Social media strategies, fishing where the fishes are

This article is in continuation of  “Corporate Web Strategies” Series… read other installments here, here.

In the beginning, the web was developed as a stateless platform and ever since it has evolved to something meaningful and social. With the advent of programming languages that helped maintain states on the web so as to have a meaningful experience, the web now mimics the normal social life.

Social media is a stage the web has evolved to; bringing the way we live life everyday to the web. As you may have known, we are a social being and in every aspect of our lives we demonstrate our “social-ness” which now brings us to the age of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and the likes. All these are tools that help customers spread your message faster whether good or bad.

Social media strategy should be part of your web strategies as it has come to be a part of the web experience. You may want to know what social media is all about; Social media is the use of Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers.

Key point that will help you formulate a better social media strategies

• Listening: implement at least a rudimentary listening platform. By listen, you know what is been discussed by your organization, what are they saying to their friends/network about you? What are their frustrations or love?Web Strategy Matrix: The Eight Stages Of Listening

This table was developed by Jeremiah Owyang

• Communications: build a starting place to hold your conversations. And by this, I mean a blogging platform.
• Methods: determine the mix of content you intend to create, and build workflow around it.
• Community: most social media strategies have to address community and how you will embrace the people you seek to gather around your business.
• Neighbors: develop a plan to reach out to others in your community, comment, and share. For corporation this will include media outfits and industry thought leaders.
• Outposts: develop social network outposts where you can communicate with other communities, and also share the way back to your own platform. This is very important as some fears that they lose traffic to the social media sites. To guide against this, create a funnel that allows your customers (or prospective) to come to your site where the action takes place. This could include getting their contact or having them to buy your product or service.
• Marketplace: if your strategy involves making money, build a marketplace external to your community. Keep these separate.
• Attention: learn how to build awareness and encourage relationships with the media you’re making.

Above all you need to know if your work force is web/social enabled (we will talk more on this later. This involves education your staff or selecting the ones that already use social media to leader your campaign. If your culture has not matured (for social media), I advise that you work critically on making your firm to develop culture of a social web.

Remember that social media helps to broadcast your company performance whether good or bad.

Tweet This Post

Selecting where to advertise online for effective return

We last discussed about what online advertisement is, and its various advantages. We will be exploring today, where to place your ads to make good return on your effort.

Currently, Google takes home the large chunk of online advertising revenue. There are thousands of other sites you can advertise on, as the list keeps growing, the need to be more targeted and semantic arises. For effective advertising, you really need to know where your target audience is, what type of advert they consume, their surfing habit and time zones, etc. These will influence your choice of advertising medium. Let’s explore some …

Google Adwords

This is the flagship Google advertising product that has given high returns in recent times. With Google search remaining the leading search engine, the performance of this medium has continued to interest advertisers. Also looking at Google’s ad network, Adsense, it gives a better way to reach people in a more targeted way. The ads are contextual, placing your ads only to where related issues are behind discussed. Google advert is based on budget; you can specify how much you want to spend per ad per day and how much you are willing to per pay ad.

Yahoo

Is world’s most visited site and also uses geotargeting methods to serve ads, it can display ads relevant to Nigeria for someone browsing the net from Nigeria. Giving the number of people who use yahoo in Nigeria, it is sure a good advertising medium for you to consider. Yahoo advert is also based on budget; you can specify how much you want to spend per ad per day and how much you are willing to per pay ad.

Facebook

Currently the golden fish of social networking sites, Facebook has grown beyond 300 million active users, giving you a platform to reach million of people faster. Facebook ads are more targeted than other advertising platform like Yahoo and Google. With Facebook, you can target by country, region, age, sex and interest. This gives you options to target your niche better. Facebook is currently the second most visited site in Nigeria after Yahoo (overall).

News Sites

In our last ranking on most visited Nigerian sites, about 60% of the top ten are made up of news sites. Which to a large extent shows the browsing habit of Nigerians, and also let you to know the sites mostly visited by Nigerians. Though, Nigerian sites don’t have performance measuring tools, but their hits are considerably good.

