Promoting your website to make more of your online communications strategy means keeping two tricky taskmasters happy:

1) Your customers
2) Internet search engines

Customers are listed first, as I believe your primary responsibility in any communications activity (and any media) is to your customers first and foremost. When creating your website (or updating it) think carefully about what your customers want and their online information needs. What are you prepared to share with them publicly and what information helps them do business easily with you. Customers can be the people who buy your product, but they may also be people who have other interests, such as journalists or market analysts.

Design your site with people in mind (user-centric design) making it easy to navigate, exciting to look at, brimming with news and reasons to go back to it. Make it bright, fun, informative, compelling, news-worthy and friendly – your primary audience will quickly recommend it to others.

Search engines

These are your next audience, just like customers they are busy and they really appreciate you using good editing techniques to digitally ‘signpost’ the information they need. Again, try to make their job as easy as possible, so they can work for you.

Start with your site itself – make sure you have a meta-tag to tell the search engines what you provide, spell it out for them so they know what you can offer their readers. Register your website with Google and Bing, so they know what to say about you and what your pages offer.

Next, think about the following question:

If a customer didn’t know your brand, how might they search the web and find you?

This could create a strategic discussion in your business and give your brand managers some food for thought – you may need a room, some coffee and to put some time in the diary to deal with this one. You could even ask some new customers how they found your website to settle any disputes.

The outputs you want from this heated debate are the link between your brand and organic search. Next you need to sprinkle these ‘hooks’ across your user-centric site to help drive SEO and ensure people who are looking for these items online are directed to your website, helping the search engines service their requests. Make sure these electronic ‘middle-men’ are doing their job to direct these enquiries to you.

So – that’s the challenge or the art of SEO – in many ways it’s back to the basics of all communications, think about your customers, who are they, what do they want, how do they find you, how can you help. The key point is not to let the search engines dictate your design or limit your creativity for your customers, but make sure they are your next port of call.

Good luck with your next web project and don’t forget to focus on design first – give your customers a reason to return to your site, provide the  news, content and information they need, before you start to think about SEO.

In a future article we will look at Social Media and the role this is now playing in improving search optimisation and driving traffic to your site.

Not much time for blogging, so here’s a ‘speed blog’ on positivity:

In these austere and challenging times, what sets companies apart (and this is typical of crisis behaviour) is the way they adapt to difficult circumstances and maintain that all important positive edge and good customer service.

It’s all too easy to ‘batten down the hatches’ go to ‘minimum cost, minimum effort’ and start to look internally, rather than maintaining an outward focus. In these difficult times, new ideas for cost-cutting are in big demand – new ways of being more efficient with processes and also more targeted ways to communicate effectively with customers are welcomed.

So – think positive, try not to frame answers to questions in a limiting way (a classic learning point of NLP thinking) and make sure your customer service remains top notch so you are top of the list when the recovery comes and spending starts again.

Don’t think rising costs, think value for money. Don’t list the reasons why you can’t do something, find a way that you can within the bounds of a limited budget.  Using alternative communications such as PR and Social Media could be one way to maintain contact with your customers and perhaps provides an opportunity to learn new skills and broaden your communications channels and outreach.

Just like this blog, time is short,  but with a fairly quick article – hopefully I reached you with something valuable and positive.

Ideas are what business needs – ideas about a new product, ideas about  a new angle to speak to the media, ideas to start a debate or initiate a conversation.

If you’ve hit a mental block with something, try to take some time out, change your surroundings for a few minutes and perhaps change the company you keep to discuss it. I frequently find that a walk at lunchtime before responding to that email or writing that communication helps generate a fresh perspective. Discussing it with someone outside your normal environment can also make a big difference.

Some of the top copywriters say that the last thing you should do is actually start writing, the fostering of the ideas needs to take place first. Don ‘t pick up that pencil until you’ve had time to nurture your thoughts.

The use of a coach or mentor in business is on the increase and many corporations are setting up internal mentoring schemes to help growth and foster innovation and new ideas. Sometimes a younger head can benefit from a gentle steer from a more experienced and detached professional, keeping the new ideas flowing but taking the most efficient and appropriate path to help them progress.

In the next few weeks were going to be very busy working on a new idea from a new client, so please be patient – ideas are in progress. More updates soon.

