Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

I’ve been working hard on creating a new brand for a client. It has been thrilling and frustrating at once, depending on the moment (as most branding projects are). I got a cartoon by Tom Fishburne and Skydeck Cartoons called “The 8 Types of Bad Creative Critics” from one of my coworkers on the project which summed it up perfectly; and really made me laugh.

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Michael Rudnick created a space for all of the presentations given at the ALI Social Media 2007 Summit, held last week in Chicago. I posted my pre-conference workshop (three hours on the basics of blogging) there.

Thanks so much, Michael!

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I had a friend ask me about quantifying social media metrics. Here’s my answer - most specifically about blogging:

Awareness -

1) Brand awareness online can be enhanced. Marqui improved from 2000 Google results to 248,000 within two weeks of launch of our “paybloggers” promotion, and climbed to more than 600,000 results while I was there.

We achieved greater brand awareness for a 24-person software company than many larger, longer established companies.

2) Thought leadership - web sites with lots of activity and inbound links are immediately valued as having ‘more authority’ than other sites. Blogging - in particular - drives activity (fresh content) and inbound links. (If you do it well).

3) Word of Mouth (WOM) - consumers trust each other more than media, and the internet is the only medium in which trust is rising, according to Forrester. If you’re having active, transparent conversations online with customers, prospects and influencers, you can generate positive WOM - or diffuse negative WOM by being publicly and immediately responsive.

Product / Market Research -

Ask your customers and prospects to give you feedback, and (because of the simplicity commenting online) you’ll gain immediate qualitative insight into your product/market expectations.

Leads and Sales -

1) Companies have built themselves and marketed themselves entirely around a blog (Clip-N-Seal) or leveraged bloggers to get the word out about their products (Stormhoek wines, etc.) in a relatively low-cost, viral manner.

2) As a result of our “paybloggers” program, we were able to establish ourselves as thought leaders in the blogosphere + “marketing 2.0″ space, and routinely generated 1500-5000 leads / month (via whitepapers and web-based presentations) for Marqui’s sales team.

3) As mentioned above, links and fresh content improve your ‘find-ability’ online significantly. As people increasingly go online to research products before they buy (online and in brick and mortar stores) your company/products need to be coming up into the top of search engine results. A blog is a great way to augment (or spend fewer) SEM dollars - because you get twice the buzz.

Customer Satisfation

Satisfied customers are given a voice, and dissatisfied customers are also given a forum to speak - and (when handled well) companies will benefit from transparency and honestly handling potentially volatile situations - it’s like the Tylenol scare. When issues crop up, you can hit them head on, instantly, and create more goodwill by being honest and straightforward.

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Considering moving your web site to a new web site address?

First, think about it long and hard.

I’ve considered moving my site from janetleejohnson.com to ojohnsonpartners.com, since that’s my business name. But moving your web site to a new domain name is not a simple process.

When I was at Marqui, we moved our blog address and lost all the inbound links - which then took forever to rebuild, and we never actually were able to regain the links we had before we moved to a new domain name.
Need to do it anyway?  Here’s a fantastic step-by-step explanation for how to do it, if you’re up for it.

It contains some very practical tips for marketers to consider as you plot your name change.

Ross Dunne, you’re a gem. Thank you for the wisdom shared.

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I’m at SEMpdx today, which is a full day conference for those interested in trends in Search Engine Marketing. I was fortunate to represent SnapNames and speak on a panel this morning for the advanced track - our topic was Web 2.0 and RSS.

The room was full, and my fellow panelists were Doug Hay from Expansion+, Dan Harbison from the Portland Trailblazers and John Hartman from Feedia. It’s always fun to put four voices together on a panel and mix it up.

I’m waiting for a panel discussion on Advanced SEO - wondering whether I’ll be able to keep up. (I’m a relative novice at anything more than the basics of Search Engine Marketing…)
So here we go!

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