Kali Digital Strategy Blog

Data driven digital strategy: You can’t manage what you don’t measure

August 2, 2012 – 3:48 pm

Often times a company or an organization will get a website going, as a virtual shingle or online brochure, even before much of an organization is in place. This makes sense because a website is a must-have as you’re building something new. In fact, at this stage, there’s usually not much of a digital strategy in place, but I do give this one piece of advice: Get some kind of analytics tool installed on your Web site as soon as you launch. I like Google Analytics, it’s very powerful and it’s free, though there are other tools. This is the best thing that you can do for future members, customers, or users.

Getting the analytics going on your site early on, before you even need the information, is important because it allows you to start capturing data from the very beginning. By the time you need that data, you’ll have already had, probably, months of data and information collected that you can look at and review. This becomes infinitely important when you start to contemplate your digital strategy. Rather than starting from nothing, you’ve got a lot of great data on your users that you can reference. Digital strategy needs to be driven by data. There was a time when data wasn’t available and you had to cobble information together to determine where to emphasize strategy, but that time has come and gone. It’s quite easy, now, to get powerful data on your users and their habits so you can get a clear understanding of where you’re going when you begin to execute the digital strategy.

In order to provide the best possible experience for your users/customers, you need to be constantly working at collecting data, whether it’s analytic data on how your digital properties are being used, online satisfaction surveys, or just talking to users every chance that you get about what should be done differently with your site or digital properties. While this is a digital strategy perspective, it’s also a customer-centric retention strategy that should be built into every level of an organization that wants to succeed and continuously deliver satisfaction.

Having this data and referencing it is especially useful when you’re measuring across multiple channels, such as Web, social media, mobile, email, etc… Particularly, with social media where there are a variety of junk tools out there that promise a lot and deliver little, especially where measurement is more art than science. However, the most creative metrics are still Ok if they’re meeting the goals as determined in the digital strategy. Without the digital strategy and solid metrics, who can tell if it’s providing any value or satisfaction?

Ultimately, you can’t manage what you don’t measure…

Tags Digital Strategist, Digital Strategy, Google Analytics, Measurement, Satisfaction, Social Media, Social Media Strategy, Web Strategy | Permalink | Comment (0)

Does Google ranking matter?

July 26, 2012 – 2:07 pm

I was wondering how long it would be before somebody started asking this question. Over the years this question has been asked in so many different ways and in so many different contexts, and usually the answer has been yes. Today, though, I’m thinking about it in a different context after having read Brad Shorr’s article at Ragan.com called Why a high Google ranking is becoming ‘worthless’. What am I talking about? Search engine optimization, or SEO, and with Google does ranking matter?

The last year, plus, has seen some really interesting, and at times rather discreet, changes regarding how Google works. In fact, at times, I’ve found them cumbersome and problematic. For instance when searching for “digital strategy” in Google, it used to be that my first hits were taken from high-ranking digital strategy-oriented sites throughout the US, then a local filter of some kind was added that brought up mostly mid-Michigan-based firms (where I live and work) and then more deeply I’d find firms in Michigan, then Chicago, New York, etc… with the search dragnet widening geographically as I searched more deeply. I didn’t love that and I felt that it compromised SEO practices towards a quasi-Craig’s List end (i.e. keeping everything too local) that I thought was very anti-World Wide Web… Nevertheless, I bit the bullet and dealt with it.

A little later Google+ was launched and a tighter integration with one’s Google ID started skewing the results. Now, when I searched “digital strategy” I was seeing my own comments, my own posts, etc… totally unhelpful. This really concerned me from a Google-Usefulness perspective. While I appreciate Google trying to get into the social media fold, doing it to the detriment of what made them great, their search functionality, seemed like a really bad move.

