Digital Marketing | Glenn Ward

What should you think about when designing a Global website URL naming structure?

Just what is the best URL structure for a large corporate international website?

You will have seen many approaches to naming of URLs while browsing the Internet. When I used to build sites I would always organize sections of the website into folders and if I included a blog or forum I would sub domain them. I had no marketing reason for this, just tidiness! During my days as a Web Manager on eCommerce sites I became far more SEO focused. See a beginners guide to SEO. I shall write another post relative to page content, title URL etc, but in the mean time lets focus on the address bar.

Another consideration is language and how we represent this in our URL, or if we don’t at all. The most popular language abbreviation is again the ISO 3 character code Wiki – ISO 639-3

Look at any international company that identifies a need to have a global presence with local focus;

Nike (look at the sitelinks to see how Nike use sub domains), Addidas (again, look at the sitelinks but also the use of url’s and auto location redirect) and my favorite Apple (Google Search).

They all take on a structure that we can learn a lot from. Maybe something you wouldn’t necessarily think about at a country level. Also, there’s language to think about many content management systems require the duplication of pages in order to deal with language and these pages require URLs. So we now have 2 dimensions, country and language. Obviously there us such a thing as regional domain names but for a company with global presence these should be forwards not separate sites if you are to develop a prominent online presence. So, what do we have? A .com address, country level content needs and a language option.

Country option 1
www.websitename.com/uk

Country option 2
www.uk.websitename.com

The second is my preferred option as it is a well structured index-able page that allows for a language change that is obvious to the reader where they reside without any need for breadcrumb trail listed in your page content. This might look like,

www.uk.websitename.com/eng

Here are a few interesting reads on sub domain vs sub folder or sub directory with varying takes,

SEOmoz – Understanding root domains, subdomains vs sub folders and microsites

Search Engine Journal – Subdomains or subfolders which are better for-seo

Matt Cutts – Subdomains and subdirectories

Your pages might so dynamic that country and language are handled on a single page but this might have indexing and crawling implications by search engines (Id have to research further)

Another consideration to take into account is microsites. They shouldn’t be used for link building and the like but there is often a case. In our particular case these are business cases which is equally as important! No matter how passionate you are about your personal skillset or individual task, respect and align with the companies business needs, this is where your wages come from and while search ranking is number one in your agenda its not someone else’s.

What should you think about when designing a Global website URL naming structure?

Just what is the best URL structure for a large corporate international website?

This post first stemmed from a while back, I was looking into the best naming convention for an international website with regard to SEO. For example, sub domain or sub folder? Abbreviation or country name? While working on the global digital strategy it became apparent that this question routed further than search engine optimization. When the digital agency we are working with highlighted a link to the a title=International Organization for Standardization href=http://www.iso.org/iso/home.html target=_blankISO website/a. In all honesty their website is a pain to navigate so I have used wiki links to highlight my reading. Firstly, here is a link to get up to speed with country codes a title=ISO Country Code href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_country_code target=_blankWiki – ISO Country Code/a then there is the Alpha-2 a title=ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2 target=_blankWiki – ISO 3166-1 alpha-2/a, 2 character country standardisation you see used in the Nike example below and the Top level domain naming convention we all know and love a title=Country code top-level domain href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code_top-level_domain target=_blankWiki – Country code top-level domain/a. Although the domain naming is based on the ISO standardisation the official 2 character naming can be found on the a title=IANA Domains href=http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/ target=_blankIANA or International Assigned Numbers Authority/a notice the official UK TLD is in fact GB.

You will have seen many approaches to naming of URLs while browsing the Internet. When I used to build sites I would always organize sections of the website into folders and if I included a blog or forum I would sub domain them. I had no marketing reason for this, just tidiness! During my days as a Web Manager on eCommerce sites I became far more SEO focused. See a a title=Introduction to SEO href=http://glennward.co.uk/2009/04/intoduction-to-search-engine-optimisation-seo-learn-at-lunch/ target=_blankbeginners guide to SEO/a. I shall write another post relative to page content, title URL etc, but in the mean time lets focus on the address bar.

