I’ve just ‘liked’ “Vick’s Road to Relief” on Facebook.  There was an incentive –  if I clicked ‘like’ they would immunise one Laotian child against pneumonia. Therein lies my problem, and the subject of this post.

For a whole bunch of reasons – health, ethical and others – I don’t normally buy Vicks or Proctor & Gamble products.  So I don’t ‘like’ the brand at all, actually.  But it’s important to me to help 3rd world children.  So I clicked ‘like’ – and now, to my network, I’m seen to be endorsing these products, that I don’t normally buy, and this incentive, which I don’t like at all.

Is this a cynical ploy by Proctor and Gamble to get more Facebook likers at whatever cost, or will it really resonate with their target market (which clearly isn’t me!)?

Offering incentives to get more likers on Facebook is not new and can be a good strategy – recently B105 offered a chance for their listeners to win free tickets to a concert by liking their Facebook page.  But offering an immunisation to save a child’s life as an incentive to engage with a brand?  At best tacky and at worst tending to 1st world exploitation, in my opinion.  If Proctor and Gamble were so concerned about the number of deaths from pneumonia why didn’t they just make a philanthropic donation and add it to their press releases?  Why use something like this as a bid to increase visibility on Facebook?

On the Vicks Facebook page there is a slogan –  ’1 like = 1 life’, posed photos of children in Laos being immunised, and branded wall posts.  It’s all a bit slick and packaged, to my mind, and smacks too much of 1st world marketeers.  Contrast this with the B105 offer – which suited the target audience, added to the radio conversation because it was all run on air, and no-one was exploited.

Will the Vicks brand beneft from this?  To a degree, probably – in terms of more exposure and the chance to get their posts in front of a new and larger network.

But offering incentives to like a brand on Facebook needs some consideration.  If you simply want to get more likers, then standard incentives, without much thought, can probably achieve this.  But if you want those likers to engage with your brand – like your future posts, share links, post photos, make comments, endorse your brand to their networks, reinforce community norms – all those great things that an engaged Facebook audience can do – then, in my opinion, the offer should be aimed at getting potential advocates to invest in your brand in future.  ’Liking’ a page on Facebook requires nothing of me – one click and that’s all the involvement I’ll ever have with the company unless I choose more. Achieving real engagement requires much more commitment than pressing a button.  Elements such as an offer that is targeted to the market profile you’re aiming for, a series of activities to foster conversations and interaction, a tone and style that encourages people,  a long-term view, - in fact, all the things you would normally do to make friends with people –  will help, but not guarantee engagement.

I think Proctor & Gamble risk being seen as cynical exploiters of the 3rd world by me, and others, rather than the positive brand values they’re trying to portray.  Also, though there are a few ‘engaged’ comments on the Facebook page, I think that many new likers from this incentive are unlikely to have or develop much affinity with the Vicks brand.  I think they’re more likely to be like me – seeing an opportunity to  help someone out as a one-off at the expense of a rich multinational.  I note that they’re now asking clever questions on posts such as “click ‘like’ if you’re having a day off this long weekend” – guaranteed to get likes and comments – but in my opinion, this isn’t true engagement.  Nothing much is required in terms of thought or brand endorsement.

The pragmatist in me says – at least one child will benefit.  The humanist says – it’s appalling that this is all I have to do to save a child’s life and that the 1st world has made it such a commodity.

The potential and power of social media in saving lives in this case is clear – but it makes me uncomfortable and I’m not sure if it will really benefit the brand in the long run.  Or maybe I’m just not their demographic.  What do you think?

Firstly, when you type the standard URL www.qantas.com.au the site automatically detects that you are on a mobile device and redirects you to the mobile site.  There’s still a link option to go to the full site if you want to.

Secondly the navigation is a simple clear list, and presents you with only the options you might need if you’re in a hurry and out and about - Check-in, Flight Status, View your Booking, Frequent Flyer, Lounges, Timetables and Contact Us.  Not only have they limited the options but the order down the page is in order of user need, pretty much, or at least where you’d expect to find them.

