Do Not Listen To Your Lawyer*

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We love Nutella. Like, seriously love it. It’s amazing and makes almost everything taste better. Don’t believe us? Try it on anything. If you find something with which it doesn’t work, let us know.

All that awesomeness has garnered the brand legions of followers, none more passionate than Sara Rosso, a blogger and brand advocate who started World Nutella Day back in 2007. The event has over 40,000 likes on Facebook and is celebrated throughout the world. Did Ferrero (the company that makes Nutella) embrace this phenomenon? NO! The company’s attorneys yesterday sent Rosso a cease-and-desist letter demanding she end all activities surrounding World Nutella Day. The resulting PR and social media backlash is a prime example of why you should not listen to your lawyer.

*Ok, you should usually listen to your lawyer. But on social media matters, you should really take any lawyerly advice with a grain of salt. Here’s why:

Having a successful brand in social media is about trust.

As a brand in social media you must trust your fans and advocates if you want to be successful. You must trust that they will promote you in a positive way that will ultimately be in the best interest of your brand.

A lawyer’s goal, however, is to minimize risk. Minimizing risk for a lawyer means not trusting anyone. Lawyers like to control things to make sure no liability results. One of the lessons we’ve learned from social media is that you can’t control it. You can engage, guide and encourage but if  you try to control your brand in the social media storm you’ll just be blown away. Your lawyer doesn’t understand this, which is why Ferrero beat a hasty retreat from it’s cease-and-desist order and is now working with Ms. Rosso to work out a beneficial solution for both parties that keeps World Nutella Day alive and well for all of its adoring fans.

If only they hadn’t listened to the lawyer in the first place…

The 3 Metrics that Say You’re Getting it Right Online

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There are three metrics that you want to look at when you’re assessing if you’re getting it right with your online content….

One: Time On Page

For your top pages check out how long people are spending on those pages.  Time yourself reading the page.  Is it about the same?  Is it more?  Is it way less? If people aren’t taking the time to really process your content, or if it’s too confusing, you may need to do some re-working.

Two: Increase in Page Views

If your content (blog post, sales page, about page) is great and it’s driving people to share it and love it then the number of people viewing it will increase.

Three: Engagement

If your content is getting social media likes, shares, favorites and comments, it shows that your readers have really found value in what you’ve produced. Engagement starts a conversation that can take your content to the next level.

Five Signs That Your Content is Weak

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Fear is a paralyzing thing and when you worry that your content is weak you don’t publish.  When you don’t publish you can’t help support what your business’ online presence is really for.  Here are five signs that your content is weak:

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  1. If you read your own blog posts and you’re not nodding or smiling: It’s weak.  Great content is about engagement and engagement is about emotion – if your content doesn’t bring out ANY emotion in you….it’s probably not doing much for your reader.
  2. It’s laced with errors.  Grammatical, spelling, incomplete thoughts mid-sentence.  The best way to avoid this one is to save your work – let it sit for 15 minutes or a day and then read it again with fresh eyes.
  3. There is nothing to DO with it. Like it, love it, hate it, comment, click.  LET there be SOMETHING to do with it.
  4. You used 500 words – you needed 15.  Fluff has a place online….but is it on your site?
  5. You don’t provide a unique viewpoint. If you’re recycling content from other sites/thought leaders, you need to at least put your own spin on it. Add value, or your reader will find it somewhere else.

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Once you’ve made sure that your content is strong, you can be confident in publishing it and take full advantage of your burgeoning online presence. Strong content = strong business!

 

How your website is like my lawn

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I’m not going to pretend that this title has SEO best practices in mind.  It doesn’t.  I like it anyway. I bought a house last year and for the first time I have a lawn. Now, I’ll be honest: I haven’t given much thought to the lawn at all….until this spring. It is overrun with weeds and there are entire sections where the grass has just refused to grow – it is so bad that professionals needed to be called in and the verdict was not good. The entire lawn needs to be re-seeded. I was left reeling.  This is going to be a major project and then I got on a call with a new client. And guess what?

Their website: It is like my lawn

They let it go. They didn’t pay much attention to it.  Someone was giving it the yearly once-over and they thought that’s all that they needed.  They had a blog -it got stale, it lost focus, it received flashes of brilliance but mostly it was ignored and walked over. There entire site needs to be re-seeded.

So there are two action items from today’s blog post.

ACTION #1 – Periodic Re-Seeding

In your calendar right now block off 40 minutes in the next week to read the content on your 4 most FREQUENTLY visited pages.  Make sure that it is:

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  1. Accurate and current.  You’re probably thinking this is just a crazy idea that it is NOT accurate and current.  Read it.  Gasp and then just look forward.
  2. Readable.  When you’re writing your content in your text editor of choice it can seem like a breeze to read. But when you get to your site you’ll notice things you missed like your paragraphs being so long that your eyes started to lose focus.
  3. Converting. These are your very best pages.  What are they doing for your business?  Do they link directly to your sale page?  Do they give an interested party ANY good next step?  Make sure it does.

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Depending on the amount of content, the number of visitors and what you need to accomplish from your website you’ll want to look at your best pages at least once a month and schedule in time to look at the other pages too.

Action #2 – What’s your Website for anyway?

I challenge you to look at what your website is for.  I know this might SEEM obvious – but it really isn’t – and yes, my lawn inspired this part too.  I have a lot of lawn options.  I could install turf, sod, I could do nothing, throw rocks down, did you know you can moss an entire lawn?  It’s true.  There are lots of ways to cover your acreage. Same thing goes for your site.  Perhaps you do not need 800 pages of research on your site – perhaps you need eight pages that actually say SOMETHING.  So think about what your website is for and really look at your top four pages and see how those most popular pages support your website’s purpose. If they don’t, take some time and really revamp them in such a way that they advance the ultimate purpose you’d like the site to serve.

Who are you even talking to?

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So you’ve convinced yourself that you need to have a presence online. Or maybe someone else has convinced you – either way, you’ve made the decision and are ready to move forward. Now your problem is that you have no idea what you should say. What aspects of your product or service should you highlight? What tone do you take? All of this can be extremely daunting – unless you first answer one key question that flies under the radar for many people new to the online arena:

Who exactly are you talking to? Who is your target audience?

To find your target audience, you have to define two key people – your consumer and your customer. “Wait,” you say, “aren’t those the same person?” Not always! Here’s the distinction – your consumer is the person who consumes or uses your product or service. Some examples:

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  • the guy who eats your sandwiches
  • the woman who wears your t-shirt
  • the business owner who implements your marketing advice.

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Your customer is the person who makes the purchase decision – your buyer. Examples of customers:

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  • the mom buying groceries for her family
  • the purchasing manager evaluating b2b vendors
  • the receptionist placing an order from a restaurant for a company lunch

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If these two people are the same, your job is easier. You can craft a message appropriate for that audience and meet them where they are online. If you have several audiences, you need to decide how you’d like to engage and drive demand – from the consumer side, or the customer side. Consumers respond to messages appealing to the enjoyment or utility they get from your product or service. Customers generally respond better to messages that promote value, quality or convenience. Specifics depend very much on what types of people populate your audiences. Do your research, and engage the proper audience the way the want to be engaged and you’re well on your way. Stay tuned this week for more advice on finding your customers and tailoring your content and messages to their needs. It’s gonna be a good week.