Another consideration is language and how we represent this in our URL, or if we dont at all. The most popular language abbreviation is again the ISO 3 character code a title=Language 3 Character code ISO 639-3 href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639-3 target=_blankWiki – ISO 639-3/a

Look at any international company that identifies a need to have a global presence with local focus;

a title=Nike href=http://www.nike.com target=_blankNike/a (look at the a title=Nike sitelinks href=http://www.google.co.uk/search?client=safarirls=enq=nikeie=UTF-8oe=UTF-8redir_esc=ei=PW6TTqvuLIWh8QOPxeHnBg target=_blanksitelinks/a to see how Nike use sub domains),a title=Addidas href=http://www.adidas.com target=_blank Addidas/a (again, look at the a title=Addidas sitelinks and URLs href=http://www.google.co.uk/webhp?hl=en#hl=encp=5gs_id=kxhr=tq=adidaspf=psclient=psy-absafe=offsite=webhpsource=hppbx=1oq=addidaq=0saqi=g-s4aql=gs_sm=gs_upl=bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osbfp=8c08631233d8fd66biw=1404bih=769 target=_blanksitelinks/a but also the use of urls and auto location redirect) and my favorite a title=Apple href=http://www.apple.com target=_blankApple/a (a title=Apple Google search href=http://www.google.co.uk/webhp?hl=en#hl=encp=3gs_id=cxhr=tq=applepf=psclient=psy-absafe=offsite=webhpsource=hppbx=1oq=appaq=0aqi=g4aql=gs_sm=gs_upl=bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osbfp=8c08631233d8fd66biw=1404bih=769 target=_blankGoogle Search/a).

They all take on a structure that we can learn a lot from. Maybe something you wouldnt necessarily think about at a country level. Also, theres language to think about many content management systems require the duplication of pages in order to deal with language and these pages require URLs. So we now have 2 dimensions, country and language. Obviously there us such a thing as regional domain names but for a company with global presence these should be forwards not separate sites if you are to develop a prominent online presence. So, what do we have? A .com address, country level content needs and a language option.

Country option 1
www.websitename.com/uk

Country option 2
www.uk.websitename.com

www.uk.websitename.com/eng

Here are a few interesting reads on sub domain vs sub folder or sub directory with varying takes,

SEOmoz – a title=SEOmoz Understanding root domains subdomains sub folders and microsites href=http://www.seomoz.org/blog/understanding-root-domains-subdomains-vs-subfolders-microsites target=_blankUnderstanding root domains, subdomains vs sub folders and microsites/a

Search Engine Journal – a title=Subdomains or subfolders which are better for-seo href=http://www.searchenginejournal.com/subdomains-or-subfolders-which-are-better-for-seo/6849/ target=_blankSubdomains or subfolders which are better for-seo/a

Matt Cutts – a title=Subdomains and subdirectories href=http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/subdomains-and-subdirectories/ target=_blankSubdomains and subdirectories/a

Your pages might so dynamic that country and language are handled on a single page but this might have indexing and crawling implications by search engines (Id have to research further)

Another consideration to take into account is microsites. They shouldnt be used for link building and the like but there is often a case. In our particular case these are business cases which is equally as important! No matter how passionate you are about your personal skillset or individual task, respect and align with the companies business needs, this is where your wages come from and while search ranking is number one in your agenda its not someone elses.
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Setting up a blog with Social, Viral and Digital Marketing in mind – Part 1

Introduction

I’m assuming you have installed your wordpress blog on your server. This post will guide you through some general settings and installations that will get your blog up and running and ready to be spread across the web. Obviously you are here so you can see how some things work but also take a look at my most successful installation, GfK TechTalk

First, choose, install and customize theme.

Add blog Information

Under settings > General fill in your title and tagline, the title will be the name of your website and the tagline what its about, be sure to use some keywords that you want to reach the search engines. Go through all the settings beyond general and make sure the posts, comments etc will behave in a way that suits your blogs intentions.