Niche sites

To my observation, niche sites have a better Click-through-rate (CTR) given the relevance of your ad to the audience on the particular site. Like webtrendsng.com which is target at web people and people who are interested in web technologies, advertising a site or product with these people in mind gives a better return on your ads. Look around for sites with related interest in what you want to advertise, and you will get good return on your money.

Online advertising is the future, given the rate at which people move online. Couple with the fact that online advertisements are targetable, measurable and delivers value, the need to understand how to go about it is key to getting best from it.

In our next Issue, we will look at how to measure your advertisement performance and planning.

Have you advertised lately online or thinking of doing so? Do you have any challenge? Let’s hear you!

Photo Credit: seosemway.com

Tweet This Post

How to align your web strategies with your corporate strategies

We shall continue today with our discussion on corporate web strategy, we discussed last about setting up the implementation team.

Like I pointed out on the team members why the CEO or COO should be on the team, the purpose is to make sure that the web strategies derive its strength from the corporate strategies, making sure that it not a journey on its own without a correlation with the business.

Understand corporate strategies clearly

As businesses have niche they serve, which they ultimately link their strategies with. To my little understanding, the customer plays a centre role in this process. I want to also believe that your business have its core competence, which is what people think of immediately they hear or think about your brand. Think Google, think Search! Think Microsoft, think windows! Think Disney, think entertainment! Think GTB, think banking with easy backed with technology! Think Punch, and you think of authoritative news reporting! And the list goes on. Your core competence is what brings your customers towards you even as customer service influence continued business relationship, any company that overlooks its core competence, will get lost in the buzz.

I made a comment about punchng.com the last time and someone mentioned that, they’ve got blog which you can interact with! Fine they’ve got that but when you think about punch, what comes to mind?  That has affected punch ranking for the last 3 months, it sure shows that the rule online is different from that of offline. It’s not really about what you put on your web both the business impact and relationship to what you do.

The CEO or COO (or any top management person) knows about the business direction, influence (to some extent) and strategies. This people help table what they are looking at achieving with their web campaign keeping it in tandem with the corporate strategies.

Understand web as a tool to be used for your business

Unless you are a full internet company, the web remains a tool to use for your business and not your business. There are advice here and there about bring your business online, about the possibilities and advantages of web 2.0 and social media. All this are nothing but evolution of what the web comes to serve. The web gives you opportunity to expose your products and services to your customers, reach out beyond your border, help you better serve your customers and reduce your expenses on all these.

Like every other IT campaign, web makes up about 20% about you and your companies. So, you don’t concentrate on the technology while overlooking your business aim. The web only helps you to achieve them faster and cheaper.

Knotting it together

Corporate strategies are not generic but specific to your business needs and vision for your company. So naming one here will be like giving someone direction of what one doesn’t know about.

You need to iron out what your corporate strategies are, and see how the web can help you solve it. You may need to ask some tough questions like these;

• What do we do, and how can web help us do it better?
• What are our competitors using the web for, and how?
• Are our customers or target customers’ web savvy?
• How do they use the web?
• How can we serve them with the web?
• How much do we need to spend on our web effort before thinking of return (monetary, time and the likes)?
• Where do we see ourselves in the next couple of years and how can we accelerate this with the web?

These and many more questions you should answer before plunging into web effort. Now link them to the technologies made available by the web to achieve all these.

Have you implemented a web strategy lately? What are the tough questions you answered? Have you benefited from your web effort? Share your experience…

Tweet This Post

Corporate Web Strategy: Setting up the implementation team

In my last post I discussed about what corporate strategies was and how to get started defining one. Title for today simply wants to focus on how to form a team that will deliver a fulfilling web strategy.

The Team

Snap shot of those who should be on the team;

• The CEO or COO
• The CIO or top IT personality in the organization
• Customer Support personnel
• Sales & Marketing
• External consultant (Web designs, Developer and Strategist)

That’s the ideal fulcrum of people you should make members of the team, now let’s look at their respective roles in the building process. Remember, less is better, don’t let too many people be in the team so as not to slow-down the process.

