Choosing the content management system (CMS) for your company can make you a star player if implemented correctly or banished to the basement for making an expensive mistake.

Photo courtesy of advance to prosper

Our CMS experts have been implementing content management systems since 1999 and we would like to share our knowledge with you. In this webinar, the Wakefly team will guide you through our five step process to a successful implementation as well as show you some common pitfalls.

Mistakes in the CMS selection process can cost thousands of dollars, shorten the website’s life- cycle and greatly increase the cost of ownership for any website. By following Wakefly’s five step CMS selection process, you can ensure that you have chosen the right platform in the correct online environment to meet all of your web development and marketing goals.

If you’re planning on launching, redesigning or developing a B2B website, our webinar will guide you through the process of choosing an appropriate content management system (CMS) and avoiding common selection, design and development pitfalls.

Who should attend: Anyone planning to launch, redesign or develop a B2B website.

Join us on Thursday, July 22nd at 1 p.m. Eastern to learn about Star Player or Banished to the Basement: Choosing a B2B Enterprise Content Management System
Duration: 45 minutes

I hope to see you there.

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Lately, many of our web re-design projects involve migrating existing content from a database into a .net content management system. I spoke with a few of our certified Kentico trainers and web developers about the best way to integrate Kentico with a back end database that contains content that needs to be migrated to a new website.

Here are five tips:

1. Prior to the migration, update your database by removing any pages that will not appear on the new website. The decision whether to include a page in the new website will be determined by the new site map. 
2. Assess the existing content and determine what document types will be needed in Kentico and create them. For example, you may want to use the document types for press releases and products and create custom ones. Generally, custom document types will have fields that match the tables in the old database.
3. Place the design templates into Kentico. Templates are created using HTML, CSS and images.
4. Write a script to automatically migrate this content into Kentico, utilizing Kentico’s API.  
5. Once the content is migrated into Kentico, you will be able to modify any of the existing copy and add new copy using the document types.

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I just responded to a question posted on Linked In. The question was “How to decide between PPC and SEO”.

My view is that you should look at PPC and SEO as a “one – two punch”. Many of our clients who are launching a new or re-designed website will do PPC for the first several months and then taper that off as the SEO/organic picks up. The reason for this approach is:

1. PPC generates results in 24-48 hours
2. PPC gives you a “quick hit” in terms of driving traffic to your site
3. PPC is a good way to test the effectiveness of a keyword. You should then employ that learning toward your SEO/organic efforts.

Long term, you want your leads to come from SEO/organic because:

1. It’s cheaper than PPC.
2. Once you’re highly optimized, it’s hard for your competition to displace you. With PPC, your position can be displaced by someone who bids more than you.
3. As you become more optimized for your keywords, your PPC rates decrease. You’re actually “rewarded” in a sense for being organically optimized. 

If you’re not getting your desired ROI on your PPC efforts, consider the following:

1. What do your landing pages look like?
2. Have you tested the ad copy?
3. We’ve written a bunch of blogs on both PPC and landing pages. Here are just a few. To see more, go to our site and do a search. http://blog.wakefly.com/?Tag=B2B+PPC+Tactics,       http://blog.wakefly.com/bid/10414/A-few-tips-on-effective-landing-pages

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Is Blogging really going to benefit my business?

The simple answer to this question is ‘Yes’, blogging will benefit your business. But you can’t just create a blog and leave it as a static, dead page on the internet. Your blog has to be dynamic and alive – it is the platform that facilitates your conversations and creates dialogue with a global audience. In an earlier post we highlighted ways in which businesses can create a successful blog.

MarketingSherpa’s 2009 Social Media Marketing & PR Benchmark Guide provides a comprehensive overview of why Social Media Marketing is important. We looked at some key aspects of the report and came up with our evaluation of why blogging is an important component of the Social Media Marketing mix and how it can greatly benefit businesses:

1. Brand Awareness and Engagement – As Inbound Marketing techniques take precedence over traditional marketing practices, more and more companies are working to create an online presence. With putting up a website online comes the challenge of projecting a positive brand image. It is all about being found and getting heard. Blogs help businesses get found by their customers. Through a blog, a business can create meaningful content which helps to create brand awareness. It also helps brands engage with their online customers.

