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Plan for Website Success
8 ways to WOW your boss, company executives, customers and prospects with a truly effective website.

No doubt, you've visited plenty of websites that have proven to be a waste of your valuable time. If you're like many business and marketing professionals, you secretly hope that your site meets the needs of your prospects, customers and internal users.

But you're not really sure, are you … ?

You can create a roadmap to greater website effectiveness by taking the following advice. You'll find that the investment in time and money—to convert your site to a successful measurable marketing tool—well spent.

To find several tips that promise both increased qualified traffic to your sites and enhanced visitor usability, Read More.

As seen in

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL

"We worked with Johnson Direct to create an effective site for our new partnership with The Wall Street Journal, WSJwine.com.

The goal was to help us to create a 'look and feel' in line with the brand values of both The Wall Street Journal and Direct Wine and to build an inviting customer interface that would strike the right balance between a good 'wine' experience and easy-to-use functionality.

Johnson Direct helped us deliver the WSJwine.com site in a smart and efficient way. We found Johnson Direct very professional to work with and totally focused on delivering the end result on time and to a high standard.”

Tanya Kelly
Director of Marketing
International Direct Wines

To see some of Johnson Direct's most recent web work, view this online slide show.

NEW! Special 5 Part Series on New Media

In this special feature, we’ll share with you 5 new things that you should immediately incorporate into your ’09 budget … and guess what!? All of them are FREE!

Each month we’ll feature 3 quick tips to help you get started immediately.

Part Two: FACEBOOK

With more than 80 million members, Facebook is today’s fastest-growing marketing opportunity! But getting started can be overwhelming and you only have one chance to make it right.

So how do you get started? Here are 3 techniques to work:

1. LEARN YOUR FACEBOOK LINGO
Pages, profiles, groups, friends, status updates, news feed, poke, walls, chat, friends, fans…..just to name a few! It can definitely be overwhelming and if you don’t take the time to learn about each of them and which one is better suited for your organization, you may find yourself with little success.

In general, profiles are not appropriate for marketing. However, you will need one to create a page or group, so identify a key member of your organization that should use the profile as a basis for your page or group. Remember, because profiles are typically for personal use, you should be strategic in choosing this.

Second, you must decide whether to create a page or a group. Both have pros and cons and they are definitely not “one-size” fits all. The pros at Johnson Direct can help you to identify which on is more appropriate and help you get set-up.

2. REMEMBER THE RULES OF SOCIAL MARKETING
Facebook marketing requires communicating….not advertising! When clients see a Facebook page or group for the first time, their initial reaction is “That’s it?” Facebook is very clean and doesn’t have a lot of room for custom design (in comparison to MySpace, for example), but you can incorporate your brand into the group/page.

Mass marketing is also not allowed. One of our clients recently had their account disabled for sending too many requests to join their group. Facebook looks for spam, so when you are sending too many requests for prospects to join, it’s going to send you a reminder to stop. Just remember that social marketing takes time!

3. CREATE INTERACTION
Social marketing is all about social interaction and expression and this is the key to your success. Two key ways to create interaction:

Update your Facebook page regularly by adding engaging and useful content. Facebook is programmed to highlight new information and recent changes. The more often that you add new content, the more frequently people will return to your page. You can even send updates to your group members to announce new events, products, sales and so on.

It will be important to create a strategic plan ahead of time to highlight key updates that you use, but also remember that your content needs to be timely and interesting, so pay attention to new things in the marketplace and activity on your page or group.

Encourage and allow fans to participate in the conversation. Admittedly, this can be scary for clients. What if members have something negative to say about my service or product?

Our recommendation? Embrace it, fix it, and learn from it!

First of all, where else do you receive this valuable feedback from your clients? And even if it is negative, don’t you want to know so that you can fix it?

Second, fix it. Respond back to the customer’s complaint. This shows that you care and that is powerful. Most of the time, people just want to be heard and aren’t even expecting a response.

Finally, learn from it. Find new ways to encourage feedback from your customers and prospects.

Did You Miss Part One? Last month, we gave you 3 reasons to consider blogging and see how it’s helped Johnson Direct with PR. If you missed it, Read More to get hip to blogging now!

Next Month, Part Three: LinkedIn Next month, you'll learn how to use this professional networking site to create a network of your customers and establish new connections.

COMING UP IN OUR NEXT ISSUE

An Ode to the Self-Mailer
Why it's time marketers update their notions regarding this maligned format.

If you haven’t tested formats in a while, you might want to consider adding a self-mailer to the media mix. You may be pleasantly surprised by the results you achieve.

Next month's feature will separate facts from fiction and uncover effective self-mailer strategies that prove typical myths about this clever direct mail format all wrong.

Stay tuned for the next issue!