Corporate Web StrategyWeb Marketing ideas, tactics, trends and more….

The beauty about social media is not about the various ways you let your audience link your site to various social media channels, but more of how you use these social media channels effectively for your benefit.

If you think by putting Facebook, Twitter or Linked-in links on your site is adequate to count for social media presence, you need to think again. Social media is no longer just about the ability to be able to share your site’s content with others.

Social media is about interaction – having a personality behind that social media account and be able to interact with your customers via social media. It means expanding your corporate presence beyond your website. It also means taking your customer’s opinion seriously, and being wiling to take and act on open negative criticism.

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When a corporate website is first conceptualized, one of the first things that come to mind is the website structure.

How best can we architecture our web structure so that it’s relevant, up-to-date, functional and easy to navigate, all at the same time?

I also call this as the online customer journey THROUGH your website.

Some small businesses will have no problem creating this. A basic structure would be About Us, Products, Services, Contact Us, etc. However, if you have a more complex business, you’d have products, sub-products, demos, services, offers, more sub categories, and much more.

How do you plan your customer journey so that they see what you WANT them to see, depending on what they are looking for?

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In Jeremiah Owyang’s post – Reinforcing Customer Service in Social Mediums, he asks for submissions of experiences where social media has proven to be more effective, efficient and helpful in customer service.

Today, I will attempt to explore some considerations when it comes to adopting social media as a viable channel to manage customer service in an organization.

There was a comment posted by Sean Odriscall on how he believes that implementing such a change would require extensive business process reengineering, planning as well as a redefinition in measurement metrics. It’s not merely as simple as creating and engaging with an online community.

I totally agree with Sean in this area, but I also believe that if such a change would give a company an apparent competitive advantage, it should definitely be explored. Perhaps a preliminary study on the extent of how social media is currently being used to engage customers in an organization, and the effectiveness of such relationships would help to provide a perspective towards a full and official adoption of social media in organizations.

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Social Media is THE hot topic today. There are hundreds and thousands of sites offering tips on social media usage and trends. However, if you are creating a web strategy you probably need more information on trends, ideas, and a great deal of substance.

Here’s a review of 10 of the most social media sites I have found most useful in helping me craft my corporate web strategies:

1)   Jeremiah Owyang

With roots originating from Forrester, Jeremiah Owyang’s blog is a wealth of knowledge from the viewpoint of an analyst. Read his blog, and you’ll find deep insights on the impact of social media on the marketplace or your marketplace. If you are seeking for social media research, you’ll sure to find lots here. With Jeremiah being part of Altimeter now, the current focus of the site right now seems to be on the concept of Social CRM.

2) Social Media Today

This site is probably more of a collection of blog posts contributed by a string of guest authors. Thus, you could probably find lots of social media tips and tricks here, but probably as in depth as you would like. Nevertheless, Social Media Today is a great news site for lighter reading. You’d probably also find some excellent reference documents and webcasts here as well, especially if you are just learning the ropes on social media.

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I get a lot of people excitedly telling me how Twitter is hot, and that Twitter should be incorporated into web marketing. However, stopping short of using Twitter on a personal basis, most people have hardly any ideas on how to integrate twitter into their web strategy.

Furthermore, in Asia, while there are like 1 million Twitter users in Malaysia alone (I’m not sure how many of these are active), most users are still using Twitter on a personal basis. Nevertheless, with iPhones and Blackberries fast gaining ground here, it won’t be long before Twitter will catch on.

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According to the webcast featured in Social Media in Asia, peer networking is the 4^th major influence on buying decisions after Speaker presentations, Research content and virtual events. This means that prospective buyers are consider the opinions of what they listen from their peers within their social networks.

Another interesting aspect is that people in Asia tend to have more friends online, than offline.

Now, how then can companies build on these relationships in their corporate web strategies to help sell more products?

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By now, the majority of employees are participating, interacting and sharing on social sites such Facebook, blogging or Tweeting. As of end 2009 there are an estimated 27.3 tweets per day, 60 million Facebook users and 126 million blog (www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6MfnuvH4Rs) .

