Supplyant

Web 2.0 has become the 1 millionth word in the dictionary.

But just as Web 2.0 has become commonplace, people have started looking forward to Web 3.0  and to what the internet of the future will look and feel like.  Thinking about where the technology is going  gives us an opportunity to start planning now.

My Web 3.0  Trends & Predictions

1. How you will use it ?
   Stop thinking about the web being something you need a computer to use.  It’s started already with the iPhone, even now people are spending huge amounts of money on products and services using phones. Just last week potn.com received an order for a £1000 set of wheels, which was placed using a phone and PayPal. In the next 5 years mobile phones will become the primary method of interacting with the Internet.
2. Single Log In?
   Open ID is a technology that’s growing quickly and being adopted by Google, Facebook and every other hi profile tech company. What this technology will do is allow you to log into any site on the Internet with exactly the same details. No more registering everywhere you go.  By taking away the registration barrier interaction with sites is easier and will become much more common place.
3. Information overload will see social marketing thriving.
   The Internet is crowded already and there’s more information than you can keep up with. This will lead to more people joining groups of like minded individuals who’s recommendations will become more valuable than any advertising.  Management of this information overload will become a hot topic and lead to development of radical new ways of keeping up.
4. PUSH PUSH PUSH
   At the minute you visit websites, but as web 3.0 kicks in you’re going to find more information pushed to you. In whatever form they take, subscription based services are going to take over.

Do you have any predictions of what’s coming next?

As you can imagine I try pretty much every new social network tool that’s out there, but were seeing certain ones are growing in momentum at the minute.  A quick search for potn on google shows that the potn twitter is front page for most people and  potn squidoo pages are now rising fast.

Everybody is talking about twitter at the minute (here’s a quick guide) but you may not have heard of squidoo.  Squidoo is a Seth Godin creation that offers you another spot for talking about yourself (quick guide).

The aim of the game, if at all possible, is to take up the whole of the front page of google with results associated with your brand.

If you haven’t done so already

• head over to twitter and sign up for an account
• head over to squidoo and set up your page

This will help you on your quest to take out the whole front page.  Ill be posting soon about the secret of dealing with all these networks without wasting time, so stay tuned.

I found a great article over at tech-crunch talking about advertising revenue from newspapers. You can see from the pretty grim graph below all is not well in newspaper land.  Its worth noting that these figures talk not only about newspaper advertising revenues  but also advertising revenues on the newspapers websites.

So is it time to start looking at newspaper advertising?

Well, nothing’s changed really. For most people  the answer to any question regarding marketing is down to one thing, ROI (return on investment). If you can test and measure it and it works, do it. If not, don’t.

On page advertising is much harder to test and measure, so be careful and don’t go for it unless you’re onto a real winner.  Also, ask yourself is a newspaper reader going to be your best customer or should you be targeting web savvy users?

For now, unless the offer is amazing, I’m recommending you look at easily measurable online opportunities first before even considering newspapers.

What do you think?

• Were is the newspaper market going?

• Will it last the next 10 years?

I hate losing customers because it makes me sad. Winning new customers is an expensive game too. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of advertising, a lot of permission building and too much of your precious time.

The top reasons why people leave your company and start using another are;

1% – Death
3% – Change email / Lose favourites
5% – Buy from a friend
9% – Sold by a competitor
14% – Better product / Better price
68% – Perceived Indifference

As Guerrilla marketeer guru Jay Levenson says, you should be spending over 75% of your marketing resource talking to your old customers instead of wasting time on new ones.

68% of your customers will leave you if you don’t talk to them. So stop reading this and start figuring out ways to talk to your customers.

I used to flick through TV channels with the remote in the hope I found something I liked. Now I subscribe to Sky+, pick my favorites and skip the annoying and interruptive ads.

Sky+ is turning millions into TV subscribers. They choose what they want to watch, record it, skip past the adverts and get back to the show!  Sky+ is a great indicator for how people will use your website in the future, finding relevant content and consuming it at their convenience.

People are cramming more in a day than ever before. This means the amount of time users have to browse is getting smaller and smaller. You only have to look as far as social sites like Facebook to see that people are finding a place to get relevant content delivered to them in seconds. They feel really comfortable with this and are staying for the long haul. The Russian investors who have just paid $200m for a small slice of Facebook  think so too.

As a website owner, think in these terms;

• People will increasingly find you through subscribers recommending others.
• People will only stay on your subscribers list if the content is useful to them.
• People want relevant updates fast (twitter, facebook, email, mobile phone or RSS)
• People want an easy way to share your content with friends.
• A subscriber is worth 10 times as much to you as a visitor…

The best way to increase your market share is to deliver highly relevant content to your subscribers, just like Sky+

I love seeing people get great result from newsletters and subscribers. But how often should you talk to them to not wind them up? I think your schedule depends on three key factors.

Can you commit to a regular schedule?

