Steve Rubel reports on MSN’s fake blog campaign: MSN slips with fake blogs. Must be the one Scoble was so upset about last week. Apart from being pretty lame and missing most of what makes a viral campaign really work, just more proof that John Dvorak is right, and again, from Scoble: Dvorak says Microsoft’s marketing sucks.
More tips for pitching bloggers
From FusionBrand: seven rules for highly effective blog PR
From BL Ochman: An open letter to PR people from a recovering publicist
Blogs and the Law
As companies start moving into the blogosphere, can the lawyers be far behind?
Seriously, there are a number of legal issues around copyright that bloggers should be aware of. Take a look at Toby Bloomberg’s post: Corporate Blogs: Legal Red Flags.
Her post introduced me to Charles M. Smith, Pheedo’s COO and legal counsel, and his terrific post on “Who owns blog comments”
Finally, on another note, another thanks to the Diva for telling us about Alf Nucifora’s blog and in particular his post on etiquette: Boorish Business Behavior
So what’s all this about RSS anyway
Lots of talk about Robert Scoble’s comment last week about RSS and marketing and I quote (emphasis his):
"Sorry, if you do a marketing site and you don’t have an RSS feed today you should be fired.
I’ll say it again. You should be fired if you do a marketing site without an RSS feed."
Tom Murphy, on his PR Opinions blog, more or less agrees that RSS is a good, perhaps necessary thing, but he is not as vehement as Scoble: it isn’t a fire-able offense: Fired for no RSS…. don’t be silly. One thing I like about Murphy’s posts, he often adds links to additional resources. Check them out.
Of course, Scoble himself checks in to provide additional perspective on his opinion and reports on two Jupiter analysts (Eric Peterson and Michael Gartenberg) who disagreed with him.
I agree with Scoble: they are missing the point. It isn’t about RSS. It is about making websites more active and relevant to your customers and prospects. If you DON’T have something to tell your customers at least once or twice a week, ask yourself WHY. Maybe they have things they’d like to tell each other?
For me, RSS, like weblogs, is just a way to communicate. And if your audience is reading blogs and sites in RSS aggregators, you had better be providing SOMETHING in an RSS feed. It doesn’t have to be your whole site, but at a minimum, publish an RSS feed of your latest news.
Personally, I can’t tell you how disappointed I am when I visit a new blog or website and find it DOESN’T publish an RSS feed. The only way I can stay on top of everything I read is my aggregator, and I know I am missing good stuff!
Think about it.
A good B2B website is..
Not too long ago, I posted in some detail about why corporate websites suck. Today I thought I’d move to the other side of the coin, and give you my definition of a good website.
But before we get to the good, let’s review what I mean by bad. I am primarily talking about business-to-business (B2B) websites that purport to be communicating with prospects and generating leads from the website. The reason they are so awful? They forget to sell!
They forget that the main lead generation tasks of the website are:
· to provide the prospect with information about that product that is relevant to his needs and;
· to provide a clear path that moves the prospect to the next level of engagement with the company (download a trial, purchase, order a white paper, sign a petition, whatever).
Instead what you usually find is a jumble: lots and lots and lots and lots of product information (especially in high tech, where product marketing seems to be paid by the word); investor relations; tons of logos of partners and press, often with no clear understanding of just WHY these logos are there; maybe a customer support site; a news section etc. etc. etc. Plus lots of flash, PDFs and Powerpoints.
You land on one of these suckers and you just don’t know where to go. Except NOWHERE.
Even the “worst” business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce site (direct consumer sales via Web) does a better job of communicating its value proposition to the visitor. Because it remembers that it is trying to SELL something. And the good ones like Amazon don’t ever get confused about what they are trying to do. Amazon’s website is about selling. You want investor relations, look for the teeny print at the bottom of the page.
In fact, B2B marketers can learn a lot from looking at successful B2C sites like Amazon, LL Bean, pick your favorite. The good ones are all about selling. Anything that is extraneous to that effort gets put in its proper place. It’s there, but it is subordinate to the primary job of the website, which is to sell.
So that’s our main requirement for a good B2B website: it focuses on SELLING, not on telling. Easier said than done. Here’s my suggestion on how to do it, and this will work whether you have an existing site or are developing a new one.
- Cut back to the bare minimum number of pages and information until all you have left is a clear product message for your prospect that tells her what you have in the context of her needs and the next step. Less is absolutely more.
- You may have multiple products and multiple audiences. Think carefully about whether you can serve them all from the same website or if you need to break up into sub-sites. Either works, but you do have to pick one model or the other. We’ve all seen sites that try to do a little of each…..
- Take everything else and put it SOMEWHERE ELSE. Do not let all that other stuff (investor relations, support, press section etc.) be more important than the main job of communicating with your sales prospect. Yes, you need to have it, but don’t let it get in the way. You can still have everything on your corporate “kitchen sink” site, but if your website is about developing sales prospects, that stuff should be subordinate to the selling messages. If the primary purpose of your website is to generate sales leads, LET IT DO ITS JOB!
- When someone wants to add something to the website, the first question should always be: how does this information or page add to the basic sales message? If it contributes to the prospect’s understanding of the offering, and how it can help him, by all means, add it. If you are adding it for any other reason, think long and hard about going down that slippery slope. Because there lies website bloat.
Here’s the rest of my list of good website requirements, in no particular order:
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Deliver key information in an RSS feed, especially information that you update frequently;
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Create sub-sites/subsections whenever possible for focused groups, like investors, channel partners, customers, press etc. This is a two-fer: it allows you to shift focus on the subsite to delivering your message in a fashion relevant to their needs and it gets their special needs out of the way of your main selling message. Trust me, investors WILL find the investor section, even if it is in teeny print at the bottom of the page.
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Keep your message simple and direct, and always in the context of the buyer’s problem, not your product. It bears repeating: no one really cares about your product but you. What the prospect cares about is how your product might solve his problem. Stay on that. Benefits in the context of the problem, GOOD. Feature lists, BAD.
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Minimize PDFs and Powerpoints. If you feel you must offer them, fine, but make sure you’ve got the content summarized in the content of the website page as well.
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Capture the voice of your customer. The traditional way is case studies. Yawn. My suggestion: Incorporate a blog. Perhaps written by your product managers or a support rep. Perhaps with client contributions. There are many ways to add a blog, and just about everyone one of them (except a “fake blog”) will add a level of dimension to your site that will encourage prospect and customer engagement.
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Flash, video, film clips, sound files. I’m pretty neutral on them. If they help the prospect understand the offering, go for it. If you don’t know why you are adding it except that it will make your site more “sexy,” don’t bother.
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Remember: someone has to read all this information on your website. Whenever possible, write in a conversational style, avoid jargon and corporate speak. Lighten up! Just because this is serious business, doesn’t mean you have to be dull.
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Make it easy for the prospect to engage, whether it is to buy your product or download a free trial or order a white paper. Don’t put lots of roadblocks in the way. Don’t leave them wondering what the next step is. Offer multiple ways of engagement; if all you offer is “call for more information,” you will rarely get prospects early in the sales cycle. You can have a website form, but make the questions meaningful. And most important of all, FULFILL FAST. My ideal: for a hot lead, the prospect’s phone is ringing before she is even off your website!
Going forward, when I find them, I will post examples of good B2B websites. In the meantime, I recommend the following book on web usability. It is short, sweet and to the point: Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug.