonials: Providing prospects information about satisfied customers is often one of the most meaningful and effective ways to build trust and close deals, though such first-hand recommendations are often one of the hardest things to arrange.  Interviewing customers for testimonials and packaging them on video will ensure they are at-the-ready when needed in a marketing or sales pitch.

• Cold Calling: Though cold calling is celebrated by the few salespeople who thrive on it, it is an often-maligned function that is unpalatable to many callers and call recipients alike.  Taking a “cold-call” message and making it into a video will enables prospects to receive a polished message in a way that is convenient for them. In terms of measurement, tracking what a potential lead watches also can give salespeople more time to follow up with meaningful conversations and less time chasing prospects down.

• In Person Training: Advances in technology, increasingly busy schedules and tight budgets have made in-person training harder to justify. Using online video to educate eliminates the need to travel, book venues or print out and ship documents. More importantly, it enables people to learn on their own and on their own schedule. It’s also possible to track the viewers of training videos to gauge the impact.

• Help & Support: Keeping customers and prospects happy and engaged 24/7 is a given in today’s competitive environment. While some customers prefer to tweet questions, others want an FAQ or forum, and still others want more in-depth explanations. As expectations have shifted, responsive marketers are coming to realize that they must make many different types of resources – including video that is especially effective in showing complex nuances and procedures – available on demand.

Tips on how to create content for social media

Below is a blog posting that I did in conjuction with Crain’s Chicago Business.

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Ask Score: Harnessing social media Posted by Ann D. at 10/28/2009 10:30 AM CDT With all the buzz surrounding Facebook, Twitter and other social media tools, it’s only natural that small-business owners want to know how to get onboard. It’s a topic that has come up often lately in Score Chicago’s workshops and counseling sessions.

Score Chicago’s workshop chairman, Mark Goodman, creates content for the Score Chicago blog, for the organization’s Twitter followers, and for a number of video outlets. He shares a few thoughts on using social media to your advantage:

The content creation plan for a small business used to be pretty simple. When you rolled out a new product, you did a brochure and maybe a press release. If you did some advertising, perhaps you ran a small ad. You trained your salesforce, then got going.

What has changed in the last 10 years? More and more, buyers do not want to see a salesperson, but want to find the answers to their questions online in places such as blogs, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc.

How do you get started? First, participate as an observer. Make a list of blogs in your industry and view them regularly. Sign up for Twitter. (You don’t have to write, you can simply follow for now.) Subscribe to some videos on YouTube. Become a participant, respond or comment on what others present.

Then make an inventory of the kinds of questions that prospects, customers and users are asking. If you are watching search terms, that’s a good place to start. One of the most common search terms on our blog has been “how to be a good salesperson.” We’ve done a number of entries about that.

Next, determine what experts are available to you. Think beyond just your company. Are there suppliers, partners or even customers who could be tapped for ideas or contributions? Look at what resources you have available. Are you comfortable writing, doing videos, creating conversations?

At Score Chicago, we had a client who was a painting contractor who specialized in restoring older homes. He was not much of a writer, so he hired a ghost writer to do his blog. Focusing on the key questions and aligning them to the search terms, he found his blog being read by key customers in his area.

Customer interviews are very powerful. While these enhance your Web site or blog, you would be surprised how many times customers will want to add your interview to their Web site. Experts often use a good interview to enhance their personal reputation.

Lastly, pick one medium and make a commitment to create regular content. Readers, viewers (and search engines) will better recognize your expertise if your content is continual as opposed to occasional.

Establishing your company as a trusted information source takes time, money and effort. However, the payoff can be significant. Mindshare can be translated into marketshare. The value of knowledge cannot be discounted.

12 Steps to Creating Impact Video on the Internet

It is increasingly easy to put video on the internet. The casual user picks up a camera, shoots, and then puts up the equivalent of a home movie. Afterwards, wonders why no one is viewing.

Internet video can be effective in positioning your business as a trusted source, increasing traffic, and enhancing revenue.   To get the biggest impact, you should go through the process below.   Note that 8 of these 12 steps take place before you pick up a camera.

Steps to creating Internet Video

1. Define your objective

a. Who are you trying to reach

b. What outcome are you expecting

c. How is video part of your overall marketing/customer touch strategy

d. What is your call to action

e. How will that objective/call to action to linked to your website

2. Understand how you are serving your viewers/community

a. What viewer questions are you answering

b. Who are the subject matter experts

c. How are those subject matter experts going to be queried

d. How will the questions and answered be displayed

3. Decide how you want to use your video content in the internet

a. Video Service (youtube, vimeo, blip.tv etc)

b. Your website

c. Conventions

d. Deconstruct content on blog

e. Deconstruct content as FAQ

f. Tag on to email

g. Share with Partners

h. Other

4. Determine what metrics do you want to use to track your viewership

a. YouTube or similar internet service

b. Website analytics

c. E-mail marketing

d. Blog Views

e. Comments and inquiries

5. Create a budget & distribution strategy

a. How does video fit into your marketing budget

b. What partners might be available in your network to help in the funding

c. How might internet advertising fit into your strategy

6. Understand the logistics of content creation

a. What is the availability of your subject matter experts

b. What kind of facility is available for creating the content

c. How comfortable are your subject matter experts in doing TV

d. Who is going to serve as your host

7. Finalize a list of questions for Subject Matter experts

a. List of questions you think need to be answered

b. Cross check those questions with key search terms (both from your website and Google Keyword)

c. Confirm the questions with subject matter experts

d. Determine any cut away material you will need

e. Review questions with subject matter experts

f. Finalize interview style (two shot, two camera, monologue, vignette)