Thirdly – this is probably the most important one – they’ve included as content only what a mobile traveller might need.  There’s no holiday information, for example, or destination information.  There’s no sale fares or specials.  Thinking about who the site is for – business travellers on the go with limited time,  who just want to get to the meeting or home with a minimum of fuss, and who are not all that concerned about pricing – Qantas have thought through where the travellers are, what they’re likely to be doing and why they would be using a mobile site instead of the full site.  Checking in quickly, for example.  Finding out if your flight is on time when you’re stuck in traffic. Changing a flight when a meeting has run over time.  Or locating the Qantas club lounge at a new airport, for a frequent traveller.

It’s important for you to be thinking about a mobile version of your site – the rapid growth in mobile capability and uptake means it’s only a matter of time before your customers try to access your site on a smartphone, tablet or other device.

Virgin Mobile, which sells mobile phones, has not done this well.  When their URL is typed into a smartphone, their full site appears.  If it were me, I would look at the most common functions (their Analytics will tell them what these are) and decide which of these would work on a mobile enabled site.  Log-in and account payments, for example.

What makes a good mobile site?  There’s no need to put your whole site up there.  Consider, as Qantas has done, which market sector is most likely to benefits from a mobile enabled site (in this case, domestic business travellers).  Who is most likely to need your site in a hurry?  Where will they be?  What will they most likely be doing?  What information can you present in such a small screen size, and how will you design it so it’s intuitive and easy to navigate and read?

Ask yourself: where are my customers and what are they doing when they’re out and about? For example, if you work in travel, your users could be checking in, finding destination information or eating out tips, lodging a complaint or needing a quick translation. They could be in a hotel, at a bus or train station or in transit somewhere. Alternatively, if you decide you don’t need to enable the site for your customers, what about your intranet or extranet?  For example, your sales people or consultants might need to update client records on the go, or access critical information in the middle of a meeting with a client.

Asking critical strategic user-focussed questions like these before you start to build will make your site a lot more accessible and successful.

Your site Analytics should tell you what proportion of your audience is trying to access your site from a mobile device.  What will they see when they do?

If you’re looking for huge reach at minimal cost, to help you get new people through the door quickly, it’s worth considering. Just a few words before you get started -

See if you can cap the deal. A couple of business owners I’ve seen have had some trouble with redemption when the deal sold beyond their wildest expectations – and they either couldn’t fit everyone in before the deal expired, or it cost them too much in staff wages and stock to redeem when they could have been filling the restaurant with paying customers. Be prepared for massive uptake – and do the figures on service and stock costs to check how many discounts you can afford!

I looked at a flight simulator deal that was a massive 75% off – would have been fantastic for hubby’s birthday.  I almost bought it but got distracted (no, really). When I returned later in the day, the deal had sold in the hundreds. Simple maths and reading the fine print told me that they were not going to be able to redeem all those 2-hour sessions before the expiry date.  End result – unhappy customers and damage to the brand.

It makes sense that group buyers are price sensitive – group buying is all about price. Many reports show that buyers do not spend much beyond the original deal price. So don’t expect these customers to pay for themselves in the first visit. But what you do have is a great opportunity for repeat business or upsell. Its an old but good strategy to offer an examination or assessment with your deal (such as dental x-rays with a clean) to get people to return – which is exactly what A Smiling Place did for me. They’re now my dentist – and I would not have discovered them without a group deal. If your business is a cafe, its a bit harder and you might be relying on the upsell in the first visit to make back your discount – but perhaps you could also collect their business card or email address, and encourage them to find you on Social Media?  Capturing their details for an e-newsletter, or having a ‘follow us’ strategy for Facebook or Twitter is a great opportunity to keep yourself top of mind and draw them back when they’re next ready to buy.

I think where group buying can work well is using the massive reach and opportunity for exposure - but understanding that repeat business and upsell is probably where you will benefit most.  Why not consider your product mix and see if you have an add-ons that could help you redeem some of the discount, and have a long term repeat business strategy in place before you start?

What do you think? Do you have a group buying experience to share?

You may underestimate the time involved in responding to customer’s tweets, posts or complaints, once they discover that you’re on Social Media. There’s now an expectation of immediate service on Social Media channels such as Twitter or Facebook, and it can have a huge reach.  Without the resources to respond quickly, you run the risk of being seen as unresponsive and uncaring, damaging your Brand.