CEO or COO

The CEO is the engine room of the company, with keen understanding of the business role, the role of company in the industry and the future of the company. In case the CEO is not available, the COO or vice-president can stand in. These other people are members of the Management and will be able to voice the importance of the web project and be able to allocate resources according to the company’s budget and strategies. Even though the CEO may have an idea of the importance of the web campaign, he should further be educated by the consultant or the IT person on the strategic roles of the web. The CEO will be more concern about the ROI of this campaign hence making sure that overzealousness is curtailed in the process. I have seen in some companies in my course of consulting with clients that, some CEO may have read, heard and seen some positive effect of the web (and IT), they just want it implemented ASAP, hence given less room for thorough implementation and strategies. So, thorough briefing or education is very important.

CIO or IT Personality

In most organizations, there are separate department for IT and a figure-head in form of manager or CIO. IT personalities are generally informed to a large extent as to what is happening on the internet, the service providers, competent vendors and experience as to how to implement the web strategies. Their roles are very important so that you don’t over pay for services to be rendered by the external consultants.

I have seen some companies making the web building process a sole responsibility of the IT department to their detriment. Most IT persons don’t know rudiments about the business, and mostly placed in the support department. So they just implement the website just the way they think other people do it with the company’s operations in mind.

Customer Support Personnel

The web has evolved from just another brochure for marketing to customer service. With the advent of web 2.0 and its child social media, web sites are now responsive giving the customer service department a better way to help customers faster. The customer service personnel should be in the team to tell their story, how customers respond, which method they like to be served and the trends.

Sales & Marketing

As Newton once said “Everything remains at the staff of rest until a force is applied”, in business nothing really happens until a sale is made! The sale is what brings in the money, while the marketing is worth expose to people what you have to offer! The input of these departments is very important because it is the ultimate thing that will affect the bottom line which will make the CEO happen and every other staff members and investors.

The sales and marketing persons explains the method they have been using, how they have performed so far, what they want change, what is hot in the market and ways to make them reach the customers better. If all their comments are well taken note of and integrated into the web strategies, the success of the web campaign is inevitable.

External consultant (Web designs, Developer and Strategist)

Getting an expert in these areas is very important, if your IT department are not web savvy, you must consult an external person to help you in this process.

Talking about the web consultants, you need to understand that, the web is vast and in most cases one person doesn’t know it all. Firms generally consultant with a web designer or developer who are basically tech people and may not be able to maximize the potential of the web. Yea, well they will provide their service to your liking but I will like to add that the impact of a strategist is the void currently needed to be filled in your next web campaign (in case you don’t have one). The role of the strategist is simply to create a bridge between the business process and the web technology at hand for optimum return. This will make sure that, all efforts are geared towards serving the customer and at the same time getting good return on your expenditure.

Summary

I will summary the works of each team members as; CEO brings the business needs, challenges and focus to the ground, while the customer services & sales and marketing personnels brings the business process, customer needs and their ideas to fore, the web designer/developer create the web pages and application while web strategist link the business need with what the designer/developer is doing for effective return and monitoring.

Do you have a web team? What are they comprised of and how have they performed so far? Drop comment below…

Tweet This Post

Top Web Development Companies in Nigeria

I will be reviewing on this page, top web development companies in Nigeria, we would look into applications they have developed, how long they have been in the business and their general influence on the web space in Nigeria. Don’t mind if I start from the big guns, I think we should appreciate the impact they have had on the industry.

Sidmach Technologies

They developed Waeconline.org.ng, jamb.org.ng Nigeria‘s first online examination registration websites. I will say these projects opened a new chapter in the web industry in Nigeria!

Looking at Sidmach’s portfolio, they have more government related projects than Taviatech.

They have offices in Lagos, Abuja and Portharcourt.

