Dear Chris,

I’m so pleased that you like the site. I hope that your seminar was a success. I’m glad you asked this question, because it comes up a lot.

Unfortunately, the kind of animation we created for you — CSS3 + Javascript, in case you were wondering — will work in every popular modern browser except for Internet Explorer. Hence you’ll see the static image (the business card) on IE instead of the animation. That’s exactly what we planned and would expect. Lots of people are trying to develop IE workarounds, but I haven’t seen anything that works yet, with one expensive exception (details below).

The visitor-value equation, and the case for the mobile user.

Clients, not unreasonably, often expect that their site will give visitors the same experience on all browsers and platforms. Those of us responsible for creating websites have a different reality: we seek a good experience on all browsers and platforms. The “same” is just never gonna happen.

So the equation we run in our heads (and meetings) is this:

What will provide the best experience for the most visitors? And can we provide an alternate experience for the other visitors that will a) be aesthetically acceptable and b) achieve the client’s marketing goals?

Once, that answer was simple. You picked what worked in IE. No matter how limiting the IE experience, it was the overwhelming browser of choice (well, really of default) for most users.

The most recent statistics that I’ve read claim that IE is still the default browser on at least one-third of computers. One-third is a lot. One-third is huge. To create something invisible to one-third of users would be an incredibly dumb move…if that meant that all or most of our web surfing were still done while we sat in front of a computer.

But it’s not. Sitting at a computer to surf the web almost seems quaint. Just this week, Facebook announced that more people now access their site from mobile devices than they do from computers. As Stephanie Rieger so correctly pointed out in her March 13 article in Smashing Magazine, “the best browser is the one you have with you.”

Angie LaPointe with her new iPad. Onsite technical support provided by Curtiss LaPointe, grandson. Photo courtesy of Dale LaPointe and her trusty cellphone.

That changes the equation significantly. In this new arithmetic, absent other influencing criteria, I’m willing to sacrifice the Internet Explorer installed base in favor of pleasing a much larger audience of mobile users (and users of other desktop browsers). Especially when I can still offer IE users an acceptable experience that still brings home the bacon for the client.

IE 9 is the most current release — that’s probably what you have — and IE 10 is in beta. 10 is supposed to support CSS3 animations, but we won’t know until it’s actually released. Right now, you can only get IE 10 if you’re also willing to install the Windows 8 beta, and few are willing to go down that road. Even if it’s a spectacular, smooth-running zinger of an operating system — which would be a first for Microsoft — I think that the Windows 8 interface is so ugly that I’d rather buy a Mac than look at it every day.

But that’s another story. Right now, here are the choices we face in implementing animation on the web:

Animated GIF. Supported browsers and platforms: All of them. The oldest option for animation on the web, and still a useful tool for some applications, but it has serious limitations. I won’t go into all of them, but the most relevant here is that in a GIF, opacity (transparency) is binary — either on or off. That’s fine when you need a light switch, but not when you need a dimmer. The success of your animation depends on gradual changes in opacity and other effects that aren’t possible in a GIF.

Flash. Supported browsers and platforms:

• All computer web browsers that have the Flash plug-in (most of these either include it already or make it easy to install).
• Windows smartphones.
• Android phones and tablets — all Android tablets, and a few Android phones, support Flash out of the box. Getting Flash to work on most Android phones involves going to the Android store to download and install a Flash player.
• RIM (Blackberry): Older Blackberry phones, but not new ones.
• Apple iOS — iPhones and iPads — do not support Flash.
• Future support on mobile devices: none. Pretty soon, no new mobile devices will support Flash: Adobe, which makes Flash, has recently announced that it is abandoning its mobile Flash platform. I suspect that Flash for the web will also be gone in a year or two.

Most of the animated banner ads that you see on the web are Flash. Flash pros: It can do almost anything, and when it works, it can be quite beautiful. Flash cons: Expensive to generate, difficult to change, and invisible to search engines. Also inflexible and not scalable, so if you have a visitor with poor eyesight who wants to change their screen resolution, the Flash elements don’t get any bigger.

CSS3. Or CSS + Javascript; or CSS + HTML5. Supported browsers and platforms:

• All popular modern browsers except Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer does support limited animation features — and by limited, I mean, like, one — but not what we wanted to do on your website.
• It works very well on Google Chrome, Safari (default browser on Macs), Mozilla Firefox
• All current mobile platforms (smartphones and tablets).

CSS3 pros: Cost-effective, search-engine friendly, stable across different browsers and devices, easy to change, scalable and flexible. Unlike Flash, it’s standards-based and deploys the same source files that are used in development. What that bit of mumbo-jumbo means is that if you got in a big fight with your sister, and wanted some other company to change your animation, they could.

The two most important arguments for CSS3 animation are:

1. It works on most smartphones and tablets.
2. While no one can predict the future of technology, CSS seems like the safest bet for future-proofing. The web has been going here for the past five years, and it will probably keep going in this direction for a while yet. Now that I’ve said that, of course, the very act of writing it down will change the future (sorry, Internet!).

Cons: It’s the newest of the web animation technologies, and still a bit clunky. Animation is not yet as smooth and graceful as Flash, and not all supporting browsers implement all options equally well or consistently. But it gets better with every release of a new browser.

Actual movies. We could create studio-like animations, but this isn’t practical for most applications. In the first place, it’s expensive — the last quote I got from a competent commercial studio started at $4,000 per minute. Secondly, when you want to put the finished film into a website, choosing a player and deployment method presents some of the same browser and platform issues as web animation. And a half a dozen other issues that I don’t have the strength to discuss.

CSS3 and Flash. This solution works for everyone, on every browser and platform…if you have developed two separate animations, one in Flash and one in CSS. If you have a very good browser-detection script and it works perfectly. And if all those non-CSS3-supporting browsers and platforms that do support Flash have a Flash player installed. It’s also expensive. We’ll do it when needed, but we don’t recommend it.

The CSS3 and Flash combo is more affordable and sensible if you’re creating animated web banners, where the advertising site’s host usually provides the browser detection. But even then, the usual combo is Flash and animated GIF.

Does that answer your question?

Your sister,
Michelle

Can I re-use content that I find on the Internet?

The short answer is: probably not. Copyright law is a muddle of “if…then” statements and rules that apply on a case-by-case basis. (If you’re interested in a detailed explanation, many college and university websites have excellent in-depth guidelines, like this one at Purdue, and this one at Northwestern University.) But sensible rules for copyright practice are a lot easier to absorb and use. Here are the guidelines that we give to our clients.

Your High School Teacher Is Still Right, Even On The Internet

One of the biggest misconceptions about the Internet is that copyright rules are different here than they are in print. They are not. In fact, most of the text and images that you’ll find on the Web are copyrighted, which makes the rules for web content not much different than the rules you had to follow for writing a term paper. (The good news is that you almost never have to write a bibliography.)

