Effective communication fuels offline and online success.

As a consultant and webmaster I’ve often been saddled with the task of ushering organizations into the new era of website usability and design. Often it’s challenging, because once you adopt a serious commitment to make your website more useful, or better still, more profitable, this should signal some changes in a companies processes responsibilities and overall “culture”.  Simply put, the thought of making changes to your website and not making changes in your business process can cripple efforts and marginalize the sites’ effectiveness. That’s not to say the site becomes worthless, but we’re looking for maximum efficiency and sustained growth, i.e. potential. I think it’s safe to say that one common goal of any organization is meet or maximize it’s potential. From fund raising and awareness campaigns to online sales. Trying to affect an organizations commitment to change at that level takes a lot of energy and even more patience.

Empowering content with social media.

Many web operators and proprietors have only a casual familiarity with the practice of social networking. The purpose and usefulness of social media and social networking are revealed through examinations of how and why they work. For a company or organization, social media is all about going where people are to get the word out. Operating a business offline, people attend events such as conventions, club meetings, political dinners, fund raising rallies, or anywhere they can network and exchange ideas and spread the word about myself and my services.  Online, these opportunities to expand our network and meet new potential clients are realized through the social media entities. Social media sites such as Facebook, Digg, Twitter, Flickr, and Stumbleupon connect people of like interest in ways that empower it’s users to promote popular content. At it’s core, the social media networking is about going where the people are to communicate. It’s about taking your message to where people connect online.  Today’s online communities use social media as a way to monitor multiple websites for fresh content. Subscribers and visitors alike are prompted to promote the content that they find useful, helpful, or intriguing.  Openness and transparency are goals of efficient and effective communication both on and offline. These practices provide a platform with which we can disseminate information and silicate brand awareness. They give us the freedom to market particular strengths and nuances of our organization or business to a critical audience without unnecessarily risking brand abuse (overly aggressive and often unsolicited email marketing strategies).

Getting Started: The Case Study.

We’ll begin with a fictitious company called Hair We Are. They are distributors of special hypoallergenic wigs and hairpieces for people with issues and illnesses resulting in loss of hair, such as alopecia and cancer treatment. The company operates a storefront and owns a website which they list and sell products, provide a catalog for download, and give the history of the company and it’s mission statements. With exception of it’s simple shopping cart, the website is primarily static i.e. it lacks two way interaction with it’s visitors.  This approach has seen some success for the company, although admittedly they have no idea how much potential there is for increased online sales. The website has been mostly a second thought until recently when they decided to put forth some extra effort.

Let’s take a look at that content.

The task is to perform an audit of the content on their website and formulate a strategy for integrating social media and enhancing their communications plan using their existing content. On the website there’s a page with an interview and a few excerpts from local newspapers about the company. At the top of the homepage there’s a photo of a woman with a warm smile, wearing a wig from the store’s collection. Aside from the products themselves, that’s it. Take a look at the example content audit for Hair We Are that’s listed below.

Objectifiying your content, Things to consider.

1. What is this contents’ format? (Audio, video, photos, text, etc.)
2. What is this content’s purpose? (By including this content on the website, we’re assuming it contains purposeful information. It either helps them make a decision, gives them options and/or choices that prompt a response such as a purchase or feedback comment for example.)
3. Who is the intended audience for this content?  (Clients, partners, post sales support, etc.)
4. What action could visitors take that would establish the company as a member of a larger community and/or encourage visitors to become members?

Page Information:

Page URL: HairWeAre.dum
Page Title: Company News ; Hair We Are Content
Format: Text, photos, video
Audience: Clients, potential customers and media
Objectives: Each entry on this page is related to press and acknowledgments that the company has received. The idea here was to show that the company is trusted and respected choice among people in need of hypoallergenic wigs and hair pieces.

Content Objectives:

The goal here is to draw a conclusion based the audience and objectives for this content. The content’s format type is used to help us map out suitable websites to target for social media networking.  Text, photos and video are listed as the format types. Now we can make a list of social media websites that focus on hosting and promoting each of the media formats we have listed. For the text articles we took a look at Digg ™ and Twitter ™.  For video, we found YouTube and Vimeo to be a good fit. For photos we chose Flickr ™and Facebook ™. Other blogs that we’ve targeted are alopeciahopeblog.com, alopeciaareata.us, and teamalopecia.com We can take it a step further and cross reference the terms cancer, chemotherapy, wigs and allergies in a search engine. That returned at least a dozen other viable blogs and social media sites with the right profile for our purposes.

Giving your audience some control.

Finally, what actions is the visitor allowed to take? This is where we determine the amount of time and resources the company is willing to direct toward communication via social media. Allowing comments, new content posting and trackbacks are good ways to start. They are good for content that’s been well produced and offers a benefit to the larger community. For instance, well documented articles about alopecia or hypoallergenic cosmetics or even self esteem, have information that may be of interest to communities outside those that you’ve primarily targeted. The benefit is that this content gets promoted and more and the company’s message along with it.

Making the connection

There are countless numbers of social networking opportunities to be found on the internet. It’s a challenge extended to website proprietors to think forward to solutions such as; adopting social media, blogging and article syndication. Sometime that means getting back what you put into it.