Taviatech

“Tavia Technologies Limited is an experienced technology company offering Web, Wireless & Business Intelligence services. We have consistently provided first class services to our valued customers in the Telecommunication, Banking, Oil & Gas, Law Firms, Insurance, Real Estate, Non-Profit, Recreational, Manufacturing Industries and other sectors. “

Taviatech has been in the business for 10 years and have deployed high-end solutions including Interswitch e-payment system (website), MTN, Access Bank, FCMB, Starcomms portal and other great solutions. Their office is located at Motor ways centre in Ikeja, Lagos.

This is just the beginning as more companies will be featured here. We will also look at individual designers that are world-class from Nigeria.

Stay tuned!

Tweet This Post

Corporate Web Strategies; getting started, defining your goal

This is the first of the installment on Corporate Web Strategies. We would be looking into, how to develop effective strategies for your online success. With this you will have a guideline through which you pursue your online campaigns. You may want to ask, what is a corporate web strategy? Well not to worry we will dive into it right here then you can go on from there to define one for your company.

Corporate Web Strategies is simply a defined, analyzed and understood method by which you pursue your online spending and campaign toward allocating effectively for your web efforts and getting adequate return.  Defining a web strategy at this point in time has never been as important as now, when all companies are cost conscious, when all other media are not measurable! Am sure you would have seen other companies launch their own websites, blog, Facebook page, twitter account etc. these are good and welcome! Then you now think your company deserves one, yea it surely does! It is possible to do this is ad-hoc manner (like most people do) or to have a well understood, proactive and effective plan to make sure that you are not just doing it for doing sake but you are getting value from it.

Goal, what do you want to achieve?

I want to believe you have a solution you provide to your client/customer, you have a set target you want to meet this year in terms of profitability, right? Those are your business goals. Now coming to the web, why do you want to have a website? Is it to educate your clients about what we do? Or for our suppliers’ to track their transactions with you? Or to have an e-commerce platform whereby clients need to come to your office will reduce and to expand beyond your geographical location? These are business needs and should be the bedrock from which all your development spending, ads spending and social media campaign emanates from! While defining the goals you need to also know your customers wants, their level of internet-savvy and all other things.

Having defined the goal, you now look at your budget if it really can cater for it. It is possible that you have budgeted the amount you want to spend on that for the year, if so you may consider doing necessary adjustment or wait till better time you will have enough funding. But first you need to consider the impact of waiting or doing it now! Your competitors might already have been getting your clients lately and that seem to be affecting your revenue, this means that you don’t have much time to wait, now is the time!

Having a goal is very important here and it shows that you are not just following the crowd and getting lost in the buzz till you can’t find a business justification for your effort. The goal also make sure that, your online campaign have something to do with your business model, and that it only builds on it rather than building itself for building sake.

In the next installment, I will be discussing “how to align you web strategies with your corporate strategies”

Corporate Web Strategies, topics to be discussed;

• Getting started, defining your goal
• How to align your web strategies with your corporate strategies
• Setting up the implementation team
• Social media strategies, fishing where the fishes are and not letting off the hook;
• Selecting the right web service provider
• Delivery checklist, have they developed what you wanted?
• Prelaunch checklist, how can we get to know you have a site?
• Launching your website, serving the food to the world
• Marketing and publicity do you need one?
• Measuring success, how have we feared?
• Thinking forward, where do we go from here?

Tweet This Post

Trust Economy: How to build a ready market for your product and services.

The way the world is moving is toward an economy where people need intelligence, trusted advice to make decision. As you know, people have less time and high demand is on the little they have. To make your company, product and service stand out in this trust economy, you must build relationship. The key here is relationship! As many people you have trusted relationship with, the better your chance of success.

New Definition of ROI

You need to know that the definition for ROI as you were taught in the class has changed. It used to be “Return on Investment” now it means “Return on Influence”. The larger your influence, the better for your business and personality.

Trust Economy; The people, the currency

Trust economy is the economy where people make sound decision to go for your product and services based on their knowledge about what you offer them. This they get through recommendation from their “Trusted” network. Human-over-Ip is the protocol for the trust economy. Am sure we all are familiar with the general HTTP protocol. Yeah! That is the protocol of the internet, but it’s high time we recognized that; friendship, Social, business and every other activities we engage in real life has move over the internet, so the protocol as change! In our normal economy, we have law-backed-paper as money. This age things have changed, like I said earlier, people do not have much time; they have targets to meet and places to go. So for you to be able to get their attention you must have value that is much more than their targets. So, attention in this current age is the current for the Trust Economy.

