Don’t you love the web? Don’t you love sitting by a warm fire, getting hammered on cheap merlot with the web? Wouldn’t you like to have babies with it? Except when it doesn’t speak to your innermost desires. Which happens all too often. Sometimes, I want to divorce the web. I’m going to start a new feature on this blog. My ambitions are modest and I hope you share my desire for how to make your web site better. Together, we will help create a more perfect online world… I’m actually going to do my level best not to use YOUR web copy, or if I do, to make it untraceable. I’ll highlight certain words or phrases to focus on. (By the way, I’d truly love to have another writer or editor take a whack at my web copy this way.) Let’s hear it for self interest! EXAMPLE: “We understand how content, services, and user interface interact to produce uniquely powerful results for…” I know that the person who wrote this does not hate the web or mean it harm. I know they were hoping this would be scintillating copy. It isn’t. First of all, you and I, as users of the web, seekers of information and shiny objects, don’t really care what a business “understands” about the world or even their own business. What do we care about? [All together] OUR OWN SELF INTERESTS! That’s not as evil as the ALL-CAPS would imply. Humans are largely self-interested creatures. That’s OK; we’re still good mammals. Give ’em what they come here fer All I’m saying is that when we writers speak to a web audience, we need to think and write about what customers come looking for. They didn’t come looking for some corporation’s understanding. They came looking to see what that corporation could do to make their lives better. And honestly, why should we take this company’s word for the fact that they understand anything? They might understand a lot but I don’t know them. I’ve never bumped into them in Denny’s or Safeway or any of the other places I go to find dates. Or if I did, they didn’t ask me out or vice versa. We’re not even on a first-name basis. So, let’s not begin sales copy by telling potential customers what we know or understand. Let’s show them by speaking directly to their wants and needs. Jargon is for people who hate their mothers “We understand how content, services, and user interface interact to produce uniquely powerful results for…” I was a content publishing lead at Microsoft for many, many years. I know what...
Read MoreThere’s a lot of wailing and gnashing of incisors about corporate culture, mostly by people in corporations. I worked at Microsoft for nearly fifteen of the best years of my life, and I’m hear to tell you, some of the gnashing was well worth the dental work. I’m not even sure what that meant but it popped into my head and I had to write it. I think what I was trying to say was that “corporate culture” can be a drag. Of course, it doesn’t have to be and actually isn’t for a number of people who don’t have to use their Microsoft Premera coverage to fix corporately-gnashed teeth. Like anything in life, it depends on the attitude you bring to it every day. But I’m not hear to give motivational speeches to my non-existent audience of unmotivated corporate bees. Some days, working in a corporation blows. What is a corporate culture anyway? Does it exist? While I was at Microsoft, I watched the company soar from about 35,000 employees to nearly 100,000. That’s why they have the company meeting at Safeco Field. That’s too many people to have a culture that shares many values beyond what the broader culture shares. Microsoft puts a huge premium on diversity in hiring as well and one of the great things about working there was working with people from all over the world. I’ve never heard anyone except corporate executives say, “I just love our corporate culture.” No. Not. Doesn’t happen. I’ve only heard the rank-and-file use the term pejoratively. So it seems like anything you might call corporate culture is really how executives define a shared sense of belonging that doesn’t exist and employees define as some sense of oppression they feel from having to work in a place where the rules don’t always agree with how they think things should be. I had no sense of belonging to Microsoft or its “culture” while I was there. I felt a strong sense of belonging to my group and our products, especially our very sophisticated Flight Simulator. Microsoft as a corporate entity seemed remote. I never resented that remote entity because it seemed remote and I realized, having a degree in psychology, that large organizations of human beings tend to behave and organize like large organizations of human beings. In other words, one should not be surprised at how corporations act internally or externally, especially when they become huge. This is without a doubt the most oddly rambling blog post I’ve written since…well, at least since my last odd rambling blog post. But I enjoyed writing it. Ever have one of...
