So I’m smack in the middle of my vacation with the extended family (intentionally without cellphone/laptop) enjoying the rustic scene at  in Goa, India. Then, disaster strikes. My faithful Sony camcorder, with which I’ve captured many memories/antics during our travels, starts to act up for no apparent reason. Of course, this had to happen miles away from anything except palm trees and the clear blue sea. I should be relaxed in sheer bliss, but now I’m stressing out trying to get the *&^% thing to work. And hey, I’m an engineer, so I’m consumed with finding an immediate solution to the problem (driving the rest of the clan crazy in the bargain). My four-year old is going on his first ride on an elephant, and I’m getting a “C:31:23” error…

What’s all this got to do with Web Presence Management…and what is WPM, you may ask?  There was a time when your brand’s web presence was on a simple multi-page, static brochure-ware website. You built it and visitors/customers came. But then traffic that mattered tapered off, despite your best efforts to keep things dynamic. So what happened? Fast-forward a few years, and you find that of the important “fish” are now in their own favorite ponds. Your customers – and potential leads — talk about you “out there”.  Often enough to spread the word – good or bad – about you. Perhaps some of these words catch your attention. More likely, though, the conversations may never reach you (or even worse, spiral out of control and come to your attention too late).

Back to the beach. Luckily enough, India has leapfrogged an entire telecom generation, avoiding laying out swathes of fixed-line copper infrastructure. So while most folks across the country have no idea about DSL/broadband access except in the major cities, you’ll come across locals in the remotest corners of the country abusing their mobile phones to the utmost. My mobile warrior was Anthony, one of the colorful local fishermen (in the photo) whom I had befriended for our daily source of fresh nutrients, and who supposedly used his connection to get local weather and find out where the fish were en masse. Before you could say the words “fresh fish!”, Anthony had me connected to outside world and (whew!) the Internet. Normally, if technical difficulties had struck  in one of the big metros, I would’ve called a Sony service center and got the camcorder repaired under warranty by a technician. Given my remote location, I went to the Sony website for help. This was like trying to find a specific seashell somewhere along the seven miles of beach stretching out on either side of where I sat with my toes in the sand.

My next step, which in retrospect  should obviously have been the first one, was to type in “C:31:23” in my search engine of choice. Voila…links to scores of discussion forums and communities/blogs with people sharing the same problem. A quick glance at the top few results seem to suggest the BEST SOLUTION is to remove the power and — I quote verbatim from just one of the threads here: “…This may seem silly, but it worked for me. Try smacking the side of the camera relatively hard with the palm of your hand. Eject the tape and reinsert. You may need to do this a couple of times.” I was a bit leery about whacking my $1000+ camcorder with what was clearly not a very “engineering” solution, but hey…I was ready to try anything. After confirming that several users also shared the same opinion (no doubt with varying degrees of success) I directed a fair share of my pent-up frustration on the hapless machine. Yes, this has a happy ending! I was immediately back in business, again capturing loads of video action (much to family’s chagrin, but that’s another story…).

Take Away: It’s time to acknowledge the changing reality around us and do something about it. Sony has a lot going for it, but a lot of bad buzz floating out there too. It’s never too late to smack your web presence back into shape so it does what it’s intended to do: Bring in the best leads, help monitor  — and quickly respond to — the good (and any bad) buzz around you, and ultimately improve your brand image and bottom line. If you agree, sign up for a free consultation today. See how you can create and implement an effective strategy for your web presence going forward.

PS: At the very least, you now know of a low-cost (and low-tech, albeit therapeutic) method to repair any of your seemingly high-tech electronic gadgetry that may malfunction in the future.

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According to the Onion unpopped kernels cost U.S. Billions ever year.  I myself don’t let the unpopped kernels go waste.  I chew them into submission when I am too lazy to stick another bag, right side up, in the microwave. Yes, I know.

This got me thinking.  How much are unpopped kernels costing me in my business?  They are those anonymous visitors that come to my website.  They come back multiple times, clearly looking for something, and sometimes get tantalizingly close to telling me who they are.

Many businesses don’t think too much about unpopped kernels.  They assume that at some point the anonymous will reveal themselves.  This approach has the risk of losing the prospect completely. There should be consistent efforts to:

• Understand what percentage they are – 15%, 35%, 60%?
• How long does it take to convert someone from anonymous to known?
• Be active in conversion.  What are they looking for? Can their content consumption history tell us more about what can be offered to them to help reveal their identity?

Getting back to popcorn, here’s the real story behind unpopped kernels and what scientists are doing to make them all pop.  While I don’t like unpopped kernels on my website, I actually enjoy some in my popcorn.

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SEM seems to be that magic pill that’s exactly what the doctor ordered.  The thinking goes like this.  Google seems to be making fistful of dollars on it, so it should be working for businesses that use them.  The competition uses SEM and “we can’t be left behind”.  If people click and come to our site, “we have a qualified prospect”.  It only cost me “pennies”.

SEM Warning!

