Online Marketing Tips and Tricks

An eBook of ideas brought to you by Extendance

Extendance GmbH
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8610 Uster
Switzerland

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www.extendance.com

Developing a creative marketing program
How to implement an online marketing process
Building online participation
How to write effective e-mail marketing campaigns
Success in corporate blogging
Using RSS for marketing communications
How to write content for your website
Achieving more viral campaigns

Introduction by Ralf Haller, Extendance CEO

Online marketing and PR are on the rise, in some cases even replacing traditional marketing and PR activities. This has a profound impact on the way marketing budgets are spent and will only increase over time. The effects are widely felt as traditional print media loses momentum, but online opportunities are being missed simply because this new medium is not understood in full detail. Trade show attendance, too, is declining, an overall trend and not linked to general economic circumstances.

To help you understand the possibilities of taking marketing online, over the past couple of years we have written about our experiences and ideas in a number of How To stories. As a practical example of e-marketing in action, we have created e-book from a selection of those stories. We have re-worked the content so you can read it easily on your iPhone or any available e-book reader, but of course you can read it in your PC browser as well.

We hope this opens your mind to the idea a bit, and gets you embracing online marketing tools and campaigns in the same way you have mastered your job with offline tools and campaigns.

To make it clear: online or offline tools are not in competition with each other, but what matters at the end of the day is whether it works or not, and of course also what it costs to achieve measurable goals. I am sure you see this the same way, and will be open to the great opportunities they offer even before others in your market segment are.

Ralf

1. Developing a creative marketing program

If you are trying to formulate your online marketing and PR strategy, one of your tasks will be to fit it into your whole creative marketing program. This might be the ideal time to decide a new program, too!

When working out your marketing program, the first step is to write a simple creative strategy. If you do the same for your competitors, you will understand them and be able to avoid imitating them, as well as being able to position yourself. One of the best and simplest guides we know for this is Jay Conrad Levinson's worldwide bestseller Guerrilla Marketing, recently updated and expanded in a new book edition. We will summarize for you here, and of course add our own tips.

Guerrilla Marketing was written for small company owners with very limited budgets. But it actually contains lots of interesting content that applies to medium and even very large-sized corporations in ICT markets. At the very least, it helps you get started quickly so you can then expand on a good foundation, even in the more complex environment of larger companies. Our preference is to keep things simple, though, and for each company division write one focused Marketing Plan that can be managed and executed quickly. Then one combined plan should be put on top to create a coherent high-level one, too.

Now let's look at what's in a Guerrilla Marketing Strategy:

The Seven-Sentence Marketing Strategy
All you need in a plan is to address these seven points:

The purpose of the marketing – what action you want your prospects to take e.g. going to your website, clicking on a banner ad, ordering information, etc.
How you achieve this purpose (your competitive edge)
Your target market(s)
The marketing tools you use
Your niche, your position
Identity of your business
Your budget, as % of gross revenue

Marketing Strategy Example:
The purpose of Nextgen Chipset Inc. (NCI)is to motivate prospects to study our website and engage them into a product demo in their labs. NCI also wants to position itself as the brand and thought leader in this new product market. This will be accomplished by positioning NCI's products as technology leader in low power consumption and smallest size. The target markets are all mobile communication devices that have access to the Internet. The marketing tools that we plan to use include regular news release distributions, technical and business oriented articles in leading industry magazines, presentations at trade shows, free webinars, white papers, customer success stories, online ads for keywords, e-mailings to analysts, press and other influencers, a community website area and blog that includes regular contributions to most relevant topics.

The niche that NCI occupies is that of lowest power consumption and footprint nextgen chipset provider to mobile access terminal vendors.Our values will be those of a highly trustworthy long-term client relationship-seeking technology leader. Ten percent of sales will be allocated to marketing.

Now, even though you have your own strategy, you are of course not yet done. The next steps will be to produce a creative marketing strategy that achieves your goals.