Enter Brad Shorr’s article Why a high Google ranking is becoming ‘worthless’. If your Google search results are going to be skewed, sliced and diced in so many different ways based on a variety of known and unknown determining factors then we start bump up against a model where an absolute power is determining what we see. Previously this was based on algorithm, and a very good one, that determined the value of what came up in a Google search. Of course, it’s proprietary so we had to guess, and play around, but basically we could figure out what worked. Now, though, with Google stacking search results that correspond to their proprietary, non-search, features we’re moving towards an AOL wall , circa 1997, that gives you the Web that the company wants you to experience. Facebook still thinks this is a solid strategy, and it’s certain to lead to their demise. Strategically, this is a bad move for Google, but commentary aside, Brad Shorr makes some good points about how you can maintain your search ranking and how you can fit this new approach into your digital strategy.

Brad writes:

The rallying cry “We’re number one!” still works for football, but SEO marketers need a new one. My suggestion: “We have awesome search placement!” relating SEO activities back to the four areas I’ve been talking about.

For localization: It’s essential for any local or regional business to use local optimization best practices. You want to make sure Google places your content well, not just in a standard search, but in Google+ local and credible local search directories.

For personalization: Engage with and build relevant social media connections to build influence and visibility. Use rel=author links to achieve broader placement through the Google authorship initiative.

For segmentation: Create and optimize a variety of content forms. The most important ones are images, infographics, video, news items, and original social media content.

For semantic variation: Put the focus where it belongs—on useful, relevant and authoritative content. Google will place content that delivers value to searchers better than content that attempts to manipulate its algorithm.

I’ve taken Brad’s thoughts out of context, so I recommend reading the whole article, but as search changes, so too, SEO changes. Key to any digital strategy is SEO and your search ranking. Therefore, it’s important to be watching and adapting, because search ranking does matter, but its only worth the value it delivers.

Tags Craigs List, Digital Strategy, Facebook, Google+, Local, Local Web, Page Ranking, Search, Search Engine, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, SEO Content, SEO Keywords, Social Media | Permalink | Comment (0)

Good digital strategy is user-centric

July 24, 2012 – 6:45 am

Is your digital strategy focused on meeting your audience’s needs?

This is a simple question, and it’s a question that’s central to an organization’s success when rolling out a digital strategy.The digital domain moves very fast, and it’s easy to get caught up with new Web and social media sites, mobile devices, apps or whatever the new shiny object is. The problem with this is that it takes the focus off the audience’s needs and puts it on the site, tool, app, etc… which is to the detriment of not only the digital strategy, but also to the organizational goals that are trying to be met.

Good digital strategy is user-centric.

Even if you don’t know your audience or haven’t developed personas, you can still have an idea of whether or not the channels in your digital strategy are working for your users. Demographics, ethnographics, user stats, personas, etc… are extremely useful, and I heartily recommend their use, but depending on the organization, budgets, and the like that data might not be readily-available. However, there are many free tools that you can use out there from Survey Monkey to Google Analytics that will allow you to gauge where your users are at. Even running a poll as a simple add-on for WordPress will give you some indication as to where your users are at and whether or not the site’s working for them. An even simpler approach is to just post a link to an email or email form asking on your site or on your Facebook page asking: “How are we doing?”

For those folks with available budget I swear by Foresee and the satisfaction reports they provide. As far as I’m concerned there’s nobody in the online satisfaction business as good as Foresee (Full disclosure, I use them in my current position, and I’ve presented as an unpaid speaker at their 2012 Foresee Summit) and I would recommend them to anybody serious about online satisfaction using a single methodology across multiple channels.

I guess what I’m getting at is that it doesn’t matter if you’re using basic do-it-yourself tools or your using a firm that gets this data for you; in either case, having a digital strategy that’s user-centric won’t just ensure that your digital strategy is a success, initially, but it will ensure that it continues to be successful.

Tags Audience, Digital Strategy, Foresee, Foresee Results, Foresee Summitt, Persona, Satisfaction, Social Media, Social Media Strategy, Usability, User-Friendly, Web, Web Content, Web Strategy | Permalink | Comment (0)

Digital Strategy

What does a digital strategist do?