Like the warning on the medicine label, SEM can have be downright injurious to your health if taken on an empty stomach.  What do I mean by that?  Before you spend money on SEM, put yourself in the shoes of your prospect.  Your prospect is not going to get “sold” by just visiting your website, however impressive it may be.  She is going to look at validation from the external web – your web presence that is beyond your own website.

In order to experience your web presence yourself, do a quick search on your own business and see what comes up.  Hopefully the first hit is your own website (If not, you have some serious SEO work to do).  If the next few entries are:

a) Your own aborted entry in Wikipedia marked as “maybe an advertisement”, or

b) A press release from 2003 announcing a version 1.01 of your product, or

c) A link to a LinkedIn company page that does not show a strong team, or

d) An industry article or blog entry that mentions your product with negative comments (or even worse with no comments), or

e) A discussion forum showing disgruntled customers, or

f) all of the above,

you might be ingesting SEM on an empty stomach.  Your prospect, now aware of you, thanks to SEM, is now put off by what she finds (or doesn’t) about you.  She’s a blip in the radar, never to be found again.  Your pennies spent on SEM now cost you a bundle by chasing a perfectly good prospect away – maybe for good.

So before you take the SEM pill, make sure your are not doing it on an empty stomach.

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I wish I had an answer to that because I’m tired of answering that question.

The last several years have seen an explosion in the space of point marketing solutions. A space that will define your web presence and include among others solutions for web content management, sites and landing pages management, online communities, webcasts, podcasts, support forums, idea forums, blogs, wikis, polls and surveys, e-mail marketing management, website analytics, lead nurturing, customer relationship management, and search marketing management. There is a plethora of vendor solutions available in each one of these categories.

Oh, Great! So it is a marketer’s perfect world then?

If the world was perfect, it wouldn’t be.

Well, not exactly! What not exactly? Does this sound all too familar? You send out e-mails using vendor A to the list from your desktop Excelsheet that leads to registrations on vendor B for webcasts to be delivered by vendor C and to be archived by vendor D to be posted on the community platform of vendor E activity on which you would like to be progressively sent to your CRM system on vendor F. Somewhere in this mix is your own .com site, with or without a login, and analytics from vendor G. And, that all important copy change that you wanted to make on your site is request #42 for your webmaster/IT, who is working on scripts for your data to flow from vendor A to vendor C (or was it vendor F) so that you can have a more qualified lead for your Sales team. Working across these vendors and your own IT you pray that one more window of opportunity does not close on you ..

Now, you have’nt had enough and want to reach out to your audience with a new podcast or an eBook. What do you do? OK, you send out e-mails using vendor A to the list from your desktop Excelsheet that leads to registrations on vendor B for podcasts to be delivered by vendor C … wait a second!

It’s like deja-vu, all over again.

and, more. Audience Joe has as many profiles and metrics as there are vendors and campaigns. Lucky you, get to consolidate them the fun way on that spreadsheet again or the not so fun way by opening an IT project and wait until .. wait, ..

It gets late early out there.

So you wish there was that one single interface – your own pilot’s dashboard – from where you can control all the aspects of your marketing plane with the best-in-class components for the different functionality and importantly, fly the plane yourself too. Despair not. We are with you there ..

You can observe a lot by just watching.

And, so we did (by watching and participating). Embark on this mission to provide complete web presence management across multiple channels without the multiple vendor overhead, progressive and consolidated 360° optics into target audiences, and tighter integration with sales. Our first product release is cooking in the clouds (force.com platform) for a Jan’09 release. But wait ..

It ain’t over till it’s over.

We have larger and grander plans to make your life easier. We’ll simplify the process on how you can manage your brand’s presence not just on your corporate .com sites but also on the increasing list of social sites where they talk about you, with or without you. So wouldn’t it be great to let us support you in joining these conversations for ..

The future ain’t what it used to be.

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I was registered on Obama’s site for more than a year leading up to the elections.  I was impressed with how his campaign managed his web presence across various channels.  I was also registered at johnmccain.com and hillaryclinton.com so I could follow all the lead characters in the race closely.

Thinking back, as an audience, there were two things that Obama’s campaign did much better than the other campaigns.   First, the consistency in which they kept in touch with their audience.  As audience, there’s something comforting about knowing how often and familiarity with the tone of communication you receive from an organization.  The consistency creates a rhythm for the organization, but more importantly it creates a rhythm for the audience as well.  There were no periods of lull or sudden frenzy that was apparent in the other campaigns.  Second, the complete orchestration of the content of the email campaigns, website, and content distributed through social media outlets.   If you click through or visit the website following an email communication, the media elements on barackobama.com kept you focused on that specific message.  With other campaigns, it was very clear that different arms of the campaign were working different channels and I was left with more questions than answers with the two minutes I was ready to spend with them.

Now there’s a new whitehouse.gov website that promises to extend what I experienced with barackobama.com. You can sign up here like I did.

Will the ingenuity of barackobama.com translate to whitehouse.gov?  Will change really come to Washington? Based on what I saw on barackobama.com, there’s much to be hopeful!

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