Digital Strategist – by Silu Modi

HBR recently posted a terrific article titled “A List Of Goals Is Not A Strategy”

The key premise is many managers, when tasked with defining a strategy, instead start focusing on KPIs and designing solutions to maximize those KPIs. They focus on the goals and tactics but forget about actually creating a strategy to set the context for what they want to acheive.

Starting by identifying the stakeholders, what you want from them, and what they want from you is a great first step. Understanding what your stakeholders truly want by asking and not just guessing (or assuming they’re the same things you want) should be the primary focus. I’ve heard it compared to “Creating a strategy by looking out the window, not looking in a mirror.”

Crystal clear understanding of what your winning aspiration is, where you will play, how you’ll win and what capabilities you’ll need to win there are also key pillars.

As one of my mentors said recently in a strategy session, “If we’re not making hard choices on what to do and what not to do, we’re not creating a strategy!”

We’ve all been there… things go horribly wrong and people start losing their heads. I like to think one of the things I’m good at is crisis management. As things go more and more out of control, I seem to have the ability to get calmer and calmer (and I’ve learned that has a tendency to drive those around me even more nuts!).

That’s why I found this article on the number 1 rule in crisis management so insightful. It talks about the investigation of the crash of Air France 447 and how it came down to the pilots panicking and not doing the one basic thing… keeping the plane under control. Apparently, the emergency checklist for a Cessna has 6 steps. Step one is “Fly the plane”.

It is very easy to go into a crisis spiral and forget to the do most basic things to keep the situation under control. I’ve actually taken this to heart. Recently when I was in a ‘crisis’ situation (and by crisis, I mean something was going wrong with our internal systems that nobody outside of our company would ever care about), I kept repeating the same phrase… “Are we still flying the plane?” It took a little while before others understood what I meant and we were able to make sure the basics were being taken care of while the malfunctions were being addressed.

Next time you find things spiraling out of control, just remember that Job #1 is:

1. Fly the plane

If you’re in financial services, you wait breathlessly every year for Warren Buffet’s annual Letter to Shareholders. If you’re in the digital field, you wait every year for Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends report. This year, Mary’s report is again a very worthwhile read. This article on Bloomberg provides a pretty good analysis of the key points in her report.

I’m certainly not qualified to criticize any of Mary’s finding and conclusions. However, I do have to agree with Bloomberg that Mary’s report is not easy on the eyes. They asked Emiland De Cubber to redesign Mary’s slides to see if he could improve on them… and he did! Same content, but much easier to read and understand. I hope Mary takes a look at Emiland’s work for next year’s trends report.

I was recently a speaker at the Digital Marketing for Financial Services conference. I gave a one hour presentation on “Effective Social Media in a Regulated Environment.”

The presentation went very well. I also had the chance to connect with some very smart people in the field.

The amazing folks at Advisor.ca wrote a great article about the conference, with several references to the presentation I gave. If you get a chance, give it a read.

Jeff Atwood writes a great article on Digital Sharecropping. That’s the concept that built many of the Social Networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Flickr. Those sites just provide the foundation, but the content on the sites is provided by the users. The reason the users provide all of the content is…

…

Well, that’s a good question. Why do the users provide free content (and essentially, labour) someone else’s site? Generally a site that makes a profit off that content? Why would they so often be willing to give up their intellectual rights to that content?

That’s something to keep in mind when formulating your plan. If your Digital Strategy includes building a community around your brand, you have to ask yourself very early on, why would someone want to take the time to be part of this community and provide free content. What am I going to give them in return?

It has to be a two-way street. There has to be an added value or benefit for your community to be part of your community. Or as Jeff put it so well, the user will ask themselves, “What do I get out of the time and effort you’ve invested in this website? Personally? Professionally? Tangibly? Intangibly?”

If you don’t have a good answer to that question, you might want to take a closer look at the rest of your Digital Strategy.

I was out with a friend the other day and I was reminded of a “creative” solution we implemented to an age-old problem. We had set up an online community for a client, and as is too common in communities, there were a couple of users that trolled the community annoying the remaining 99%.

We tried all of the usual methods to resolve it. Sending warnings to the offenders, manually editing and filtering, and finally banning the offenders. Of course, with the ease of getting a new email address and re-registering, the trolls kept coming back and it turned into a kind of “whack-a-mole” game.

Finally, I took a page from Philip Greenspun (author of the classic “Philip and Alex’s Guide to Web Publishing“) and got creative with the situation. Instead of trying to ban the users, we decided to just frustrate them into leaving on their own accord… without them knowing.