It also takes time to find ‘likers’ and ‘followers’ on Social Media – there’s often a substantial investment in time and effort, website changes, and perhaps advertising to let people know you’re there.  Having a well-planned strategy of posts, specials, competitions, offers, people to follow, and other elements, can mean the difference between a great Social Media presence and one that really doesn’t work.

If you have more than one staff member posting, who use their own writing style (or have delegated it to the 18 year old in the office who uses unintelligible shortcuts), this could detract from your Brand too – and confuse customers.  A short writing guide that defines the tone and feel of your writing to reflect your Brand and ensure a consistent posting style is a great idea, and you can make it part of your plan.

There may be other platforms apart from Facebook and Twitter that will work well for you, and taking some time to explore them and plan to use the best features of each to achieve your goals may work better than following the crowd.  For example, FourSquare is a great platform for businesses that rely on a local or tourist trade – such as a cafe or restaurant.  Twitter is a great platform for broadcasts, but you often have to retweet to keep your information alive – so while its great for drawing attention to blog posts or creating a buzz around special offers, unless you RT, your customers might miss it.  Facebook can handle huge traffic spikes if your website can’t –  Queensland Police used their Facebook Notes page for regular updates during the Queensland floods rather than their website, which was crashing due to traffic.  They also used Youtube for video updates straight from the Commissioner, so that people had clear full information, not rumours, avoiding panic.  Their savvy use of different Social Media platforms meant that vital information kept flowing during the crisis, unlike Translink who relied on their website to disseminate bus and train information and consequently experienced outages and user frustration.

So I’d recommend that you make time to plan – set some goals, define the tone and style, set a weekly or monthly plan for your posts, check out all the major platforms and select then ones that are best for your goals, and make sure you’ve set aside budget and staff time to really make it work.

I’ve blogged before about the role of Twitter in empowering consumers and forcing corporates to respond to unhappy customers.  I’ve even lectured on the topic.  Now I’ve experienced it first hand, and, folks, it’s all true.

Recently in the W/M household: new router + 1 PC and 2 Macs + wireless printer = trouble.  Major frustration experienced by all (me, H, no.1 son, cat) as nothing would load.  Connection speed slowed to 31 kbps (we have cable – not ADSL cable, Cable cable). Driving us insane.  Oops we thought – something wrong here.  Retiring to my corner and maintaining my position as the person who just does the Internet, I sicked H onto Telstra as our access provider (Optus dongle was running very slowly as well, but that’s another story).

So dear patient H tried to fix the problem by phoning them.  I warned him.  2 hours and 3 brushoffs later, I Tweeted what was, for the situation, quite a restrained message - Listening to my poor hubby patiently going through 3rd spiel of the same problem to @Telstra “helpdesk” and getting ‘hold’.#becausetheycan. Within 2 minutes, to my astonishment, Tristo of Telstra replied offering assistance. Politely too. After some backwards and forwardsing (we won’t kvetch about the fact that he invited me to DM him when I couldn’t because he didn’t Follow me)  H was phoned by a very helpful tehnician who tested everything, found it was a cable issue, and arranged for a technician to look at the problem within a week.  Within a day would have been good, but it’s a start, and much better than talking to Manila or Mumbai.

So there you go.  2 hours on the phone or 2 minutes on Twitter.  One question remains though – how are the Twitterati able to get such a quick response when it’s impossible on the phone?

Rob Hudson of GPYR, to whom the question was directed, responded that firstly its important never to underestimate your audience.  For all you know, the segment that is interested in your market might well be using Twitter or other Social Media.  True – according to information available on Mashable, 17% of internet user respondents between 63 and 75 use Twitter regularly – and compared to other groups, 17% is quite high.  Also, 90% of Senior social media users regularly use Facebook – so they’re not averse to Social Media.  (This is 2009 data and given Twitter’s huge growth, its probably more by now.)

Why not put a Twitter button on your website and see if your Senior users click through and follow you?  It’s likely that if they’re interested in you product, they’ll be curious.  Once you have a follower base, try some Tweets with offers that might be of interest and see if they get clicked through or retweeted.