Creativity in 7 steps

Another seven-step program will help you to do so:

Find the inherent drama within your offering. This is basically something that must be inherently interesting to your prospects. In the above example it is lowest power consumption and footprint.
Translate that inherent drama into a meaningful benefit. It's about benefits, not features, as you know. Pick 1-3 max. Smallest and longest-running battery-operated mobile communication devices, in our example.
State your benefits in as believable a way as possible. The difference between being honest and believable is key. If your benefits sound unreal then you need to do everything to make them believable. In our example it could be customer success stories recounted in a podcast confirming the new power-saving and footprint design possibilities that you brought to them.
Get people's attention. Key is to interest people in your products and not simply your ad – something creative art directors often do not manage. In our example it could be writing about concrete application examples and a usage scenario that are possible with their nextgen chipset.
Motivate your audience to get involved. In NIC's case, get them to sign on for a free webinar and check out interesting user notes on your community site. Give experts white papers so they can get all the details.
Be sure you are communicating clearly. You want 100% of the target audience to understand the main point. An excellent tagline, plus interesting and meaningful headings in all your marketing material, could also help NIC here.
Measure your finished marketing tool against your creative strategy. If you fail to achieve your goals then your strategy was poor, regardless of how smart it might have sounded or appeared.

Once you have developed creative marketing tools that fulfil your marketing strategy, these must also be used and distributed in the right way and to the right audience. Even when companies depend on viral marketing – a hard act to achieve – some very good marketing has to be put in, even if it does not appear to be marketing. The offering and appearance must be attractive and usable enough to power word-of-mouth. That also belongs to marketing. Take Google. When they started, they invested tons of money to be the most powerful search engine in the market. They spent again and again on servers to make their search fast and relevant. They eventually started to make money – but only when they also copied the business model for paid clicks in ads next to search results from another company (Overture).

Summary
Following the two seven-step sequences above will enable you to get the right marketing strategy and creative content. If you then manage to bring it in front of your target group, you have done what good marketing is supposed to do. Now if you indeed have the right solution for your customers, success should be possible. It is now just up to your sales and business development efforts!

2. How to implement an online marketing process

Online marketing is becoming ever more important for every ICT company. Traditional marketing, PR and media rules will simply become less relevant in the long term. So there is little choice now but to take the new rules seriously, and make your decision on how to best implement and integrate them with other activities in your company. As this overview will show you, there is no magic involved but, as always, common sense and an understanding of the new paradigm of the online marketing world. And in case you feel you cannot do it on your own, there are many support options available.

First steps
As with any marketing activity, before you begin you must be clear about the overall company strategy. Everything you do here, too, has to be in line with the company values, management goals, sales, product management and, last but not least, your marketing communications CI.

In your first step you should build an online marketing campaign strategy that defines the goals in line with these other company functions. Lots of analysis will be required, and the more know-how you or your online marketing partner has about your company's products, your markets and your competitors, the better and faster this step can be done. Key in this first phase is a definition of buyer personae. There are many such possible personae. One, for example, could be enterprise software supplier CFOs looking for cost savings. Another might be their CIOs, whose jobs require them both to implement an efficient IT process and if possible create a positive ROI, and at the same time manage to deliver IT services and automation that will enable internal and external IT customers to compete in the market against other organizations. They must also be sure to use appropriate technologies that serve these goals. There are probably many more buyer personae for such an enterprise software company. Each of them needs to be defined so that, in the next phase, appropriate content can be developed.

Implementation
Following this planning phase, the second phase is implementation, i.e. to produce and deliver the content. First up, you need to create content that interests your audience and addresses each buyer persona. Then you need to make sure you select the appropriate online targets. That means having a comprehensive list of online portals, blogs, media, along with any influencers in your industry who have an online presence such as a website. Content should be distributed, comments posted, links shared, etc. with these targets. To publish your own content, select the most appropriate online tools such as your own blog site, podcasts, secured website areas, public website areas, enewsletters, press releases, videos, white papers, interactive tools such as ROI calculators, or even more elaborate tools such as interactive games or product demos: Whatever you feel could present interesting content in the best possible, and most accessible way. There are more details about selecting and using these tools later in this ebook.

