Is your website still fit for purpose in 2012?

Websites are today’s virtual shopfronts. They speak volumes about the organisations they represent, creating lasting impressions which will engage or disengage customers within the first four seconds of their visit.

Website design trends in 2012

Website design in 2012 is all about the customer experience and customers want functionality, faster online access and social interactivity. If your website still appears as a static extension of your company brochure, with very little functionality or consumer interaction, it probably is time for a major overhaul.

Purpose-design

The best websites today are purpose-designed. They are built around the actions you want your customers to take when they visit your site or land on a particular page.
If you are planning on upgrading your website or rebuilding it from scratch, you should be incorporating the following elements.

Social media integration

Social media is also set to become an integral part of website communications, customer relationship-building and retention in 2012. Corporate attitudes to social media are changing and more organisations are developing integrated strategies to support their Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or YouTube presence. We will see more websites using their social media channels this year to talk to and learn from their customers, build relationships with them, manage complaints and provide support. Expect to see Twitter for business use really taking-off in 2012.

Smart phone-friendliness

Smart phone searches will grow significantly this year with more than one in five internet searches expected to be via a mobile device and the trend will increase significantly over the next five years. If your website is not mobile -friendly, frustrated visitors who find it difficult to read and slow to load will go elsewhere. Content too should be compatible. Headlines and text should adjust to fit the smartphone browser so that the visitor doesn’t have to scroll over to see it.

Forget Flash – it’s HTML5

Speed of access is what people want. Smart phones will not be installing Flash for consumers which makes using HTML5 extremely important for businesses.

Intelligent and useful content

Reader-friendliness, quality of information and usefulness are what attract customers and search engines like Google to a website. Make sure you research your market before making improvements. It’s important to listen to the people you want to reach, understand their needs and provide content and imagery that will attract and interest them. If you can give them what they want they will engage with your site and get others to link to it.

‘Inclusivity’

Consumers also want to find what they are looking for quickly in a language that they understand and identify with. The language style, tone and voice of your website should therefore be compatible and familiar to the people you want to reach so, again, listen and learn from your audience before you start to ‘speak’.

Continuous ‘fresh’ content

Search engines like Google as well as consumers don’t want to see and read the same old boring stuff over and over again. They are hungry for fresh content that’s interesting, useful and engaging. You should regularly refresh your site with new information, video, photos, info graphics, slide presentations, news releases and more.

Big interesting pictures and attention-grabbing headlines

Again, big, dynamic images, high impact headlines, interesting infographics and larger icons are all features which savvy websites are using to keep consumer returning to their websites, engaging with it and referring it to other potential customers.

More community and environmental commitment

Last but not least, consumers expect to see real examples of community, ethical and environmental commitment with testimonials, case studies, events calendars and social media interactivity within this section of your website.

Should my business have a blog?

Think of a business blog as part of your online marketing toolkit. Blogs can really help you to personalise your business and build brand awareness as well as trust amongst your customers.

Business blogs are also not only extremely cost-effective but a great way to communicate with prospects, build long-term customer relationships and generally market your business.

Here’s what blogging can do for you:

• Demonstrate your knowledge and establish you as an expert in your field


• Make your business services stand out


• Attract new business prospects and opportunities


• Improve brand visibility and search engine rankings


• Create PR and media opportunities


• Open communications channels with prospects / customers


• Generate new leads


• Show customers / prospects how you can solve you’re their business problems

What should I blog about?

Decide first what you want your blog to achieve. Who are the people you want to reach? Be very specific about this and don’t try to be ‘all things to all people’. The more focussed you are, the more effective your blog will be. Think about what you can you write about that is going to be valuable and interesting to your readers. Remember, a successful business blog is always customer-focussed and never about ‘you’.

Quality and consistency is vital

If you are going to blog, then you need to be consistent and do it regularly to build customer loyalty. Quality is also extremely important; your blog should be ‘brand’ - and ‘reputation-building’. That means you must have compelling, high quality content - for your readers and to boost search engine rankings - that’s spell-checked and factually correct. The design, look and feel of your blog should also be in keeping with your corporate identity and culture.

