A Glass Half Empty for the Internet

Cadburys South Africa are on a campaign to do with Monks. Mediaholic still don't know what it is and we feel that they are almost on the right track but have excluded a major area for advertising, The Internet...

Above is the ad, many of you may have seen on TV in South Africa. I like teaser Videos and this one does what it is supposed to do and prompted my wife to Google "Cadburys May 15." An international search renders results that are not even relevant to the brand. Urban Dictionary, a YouTube Channel and some reviews and blogs. For me there is an ad, only one, that leads to a website, www.glassandahalf.co.za, which has a countdown, and a teaser video.

Poor SEO

The website has shocking Search Engine Optimisation. My check returns 6 keywords. Google's Keyword tool will generate 266 keywords for the phrase Cadbury's chocolate. In fact the phrase we searched for isn't even one of the 6. This means that all the traffic to this site will have to be direct, referred or via paid search engine marketing. One doesn't need to necessarily use all 266 keywords as some may be negative to the campaign, but when compiling keywords the basic question is, "what will my target market search for?"

Mobile Media Forgotten

When one searches online for any info you get nothing of interest either. A few HelloPeter complaints and other irrelevant nonsense. There was an ad for a YouTube channel that had no link to the SA campaign at all.

Credible Social Media Follow Through

Any advertising campaign that makes use of traditional media needs to follow through to Social Media. That means the brand must be sufficiently represented online and that the campaign must be prominent in all forms of social media. Cadbury has ignored all aspects of this. They didn't even bother creating a Cadbury SA YouTube channel, but uploaded the ad to "TechSys100."

Ignoring Facebook is just Silly

There were 1.9 Billion page views on Facebook in South Africa for April 2011... That is 38 times the population of SA. They have a 69% reach into the market. It would also have cost a lot less that a week's worth of TV ads on all channels.

Free Options that Make a Big Difference

Getting SEO right, creating YouTube, Facebook or Twitter accounts is free and easy. Monitoring them is obtaining feedback in real time which is great for any marketer. Any good brand manager will tell you that your branding needs to follow through to every campaign. Otherwise there is no point to it...

The big question then is, Who are you partnering with that will help you get the best results out of your campaign?

Antagonise Your Copy

Writing web copy is one of the most challenging tasks I have ever undertaken. There is a lot to consider; writing style, paragraphs, formatting, headlines and more.

Keywords

The most challenging part of writing web copy for me is sticking to usable keywords. Google's Content Guidelines state that you should think about the words users would type to find your pages, and use them in your copy. However, when writing your web copy, you need to make use of those words in a manner that is useful to the reader.

Keyword Stuffing

Don't repeat your web copy keywords all over your text. Web copy. Loading your (web copy) page with (web copy) keywords is not only against the web copy rules, it is annoying web copy to your web copy readers.

Effective

A site I happened across that made great use of keywords in their copy is web-design.co.za. They managed to use the words "web Design" in their copy 36 times, and they did so fairly effectively while still making sense.

The infographic above is taken from a page on this website. It is created at Wordle.net and is an interesting tool to look at what text appears in your web copy. The larger the word in the graphic, the more often it appears.

Positive Keywords

In the graphic, the positive keywords, or the keywords that my clients would use in a web search, that are present are; advertising, business, online, media. These are words that I expect clients to enter into a Search Engine and hopefully find my website.

Negative Keywords

The negative keywords, and the most prominent, are indicative of a major flaw in my web copy. Words such as "your" and "You" indicate to me that my copy-writing style tends to be more of a lecture. Who wants to be lectured to in this day and age? I believe it is far better to plant a seed and allow the idea to come from your client so they can tell you what they want, even though you hinted at it, than to be told what to do.

Google do ignore common words in your web copy such as "and," "of," "the" and so on. I included them in my analysis because I want to see how my readers see my web copy.

Pay a Professional

If you think you can't write your own web copy, there are plenty of professionals out there who can help you. It is an important investment in your web space that makes a huge difference to your Search Engine Rankings.

A Facebook Group is a Silly Idea

I see many small business owners try get their social media campaign started by creating a Facebook group. As noble as this is it is certainly the wrong move and will lead you into a Social Media desert. Facebook Pages are a much better option. Here's why.

Limited Numbers

Firstly, a group limits your numbers. You might have no business ambition and therefore it may not affect you, but we all want to be business rock stars deep down and limiting your numbers to 25,000, including you the administrator, is limiting your potential. If your business were to grow larger than that you would then need to create a page and move all 24,999 of your fan base to the new site and entice them to "Like" you again. Lets say only half decide to actually move. You've lost half your fan base in an instant.

Easier Communication

How do you go about letting your group members know about a special offer? You have to send them a message. Facebook limits the amount of group members you can message to 1,000. So when you have 1,001 members, your communication goes out the window. Compared to Facebook groups which allow you to have a status in the news feed of all your fans, Groups come across as having to lick an envelope and visit the post office. Sharing messages within a Page is easy, not as intrusive and far less annoying than getting random message notifications.

