The top two things that make a great web writer are, in my view, style and process. Starting with style, many people think it’s easy to write for the web since space is limited. But trust me, crisp, succinct language that directly communicates important messages is not easy to write. It takes a lot of background work to determine what messages really connect with your audience, then more time to hone them into short, memorable phrases.

A great web writer thinks visually, having a page layout in mind at all times. Since people are reading less and reacting more to images, illustrations and video, this writer will come up with creative ideas for turning the words into visuals, and will present copy formatted so viewers can skim it and get the essential messages in a glance.

What I mean by “process” is that the great writer creates content that can be leveraged for multiple uses while following strict branding and SEO guidelines. Every piece of content can be stretched to be used for a website, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blog, video clip or posted as a presentation or spread far and wide through social media bookmarking. A writer who understands the process of how to quickly develop meaningful content for all of these channels is a superstar.

Take whatever time it takes to find them. Then keep them happy!

We proposed to start by building a strong and active presence for key employees on LinkedIn. Through them, over time, we would position them as experts and demonstrate that the company was an industry leader. To gain trust and credibility, we suggested starting with basic steps, making full use of the tools and opportunities offered by LinkedIn.

One of the key tools is the LinkedIn company page. As LinkedIn documentation says, “it is like a LinkedIn profile page for a company.” People are using it to research companies, stay updated with company news and learn more about products and services. A company page is a way to put a human face on a company by giving, as LinkedIn says, “a peek at the individuals behind your brand and highlighting how members use your products. Your Company Page offers tools to bring your brand to life.”

Our social media marketing team put together a complete LinkedIn strategy for our client that included a company page, and they quickly agreed that it made sense for them. Later, once established and credible, we will create a group.

Here are some of the things you’ll be able to do with a company page:

• provide company status updates
• present a complete company overview
• show your products and services
• build a recommendation showcase
• use analytics to learn about your followers

How do you find a company page? From the LinkedIn navigation bar at the top of every page where you’ll see “Search Companies.”

The first thing that jumps out is privacy. Facebook works on what is essentially a one-to-all sharing model, and while you can manage post visibility through lists and group privacy settings, it isn’t that easy to do. Google+ is structured around “Circles” which are private groups. It’s easy to share specific information with the group you want to see it. In response to “Circles,” Facebook is in the process of updating its privacy and location control settings, so Google’s edge here may soon go away.

For ease of use, Google+ again has the edge. It is simpler, easier to understand and use.

It is the same with the chat feature, which functions better than Facebook, both for texting and for video chat. “Hangouts” is a Google+ feature that lets users join group video chats. You can send messages during the hangout and watch YouTube videos as a group. Facebook recently launched video calling that is powered by Skype, but there is not a free of charge way to create group video chats though one-on-one video chats are possible.

Google+ with “Sparks” offers a basic news reader. Here users can create customized news feeds that will stream stories from all over the web on topics of interest. This differs from the Facebook news feed which focuses on your friends.

In Facebook, you only get posts and status updates from people who are your friends. In Google+, you have the option to see updates from people you aren’t following but who are following you. As well, you can “hangout” with people who are not in your “circle.”

Interestingly, since the introduction of Google+, usage is trending toward people who are younger (under 35 years old) and wealthier. As always, marketers face quite a challenge to develop the right social media strategies. The landscape always changes and flexibility is key to social media success. Google+ is starting to get traction in Europe. While not yet important enough to build social media marketing campaigns around, it may be soon. Here are some statistics pertaining to  Google+ users from July:

U.S. 433,000
UK 39,000
Germany 26,000
France 23,00
Spain 20,000

Google+ is Google’s social media project that, they say, is not intended to compete with Facebook but is designed to make the entire Google experience more social. But clearly, it is intended to maintain Google’s web dominance in light of the Facebook threat.