8. Finalize Requirements document that address the above questions

a. Actual production process

b. Schedule

c. Budget

d. Deliverables

9. Shoot the raw content

a. Interview

b. Cutaways

10. Edit Content

a. Rough Pass for Preliminary Client Approval

b. Final content based upon Requirements

c. Upload to Video Service

d. Annotate as appropriate

11. Create Other Internet Deliverables

a. Blog posting

b. FAQ

c. Embedded Website

d. Others

12 Measure Impact

a. Web Analytics

b. Customer Response

c. Advertising and Derivative Revenue

d. Revise annotations and key words based upon analytics

e. Implement “repeat” strategy

3 Tips for Video Interviews on the Internet

Informational videos on YouTube and other internet video services have become widespread.  If you are doing a video, consider these tips.

1. Before you go on the air, review your questions with your guest.  A review will insure :
   1. Your guest answers the question that you ask
   2. When on camera, your guest responds quickly with a well thought out answer
   3. You avoid a question that your guest does not want to answer
2. At the beginning of the interview ask the guest to establish their expertise on the topic.  (“I am Director of Internet Services for BigCo.  In that job I am responsible for the management of our Twitter, YouTube, etc…)
3. If you think a guest comment is unclear, restate it for the audience and make sure that the guest is in agreement.  It’s OK, if it needs to be clarified.

Lastly, if you are editing, consider more than one posting.  Suppose your guest talked about social media for customer prospecting, and then discussed social media for customer services.  It could be one posting, but it could be two.

Adventures in iPhone land

In the post below, you will see that I purchased my first phone that was not Motorola.  I bought an iPhone.  Primarily because of the video and internet features, but also because my wife wanted one.  I figured if I bought one too, it would minimize what I would need to learn to provide tech support.

So, today I am at a client visit.  I want to show some of the video, so I figure I will connect to the internet.  No such luck at the client location.  I thought I was having a problem with the data plan.  Then in the car on the way home, I tried to place a call.  I was unable to place a call.

What was going on?  As luck would have it, I was on my way past the ATT store.  I stopped by the store.   The sales person affirmed that it was not making a call.  He waited a few minutes, then made a call.

I asked what he did.  He said that the iPhone is like a little computer.  Sometimes, maybe once a week, you need to reboot it.  Press the bottom button and the power button together  for about 15 seconds.

Nice to know that even the iPhone has its quirks.  Not just a Motorola issue.

More to come as I explore the features and benefits.

Help with your social media

I attended a program sponsored by Crain’s Chicago Business last week.  One of the speakers suggested that you hire a fresh out of college person to manage your social media.  I would suggest another path.

My company is in that business.  With us, you get people with a proven track record.  We can transform your company conversation.  With a freshout, you will have to provide editorial and strategic guidance.  They will not provide a content strategy.   With luck, you’ll get execution.  With us, you will get transformation.

For more information, see www.e-conversation.com

Marshall McLuhan:Understanding Media in the context of the internet

Marshall McLuhan was one of the foremost writers about media in the 20^th Century.  He created “the media is the message”.  Recently, I have been rereading Understanding Media.  The book is packed full of ideas.  Over the course of the next few weeks, I will be sharing some of these ideas.

My goal is to put these ideas into the context of the internet, Web 1.0 and Web 2.0.   Also, draw some parallels between McLuhan’s innovative look at media in the middle of the 20^th Century, and today’s new media.

The first part of this comes from the editor’s introduction by W. Terrance Gordon.  Gordon notes that We think of media principally as a media of communication; press radio and television.  McLuhan thought of a medium as an extension of the human body or mind; clothing extends the skin….A medium, or a technology can be an extension of the human being.

Media comes in pair, one “containing” the other.  So the telegraph contained the printed word. …. The contained medium is the message of the containing one, but the effects of the latter are obscured for the user who focuses on the former. Because those effects are so powerful, any message in the ordinary sense of “content” or “information”  has far less impact than the medium itself.  Thus  “the medium is the message”

What does this mean for a business person?  Increasingly, the internet is allowing for a large scale conversation done electronically with each individual.  What we could call an e-conversation.  When you create content, think about how is that content an extension of you and your business.

Also, when you create content, you must create the content a subset of the medium.   A 60 minute presentation works in person, but putting the video up on YouTube can be problematic.  Looking at Web 1.0 (the internet in the 1990’s) as a medium:  for many businesses, the response was putting their brochures up on the internet. But over time, the internet developed its own set of protocols.  Your brochure was no longer enough.

These two points are a good start.  More to follow