Last week marked a great deal of activity at Compelling. We set a date for some PR work with a national charity, wrote a guest blog article for another consultant and had a great evening out with a web-obsessed x-colleague where we put the world to rights on a number of fronts.

On a personal note, one of his points of clarity was around the forthcoming birth of my son/daughter and heir to the communications throne! This is due next week, so a frenzy of preparation is taking place at home as we finish the nursery and buy all manner of new items of equipment that we hope will see us through the first few weeks of parenthood.  Am I ready? I think you can never be ready for an event like this – that’s been my realisation.

Anyway, the point was made that parenthood would change me and we joked over a pint that I would look somewhat ravaged and worse for wear by this time next year.  With this in mind, the image below and this post is a small reminder of my last days of minimal responsibility in this world – to be reviewed in 12 Months on 1st March 2012.

Days before parenthood (1st March 2011)

Anyway, to business – so what to record about the world as I approach fatherhood?  Change is certainly afoot on a global scale this week with the protests in Egypt, Bahrain and Libya.  After a public protest broadcast via the Radio 4, several hundred oil workers have been rescued from the desert south of Benghazi. If you wanted an example of the power of the media, this has to be one to note.

On UK turf, the ‘talk’ of economic cuts has now translated into some real reductions with the police and armed forces facing drastic cuts in salaries and numbers – that’s the recession news for now.

Also, referendum fever is gripping the country with Wales voting ‘YES’ (or ‘Oes’?) to have its own law making powers and a vote on the alternative voting system, potentially a huge change on the cards for 5 May.

Closer to home, this week I’ve been out on my bike for the first time this year, thanks to a spell of decent weather after so much wet, wind and snow in the last few months. Partly inspired by pumping up the tyres on our pushchair as we prepare for things to come, I thought it might be time to blow the cobwebs off of the most environmentally friendly way of leaving the house at high speed!! (to get to the shops, obviously…not just to escape!! ).

Finally, this week brings not only Shrove Tuesday with pancakes scheduled to brighten up the kitchen, but also I see it’s national pie week – so as food is sometimes a subject close to my heart, we have a double whammy of culinary delight in the diary.  Something tells me that any son/daughter of mine might just put in an appearance before national pie week is out. (Let’s see if my prediction is true…). It’s also great to celebrate the depth and breadth of local produce now available at Farmer’s Market and in the growing number of farm shops springing up.

So – here’s to Fatherhood and the ageing effect, referendums, regime change in Wales and the Middle-East, Shrove Tuesday and lest we forget…National pie week!

Ah – branding and positioning! Great to be working on that once again after TOO MUCH internal comms and change management project work.

Yesterday I had a great dinner/brain-storming session with a friend from Oddsock Design (come on guys – don’t be shy about your new website – get it launched!!) anyway, we had a good chew on branding and marketing and PR for a couple of clients.  After a long chat we kept coming back to strategy and being benefit or user-experience focused, rather than being immersed in the ‘Speeds and Feeds’ (best said with a Scottish Accent!) as they say in technology land.

Yes, there are still Tech companies out there trading on the technological details of what makes a product tick, rather than what it can do for you. Come ON! Engineers are not holding the budgets these days and they certainly aren’t running procurement departments or taking over the board room. The guys at the top don’t want wiring diagrams, they want to know how it will make life a better experience for them or their customers - or work quicker, so they can go home and see their families earlier on a Friday.  It’s all about the experience - from getting the product out of the box, to installing it and using it in anger.

Apple generally do a great job on the OOBE (Out of the box experience). A new MAC just hums appreciatively when you switch it on. Next it they will make it purr while it starts up and playfully bat a small toy round your living room to entertain you while the blue lights pulse and it synchronises itself with its new home.

Thinking about user experience reminded me of a great/old car advert by Volvo of all people. Volvo have done well as a brand recently in turning safe, solid and perhaps boring cars into a product that promises adventure and allows you to drive in a more challenging environment, painting the picture of a great user experience. The new breed of darker Skoda ADs are in a similiar vein… worth checking out – quite an evolved brand from its humble beginnings in the Czech republic.

But back to Volvo – in the early days, they had a similar user experience focussed idea with an AD used in Australia featuring the strap-line “Drive it Like you Hate it” - what a great piece of turn-around marketing to make a product that might have detracted from driving with it’s safety obsessions changing it into the means for having an adventure down-under.

