A Top-Ten List for Digital Communications

By: John Stone
04/07/09

To succeed in marketing and communications, you need to tie digital communications channels together and understand your audience.

There is a lot of discussion about social media today and my colleagues, Chris Brogan, and his team of pirates in the New Marketing Labs are paving the way with their leading work in this area. We are often asked how social media marketing fits into a broader strategy of digital marketing and communications. What is the new role of the corporate web site, newsletters and eMail? How do we tie in our event marketing and focus our strategic sales teams? How do we focus limited marketing resources and messages on the right targets?

Many elements of this new media landscape are easy to implement; the challenge is in tying them all together into a unified platform and using them to pursue an effective overall strategy.Let’s outline some of the communication channels and considerations you might have in using them effectively:

eMail - still a critical -if not over-used - channel for audience engagement. In particular, email is one of your key push communication channels that does not rely on your audience seeking you out. In general, I recommend “opt-in” or permission marketing models that engage users based on their intent, however, to inform your audience about an offering and trigger a conversion, email is a great tool. An approach that works well for me is when the sender recognizes my device and sends text-only to my handset (HTML is OK on my browser) and I like it when they make the communication very clear - with headlines and links to read more if I chose. As long as the opt-out features are clear, I don’t mind receiving emails, but the more I get the more I the messages get lost.

eNewsletters - I like the newsletter approach. When I get one from a credible source, I know I may find some valuable content and insights. It is great when I the eNewsletter has web 2.0 tools that allow me to send to a friend or save a link to favorites. From a marketers point of view, all the clicks and links in the newsletter are trackable and I can see who among my audience are reading what items. This insight into the audience intent allows met to engage them in dialog about their interests.

Digital Video /YouTube/ Viddler - I love the eTrade ads and for a brand like eTrade, what a great way to syndicate and extend the views of these commercials. We are in a “video generation” and with the proliferation of products, syndicated video is a great way to learn about products and services. The web is a great way to distribute your infomercials and educational product information - both through your own channels and through web syndication.

Webinars and Twebinars - One of the best ways we have to engage an audience is with Webinar channels. These are typically 1 hour educational programs and are great ways to engage an “opt-in” interested audience in a deeper level of content and conversation. These presentations and conversations demonstrate our expertise and also help describe the solutions we can deliver. Registration information gives me the list of attendees that I can nurture before, during and after the event. The audience has expressed their intent and given me “permission” to engage them in the dialog. As an example, we are planning a series of Webinars with the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium as part of our strategic partnership and sponsorship of this event. An innovative approach that we often use is the Twebinar - a synchronization of a webinar and live Twitter dialog.

Web Site and Landing Pages - This could easily have been the first item on this list and and a web site remains one of the most important vehicles for brand communications. Today, your web site is only one of the many touchpoints that your audience will use to see your content or engage in conversations about your brand, products and services. When you are communicating across the web through social media and communities, you (and others) will be sharing links to landing pages within your web site. Your web site needs to have a strong visual design that is consistent with your brand image, a clear and understandable user interface and information architecture, rich content to engage the audience and strong conversion points or “calls to action” with the ability to follow-through with what you are promoting, e.g. attend an event, buy a product, register for a service. With the right tailored content and web 2.0 features, your content will be extended across the web (e.g. with RSS feeds and technology) and your organic (non paid) search visibility can be particularly strong. For specialized search terms and offerings, you can also selectively use paid search terms and increase click results.
Blogs and Wikis - A blog roll that combines your (and external) credible blog posts from your thought leader community can be a terrific way to maintain a fresh content approach on your site and engage your audience with some ideas and frameworks for discussion. You should encourage active blog participation with your team and extend the publication of blog posts based on their content and value. You can also use wikis to engage on the co-creation process for projects and product development.

Social Networks and Communities - You should have a presence on the social networks, and stay engaged in the conversations. Set up a Facebook Group and fan page and manage it with content and links. You also can use a Twitter presence to communicate updates about opinions, events you are sponsoring/ speaking at, new blog posts, interesting conversations taking place in online community. LinkedIn is usually thought of as a tool for individual networking, and while it is excellent for that, it is also a great way to build a community. Check out the MIT CIO Symposium Group on LinkedIn. Use LinkedIn and Plaxo profiles to share blog posts and news items that may trigger a dialog. If you want to move up the maturity curve, consider whether building an OpenSocial application on Facebook or elsewhere that can further engages your audience. Depending on your community, you may want to host and manage your own exclusive “velvet rope” space to engages your members with exclusive content, and provide member-to-member interaction, member profiles, and member publishing options that foster continued interest and engagement in the community.

Mobile & Smartphone - the popularity of the iPhone and Blackberry platforms are clear indications that you need a presence on these devices. While you can rely on individuals engaging your website directly from this smaller form factors using a WAP interface, a more advanced offering - a native mobile application - can provide your audience with a far better audience engagement experience. Apple’s AppStore has been a huge success and Blackberry and Nokia and others are now launching similar services. These capabilities facilitate easy downloading of applications to the device. If your audience is mobile and would like to engage you through mobile devices, you will need a comprehensive mobile delivery strategy.

Event Registration - Live events remain a key element of a community engagement strategy. No digital network can fully replace the value of face-to-face meetings and dialog. Your registration systems not only must provide the right level of sophistication for event data management (show types, products, payments, on site badge printing etc. ) but it should also provide you the insights on your audience and their intent as well as a marketing list for your sales team to engage.

Audience Intelligence - advanced data management and dashboards are important in pulling all the information together about your audience and gaining greater business intelligence about the performance of your campaign tactics and your audience channel, service and content preferences. Some of the online channels will not have personally identifying information - and you won’t have a complete correlation of your RSS subscribers, blog readers, web site visitors and your event attendees, however by combining advanced social media listening tools, web analytics, and your registered users/ attendee information, you will gain an increasingly strong picture of what is working and what is not working in your marketing programs.