To ensure maximum visibility, you need to use adwords, and the selection of keywords goes hand in hand with search engine optimization. If this is not something that you feel you want to do, it can be outsourced to experts. Optimizing your images, and promoting Facebook, LinkedIn or other social media profiles of key people in your organization will also increase search engine visibility. A further tip is to make sure any traffic directed to your website goes to a landing page rather than simply to your home page, so that your prospects engage directly with targeted content designed to convert. Step three includes monitoring, analyzing and reporting, using a range of available software tools to measure success in terms of revenue, traffic, and user account opt-in list (size and quality). The latter will quite possibly require subjective measurements, as the definition of quality leads is often still not that easy to automate.

Managing the process
You need to gather feedback by every possible means from each buyer persona in key account customers to find out how your online marketing is perceived, and of course you also need to consult other organizations in the company and gather feedback. Then apply plenty of openness and willingness to constantly optimize your content, tools etc., and feed things back into the campaign strategy if needed, so that the control loop is closed as shown in the diagram.

To manage the whole process, you need some idea at the outset of the time required for each step. You will spend most of your time on creating good content and distributing it to the best online targets. Obviously, this will be most intensive at the start, but again there must be a large continuous element, with major reviews and redesigns planned at regular intervals. For practical reasons, perhaps 20-30 mins per day should be dedicated to work such as search engine optimization, reporting and analysis tools. Data can be collected more comprehensively every month or so.

Lastly, to ensure that all activities are fully integrated with other company departments, you will need lots of joint meetings, especially at the beginning.

3. Building online participation

At Extendance, we think that participation marketing already offers great value for money, and is an effective way to position many companies for their future markets.The internet's effects on marketing and PR are still way off being fully realized. Search, RSS readers and aggregation services, tags and keywords are already important in news distribution, particularly in IT, where the workforce is internet- and PC-savvy and has a huge appetite for new information. As interactive media, video, and smartphone apps all begin to make an impact even in business circles, now is an important time to position your company.

Online news has changed
New ideas, software and collaborative partnerships mean there is more and more news in ICT. To stay up-to-date, companies must trawl through articles by expert journalists, tech blogs, maybe discussion forums and perhaps microblogging services and social networking sites. Active news-gathering tools such as RSS feeds, news aggregation services and tagged searches are obviously essential – and they are having a big effect on PR. Trade journals and standard news releases do not do a great job of getting into this information stream. Participation does, though, so it is now something of a mantra in online PR.

How to participate
Participation isn't just a buzzword, nor is it a particular set of technologies or tools. It's more an attitude or a way of doing things. PR should aim to engage the end-customer directly, delivering content when it is wanted rather than when you want to announce it. To know when and how to do this requires interactivity – or an infallible instinct, and not many of us have that.

Opening up your company
To get people interacting with you, you have to offer yourself as an approachable source of good information. For one thing, that means producing good content in a friendly form – free online articles and ebooks are good examples. A further step is to encourage your audience to take some action that starts the ball rolling. Opt-in lists for information, followed by email campaigns are now standard practice, although not all companies do them in a really well co-ordinated way. Having content that invites interaction, e.g. a blog, forum or wiki, is a step up from this because there is much more user participation. A middle course is not actually "rolling your own", but monitoring what is happening elsewhere and sending comments or starting relationships via email. These activities are, of course, partly disseminating content, and partly finding out what interests people. The co-ordination is what makes it powerful, and why it will become standard practice in PR and marketing.

Online conversations do's and don'ts
Thought leadership is the aim, but it requires both commitment and restraint. Your input is valued when you offer valuable information. The minute that marketing messages are included, the conversation is over. Solid information to key journalists, helpful comments on blogs and articles, and links to relevant content turn your company into an asset that people will consult and mention to others. The timeline and ethos are also different to conventional PR and marketing, requiring patience and the ability to let others lead sometimes.