2. Better Search Engine Visibility – Blogs are platforms that effectively facilitate powerful online conversations. The best part about having a blog is that it will dramatically increase your Search Engine rankings. Content on a blog gets updated more frequently than content in other parts of the site. This gives businesses a better chance to rank for dozens of keywords. If you produce remarkable content people will share your content on their sites – on micro blogging platforms (e.g. twitter) and on various other Social Media sites (Facebook, Digg, Linkedin etc.), this in turn will make your site more popular with Search Engines.

3. Greater outreach: Increase in your Web Traffic – When your Search Engine visibility increases your traffic will definitely increase. A recent study conducted by Hubspot shows that active blogs draw 6.9 times more traffic. Hubspot states that, “We can infer from the chart that blogging, which is equivalent to content building, helps attract more site visitors. The rationale is similar: more blog articles mean more chances to create something that grabs readers’ attention and indirectly build up a company’s reputation.”

4. New relationships – Creating a brand online or harnessing powerful communication through online channels can only happen when you make your brand more accessible. One of the key benefits of putting content on a blog is that it will attract new people to your site and help strengthen existing relationships with your customers. Remember that people are already having conversations about you on the internet. It is important that you have a voice and you project a positive image for your brand. Putting content out there helps in getting found by potential customers and it opens the field for dialogue. Content on a blog can be easily accessed by a global audience; this helps brands create new meaningful relationships. 

5. Ongoing Dialogue – Traditional marketing channels always dictated what the brand was or how it could be perceived. With the increased adoption of social media we have seen a shift in that trend. Today, it is all about having a conversation with your customers. Blogging is a multi-way platform (brand ↔ customer, customer ↔ customer) and you can no longer dictate.

• “Your brand is no longer what you say it is, it’s what they say it is
• Social media is where they-customers, prospects, journalists and other influences-are having conversations (reviewing and talking) about your brand
• They’re forming and sharing opinions that will impact your brand. Therefore, a social media strategy is needed to cultivate interactions and dialogue”. (Omniture report 2010)
Blogging is one of the core components of a great social media strategy. Through a blog you can engage your customers, readers, prospects, journalists, tech experts etc. into meaningful conversations.

6. Brand Leadership – Studies by Omniture, MarketingSherpa, Hubspot etc. have revealed that in our social media led societies people are already having conversations about your brand. Blogging can help nurture your brand online. The content of your blogs can help you brand yourself as a “thought leader” in your industry. It can also help you gain your customers trust and loyalty. 

Do you want to learn tips and techniques to blog successfully? Wakefly is hosting a free ‘Blogging for Success’ webinar on March 18, 2010 at 1 PM EST. Go to www.wakefly.com/webinar to register. 

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Is your B2B business stuck in the old mentality of mailing print catalogues and sales information to customers? Well, that way of doing business may have another digital nail in its coffin:

The U.S. Postal Service may be forced to eliminate a day of mail service because the economic downturn has led to plummeting volume and revenue, the postmaster general said Wednesday.

Postmaster General John E. Potter, in testimony before a Senate subcommittee, warned of a possible worst-case scenario: eliminating the requirement to deliver mail six days a week to every address in America.

More businesses are bypassing the post office, and for good reason: it’s expensive and slow. In fact, Marc Andreessen recommends that print publications suspend their physical editions and force themselves to focus on their online properties. In a green-conscious world, such a move would help to protect the environment — junk mail reportedly
kills 2.6 million trees and produces 1 billion pounds of trash each year. But more importantly, B2B companies like trade publications can save large amounts of money — no paper, no ink, no printing presses, no page designers, no print-advertising departments, and so on. Obviously it costs far less to publish a website than a print publication. In addition, your B2B business can increase web traffic and advertising revenue by using cheap methods like SEO, PPC, and social media as well as Google Adsense and Adwords.

Most executives and managers are already beginning to realize this new paradigm. But do they realize that they can move all of their print media online? Think about it. Everything can be online in the modern, digital world: sales catalogues and brochures, sales-order paperwork, customer service, product specifications, and more. What, really, do you need to send in the mail anymore?