When a troll was identified, they were flagged in our database and we flagged the account. The next time the user logged in, they had a 1 in 3 chance of actually being able to log in, or getting a “Server Timeout” error message. If they did actually manage to log in, every page refresh had a random delay of 5-30 seconds, and even then, they would occasionally get a timeout message. The flagged users generally just got frustrated with the “poor quality” of our site and moved on.

One of our developers actually took it a step further. Trolls live for stirring the pot. They post abusive and over-the-top posts and wait for the firestorm. What if the firestorm never arrived and the other users just ignored their posts? The developer set the database so that when a flagged user posted a message, he would see his post in the thread, but no other users would see it. He would sit back and wait for his comments to start a flame war, but the other users would just carry on with their own discussions, unaware of the flame-bait posted.

The number of trolls dropped dramatically. Users were thrilled that their conversations continued without disruption and there were no more warnings issued by the moderators. And, of course, no one was aware of what was going on behind the scenes to clean out the disruptors.

It just goes to show… the tried and true methods sometimes don’t work. Looking for a creative solution based on the habits and motivations of your users often yields far better results than going with the textbook approach.

I’ve been doing digital strategy for a long time now (over 15 years!). I seem to have found a pretty good niche recently, specializing in digital strategy for the Canadian financial services industry. I’ve been doing this long enough now that I feel confident to call myself an expert. However, it wasn’t until recently that I got an inkling of what it means to be an expert in a particular field.

Then I stumbled across this excellent post from Eric Barker at Barking Up The Wrong Tree. The line that tweaked with me was:

…novices sought and responded to positive feedback, and experts sought and responded to negative feedback…

Now, don’t get me wrong. I have an ego as big as the next person’s (well… maybe a little bigger). I still like it when I’ve been told that something I’ve done has been helpful / useful / profitable . However, I get more juice from someone teaching me something or guiding my thinking into a direction I haven’t been. I’d like to say I like getting pulled out of my comfort zone, but like most people I get that little feeling in my stomach that resists the move initially. But I’ve gotten to where I am because I’ve been able to take the chance to do something I’ve never done before and figure out how to do it.

Of course, it reminds me of a post I saw recently on Joey deVilla’s Accordion Guy blog:

At my day job, one of the questions I get asked quite often is “How do I get my site to the front page of Google?” I usually have the same answer and it’s not one that everyone likes to hear.

“Write great content… regularly and consistently”

For the most part, it really is that ‘simple’. SEO techniques will only get you so far if you don’t have good, current content.

… Which is why when I came across this Salt and Pepper post from Chris Brogan, it really struck a chord with me:

Executing cleanly on simple efforts is far more valuable than pulling off something clever that gets you attention briefly, but has no lasting change.

Much of what I do is actually quite simple. It just stems from years of experience and learning from my (many, many) mistakes. What separates the wheat from the chaff in my line of work is this: The good ones can take something that looks complex and turn it into a series of simple steps. Or as Chris puts it:

And truly, if you want to know just one more secret, I’ll share it: complex is usually just a lot of simple things played out in a smart sequence.

I’ve been asked several times how to create a Digital Strategy from scratch. I always point people to my digital strategy blog, but I’ve been getting the feedback that the original post is hard to find as it was written a while ago and has fallen off the main page.

As I’m on vacation this week, I thought it would be a good idea to repost the original article in it’s entirety here so that it comes back to the top of the list.

Enjoy.

__________________________

The most difficult part of formulating your Digital Strategy is staring at that blank screen and blinking cursor, trying to figure out where to start. What helps is starting with a “Cheat Sheet.” The basics that need to be flushed out before you can even call it a Digital Strategy. I’ve put together several Digital Strategies for various different brands. Through lots of trial and error, Google searches, and standing on the shoulders of giants, I’ve finally put together a basic template I use when I start. It consists of six headings with the questions I have to have answered before I can even claim to have a basic strategy.

OBJECTIVE:
When this Digital Strategy is completed and executed successfully, what will be the outcome? What are you trying to achieve? Increased brand awareness? A 5% reduction in calls to the call centre? A 2% increase in sales in your North East market? Or as simple as getting 10,000 followers on Twitter? Perhaps it’s a better connection with your audience by answering 100 questions per month via online channels? You have to know why you are putting together the strategy and how you will know if you’ve executed is successfully.