The other point that Rob made, and I agree, is that Twitter is a communications tool, rather than solely a marketing one – so its best used for communicating information in order to build a relationship, rather than being all about offers (unless, of course, like Catch of the Day, that’s what your audience is expecting.)  Once the relationship is established, then you can start to sell.  Anthony Dever of BCM has a great analogy of having coffee with a friend and being interrupted by the Harvey Norman man shouting advertising calls to action at you in the middle of the conversation.  Why not sit down, introduce yourself, establish a mutually beneficial relationship and then introduce your company and its products?

There’s a great checklist on SmartCompany of 55 things to do on Twitter that are not all about sales – check it out for some ideas.

Rob’s other point (he’s very smart;) ) was to suggest that, like Dell, you could use Twitter only as a service channel – for complaints or queries.  Comcast, who I’ve mentioned elsewhere,  does this well.

BTW, If you’re just starting out with SEO, and are in need of Search 101, seomoz has some excellent guides for you.  If you know the basics, or have someone working for you who does, read on!  There’s a long list of potential content that you could optimise on Marketing Jive .  Here’s some suggestions to get you started:

Images

Every website has images – even those with the least visual products!  Make sure each image on your website has an Alt Tag that contains a relevant keyword.  Also, ensure the same words are in the HTML that embeds your image in the page (here’s an example from ourbrisbane.com, where the image alt tag is used to boost rankings for the keywords ‘ABC Gardening Expo’  <img src=”http://www.ourbrisbane.com/files/imagecache/200×200/events/flowers.jpg” alt=”" title=”ABC Gardening Expo “).  Also, captions below images containing keywords will help as well.  Don’t forget your company logo if its an image – great for optimising for your brand name.

Press Releases

Make sure your press releases are optimised with relevant keywords – they’re fresh content and a great way to boost your rankings.  As well as publishing them on your site, why not send them to some of the online PR houses like FastPitch or PRWeb?

Videos

If your product is visual – like Cruises – its easy to post beautiful or exciting footage of your latest destination!  But what if your product is not visually exciting – like car insurance?  If that’s the case, what about a ‘tips’ or ‘how-to’ video from one of your subject experts on something relevant – eg finding a safe car on a budget?  Or if your CEO is a respected business leader, what about an interview with him for the business market?  You can pay a production company to develop the video if you need to, but new products such as the FlipVideo camcorders have made it very easy to film and publish high quality short takes on a small budget.

Blogs

As well as being very easy to set up, one great advantage of a blog over a website is that it will be seen immediately by Google (provided you’ve been blogging for a while and have a reasonable amount of content) – which is fresh content.  Also, because blogs are usually about one subject, you can optimise them with many relevant keywords to boost your rankings.  Plus, user comments, and links from other blogs to yours or within your blog, will also help to get you on page 1 of Google. So get bloggin’   Don’t be daunted by having to write a long post every time – a paragraph is sometimes enough.

Powerpoint Presentations

If you have a great Powerpoint presentation – eg your company showreel – or PDf docuemnts that might be interesting to your market, its easy to publish them using SlideShare.

Maps and Directories

If your company has a shopfront, such as a hotel or cafe, embedding Google Maps in your website can be a great idea – not only can you be found easily, but if you list your business in the accompanying Directory, you’ll get higher rankings.  Why not try a Google search for your type of business and see how many maps and listings come up?

Internet Marketing Today by Dr Ralph Wilson (wilsonweb).  I love Dr Ralph – he’s like a comfortable old armchair!  Full of down home comfort and reassurance, but with up to date and sharp insights and how-tos for all things digital – marketing, social media, websites – everything.  He’s been around for more than 10 years and still going strong.  Very good for small business, owner-operators and people running their own sites.

The SEO Web Developers Cheat Sheet from seomoz is great for getting started in SEO – gives you the top things to look for in your site and lots of helpful advice.  The site itself has a lot of great information as well.

For Social Media, I’d suggest Shift Communications – great insights and how-to’s for innovative online PR strategies.  In particular their PR 2.0 Reference guide will tell you everything you need to know about RSS Feeds, Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Linked in et al

Marketing Sherpa is another great one for masses of information on Digital Marketing.