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When’s the last time you awoke with a start in the middle of the night with the realization that you haven’t checked your Hotmail account in months? Just think of all of those spams from Classmates.com sitting there unread. A worse outcome is forgetting that you used your Hotmail or Gmail or Yahoo mail account for a Craigslist ad and then wondered for weeks why no one wanted your collection of bakelite camping dishes. It’s actually rather easy to have all of your various e-mail accounts arrive in one inbox, whether you use Outlook or Apple’s mail program or whatever e-mail client you have. I use Outlook and the wizard to add multiple e-mail accounts is very easy to use. On the Outlook Tools menu, you select Account Settings, and then click New. Follow the instructions. The configuration is automatic but sometimes this doesn’t work. Then you have to click the Manually configure server settings or additional server types check box. You’ll usually be configuring a POP3 server named something like pop.domain.com (e.g. pop.comcast.net) as the incoming server and smtp.domain.com as the outgoing server. HOTMAIL Hotmail, unfortunately sucks in this regard. You can ONLY forward to accounts that end in hotmail.com, live.com, or a custom domain hosted on Live. You can, however, set up Outlook to grab your Hotmail account and deliver it to your desktop without a visit to your browser. It requires you to get something called Outlook Connector, which is a free download from Microsoft. After installing Outlook Connector, the next time you start Outlook it will ask if you want to add an account. Just follow the instructions. GMAIL With Gmail, you can forward e-mails or set up the Gmail account in Outlook. Log in to your Gmail account. Click Settings in the upper right corner of the screen. Click the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab. Click Forward a copy of incoming mail to and fill in the e-mail address. There are a number of options you can select here as well, like whether to leave a copy of the mail in the Gmail inbox. You actually don’t have to forward the e-mail either. You can just set up your Gmail account in your e-mail client (e.g. Outlook). In Outlook, on the Tools menu, select Account Settings. Click New and follow the instructions. If you choose to configure it manually, you’ll use pop.gmail.com and smtp.gmail.com as the incoming and outgoing servers. If you’re not that tech-minded, don’t worry. You’re not going to break anything doing this. How did we get to this place where we have multiple phone numbers and e-mail accounts and Twitter accounts and Facebook accounts...
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It’s important to remember that search engine optimization, while very important, is designed to generate traffic. Traffic does not buy your product or service … humans do. They’ll only do that when the copy that they read on the Web page converts them from traffic into customer. Not just any copy will do that (he stated correctly, if self-servingly). Let’s take the example of the two financial services companies Primerica and ING. If you google “financial services,” both of these companies appear on the first search engine return page (SERP). This is good for both companies. Someone is doing great SEO for both, in the meta tags and in the copy on the page. Premerica has an advantage, however, when it comes to words on the page. Finances rank among the most confusing and anxiety-producing subjects to most middle income people. Everyone is frightened and unsure about what to do with debt, savings, and investments. Premerica assures people right away with a great tagline, prominently displayed: Freedom lives here. The rest of the home page is clean and uncluttered, with links to short articles with titles like Our Market, Our Edge and Change Your Life. These titles speak directly to the desires of someone Googling “financial services” and indicate that the benefits Premerica offers will satisfy those desires. ING has a rotating series of slow-loading images in the header that don’t do a clear job of directly speak to an anxious Googler. The only paragraph of copy on the home page begins with two of the most unnecessary words anyone can put on a home page: “Welcome to.” The paragraph then explains the features that ING offers instead of convincingly explaining the benefits of doing business with ING. Premerica’s Web site tells me that a benefit of doing business with them is that I’ll get educated about finances. ING seems to just offer a smörgåsbord of services that I have to choose from. I don’t know which of these companies better serves their clients, as I don’t do business with either one. But in terms of convincing copy on the page, Premerica immediately strikes a more reassuring tone and speaks in terms of benefits instead of features. When was the last time you felt something immediately upon visiting a Web site or viewing a print ad? Do you remember what words were used? How does your own Web site do with quickly presenting benefits to the traffic that arrives at your...
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But remember … it’s a dance, not a deception. Stimulate First rule of marketing: grab their attention. This is harder than ever, whether in print, on the Web, or in video. The currency of attraction is content: words and images. Not the annoying flashing kind but words and images that appeal to the desires and needs of a specific audience. Seduce Even when buying floor wax (does anyone do that anymore?), we want to be seduced by the promise of a better life. When someone convinces us that their promise is real, we can’t spend our money fast enough. One of the definitions of seduction is “to win over; attract.” The more powerfully you seduce, the faster you get a new customer. There are ways to seduce and there are ways. The image above is seductive in more than one way (now I’m giving away my secrets). It has deep reds, a color associated with passion, sexuality, and boldness. The center of the photo is bright and fades to shadows at the edges, suggesting mystery. The man’s posture is one of confident command and the woman, although in a stylized stance, evokes supine satisfaction or even submission. (Don’t hate me, I’m only the messenger.) Dance — certainly the Tango — is all about sexuality. But there’s something humorous about the image as well. To most of us, it seems to take itself a little too seriously. That is a device used often in advertising to make us laugh. We know that we’re in on the joke. Humor is one of the essential tools of seduction. We like people who make us laugh; at life, at them, and at ourselves. It relaxes us and makes us open and approachable. In advertising, that makes us want to whip out our VISA. Part of the intoxication of seduction is that we believe it really will bring with it a better life. There’s nothing more disheartening than a seduction that makes us feel a fool for love. The dot-com bubble for instance. Satisfy So when that floor wax really turns out to perform, we’re thrilled at the promise fulfilled. We become loyal to the brand and we gush to our friends. We feel justified in having placed our trust in the initial appeal of the product. This only happens when the product or service performs as promised. That is why it’s important to remember that when you invite your customers to Tango, it’s a dance, not a deception. Can you think of an ad or Web page that seduced you? Tell...
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