Another part of the objectives is the constraints. As much as we’d all love to hear, “Take as much time and money you need to reach the objectives,” chances are you have constraints. This is where you also lay out the timelines and budget as you understand them, as well as any assumptions you are making in the rest of the strategy

AUDIENCE FOOTPRINT:
Who is your audience? What are their demographics? Are they even digital people? If so, where do they congregate? Are they primarily email users only? Do they read blogs, or do they only read “real” news sites like CNN or New York Times? Are they actively engaged in social media sites? Are they Facebook / Twitter users? Would they actually subscribe to Fan Pages? You have to have a very good idea of where your audience is, how they interact in the digital world, and what they would find relevant and engaging.

AUDIT:
OK, so now you know where your audience is and what you want to achieve. Where are you starting? Start with an audit of the digital assets you already have on hand. Domain names, logos, videos, websites (active and old “cobweb-sites”), social media profiles, etc. What are your building blocks?

Next phase of the audit is to understand how your brand is already perceived and being talked about in the digital world. Start with Google searches on your brand names, your product or service sphere and your competitors’. Set up Google Alerts to notify you when you are mentioned. Look at your existing web properties and analyse the incoming links. Where are your visitors coming from? Monitor your search engine logs to see what they’re looking for. Consider using a free or paid social media monitoring tool to dig even deeper. I’ve used Trendrr and YackTrack on the free side with varying degrees of success, though your mileage may vary. On the paid side, you could look at VoxTrot, BuzzMetrics or Cymfony.

Now is also a great time to do a competitive audit. What are you competitors doing? What’s working for them? What sort of commitment are they putting into their Digital Strategy? Do all of the above for your competitors and gauge where you stack up in your market.

ROADMAP:
The $1,000,000 question. Now that you know what you hope to acheive, what’s already out there, what assets you have on hand, and what your audience wants, what are you going to do? In your audit, you may have found some low hanging fruit. Quick executions to start building some momentum with low cost and quick wins to put the wind in everyone’s sails.

First, look at your existing websites. Are they relevant? Do they even provide the basics? Do they speak to your targetted audience? Or to your shareholders? Or to new recruits? Maybe you want to look at a complete overhaul in one fell swoop, but often time, the existing brand sites may benefit from a phased execution. Do you need special sites  targetted to special segments of your audience or specific campaigns (also know as micro-sites). Is the content on your sites current? Are they optimized for Search Engines?

Second, look at your audience profile to help determine if and how you want to engage your audience. Does the CEO need a blog? Or the heads of various business or product units? What information will you share? Who will write the blogs? Your PR or Marketing group? Or the person in charge? What Legal sign-offs are required? How often will the blogs be updated? Do you need a support forum? Do you have Frequently Asked Questions that could be found in an FAQ on your site? What about connecting via Social Media platforms? Is your audience active there? Do you want to have one (or many) Twitter accounts? What about front-line employees? How engaged do you want them to be in your connections with your audience? These are just a few of the questions that come from the audience profile.

Third, look outside your own assets. Should you be getting engaged on other sites? Sites that specialize in your product or service area. Will you monitor the forums and respond to questions about topics about your product or brand? Will you comment on other blogs about topics in your area? In short, how engaged will you be in the so-called blogosphere?

And the final question… what can you accomplish in the time and budget you have, and what part of the roadmap is for future consideration for the elusive Phase II.

(I will write further about the execution of the strategy when I post about 2MCE)

COMMITMENT:
Wouldn’t it be nice if you put together a plan, executed it, and then were done? Sadly, it’s just the beginning. The Digital Strategy needs to outline what the ongoing commitment to the strategy will entail. If you are relaunching your main sites, who’s responsible for making sure that content is fresh, updated and relevant? Who’s responsible for answering email queries about products and services? Who is responsible for monitoring the web and tracking mentions of your company, your brand and your key people? What will they do with that information? Who will be monitoring the blogs for mentions of your sphere and be able to answer questions, complaint and concerns in the comments in a professional manner? Who will monitor your own Social Media properties and put a human, social “face” behind your brand? This is an on-going operational cost, not a project cost. If you can’t get a commitment on the commitment, it’s time to rethink your Digital Strategy.

MEASUREMENT:
How will you know if you succeded? There is a post coming soon about how to measure ROI on the web, but suffice for now to say that it’s not easy to find quanititive measures. What are your measures of success? Is it site visitors? Press mentions? Blog mentions? Followers on Twitter? Fans on your Facebook page? Or something more subtle such as level of engagement by your evangelistic base? Blog mentions vs. your baseline? Google PageRank? Revenue in the North East territory? Call volumes? Go back to your Objectives and bring it full circle by showing how what you measure will prove (or disprove) your success against your objectives.