To your subscribers a consistent schedule is arguably more important than the ultimate quality of your articles. Do people watch East Enders every day because each episode is always better than the last?  People hate change and miss you when you miss an appointment.  Using feedburner or a similar service for managing distribution of your newsletters lets you stop worrying about timing.

Do you have something to offer which is wanted?

Are you nagging me to do something or offering me something. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out which one you should be doing. Friendly advice great, ordering me to do something bad

Leave a little room for nice surprises

If once in a while my wife phones me and says “come on home I’ve got my best lingerie on”  I am always going to make sure to pick  up her calls. Nice surprises once in a while means I keep coming back.

I schedule my newsletter to appear on tuesdays and thursdays, but of course every now and again I chuck in a little surprise.

Are you getting them too regularly, or not regularly enough? Tell me here

Keeping in touch with your customers is paramount.  If you’re not talking to them then they just assume that you either don’t care or have disappeared. Traditionally newsletters have been a great way of keeping in touch but…

If you’re anything like most companies that have newsletters you are probably in this position:

• Nobody wants to write the company newsletter
• When it does get written, it’s about the company, rather than things that benefit the reader
• It gets sent to a bunch of people that haven’t asked for it.
• The newsletter gets sent once in a blue moon
• It’s posted or faxed
• It may, or may not, get looked at (you don’t know) and binned.

EPromo is a different, but simple approach.

You write articles on your blog, consistently.
Google lists your articles as ‘high importance’ and ranks them well.

New Suspects;

• find and read your article through Google, Yahoo etc and click to your site.
• look at other articles you have written of relevance to them.

Now Prospects;

• they now choose to subscribe to your free updates via email or RSS because your articles are useful to them.
• they have also subscribed to your article notifications on Facebook and Twitter.
• they have been impressed by your intent to delivery articles consistently and your obvious capability to get the job done.
• they think to call you when a job comes up. You get the job because they have learnt to trust you.

Now Customers,

• they appreciate you staying in touch, without appearing pushy.
• they think to call you when a new job comes up. You get the job because you keep on giving, even after the sale.

Now Fans;

• they confidently recommend your articles and you, to other colleagues and industry.

Analyse what’s been most successful for you, return to “Go” and collect more Suspects ……

The difference is not really in the news itself, but its ability for you to communicate more effectively, consistently and cheaply with your leads and customers.

Need help? Need a plan? Get in touch

I had a company contact me today….

1. They sent me a “newsletter” this morning. I didn’t ask for it so deleted it before even reading it.
2. They followed up by phone asking me if I received the newsletter. Erm, Yes, but I deleted it.
3. I re-opened the email just out of curiosity and it was all about them, not about helping me.
4. They told me how well everyone else was doing. How does that help me?
5. The news was old news I’d heard sometime ago from another source.

The approach was wrong on so many levels, maybe next time they should:

1. Get permission beforehand to send the newsletter. This can be a personal email.
2. Send relevant news to my business, not general stuff I need to filter through.
3. Give me an significant incentive to follow up with any business requirement.
4. Keep giving consistently over a long period before expecting a return from me.
5. Build some real rapport so I trust you before doing business.

If you want to sell to me, your going to have to earn some permission to do so first.

Are you a hunter or a farmer?

• The hunter will track down a prospect get the sale and move on.
• The farmer cultivates his leads for a maximum long term yield from his efforts.

There’s a good reason there are more farmers in the world than hunters… It works better

Is your website farming new customers?

A key strategy for building traffic to your site is by looking for other sites in your area of interest / business and interacting with them. Pretty much every half decent site out the gives you the ability to respond to an article or to join the conversation.

Including yourself in the social web is your responsibility as a business owner, not embracing this opportunity is like going to a night club and sitting in a dark corner looking at the beautiful people rather than chancing your arm and chatting them up.

Are you a lurker?

A lurker is a person who reads discussions on a message board, newsgroup, chatroom, file sharing, blogs or other interactive system, but rarely or never participates actively. Life as a lurker is really easy but isn’t going to make you any money.

Stage 1: Stop lurking and start talking?
Its scary getting involved for the first time, but this isn’t time for excuses, just get on with it.

• Stop being afraid of being wrong
• Stop being afraid of saying something stupid
• Stop being afraid that you wont be interesting enough

Your mission is to just say something even if its just hello.

Stage 2: Be Relevant
So, your going to comment on this article. If you write something constructive about the article then chances are as the site owner I’m going to be chuffed that your interacting and allow your comment. If you come on and talk about your company and not the article your going straight in the spam pot.

Stage 3: Build Trust
I don’t want to hear about your company just yet, I want your opinion. Ask me some questions build a rapport with the other members of the site. If you build trust with my members I might even let you tell people what your company does.

Try and sell yourself too quickly and you will burn your bridges.

Now the real test…. who’s been reading?  Bottle of champagne goes to the best comment/question…