To give you some insight, so you can determine if Google+ should become part of your social media marketing strategy, here’s what it offers…

In an effort to closely mirror “real life,” it is designed around social circles. Users create separate circles that include only selected friends, family or colleagues. You can have family in one circle, co-workers in another, social connections in another and so on. You can even have a circle of one person that is your boss. By posting to one circle at a time, you can send messages that are private to each, and not seen by all your connections at once. You can interact with your circle of co-workers on work issues and connect separately with your circle of friends to plan a Saturday night at the cinema. Or post the photo of you at a late night party for your friends to see without worrying that an HR manager would see it when you’re looking for a new job.

Google+ also offers “hangouts,” where, as they say, “the unplanned meet-up comes to the web for the first time.” You can let specific people or entire circles know you’re hanging out and see who drops by for a face-to-face-to-face chat.

To solve a frustration many of us have, they’ve included “Instant Upload” which automatically takes photos and videos from your phone and posts them to a Google+ album. I haven’t tested this yet, but am looking forward to seeing if this is as easy as they make it sound.

By leveraging its immense search capability, Google+ will aggregate content based on your interests. I wrote about LinkedIn Today last week, and the Google+ feature called “Sparks” works the same way. You tell it what you like and it comes back with things to watch, read or share. And it gets smarter as you use it.
Finally, group texting is offered in the “Huddle.” You can text chat with a group of friends, saving a lot of time and giving your thumbs a rest.

What do you think? In a future blog, I’ll compare it to Facebook.

LinkedIn Today is a full website, with multiple navigation tabs that are customized just for you. When I go to the site, my navigation includes marketing, publishing, public relations, and online media. Under each topic, there are headlines, articles, links, related topics and more.

I’m sure you’ve noticed the articles that appear on your personal home page. These are driven by LinkedIn Today, and represent the 3 top headlines in your categories of interest.

Without taking any action, you have interesting content. But going a step farther, it is presented to you in a priority order that is determined by the general LinkedIn public at large. “Trending” topics, the most read articles, appear at the top of the list. This saves you a lot of time by getting you to the highest quality content right away.

The type of SLA offered by various hosting vendors we researched varied widely. The “guarantee” for server uptime was consistently very high (99%), but there are many other things that are important to keeping a website running smoothly. What happens if a server OS upgrade creates a conflict with the website application, for example? Who steps in to help out, and how fast will they respond?

After using price and performance yardsticks to identify two hosting companies that we could recommend to our client, one of the key factors for making the final decision will be the SLA. One company offers a complete SLA that includes server maintenance and accessibility. The other offers an SLA only for accessibility. Of course, there is a price difference between the offers. So my client will have to decide if he wants to take the “risk” of having potential downtime and additional expense or save money. The risk is minimal, so the choice is not easy.

But I hope this example shows you why an SLA is important and how, in many cases, it is a critical factor in the choice of a vendor. Please comment if you have questions.

As soon as people realized that one way Google derived organic ranking is by determining how many external sites link back to a company’s site, unethical webmasters and SEO agencies placed the same content on multiple URLs. This immediately created a lot of links, which makes a company look like it has a powerful web presence. And, of course, Google caught on to this very quickly, and now “duplicate content” will negatively affect your organic ranking. It is to be avoided at all costs.

Legitimate and effective SEO works when you create back-links to your site with reputable, relevant external sites. This happens naturally as people write or post content about your company. Or you can boost your ranking by placing content as widely as possible throughout the web. Here are some things you can do:

1. Use Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter to place content with a link back to the relevant page on your site
2. Place press releases (we maintain a list of 50 reputable sites that will post press releases)
3. Write and publish articles
4. Place content on YouTube and Flickr
5. Use social media bookmarking (placing content on relevant social sites)
6. Maintain a blog (at a separate URL so it can link back to your site)

Of course, developing a good set of keywords makes all of this work. Be sure you’ve done the research and selected keywords that have a good chance of success. It takes time to generate the content you need for SEO success, so think of your keywords as an investment. You’re investing in them over time, with the goal of generating a lot of website traffic and turning it into new business.