Widgets

Widgets can be found under the appearance heading on the left hand side of the control panel. They control the content that appears mainly the right hand column of the site but also header footer.

Favicon

If you don’t have any image editing software you can easily create a favicon by uploading it to a number of site such as Favicon.co.uk you can then simply download it and upload it to you sites top level folder (htdocs) for it to appear in a browsers address bar.

CSS

The Cascading Style Sheet is fully customisable and is accessible by clicking appearance > Editor > StyleSheet under Styling

Install Plugins

I’m going to give you a short overview of useful plugins I have tried and tested. It’s not everything I use and everyone’s blog will have different needs but this should give you a good start and save some time.

- Social Media and Viral Marketing

Digg Digg

Digg Digg provides convenient buttons by your post for your readers to market your articles on your behalf, essential for the viral marketing aspect of your blog, you may have seen these buttons on site like Mashable.

Twitter Tools AddToAny: Share/Bookmark/Email Button

Once you have established your social media platforms that work for your particular target audience then use Digg Digg for these platforms. It is important to remember that everyone has there own browsing habits and favourite bookmarking tools so make sure your blog facilitates them. AddToAny pretty much adds every other bookmarking link to your post.

SexyBookmarks

A very stylish plugin adding additional bookmarking to your post, I have started using this as an alternative to AddToAny.

Social Media Widget

While many seem to think that linking to your social media accounts means you are intergrating Social Media, as you may have picked up from the above plugins it is only a small part. However, this plugin simplifies the adding of icons to the navigational column and gets you to think about a few extra platforms at the same time.

FeedBurner FeedSmith (manual install)

The Feedburner plugin cannot be found on an add new plugin search, you need to download the plugin file from Google and upload the zip file to your server extract the file and refresh the plugin page in WordPress and activate the plugin. Next, got to your google feedburner account and in My Feeds fill in the address of the blog feed in the Burn a feed right this instant box. Navigate to settings and then feedburner and add your new Feedburner feed address.

- Analytics and Tracking

Google XML Sitemaps

Sign into webmaster tools, add new site, upload the html file although there other options for verification, verify the site,

Edit the settings and build the sitemap

Your sitemap was last built on August 17, 2010 8:51 am.
Your sitemap (zipped) was last built on August 17, 2010 8:51 am.
Google was successfully notified about changes.
Bing was successfully notified about changes.
Ask.com was successfully notified about changes.
The building process took about 0.53 seconds to complete and used 27.25 MB of memory.
If you changed something on your server or blog, you should rebuild the sitemap manually.
If you encounter any problems with the build process you can use the debug function to get more information.

WordPress.com Stats

In order to use the WordPress.com stats plugin you will need a wordpress API key, after you have installed the plugin you will be shown a red error message until you have resolved this, click on the error message and you arrive at a page showing the following “The WordPress.com Stats Plugin is not working because it needs to be linked to a WordPress.com account” click on the link to get an API key and sign up at the wordpress.com site, you only need to sign up for a username, a full blog is not necessary. Once you have gone through the motions got to my account and you will find the API. Copy the API and return your self hosted blog site, enter the key and you will be shown the wordpress account that the api is associated with, now just click and add your blog to the wordpress.com and you’re ready to go.

WP-UserOnline

WP-UserOnline is a handy little plugin that quickly allows you to assess our current users online and monitor marketing efforts in real time.

Ultimate Google Analytics

Go to your Google Analytics and add new website, enter the site address and you will be given some code to paste into your pages, fortunatley the settings for Ultimate GA allow you to just paste the UI code and you are up and running. Give it some time before you start to see your results in Google.

Instruction of accounts to set up

You’re going to need some accounts if you want some traffic and want to take advantage of free tools!

WordPress Account

For some of the stats programs and spam plugins you will need a API Key from your WordPress Account. You can set this up at the WordPress site, see above.

Facebook page

Rather than bug your mates posting links to your personal profile and to make sure you have the facebook followers that are actually interested in what you have to say, set up a Facebook page for your blog and put your links in there.

Twitter and Twitter developer account

Your Twitter account is going to be important in pushing out your posts once you have established your following. Use plugins such as Twitter Tools to automate the process.

