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Getting people to link and buy — content is king and so is interaction
A lot of people want to optimize their web content, suggesting you might want to get it right and leave it (for fear of messing up). But, many sales (particularly big ticket ones) require multiple touches, in a word “interaction”.
Sections: Business
Topics: interaction
The Ann Arbor IT Zone held a panel on search engine marketing and optimization (SEM/O). As one might infer from even a casual perusal of the Search Engine Watch Blog, or John Battelle's Searchblog, there was a lot of emphasis on pay-per-click search advertising (definition) such as Google's adwords and adsense. Basically, you can think of this as buying a storefront on good web properties. But, that's just paying for leads. How do you get people to come back for more (good)? How do you get them to tell their friends about you (or better, link to you)? How do you convince them to buy your product or service (best yet)?
Both Andy King (Web Site Optimization) and Linda Girard (Brightweb) emphasized the need for good content. Linda even went to the point of suggesting hiring an SEO-aware copywriter. I think focusing on content makes a lot of sense, and as I mentioned in a previous post, people who focus on creating frequently updated content are going to play more of a role in the web as technology barriers are reduced. But, a lot of sales require touching the customer multiple times. To do that, you have to interact. There are both benefits and (sometimes substantial) costs to interaction. An issue I'll be addressing in future posts is how to make interaction into a positive value proposition for your company.
Bud posted this on February 9, 2005
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