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We receive a lot of requests from people who are re-designing their websites to explain the benefits of building their website with a content management system (“CMS”). One of the CMS that gets mentioned a lot is Kentico, an off the shelf asp.net powered CMS. The questions people ask us about Kentico pretty much fall into a few categories, including:

1. Editing and creating content – “how easy is it to use for a non-technical person?”
2. Scalability and flexibility – “how scalable is it”, meaning “what features does it have that will allow me to grow my site as our needs evolve over time?”
3. Search Engine Marketing – “how does it help with/fit in with my search engine marketing initiatives?”

Because we have these conversations all the time, we decided to start the Kentico Implementation Group in LinkedIn as a way to pose and answer questions about the Kentico CMS in a group setting.

If you’re interested in joining, or if you know someone who will benefit from the discussions we have on the Kentico Implementation Group, please do a search for “Kentico Implementation Group” in Linked and request to join.

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In an effort to improve its brand in the minds of customers, Bank of America (BAC) has increased its spending on digital marketing — but decreased its investment in traditional outlet including television and print.

Photo courtesy of petermcmahon.com.au

“We’re not abandoning any of those forms of media,” BoA head of marketing Claire Huang told an audience at Advertising Age’s Digital Conference. “But we’re realizing that digital not only allows you to provide information, you can have real, live connections. It’s not just a flat little square box you have two seconds to look at.”

Huang was responding to a query from panelist Tim Armstrong, the CEO of AOL, who also talked about his firm’s branding activities. “When I first started at AOL, a lot of people gave me advice to remove the AOL brand from the company,” Armstrong said. “I talked to a lot of different partners, and the fact is there’s a tremendous amount of goodwill behind the brand, which was so unexpected. So we made a decision to stay behind the brand.”

The two companies said the solution was to publish more online content (although using different methods). BoA is increasing its digital presence by harnessing internal efforts like new texting, Twitter, and webcasts rather than spending more on online advertising.

“Traditional advertising of digital like search and banner ads has shrunk a little bit,” Huang said. “We’re actually making our own content because we have the content experts.” For example, Merrill Lynch (a unit of BoA) hired Charlie Gibson to talk about retirement planning on a panel discussion that was webcast from the company’s website.

Armstrong also addressed concerns that such arrangements may cast a shadow on the journalism industry. “My belief is that when you hire a great journalist, you’re hiring their network, and not just their Twitter network; journalists are networks themselves,” he said.

AOL has recently hired many journalists from those recently laid-off by traditional outlets, and the company may be a reporter’s haven. Still, Armstrong added that AOL is also planning content in response to reader requests — a tactic that contrasts with the traditional model of journalism in which the editor and reporter are the experts.

“Content has been historically done in a vacuum,” he said. “So we’re continuing to work on it, so two months from now AOL will be very accurate at producing content. The investments we’re making for improved use of technology for content will be a long-term net positive. I think we’re a great place for journalists. We have church and state at AOL.”

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Twitter might seem like a waste of time and only a tool for friends to keep in touch. But Twitter is invaluable for business because the 140-character messages can include a website link shortened using websites like bit.ly and tinyurl.

Photo courtesy of culch.ie

Businesses can use these tools in a variety of ways:

1. Driving Website Traffic. Tweets can be written to get readers to click on a listed Web address. Now, the exposure is doubled because tweets now appear regularly in search engines results from Google.
2. It is Free. Creating an account does not cost a cent; the only expense is time.
3. Staying Up-to-Date. Breaking-news events can spread throughout the world in a matter of seconds, so following Twitter users in your industry is a good way to keep abreast of the news while you are doing social-media marketing.
4. Staying Informed. Following thought-leaders in your sector — and even your competitors, clients, and partners — is a good way to learn valuable information and the latest trends.
5. Reinforcing a Brand. Highlight tweets with your ideas, opinions, and expertise will promote your brand among your followers. By making a great first impression, loyal followers will be gained.
6. Staying in Touch. Twitter is a fast way to keep in touch with current and prospective clients. Since others can retweet (forward) your posts on Twitter, it helps with viral marketing.
7. Sharing Information. Retweeting a message about something your followers would like is a way to build your reputation — it shows that you are on Twitter not only to benefit yourself.