July 18, 2012 – 1:19 pm

One of the things that I wanted to do with this blog was aggregate other ideas that I’ve found elsewhere on digital strategy. This morning, as I was surfing through Reader, I found this article What Does a Digital Strategist Do? over at Tuuk written by Jeff Reckseidler. I can tell you, for sure, that this article really made me think and it also made me think about my own approach to digital strategy.

Jeff asks this question in the article as something that he gets from a lot of CMO’s: “How do you leverage digital technology to create true competitive advantage and make us more relevant in the market?”

This is interesting to me, because I’ve spent the bulk of my career working for non-profits, who I wouldn’t say are uncompetitive, but often, particularly with non-profit organization work, they have their respective markets to themselves. This kind of captive audience could easily become a recipe for laziness and disinterest regarding user/member satisfaction, but fortunately I’ve been involved with organizations that strive to be competitive and focus on what the users wants and needs. This last part is important, because when it comes to digital strategy, as Jeff points out:

“Planning as a discipline is about setting trajectory for a brand and inspiring amazing solutions to client problems…”

Where Jeff talks about amazing solutions, I’m thinking digital technology solutions, and the right solutions for the job; true innovation. For instance, just because a company’s slaps a Facebook logo on their bag of microwave popcorn doesn’t mean that makes a lot of sense for their brand and it certainly doesn’t mean that they’re going to engage the users of their brand. Sure, everyone else is doing it, but that doesn’t make it strategically sound. A brand has to determine whether they’re going to be a leader in a market or a follower… This is where, as Jeff points out, digital strategy is about thought leadership and directing the trajectory of the brand.

Getting back to the question: What does a digital strategist do? I tend to agree with Jeff, but I have a slightly different perspective: A digital strategist sets the trajectory of a brand in the digital realm by aligning organizational goals and research & analysis with prevailing digital properties.

Tags Digital Strategist, Digital Strategy, Facebook | Permalink | Comment (0)

Digital strategy checklist

July 14, 2012 – 3:35 pm

There’s a nice digital strategy article posted at the Ragan.com. I presented at a Ragan Web Content conference back in 2007, and I’ve always found them to be a valuable resource when it comes to thinking about the Web, content, and the tools for organizations to be successful with both. While the article that I’m referencing, 11-point checklist for a healthy social media strategy, is a good one, I feel as though it’s really more of a digital strategy checklist. On some level that makes sense, because social media strategy is very much in vogue, and sometimes you have to talk to organizations in terms they understand, and nearly every organization understands social media, whereas digital strategy, the concept that encapsulates a social media strategy is sometimes misunderstood.

I’m posting a link to this article and referencing the points, because at its core is a digital strategy and many of the things that need to be taken on from a digital strategy perspective to be successful and meet organizational goals. There are some items that I have discussed here (social media, blogging, and email) and a variety of things that I’ll get into as Kali Digital grows and I dig deeper into digital strategy.

Here’s the list taken from the 11-point checklist for a healthy social media strategy:

Your 11-point checklist:

1. Your blog: Like your website, your blog must be current, offer sound advice, and have a casual voice.
How often do you post? How do you decide on content and frequency? Hint: It goes back to the challenges of your niche market.
Does more than one person post? Is your blog’s voice in harmony with your main messages? Who are your readers and why did they choose your site over millions of others?

2. Your e-zine or newsletter: Does your newsletter include the title tag from your site? List your social links and URL to encourage people to connect online.

3. Your videos: Do you have an opening and closing slide with your company name and/or logo? Did you weave your website into the text so the speaker can subtly promote it as a resource?

4. Your email marketing: Does the same common attitude of helping people shine through? Don’t sell; build relationships with your target market. Use your title-tag descriptor, and forget the jargon, rhetoric and BS.