For people to stop by and read your blog, to buy your product, come to your company, they must sense some value and sensing value is influenced by various things in this age. The most important of all are the people they trust, people they know and people who are in-touch with them.

The Magic Wand: Getting your clients/customers when you need them

It’s old-fashion to rush-to-market your product and service to people. They are concerned about their time and hard-earned money. People mostly don’t want to take another time to test your product. They want a product they know or someone they trust advise them to go for. You know, Celebrities and big figures around are used to advertise product, well the celebrity is being paid for the service and might not have tested the product. So the trust is not there any longer. People have tried over and over again and they are just tired of it. They buy product recommended by their friend than any other solid, classic advert. As you know, their friend is not being paid for the advice and the friend is talking from experience, hence the Trust level is very high.

For you to effectively get your clients when you need them, you need to have built relationship over time. They want to know you as human, they want to be sure that you have feelings; they want to know how much you care. So, when you meet the next person in the seminar, get interested in things they like most and discuss with them. Let them have a feel of your “human-hood”! Having connected with them, show them you care, give them related information to what you represent, be helpful on questions asked.

How are you building trust?

Note: this article has appeared on my old blog on my personal site.But as been updated.

Tweet This Post

What is your business model?

Studying web business for couple of years and seeing some start-ups thriving for a while then disappear! I realized that the web is nothing different from the traditional business which operate base on the same rule; if the total money generated is much more than the cost of providing your service or selling the product then you make profit. If this continues over time, you become a successful company!

I will be exploring with you in this article, “Web business model” which I think is critical to your success in building your own online empire like Google, Yahoo, Facebook etc. Let’s define what it really means, “a business model is the method of doing business by which a company can sustain itself — that is, generate revenue. The business model spells-out how a company makes money by specifying where it is positioned in the value chain.” As defined by MICHAEL RAPPA, note the emphasis as we will be talking more on these.

Before I go further, I want you to understand that, “What makes a business successful is its ability to provide value for its customer/client and being able to sustain their happiness with your service for as long as you want to remain in business.”  You may want to ask, what does Google sale? Or what service does Yahoo provide? You may still want to probe further to ask “How the hell does Facebook make money?” If you reflect on these and look critically, you may be able to answer these questions yourself. Now let me ask, why do you go to Google? Well your answer to that question is what gives Google its market capitalization of over $140billion.

So back to you, what value do you provide through your site and how much money can you make from it? I have seen people start “me too” businesses by creating exactly the services of these successful companies! Do you make more money than you spend? If yes, fine! Then all you need is to expand and see how much of the money you can make by reaching more customers! I have worked with couple of start-ups and most time I hear words like… I have spent so much money on this site! I receive good comment from my site, which is good for me! I love this thing and will continue to it! I am not against any of these, but if you cannot continue like this and be successful! Our concern here is sustainability and growth!

Understanding the Internet Currency

Well, you might think the currency spent on the internet is dollars, you are absolutely WRONG! The ultimate currency spent online is ATTENTION! The web is called attention economy! Yahoo, Google and Facebook are the world’s most visited website and obviously among the most successful (except for Facebook which is still in its infancy). Google commands far more than 69% advert revenue on the internet! For you to build a business on the internet, people must know about it because you created for them! Facebook generated a lot of hypes and it has compensated for it with good service which the public have been yearning for; privacy and simplicity!