There you have it. The 6 basic pillars of a Digital Strategy. Of course, you could have more (lots more), and in the coming weeks and months, I’ll elaborate on the Digital Strategy and discuss other pillars to a strong Strategy. But if you think through these basics, you’ll be well on your way to online success!

In part 1, I discussed the initial tasks when taking over the digital strategy for a company. As you start getting the analytics, interview your stakeholders and devise a plan for the quick wins, it’s time to start assessing the overall infrastructure. So, what’s next?

1. Get a list of all domains:
Chances are high that your company owns more domains than your main website’s name. Go to your IT group or your hosting provider to find out which other domains you own. There were probably several campaigns that had URLs purchased and are currently sitting unused or have outdated content. Also find out if you have any micro-sites or vanity redirects (i.e. www.yourcompany.com/campaignName) that are still live and have outdated content. In many instances, you’ll find sites that people have long forgotten about that have old prices, old logos and are still crawled by search engines.

If you don’t already own them, try to purchase as many mis-spellings of your main company name, as well as defensive names (CompanyNameSucks.com).

2. Internal Assessment:
Find out how the sites get updated. Who has to approve the content? Who writes it? Who creates the artwork? How long does it take the change a comma on the live site? To update a graphic? To create a new page? To create a new vanity redirect? Is it all done in-house? Do you rely on external people? Are you beholden to just one or two? The best way to do this is not to ask what the process is, but to live through the process. Make sure you have actually updated all of the above on your website(s) within the first two weeks to truly understand the processes. Chances are, the real processes are slightly different than what you’ve been told they are.

You also need to understand the reliability of your websites. What has the uptime for your site been for the last 12 months? What is the escalation process? When the sites go down, who finds out and how? Is there an automatic notification? Who’s on pager support? Do you get called? Do you have to take action, or is it automatic to get them back up?

3. Budget and ROI
How much money do you have to play with? What are your monthly costs for hosting? For resources? Do you have internal billing for IT help? For Legal sign-off? What is the process for justifying more budget? How will the executive level determine if you are making good use of your budget? What level of sign-off authority do you have? Can you pick your contractors and vendors, or is there a preferred list?

4. What is the importance of Online?
Finally, you need to determine how important the online properties are in the overall strategy. When new products are launched, is the online group part of the planning process? Or are they brought in when the strategy is already determined? Or worse yet, are you just given the collateral and asked to put it online with no input? Do the sites generate revenue (directly or indirectly)? Or are they just seen as a cost centre with no impact? If they are not seen as important, is that because of historical issues? If you show value, is there an appetite to change perceptions.

If the answers to question 4 are not encouraging, then your tenure may be frustrating and short-lived. However, if you sense there is an appetite to make the digital strategy an important facet of company strategy, you’re well on your way to making a significant and measurable impact to your company!

Congratulations! You’ve been hired or promoted to take charge of your company’s online strategy and execution! At some point, the elation will fade and you’ll confront the same question everyone faces when they’ve been put in charge… “Where do I begin?” There are many different places you can start, and many would be correct. But if you are stuck in indecision, maybe this can be a path to get you moving.

First things first, and this has nothing to do with digital strategy. I suggest you read “The First 90 Days” by Dr. Michael Watkins. It is an amazing guide to getting up to speed in a new organization, helping you survive the transition and come out at the other end with solid momentum and a strong reputation.

Assuming you’ve read the book, here are a few things to get you started on your digital strategy:

1. “In God we trust, all others bring data.” — Framed plaque from the ‘60s at NASA’s Johnson Space Center
First, get the analytics. Very soon into your first week (and ideally, your first day), open a corporate account at Google Analytics. Throw the analytics code into the bottom of every page (ideally in a common element of all sites like a footer).  As well, get an account at Google Webmaster Tools, put the confirmation file on your root and start collecting the data. If you don’t know how to do the above, your IT group should be able to help you. Don’t worry about the data for at least a month. Let it collect.

While you’re waiting for that month of data to accumulate, you need to understand how to interpret the data you’ll be collecting. To do that, you must read one book. “Web Analytics 2.0” by Avinash Kaushik. I’ve been looking at Google Analytics stats for years and thought I understood what the numbers meant. After reading Avinash’s book, I realized that I had no idea what I was looking at. It changed my entire outlook on analytics.

