Marketing Today

Hey, my website was graded a "C"

At The Art Connection, we just launched a new website in August, 2008.  As a board member interested in making my not-for-profit more professional looking, I spearheaded the project and wrote the copy for the site.  Boston Interactive created the site and did a wonderful job that we're really pleased with.

When I learned about the free "Webgrader" tool from Hubspot, I just had to try it on our new site.  We scored 70 out of 100.  And the reasons why are pretty interesting.

Metadata Minefield

Apparently, we have way too much metadata.  Our description is too long and we have way too many meta keywords.  And, being an organization that is focused on art, we have way too many images on our home page.  What does this mean in English?  It means our Google ranking is low and we don't even have a Yahoo entry.  I'm happy to report that the readibility level is for secondary/high school level.

Social Media Could Be Better

Shame on me for killing the blog last week since I was the only one contributing to it.  Blogs are a great way to shift marketing from outbound to inbound because they are a great way to interact with customers.  They're also great for the search engines because they love searching for new content.  We only got 3 del.icio.us bookmarks and 0 Diggs which means that we don't have a great web presence outside of our own site.

Improving Our Website Grade

Hey, nothing I like better than a challenge!  I'll be downloading the free Hubspot Internet Marketing Kit next to learn how to improve our website grade.  I'll just bet the first step is in refreshing the content on our pages and resurrecting that blog again.  That will teach me!

On the web, you are what you publish

This week I attended the Inbound Marketing Summit in Cambridge, MA.  This conference brought together experts in the field of inbound marketing to share the latest strategies, tools, and best practices to utilize inbound marketing methods to grow business. It was a great day of meeting my peers and one of the keynote speakers, David Meerman Scott, who signed my book "The New Rules of Marketing and PR" with the title of this blog entry.  "On the web, you are what you publish."  We also got to hear from Seth Godin, a great speaker, who I always think is just the "Master of the Obvious".  Reading his stuff is like eating junk food.  It's fun while you're doing it, but when you're done you wonder what you just ate.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR

Every once in a while you come across a book that makes you rethink things.  In the same way that the Internet has changed the way people communicate and interact with each other, this book made me rethink how I approach marketing for the products and services that I market.  The conference reinforced what I've learned by reading David's book which is:

• You can't count on people coming directly to the home page of your website.  With search engines, people are going to pages on your site so each page needs to be written well and should be easy to navigate.
• You can communicate directly with customers and prospects with targeted messaging online where good content is so important to share.
• You're crazy to do PR the old way of paying a big retainer to a firm to hound reporters to right about you.  Getting an understanding of how PR works in today's wired world is key.  Reporters and journalists are still under deadline and they are still looking for scoops, but they can get their information from many more places than they ever have before.
• You should understand the value of online videos as part of your marketing mix.  Done right, a small investment can take you farther than you'd ever get with a multi-media print or TV campaign.

We also spent the day talking about the value of Twitter for microblogging, Facebookfor building groups and communicating online, Wikis, blogs, and more.  It was great to be out with my fellow marketers talking about the latest techniques.  Hubspot and their partners did a great job with this conference.  Now, all I need to do is to go off and process what I learned so that I can apply it successfully!

Are Republicans Just Better Marketers?

Like the rest of America, I've watched the presidential race for months.  As a registered Independent living in Massachusetts, I usually try to vote for the candidate I like best.  I watched a fair chunk of the Democratic National Convention on TV.  While I liked the speeches, I wondered why Obama chose to announce his running mate on a Saturday when he missed some news cycles.  And, I was amazed that John McCain was still getting a much airtime as he was during the convention with his "celebrity" ads and his Jay Leno appearance.  But McCain really made noise when he announced his running mate, Sarah Palin, on Friday, August 29th.

Because I was stuck at home on Labor Day weekend, with a sore foot, I used the time to learn everything I could to learn  about Sarah Palin.  I read the Sunday Boston Globe, the Sunday New York Times, did my online searches, and watched TV to see what the press could figure out.  And I checked out Facebook, because as expected, my e-friend Peter began posting Sarah Palin articles as he could find them.  To keep up and learn more, along with 75K others, I became a Sarah Palin fan on Facebook.  I even joined the Massachusetts Republican party on Facebook and signed up for more information on the John McCain for President site.

And, the emails are now coming in.  My local Ward 5 Republicans have invited me to meet up.  I've been invited to make outbound calls at my local Republican headquarters any evening that I like.  Governor Palin has sent me an email for a donation.  And, Team McCain has sent me a link to the latest Alaska's Maverick ad so that can be one of the first to see it.

Hey, the Republican speeches (with the exception of Governor Palin's speech) weren't nearly as interesting as the Democratic speeches.  And, I realize that all parties are using social networking to promote candidates.  But, when it comes to understanding how to stay on message, talk directly to the people of America rather than the talking heads on Sunday morning TV, and dominate the news cycles, the Republicans have my vote.  Heck, right now, their even taking ownership of the "Change" message and putting Obama on the defense.  It's going to be an interesting run up to the election.