5. Your social profiles: Do your profiles on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other channels have (nearly) identical language that clearly describes how you help people?

6. Your business cards: Are business cards are a thing of the past? I don’t think so, but not everyone agrees. If you have cards, do you have one or two social links listed? Do you really need your fax number, or is it obsolete? People will look for your logo and consistent punchy phrase of how you solve problems and get results. Keep it clear, uncluttered, and visually pleasing. Dump the cutesy titles and focus on the prospect/client.

7. Your email signature line: This is an area many tend to forget. Include your social links, website, and anything that separates you from others. Use live links as well. Remember, the goal is to get people back to your site or profile.

8. Your “about us” page: These pages tend to be static, but if you update them periodically with staff changes, awards, accomplishments, and links to new testimonials, they can compel visitors to stay on your site and poke around.

9. Your Pinterest boards: Do your visuals and pictures make it absolutely clear which field/industry you’re in? Is your profile congruent with your bio, title tag, email marketing, and blog?

10. Your bio line: Do you have two versions-long and short-that you use at the end of your bylined articles, white papers, and case studies?

11. Your traditional print-marketing pieces: Many industries find success in mailers, print advertising, and other traditional marketing channels. Are these pieces consistent, clear and congruent with all of the above? Is your message, clear, concise, compelling and visually appealing? Does your contact information and call to action stand out?

Tags Blog, Blogger, Blogging, Digital Strategy, Email Campaign, Email Marketing, Email Strategy, Ragan, Social Media, Social Media Strategy, Web, Web Content, Web Strategy | Permalink | Comment (0)

How does Google work? (Infographic)

July 7, 2012 – 3:41 pm

This was a great infographic that I saw a while back and thought that it was a great graphical representation of what’s involved in the inner workings of Google and search, in general. The graphic here is small, so I recommend going to see the large dude over here or here.

Tags Digital Strategy, Google+, Infographic, Search, Search Engine, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, SEO Content, SEO Keywords, Web, Web Content, Web Strategy | Permalink | Comment (0)

Digital strategy and email

July 7, 2012 – 3:36 pm

When thinking about a digital strategy and a direct line of communication from users, I can’t emphasize email enough. Sure, there’s Twitter, proprietary messaging through most social media channels, even texting, but email is super-simple and it has the highest guarantee of getting to the eyes of the intended recipient, provided the email address is correct.

Certainly, it’s a generational thing, and definitely a communications preference, but for me, I just don’t like talking on the phone like I did when I was a teenager or in the early years of cell phone ownership.

Email is unobtrusive, and is the best interface that allows for the most basic relay of data that exceeds several lines. I can respond at my leisure. I can organize my thoughts, and put them out there in front of me before committing to them. I can have a record of what I sent, because you never know when you might need a record of what you’ve said.

Unlike phone calls from strangers, where I hang up almost immediately, or tweets that get lost in the feed, or text messages I never noticed the notification for, I always get my email. And I seriously consider and think about email that I receive from strangers; not spam, mind you, but genuine inquiries from strangers. Email just works really well.

Sure there are folks who talk about the death of email by texting, and texting, sometimes, is an even more basic relay of data, especially when lengthy thoughtful statements aren’t needed, but for complete thoughts, email is a great solution and one that shouldn’t be dismissed or not included in your digital strategy for the next shiny communication object.

Does your organization have a process or workflow for receiving email and then responding to them? If not, you should, there’s a huge opportunity for service and satisfaction there. It might be old-hat, but email is as useful as ever and every digital strategy needs to have some kind of email component.

Tags Digital Strategy, Email Campaign, Email Marketing, Email Strategy, Social Media, Social Media Strategy, Text Messaging, Web, Web Strategy | Permalink | Comment (0)

Digital strategy and the local web

July 7, 2012 – 3:33 pm

A lot of small businesses, particularly where I live, don’t have Web sites, a social media presence, or a digital strategy of any kind. I have to wonder how this can even be possible, in this day and age; but alas, it is…

The answer, however, is simple: Small business owners are so focused on staying in business that the idea of having a Web site, digital properties, such as social media, and a modest digital strategy is a luxury that they just don’t perceive as required.

