“Your website is an amazing branding tool!”

How many times have you heard that? Hundreds, if not thousands of blog posts, start off this way, but often trail off when it comes to the details. It’s true though, a successful business is fueled by a great web presence. Unfortunately, the brand of a company website or personal profile is often times lost in the clutter of the web. In today’s Web 2.0 world, your message must balance informational web pages with a viable and exciting social media identity.

The Office: A Case Study

Although there are only around 23 episodes of NBC’s The Office per year, the show has become far more than just 30 minutes of weekly airtime. In fact, these half-hour installments have proven to be the axis for a very extensive and enthusiastic leap into new media.

The Office’s years of sustained success stems from its documentary-style format, taken from Ricky Gervais’ original version of the show running from 2001-2003 in the United Kingdom. This hand-held camera angle makes the characters come alive in an authentic way and makes them perfectly transferable to social media.

Even though I know Michael Scott is a fictional boss of a fictional branch for a fictional company, there’s a lingering feeling that I could drive over to Scranton, Pennsylvania and ring his doorbell. As mentioned earlier, much of this “realness” comes from the way the show is filmed, but it is reinforced by the bevy of blogs, Flickr accounts, character Twitter handles and many other media devices associated with the show.

A sample of the discourse The Office characters exchange on Twitter,
adding to their character development and reinforcing the brand overall.

Brand Loyalty

By giving each of the show’s most beloved characters a blog or social media account, The Office is able to interact with their audience and provide additional mediums to create a fanatic connection. It’s a marketing tactic focused on building brand loyalty through an emotional connection. Viewers tune in because they care about the characters, and understand the essence of who they are.

Traffic Boosters

The Office and the NBC fat-cats didn’t setup all this content for their health though. No sir. The Office homepage on NBC.com is both a forum and a billboard. The new media devices act as a magnet, bringing devoted fans to the site. Even though Season 6 wrapped up last month, fans are still getting engaged with the show through the website. Advertisers spend great amounts to acquire the coveted ad space on this site. It’s a win-win for everyone.

But I’m Not In Entertainment…

So where does your business fit in? This case study on The Office’s new media usage is an example that businesses of all types can follow. Even though The Office is a hit network TV show, the themes of the show and the social media campaigns tied to it are modeled around the personnel within the the fictional company. Your social media campaign should try to do the same. Of course, your company (probably) shouldn’t name their blogs The Diabolical Plan or The Halpert Baby Blog, but the point is that you can make fans out of your customers by providing insight into the things that make your company tick.

Where to Get Started

Tweeting for Fun

During our latest round of networking and public events, we heard the same question over and over – how do I get started? If you’re getting into social media for personal use, I always recommend starting with friends and then moving on to your passions. Connecting with friends will help you learn the ins-and-outs of networks like Twitter and Facebook. If you make a mistake, who cares! Only your friends will see. Then start following your passions by following major brands and important people within your area of interest. I found the following instructions to be helpful as I built my Twitter account (@MetaCase):

1. Start with what you know…or what you want to know
2. Stick to it! Devote between 15-45 minutes a day to building connections and posting content.
3. Show, don’t tell. Make sure you keep credibility in mind when Tweeting. It may be therapeutic to complain, but you won’t win followers that way.

Tweeting for a Company

Starting a Twitter or Facebook account for your company is a bit trickier. Although social media accounts are generally operated by the marketing/PR teams, corporate social media usually start with the Legal Department. Work with your legal department to see what kind of interactions you can perform without getting sued. Then, start listening and providing customers with interesting content that starts a conversation.

Sharpie, the permanent marker giant, is pretty nimble when it comes to using social media to increase brand loyalty and advocacy. Their campaign entitled, Sharpie Uncapped, focuses on the thousands of ways Sharpie customers use their markers to express themselves. Need new detailing on your motorcycle? How about some new sneakers? These ideas and many more are chronicled across their blog, YouTube, and Flickr.

Choices, Choices: Twitter or Facebook?

Some companies, like Sharpie, like to use all forms of social media as they attempt to canvas the web and fill every niche. But there are still other companies that choose to focus on one network. Jerry Kozak, Owner & Marketing Director at the Ann Arbor T-Shirt Company, explained why his organization devotes much of their marketing energy on their Facebook page for products like Screen Printing & Custom Shirt Design:

When we get a Facebook fan page to adopt one of our designs, it is presumably there forever. New members see the design indefinitely. Twitter is more like someone standing on a corner announcing something…If you weren’t there to hear it, it’s unlikely you’ll get the message at all.