How can I legally use text from other sources?

Quote text, don’t steal it. When it comes to quoted text, you can’t go wrong by using the same guidelines used by The Huffington Post. They’ve been through the copyright wars, and have developed a set of standards that work well and that are easy to follow.

• Use quoted text as a basis of, or adjunct to, original content. In other words, if you see something on the Web that’s relevant to your audience, write a fresh article about it—don’t just copy and paste.
• Keep quotes short—no more than a few lines each. On The Huffington Post’s website, their longest uninterrupted quote is the equivalent of one long or two medium paragraphs.
• Make quoted text obvious. The Huffington Post indents quoted text and puts it in a box with a background color. You can pick any style that goes with your publication’s layout or branding. Just be consistent and use that style only for quoted text.
• Include attributes for every quote, with a link to the original source material whenever available.
• As hundreds of sued bloggers have learned, you should absolutely never copy and paste whole articles, posts, or long portions of articles or other content. Providing attribution for borrowed content will not protect you.
• Nor should you channel your inner fifth-grader and rewrite portions of articles, content, or other found material as your own. Even on the Internet, that’s still plagiarism. In the last few years, a number of online and print journalists, at least one bestselling novelist, and a famous historian, have all succumbed to sloppiness or temptation and did this, some “borrowing” and rephrasing only a few paragraphs of text. All experienced serious and very public damage to their careers. In 2010, in a scandalous and fascinating story, Cooks Source Magazine was basically destroyed when their long and shameless history of stealing Web content came to life over a single pilfered article about medieval cookery.
   
  If you’re inspired by something you read online, write you own spin or commentary on it, and reference the original. You see this all the time in online news magazines and the blogs and columns of professional websites, like Advertising Age. You can gracefully (and legally) reference the original by saying something like this: “James T. Kirk’s excellent article in Starships Today got me thinking: Are we really ready for the next generation of warp drives?”

How can I legally use images from other sources?

The rule of thumb for images is even simpler than the rules for text: Don’t use any image unless you have the rights to use it. This includes photographs, illustrations, maps, graphic buttons, bugs, and other artwork.

The reason for caution is that a simple image can have many layers of ownership. Let’s say you find a photo of a celebrity that you’d love to use on your website. Here’s who might have usage rights over it, and/or the ability to grant rights:

• The subject, or, if the subject is deceased, the subject’s heirs or estate
• The photographer
• The entity that commissioned the photograph. For example, a magazine, newspaper, movie studio, advertising company, etc.
• A stock photo agency contracted to manage the image. Getty Images and Shutterstock are two stock photo houses that license editorial images.

You don’t want to tangle with all those who have a vested interest in protecting their work—and protect it they do. In fact, when it comes to images, not much is in the public domain. Even works that you think might be safe usually are not.

Take the Mona Lisa, for example. Da Vinci died almost 500 years ago, long before the invention of copyright law. What could be more in the public domain than that? You’d think you could use that image with impunity. And you’d be right, to a certain degree. That’s why you see it on everything from coffee mugs to mobile phone covers to the seats of folding chairs (I don’t really get that last one, but, whatever).

The image itself is in the public domain. But a new work derived from the Mona Lisa—including a new photograph of it— is probably not in the public domain. Copyright of that particular photograph belongs to that photographer (and/or to the museum that commissioned it), and you might need permission to use it.

Once I have rights, can I use images for any purpose or medium?

No. When you commission a photograph or illustration, or buy a stock image, that purchase usually comes with some specific reproduction rights, but not others. These rights may range from very limited to very generous.

Limited rights might include something like the right to post a celebrity photo in editorial content on a website for a certain period of time. Extended rights may include the ability to reproduce the image in multiple media many thousands of times, and to use the image virtually forever. As you might expect, extended rights usually cost more than basic rights.iStockphoto’s licensing page is a good primer on how licenses work.

(Tip: If you’re hiring a photographer or illustrator to create original artwork for you, you’ll save money by negotiating up front for all the potential uses you’ll have later.)

What if I’m broke/a small business/a student/creating a personal website or blog/just starting out/not making any money/a non-profit/doing God’s work?

Sorry: The same rules apply to you, too. Some image sources may offer discounted rates for non-profits or educational purposes; it never hurts to ask.

What if I’m creating a parody?

Oh, well, then, knock yourself out. Mostly. Carefully. You’ve got a whole lot more leeway, as this PDF from the American Bar Association explains very well. But your use has to really be parody, and “transformative”— in that it creates something genuinely different and new out of the original idea. It doesn’t count if you’re creating ordinary content that you plan to call a parody in the event that you get a cease-and-desist letter from a copyright owner. (Interestingly, the Supreme Court gives much more leeway to parody than to satire. Read the ABA article for more info.)

Give me some good news: what images can I use?

Lots of stuff:

1. Your own original images— photos that you take, pictures that you draw. Of course, you still have to follow copyright law with regard to the subjects of the photos; that’s why reality TV shows blur out logos and brand names on T-shirts.
2. Original images that you commission: photographs, illustrations, logos, etc.
3. Stock images. There are dozens of great resources for stock photos, illustrations, animations, even videos. Some of them cost as little as $3 each; some cost hundreds of dollars. Just be sure you buy the right license for your use. The small investment is worth it, and you’ll usually have access to images that are higher quality than anything you can snag for free. On this blog, and on the C3 Advertising website, we use stock photos, original art, and commissioned illustrations.
    
   Some of our favorite stock photo sites are iStockphoto, Veer, BigStock Photo, Getty Images, and Shutterstock.
4. SOME images on file-sharing sites, like Flikr. Occasionally, designers, illustrators, and photographers will generously share their work under a Creative Commons or similar license. Read these licenses carefully for each image. Creative Commons licenses come in several flavors, and you must abide by the rules. Some allow sharing only on the web, some only for editorial or educational purposes, some only with attribution or if you promise not to alter the work.
5. Free stock images. I include this resource for due diligence, but with rare exceptions, you get what you pay for. You also have to be cautious about the provenance of your free image sources. You don’t want to get in trouble because somebody else lied on the Web. Not that anybody would ever lie on the web…oh, wait…nevermind.

I’ve included a lot of detail here, but the rules are actually easy to follow. Until you get the hang of it, bookmark this page as a reference. And when you’re feeling frustrated that you can’t just copy and paste to fill your online bucket, remember this: Copyright laws are a good thing, especially for you. If you’re reading this, you’re a content creator of one stripe or another. The original content you create will benefit from copyright protection, too.