Google, Analytics, Feedburner, Webmaster Tools

You’re going to need a Google account and a few of their products.

Gravatar

Gravatar is a sister site to wordpress and is a handy way to add an avatar to your email address . Sign up for a Gravatar account, upload your photo, then on any participating site you use that use that email address your avatar will be displayed.

bit.ly

Contact me if you would like more detailed advice, more plugins and information on how this fits into a marketing strategy.

An insight into why digital and viral marketing is sooooo important (in my opinion)

I continually come across people who are adverse to digital marketing! Or more the point, don’t understand the area so pretend its unimportant or not beneficial to business development or marketing strategy, this is especially the case when I mention social media or YouTube! Bit too childs play! but there is no point in putting your head in the sand when it comes to advances in technology, I know your CD collection did look good and you could see what your CD’s had at a glance blah blah blah! but now you own an iPod don’t you? All your music in your pocket, organised in any number of ways! and I bet you even tell your friends about how good it is! You know who you are! I like the feel and smell of a book as well but sorry! They’re next to go!

My point is that people consume mass media in many different ways, so the emphasis should be on content not the platform or device, although you should reach out to as many platforms and devices as possible. Whether it be your YouTube viewing or Facebook account most have an accompanying app on the phone, pad, games console, tv etc, this was just the beginning of the trend, even the most avid newspaper readers are beginning to obtain their news over an iPad, kindle, Samsung Galexy, Blackberry Playbook etc. In order to push marketing messages to our customers we need to be aware of major shifts in media consumption. Unfortunately for some of us this means learning about platforms we don’t yet understand. By identifying or creating good content that relates to our brand or product we start to see where our clients might be. All too often, the only thing someone hears when I talk on the subject is facebook or twitter and then immediately become disinterested, I am talking about a platform, it could be anything and will almost certainly be different for every industry. The major point in the social media arena is that the target has already profiled themselves, they have given you the vitals, there hobbies and interest, where they’ve been on holiday. Yes I did mention social media, sorry, I know a good portion of my readers are now thinking how does that fit into B2B? Linkedin is social media! You can can spend hours and pennies going to conferences, events networking but you also can quickly search a self generated database where employees have already stated who they work for, what their title is and what they do for the company. I agree there’s nothing better than a face to face and that’s where you make sales but in a world where we are continually improving efficiency to save time, we all manage to fill that void with something else and the fact remains that many of us don’t have the time to leave the office.

So lets make this as simple as possible and lets start at the beginning as so many people are attacking the wrong link in the chain. Here’s a short case study, not from an online store, that’s too easy! This is a case study from a job I did for a auto locksmith start up. Firstly ask yourself where are your customers? what are they doing at the time the need your product? what are their needs? A friend of mine had set up as an autolocksmith, his customers were identified as one off users of the service that often would be in an emergency situation, locked out of their car, away from home, lost keys etc. Having this information not only answered a lot of Digital Marketing questions but also design questions enabling them to channel the spend where it would be most effective. The service needed to be found quickly and on the platforms people would turn to when they needed this type of service. For the short term marketing strategy PPC campaigns were essential, the ad needed to be displayed on the first page of search engines, there was a high probability customers would be on a mobile device so the website need to load fast and display the information needed to make contact as well as the services offered. Directories would be important and test were made to see which, if any would produce a return on investment.

Ok, point made, a marketing strategy where I didn’t suggest a facebook page or any form of social media and I might add, one where offline marketing methods such as a yellow pages ad brought in no extra business.