2. Understand the needs of your internal stakeholders:
Most likely, the reason you were hired or promoted to that position is that some powerful people within your organization realized there is potential online that the organization is not tapping effectively. The power brokers probably have an idea of what they’re expecting to see online (and what you need to accomplish to be considered a success). Don’t guess at what that is. Ask! If you want some great guidance on how to find that out, I again direct you to Manager Tools and their excellent podcast on “Jump Starting Internal Customer Relationships.”

3. Find the ‘Low Hanging Fruit.’:
Based on your data and the remarks from your stakeholders, you probably have a sense of some low hanging fruit or things you can execute and launch quickly to build momentum. Momentum is often overlooked. Early wins help everyone see that ‘something’ is happening and it’s not going to be all talk and analysis. It also helps spark conversations. As the old saying goes, “It’s far easier to critique than create,” so give the stakeholders something small to critique. It provides low-risk feedback and helps hone your longer term strategy with minimal effort.

This advice will probably get you through the first week. In Part 2, we look a little longer term and talk about how to get an assessment of your team, understand your corporate culture and how to define your own measures of success.

Peter Kim wrote a fantastic article on the dangers of following the latest Social Media trends without understanding what you’re doing. The article is called ‘The Marketer’s New Clothes‘ and it highlights what I’ve seen happen a few times.

Four things strike me as lessons from the article:

1. Make sure you know what you’re getting into:
If you don’t ‘get’ digital media, no worries. Do your research (starting here, of course). Go to industry networking events. Find other marketers that have run digital campaigns. Learn from their successes and their failures. Stand on the shoulders of giants.

But for heaven’s sake, don’t just get your information from an agency or a ‘Digital Strategist’ that has a vested interest in getting you to buy what he’s selling. If you are talking to an agency, don’t let them baffle you with jargon or make you feel stupid for not understanding. Remember what my motto:  ‘If you can’t explain it to a 6-year-old…“

2. Question everything:
Don’t let the latest trends get in the way of a proper strategy. Whatever shiny new thing is being developed for you, ask how it is going to contribute to your bottom line. What measurements are going to be used? What’s the baseline? How are you going to measure the ROI? Again, if your agency or your strategist can’t answer these questions off the top of their heads, you may want to start asking even more questions. That should be considered a huge red flag.

3. Beware the herd mentality:
Just because everyone else is doing it, doesn’t mean you should. You have to know who your audience is, where they live online (if they even do) and what they are looking for. It has to be relevant. But even more important, beware the herd mentality inside your organization. I’ve been in the situation where the CEO of the company walked into my office and told me that we need to be on Facebook! Every other major company is on Facebook, why aren’t we?

(Sidenote: When the CEO walks into your office and says we need to do ‘X” right away, do not say ‘NO’, unless you want me to introduce you to a couple of fine recruiters I know. Figure out a way to do it, put together the plan on how to do it right and the cost/benefit. When you’re discussing the plan, try to find the opportunity to inject your thoughts on the feasibility for the company if the cost/benefit isn’t there, along with alternatives to achieve a similar end result).

4. It’s ALL ABOUT the ROI:
At the end of the day, we’re all in this for one thing. Money. Yes, I’m sorry to break it to you, but every company is out to make money. And if any activity you do doesn’t contribute to the bottom line, chances are that you won’t be doing it for long. So if you’re getting into digital media, make sure you know how you’re going to prove to the higher powers that the $100,000 you’re spending are going to make or save the company $100,001 very soon. And the person or group putting your digital media strategy into action had better have the answer for you as well.

Josh Bernoff, one of the authors of Groundswell, posted a great article on another approach to creating a digital strategy. I posted earlier on the 6 Basic Pillars of your Digital Strategy. Josh sums it up in 4 pillars, which he calls POST. POST stands for People – Objectives – Strategy – Technology. From his post:

P is People. Don’t start a social strategy until you know the capabilities of your audience. If you’re targeting college students, use social networks. If you’re reaching out business travelers, consider ratings and reviews. Forrester has great data to help with this, but you can make some estimates on your own. Just don’t start without thinking about it.

O is objectives. Pick one. Are you starting an application to listen to your customers, or to talk with them? To support them, or to energize your best customers to evangelize others? Or are you trying to collaborate with them? Decide on your objective before you decide on a technology. Then figure out how you will measure it.

S is Strategy. Strategy here means figuring out what will be different after you’re done. Do you want a closer, two-way relationship with your best customers? Do you want to get people talking about your products? Do you want a permanent focus group for testing product ideas and generating new ones? Imagine you succeed. How will things be different afterwards? Imagine the endpoint and you’ll know where to begin.