Volvo certainly made a good job of marketing a technical product at the time with that one – straight to the benefit, the user experience, the joy of the thing! Their engineering background still leaks through with inspiring names like the ‘XC90′ – that nearly tops the ‘IBM PC300 GL’ for thrill factor and a catchy product identity -  but I’m sure the cross-country range delivers a beast of a car that you can drive ‘like you hate it’ in all weathers!

So - keep your brands benefit and user focused in 2011.  ‘Drive it like you hate it’ also seems a pretty good motto to get us through the darker moments of February!

Peace is ‘the moment when you reload your rifle’ according to the venerable Mr Bob Dylan.

A cynical definition for a cynical world perhaps, but it’s also true that you do need time to reload, take stock and reflect before your next moment of brilliance!

From a marketing and communications perspective, going ‘dark’ for a while can also be the right strategy at certain moments. Large corporations do this all the time, when financial results are about to be published or some unspeakable merger is on the cards and they can’t possibly comment, you can’t get a squawk out of them.

You also see this tactic in the dizzy world of the celebrity, something is going on, but ‘no comment’ can send the press into a whirl-wind of speculation. Let them stew for a while, make their wild assumptions, keep the paparazzi on tender-hooks until you’re ready to spill the proverbial beans. And when you do finally reveal all – watch them lap it up with renewed enthusiasm – it’s the one that they’ve been waiting for, the waiting is over and it was worth it.

On a personal level, creative folk also need some down-time to wander the earth in search of inspiration, to disconnect from it all and gently ferment that next idea or just recharge the batteries. As I read on a technical blog comment recently ‘Disconnected doesn’t mean OFF!’ – it’s well worth having a little ‘me time’ occasionally.

So – kick back, chill-out, go to the park (while we still have some!), enjoy walking though those crunchy autumn leaves or spend some time lurking in the corner of your favourite coffee house this weekend. If anyone challenges you, tell them your ‘reloading your creativity’ – and ‘they couldn’t possibly understand!’.

Finally, make sure you take a notepad and pen for these offline moments, be ready for when inspiration strikes back.

Just a short post and a fantastic end to the week with a couple of lovely photos of James Davers reaching the North Pole, on behalf of Help for Heroes.

Well done James – just an amazing effort!! I’m a little bit speechless looking at these. Wow.

James (left) at the North Pole

If you’re inspired by James’s trip, coming fourth overall in the Polar race, please sponsor him: http://www.justgiving.com/racetothepole   If you know him in person, a pint is in order!

Good work James and thanks for flying the Polar recruitment flag too.

James and his Polar bear, up North!

Reminder: Activate your ears

Some say that you can’t beat a modern digital gadget to help with managing communications  – where would you be without your smart-phone? While I wait in the checkout queue at Sainsbury’s I can check three different email accounts, surf the web, or receive an SMS to remind me to buy the right type of Toothpaste from the bewildering array displayed on the shelves!!

However, sometimes this constant electronic contact can become a little wearing and it’s proved on numerous occasions to be the least effective way for resolving an argument or problem over any kind of significant detail or semantic disagreement.

Digital communications are also great when you’re in ‘Happy Apple’ mode – feeling positive about the world and marvelling at the glow of blue LEDs that exude confidence and seduction from your new toy. But if you’re tired or battling with complexity I have discovered two new gadgets that outperform these gizmos. The good news is that they come pre-installed on human being v1.1 and you get two as part of the standard offering with few exceptions.

Ears are without question one of the best communication tools we have – they sit nicely away from that blunt transmitter in the middle of the communications portal that sits above our neck, in a rather superior elevated side location, teasing us with a sly side-on profile view. In terms of design these instruments are subtly angled towards the front for optimum reception and work best in conjunction with appropriate levels of eye-contact, signalling that they are charged, on-line and have a decent signal.

Communicating is as much about receiving as it is about transmitting. With the growing choices of social media and digital broadcast channels, it’s far too easy to fall into the trap of attempting to transmit on every level, when targeting, messaging and the quality of what you say is more important that the frequency with which you tweet it. If you are stuck in broadcast mode, you also tend to miss the important replies when they come back in the other direction as a response to your outputs. You can’t judge the mood of your attractors and detractors if you don’t have an inbound channel as part of your communications portfolio. Receiving as well as sending has been part of the communications model  since it was first considered by engineers and comms. theorists alike.