Summary of my Online Digital Marketing reading for 2010 as Tweeted via Twitter

Website Optimisation

RT @seohimanshu Two Powerful ways to reduce bounce rate http://bit.ly/hSc5E0 #bounce #rate #google #analytics
20 Ways to Make Money Blogging in 2011 dotsauce.com/2010/12/21/20-… via @DotSauce
Ultimate list of landing page conversion optimization tools raventools.com/blog/the-ultim… via @RavenTools #CTA
6 tips for an effective ‘call to action’ – Small Business Blog from Microsoft – Site Home – TechNet Blogs : http://bit.ly/houNMG
RT @unbounce Your Landing Page Sucks! Here are 10 Examples That Don’t… http://bit.ly/glRcyl
Ultimate list of conversion optimization tools raventools.com/blog/the-ultim… via @RavenTools
Landing Page Ideas To Explode Business http://shar.es/0zSTV
An introduction to Google Webmaster Tools glennward.co.uk/2010/03/an-int… @glennmward #SEO #glennward posted 17.03.80
7 ways Google Analytics can help when redesigning your website – iCrossing http://bit.ly/dC9TBK

Digital Advertising

6 Predictions for Digital Advertising in 2011 mashable.com/2010/12/21/adv… via @mashbusiness @mashable #DigitalMarketing #DigitalAdvertising
Marketing Strategy Planning managersblog.net/marketing-stra…
Europe’s concerns over behavioural advertising intensify | News | Marketing Week marketingweek.co.uk/disciplines/di…
How to turn consumer inaction into action: five tips econsultancy.com/blog/6673-how-… via @Econsultancy
Integrating marketing activity across all your channels: a #JUMPchallenge post econsultancy.com/blog/6632-why-… via @Econsultancy
Interesting post – 6 Best Practices for Developing a Mobile Marketing App in 30 Days. http://hub.am/avsVok

SEO

The Top 10 Internet & Search Marketing Trends for 2011 | Web SEO Analytics http://bit.ly/eWCxbx
Blog commenting useful for SEO? http://bit.ly/c9L7oP #seo #sem #keywords
RT @sejournal 2011 SEO and Social Media Checklist | Search Engine Journal http://bit.ly/dMFtnT
Web 2.0 : SEO : ERP : CRM : SCM : Software: SEO Via Updated Content – Affect Google Rankings? http://j.mp/fXrv0V
Seven Free SEO Tips to Boost Your Site’s Traffic – http://b2l.me/avfzum
Intoduction to Search Engine Optimisation – SEO Learn at lunch glennward.co.uk/2009/04/intodu… via @glennmward #seo
RT @crearegroup Will Google TV impact SEO? http://bit.ly/9qciER
Currently reading Drive traffic increase conversions http://www.terry-heffernan.info/drive-traffic-increase-conversions/1156/173/
Beyond SEO, getting the right traffic for your product glennward.co.uk/2009/06/beyond… @glennmward glennward.co.uk #SEO

PPC

ppc campaigns organic search results vs the paid ones http://bit.ly/efEpu2 #ppc #search
PPC Blunders- Know, Avoid And Earn http://bit.ly/fWTnV6
Understanding the science of PPC digital marketing – Make Pay Per Click work for your business glennward.co.uk/2009/11/unders… via @glennmward #ppc

Analytics

Text analytics: a key trend to watch over the next three years | Forrester Blogs http://bit.ly/ggdccY
New blog post: Monitoring your B2B online marketing efforts using Custom Reporting in Google Analytics http://bit.ly/eMurEg
Web Analytics – Art or Science? http://bit.ly/DmkuQ via @jonnylongden
Introduction to Google Analytics and other website analytical tools glennward.co.uk/2009/11/introd… via @glennmward #seo #google #analytics
Tracking social media conversions using Google Analytics http://dld.bz/y76R
Tracking HTML5 Video with Google Analytics (and goodbye to Flash) | Elisa DBI http://bit.ly/aRFYz8