Would the average small business owner not put a listing in the Yellow Pages, or not have signage made up to advertise what they do to the passer-by, or even still not have business cards to hand out? Not likely.

The small business path, often, is one that’s driven by the individual small business owner, and their experiences rather than some kind of small business best practices or some Small Business Administration outline on the fundamentals of how to make a business successful. To be fair, the Small Business Administration, does outline some rudimentary ways to use the Web, as part of a marketing plan, along with a few bits on email marketing, but there’s no overall look at instituting a digital strategy and how that’s more possible today than ever before with all of the free and low-cost tools that are available, to say nothing of socia media.

To not have a Web site five to ten years ago, just meant that a given small business was slow to make the move, not a big deal in the customer’s eyes. Today, though, not having a Web site means a serious lack of good judgment with far-reaching implications about the kind of service, or the quality of service, a customer might receive, thus leaving a bit of a blemish on the experience, and sadly on the business itself. It’s not ancillary or a luxury to have even a modest digital strategy anymore, it’s required.

Right or wrong, the reality is if you don’t have an online presence with a digital strategy and you aren’t leveraging the digital properties where your customers spend their time, then your small business is certain to be left behind by those that do. I post a lot of information here on how to implement these changes on a grass-roots level. Take a look and see if there’s something you can be doing to make your business more successful. A digital strategy can be taken on in small, forward-moving chunks… where can you start today?

Tags Craigs List, Digital Strategy, Facebook, Flickr, Google+, Local, Local Movement, Local Web, Pinterest, Search, Search Engine, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, SEO Content, SEO Keywords, Social Media, Social Media Strategy, Twitter, Web, Web Content, Web Strategy | Permalink | Comment (0)

Digital strategy and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

July 7, 2012 – 3:31 pm

One of the cornerstones of any digital strategy, particularly as it pertains to your Web site is Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, as I’ll call it throughout the rest of this article. The world of Web is steeped in jargon that leaves many scratching their head first in wonder, then awe, and then irritation; SEO, is one such term.

There’s nothing particularly mysterious about SEO; you want folks to find your site, and to do this you need to get listed it in search engines, because that’s where people go to find things in the mountain of data that is the Web. But how do you get yourself listed at the top of the first page rather than at the bottom of the tenth page, where most people will never even find you. This is something that has confounded internet marketers since the beginning, but it’s really just as simple as writing good content that others would like to read, and keep the content up-to-date. It also helps to not have articles that emphasize landscaping one day and then the next day an article on Web design, because search engines look for keywords.

For instance, if you have an article that includes words like: landscaping, mulching, garden, gardening and the like, five times in a given article then when search engines visit and index your site they’ll bring you up when someone searches those terms. Similarly, if you have a Web design article and it includes words like: web, design, user-friendly, usability, etc… then you’ll be brought up in searches that look for these things. However, we don’t normally search for such disparate things as landscaping and Web design together, if we did your site would be a winner. Usually, though, we search on the keywords that come to mind. In this example, let’s say it’s gardening. We search for gardening, and there are thousands of Web sites for gardening that the search engine has indexed. The sites that have gardening as the focal point, and lets say their titles, subtitles and keywords references gardening maybe hundreds of times to your half-dozen, well the gardening site is going to win and they’ll be listed at the top of the first search page. Similarly, the sites in order of relevance based on keywords, will fall behind and this is called search ranking.

Now, when looking at the Web strategy aspect of a digital strategy, search ranking is important, but it’s not all about keywords. In fact, there are special (and often very secret) algorithms, or computer programs that are run to determine if people are liking your page, if they’re reading and linking to it, is the content relevant, in context, or isn’t it. It’s the life’s blood of a search company to have relevant results, because a search engine that doesn’t deliver good results to those of us doing the searches is a search engine that nobody uses and that search company goes out of business.