At a personal level, people enjoy social media. But how many people actually agree to use social media professionally? How can you convince your tech professionals to maintain a blog on their areas of expertise? How can you bring your long-standing staff to utilize social media for sales, marketing, customer service and PR, when they have been so accustomed to traditional channels?

1) Communicate the vision of incorporating social media into business functions

Employees first need to see the reason why they need to use social media professionally. While many may embrace this positively, they need to understand how their contributions will help to improve company performance in a competitive marketplace.  Provide them with examples of how social media have transformed other organizations, and an overview of how social media will be used in selected functions in the organization.

2) Create a Web Strategy which defines the role of social media in various organizational functions

Most people are reluctant to change, and more often than not, prefer to remain in their comfort zone. To facilitate this transition, create a web strategy plan that details how social media is going to be used in each function. For instance, if social media is to be used within a marketing function, explain how employees can help promote company products and solutions via their social networks – blogs or twitter.

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We’ve all heard all the buzz about social media, and all the stories on how corporations clamber towards social media utilization in their sales and marketing operations.

We hear of the Dell Hell story of how social media cannot be neglected. Suffice to say, corporations and even enterprises have hired talent specifically to manage these online engagements with prospects and customers.  They listen and engage their customers, and identify influential social channels where prospective clients congregate. Simple social media tools such as www.socialmention.com allow companies to measure the level of buzz around their brands.

Along comes Social CRM – a set of tools aimed to help corporations make sense and track the various information and customer relationships that they have built via disparate social media channels. With Social CRM systems adopted, corporations incorporate the social media interactions into multiple customer-facing functions in the company. They are able to have full visibility on past social media relationships the customer have had with them. This allows corporations to react and respond quicker to business engagements than ever before.

How can corporations start integrating Social CRM into their web strategy?

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The steps in creating a corporate Web Marketing plan has its similarities to crafting marketing plans within a traditional (non-web) marketing context.

The first element you need to define would be your product’s (or service’s) value proposition.

How is your product or service better than that of your competitor’s?

How do you communicate that value to your target customers? In other words, what is your value proposition? Why should your customers pick your product over others?

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In the era of Web 2.0, Internet marketing is no longer an “optional” choice within the context of corporate marketing. Web presence has become the norm rather than the exception. For some small enterprises, a simple website or even a free blog page would suffice as a simple virtual representation of the existence of the business.

Thus, the next questions would then be, what can corporations do further to harness the power of the Internet for business expansion or to outperform their competitors? How can organizations incorporate a web marketing strategy as a crucial part of their marketing plan? Is it possible to influence the customer’s purchasing decisions with a solid web marketing strategy?

Surfing through the Internet, I’ve encountered countless of blogs and websites focusing on the “money-making” aspects of Internet Marketing, which would include selling online products, blogging for dollars, selling online Pay Per Click ad space, and to gel it all together, search engine marketing.  On the social media scene, I’m sure you’ve heard all that buzz about Twitter, Facebook and Linked-In.

But how do we put all these concepts to work together for us? We have sites such as www.web-strategist.com that provides analytical insights as well as web and social media trends targeted at Forrester. There are also sites such as www.mashable.com that offers great how-to guides and the latest tech news relevant to social media. Finally, just Google “make money online” and you will probably find a plethora of sites on this topic, in the likes of www.problogger.net, www.johnchow.com or www.courtneytuttle.com.

Ultimately, just by scouring the Internet, business owners should be able to discover piecemeal but valuable social media and web promotion ideas and how-tos. However, in order to stand out from the crowd, corporate marketers and entrepreneurs need to harmonize web tactics with a solid marketing plan and strategy.  Stuff like search engine optimization and social media marketing will only work when there is a master marketing plan in place to drive the direction of web activities.

Only then, would corporations be able to communicate value and drive demand effectively. This comes not just by influencing customers, but also by building relationships and understanding customer needs and requirements, with strategic online conversations.

This has been the pilot post of Corporate Web Marketing, with more insights on corporate web strategy coming soon in future posts. Stay tuned!