Recently a friend sent me a link to a new “computational knowledge engine” called Wolfram Alpha: http://www.wolframalpha.com/screencast/introducingwolframalpha.html.

I followed the link to 15-minute presentation about www.wolframalpha.com. I won’t go into the details – if your interest is peaked you’ll check it out. However, I do want to say that I found the presentation interesting and have bookmarked the website.

My friend’s e-mail is a textbook example of viral marketing. Before he contacted me I’d never heard of the website. Media cost to Mr. Wolfram - zero.

Recently I took a PowerPoint presentation from a client, combined with a video from small camcorder and added some captions to make a video of a presentation that the client gave at a national conference which will go on their website and probably YouTube. The cost to them was just the editing of the components into a video.

There are any number of tools that can create affordable video presentations, but technology is not the real wisdom here. The secret, or wisdom, is to make a presentation that is either (pick one) newsworthy, entertaining, compelling or evocative of some emotion. Ideally your presentation should have elements of all three.

I’m not talking Academy Award screenwriting and/or acting. The Wolfram Alpha presentation was animated screen captures of the website – probably done in Flash – and Mr. Wolfram’s pleasant voice, but the ideas and examples were intriguing and to someone who regularly does online research – compelling.

The PowerPoint presentation was serviceable, but the video was very “guerilla” and probably would have sufficed only as a record of the event. However, by combining them and adding additional content we created a presentation that was provocative and compassionate.

Now get this. If you have a website you can’t rely on it to market you. There are a bazillion websites with several gazillion added each day. Websites are like books in the world’s biggest library that will remain on some far distant shelf gathering dust until some patron either painstakingly searches them out on the library’s computer or happens upon them while patiently scanning the shelves.

Making sure that your website is chock full of a variety of copy on various topics related to your enterprise and offers a newsletter and/or blog will help you produce what are called “organic” results to searches. As most of you may know this is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. The companion term, Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, requires that you rent adwords. This is also known as “buying clicks,” and depending how much you’re willing to pay for the adwords, or phrases, governs where you show up in the Sponsored Links at the top or on the right side of Google’s page.

By they way, lots of companies will offer services to get you placement on “all the search engines” not just Google. This allows them to charge more and give you less, because – for the being – Google is still the gorilla of Internet Search. That may well change when Bing catches on, but for now, if you’re buying adwords, stick with Google.

Whether you rely on SEO or SEM, whether your website shows up at the top of the page when someone is searching for information and services in you line of endeavor, the problem is that someone has to look for you. As with the books on the library shelf, your website doesn’t show up on someone’s doorstep asking for attention. Or, if it does, that’s generally called SPAM.

However, if I get a video from a friend or acquaintance most often I will look at it. And the referral constitutes a form of endorsement. Media cost to the maker of the video – ZERO.

You all can and should make a video explaining what you do, why you do, and how your efforts will benefit a customer. If anyone out there says this isn’t appropriate to what you do – you’re wrong and I’ll gladly demonstrate why if you want to follow up with me – steve@rustadmarketing.com.

Is online video any different that a TV commercial? In some ways, no, but in other vastly more important ways…absolutely. Online video, or commercials if you insist, are not limited to time because the Internet doesn’t charge for broadcasting. In other words, unlike print advertising, radio, outdoor, TV, or direct mail, there is no charge for distribution…no matter the length in time, or column inches, nor the number of repeat viewings or printing necessary to effectively deliver your message.

Let’s let that sink in a minute.

With video on the Internet, you have all the time you need at no cost to you save for production expenses to explain your proposition. Because you’re not limited to 30- or 60-seconds you can rattle on to your heart’s content about all the intricacies or your passion, persuasion or profession…as long as you make it (repeat after me) newsworthy, entertaining, compelling and/or evocative of some emotion…ideally all three.

The most profound bit of Marketing Wisdom for website owners and operators is that content – in quantity as well as quality – is king. Unlike other forms of marketing messages such as ads, brochures, outdoor boards, fliers, etc., the flexibility and inherent economy of websites creates the opportunity of providing more than just a concise presentation of features, benefits and a call to action.

However, unlike traditional advertising, which is pushed at the potential customer through whatever media the viewer, reader, or listener is accessing at the moment, the Internet is passive. Every website waits for its visitors. This is why the key to mastering the Internet is the knowledge that the quality and quantity of your website’s content strongly influences how quickly and how often your website is “searched,” that is to say, reached by visitors.

No other mass communication medium can effectively archive and access as much content as does the Internet. Bits and bytes take up little dimensional space. One of the amazing features of computing is the exponential growth of data storage. With every couple of years, more and more information is being stored in less and less space.

The challenge faced by anyone searching for some fact, price or informational nugget is, of course, plucking what you’re looking for from the virtually infinite haystack of data. Search engines like Google have made billions on facilitating your search, but finding what you’re looking for online can still be a daunting task. The Internet is akin to an old-fashioned library whose shelves groan under the weight of tons of printed material old and new. The big difference of course is that – unlike a library – the Internet has no theoretical limits. It can retain everything that was ever posted on-line.

