National Mail Order Association -- Expert Advice Series

February 2008

John D. Schulte's Expert Advice Column

You’ve heard about it, web 2.0. And if you’re like me, you wonder, what is web 2.0, and what does it mean to me as a marketer of a product or service?

Searching the web on the subject even complicates the matter because you find all sorts of information that is written in hard to understand tech language. This article is meant to simplify the meaning for a marketer and tell you what you need to do right now.

First off, from a marketing standpoint web 2.0 is really about building search engine ranking and word of mouth marketing. It represents the shift from your company controlling all the information about your company’s products and services, (i.e. web 1.0,) to the consumer providing and sharing information about your company’s products and services.

This is done through blogs and other internet social web sites like www.Facebook.com, www.linkedin.com, www.fastpitch.com,  www.MySpace.com, www.plaxo.com, www.flickr.com, and www.YouTube.com,  and social bookmarking sites like, http://www.digg.com, http://www.propeller.com, http://www.stumbleupon.com, http://del.icio.us, http://www.Reddit.com, http://www.newsvine.com, http://www.technorati.com (i.e. All together gives you Web 2.0)

In other words, Web 2.0 is about word of mouth marketing, or “conversation marketing.” You need to interject social marketing tactics into your regular marketing that will help spread the word about your company and also give you additional search engine optimization for your web site. You need to do this to rise and stay at the top of the search engine rankings with relevant keywords and the topics associated with what you sell, and you do it by building highly relevant social communities that tie into your target market.

You want to use new web technology to encourage and engage conversation about your product rather than you simply pushing your communication about your company into the marketplace.  You want people to talk about you using blogs and social networks, bookmarking information about your company and then sharing it with their friends.

As an example, let’s say you are selling aftermarket automotive accessories. The current Web 1.0 approach is to discuss features and benefits of the accessories on your website. Where a Web 2.0 strategy is to encourage customers to download their pictures and videos using your accessories on their cars and trucks.

Why is this shift happening?  Mostly because people are becoming disinterested with static “one way” corporate generated content, and now that the tools and technology are available for them to easily learn from others and share experiences with others, the natural tendency is to go looking for more interactive options to help them with their research and purchasing decisions.

Everyone now depends somewhat on the internet as a marketing channel, and that will only grow, and to keep up, you need to incorporate a few tactics this year.

Why must you start now? Because most non-blog sites are falling fast in search engine rankings, 60-80% of indexed pages on Google are now blogs. Traffic on Social Media Sites is quickly surpassing other sites.  

You may have personally noticed this shift when you've searched on a word or term and comments found on Wikipedia come up at the top of the search listings.

So here is a six week plan for you to start this very week. Don’t put it off.

Week One: Start up a blog around some relevant topic to your business and make at least one post. Blogs are an essential component of a Web 2.0 strategy, and important to the future online marketing success of your business.

 A blog will:

- Increase traffic to your corporate web site and other call to action pages.

- Build an online BUZZ around your company’s products and services.

- Eliminate up to 90% of search engine optimization costs.

To get by any inertia you may have of setting up a blog today, to make it easy and avoid the learning curve; we recommend using the blog creation service Moguling like the NMOA did. (We set up our first blog using them for wholesale distributing, with more to come.) I checked out a number of possibilities for blogging, but I went with Moguling because it’s very easy to use, and the important Web 2.0 functionality and components you need are already built into it. Plus it’s a great bargain. Moguling is set up to give you a free blog account. It's well worth it!  With the free account you don’t even need to have another URL.

NOTE: If you do want to use your own special URL, (recommended) their fee is just $9.95 a month. Still a bargain and you can easily go from a free account to a paid one at any time in the future without losing any work you have done.

If you think you're too busy to get the blog going, don’t let it stop you from acting, Moguling also has a unique service that will research and write keyword rich articles for you and post them on your blog.

NOTE: If you have not yet created a web site for your business at all, start with a blog. If you act now, there is a good likelihood you can get a good keyword URL for your business if you add blog at the end of it. Example: We could not get the URL wholesaledistributor.com for our new wholesale sourcing blog, but we were able to get www.wholesaledistributorblog.com I recommend you search for one or more good URL’s now that can be used for future blogs of your own, before someone else does.

Before the end of week one, have your web person use Moguling’s built-in Widget feature to put an RSS feed on a page of your main site that relates to the topic of the blog. This Widget feature will stream any new blog posts right onto your main site and give you additional search engine ranking juice. You can see an example of how we did this with our new wholesale blog at the bottom of the NMOA Wholesale Product Department page.

Week Two: Set up a free account at these social bookmarking sites: http://www.digg.com, http://www.stumbleupon.com, http://www.Reddit.com, http://del.icio.us, http://www.newsvine.com, http://www.technorati.com And on each posting you make to your blog, use one or all of the bookmarking sites mentioned above to optimize the posting by tagging it and adding it to your favorite list. And you ask everyone you know to tag it as well; Friends, employees, relatives, and good customers.

Week Three: Create your first profile on a social web site. I would recommend starting with www.facebook.com. After you have a detailed profile on Facebook, do a search for groups on Facebook related to your industry and join them and contribute something to that site, maybe linking to your blog, or your company profile. If there is no group related to your industry, start one. You might want to start one even though there are others. Here is an example of the direct marketing group we started for the NMOA, http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5375374834 (Join us for free and post your link!)

Week Four: Create a profile on www.linkedin.com, www.fastpitch.com,  www.MySpace.com, and www.plaxo.com. Just open your Facebook profile and copy and paste the same information from there into these new profiles. This makes it quick and easy. Remember, each of these social sites you create profiles on give you additional links to your main site for free, and also put you in a network where others can find you.

Week Five: Set up a Press Release Page on your main web site if you don’t already have one so you can post any news releases about your company. Here is an example of the NMOA’s direct marketing press release page. Then write a press release about your new company blog, post it to your web site, and then submit the release to various press release distribution services. A reasonable fee based PR distribution service is prweb.com and a decent free one is pr.com Then use the social bookmarking sites you made an account with in week two, and tag your press release.

NOTE: Watch for the new NMOA training guide on “Marketing without Money using Press Releases and Articles.” It’s just about finished and should be out in the next few weeks.

Week Six:  Make additional posts to your blog and tag them with the social bookmarking sites. And then each week after this, make additional posts. Make sure any of your sales people or employees get registered to post to your blog too.

This six week plan will get you started, and that’s the most important thing when it comes to a Web 2.0 marketing strategy; it’s a work in process, ever evolving, your first steps you do here will lead you to the rest.

If you have questions, or need help, contact me at the NMOA and we’ll see what can be done.

If you missed my article, One tactic to increase your web sales by15%, you can click here to read it.

To your success,

John D. Schulte

schulte@nmoa.org