There are a ton of reference materials on SEO on the Web. Here are a few good ones that I’ve found:

The book, literally, on SEO
Cute video on SEO
Fun infographic on how Google works
The SEO Success Pyramid
More great info on SEO, including a periodic table of SEO ranking factors

Tags Bing, Blog, Blogger, Blogging, Digital Strategy, Google+, Search, Search Engine, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, SEO Content, SEO Keywords, Social Media, Web, Web Content, Web Strategy, Yahoo | Permalink | Comment (0)

Digital strategy and social media

July 7, 2012 – 3:28 pm

Nearly every digital strategy has some kind of social media aspect, but in every instance the approach and strategy needs to be customized for the business or organization. There are a lot of channels out there, more than Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, and Pinterest and more than a few ways that an organization’s goals can be met. Therefore, It’s important when talking about social media as part of a digital strategy that we understand the roots and the history of where social media came from.

Social media is a relatively new term for a concept as old as the Web itself. As long as the Web, as a network of connected users has existed, it’s been a social medium. So when you have folks sharing things in a variety of formats (i.e. still images, audio, video, etc.) somehow it becomes social media. That’s it. It’s really that simple. There’s no mystery or secret to social media; it’s what the Web has always been from YouTube and Facebook, today, to pimply-faced teens swigging soda on Dungeons and Dragons BBS’ (Bulletin Board Systems) all through the late 70′s, 80′s and early 90′s.

Of course, social media has evolved, the technologies have changed, and the user-interfaces have gotten better, but the core of what social media is, has changed very little.

In recent years, however, pundits have tried to frame social media as something else, some kind of communications or awareness panacea whereby you herd your fans/customers into some kind of digital stable, and get a direct, captive audience. This has worked to a very limited extent because as soon as there’s somebody building a fence or stable, there are ten other people building wide open pastures where users can roam free. This is where the idea of engagement comes in. For the marketing or digital strategist engagement is what keeps the users sticking around. On the Web, you can go anywhere and do nearly anything, why would you hang around just one site? Engagement keeps people interested, surrounded by like-minded users, talking about things that are interesting to them.

Personally, I don’t think that a model that promotes captivity over freedom will ever succeed, online or anywhere, and all the available data supports that. Which is why an integrated approach to social media, as one part of a digital strategy, done in concert with a Web site, blog, mobile apps, or email marketing is the best and most comprehensive approach.

The fact is social media is time and labor-intensive, worse still is if you don’t have any idea where you’re going, or what you’re trying to achieve. You can post on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, write a daily blog, etc… but that’s hours of work, that needs to be done on a daily basis or at least a couple times a week. Without a plan or a goal there’s also no way to measure if the work is a success, and should be continued. The fact that tools like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are free and blogs can be added to any Web site with little work, and no cost combined with the potential of these tools (to say nothing of the hype factor) has a lot of organizations eager to utilize them. However, because there’s no capital investment organizations aren’t prone to developing a plan or strategy for implementation. Often, I hear of communications managers, web designers, or copy writers inheriting the “social media” piece because organizationally they seem to be the best fit for it… equally often this inheritance comes with no plan, strategy or awareness of how much time the implementation, but more importantly the upkeep of social media takes. I highly recommend that anybody getting into social media ask themselves what success would look like as it pertains to the digital strategy, then survey the time involved, and most importantly figure out whether there are resources to support it. Once you’ve got these in place then you start thinking about the social media aspect of digital strategy.

Tags Digital Strategy, Facebook, Flickr, Google+, MySpace, Pinterest, SEO Content, Social Media, Social Media Explanation, Social Media Strategy, Twitter, Web, Web Content, Web Strategy | Permalink | Comment (1)

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