Personal Presence

Now you can also browse Facebook as your page. My band played at a venue in Durban with a well known musician. There were a few people who commented on HIS wall that they enjoyed our performance. At the time I could only comment as myself. How much better would it have been to have been able to send a message as the band. Instead of me saying, "Thanks on behalf of Stereo In Flight." the message would have read," Thank you very much. From, Stereo In Flight." Now think of your business being able to communicate with clients as their friend. Isn't that the point of social media?

Do It Right The First Time

There is a point to doing some research before jumping into the social media pool. Many people dive into it without a plan or objective. When it fails they blame social media. When in fact the old saying applies, "Failing to plan is planning to fail."

South Africans SUCK at Social Media for Business

Yes that's right. I need to say it in a harsh way as well because it is as true as a penguin is black and white. South African's, in particular South African businesses are terrible at marketing on Social Media.

It's NOT Free Advertising

Social media is designed for people to keep in touch. You could maybe liken it to a group of friends at a pub having a chat. Now imagine in the middle of that group, someone keeps butting in and saying "We're offering a special on Dog pedicures. Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!!11!!!" (you're not excited enough if there are no 1's in the exclamation)

Who can tell me they wouldn't want to smack that person or at least get him thrown out? All he would succeed in doing is ruin the conversation and make sure the group never return.

Don't go posting comments promoting your business all over. The Internet is not free advertising.

SPAM Must Go

If you go through the groups on Facebook, Myspace or LinkedIn you will see posts on the pages of groups about peoples events and businesses. Littering the Internet with trails of your "marketing" is like seagull droppings all over the beach. It is NOT COOL! It is SPAM, which is interruptive and offensive. It paints your business personality as desperate and annoying. The only people who may want to deal with you then, will be fellow desperates or insecure customers. Those are probably also the same people who think they have won a prize because of the banner ad that says they are the 999,999 viewer.

SEO No

Maybe you have been told the latest buzzword that is Search Engine Optimisation. While it is a great method of improving your search rankings, going about improving your rating by littering the Internet with links is a big NoNo. That can be even worse for your business than you think. The free options online are fast running out. It is best to get into the paying market while it is still small enough to accomodate you.

Good Goals and Great Partners

When choosing an Online Marketing Strategy, or a partner to do so, it is important to look at what their goals are. If they are dead set on only bringing your site traffic then you might have to look carefully at their methods. Try find someone who is more interested in your success from online campaigns. Someone who will look at your whole online presence and match it to your brand. Someone who will help you create a great online world that sells.

Is that not what we are after? Sales.

SEO: Scam Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation is the process of pushing your website up the lists so that when someone searches for your product or service your website is first, or at least close, in the search engine rankings. it is the Rolls Royce of free advertising.

Is it REALLY Free?

Paying an organisation to improve your site's search engine friendliness sounds like a good idea. It sounds even better when they say, "You don't even have to worry about it. We'll do all the work." Unless they take ownership of your site and make changes to your content they are not performing legal SEO. Google's guidelines specifically state "Don't Participate in Link Schemes."

Overload

Search engines used to make use of keywords hidden in the site's code to index the pages. What was happening was that web masters were wise to this and put "dogs dogs dogs dogs dogs dogs dogs dogs dogs" in the keywords to fool the site into thinking the site had a lot to do with dogs. Now the keyword rates very low in the overall quality algorithm that calculates your ranking to combat this.

The next criteria that was picked in is links to your site. If your site is linked to a lot, the Search Engines view it as important, thus ranking it higher. This caused many Search Engine Optimisers to go onto any site that allows comments, then adding comments with links to the site in question, thereby SPAMming the Search engines with links and boosting the SER. This has been known to happen with small and even larger organisations.

Having interesting content that people want to link to your site is key. By participating in a forum where you make a valuable contribution and are allowed to have a link in your forum signature also boosts the amount of good quality links to your site. Logging in and commenting, "LOL," to a million posts is not considered a valuable contribution. Also, other users of the forum will visit your site, and possibly link to it from their blogs, sites or social media accounts.

Penalties

If your site is found to be in violation of any of the SE guidelines, your site is likely to be removed from the Search results or even banned from having any links on the Google Content Network, which makes up almost 80% of the web.

Real SEO

The best way to ensure your site is ranked highly is to make sure your users rank it highly. Facebook never had to worry about SEO because it is useful to the user. If users like your site, visit it often, make use of the content and features, then your site will feature highly on Search Engines.

Our recommended Steps are;

Make your site useful to the user
Use Search Engine Marketing or Advertising to Increase Traffic to your site
Make use of Analytics to see how to keep your site useful
Join and make a valuable contribution to a forum
When writing copy, consider using the keywords your clients would use when searching for your products or services
Ensure all image and video tags have relevant information for spiders to read. (image and video search is quite popular)
Consider writing a blog. Blogs not only generate content, and more keywords for Search engines to index, but they provide fresh content for your visitors and a reason to return to your site.

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