Disclaimer: The guidelines offered here are based on our experience in following copyright law as content creators across multiple media, and in helping our clients stay compliant as they create their own content. But since my formal legal education consists mostly of watching Law & Order, if you have a specific copyright question or issue, contact a lawyer.

Thousands of words have been written about SOPA, many of them incredibly confusing. Discussion of the bill has been framed as a battle between entertainment Godzillas and Internet Mothras, as a watershed difference in generational mindsets, and as the monkey wrench that will wreck the international domain name system. Those in favor of SOPA argue that it’s necessary in order to assure rewards for creativity. Those opposed worry that it’s a dangerous erosion of our freedom of speech. Most technical experts say that it just won’t work: while capable of extraordinary harm, it’s highly unlikely to do much good.

These are worthy topics of discussion, but as a marketing and web professional, my SOPA worries are entirely different. I’m worried about web hosting companies that are so afraid of SOPA that they severely restrict what their customers can post on their own websites. I’m worried about hosting prices that skyrocket so fast and high that small businesses will be priced out of the Web. I’m worried about the end of the Web as a way for companies to engage in conversations with their customers, and its transformation into a series of dull, static, SOPA-safe billboards. Mostly, I’m worried about abuses of loopholes that amount to legalized extortion.

Here’s how SOPA works, and why it’s keeping me up nights:

• Under SOPA, your domain could be blocked simply because your site is “capable of” copyright infringement. Think about it – what site isn’t capable of copyright infringement? It’s a bucket. I can fill it with nicely legal original content and some fully paid-up stock photos, or drop in a copyrighted picture of Elvis and an unauthorized chapter from Twilight. As long as I have control over my own content, I’m vulnerable.
• Once your hosting company gets a court order to block your site, SOPA requires that they make it invisible and inaccessible to viewers in the U.S. within five days. Let’s be clear on this, because it’s nasty: We are talking about blocking your entire site and domain name. If you have one page with one questionable paragraph, photo, embedded video, or audio clip, your entire site is toast. The best you could do in those circumstances would be to buy a new URL, put up a new website, and hope and pray that your customers find you before you go out of business.
• Under SOPA, your internet service provider is forced to play policeman on your website. It’s been pointed out many times that this could force ISPs to sensor content for their own protection. The costs of the staff required to police content adequately would be astronomical. Some ISPs might simply close up shop. Others would have to raise their prices by an order of magnitude. It’s not a far leap to think that some small businesses would be priced out of the internet entirely. So much for the Web leveling the playing field.
• I can envision other unpalatable scenarios, too: web hosts banning the use of all non-original photographs or logos, for example. If you’ve ever had to call your ISP for technical support, just imagine what a nightmare it would be to manage this scenario: “We just got certified as a (Cisco Channel Partner, Organic Farmer’s Market, ISO 9001 Facility, Environmental Dry Cleaner). Who do we have to talk to for permission to use the certification logo on our website?”
• In a SOPA age, you might also have it written into your hosting plan contract that you agree to bear all the legal costs your hosting company might incur to defend themselves in a legal wrangle over your site’s content. Can you imagine being liable for a $100K legal bill because one of your employees posted a Flickr photo on your company blog?

Most of all, I’m worried about Son-of-Righthaven.

Righthaven was a company that declared bankruptcy in September of 2011, after the courts put it out of its only line of business: filing copyright lawsuits against website owners, most of them bloggers.

Righthaven took on content creators as clients – a newspaper in Nevada was one – or simply purchased the copyrights of content outright. They then went trolling for violations, suing for the maximum $150,000 penalty, but settling for a few thousand dollars and transfer of the “violator’s” domain name to them. A typical target was a blogger who had used a news photograph, or quoted part of a news story, without permission. Before they were stopped, Righthaven filed almost three hundred lawsuits and netted hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlements.

Now, I’m a passionate defender of copyright. My livelihood depends on generating original content for clients. My dad, a retired book publisher and author himself, is also a big fan of copyright. Ditto for my daughter, a screenwriter and film director. We’re three generations that like copyright protection, because as a family, we enjoy living in houses and eating food from grocery stores.

But it’s hard to imagine how SOPA will effectively defend copyright without opening the door to Righthaven-like abuses. I imagine Son-of-Righthaven lawyers have already figured out a long list of loopholes that will line their pockets. Until the loopholes are plugged one by one, the collateral damage could be huge. (Righthaven’s heyday lasted almost two years.) To accept that cost of protecting copyright is like trying to warm your house by setting it on fire.

What might happen under SOPA? Here’s one scary scenario.

Let’s say you’re a home-improvement company. A popular feature of your website is a section that invites customers to upload photos of their homes before and after renovations.

Far, far away, in a nondescript business park, in a suburb of Tampa or Wichita or Paramus, a young man trolls the Web looking for copyright violations. Son-of-Righthaven pays him minimum wage plus a bonus for every violation that he finds.

On your website, he finds a photo of a remodeled living room that was uploaded by a customer. Included in the photo is a limited-edition print by a famous artist. Or a movie poster. Or a can of brand-name air freshener. Or a box of tissues with the label on it. Or a kid wearing a celebrity T-shirt. Or, as The Daily Show has pointed out, a television set that shows a rerun of Newhart.

Son-of-Righthaven contacts the copyright holder and suggests a collaboration. The lawyers explain that you are a large company with deep pockets. They tell the copyright holder that you make a significant portion of your sales from your website, and can’t afford to have it shut down. Son-of-Righthaven is confident that they can get a large settlement from you to avoid court, making this a no-lose proposition. They’ll do all the work, and give the copyright owner a portion of the proceeds. “Money for nothing,” as Dire Straits so eloquently put it.

A few days later, you get a letter from the law firm saying that their client has agreed not to take action that will permanently close down your URL. All you have to do is to immediately take down the offending material, and pay them a settlement fee of tens of thousands of dollars. And you’ll probably do it, because you don’t want any of those other awful things to happen.

But there’s a better solution: Just stop SOPA.

SOPA is dormant, but not dead. It can come back to life at any time. If that prospect worries you as much as it worries me, tell your lawmakers how you feel.

Resources:

How SOPA would affect you: FAQ (c|net)

Say No to SOPA (A List Apart)

Letter opposing SOPA from Democratic and Republican house members (PDF)

Law Firm Finds Success Targeting Those Who Post Copyrighted Images (TIME Magazine)

The End of Righthaven? Lessons from A Serial Copyright Plaintiff (Cobalt Law Review Blog)

What follows is a true story. The names have been changed to protect the embarrassed.

Imagine that you are an ad agency in search of a technology partner for some upcoming projects and proposals. You do your research, come up with a couple of candidates, and contact them.

Between the time that you leave a voicemail for the CEO of one of them, and the time that he calls you back — not long; less than two hours — you go back to the website to explore some of the company’s portfolio examples and case studies in detail.