Modifying the news release
Standard news releases create episodic news, which ideally then gets taken up and commented on. The social media news release is a much more shareable vehicle, whose aim is more viral. Breaking down information blocks into clip-friendly chunks, embedding multimedia content and linking to other material, it creates more opportunities for sharing and interaction.Still compatible with conventional distribution channels, it also suits direct sending to targets, and should embed or link to all of your social media marketing activities in some way.

Which conversations, what message, which tools?
The simple answer is to put enough resources into finding out, and to experiment a little. Lots of companies will be focusing on the main online portals, forums and well-known blogs, and have alerts for items that mention their names and those of competitors. So not only is the competition in these channels quite fierce, but there is often a kind of "goldfish bowl" effect, where reality is distorted because most people want to be "on-message". Careful blog, forum and social media searches can reveal a lot more interesting activity elsewhere, providing alternative views of your market and creating opportunities to join some very interesting exchanges and develop more genuine relationships.

What you might discover if you look very thoroughly, and you're really lucky, is that nobody is yet answering the important questions, or even finding out what your customers' biggest concerns are. If that is the case, your company's blog, forum or wiki could be just what is needed to fill the gap.

4. How to write effective e-mail marketing campaigns

E-mailing has become the number one business communication tool in high-tech, even taking into account phone calls using VoIP. Though chatting may be widely used in technical support-type scenarios, or as a convenient tool for close business colleagues located at different places, e-mailing is a particularly good tool and certainly the least expensive one for distributing online ads, free online offers such as newsletters, and short, regular, expert advice.

You can see the model we follow in the diagram below. A range of both online and offline marketing activities advertise a free offering, such as a newsletter, or an expert advice series, such as our own How To article series.

These attractive offerings serve the purpose of establishing an opt-in e-mail list to whose subscribers you can then send information and market products or services. If your intention is to sell a product, then you should have a series of e-mails providing free content (say 2-3) before you send the e-mail containing the product or service offering. Here, a free 30-day trial (you really charge them for it only after 30 days) works best.

In most cases in high-tech, we dont actually want to sell anything (in B2B practically never), but want to establish a loyal readership that includes existing customers, prospective customers, colleagues in complementary companies, journalists and even competitors (e.g. to attract employees from them).

Effective e-mail content
The e-mail should be short, as experience shows that people do not read very long copy. You should also provide a link to a landing page containing organized, lengthier content, or an order/subscribe page. It is best to start the text with an attention-gathering opening sentence that contains something your target group will instantly recognize as a key benefit. Your SUBJECT line in the header should also attract attention, and you should always fill in the FROM line.

Use your first paragraph to bring across the key message in a simple way and to give a link to your landing page or subscriber page. The tone of your text should be informative and educational, but not hard-sell.

Etiquette requires that you have an unsubscribe link included that makes it very easy to get off your e-mail distribution list.

How to pass ISPs and spam filters
Assuming you are NOT a spammer, but somebody who has a valuable product/service to offer and wants to let a well-selected target group know about it, you want to get your e-mail delivered into inboxes. Here are some of the things you need to consider:

Create a reverse DNS. Your outgoing IPs need to have valid reverse domain name system entries set up. This ensures that you come up when the receiving ISP checks who owns the IP where the message is coming from. This needs to be entered anew when you use someone elses e-mail distribution tools or services.
Set up an SPF. A sender policy framework is another step to verify an e-mail sender's identity. It also protects you from phishing attacks against yourself.
Validate HTML content. Make sure that HTML content is 100% error free. This can be checked with a w3.org HTML code evaluator tool, which can be found on their web site http://validator.w3.org/.
Avoid scripting. Many e-mail systems filter out e-mails that contain scripts. It is therefore better to use simple text with no scripts, and a landing page if you intend, for example, to measure statistics of who clicked onto what content. Statistics are the main reason why scripts are included in e-mails.