T is Technology. A community. A wiki. A blog or a hundred blogs. Once you know your people, objectives, and strategy, then you can decide with confidence.

The interesting thing to note here is that he puts technology as the last part of your strategy. That’s the right place. The technology is just the tool to achieve your objective. It is not an objective in and of itself. I hear that quite often… ‘We need a blog,’ ‘We need a Twitter account,’ ‘How do we get a Facebook Fan Page?’

None of those matter unless you know what you want to do, who you want to reach and how you’re going to reach them. Putting the tool first is what Jeremiah Owyang calls “Fondling the Hammer.”

Start with the objectives, the audience, the assets and the metrics, then figure out how you’ll build it.

Some years ago, I sat behind a one-way mirror as a research organization attached contraptions to volunteers as they viewed our websites. These contraptions tracked the user’s eye movements as they surfed our site trying to accomplish tasks we had outlined. The findings from our private study were surprising and made us reconsider some basic assumptions we had made about our audience.

There have been several eye tracking studies published on the web. While the specifics of our study applied only to our site, this study discusses some general principles to keep in mind when designing your sight for maximum impact. Some key findings from the report that I found interesting:

1. Lists (such as this one) hold attention longer. If you are talking about several related points, a bullet list or numbered list will help draw it out.
2. Show numbers as numerals instead of as text. 600 is easier to read than six hundred.
3. Large blocks of text are avoided. Break your content into smaller, more digestible paragraphs instead of large blocks. Ignore the grammar rules.
4. Big, clear images get a lot of attention.
5. Users focus on the top-left corner first. Make it impactful.
6. The bottom portion of your page is usually scanned. Only if something truly stands out, will it be read.

The most interesting part of the study was the eye tracking heat maps. They overlayed eye movement on several websites and found that the eye moves roughly in an “F” pattern. Top left -> Across -> Down and right -> Down -> then maybe gone:

More detail on these studies and more actionable suggestions can be found here. Keep these design ideas in mind when you are designing your next website, or re-evaluating your current site. (Bet you almost missed this line because you just scanned over it.)

Lee Huang wrote a post on centralizing the Web Marketing function in a company. He describes the things that he feels need to be taken into account when centralizing this function:

1. The “What’s in it for me” questions that will inevitably arise from the business units that were used to owning and controlling the direction of their individual web presence. He’s nailed it when he says that getting the buy in early from the affected business units is key to succeeding.
2. Being responsive. One of the worst things that can happen (and I speak from experience) is taking the web marketing function away from the business units, and then bogging down all requests with slow processes and high dollar amounts. They key is to show value-add early with quick wins and high-value consultation into more than just the mechanics of web marketing.
3. Prioritization of projects. Transparent prioritization may not be a big issue early on, but needs to be in place early on. Again, from experience, at the beginning, work will be simple and trickle in at a pace that can be easily handled. However, if you do things right and are successful in your strategy and campaigns (you do have a Digital Strategy, right?), the requests will start flooding in. At that point, the key stakeholders from the various business units need to be a large part of prioritizing your team’s resources and budget. Favouritism will come back to bit swiftly

The point that Lee doesn’t make, but I have found just as important is “What skills are you going to staff this department with?”

Are you going to transfer the “web” people from the other business units? The pros to this approach are getting the business knowledge that comes with these people. But the big con is that there will always be some loyalty to the previous business unit and it will be hard to prioritize without undue influence.

Are you going to hire people to do the work in-house? Or out-source the execution and just have strategy kept internally? Out-source to your internal IT team, or completely outsource? Again, three different approaches, each with its pros and cons.

Having a one-stop shop in-house allows you to get work done quickly and control the team that works on it. However, you are “stuck” with the skillset you you in house. If you have all Java developers, everything is an enterprise Java solution. Also, you’re at the mercy of internal policies on how quickly you can get work done.

In-sourcing the development to your internal IT team has the advantage of keeping you arms length from the execution, while still having the internal influence and power derived from the relationships normally formed by people in close proximity, and by the normal management interactions. However, IT has processes that may not work at the speed of web development, and when major corporate initiatives occur, your “silly little web projects” can take a back seat to the “really important work.”