On a blog maintained by one of the company’s executives and featured prominently on their home page, there’s a description of an intriguing and innovative project. And these sentences:

“While the technology is exciting, in our opinion the execution was sub-par. We blame the lazy ad agency that the client hired to design the interface.”

Really. It really said that.

By the time the CEO called back, the last of those two sentences was burned into my brain. I don’t know anything about the ad agency or the partnership. I don’t want to know. I just know that I don’t want to risk being called a “lazy ad agency” for posterity. So even though I tried to have a polite conversation with the CEO, I wound up telling him we weren’t interested in doing business with his company — and why.

He was surprised and embarrassed. He had no idea that his exec’s blog entry said that. (The offending language was removed within minutes of our conversation.) He apologized. He explained that their blog entries are triggered by their SEO specialist, who prompts one of the blogging execs to write a new entry when needed. The strategy is working as part of their other SEO efforts; they regularly rank at the top of search engine results.

But they forgot something important: if you do it right, the content you write for SEO — for machines — will also be read by people. Machines can only take you so far: they’ll score your content and place you where they think it’s appropriate in search engine results. But only human beings can act on your content in a away that benefits your bottom line. Search-engine algorithms don’t have money. People do.

SEO is a path to human beings, not a goal in itself

“You’re not writing for people, you’re writing for Google.”

This was the amusing reminder given to me by a friend and colleague, when I first began writing this blog. Back then, no one was reading it except Google, Yahoo, and Bing. In most cases, it takes a long time, and a lot of effort, to build an audience of human followers. So it’s easy to forget that readers are at the end of that chain.

You may start a blog or Facebook page to increase your SEO rankings. But if you’re successful, people will read it. And what they read had better be something you’ll be proud of.

The Internet is Not Invisible

Only eleven years separate us from the previous century, but in that time, there’s been a sea change that’s hard for many of us to internalize:

Anything that’s posted to the public Internet is instantly visible to nearly everyone in the world, and it has the potential to stay public forever.

Most of the time, that’s a good thing. But if you forget those facts, it can backfire. Ask any old-school politician who forgets that you can no longer give one policy position to one audience, and a different policy position to an another. Ask any college student who has forgotten that his parents can see Facebook, too.

So how do you take advantage of the very real SEO benefits of blogs and social media content, without saying something you’ll regret? Here are four steps to help you get the best and avoid the worst.

1. Wait a day.

Your blog software has a “Draft” button. Use it.

Open up your blog software, type a few paragraphs, hit “Publish” and you’re done. Check off “write blog entry” from your GTD list. Easy! But not smart.

Instead, wait a day, read your draft again, and then publish. You might catch something that’s minor, like a confusing sentence or a misspelled word. Or you might prevent disaster, when you realize that you accidentally said something you (or your customers, your boss, your stockholders) will regret.

If you find that you can’t resist the instant gratification of the “Publish” button, write your blog entries in an offline application, like a word-processing program. That gives you the added bonus of having an archived copy of your bloggerific wisdom. This will come in handy someday, when you write your memoirs.

Waiting a day is the same advice that your English teacher gave you when you were in school, when he or she taught you the draft/review/revise process for good writing. Even if you were the kind of kid who compressed all those steps into one glorious sheet of notebook paper written on the bus, don’t do it now. You’re a grownup, and there’s revenue at stake.

2. Get a second opinion

“Um, buddy, you might want to re-think that comment about the boss’s nephew.”

Have someone else in your organization read your blog entry or Facebook content before you publish it. If you’re in a large organization, someone in the marketing/communications department is ideally suited for the task — they’re already steeped in company messaging, and know how to fix spelling mistakes.

If you’re in a smaller organization, trade with another content author, if there is one. In a pinch, any other pair of eyes is better than no review.

3. Develop and distribute a content policy

It’s like swimming-pool safety rules for your public image

The CEO of the company that I turned down had no idea what anyone said on their blogs — until our conversation, at least, his only interest in his employees’ content was whether or not it worked well for SEO. I’ve had clients that have never seen their own Facebook pages; they just know that someone on their staff maintains one.

Everyone’s pretty new new at navigating the waters of social media, so give your employees some guidelines, in the form of a content policy.

• Tell people what they should and should not say.
• Keep it short, sweet, and simple, so that it will actually be used. One page of guidelines, plus a few examples, will be more effective than a fat three-ring binder that governs every conceivable issue.
• Introduce it at a meeting, and give content authors a chance to ask questions.
• Post it on your company’s intranet, so that employees can find it easily.
• Revise as needed.

4. Define a content goal

Fill your website, white papers, and case study files — painlessly

Ask any kid, and they’ll tell you that the most dreaded essay assignment is the one where they’re told to write about anything they want. It’s too broad. It practically invites procrastination, rambling, and repetition.

Happily, there’s a cure: narrow the focus. When you do that for an organization’s content management, you double the value of your content with half the effort. Simply ask your content authors to write all or part of their content with a specific goal in mind.

• If you’re a service company, the goal can be to write about case studies. The blog has immediate interest, and you get a steady stream of case studies that you can add to your website or include in presentations.
• If you’re a consumer company, the goal can be to write a series of helpful or seasonal tips. After a few months, you have enough information for a booklet to hand out to customers.
• If you’re a nonprofit, the goal can be to write about current projects. You can later repurpose that information into material on your website or in your annual report.
• If you’re a manufacturer or software developer, the goal can be to develop content that can later be used in white papers. White papers are still valuable as offers to some audiences, but many companies dread the time and effort it takes to produce them. An engineer’s blog can give you a head start on that content.

Of course, all of this content will have to be edited and/or expanded to suit its new context, medium, and purpose. But with the right blog content, much of the work is already done. I’ve even known authors who use their blogs to draft their books one chapter at a time.

For more information about, and options for, creating and managing high-quality content, check out C3 Advertising’s Social Media Content Services.

Shark illustration for C3 Advertising by Jennifer Mason

When the conversation starts, everything’s rosy. The sky is Disney pink and blue. The birds are singing. And then a friend or colleague says, “We just found someone who’s going to to get us to the top of search engine rankings.”

That’s when everything changes. My stomach churns. The sky grows dark. In my head, I hear the soundtrack from Jaws. “DUH duh…DUH duh…DUH duh…” And I hold my breath in fear until I learn whether the story has a happy ending.

A happy ending is that the friend has found an honest and competent SEO resource. Another happy ending is that the friend has been lured in by a shark, but hasn’t yet signed a contract or paid any money.  There’s still a chance I can turn the boat around and steer it safely back to land.

The unhappy ending, of course, is that my friend or colleague has spent money on something that will not do them any good, and may do them considerable harm.  Rather than wait for any more of those conversations, I thought I’d share six types of SEO sharks, and tell you how you can protect yourself.

