Small Business Web Design, Local Internet Marketing, Local SEO, Online Video, Training | LOCAL Na8ion West Palm Beach, FL

You may have already heard more than you can take about social networks like Facebook and Twitter or blog marketing. These conversational communications tools are none the less here to stay. Once in a while it’s a good idea to step away from the How-to make a facebook page type article and look at the bigger picture of how online tools are redefining our customer relationships. That’s the intent of this piece.

The Broadcasting Model

It would be an understatement to say that customer communications models are changing. Old marketing and communications practices followed a we speak/you listen model. This worked out pretty well for business owners and marketers when people used to have more attention to spare or we could rely on the novelty of an advertising medium to break through the clutter. Unfortunately, the expiration date these days on novelty expires in months and not decades.

The issue now is that people don’t have the time or interest in listening. Before they expend their time and attention on your company or product an exchange of value has to take place. For today I’ll call that exchange of value, engagement.

The old model looked something like this.

Ye Old Marketing and Communications Model

The Interaction Model

Interactive online tools like blogs ushered in today’s interaction model and extends today in webinars, livestreams, chat rooms, virtual worlds and social networks. Clearly we have a lot of tools that make it possible to better listen. For those of you with businesses with retail locations this interaction model has always extended to the most powerful of interaction models – face time! The influence of online tools has grown and today small business owners are starting to see the value in listening more with online tools. But listening skills aren’t enough and far too many organizations are still stuck in the broadcast model.

The interaction model looked something like this.

The transitional model - think web 2.0

The Evolving Engagement Model

With today’s tools we have what we need to move towards a new engagement model that focuses more heavily on listening, processing, interacting, and broadcasting. Ideally, the net result is tangible engagement and then a lift in your brand and sales.

It probably resembles a formula like this.

Listening 30% / Processing 20% / Interacting 30% / Broadcasting 20% = Engagement

The evolving engagement model

I’m going to dive into the engagement model in more detail in future posts and we’ll bring it all together with an actionable process.

Julian, ed LOCAL Na8ion
where you are is where it’s at

We just launched a sister practice of LOCAL Na8ion called brand trampoline. I’m writing some posts there to get things started and even though the content is a bit different from the typical fare here I thought you’d be interested. Here’s the first post. There will be more to follow.

- Julian, ed LOCAL Na8ion

One of our sister practices at brand trampoline is called LOCAL Na8ion where we help small businesses harness the web to get more customers from their local city. Our slogan at LOCAL Na8ion is where you are is where it’s at. The slogan hints at how our physical and virtual worlds have become intertwined. At times, where we are is a state of mind, such as when we’re contributing to an online community, while at other times we are grounded in the context of our physical location and needs like when we go out to dinner or look for a plumber on Google.

Where your people are at has changed

The slogan is apt for our new service Brand Trampoline because where you are and where your people are (be they consumers, job seekers, or buyers of your product or service) has radically changed…if you want your company to be where it’s at you have to participate.

Every aspect of life is converging and connecting

Connections are now happening in multiple contexts and dimensions including our physical proximity and shared interests to our social networks of friends and associates on Facebook, Twitter, email and blogs, and yes offline too. Perhaps the ultimate mashup of all these interactions is TCFKAP – The computer in your pocket formerly known as a phone. Wait, did I just make a Prince reference?

Facebook is becoming the web’s top source of traffic

The web today is pretty search centric (that’s spelled G-O-O-G-L-E) but times are changing quickly, Facebook is fast becoming the web’s top source of traffic. Real time search results and social search are replacing the way we interact almost overnight. We have new interaction touch points, tools, and communication vehicles and in almost all cases consumers, job seekers, and local buyers are way out head of the typical enterprise - be they the mom and pop variety or the Fortune 500.