Invite discussion

An easy way to do this is to ask your visitors for feedback by inviting them to leave comments or suggestions which keep the conversations going. And when people participate, don’t forget to thank and acknowledge them.

Comment on other people’s blogs and social sites

Get yourself known by commenting or guest blogging on other people’s blogs and discussion forums. Try to participate in other social networking channels like LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube and SlideShare.

By following these tips, you will be well on your way to being a successful blogger.

QR codes: a fantastic business marketing tool you should be using!

Over the past few months we’ve been encouraging our clients to start incorporating Quick Response codes (QR codes) into their marketing communications because they are an extremely cost-effective and useful way of encouraging customers to interact with a company’s products or services.

What are QR codes and what should I use them for?
QR codes are 2-D barcodes that behave like hyperlinks and can be decoded using your smartphone with a QR code reader. They can link to a new product page on your website, a Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter profile, a Google maps reference, vouchers or special offers – just about anything you want to show and tell your customers about. You can also use QR codes to send emails and SMS messages automatically or upload people’s contact details into your smartphone’s address book. They were first designed for the auto industry to track parts.

QR codes – a huge marketing opportunity just waiting to be tapped
The great thing about QR codes is that you are not limited in terms of length, size and space. Traditional advertising works on limits. You pay for extra airtime, advertising and newspaper space. But fixing a QR code to your advertisement, you are literally limitless in the amount of information you can include in your advert. According to the latest UK survey of mobile phone users in July 2011, 45% of consumers already own a smartphone with a further 17% planning to acquire one within the year. In terms of marketing opportunities, there is an audience for QR codes that is just waiting to be tapped!

How do I get a QR code?
It’s very easy. There are several websites which will create QR codes for free like Quickqr and Qrstuff.

How do QR codes work?
The first thing you need to do is to download a QR reader. Most smartphones come with readers already installed these days. You can also download one from the internet for free. After you’ve done this, enter the QR reader on your phone and take a picture of the QR code. This will take you to the code’s location. For example, if you put your LinkedIn or website address into the QR code creator, the QR code created will take people to that page when they take a picture of it on their smartphone.

How do you use a QR code?
You can use QR codes to promote yourself, your products and services in all sorts of ways. For example, you might have a QR code next to each product on your web site which contains product details, contact information and the web link to the page so consumers can review this information on their smart phone and share it with their friends. You could add one to your job advertisement, exhibition stand, company signage and business card so it’s easy for someone to add you to their smart phone address book.

In short, you can add a QR code to any marketing and advertising materials from posters to TV advertisements and use them to connect consumers or customers to:

• Product information


• Contact details


• Special offers


• Special events


• Competition details


• Voucher or coupon


• Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn


• Latest YouTube video

If you are interested in using QR codes here are some useful links:

• http://www.quikqr.com/


• www.beetagg.com/downloadreader


• www.reader.kaywa.com/getit


• www.2d-code.co.uk/qr-code-readers


• http://www.qrstuff.com/


• www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code

How to write a good PR brief

A PR pitch and eventual communications programme are only as good as the PR brief you provide.

Here are some quick tips on how to write a good PR brief.

Vision and objectives: state what your vision and key objectives are. What is it that you want to achieve, where, when and why?

Target audiences: identify who you want to reach.

Background: provide background information on your organisation, this could for example, be a company profile explaining what you do and your products and services. Explain what issues and challenges your organisation is facing and any key selling messages and unique selling points you have (e.g. why do people choose your organisation / products / services?).

The PR brief:

• Identify and highlight the areas you want the PR agency to tackle and what resources, including any additional agency or in-house PR or marketing communications support.


• Budget: be clear on how much you want to spend as your PR strategy and programme will need to be built around your budget.


• Deadlines: state your project delivery deadlines.