Some are old, some new. Some are truly dangerous, others merely a waste of money. Some I thought were dead, until they recently poked their ragged fins out of the water.

1. I’ll Take You To The Top, Baby

Confusing the sizzle with the steak

How it works: Someone offers to put you at the top of search engine results with their “magic” combinations of keyword phrases, multiplied blogs, long landing pages of nonsensical keywords, and specially written content. (Usually, the “specially written content” is so bad that you would be embarrassed to be seen in public with it.)

The theory: If you get out of the crowded field of your competition and focus on highly specific keyword combinations, you’ll quickly rank on the first page of Google search-engine results.

We're #1...if the search term is "the butterfly sneakers that Joe Celebrity wore the last time he went to court"

The fact: You might actually get to the top of the mountain.  But it will be the wrong mountain, and  nobody will be there. For example, say you’re a new brand of sneakers. On a search of “sneakers”, you’re on page 14, below Nike, Reebok, Zappo’s, and Converse. But on a search with a more specific keyword phrase recommended by the experts: “the butterfly sneakers that Joe Celebrity wore the last time he went to court” — you’re #1! And you’ll stay #1, for the one person per year who is going to search for that term. By total coincidence, that one person may even be someone who works for the company that sold you the service.

Red flag #1: Performance guarantees, if any, only promise to deliver first-page rankings on the company’s “recommended” search terms.

Red flag #2: You often have to pay hefty fees for the service in advance.

Red flag #3: During the sales process, no one ever talks about conversions or sales. In the pitch, and in abundant testimonials, the focus is only on rankings as the goal.

In all the years I’ve been working with SEO, in all the various forms that this keyword “program” has taken, I’ve only ever found ONE company that claimed success with one of these programs. No one else– no client, no acquaintance, no colleague–has ever been able to point to a single qualified lead that came through their site from one of these programs, let alone a conversion to a sale. The company that claims success believe they had an extra $10K in sales during their program. That sounds great, except that the program cost $10K. Their net increase is thus zero–if you don’t count the sales lost from the $10K of budget they diverted from actual advertising.

How to do it better: First, and most important, don’t forget that your goal is sales, not search engine rankings. (Click here for a free downloadable reminder.) Second, if you’re competing in a very crowded field, use search — and relevant content, and other media — to target smaller niche audiences first. Plan your campaigns well, and build from there.

2. Stuffing Your Meta Tags With Popular Keywords

Simple! Understandable! Except that you don’t need it anymore

Zeppelin maintenance programs: Handy once, but no longer useful.

I wrote about this once before, so I’ll keep it short.

How it works: For a monthly fee, an SEO “expert” offers to research all the popular search terms, and update your website’s meta tags on a frequent basis, usually weekly.

The theory: People who are searching for the keywords of the day will find your site. The more sophisticated practitioners of this art also point out that changing your keywords changes your content frequently, which search engines like.

The fact: This isn’t evil so much as it is outdated. There are a lot of things wrong with this theory — targeted marketing, anyone? — but the most obvious is that Google doesn’t use meta tags anymore, precisely because people did stuff like this. So signing up for a meta tag service is like buying a service to keep your Zeppelin filled with hydrogen.

Red flag: It sounds great, but only if you don’t think about it too hard.

SEO consequences: You’ve wasted your money, but Google won’t get mad at you. You’ll just be ignored.

A better way: Implement a good, real search strategy that includes pay-per-click, and update your website content — your actual content — regularly, with information that’s useful to your target audience.

3. Irrelevant Reciprocal links

Google, Yahoo, and Bing really do judge you by the company you keep

How it works: You get a polite email — coincidentally, like the one I got this morning — inviting you to trade links with someone you’ve never heard of, usually in a three-way swap. (I’ll link to you from my site; you link to “my” other website). The URLs and code are included; both sites look legit, nobody asks you for any money. What could be the harm?

The theory: Links are good for you. So wouldn’t it be a good idea to trade links with other websites?

The fact: Links to your site are good for you. But not all links are equally good, and some are very, very bad.

Search engines count relevant links as one measure of content value. If I’m writing a blog about vegan cooking, and I link it to a food site that sells “Ten delicious substitutes for mozzarella”, search engines assume that I’m suggesting relevant content to their readers, and will rank the substitute-mozzarella site accordingly. Here’s how this one was supposed to work:

An educational software site links to a six-year-old site for a student film, which includes a link to the Services page of a PR firm. Red flag #1: there’s no relevant content connection among these three sites.

Red flag #2: Your site link will be at the end of a list of hundreds of links on the educational software site. They don’t look like links, and they don’t have any connection to what you do (in this case, the proposed list includes jewelry, auto parts, computer repair, loans, business consulting, travel to Greece, Indian call centers, hair color, forklifts, wrinkle cream, charcoal portraits, steam showers, Christmas stockings, dozens of SEO consultants, and a London handyman.)

Why it won’t work: It flunks the relevancy test.

SEO consequences: Small (search engines may just ignore it) to significant ( If it comes onto their radar — for example, if you submit your site to a search engine — they may reject your request, or blacklist you, and tell you to try again when you’ve cleaned up your act. )

A better way: Fill your website and blog with actual relevant content that will be of interest to people in your target audience, and then market it to let them know it’s there.

4. Link Farms

The very last reason you want to land at the top of search results–or in The New York Times

Websites created just to be link farms are no more real than these movie set facades.

How it works: Someone creates hundreds or thousands of small websites with relevant content. The sites have real content, they say all the right things about your category, and they link back to your site with vigor. The only problem is that the sites and URLs are all fake. They exist only to fool Google into thinking that the whole world is linking back to you. Or, the sites are legitimate, but the site owner is paid to link back to you.

The theory: Links from sites with relevant content are very, very good for you.

The fact: True. But search engines do not take kindly to being scammed with phony websites or drummed-up content, no matter how relevant.

Why it doesn’t work: It might, for a little while, until you are a) publicly humiliated and b) sent into exile by Google. Just search “J.C. Penney Google search fiasco” and see what happens. It is not, normally, a good sign to have your company name and “fiasco” in the same sentence.

Red flag: This service is not on the SEO consultant’s website. They suggest that you don’t bring it up in public. You are discouraged from asking other clients about it.

Hidden danger: We have heard that some of the content on these phony websites is plagiarized from other, legitimate websites. We haven’t seen examples of the phony pages, but it’s plausible — if your in-house or outsourced search team is generating hundreds of pages of phony links, and you aren’t paying them for hundreds of hours of copywriting, that text has to come from somewhere. If that’s the case, in addition to violating search engine webmaster terms, you could be adding copyright violation to your sea of troubles.

A better way: Think past the current quarter. You’ll be more successful in the long run, and you won’t have spent a small fortune to get kicked off of Google.