Business models you can choose from

• Brokerage: this model is based on bringing the buyer and the seller to common place to bring about transaction from which the broker gets commission or percentage. Think of it like the normal brokerage services. The Internet facilitates this model effectively. Example: ebay.com
• Advertising: this model is where your revenue comes from placing advertisement on your site from second or third-party. Requires you to generate huge traffic. The content you offer on the site could be free but while they (visitors) enjoy your freebies you make money via ads. Example, yahoo.com, Nairaland.com, Google.com
• Infomediary: as its name implies, information intermediary! They are based on generating information from a given set to other group of people. Nielsen, Doubleclick (now Google).
• Merchant: These are more like the traditional brick & mortar with online presence. They produce/list various products from which they make profit from its listing price. E.g buyright.biz etc.
• Manufacturer (Direct): thinking about removing the middle man, this does it right! This model facilitates from factory-to-customer’s home. You have access to the end user of your service and sell to them at an affordable price which helps you lower your operating cost.
• Affiliate: this model is simply pay-per-performance. When you generate a sale for your affiliated site, you receive agreed percentage for the sale. While you can join existing one and build a site on the model, you can also create it around your products and services. Like the common link/banner exchange and the famous Amazon affiliate. Site that offers this model includes Omoobridal.com, Amazon.com,clickbank.com etc.
• Community: this is ultimately based on your user loyalty; make them gravitate towards your site each time they come online. Nairaland.com successfully used this model, in year 2005-06 I was personally addicted to it. The emerging communities are the social networks around, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr etc. You can also create community for a common interest; be it open-source and charge for support service. Joomla, Red Hat and Wordpress are living examples.
• Subscription: You can create a special area for your site members, or have them per to gain access to your classified resources. This could be periodic; daily charge, monthly or annual fee. They are also called premium services; some dating (roommate.com) and social network (classmates.com) offer these services even though there are many free sites. Also consulting firm like McKinsey, they have both free and paid subscription.
• Utility: you can make your money via pay-pay use. Am sure you are currently paying for your web hosting in this format. ISP, Web Hosting.

Web 2.0 Business model

There have been arguments over the Internet on sustainability of the web model being used by web 2.0 sites, though most still fall back to the models mentioned above but their effect and hype are getting attention from every corner. As pointed out by Ken Yarmosh there are at least two models employed by web 2.0 site; Technology based and Network Effect. As he argued, even though both models are closely related and their successes are tied together, their approach to it is the distinguishing factor, looking at the way each model is pursued.

A technology based model lays more emphasis on Innovation, and product distinction in the market. This quest made it inevitable for them to enter into the heart of their users thereby creating an extreme network effect that now brings amount (based on market acceptability) the huge profit. Skype created its novel product and now it’s widely use and compete with Network carrier at some fronts. Twitter as the newest baby, made its API widely available, this makes it possible to use the service without ever going to twitter.com more than once (for signup). Though twitter is still in search of a magic wand to turn its technology into profit, as people continues to use it, its founders will be more open for ideas and a possible acquisition.

Network effect on the other hand is driven by hype and media, this raises the market expectation so high that, it keeps the founders out-of-the-box. Facebook was able to compensate for the market expectation by being innovative and expanding its borders. Facebook Connect is very good technology which will define and shape the future of socialization and identity recognition across the web.

I’m sure you can attest to the fact that Twitter is a Technology base model while Facebook is Network Effect based.

In Nigeria, we have over 20 social networking sites most of which copied features employed by Facebook and the likes. Some of the things that have kept them in the hide-out are the fact that they have not really come out with a sustainable business model. You should not be surprised if you see them fade-out one after the other. Other Web businesses are doing quite well, nairahost.com, Nairaland.com, 2deal4real.com, buyrigh.biz and a host of others.

To remain competitive in the web business, you need to fashion out a sustainable business model. See it as if you are starting a normal business and not just a hobby. Am sure if you want to start selling cloths, you sure will not sell below your cost price. It is very important that you choose a business model that fits your person and expertise. Innovation cannot be left out of this, even if you copy a model, let us see a personal touch of creativity and we can predict if you will be seen for long.

*Note: you can mix the models as you deem fit for your business. Just make sure you continue to serve your customer/users interest and don’t miss out on the ATTENTION.