Companies of all sizes are making one of three mistakes

1. They’re failing to engage at all.
2. They not keeping pace with where people are moving due to budgets, expertise or red tape.
3. They’re failing to engage in a meaningful way, often in the form of broadcasting their information rather than following an interaction model (what we refer to as digital engagement)

We all need to let go of the paradigm where our company website is where it’s at. Not that we don’t need one, it’s just that your website has already become a spoke in the wheel as far as people are concerned while your business operations, marketing and PR are still treating it like sun that your customers all orbit around.

The new interaction engagement model

We’re going to take up the case of the new interaction engagement model in the coming week but you might not be surprised to learn that success in our new world is based not in technological expertise or marketing gimmicks but old fashioned common sense applied in a contextually thoughtful way. Not to sound smug but it’s called listening. Have you noticed how little room there is today for listening? It’s hard when everyone is an expert and all of us posses some fantasmic skill or solution for becoming wealthy, skinny or successful overnight. Listening and understanding are more important today than in any time in our history.

Rather than rushing to establish an online reputation it’s useful for us all to recognize that we already have one, just like we already have a company culture even if you HR team or CEO failed to launch a multi-million dollar culture initiative in the 90’s.

I look forward to picking up the conversation about the new engagement model (er, old) in the coming week. In the mean time we’ll be out there looking for threads of knowledge in this and other conversations and looking to engage in more understanding.

-Julian

Episode 24 | Local Knowledge

There’s a new way to get on page one of Google search results by using a jQuery web design.

How do you design attractive websites for people while feeding Google the text it needs to improve your search engine rankings?

Recently I talked about how designing your website in Flash is a disaster from a search engine optimization standpoint even it if looks great from a web design perspective. People like the look of Flash web designs but Google can’t read the content of Flash movies (like video) so Google can’t rank your website for relevant keywords. The end result is poor search engine rankings.

The opposite end of the spectrum is a text-centric web design. Google eats ups the keywords like a pig takes to mud but the text heavy website design leaves people cold.

text-centric web designs rank well with Google but perform badly with people. What's the alternative?

For years website designers and SEO experts have tried myriad techniques to produce a pleasing uncluttered visual design with a text-centric SEO friendly design for Google. In the last couple of years a new web programming language has emerged called jQuery and it is quickly becoming popular for good reason. Many designs using jQuery mimic the interesting visual effects of Flash but with one key difference. All the text within jQuery effects are 100% accessible to search engines. This is great news.

jQuery is the holy grail of web design and search engine optimization

With jQuery effects you can combine text headlines with keyword rich text descriptions and break up the text with design elements, video and pictures. This chunking of website content allows you to feed manageable amounts of information to people so they get the point of what you’re saying without becoming overwhelmed.

Click on the image above to see an interactive demo of a jQuery slider panel

Let’s consider an example. A popular jQuery effect is called the slider. It features a panel that slides to reveal more content. While the person looking at the website is getting nicely chunked information, the search engine is able to read (or index) 100% of the text from ALL the panels contained within the jQuery slider panel. Take a look at the Delegate design made by WooThemes (one of many jQuery designs available in our Percolator Package) . Make sure to click on the picture of the Delegate WordPress theme to see the demo and then scroll through the slider panels to see the content rotate through the design.

jQuery has many effects that can be used to chunk text heavy content into visual design that’s more manageable. For example, we used jQuery expanding panels on a website magazine design that shows multiple blog posts on one page, an action that would normally leave a person scrolling down the website page for days.

Instead we featured the article headline and a visual call-to-action for the user to read the post by simply clicking a plus sign. As soon as you click the plus sign you see the entire blog post. When you’re done reading, you click on the minus key to put the post content away and move on to the next headline. What would have been page after page of dense text has been reduced to a few inches of precious screen real estate.

Click on the image above to see a demo of the jQuery expander (look for the plus signs)

Page one of Google Search Results

jQuery is a design and SEO powerhouse and one you can’t afford to ignore if you want to appear on page one of Google search results while still having a great looking design!

Julian Seery Gude, ed LOCAL Na8ion

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