E-mail newsletters and other free content
The newsletters with the highest open, read and click-through rates are the ones that offer short how-to tips with high practical value. The best results can be achieved if news and practical tips are combined. Experience shows that if you can relate your tips to current events or news, this can double your readership.

Our own experience
We have seen very high response rates when e-mails were combined with mailings that included a personal component such as business cards, for example. In one case we were able to achieve a 10% response rate (of which 80% were positive). This was with a small (about 200-strong) group of prospects, suggesting a meeting at a trade show to introduce products/services. To achieve that extremely high response rate figure we had to repeatedly fine-tune the text of the e-mails and letters. The one-page letter was written with the same content, but just a little bit more detail about the offering.

5. Success in corporate blogging

As you no are doubtless aware, blogs are now a standard way to obtain quick news and opinions just minutes after they become public. In today's fast-paced, global high-tech markets they are now one of the strongest information sources.

Blogging in Europe
In Europe, however, the blogosphere is relatively small still, with some countries embracing it a lot while others pretty much ignore it. The key difference is that the blogs in certain regions are very personal in nature, as opposed to being very business-focused, said Steve Rubel, senior vice-president at Edelmans me2-revolution Group. That the US is leading is no surprise as the IT industry is so strong there. You might be surprised to learn that the Japanese like blogging, too.

Viability of corporate blogging
Public blogs have now pretty much caught up with mainstream media. But are they really a useful tool for corporations and if so, how?

In November 2005, when we started our own blog site at Extendance, we had already gained some experience with our own private blogs and knew what attracted people. The Extendance blog was at first an experiment and a trial to see if we would get more readers, and in particular more returning readers with the blog compared to our former marketing communications activities, primarily a quarterly newsletter/online magazine that was writing 5-7 longer articles on specific technology market and sales/marketing topics and trends.

By late 2006, the answer was clear. The blogs beat the quarterly newsletter by a distance. While our own experience could not be simply extrapolated to other companies, it was clear to us why every tech company needed to take online media seriously.

What does it bring?

The FT reported in 2006: Blogs are attracting increasing interest from marketers who want to take advantage of their viral nature and grassroots appeal. However, they can also be a public relations nightmare: Dell, for example, is widely believed to have suffered a greater fallout from its battery recall because of widespread criticism from high-profile bloggers... They're aware of it from a crisis management point of view, but few are aware of the benefits.

Those key benefits of corporate blogging are actually pretty clear:

Internal blogs encourage people to articulate their ideas and opinions and thus motivate them more, especially in large companies where they can feel part of an otherwise impersonal organization.
Blogging by the CEO or VP Marketing (Boeing) has proved to be a great way to shape the opinion of the company and react quickly to events and news.
It builds credibility and projected self-confidence
Supports activities such as: hiring of good employees, product launches, public/media relations
Taps into an early adopter network to collect competitive intelligence information

How to start a business blog
The steps that need to be undertaken are as follows:

Find GOOD blog content providers
Set up blog site
Define review and editing process
Monitor the blog site and fine tune the content

The design and set up is pretty straightforward, since excellent software tools are available that help to do it fast. It is a bit harder to find people who can create good, consistently interesting content. If you have a good professional blogger that can take content from your own people and transform it into excellent blog posts then this could be a good solution. Best could be a combination of such external support and your own people's content. To edit the posts is highly advisable, since at the end it should still come across as a professional piece of work and, since it is public, could be quoted at other places (as well as a few legal implications). Monitor the success of your blog posts and see how you can get your readership up, both new visitors as well as the number of returning ones. Standard website statistics tools will do that job well.