5.  Secret Knowledge

Only the Chosen Ones can understand SEO

Keyword research should be done methodically and professionally. But there's not a lot of mystery to it.

How it works: Someone offers to provide you with SEO services that will catapult you ahead of everyone else because the practitioner possesses “secret knowledge”, “insider information,” a “proprietary system”, or a methodology that’s “too complicated to explain.”

The theory: SEO is a chamber of secrets, and a few clever souls with secret knowledge–and your money–can game the system.

The fact: SEO is a discipline, and you get good at it the same way you get good at any other discipline: learn it, practice it, stay up on changes in the field, and strive to get better at it every day. There’s no doubt that some people do it better than others, but that makes SEO just like any other field.

But there is no secret society, no mysterious insight, no magic system that’s known only to a few worthy souls. Of course search engines keep the ever-changing details of their methodology and algorithms close to the vest; they are trade secrets. But the principles are widely known. Google even has a blog for webmasters and its own You Tube channel.

Red flag #1: If the process is so mysterious, there’s no way to tell if the person who’s offering the service knows what they’re doing. Real experts aren’t going to give you tutorials in how they do it, but they’re happy to give you enough details to let you know they’re knowledgeable. It’s the difference between a mechanic who explains the problem and shows you the part that needs to be replaced, and one who mumbles “it’s broken. I’ll fix  it.”

Red flag #2: If you don’t know what’s in the package, you can’t know if it’s worth the asking price.

Why it won’t–or will–work: In this case, you have two possible outcomes. The first is that the person is being mysterious because they really can’t deliver, and it’s a genuine scam. The second is that the person knows how to do it, but doesn’t want to tell you what’s involved, either out of fear that you’ll do it yourself, or because they’re overcharging for it.

6. Blog Spam

How to deeply annoy people you’ve never met

Nobody likes a blog spammer, either.

How it works: An SEO practitioner offers to insert your link into many blogs, most of which have nothing to do with your product category. Usually these comments are innocuous flattery and include a link that’s disguised in a long, nonsensical URL. On a blog about natural history museums, for example, someone will post a comment on the order of “best posting I’ve read all year!” and then includes a link to a website about carpet cleaning.

The theory: When bloggers link to your site, or when people mention you in blog comments, it’s valuable for your search engine rankings. Blog entries, comments, and links are seen as having a high probability of having relevant content.

The fact: Search engines know that people who blog about a topic, and those who comment on the blogs, are usually passionate about, or have some expertise in, the subject at hand. So yes, they do count this content as highly relevant. But just as much as relevant links count, irrelevant links don’t count. And let’s face it, this is really rude behavior. You wouldn’t like it if someone did it to your blog.

Red flag: If you’re considering paying someone to do something that you wouldn’t like to experience, it’s probably not a good idea.

Why it doesn’t work: Take your pick: 1) search engines don’t like irrelevant content or links. 2) Many bloggers have replaced automatic forums with options that let them review comments before posting. Some ban comments with links. 3) Blogging platforms like WordPress have added spam filters to their packages. 4) No one will like you. 5) You run the small, but very real, risk that a customer or prospect will see what you’re doing and be unimpressed.

For a while, this blog was getting two or three spam postings a week from an insurance company in Atlanta. When I got sick of trashing the comments, I called the insurance company. I spoke to a very nice lady, and confirmed what I’d suspected: they had contracted with a firm to do all their SEO, but didn’t know much about the details. They had no idea that they were offending a total stranger in California. They apologized for their vendor’s behavior, and the spam to this blog stopped immediately. They probably also breathed a sigh of relief that I wasn’t a potential customer.

How to do it better: Blogs are great, on so many levels. The good ones are gold mines of information about what’s on the minds of your target market. If someone in your industry — blogger, commenter, industry expert, customer — finds your website content valuable enough to mention, you’ve struck SEO gold. Writing one, or posting thoughtful, relevant, and appropriate comments to a topic, are good ways to establish and share your expertise, and get people to link to you. In other words, have good, relevant content.

Is this everything?

Unfortunately, no.

There are scammers, sharks, and the well-meaning but deeply misguided aplenty, and they’re all coming up with new ways to try to beat the SEO odds.

Moreover, search engines are changing the landscape all the time. Yahoo/Bing now accounts for a significantly larger volume of search. Google is rumored to be making significant changes in the near future.

So how do you protect yourself from SEO sharks, without becoming an expert in a field that’s changing daily? Here are a few simple guidelines:

1. You’ve been hearing this since grade school, but it’s still valid: If it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t.
2. The major search engines have made it really easy to check out facts and fiction. Google has a webmaster blog and a channel on YouTube, and they’re in plain English. If someone offers you a service that sounds shady, search it. In a couple of minutes, you’ll have a much more solid understanding of the service being offered.
3. If you don’t understand the service being offered, don’t buy it.

The Great Facebook Content Catch

Quick quiz: Who owns your Facebook content?

A. You do.
B. You do, but Facebook co-owns it as long as you’re a member.
C. Facebook does, forever and for all time.
D. You do, but Facebook can borrow it as long as it’s on your page, or even after you take it off your page, if someone else has posted it on their page. Effectively, Facebook can use it as long as it’s on a Facebook server.

Most people think that the answer is (A).  It’s actually never been (A).  For most of Facebook’s history, it was (B).  Except for a strange, unsettling period lasting from February ’09 until the spring of 2010, when it was (C).  In fact, during the megalomaniacal fever dream that was Policy (C), the company claimed “unending and irrevocable license to use any content uploaded to its service”. (Read more: Concern over new Facebook content rules – Wichita Business Journal)

Scary. Creepy. And with the potential to collect all user-posted content into some giant Wikibook or Faceipedia.  (One can only imagine the lengthy entry on uses of the word “dude”, or the photo essays on the topic, “Me and My Friends at a Party.”)

Facebook’s policy is now (D), to wit:

“You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition:

1. For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (“IP content”), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (“IP License”). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.”

(Read the full statement on Facebook.)

As far as I know, Facebook has not ever used these considerable powers over content, let alone abused them. But the potential for such unlimited (albeit temporary, as long as Policy D is in force) power over content makes me nervous.

This is a big deal, because content is expensive. If your content is created in-house, you may think it’s cheap, or even free, but it is most definitely not.  This content, for example, took me a dang long time to write. In my opinion it’s a worthy investment, but it’s still a cost.