 A man falls in love through his eyes, a woman through her ears.

A close friend of mine who is the director of a local design consultancy recently visited me for a ‘catch-up’ session after a prolonged spell away from work. On one level we had a great conversation about her business and plans for driving forward in the next few months and at same the time I felt that perhaps I wasn’t contributing much in terms of articulating new ideas or areas for exploration.

Subsequently we spoke on the phone a few weeks later and I was pleasantly surprised to hear that she went away from our meeting fired up with enthusiasm and ready to embrace new business plans. Reflecting on this, it’s not always what you say in this type of one to one scenario, but what you facilitate out of your fellow conversationalist. Don’t just broadcast; taking the lead in a conversation can include involving and encouraging others to contribute.

On further reflection on this topic, from my recent Jury service on a long-running case, the most powerful instrument I have seen wielded by a defence barrister in court seems to echo and underline this principle rather well.

Although repeated requests for specific details in court often put participants on the back foot, the pivotal moments of the proceedings were all preceded with a carefully articulated question. This was followed up by a beckoning open gesture or a raised eye-brow, underlining that it was time for the witness to contribute. What was happening in-front of us was intense and closely managed ear-centric activity, the defence compelling the witness to speak and contribute to the discussion.

And how was this highly prized, expensive tactic delivered by the educated barrister assigned to the case, following years of legal study and rigorous testing?  - with attention, eye-contact and one of the best communication tools of all – with a short amount of audio ‘white-space’, more commonly known as silence.

Following an arduous trek across one of the world’s most unforgiving landscapes and having grown and equally unforgivable beard, James Davers has now arrived at the Magnetic Pole as part of Team Coins Foundation in a very respectable fourth out of eight teams competing in the 2010 Polar Challenge.

With winds taking the temperature down to minus 30 and frequently spending 14 hours a day on skis pulling a heavy sledge of provisions, this was no mean feat for any athlete.  The photo below was taken on a good day in terms of weather and visibility as James strides towards the next checkpoint on his race to the pole.

Next week I hope to catch up with the Polar peril in person,  if only to congratulate him on a job well done. James has undertaken the arctic trek to raise money for Help for Heroes, his sponsorship page can be found here.  I will be glad to see him safely home and will certainly be buying him a pint in the near future - although he may have gone off ‘Guiness extra cold’ following his recent experiences.

Thank-you to Winchester based Polar recruitment for being a personal sponsor to James for the event.

Just a short item today, but if you’re looking for a great example of making a dry subject compelling, the BBC programme on ‘Maps that changed the world’ really hit the mark for me.

Geographical and political borders expressed in print or in a linear form are at best dull. However the satirist and cartoonist Fred W. Rose turned this on its head in 1877 by expressing national situations, moods and characteristics through illustration, bringing the map of Europe and the tensions of the time to life with his range of  ‘Octopus Maps’.

Rose’s success was assisted by step changes in printing technology at the time of his inspiration, suddenly his ideas had a marketplace as the reproduction of his creative work was supported by growth in chromo-lithography and the offset litho-press around that era. (I’m not a historian – so if someone has an ‘Octopus Map’ on print developments in the UK, please send!!…)

Anyway, the lesson to be learned is clear and simple from Rose’s eye catching work . A well thought out visual can really lift the communication of a dry or a complicated subject and help communicate it to a much wider audience. Rose lays down the challenge to us all in communications – could you add an image to your next communication and transform it from flat prose to a notable collectable item? or take it to a viral level using the developing media of the day?

In the next few politically charged weeks, image is everything and choice of visual representations for the political parties activity is something to be observed (…and wondered at…). As a small warning, you can over-achieve with outdoor advertising, although personally it has been exciting to watch what many considered a ‘retro media’ return to popular use.

Recent local signage featuring monster-sized party logos and looming polished faces may be enough to give the children of Winchester nightmares and they could serve as a reminder that you can sometimes take the execution of a good idea too far. Frequency of use and competition will inevitably lead to complacency and they will sink back into the background as another distraction.  However, be reassured by the knowledge that the effectiveness of these expensive creative works will at least be measured – in a one-off polarity pole in the very near future.