Blogging in numbers (Technorati 2007):
Total blogs: 63 million (est.)
Total active blogs: 15.5 million
New entries per day: 1.5 million

6. Using RSS for marketing communications

RSS is a method used by everyone from news wires such as the AP and Reuters to bloggers and podcasters to inform subscribers that new information is available. RSS readers and converters allow RSS feeds to be presented to the readers in the form they desire and allow them to read the contents when and how they please. However, RSS is more than just a way of getting the news out.

What is so special about RSS?

RSS has become the standard method of content delivery for internet-based media distributors. RSS has swept the field because of its ability to meet the needs of all sections of the news and media, from creators through distributors to consumers, no matter whether the content is international news, corporate communications or just plain fun, such as a teenager sending jokes to his friends. There is undoubtedly RSS-related hype, and no doubt RSS will fail to deliver some of the more outrageous predictions, but RSS feeds are popular because they meet a need.

RSS works because it helps all parts of the chain. Content producers are able to inform interested people about their latest products in a simple and automatic fashion. Distributors love it because it makes it easy for them to merge news from multiple sources, and consumers also appreciate it because they can choose when and how to read the information.

RSS for marketing
For marketing communications, RSS can be a great way to interest new prospects and inform existing customers of potential new products or services that they may be interested in. Compared to mass-mailers or email campaigns, RSS efforts are more effective because as well as enabling firms to track who clicks on what, they make it easy for uninterested prospects to remove themselves. Although this might sound a bad idea at first (as marketers, don't we want everyone to read our stuff?), a little thought shows that it is a benefit. Forcing people to read, or to discard unread, information that they do not want is an excellent way to ensure that the sender is perceived as some sort of spammer. Having such a reputation will severely impact future sales activities.

The key is that RSS allows for different target groups to receive precisely the information most suited to them. However, in order for that to happen, multiple marketing communications feeds need to be created, and content placed only in the feeds that serve the relevant audience.

Existing Customers
One way to gain a reputation for proactive customer support is to create an RSS feed of patches, updates and possibly, depending on the product, bugs or current security vulnerabilities. Such RSS feeds (and for a company with multiple product lines, multiple feeds are recommended) are not a marketing tool directly because they should be created and managed primarily by post-sales support teams. Nevertheless, it is also entirely reasonable to add relevant announcements of new products or events to the feed, and it is comparatively simple to track who follows the "Read more" link.

It is well known that selling additional products to an existing customer is easier than selling to an entirely new one, and customer support RSS feeds are a great way to maintain the relationship. The feeds provide the customer with relevant information and they provide it in a non-pushy manner – a great way to build loyalty.

New Prospects
As with existing customers, segregation is the key. By having a variety of feeds, it is possible to provide prospects with the information they are interested in without flooding them with information that they don't want. Clearly, one way to create different feeds is to have feeds per product line, but other alternatives are possible.

Feeds dedicated to particular verticals or market segments are likely to be very useful. For example, even though bankers, military personnel and telecom operators have things of interest in common, they also frequently have specialized interests and are likely to find stories slanted towards other customer groups uninteresting. Another way to partition prospects is by position or job title. Technical people, such as engineers, engineering managers or product managers are unlikely to be fascinated by financial arguments, while financial and purchasing managers are going to find technical application notes hard going.

The Full Story or Extracts?
A further way that RSS feeds differ is in how much of the story they include. Feeds that are intended to be picked up by aggregation services and other distributors should probably be short summaries that encourage a click through.

On the other hand, feeds designed to appeal to a dedicated audience may be better offered in full. The most important thing, though, is to make it as convenient as possible for the readers to choose which format they prefer and then allow them to switch easily between the two. If the RSS feed is of a blog, most blogging software will be able to generate both sorts of feed. For other types of content generation, one or other method may be manual. However, it is a good idea to offer both.

RSS Versions
As with the full/extract argument the best answer is to create a variety of versions although ATOM and RSS 2.0 seem to be the most common varieties.

Final Notes
Since many programs generate RSS feeds automatically, it is worth spreading them around liberally on a website using the standard logo: make it obvious what the feed subject is, and try to make clear such details as how often it will be updated, and so on.