Of course, the best way to maximize that investment is to re-use your content. Facebook’s content ownership policy has the potential to diminish or dilute your ability to do just that. How? Here are two hypothetical examples of what Facebook could theoretically do under this policy:

1. You have a line of clothing that you market to pre-teen girls.  Every week, you liven up your Facebook page with a clever, quotable saying.  Eventually you decide to put these sayings on your back-to-school tees.  Only Facebook has already loaded them into a highly popular rotating widget and printed them on bumper stickers, none of it tied to your brand. Now you’ll look like you got them from Facebook, not the other way around.
2. Your company is the world’s leading expert on dust-repelling heating ducts. To save money and time, you use your Facebook fan page as a blog instead of setting up a real one.  You post answers to customers’ FAQs. You and your engineers write about how to achieve smooth installations and why your ducts are the best ducts of all time.
   After a while, almost without trying, you have the makings of the kick-ass white paper that you’ve been putting off for years.  You have loads of text and pictures to enrich your content-starved website.  Only by now, Facebook has launched Faceipedia, and the article under “Dustless Ducts” has all your accumulated wisdom. Nobody needs to go to your branded site, or to download your white paper.

I don’t know that Facebook wants to do any of these things. They probably don’t. But the fact that they might be able to should give you pause about what kind of content you post there.

It would be lovely if Facebook could make you instantly cool, drive millions of new customers to your door, and allow you to eliminate all but a pittance of your marketing budget. But the fact is that it’s pretty much like all marketing tools: valuable for some, highly effective when used with skill to the right target audiences, and no magic bullet.

Try this sometime. Go to your website and right-click (Ctrl-click on a Mac) anywhere on the page that doesn’t have a picture. Select “View Source” from the context menu.

You’ll see the code that makes your page viewable in web browsers. If you scroll to the very top, you may see something like this:

Example of meta tags in a web page

The text highlighted in yellow includes the keyword meta tags. They’re invisible to viewers, but search engines can see them. Once upon a time, this was one of the ways that search engines found your website; that made them useful for SEO (search engine optimization).

But here’s something very, very important to know: Google doesn’t search meta keyword tags anymore.

You don’t have to take my word for it. You can check out this Google video blog and get the facts right from the horse’s mouth.

At  C3 Advertising, we still include meta tag keywords in websites we develop for our clients. They don’t hurt, and they may be helpful for some other search engines.  But the real trick to optimizing your website for search engines is to fill it with well-written, relevant content.

Good content gets Google’s attention, and gets the attention of others in your market, which causes some of them to link back to your site, which gets Google’s attention, which raises your ranking in searches by qualified prospects, which increases your sales.

Some people think that your content should include popular search terms that have nothing to do with your product or target market. That’s nonsense. The truth is that you still need relevant keywords in your text, but they can’t be stuffed into your copy like candy in a piñata.

Here’s the right way to include keywords in your copy:

“We offer the largest selection of fine patio furniture in Southern California. The next time you’re in Redondo Beach, visit us for designer patio sets, wood, aluminum, and wicker patio tables and chairs, wrought-iron bistro sets, market umbrellas, and beautiful outdoor lighting. Try our handy Outdoor Living Room Resource Guide to help you plan.”

You get good Google results and are talking to people ready to buy in terms they understand; in addition, the resource guide is a reason for people in your target audience to link back to you and to share your site with others.

Here’s the wrong way to include keywords in your copy:

“We offer the largest selection of patio furniture Justin Bieber, Charlie Sheen, Prince William and Kate Middleton would love. Our patio furniture, outdoor furniture, market umbrella, outdoor lighting, patio tables, patio chair store is in Redondo Beach, which is near Manhattan Beach, Torrance, El Segundo, Hermosa Beach, and Palos Verdes Estates in California, Southern California to be exact, zip codes 90277, 90278, 90266, 90501, 90502, 90503, 90505, 90245, and 90274, where Britney Spears and other Sexy Stars In Bikinis hang out, sometimes Tiger Woods, rarely Barak Obama, but not usually Snooki, The Situation, the Real Housewives of Atlanta, the Japanese tsunami or radioactive fallout. Also Libya, March Madness, and the iPad2.”

You think I’m kidding, but I have seen pages written this way. You might get a momentary Google bump before being banished to page 148 of search-engine results — justifiably — for stuffing your page with nonsense, but you’ll get lots of searches from 14-year-olds in no position to buy a $2,000 redwood patio set. Worse, your qualified buyers will think you’re an idiot, or insane, and click away before they catch something.

Trashing your website with irrelevant keywords is useless, and damaging to your site's success as a marketing tool.

Remember, search engine rankings do not equal qualified prospects, click-throughs, or sales. Instead of tweaking meta tags or buying expensive services to turn your website into a keyword piñata, hire yourself a good copywriter and get good search engine rankings while using your site to sell stuff. What a concept!

This is Morgan. Sometimes her water dish is empty, or she wants to go outside. But unlike other cats, she doesn’t cry near the water dish, or the back door. She stands near someone in the family and howls until we figure it out. As a result, you can often hear us muttering, “Cry near the problem, Morgan.”

Just like Morgan, sometimes organizations miss the mark because their marketing efforts are not crying near the problem — they’re crying near the solution. You’d think that would work just as well, or even better. But if your product or service is high-ticket, technically or conceptually complex, or requires a change in thinking by your customer, that’s not enough. You need to cry near all the problems, and near everyone who has them.

In fact, you need to

• Talk to the person who has the problem.
• Talk to the person who can solve the problem.
• Talk to the person who has to pay for the problem.

Case in point:

I know of a company that has developed a highly advanced technical product. Coolbeans Widgets has been working their butts off to market it to the target market categories that need it badly. Their materials and pitch effectively address every objection they hear in the field. Yet, to their surprise and disappointment, they’ve been getting a tepid reception.

Last week, purely by accident, I was in a meeting with some people that could really use a Coolbeans Widget solution to solve a customer service problem. Yet none of them were aware that it existed. All work for organizations that are heavily marketed about products like this one. All were thrilled to learn that there was a solution, and all eagerly asked for information about it. In other words, they were a receptive, even excited audience. But none of them had even heard of Coolbeans Widgets; in fact, no one in the meeting even knew of the Coolbeans Widgets category.

The reason for this disconnect is that none of the people in this meeting work in their company IT departments. IT executives make decisions about technical products their companies buy and implement. Funding for those purchases comes out of IT budgets. So naturally, Coolbeans thinks of those IT decision-makers as their customers.

Clearly, that’s not the whole story.

The IT execs aren’t being insensitive to the needs of the business folks. They don’t know that they have a solution to the customer service problem — they probably don’t even know that the customer-service problem exists. The business people never thought to ask IT for help. Why would they? In their heads, customer service issues are people problems. In fact, if they had asked for IT help, the IT department may not have made the leap. The clear, well-presented materials delivered by Coolbeans address every single one of the problems and objections voiced by their IT customers — but they don’t spend a single paragraph addressing the problems of influencers outside the IT department.