Social Media

Revolutionize Your Social Media Strategy In 2011- 39 Useful Tips To Follow http://bit.ly/ftPwDe
Email is dead. Long live email. gfktechtalk.com/2010/12/07/ema… via @GfKTechTalk #facebook #email #gmail #socialmedia
Social Commerce: Active Social Media Users Say Companies Can Do More with Social Networks http://bit.ly/9eJ1hM
RT @infinigraph Fan Value, Customer Loyalty and Social Conversation http://post.ly/15PwB
RT @bulletproofmar: Get your visitors to buy by pressing the right emotional buttons. #B2B social media #Digital http://bit.ly/8tABRR
Currently Browsing: Social Media Exposure: Better Than Ads and Cheaper, Too. http://is.gd/fR2Mg
Good set of simple social media marketing rules! RT @GreenBuzzAgency 8 Rules: Marketing in the Music Industry http://bit.ly/9u1kMv
Why social media needs to learn the marketing basics econsultancy.com/blog/6516-why-… via @Econsultancy
RT @GreenBuzzAgency Using Facebook as a Strategic Marketing Channel http://bit.ly/bJJnD6

Misc

10 Cloud Computing Expectations for 2011 – http://bizcloudnetwork.com/2010/10-cloud-computing-expectations-for-2011/
Consumers are moving to the cloud, time for the music industry to follow gfktechtalk.com/2010/12/10/con… via @GfKTechTalk #music #cloud #download
RIM boss challenges Apple’s HTML5 video claims | NetBenefit Blog http://bit.ly/aAJtuC

Monitoring your B2B online marketing efforts using Custom Reporting in Google Analytics

I was recently asked to write a piece on Analytics at an intermediate level but this also ties into a stage we have arrived at with some Google AdWords training I’m doing so I’ll explain how analytics can pick up where AdWords left off and also how you can use Custom Reporting to monitor other offline and online marketing efforts.

If you are using AdWords for Business to Business advertising one issue is that data drops off at a certain point as you have no checkout and no price or profit attributed to a click which effectively means no calculation of the Return On Investment. This drop off can be picked up using Analytical software and in particular I shall talk about how we can do this with Google Analytics. The main point to note is that with an end action we can track an entire visitors journey from pre-entry to exit or call to action. With a checkout and a piece of code this purchase price is reported back to your Google Account. The replacement in a B2B case is a call to action and this might be in the form of an email link, request for proposal, click to download etc. As long as the visitor has something to click on then they can be tracked. The long winded process of tracking user journeys if you were using a limited stats package would be to look at the keyword that provided the visitor, tie in the key information that allows you to identify them at different stages of the journey and estimate whether they called to action. With Google Analytics Custom Reporting you are able to do far more. I would recommend using this to track individual marketing efforts and Goals to concentrate on more specific calls to action such as a click on an email link or download. Let’s take your social media efforts for example. You could set up a custom report that tracked all of your social media traffic, the site penetration of each and time on site ie. did they actually stay and read something.

Here’s a step by step guide to such a report,

In the example below I set up a new report, the first Metric I am concerned with is the Pages/Visits, to keep the dimension simple I chose Page Title as I will know exactly the page I am looking at. Once I have established the pages visited I would like to know site penetration so I add Page Views, I next want to establish whether they actually found this page interesting so I add Time On Page, finally I am concerned with where the user left the site so I add Exits.

After creating your report I just want to show you a little hidden extra that gives you a better overview of your traffic. When you look at the report you should see something like this.

This is fine for a top level overview but if you’re keen to delve deeper, click on the Pivot View above the top right hand corner of the table. You will be presented with a chart cross referencing traffic sources, the different Metrics are still available and you can change these with a simple dropdown menu.

You could take this one stage further and apply it to your offline marketing efforts, this is a bit of an eCommerce trick but why not publish an advert in a magazine with a unique URL, a unique landing page that could only be found had the person read the advert.

PPC – Pay Per Click Marketing and Purchase Process

Also see,
Understanding the science of PPC Digital Marketing

The other day I did an hour session on the use of Google Adwords and like most of my explanations related it back to conventional marketing practises and thinking about purchase process.