For many companies, this basic messaging boilerplate either doesn’t exist or is not clearly defined. Even if it exists, many employees are not asked to learn it. So how does a company develop this pitch?

It starts with research. Analyze the positioning messages of competitors to determine what their highest level messages are and how they use them, in tag lines, boilerplates, etc. Then see how your company stacks up against them by doing a traditional SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats).

During your internal analysis, keep your target audiences at the top of your mind. What are their problems/challenges and how can you solve them? This process will lead you to a “value proposition” or “unique selling proposition” that states the benefit of your company to its audiences while differentiating it from your competitors.

This may sound straightforward, but after having helped many companies through this messaging process, it isn’t easy. It always amazes me that many times key stakeholders will hold widely different views about the company’s core value proposition. Marketers need to play psychologist and hold an encounter group for the M-team while using “active listening” to move the process along until a breakthrough moment is achieved. I’ve seen this take many meetings over several days to get consensus.

At the end, the value proposition should contain:

1. Definition of what the company does
2. Clear statement of how it benefits the target audiences
3. Differentiating message

Try packing all this into one concise sentence! And be sure to use some keywords while you’re at it. Now you see why many companies don’t take this on or really struggle with it.

But I began by saying you have 30 seconds to give your pitch. The next step is to take the 3 elements of the value proposition and create supporting points for each. This will enable you to justify and explain what you do, how you’re different and why it is needed.

Once you’ve achieved this, be sure people throughout your business know it by heart.

So, as I’m leaving soon for a short vacation, I don’t have much time to blog this week. Following my own advice, here are some links I hope you will enjoy to trade fairs and conferences in cities around Europe. Here’s your chance to travel to an exciting city, learn, network – and write off the trip!

Ad Tech London 21 and 22 September 2011
Latest Trends in Marketing and Advertising
http://www.ad-techlondon.co.uk/

Viscom Paris 27 – 29  September 2011
International Event for Visual Communication
http://www.viscom-paris.com/site/GB,C5442,I5442.htm?KM_Session=cfb67cd7197a079e70a21101a41dcd42

Suisse Emex Zurich 23 – 25 August 2011
Marketing Exposition and Conference
http://www.suisse-emex.ch/de/international/english/

dmexco Cologne 21– 22 September
Digital Marketing Exposition and Conference
http://www.dmexco.de/

LeWeb’11 Paris 7 – 9 December
#1 Internet European Event
http://www.leweb.net/

And why not somewhere more exotic!

PromoTurk Istanbul 22 – 25 September
International Premium and Promotional Items Exhibition
http://www.ite-promo.com/

Please comment and tell us of any others you think should be on the list.

There are many content management systems. Some are proprietary and others are open source. Each system has its own strengths and weaknesses, and many focus on specialized applications. At the beginning of any web project, the client and agency need to evaluate the required functionality and decide which CMS is best.

And there is another important decision to make: whether to use a proprietary or open source CMS. From my perspective, for general applications it is essential to choose take the open source route. To help you understand why, I can give an example from a current project we are working on.

We were brought in to create a marketing plan for a new web portal, then to determine the website architecture that would implement it. We did this, and designed the portal as well. The client had already contracted with a web development company that uses a proprietary CMS to develop the portal. While there is no question that the functionality offered is comprehensive, the limitations became painfully apparent. First, much of the interface and navigation was pre-determined, so we could not create a simple, clear user experience. Next, design compromises had to be made. Then, social media integration for automated processes was not possible. Finally, and most troubling, the client decided to develop an application outside the CMS that they wanted to integrate into the portal. While possible, this is difficult to accomplish. All the time and cost saving went out the window.

So, with such great open source PHP-based CMS’s available (Drupal, Joomla for example), think twice before accepting proprietary solutions!