@Mashable, @Copyblogger and @Webcredible are some Tweeters I follow who always have great insights and up-to-date information.

If you’re looking for digital copywriting advice, I’d suggest Nick Usborne who’s been writing copy and coaching online copywriters for years – great insights and lots of experience.

These are just some of my favourites – what do you think?

The signup button on the Deals Direct newsletter says  ‘Sign Up’ – as you’d expect.

The membership account creation button on ourbrisbane.com says ‘Create my Account.’

The button on the Virgin Blue booking engine says ‘Find Flights’ (it used to say ‘Get a Quote’ until someone pointed out they were not actually selling insurance) .  Jetstar simply says ‘Go’ – ok as the context is clear.  I prefer Virgin Blue’s though which leaves no room for doubt -  never assume users will get it because sometimes they don’t.

The Australian Navy’s Ocean Recon site says ‘Initiate’ to start the Flash file.  Noice.  This button isn’t a critical call to action but rather launches a cool microsite aimed at their target market of young male online gamers – so a little brand-related smarts works well.

All these sound like absolutely obvious points and you’re probably wondering why I think its worth a post.  Well try these:

‘Go Now!’  (For the last step in a grocery purchase form).  Where was I going?  I thought I was buying something!

The final button on Amazon UK says ‘place your order’  so its a bit of a surprise to find out I’ve actually bought something.  I thought I was ordering something and had yet to pay,  as the credit card entry information is in the context of checking information, not purchasing.

The button on BloomTools Contact Us (generating potential sales leads) site says ‘Test Drive’.  Cute, but we’re building a website, not taking Formula One.

Cruisepilot’s home page is mostly OK – ‘Search’ for search, ‘Signup’ for their Specials signup – but then ‘Readmore’ to find out more on the What’s New section.  “Readmore’ isn’t a word and while most users will probably understand the function of the button, the lack of grammar detracts from the brand overall.

realestate.com.au does it really well – they have ‘Search’ for search, ‘Calculate’ for calculators and ‘Get Started’ to get started.  Simple.

Here’s a before and after example by the Usability Institute which illustrates the issue a bit more.

Keep your text for critical calls to action buttons simple; tell your users clearly what the next step is, don’t distract them with “clever” wording (save it for other less critical parts of the site)  and you’ll be surprised how your sales and fulfilment improves.

Types of fonts

What are the best fonts for maximum readability?  You might automatically choose your brand font, but if its not easy to read online, this will be a problem. Most experts agree that sans serif fonts, such as Arial, Verdana or Trebuchet are preferred for body text, while serif fonts such as Times New Roman and Courier New are less preferred.  Here’s an example of some serif and sans serif fonts.  If your brand is a serif font, use it in large headings and graphics, and use a sans serif font for the body text and key calls to action. (For example, in this blog template, I have a serif font for the heading and blog title, and sans serif for the text – the important stuff )  02 Hair is an example where Times New Roman is used for the body text – for me,  it’s hard to read.  By contrast, ABC Radio National site uses all sans serif fonts – do you find it more readable?  (Paragraph and line spacing also helps readability here).

A new font which has been developed specifically for online readability is FSMe – you can view FSMe on the mencap site.

Font sizes and other considerations

According to About.com, depending on your audience age, you might need to either choose a large font, or make it resizeable.  Most websites today are set at 8 or 10 point font for body text – it looks neat, but for some age groups such as over 45′s or children its quite difficult to read.  If your web design team use 8 point font, ask them to code the site so that users can increase the font size without breaking the site layout.  Webcredible suggest using relative measures (such as ems) rather than absolute measures (such as pixels)  to achieve this.

Jakob Nielsen proves that most users even today are still not aware that they can change font sizes.  Webcredible suggest making a visible font resize button on your site – you can view an example of this on their site.  Neilsen also recommends using no more than 2 fonts in total – I’m inclined to agree.  It’s very easy to make your page look cluttered and unprofessional with multiple fonts.

Also, it’s wise to avoid using italics if you can – they’re also hard to read online.