Whose job is it to connect the dots? Yours, of course, oh Mighty Marketer. Or, in the case of Coolbeans, theirs. You have to put The Morgan Principle into action:

• Talk to the person who has the problem.
• Talk to the person who can solve the problem.
• Talk to the person who has to pay for the problem (so you can make the business case).

…and talk to each one of them in a way that addresses their particular concerns.

This isn’t a new idea. Marketers have been relying on it for centuries, because it works. I’ve written about it before, and I will again. I’ve worked with companies that have expanded their markets, eliminated seasonal slumps, and dramatically reduced their sales process (and costs) simply by using the Morgan Principle.

Remember, your target audience is not just the person who pays the bill.

Even if you never meet them, whether you call them buyers, influencers, gatekeepers, or end-users — if you want to be successful, they’re all your customers.

#2 in a series.

Trap #2. Congratulate a woman for running a business.

As of 2007, women owned 28.7% of all non-farm businesses in the United States. They’re executives, managers, and decision-makers with influence and purchasing power in many more. So it’s no wonder that a lot of b-to-b marketers are targeting women business leaders.

But sometimes that noble intent is ruined by lousy execution. And one of the easiest ways to turn off women business leaders is to congratulate them for being women business leaders.

Women over 40 will be insulted – how long have we been doing this?  Younger women — Millennials — will be baffled. Many of the women they know, including their mothers and grandmothers, work, and many of these role models are business owners.

Consider these two messages, both real. The first is a rare stumble from a company that normally does a good job of talking to women, and in fact, that does a good job on the rest of this site. Unfortunately, the stumble is on the site’s home page.

The advent of companies led by women has been one of the most significant changes in the world of business and in the world itself. Female leadership of companies has—and is—changing how businesses are organized, managed, and insured. At Aetna, we’ve witnessed these realities firsthand.

Our work with women-led companies has taught us that the idea of communities—places where different people come together to share interests, goals, and values—is central to their success. This is how we have developed the benefit plans and the actual tools needed to serve the health and well-being of companies led by women.

We urge you to consider this website an online community, one where you can get the information you need for the health of the business community you lead.

The second message is from a business letter:

We’ve been friends since we were girls, and you know I love you like a sister.

But we both also know that your husband is an ass, and he’s wrong when he says that I’m overcharging for those beds you purchased for your inn.

I’m sending my employee over this afternoon to collect on the debt. Please give him the money you owe me.

The first message is verbatim. I paraphrased the second; for example, where I used “employee” and “money”, the original used “servant” and “shekels”.  In 1908, archeologists from Columbia University found this letter, inscribed on a clay tablet, in a trash heap behind the shop of a Babylonian scribe.  It’s 4,000 years old.

Interestingly, the Aetna message seems to have been written by scientists, too: anthropologists. Not marketers…or insurance specialists…or people who have met women business leaders…or people who have met women.  Aetna has “witnessed” the quaint beliefs of the culture under study, and has learned the “idea of communities”. (It even defines ”community”, and a good thing, too. Otherwise, how would we ever know the name of that thing we build?   Thank you, Aetna! )  Now Aetna is prepared to help the adorable but helpless natives by building a ready-made online community just for us!  They even tell us how to think about it!  Woo-hoo!

It’s too bad, too, because the site has good content, organized in a way that is useful for women business owners, with categories like “Healthy Business,” “Healthy Family, and ” Healthy Life”.

And it’s kind of ridiculous, considering the irrefutable evidence of the second message.  Women have been running businesses for at least 4,000 years, and probably a lot longer than that — probably as long as there have been businesses. I don’t know anything about the Babylonian woman business owner who wrote that dunning letter, but I’ll bet that she had something else in common with modern women: the urge to roll her eyes whenever someone congratulated her for simply being in business.

#1 in a series.

Trap #1: The mysterious home page.

It’s cool. It’s pretty.  It’s got a talking head, animation, a soundtrack, an interest form, and half a dozen widgets. It’s crammed full of keywords that the SEO specialist gave you. It matches your brand personality, your product packaging, or the colors in the CEO’s office.  Yet none of that matters if the prospect needs more than three seconds to figure out what it is that you do.

That means:

• The right words: A short, clear statement of what you offer. (Hint: it’s not your mission statement.)
• Pictures that communicate. If you sell products, show them and/or their benefits. If you’re a charity, show the people you help. If you offer a service that’s harder to depict in a snapshot, work with creative professionals who can help you find images that quickly communicate what you do.
• A look and feel that’s on brand. No matter what you do, you have competitors. Yet you differ from them in one or more ways that means something to your customers. That’s your USP (unique selling proposition). Are you the upscale custom brand? The low-price leader? The boutique brand?  The friendly one? The one with the huge array of offerings? The one that specializes in a niche? The one with overnight shipping?  Your USP should be reflected in every brand choice you make, from the colors in your design to the tone of your copy.
  
  And it goes without saying (I hope) that your website should have branding elements in common with marketing and advertising you do through print, direct mail, broadcast, trade shows, social media, and every other channel.

• Cues to help your audience self-identify. Your visitors have to know, instantly, that the site is for them. It would be an easy thing to say, “This site is for…” and simply list the members of your target audience. Easy — but not very effective. It’s much better to include stories, situations, images, benefit headlines, and other cues that let your audience identify themselves as part of your target market, and recognize you as someone who understands and can meet their needs.

In short, does your home page pass the “Wheelbarrow Test”?

I admit it. I made up the Wheelbarrow Test years ago on the spur of the moment, out of frustration. I did it during a meeting with six insanely smart people.

Three of them were business geniuses and three were technical geniuses. They talked about complete solutions, world-changing innovation, unique business models and flexible innovation.  It was fabulous, and they were clearly excited. But after an hour of this, I still had no idea what they were planning to sell.

In desperation, I said, ”STOP. Take a deep breath.  Close your eyes.

“Imagine that your customer is standing in front of you with a wheelbarrow full of money. If he gives it to you, what does he get in exchange?  Is it a box with a product inside?  Is it hardware? Software?  Something to wear? Something to eat? A consultant showing up on his doorstep?  A subscription or a service?”

“If you can’t answer that question clearly on the home page, then your website will not succeed. And if your website is crucial to sales, neither will your company.”

The conference room got very quiet. The six geniuses looked at each other. Four of them said “Oh…” The two Europeans said, “Eaux…”  And at last they understood the critically important task at hand.

When we start working with a new client at C3 Advertising, invariably the first item on the client’s wish list is a website redesign.  Clients are often dismayed if their existing home page doesn’t pass the Wheelbarrow Test (although it often explains a lot about why their current site isn’t working).  But all is not lost.

“Cheer up,” I say. “Chances are, your competitors’ sites don’t pass the Wheelbarrow Test, either.”