So, it is an extremely large subject and some might say its an art to perfect pay per click for a particular industry, product or brand. For more specifics on keywords and your campaigns see this article. If you break it down to it’s absolute basics and suggest some theory that could be applied to any campaign and in fact could be used to refine or revisit your existing campaign. The aim is to pick up your potential customer from an online space where you know they are specifically looking for something. Your advert should then suggest to them that you have what they are looking for, in as few steps as possible the customer will arrive in front of your product where they will find the right price and enough information to make a purchase decision. Of course it’s not that simple, product awareness often happens way before the online experience, the competing ads on the search engine may grab their attention more, they might feel you have the right price but not enough information to make an informed purchase decision or visa versa, they might research the product on your site but purchase from the cheapest vendor, they might even drop out during the checkout process. The point is that the drop out could occur at any point in the purchase process and so they are many important aspects to consider when designing your pay per click adverting and it’s not just about cleverly chosen key words and advert. You should also be looking at your SEO, landing pages, website content, price reviews, targeting, the list goes on! One is not successful without the other so think of PPC as a small part of your Digital Marketing Strategy.

I’ve written some beginners guides to SEO to here, which should also help with your landing page content.

Digital Marketing Strategy – What should and shouldn’t you be doing

Also see,
Introduction to Search Engine Optimisation
Beyond SEO – The right traffic to your site
An Introduction to Google Webmaster Tools
Introduction to Google Analytics and other website analytical tools
Introduction to Pay Per Click Campaigns
PPC Pay Per Click Marketing and purchase process
Integrating online video into your digital marketing strategy

One of the biggest issues companies face with their marketing at the moment is the “because I can” attitude. Social media platforms has made it very easy for Joe Bloggs to set up a Facebook Page, Start a Twitter account etc without first considering what you are setting out to achieve or does it really fit into the marketing strategy for that particular brand, product, service or industry.

The aim of this post is to encourage you to stop and think before leaping head first into an arena that is far more complicated than copying and pasting content into online spaces.

I’ll firstly start by simplifying how I see Digital Marketing and please bare in mind this is not taking into account traditional Marketing metrics or an individual companies Marketing strategy which also should be taken into consideration when addressing that should I, shouldn’t I? question.

The above shows my idea of a rough guide to the nuts and bolts that build up your Digital Marketing Strategy. Note, one is nothing without the other supporting it.

A video is merely a file sitting on your computer until you give it a platform and a means to be spread by it’s viewers and this is the case with all your content be it news articles, data or PR. As I mentioned it has become increasingly easy for Joe Bloggs to set up a Facebook page, start a Twitter account or post something to YouTube but pause for a second and ask yourself does this “because I can” attitude to marketing really satisfy your marketing objectives? Ask yourself a few key questions and at the same time refer back to the marketing and branding strategy, business development objectives, PR efforts etc does setting up numerous social media accounts that remain dormant really let your clients know you understand social media? No, not really! Does multiple versions of you companies graphics and variations on messages increase and improve you brand awareness amongst your clients? No, it probably damages your brand!

The message is, understand what it is you are doing and choose the right nuts and bolts that support your pre existing strategies, don’t do things because it’s easy, you can or because everyone else is doing it!

eCommerce – Should online stores be thinking about website usability from a mobile access POV

I was asked the other day if it would be a good idea to produce a shops brochure as an iPhone App. After taking off my iPhone evangelist hat I replied objectively. More and more people are accessing the Internet in new ways but successful apps work because they allow users to quickly and easily perform a task that they would normally do or feel comfortable doing on a laptop.

So back to the question, is it really realistic that every user would install an app for each of the stores they occasionally shop? I doubt it! And although the iPhone dominates the Market they still only account for a portion and unless you are prepared to develop for blackberry, android etc you will only be reaching out to a small proportion of shoppers.

While I have never been a fan .mobi idea of developing sites specific for mobile phone browsers as mobile phones, screen aspect ratios differ across every mobile devices, with increasing devices being able to cope with full screen browsing I would be inclined to look at the build of the main site, optimise the pages for fast download and take a long hard look at the checkout.

In these early stages of online mobile development I would not rule out in investing in getting the catalogue onto mobile devices but possibly a PDF that can be opened on most smart phones with links to your recently optimised web pages is the way to go at this stage. Think about layout of the PDF, file size, usability and linking. This file will also have the added viral advantage of being emailed and viewed at leisure without an Internet connection.

Also see iPhone apps or Online apps? What is the future as new smartphones emerge?