subject: What Does Your Website Say About You? [print this page] What Does Your Website Say About You? What Does Your Website Say About You?
What does your website say about you? It sounds like a simple question, but it is not. There are important strategic factors surrounding every aspect of your Social Media web initiative, including the words you choose. Furthermore, the strategy represented by those words must be carefully planned, well-organized, systematic and disciplined.
The words - The best way to describe this subtle area of web presentation is through graphical analogy. The two infographics above, for example, were both created from the textual content on the home page of the Jericho Technology web presence. They both contain exactly the same words, but the messages they convey are totally different. (Click on the images to enlarge them in a new window.)
Beyond the words
Choosing the right words to communicate the strategy is a sciencedetermining their frequency and positioning is an art formnot just for Search Engine Optimization, but also for impact.
Forging and implementing a successful operational planwith predictable outcomesis vital, or the words mean nothing.
The importance of the customer When developing web content, care was taken to emphasize those concepts we feel are most important to those we serve, and the size of the text in both graphics indicates the concentration of each word on the page. For example, the word "customer" is heavily weighted in both graphics, as it is both prominent and frequent in the website content.
It is worthy of note that we chose "customer" instead of the more common "client" in this context. Web firms tend to avoid the use of customer because it connotes a sales environment instead of a consultancy. In our view this is foolishness. The approach of highly paid consultants, who package their suggestions as a series of Power Point slides, never getting their hands dirty, has rightly gone the way of the buggy whip. Our approach is hands-on. We actually develop the Social Media strategy, execute and manage it. We solve the customer's problems through the effective use of our long experience and professional skill. These talents are our stock in tradecommodities with valueand when our customers choose to engage our talents, for the betterment of their businesses, we are never embarrassed that it started with a sale.
Properly executed, the web strategy must be customer-centric All too often, websites convey the impression that the web company itself is more important than the customer. The emphasis becomes selling before serving. The cardinal rule of effective web design is that the customer must be paramount. His needs, the solutions to his problems, and providing him with value-added information is the most important task.
To be effective, Social Media strategies must encircle the customer not isolate him As can be seen in the second infographic, the proper role of the web company is to surround the customer with his Social Media campaign and then stand aside, providing leadership, marketing, and goal-orientation, while leading the customer through a carefully executed and managed strategy. Jericho's role is then to coach, not quarterback. At the end, this process ensures that the customer can control his own Social Media campaign into the future.
In short, a successful strategy must use the three key components of the E3 Social Media Strategy: effectiveness, efficiency and efficacy.
Effectivenessbegins with planning. All Social Media activity must be based on a customer-centric model, which means understanding your target market completely, addressing their needs and solving their problems. Organized planning leads to efficient execution which creates the power to accomplish the desired effect.
One last point about customer involvement. Social Media is simple, but it isn't easy Relevant, free information must be provided. Jericho has nearly 100 blog articles on its website, and distributes more than 1,000 Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and FriendFeed articles every month to nearly 20,000 followers. A similar effort must be provided by the serious customer if he wishes to harness the immense power and earning potential of Social Media.
