It seems that many companies are catching up with current web marketing trends. Rather than being 5-6 years behind the curve, they are only a year or two behind the curve in some cases. In fact, many companies I work with are starting to think beyond the web site — that is, thinking about how to promote their brand in other interactive channels.
So how do you think beyond the web site? Here’s are some things to consider…
“Push” content.
Your web site might be well-written, your products might offer a zoom view, spin view or video demo, and your client case studies might be spit-shined and polished. But if no one sees this content, your web site isn’t working for you.
Your business needs a strategy to “push” content to other channels and niches — ones that don’t require to actively seek your content. Social media — like Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and YouTube — is the first thing that comes to mind, but how about pushing blog posts, latest sales, etc. through RSS? You might consider sending a monthly e-mail newsletter (e-commerce retailers, you better be doing this!), dropping press releases about new products, services or projects, or even distributing a podcast on iTunes. You may also want to post to Craigslist.
Getting your content in front of as many people as possible is the idea, and pushing content through as many channels as possible is the solution.
Integrate with social media.
I touched on this concept above, but social media is a great way to put your content in front of readers.
Let’s face it, I don’t blog for fun. I blog so that prospective customers will read it and contact us to figure out how we can apply what we discuss on the blog to their business.¬† In order to get readers, though, I have to put it in front of as many people as possible. To do this, I post links to Twitter (follow me on Twitter here), LinkedIn (connect with me here) and Facebook (find me here). As a result, about 40% of referral traffic (not from search engines) comes from these three social media sites.
Every blog post I write also has easy ways for readers to share my blog posts on social media outlets (see the buttons at the bottom of this blog post). Also, when I post links on Twitter, some people “re-tweet” them, sharing my link with their network, which required no effort on my part.
Large companies are doing it, too. 1-800-Flowers.com recently announced that they had conducted their first transaction within their Facebook Fan Page (not on their web site). Shopping widgets with full transactional capability will become more prevalent in the coming months and years.
Embrace the mobile web.
It’s no secret that more people are using their mobile devices to browse the web and interact with your content. How does your web site look on a mobile device?
As I see it, there are really three levels of sophistication when it comes to a mobile web site.
- Carefully coding a site so that content is readable when read on a device. We typically opt for this most simple option as most companies we work with don’t yet want to pay for a mobile version of their web site. If you want to learn about our techniques, you can read our past blog post called “How to code a web site that’s usable on mobile devices.”
- Include a handheld stylesheet on your site to format content correctly for mobile devices. This second technique is slightly more sophisticated than the first, but is not a separate mobile site.
- The most sophisticated technique is to create a separate mobile version of your web site. The idea here is to buy the .mobi version of your web address, then develop a site specifically for mobile browsers. When someone visits your web site, the web site automatically recognizes whether they are on a mobile device or computer screen and routes them to the appropriate version.
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While each of the above techniques isn’t right for every business, you can see that there are many ways to think beyond the traditional web site. In the end, the reason we do this stuff is to promote our businesses to a wider audience, and many companies take it a step further and use interactive technologies to develop relationships with their customers, clients and markets.
I’m sure there are many more ways to “think beyond the website,” and I’d like to hear your ideas. Leave a comment below!