He goes on to explain the disconnect between Twitter and his image-based designs. All Twit-pics aside, Twitter is mostly text based. Additionally, Twitter is more-or-less a publishing platform, whereas Facebook is a sharing platform. “If your goal is to get your product to go viral, the path is much more fluid on Facebook,” Kozak explains. Whether your company chooses Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc., make sure the network represents your brand effectively.

Get Going!

We’ve talked enough about what other people are doing. It’s time to make sure your company is branding effectively through its online presence. So get out there and make sure to let us know how you’re doing!

Hello and Welcome! to the second issue of the MetaSpring Blog Carnival! This month’s topic focuses on Web Design, for which we received many great submissions, so a special thanks to everyone who participated!!

Here at MetaSpring, we pride ourselves on being well versed in all things internet, but web design is our bread and butter. While web designers are often comprised of many quirky traits and characteristics, one thing is for sure: they know how to communicate extremely well. Whether it be through their designs, a Twitter dialogue, or an email, valuable information is constantly being passed from designer-to-designer. In that spirit, may we present to you the wisdom of our peers.

What Makes Your Website Stand Out?

Fellow SEO experts, Jacob Brown Designs of Novi, Michigan brought us this great guide on the basic principles of web design: design, SEO and marketing. Whatever your business be on the internet, it’s likely that you’d like your website to stand out in terms of creativity and originality and these helpful tips can help you design just that with characteristics that actively work for you. Read the post…

Realizations of Rounded Rectangles

This post comes from Keith Lang and UI&us and focuses on the rounded corners that are woven into our everyday life. Where did they come from? Why are they here? What can we learn from their permanence? Keith and his team write about User Interface Design, User Experience design, and the cognitive psychology behind design in general – so their answers to the questions above have ramifications for web design and beyond. Read the post…

Choosing the Right Colors for Your Website

In many design attempts, color selection is often overlooked for the sake of a certain style or design concept which often to colors that might not be entirely representative of the concept of the site. Robert Bravery of Integral Web Solutions in South Africa helps you discover the right colors to set the mood in your next project. Read the post…

Build: Single Handedly the Best Web Design Conference of 2009

To add to our international flair, we welcome Paddy Donnelly all the way from Belgium (originally hails from Ireland).

Paddy made the trip to Northern Ireland for Buildconf on November 5th, which he called, “one of the most prestigious and kick ass conferences of the year”. In this fantastically creative and originally styled blog post, Paddy recounts the talks of the six conference speakers Tim Van Damme, Andy Budd, Mark Boulton, Ryan Sims, Wilson Miner, and Eric Meyer. Topics covered include font embedding, seductive design, freelancing, pixel perfection and developing a hybrid between design and development. With the savvy inclusion of Twitter reactions, this post gives a thorough analysis of the conference for those who weren’t lucky enough to see it in person (us!). Thanks Paddy. Read the post…

5 Essential Document Templates for Freelance Designers

This post comes from our friend, Lee Munroe. He, and the aforementioned Paddy Donnelly, won the W3 Award last year for their work together on Big Word Project – many belated congratulations gentlemen.

Its not uncommon for designers to develop a keen sense of communication through many rounds of correspondence with their clients. Lee Munroe is a well-known freelance designer who, in order to facilitate better client discussions at an efficient pace, compiled these five, ready to use document templates. Read the post…

Profitable Website Ideas – In Just One Click?

Brian Terry sends this post to us to help those seeking profitable websites. If you have an idea for a revenue generating site, make sure you cross reference it with this seven point checklist. Read the post…

How to Create the Best Landing Pages for Google Adwords

Our friends at Digital Products Review offer their assistance in using Google Adwords. As we have experienced with a number of clients, Adwords is a powerful tool when implemented intelligently. Creating properly titled ads marketed to proper keywords can generate real results for your business. This post looks past the initial ad telling us, “The success and failure of your Google Adwords campaign depends completely on the success and failure of your landing pages”. Make sure your landing pages are properly formatted and designed for click-through success. Read the post…

10 Key Tasks For Your Next Web Site

Wondering where to start your next design project? This post from Smiley Cat Web Design establishes 10 goals any designer can set forth before them at the starting line. As you navigate through the checklist, personalize each point to your project at the fundamental level. Read the post…

Next Month’s Issue: Web Development

This wraps up the second edition of our MetaSpring Blog Carnival – be sure to check out next month’s issue Web Development. If you’ve written or know of a great development-related post, please send it our way! Submissions will be accepted through December 20th.