I need you to say honestly, what is your business model? Drop it below…

Tweet This Post

Developing your Corporate Web Strategy

Outline

• Introduction
• What is your corporate strategy/goal?
• Finding a common ground with web strategies
• Empowering your staff
• Be social
• Reenergize

Introduction

The aim of the article is to get your organization started in the web band-wagon. You may probably have started using the internet to empower your business but in one way or the other have not developed a written strategy to make your web strategies comport with your business strategies. As in various technology adoptions, a lot of people/company jump into the technology movement without even evaluate the impact it would have on their core competence, and as a result they could not get value out of their endeavor. To avoid this pitfall on the web, you should consider the following suggestions;

What is your corporate goal?

What are you running after? What is your positioning statement in the market-place? Where do you see your organization in the next 2, 3 to 5 years? What are you currently working on to reach these goals? These questions are the simple diagnosis of your organization. I believe any organization should have answers to these questions handy. If not, I will suggest reading these two books; “Good to great” by Jim Collins & Jerry Porras and “Built to last” by Jim Collins. These questions lay the foundation for your web strategies. You should not begin any web endeavour without having a clear understand of the above questions.

Finding a common ground with Web strategies

Having clearly defined and understood your Corporate Goal, the next thing to do is to find a common ground to align both strategies to drive your company growth. To create a common ground another diagnostic question will be needed to provide answers to; what are we trying to use the web for? What are our competitors doing? How can we better serve our customers with the web? How can we increase our reach with the web? These questions will be the bed rock of your web design, development, advertisement campaign and social media strategies. Your web strategies should be a propeller for your corporate strategies; else you might lose focus of the bottom-line.

Empower your staff

Your staffs are the primary implementer of your strategies, the best knowledge they have about your vision and mission couple with their attitude will be the way they see and execute your strategies. Many of your staffs might already have the knowledge of the web, while some are basic users. How do you bridge the gap? And how do you communicate your vision with your staff?

Get a consultant to design a training programme for your staffs. Many programmes failed because the primary people to run them lack the knowledge of the workings. Remember, your staffs are the ones interfacing with your clients. Get them informed first hand be launch. It could reduce your failure rate by 80%.

Be social

Have you heard about social media & Networking? Have you heard about web 2.0? Well not to worry, the power behind these technologies is that, they place the power onto the customer. Remember the age of celebrity endorsement? Advert bombardment and disruption? Things have change! The power of web 2.0 has made Word of Mouth once again the de facto in product and services promotion. Your customers are now your advocate. In this age, bonding with your client will help you hear what they are saying about your company and how they want your product. In my recent article “Creating a social bond for brand development” I elaborated on how you can use social media to bond with your customers and make social media work for you. Consider using various social media sites to reach your clients (Facebook, Myspace, Linkedin etc). There are thousand social networking sites out there, anyone that does have your target audience should NOT be your focus.

Develop an Expert Blog

Your industry might need you to provide insight into the goings in the organization or how clients/customers can better understand your products and services, a corporate blog will help you accomplish that. It will create a platform for you to bond with your customers and get first-hand feedback from them.

Measure your performance

Whatever is not measured can not be coordinated or improved, as you fashion out strategies to grow your business, a measuring metric should be developed alongside to help you check your progress. Make it clear to everyone participating in the process to understand the metrics and use it. Say, if you want to reduce your advertising cost and increase turn-over over a period of time, set how much needed to accomplish that and see the time it takes for growth to occur in the leads generated.

Reenergize

Because we cannot predict what will happen in the next minute, making our plans and strategies flexible is of a high importance. If you notice that a plan is not working over a period of time, analyze what could be wrong. You might have developed a wrong strategy for a wrong campaign, adjust and make necessary amend as applicable. On the other hand, when a strategy succeeds, check for the main step that brought about the success and improve on it. If having a subscription form on your home page has improved your client feedback, consider letting your clients/customer know of your product development so as to hear their view about it. By reenergizing you learn as you implement your strategies and you would not need to re-invent the wheel each time you need to develop one.

I sure believe the above write up will help your business if implemented. If you have problem developing the strategies, talk to an expert to help get it done.

Have you deployed a web strategy recently? What was the success rate? Do you have challenges developing one? Drop comment below…

Tweet This Post