Outsourcing the execution usually gives the most control over execution. You can pick and choose different agencies for different executions based on expertise and workload. You can get more work done faster by spreading the work around. But you are at the mercy of hard dollars instead of soft, internal dollars. You are also at the mercy of an agency where the only true relationship you have is with the Account Manager. And we all know that Account Managers say “yes, of course we can do it,” to everything, right? You lose the day to day, looking over a shoulder to see how it’s going. And again, that can come back to bite hard.

If you are thinking of centralizing your Web Marketing function, think about how you’re going to set it up, how you’re going to sell it internally, and how you’re going to handle the fire hose when you succeed!

I just love this image. It says it so well.

The most difficult part of formulating your Digital Strategy is staring at that blank screen and blinking cursor, trying to figure out where to start. What helps is starting with a “Cheat Sheet.” The basics that need to be flushed out before you can even call it a Digital Strategy. I’ve put together several Digital Strategies for various different brands. Through lots of trial and error, Google searches, and standing on the shoulders of giants, I’ve finally put together a basic template I use when I start. It consists of six headings with the questions I have to have answered before I can even claim to have a basic strategy.

OBJECTIVE:
When this Digital Strategy is completed and executed successfully, what will be the outcome? What are you trying to achieve? Increased brand awareness? A 5% reduction in calls to the call centre? A 2% increase in sales in your North East market? Or as simple as getting 10,000 followers on Twitter? Perhaps it’s a better connection with your audience by answering 100 questions per month via online channels? You have to know why you are putting together the strategy and how you will know if you’ve executed is successfully.

Another part of the objectives is the constraints. As much as we’d all love to hear, “Take as much time and money you need to reach the objectives,” chances are you have constraints. This is where you also lay out the timelines and budget as you understand them, as well as any assumptions you are making in the rest of the strategy

AUDIENCE FOOTPRINT:
Who is your audience? What are their demographics? Are they even digital people? If so, where do they congregate? Are they primarily email users only? Do they read blogs, or do they only read “real” news sites like CNN or New York Times? Are they actively engaged in social media sites? Are they Facebook / Twitter users? Would they actually subscribe to Fan Pages? You have to have a very good idea of where your audience is, how they interact in the digital world, and what they would find relevant and engaging.

AUDIT:
OK, so now you know where your audience is and what you want to achieve. Where are you starting? Start with an audit of the digital assets you already have on hand. Domain names, logos, videos, websites (active and old “cobweb-sites”), social media profiles, etc. What are your building blocks?

Next phase of the audit is to understand how your brand is already perceived and being talked about in the digital world. Start with Google searches on your brand names, your product or service sphere and your competitors’. Set up Google Alerts to notify you when you are mentioned. Look at your existing web properties and analyse the incoming links. Where are your visitors coming from? Monitor your search engine logs to see what they’re looking for. Consider using a free or paid social media monitoring tool to dig even deeper. I’ve used Trendrr and YackTrack on the free side with varying degrees of success, though your mileage may vary. On the paid side, you could look at VoxTrot, BuzzMetrics or Cymfony.

Now is also a great time to do a competitive audit. What are you competitors doing? What’s working for them? What sort of commitment are they putting into their Digital Strategy? Do all of the above for your competitors and gauge where you stack up in your market.

ROADMAP:
The $1,000,000 question. Now that you know what you hope to acheive, what’s already out there, what assets you have on hand, and what your audience wants, what are you going to do? In your audit, you may have found some low hanging fruit. Quick executions to start building some momentum with low cost and quick wins to put the wind in everyone’s sails.

First, look at your existing websites. Are they relevant? Do they even provide the basics? Do they speak to your targetted audience? Or to your shareholders? Or to new recruits? Maybe you want to look at a complete overhaul in one fell swoop, but often time, the existing brand sites may benefit from a phased execution. Do you need special sites  targetted to special segments of your audience or specific campaigns (also know as micro-sites). Is the content on your sites current? Are they optimized for Search Engines?

Second, look at your audience profile to help determine if and how you want to engage your audience. Does the CEO need a blog? Or the heads of various business or product units? What information will you share? Who will write the blogs? Your PR or Marketing group? Or the person in charge? What Legal sign-offs are required? How often will the blogs be updated? Do you need a support forum? Do you have Frequently Asked Questions that could be found in an FAQ on your site? What about connecting via Social Media platforms? Is your audience active there? Do you want to have one (or many) Twitter accounts? What about front-line employees? How engaged do you want them to be in your connections with your audience? These are just a few of the questions that come from the audience profile.

Third, look outside your own assets. Should you be getting engaged on other sites? Sites that specialize in your product or service area. Will you monitor the forums and respond to questions about topics about your product or brand? Will you comment on other blogs about topics in your area? In short, how engaged will you be in the so-called blogosphere?