If there is a specific theme that you’d like to see covered, email us with your request at media@metaspring.com

SEO: It takes more than pretty graphs

As a consulting firm in the SEO market, we frequently find that extracting detailed information from potential clients can be quite a challenge. In general, these prospective clients tend to be predominately concerned with getting the most bang for their buck and often end up conveying their needs in an over-simplified manner. In some cases, they’re not even sure what their needs are – just that they have them!

For these clients, we’ve prepared a quick survey to help focus the campaign planning process on achieving the actual goals of a company instead of just increasing site traffic.

What is the overall objective of the campaign?

Are you looking to gain more website sales, find additional leads, or perhaps increase brand awareness? A successful SEO campaign needs more than just a general increase in site traffic to improve conversions and revenue. Therefore, it’s important to define your objectives and continually refocus them as the campaign progresses.

A well-formulated campaign can lead to increased profits, better customers and higher conversions, while an unfocused campaign can often lead to a false sense of success. This can happen, for example, when site traffic increases through the use of very general keywords. These generic keywords might attract a high number and broad range of visitors, but only a handful of those people are actually in the company’s target demographic.

Similarly, if someone finds your site with the term “furniture,” they’re more likely to be “window shopping” than somebody who found your site with the term, “amish solid wood furniture”. So, while a general increase in traffic can be the desired objective in some cases, most clients require a more specific business goal to justify the cost of a continued SEO campaign.

Who is your target audience?

Do you need to target tech savvy 20 year olds or 60+ baby boomers? Understanding your target market is crucial to being an effective internet marketer.  If you want to attract the younger generation, social media websites such as Digg, Youtube and Facebook might be targeted. If baby boomers are the focus, then organizational sites and niche forums might be more ideal.

What action do you want visitors to take?

Should visitors come to your site to purchase a product, download a document, or fill out your contact form? Each goal may require a slightly different approach and should be looked at accordingly. Additionally, encouraging users to engage in the desired action generally requires a combined effort of onsite and offsite optimization.

Fortunately, there are a number ways to track and monitor these conversion goals. These tools can help to give you a real sense of how visitors are following, or diverging, from the directed path laid out for them.  A free and simple way to accomplish this conversion tracking is by setting up a funnel with Google Analytics.

Have you considered adding a blog to your site?

Why would I want to add a blog? Who really cares about what type of grass our golf course uses? Many companies have difficulty comprehending the vast utility of a blog, and more so, what it is that they should be blogging about. For SEO, blogs add the potential to increase direct traffic to your website and encourage inbound linking to your articles.

In terms of content, the possibilities are endless – you can blog about your industry, help explain a common misconception your customers have, or talk about a new product in development. While there are plenty of great resources available to help you dream up your viral masterpieces, here are a few good ones to start with:

101 Great Posting Ideas that Will Make Your Blog Sizzle

50 Blog Post Ideas for Business Blogging

Ultimately, good content is king and the more quality content that you can produce, the more inbound links you’re likely to acquire.

Who are your main competitors?

Understanding who your online competitors are can help us to assess their strengths online. If your competitors are successful, it’s possible to learn from what they’re doing right. If they are not, then you’ve got the opportunity to gain a competitive advantage by doing better.

Do you currently use any traffic analytics software?

Analytical software can be very helpful in analyzing and monitoring the progress of your campaign.  Not only can you see what keywords people are using to find your site, but you can also see what your most popular pages are, and how long people tend to stay on your site.

If you do not already have some analytical software installed you might want to consider Google Analytics. This software is free and very easy to setup on your website. It gives you access to a colorful and informative set of tools that you can use to understand the value and progress of your SEO campaign.

Your mileage may vary…

These are just a few of the key questions that you should consider asking your clients before beginning any extensive SEO campaign. Of course, every client will have their own special needs and will require your skills as an SEO consultant, and good listener, to determine the appropriate way to expand on these foundational questions.

How do you determine the scope of your SEO campaigns? Or if you are the client, what questions do you have when looking for an SEO consultant to work with?

Download our SEO Client Questionnaire PDF

Here for free download is the PDF version of our SEO Client Questionnaire. Feel free to adapt these concepts to your own needs and let us know how it worked out or what we missed!