Some pointers on briefing for website design

Time is a commodity that is in very short supply for most people. And, I've found that my clients are no exceptions.

Working without a proper brief has been a fact of life for many years now and I've worked my way around this by filling in the blanks as much as possible. I take the attitude that it's better to take a communication job, be it an ad, a brochure or press release to the next stage ASAP.

Giving the client a word doc (for a press release), or a PDF for an ad or brochure, for him/her to look at is easier and gets the job done faster than waiting for a better brief, or more material to take a job to the next stage.

There are however some jobs that I just cannot take any further without a proper brief. One of these is the preparation website.

First of all, why do you need a website? What are you going to use this for? Who do you expect to influence? What message do you want to leave with them?

These are the first considerations for any brief for a communication piece. With a website, more things have to be considered.

After answering the above, one has to consider the content for inclusion. Will there be product brochures, flyers, maybe whole catalogues? How will these be grouped? Are they going to be in separate pages? What about photos?

As photos have to be optimised for the web, these have to be small in size for quick download. And, with the medium able to use JPEGs ( a lossy format), quality of the photos need not be super quality. (No out-of-focus shots, please.)

Also, considerations as to how often these have to be changed. Will the website be purely static? Are there any interactivity considerations? What about e-commerce?

There are a lot of other considerations covering search engine optimisation, meta tags and what about building a community, or a blog to be incorporated in the site.

As you can see, it's not just straight forward.

More on this in another blog.

Blogging: why corporates need to consider this

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It would be so easy to say that blogging was just a passing fancy. Or, that as a marketing communication tool, there is very little value in blogging.

If this were so, wouldn't you wonder why companies like IBM, Microsoft, GM and other Fortune 500 companies are blogging? Why these companies not only invest time in their blogs, but promote the blogging culture within their companies.

So, as an executive in a company, should you consider using blogging as a communication tool?

Definitely.

Why? Consider the benefits:
- a two-way communication tool that allows feedback, without expensive market research
- instant upload of your posts
- communication on a personal level
- a means to influence the market easily
- a way to establish yourself or your company as an industry/opinion leader

And, cost-wise, it's hard to beat. Very little in actual dollars and time invested.

Plus, you can take advantage of the viral nature of this communication means. This aspect cannot be under emphasized.

You have word-of-mouth going for you. And, the easy means of passing your post around via the net.

With these links going around, you get more backlinks, which can help you improve your search engine rankings.

Still not convinced?

You should, at least, consider starting. Look at the cost and time involvement. What have you got to lose?

If you find this just too hard, give me a call. I'd be very happy to discuss the pluses and minuses of this marketing communication and show you just how easy this can be.

Increasing SEO rankings through PR

PR articles have always had an important role as part of the marketing communication and services mix. Not only because of their pull because of the believability factor, but also because of their use in an editorial environment. This environment is encountered not only in the trade magazines but in the web through E-zines.

Marketing communication practitioners, both consultants and clients alike, are well aware of the pull that that press release articles can achieve. But they may not be aware of what these articles can do in improving search engine rankings of their web sites.

This is done in two ways, first of all linking back to a website, through information on the press release article. Contact details of the article’s author should have the URL of the client’s website.

The other way is through the inclusion of keywords in the article. In the Web 2.0 world, placing keywords in client’s website Meta tags is not enough. The web crawlers of today search web content, on page, but also off page looking for keywords in the many news items found on the web.

With the enormous database management capabilities of today’s search engine, picking up these keywords is a much easier task than it was in the web’s early days (Web 1.0).

Hence, optimising links and use of keywords in PR articles help improve search engine rankings, because search engines list sites with the most backlinks and keywords in the top of each keyword listing.

Recognising that the Web 2.0 world paradigm may be a tad confusing for most communication practitioners, we, at JG Marketing Services, include SEO (search engine optimisation) considerations as part and parcel of the PR preparation services offered, at no added cost.

While we are not always involved in the preparation or updating of our clients’ websites, we take the attitude that we should assist our clients’ overall communication needs, whatever part of the marketing communication mix we are involved in.

Since we began offering marketing services in 1980, we have been continually looking at ways to improve and add value with the different aspects of marketing communication we have been involved in.