Just a note of caution: While submission of feeds to aggregation services is a great way to build visibility, too many similar feeds may make the aggregator suspect a spammer. Services such as Feedblitz are a great way to turn RSS feeds into automatic email lists with easy unsubscribe options. And finally, tagging or labelling entries with relevant keywords helps aggregators a lot, and drives traffic.

7. How to write content for your website

The vast majority of companies' websites are written by employees or owners who don't quite get the difference between writing for websites and writing for print. The result is that much of the web still reflects the PC's heritage as a business machine, producing the kind of continuous text previously written on typewriters for reading in newspapers and books. The computer is also a successor to the TV, though. Web users don't simply read – they spend a lot of time scanning, clicking, looking at pictures and picking out snippets. Successful web copy notices this behavior, and helps it.

Writing for active users
A simple rule governs the success of web copy: Think of the prospect as an active, and very busy, user rather than a reader. Anything other than short, clear sentences, and the attention will wander to another task. Or another site.

Six points for winning web copy

The first two paragraphs are read most intensively and most often. The main points of the text must be in them. The first paragraph, in particular, should be short. The inverted pyramid style is a tried and tested method, i.e. start the text with the point you want to lead up to in the conclusion.
News style works. Readers like authenticity. A neutral writing style, together with external links, give readers confidence in you. Exaggeration, buzzwords and cliches, on the other hand, will make the reader continually question your credibility. A rule of thumb is to ask if the language might impress the writer more than the reader. If so, they will navigate elsewhere, just like you or I would.
When users return to a page they should be able to recognize it. A useful analogy is a tour guide, making the reader feel at home in an unfamiliar environment, highlighting landmarks and being memorable.
A screen is not as easy to read or manipulate as a piece of paper. Longer texts need to be chunked and made easy to navigate. The text shouldn't run to the edge of the page, but in the centre, preferably in a single column. Most of the text should lie above the fold (i.e. no need to scroll) in 800 x 600 format. If it does not, it may be better to split it up or make it into a feature article (see below).
Features to help scanning: usability studies show that readers scan more and read less than they do with printed copy. Headings should be obvious rather than clever: they function as signposts and should be crystal clear. Other tips to aid scanning are to use bullet point lists and to highlight key words and phrases.
Layout that ensures the text will be read: Eyetracking studies reveal that readers typically scan down the left edge of the text and then read across occasionally when they see something interesting. All the key words should fit into their scanning pattern.

To run your own usability check, mask off everything except:

bold type
subheadings
first lines of text blocks
the first two words on the left of each line

Can you still get the key points?

Including documents
Many users will want to read articles for in-depth content, but this must be an elective, not an interruptive, experience. So, if the content is an integral part of your site, it should not be in a pdf. Articles are a useful source of sought-for information, and enhance your credibility at the same time. Give a brief introduction in your linking page to make the most of what you're providing.

What good content can do for you
Many businesses outsource design but see content as their role, while some web design companies see copy mostly as filler. In reality, content is the heart of a website, and needs to have the first priority. Everything else is packaging: important, but not critical unless it is off-putting, amateurish or makes the site difficult to use.

How to find a copywriter
A professional web copywriter is not a print copywriter, even less a translator. Web experience is key. Ask to see samples of previous work and test for layout (as above) and impact. Having your copy proofed and rewritten by a professional editor should make your text readable and correct, but you may lose the impact that a copywriter can offer. You should also not underestimate the impact of grammar and typographical errors on your site, so get your copy checked again and again before going live!

8. Achieving more viral campaigns

In an ideal world, other people would do your marketing for free – effectively what happens when satisfied customers recommend you. Similarly, people can market you online, on a massive scale, through viral marketing. But while word of mouth is generally well understood, viral marketing is not. We'd like to correct a few misunderstandings, and give you some tips at the same time.