And the final question… what can you accomplish in the time and budget you have, and what part of the roadmap is for future consideration for the elusive Phase II.

(I will write further about the execution of the strategy when I post about 2MCE)

COMMITMENT:
Wouldn’t it be nice if you put together a plan, executed it, and then were done? Sadly, it’s just the beginning. The Digital Strategy needs to outline what the ongoing commitment to the strategy will entail. If you are relaunching your main sites, who’s responsible for making sure that content is fresh, updated and relevant? Who’s responsible for answering email queries about products and services? Who is responsible for monitoring the web and tracking mentions of your company, your brand and your key people? What will they do with that information? Who will be monitoring the blogs for mentions of your sphere and be able to answer questions, complaint and concerns in the comments in a professional manner? Who will monitor your own Social Media properties and put a human, social “face” behind your brand? This is an on-going operational cost, not a project cost. If you can’t get a commitment on the commitment, it’s time to rethink your Digital Strategy.

MEASUREMENT:
How will you know if you succeded? There is a post coming soon about how to measure ROI on the web, but suffice for now to say that it’s not easy to find quanititive measures. What are your measures of success? Is it site visitors? Press mentions? Blog mentions? Followers on Twitter? Fans on your Facebook page? Or something more subtle such as level of engagement by your evangelistic base? Blog mentions vs. your baseline? Google PageRank? Revenue in the North East territory? Call volumes? Go back to your Objectives and bring it full circle by showing how what you measure will prove (or disprove) your success against your objectives.

There you have it. The 6 basic pillars of a Digital Strategy. Of course, you could have more (lots more), and in the coming weeks and months, I’ll elaborate on the Digital Strategy and discuss other pillars to a strong Strategy. But if you think through these basics, you’ll be well on your way to online success!

Contrary to popular belief, if you’re trying to reach a young audience, Twitter may not be your best bet.

(Side note… am I dating myself be defining “young” as under 25?)

A recent study by Neilsen has shown that the vast majority of Twitter users are over 25.  I’m actually supposed to know this stuff, but even I was surprised that 20% of Twitter users are over 55!

The New York Times has an article trying to understand why teens shy away from Twitter. But the same article also makes some interesting points on what Twitter’s main attaction is to the older crowd.

Though Twitter’s founders originally conceived of the site as a way to stay in touch with acquaintances, it turns out that it is better for broadcasting ideas or questions and answers to the outside world or for marketing a product. It is also useful for marketing the person doing the tweeting, a need few teenagers are attuned to.

So again, the same old lessons. First, make sure you know your target audience. Second, make sure they are tuned to the channel you choose to transmit your message. Third (and most important), make sure the message you are transmitting is relevant and engaging to your audience.

Previously, I wrote about how checking the “Zero” results in your search engine can provide useful insights into what users were linking your brand to in their minds, and how you can take advantage of that.

The other thing Search Engine Stats can provide you is with a better search experience for your users using the concept of Folksonomies. This is the corollary to Taxonomies. In a taxonomy, someone on the web team (usually an Information Architect, or a User Experience Expert) will try to order your content in a logical, human way.

In a Folksonomy, you let the actual actions of your users dictate which content is most relevant. Digg would be a classic example of Folksonomies in action.

But back to Search Engines. Tuning your Engine to look at search results returned to users and the click through that follows can give great insight into what users are linking certain terms to with your brand, and it will help provide a better search experience.

For example: A user searches for the term “Widget” on your site. On the search results page, they click on item number 7 on the page. OK… the engine needs to log that and remember. The next user that searches for widgets will see that previously clicked result at item number 5 on the search results list. If that user clicks on link 5, the next time a user searches for “Widget”, that same result will be higher and higher until it “automatically” becomes to top search result whenever anyone searches for it.

This not only provides a better experience for the user, but now you, as the brand owner, will know what content on your site is most relevant to the “Widget” audience and can take advantage of that knowledge next time you’re looking to launch a “Widget” campaign.

This is a tough sell. I occasionally keep my mouth shut when others are talking about “how to get our users interacting with our brand.” But I often lose that battle, throw out the following bit of experience, and watch as all eyes turn to me like I have two heads.

People don’t want to interact with your brand. People want to interact with people behind your brand. That’s the SOCIAL part of social media!

… more to come

UPDATE: I swear I didn’t see it before I posted this, but THIS says it better than I just did.