• Useful website references: include these and any other resources which will help the PR agency learn more about your organisation.


• Provide high quality business information: PR professionals are business advisers and strategists, so a good brief will provide scope for consultants to give their perspective and insight on the issues you need to address and strategies. This will also give you an insight into the agency’s creative and strategic thinking capabilities.


• Account management: ask the PR agency to provide details on how they will manage the account and work on a day to day basis with you, your organisation and management team.


• Confidentiality: include a statement on confidentiality and intellectual property.


• Submission date: advise when your submission deadline is.

Experience / references

• Ask for examples of work and project successes so the PR consultancy or agency can highlight their skills and capabilities and request references too.

What should you put on your homepage?

Your homepage is the most important landing page of your website and yet surprisingly few organisations put the right information on it.

Four seconds to grab the visitor’s attention

The opening text of your website’s homepage should be able to tell visitors in four seconds or less what you do and what you are selling. Think of it as the opening statement of a company résumé – it should highlight the key products, services or skills you are offering.

Some homepage do’s and don’ts…

• Don’t put a company logo, strapline, video, fancy Flash graphic and ‘click here to enter’ on your homepage, it’s a real turn-off. Visitors want to find what they are looking for instantly so cut to the chase.
  



• Don’t put anything to do with you company history, vision and values, mission statements, employee numbers and corporate information on your homepage – these belong in the ‘About us’ section.
  



• Do keep your content refreshed by running an RSS or company news feed on your homepage.
  



• Do - if you want to be found on Google and other search engines - ensure your homepage contains keywords and phrases that people would use to search for you on the internet. But be careful, your text must make sense and be readable, informative and intelligent to visitors and search engines. Search Engines like Google rank websites on the relevance of their content.
  

Last but not least, test out your homepage content on people who know nothing about what your company does or sells. Their feedback will tell you very quickly if your homepage is doing its job!

How do you turn negative PR into positive on the internet?

What do you do if you find your company, products or services under fire on the internet?


A very unhappy listed UK company recently asked us for strategic PR advice after finding negative comments from investors on the organisation’s financial performance. It wanted to know what it could do to stop the remarks on a discussion forum.


Our top three PR tips on managing your online reputation
If these negative comments are highly visible on internet searches, posting a defensive reply on a popular blog, discussion board or social media channel will just ‘fuel the fire’ and make things worse.


In situations like these you need to get the basics right. Here are our top three tips:

1. Push down negative comments with a strategic PR programme of good news product or company stories which generate positive brand messages on the front pages of Google and other engine searches.


2. Resist the temptation of posting defensive replies


3. Don’t order the removal of the comments just because you don’t like them!

When a PR crisis hits, it’s too late to prepare!

A PR crisis is any situation that threatens your organisation’s image and reputation. Fail to prepare for it, then prepare to fail.

When a PR crisis hits an organisation the rules of the game in normal PR and media relations change dramatically. The speed of information and image delivery over the internet is often almost instantaneous. Speculation and public criticism through social media channels like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, can overwhelm an organisation within minutes. And if you are not prepared for this, you could find yourself in serious hot water.

Every organisation should have a simple crisis communications procedure or as I call it, a ‘PR protection plan’ ready to go when things go wrong. It’s not just good PR practice, it could be a ‘life-saver’!

Crisis PR requires efficient reporting systems

Whether you are dealing with a fatality, customer complaint, share price crash, or a product fail, you will need effective crisis reporting systems which alert your chief exec and senior management team to the situation in seconds. Staff and suppliers must also have a protocol for referring any media enquiries straight to your communications team.

Be factual, quick and truthful

When things do go wrong, tell your story factually, quickly and truthfully. If you ignore the situation, deny or hide it, it will get worse. People usually remember what they hear first and last so view the situation from their perspective not just yours. On a final note, don’t make the common mistake of handing the crisis PR and media relations over to your lawyers. If they are not communications professionals, it could escalate the problem.