Common myths about viral marketing

Myth 1: It's for consumer campaigns
Reality: Of course, content that begs to be shared can build numbers fast. But a viral campaign only requires, on average, everyone that receives content to share it with at least one other person. Sharing can be fast or slow, so long as it follows the viral dynamic (see picture below). In fact, B2B businesses can benefit equally from wildfire and show-burning campaigns.

Myth 2: Viral marketing is new
Reality: In fact, Jeffrey F. Rayport coined the term Viral Marketing in 1996 in an article for Fast Company its first popular use was to describe Hotmail's practice of using a recruiting message as an email footer. Probably the most successful example ever, though, is Google, whose rise to fame depended more on word of mouth recommendation than any above-the-line marketing tactic.

Myth 3: You have to create videos and competitions
Reality: Yes, there are YouTube clips whose audience figures number millions within weeks; likewise, competitions can rapidly accelerate. But in fact, almost anything an offer, a blog entry, an article can be viral. It just has to be useful and shareable.

Myth 4: You can plan the perfect viral campaign
Reality: Yes, you can and must plan. But as other people are doing your marketing on their own initiative, growth is hard to predict. Particularly because what catches the imagination is often something completely new and, as such, untested. The following checklist will help you increase your chances of meeting your business needs through a viral campaign. But, just because it could be big, don't make it the main element of your campaign strategy.

A viral marketing checklist

1. Offer something useful, shareable and free
This is where entertainment content is great. Having fun with clients and friends is hard to beat. This is perfect for a short campaign to get the name into circulation. And can make your point. For example, a series of mini-articles or presentations about ingenious confidence tricks could be entertaining, and might be good for an internet security company. But aside from entertainment there are lots of ways to create a slow-burning campaign. David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR, is a big fan of eBooks, for example, and they certainly work for him.

2. Make it very easy to share or transmit in every possible way (including word of mouth).

Use microblogs, e.g. Twitter
Add your URL / contact details to everything
Link to a landing page offering similar content
Put a "share this" button on every article or clip
Add widgets and subscription tools (such as Feedburner) to your blog
Link your blog address to comments on other blogs (but don't comment just to publicize your URL!)
E-mail distribution platforms can keep tabs on every promotional email and the responses it gets
Don't just expect people to tell their friends or colleagues – ask them to do it
Make website features easy to mashup using Flash or Ajax

3. Don't use your own resources to spread it
If the first steps are right, things should look after themselves. But make sure your web resources and staff time are given only to business aims, not irrelevant emails. If a campaign takes on a life of its own, consider starting a forum or wiki to cater for its followers.

4. Make sure it fits your business aims
Traffic shouldn't be your main metric unless you live on web advertising revenue. It costs you money, ties up resources, and distracts from your business goals. The aim from the start must be conversion.

5. Build viewing figures without breaking the rules
The term blowback was coined by the CIA to describe unintended consequences of covert operations: one example is how the Taleban came to dominate Afghanistan after previously receiving US support to fight the USSR's occupying forces. Likewise, some marketing and PR operations do more harm than good, though perhaps less dramatically. A now infamous post on TechCrunch revealed some black hat techniques viral PR agencies use, including:

Faking conversations on forums
Paying bloggers to post embedded videos
Leaving bogus comments
Putting sexy titles and pics in the thumbnails

In the context of a fast retail campaign, this may be considered fair enough (there were positive as well as negative responses to the post), but B2B businesses need to demonstrate trustworthiness. However, other promotional techniques mentioned in the same post are useful and safe:

Post a number of related videos at the same time, so viewers can watch them all
Distribute links to an email list
Build up a presence on social networking sites
Word of mouth to every social or business contact

15-second summary
Offer something entertaining or practical. Use blogs, articles, videos, ebooks, offers, podcasts, you name it. Be creative so people will share, and help them share it. Plan for the outcome so that campaign success means business success.

Resources
Guerilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson, Mariner Books, 2007.
The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott, Wiley, 2008.
Prioritizing Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen and Hoa Loranger, New Riders Press, 2006.