Another big difference between the Internet and library full of books is that Google’s searching technology is word-based. Google’s programs constantly scour the Internet cataloguing and ranking websites by their content. This means that designing and populating your website with content that is relevant to your product or service causes your website to be recognized by Google’s “bots” which make it more readily available through their ranking process.

This is why I say “content is king,” and why your investment in quantity and the quality of that content will determine whether and how often people will return to your website.

Contrary to other advertising media, which are variously priced according to size, length or duration of message and therefore require the advertiser on a budget to present a quick and concise message, websites are cheap. They can go into exhaustive detail, offer multiple examples and even digressions with but one caveat. The website’s content must hold the readers attention, which means that online content must be well-written. The Internet is, after all, still a writer’s medium. Eventually video will change that, of course, but for now the Internet is more read than watched.

Of course, as with any attempt to gain attention, there are some short-cuts. For example, being lurid or pornographic is a sure attention-getter…at least in some quarters. If you want those eyeballs, you’re wasting your time reading here. As far as I’m concerned proffering smut to the souls who want it is akin to serving cotton candy to diabetics. It’s not something I can live with.

The one surefire technique for building a following is to tell a good story. Be it gossip, news, knowledge, or wisdom – human beings are hungry for information, and the more entertaining that information is – the better. Despite all the content that bombards us today, if you want the world to beat a path to your (Internet) doorstep, that is to say, your website, tell good stories make them interesting, entertaining, and do so often.

Until recently, it was quite common to view a website as merely a part of a company’s marketing toolkit. As such, companies would build sites and then pretty much ignore them – mostly because they didn’t know how to “make the Internet work.” In this model, a website was little more than an on-line brochure.

In the last couple of years a number of circumstances have changed such that a company’s website can (and I believe should) become the centerpiece of their marketing efforts.

Here are just a few of the changes…

1) Google, as the dominant search engine (really, a comprehensive interactive on-line marketing service), has created features and functionality that greatly increase the ability of web marketers to both spread and focus their message through both Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing SEO/SEM. Google’s diagnostics are excellent, and they offer special training to teach you how to make better use of their technology.

2) Video is now pervasive thanks to affordable digital technology in both the capture and editing functions, and the great number of video-server sites (YouTube, Digg, etc.).

3) Viral marketing – basically the spontaneous and (relatively) unprompted sharing of online content – has increased dramatically with the advent of social networking sites (MySpace for kids, LinkedIn for business folks, etc.), video-server sites, chat rooms and blogs. This is enhanced by a number of easy tools that allow a reader to get automatic updates (RSS feeds is one example)

4) Blogs, Vlogs (Video Blogs), Vod-casts (video broadcasts), etc. – Google, among others, provides a free platform for anyone who wants to create and distribute content.

What to do with all this?

These tools and others provide businesses with the opportunity to “own” the Internet within their particular market space. For your company this could mean deciding to be the “best” or “ultimate” website in your industry. Doing so would require going beyond the basic website structure of: products, services, history, contact us.

To begin creating the ultimate site I would begin by asking the question: “If we consider your company to be (a/the) leading company in your industry segment what would/could someone expect from such a leader?”

The answer to that question could include providing…

Perspective – What’s the state of the industry – regionally, nationally? You and your staff talk to buyers all over the country and are in a relatively unique position to gather as well disseminate information.

History – Where/why did particular products/services originate? What are the traditions of the industry? How to they effect the present and the future? As a leader you not only have your company’s history, but you’ve been in a position to chart the history of the industry in general.

Technology – What are the leading/emerging technologies and how will they affect the industry as a whole, regionally / nationally? A leader is expected to have the latest tech and know what’s on the horizon.

Economics – How is the current economic situation affecting other areas of the country? Again, as leader you’ve been through many economic situations and can provide perspective / balance such as, when prices drop its good time to stock up, etc.

Opinion – This is the “spice” of any information source. It provides the context for the facts, and its fun to read…and share.

Education – Who better than your company to provide a source of “best practices?” On-line video and other interactive tools make it easy to share information in a timely manner as well as make it entertaining.

Communications – You website can be an interactive marketing tool that allows field sales people to prepare and present real-time quotes using tools, forms, and calculators that are tied in to current inventory and because they’re web-based are constantly updated.

Interactive Information – Online brochures (PDFs) and forms have the virtue of being linked in to other parts of the website.

In summary, by looking at ways to make your company’s website not just better, but the premier website in your industry you can:
 
1) Create a high level of “stickiness” wherein a large number of those in you industry regularly visit your site.
2) Provide an expensive / effective / real-time media to disseminate product information
3) Establish an on-going dialogue with the site’s visitors
4) Become the “one place” to find out what’s going on in the industry
5) Burnish / enhance your company’s position as a/the industry leader
6) Build a bridge to the next generation coming up in your industry
7) Become a better partner to companies whose products you sell
Improve the interaction between the divisions / locations of the company
9) Benefit from the on-going evolution in search-driven Internet marketing