These are just some of the ways that Twitter can benefit a company, and the same principles hold true for other sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.

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You probably already know that Google ranks websites with more inbound links higher in search results. You also probably know that links from higher-authority websites — like those with a high Page Rank from Google — build your site’s authority as well.

But you probably don’t know that certain categories of websites have an inherent value — namely, government websites (.gov), university websites (.edu), and non-profit organizations (.org) — because these sites are authorities in and of themselves. After all, a link from the State Department, Harvard University, or the Red Cross is better than one from a random blog even if it ranks highly.

It might be difficult to get a link from government or educational website, but it is easier to obtain one from a charity. Here’s how.

First, most companies — especially larger ones — devote a certain percentage of their time and money towards community charities. Why not combine your efforts: help the needy, and market your company online as well.

1. Visit www.volunteermatch.org. Non-profit organizations advertise their needs for volunteers here, and you can search by either locality or need. (For example, you can search in “Boston,” or you can search by “SEO.”)
2. Research their Page Rank. Once you have a list of possibilities, look up the Page Rank of each website. Then, offer your services to a charity whose website ranks highly. Volunteer to optimize their website. Serve on their development (fundraising) committee. Make a good donation.
3. Get listed on their website. Of course, you’ll probably want to do this delicately — after all, it’s a charity. Many non-profit organizations have pages listing their partners — sometimes even on the home page — and they add volunteers automatically. Or, you may need to ask politely to be added. (Just confirm that the links are NOT “no-follow.”)
4. Enjoy the benefits! This is one of the few times in business when it is a win-win situation. Not only will you and your company be helping those in need, your website will also rank more highly in search engines. Good news for everyone!

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By now you probably know that social networks like Facebook are an opportunity to market your local business. But what really are the precise, measurable benefits? In essence, does it actually work in practice? Well, someone no less than the Harvard Business Review has studied the question, and the answer is — yes!

Harvard Business Review partnered with Dessert Gallery, a popular bakery and café chain in Houston by surveying customers, setting up a Facebook page, and then surveying them again. And here were the results:

As it turned out, Facebook changed customer behavior for the better. People who had replied to both surveys and had become fans ended up being DG’s best customers: Though they spent about the same amount of money per visit, they increased their store visits per month after becoming Facebook fans and generated more positive word of mouth than nonfans. They went to DG 20% more often than nonfans and gave the store the highest share of their overall dining-out dollars. They were the most likely to recommend DG to friends and had the highest average Net Promoter Score—75, compared with 53 for Facebook users who were not fans and 66 for customers not on Facebook. DG fans also reported significantly greater emotional attachment to DG—3.4 on a four-point scale, compared with 3.0 for other customers. Additionally, fans were the most likely to say they chose DG over other establishments whenever possible.

Photo courtesy the Harvard Business Review.

Of course, this was one Facebook page set up for one business by one esteemed institution. Your B2C or B2B business should not expect the exact, same results. However, what the study does show is that a Facebook Page, when created and executed properly, can be a tremendous asset. So, it is definitely worth doing.

Moreover, social-media marketing can work even better for B2B companies than B2C ones. The sales cycle for most B2C companies is short — people walk in and make an impulse purchase, or they see an advertisement and decide to try the product. However, the B2B sales cycle is much longer. Potential clients discuss pricing and options with companies — and their competitors — for a long time before coming to a decision, especially when the sale or service would be set for an extended period of time or a large amount of money. Since one goal of social-network marketing is to create an interactive sense of community on a long-term basis, this goal suits B2B companies that must engage current and potential clients over the long haul. (For example, your prospects likely already follow your pages on Facebook and Twitter — if you have them — as part of their evaluation process.)

If you are considering whether to have a Facebook page — or, more likely, you have one but are unsure how to use it — let me know. I’d be glad to help. The cost is small — Facebook is free except for the time and labor involved — but the benefits are potentially enormous.

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