A little knowledge is all that's required

Ever heard the phrase "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing"?

Well I'd always assumed it related to people like mad scientists in laboratories who came up with deadly viruses after reading a copy of "Anthrax for Dummies". Or someone like an evil (but stupid) super villain, who worked out how to cause global mayhem and panic with just a bottle of bleach and a tube of tomato purée. You get the idea...

But if you're a client and you want to cause widespread despair and upset in the digital / eCommerce industry... then my advice is to read and learn just enough about what you want, so that you are able to write basic and bewildering requirements for that new website / app / whatever that scare the bejesus out of those that you have asked to deliver them.

I'm not suggesting dear prospective client* that you actually take the time to truly understand the ramifications of what you're asking. Instead, you should pull together an assorted collections of terms, buzz words and phrases that you think sound 'about right' and send them off to a bunch of agency folk. These people will then do their damnedest to meet your objectives, developing grey hairs and possible ulcers in the process.

If you really want to mess with their minds, throw in a couple of conflicting requirements... Assuming you know which ones actually conflict. If not... Who cares!

*Yes I am aware that most prospective clients reading this will now not be actual clients in the future.

The overuse of the word strategy

The other day I was asked what online jargon ticks me off (to give it a polite title).

My first thought immediately went to the complete overuse of the word 'strategy' amongst a lot of people in the online industry. Here's my reasons why I think the word has become so popular:

1. Agencies and online consultants can charge more if they use the word strategy
(yup, for some reason, using the word automatically means you understand it and how to apply it to a client's business)

2. It has become incorrectly interchangeable with the word 'plan'.
(All too often I hear things like "we need an implementation strategy" when what is really meant it "we need a plan to put this website live correctly")

3. Clients feel reassured by the use of 'strategy' to define their aims.
(Admit it, no client wants to label their approach as anything but strategic. It would be counter to a lot of anyone's ambitions to say something like "here's a presentation of our content marketing tactics")

4. There are too many digital strategies
Yup, that's right.... The equation to calculate the number of digital strategies within any organisation is:
(Number of people who think they 'get' the Internet + 1).

Perhaps we need a strategy for digital strategies?

Turbo-charging your digital marketing strategy workshop

This week I flew off to participate in a day of meetings and discussions about the digital marketing plans for a well know IT equipment manufacturer.

The whole day went really well (in my opinion) and as well as meeting people I'd only spoken to on the phone before, I got to do what I really enjoy.... Standing up at a whiteboard with a marker pen & post-it notes and working in a collaborative way to map out "what the short and medium term will look like".

Doing this sort of workshop can at-times be a little daunting, however I've done enough of them in the past to be able to cover most problems that are likely to occur. But this session was actually made a lot easier by two important factors that I wanted to share:

Firstly, by having an agency team around me who are not just smart (even though we all got up before 4:30am that morning to catch our flight), but able to think in a commercial and practical way.

Secondly, having a couple of clients participate in the workshop who are not only digitally-savvy, but driven, passionate and fun at the same time.

This all meant we were able to not only get the plan of work for the short & medium term mapped out, but we got to understand far more about the supporting factors, systems and processes necessary to deliver the business objectives. In essence, getting twice the work done in the same amount of time.

If only every workshop could be like that!

Building client understanding of SEO services – part 2

In my earlier posting on this subject I covered why the lack of information about how Google actually uses its Page Rank algorithm makes it difficult to tell a client expressly how much SEO work is required.

But this is not the only factor in why it is so very hard to quantify what’s needed to improve a sites search engine visibility. There are bunch of other factors that can affect the amount of time and effort required.

For example:

1. Lack of clarity of the exact search requirements (Dear Client, exactly what keywords are you looking to target and why?)
2. The target site is badly coded
3. The target site has little or no relevant content
4. The subject material of the site is operating in an incredibly competitive online market (potentially with each competitive site using their own set of SEO consultants to promote it)
5. The time and effort required to inform / educate / chase a client

As you can see, there are so many variables.. but still some less-than-professional companies still offer a 'boxed' £100 solution to SEO. I'll leave you to decide if you think this is a good approach.

Building client understanding of SEO services – part 1

I’m always talking with potential new clients about the different services we provide at Ideal Interface, with most seeing the advantage in our offerings of: digital consultancy, website design & delivery and online marketing. However the search engine optimisation service we offer is sometimes harder to quantify to a prospect, so I thought I’d air my thoughts in public on how to build a client’s understanding of SEO and clarify just how difficult it is to say “x effort equals y outcome” and why all-so-often we have to state “it depends”.
Lets just start from a common understanding that hyperlinks are the currency of the web. This is particularly true in two ways:

1. The Google 'Page Rank' is basically a measure of in-bound quality links to a site. It is this rank that dictates how highly Google displays the pages/site when a keyword is entered.
2. People follow links.... this means they click on page content, banner, emails, etc. and this converts to offline leads and online sales.

Therefore both people/money/revenue and SEO 'juice' follows links and therefore they are crucially important.
However if you asked a prospect what a link to their website gets them in business, then a lot of them probably won't have a clue. Unless they have a comprehensive web knowledge then they won't know whether links from one domain are worth a fortune in sales or are worthless for leads, etc.

But they should! Analytics are free these days (using Google Analytics & others) and it is very easy for professionals with this knowledge to tell which links & URL's are driving business...
The opposite is true for SEO. Its very hard to tell which links from other sites give your site a boost in the search engine results pages (SERPs) - although an SEO professional can make an educated guess as to which ones are the most important.

Google (and about 90% of all UK searches are done via this search engine these days) doesn't tell us this specific information, probably because everyone with a basic knowledge would then ‘game’ the system…. but it does constantly give out advice (mostly by Matt Cutts) to do all the basics of website design, build and management properly first of all and then the links to your content should come naturally*. Obviously you can 'assist' this position if you know how....

* I am still amazed by how many sites ignore this advice and then wonder why they fail to gain decent organic search traffic. Its basic site stuff.... but it often gets forgotten or de-prioritised.