For the most part the discussions at UnSummit have revolved around topics marketing, technology and social networking. But in planning the next even (to the extent that we really do any planning), we wanted to shake things up.

So, instead of talking about solutions and successes we thought we’d pose a really open-ended question:

What is your X?

X is not your former spouse, but the one big problem that you want to solve. It doesn’t have to be grandiose or profound. Just something that you think about  a lot. And perhaps something that will serve as fodder for a good conversation and perhaps spark our imaginations.

UnSummit #4

Saturday, June 26
9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
CoCo coworking & collaborative space
213 4th St E., 4th Floor
St Paul, MN 55101

Visit the UnSummit website

Consider the costs that go into producing a typical corporate annual report. Photo shoots, creative creative concept development, copywriting, design, layout of the financial section — we haven’t even gotten to the killer cost — printing and mailing hundreds of thousands of copies across the globe.

It all adds up quickly.

So, with stock prices in the tank and shareholders ready to pounce on even the appearance of waste, I wonder how many companies will consider doing their stockholders a favor and simply publish the annual report online?

I don’t mean simply posting a PDF of the report. Many companies do that, but the results are not terribly user-friendly for shareholders.

Rather, the ideal online annual is a small site within your Web site that tells the story of the previous year in text, images, video, animation, interactive, etc.

Besides the obvious savings on paper, printing and postage, putting the annual report online offers some serious advantages.

• Everything is measurable – Who reads your annual report? With paper, you may never know. With an online report, however, every visit, link and click can be measured, analyzed and used to make a better, more cost-effective report next year.
• Video is stickier than text - Got stories to tell about last year’s business? Film it and show it. Is your CEO letter tearfully boring? Get creative and film the CEO in an unusual surrounding: at the stores, in the field or in the factory. Would you rather watch two minutes of that or read a page of 10-point sans-serif?
• Take the shareholders’ pulse - You can build polling and surveys into your online annual report in order to gather valuable information from your investors.
• Boost your search engine ranking – What do you think will assist your SEO efforts more: a PDF of your printed annual hosted by an investor relations service…or the same content, in highly searchable HTML, hosted at your own domain?
• Make the data downloadable – Some investors like to crunch the numbers. Why not make your data available for download in a CSV file?
• Create sharable content – You can set up your online annual report so that many of its components (slideshows, videos, commercials, audio, images, etc.) can be redistributed easily by others (bloggers, reporters, fans, etc.), thus increasing your audience beyond investors and helping to spread your story. In a good year, you’ll add to the number of people who have heard about your success. In a down year, you’ll add to the number of people who have heard about your plans for improvement.

Of course, for compliance reasons, you may need to provide your annual report in printed form, or at least to those who request it. To that end, you can print a small quantity of bare-bones reports (mostly numbers, no fluff) and/or make a pared-down report available for download.

Examples of online annual reports
In case you haven’t seen any online annual reports, check out the ones below:

• Coca-Cola Company (This is the 2006 report. I see that they went to a menu of PDFs for 2007. Wonder why?)
• Sutter Health
• Constellation Energy
• Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (This report combines online multimedia with downloadable PDFs of the print version, a nice compromise.)
• MeritCare Cancer Committee – (Full disclosure: MeritCare is a Polymer Studios client.)

If the last downturn taught us anything it’s that businesses can batten down the hatches very quickly, and that marketing budgets are the first to be thrown overboard.

Were you hoping to revamp or enhance your old Web site over the next few quarters? If so, a spending freeze memo from the boss could seriously hinder your plans. You might not have the funds to make the improvements you had in mind.

So, what can you do with your site on a paper-thin budget? Obviously you’re going to have to make some tough choices and prioritize what needs changing. We suggest looking at three key aspects of your site’s performance: visibility, flexibility and experience.

Visibility

There are a number of ways to measure your Web site’s visibility, but here’s a simple reality check: How does your site come up in Google when you simply enter the name of your business? If you are a small business, enter the names of the owners or key executives. You’d be amazed how many businesses can’t even get into the first page of results using their own name! It’s equally important to determine your competitiveness on key words that your prospects are likely to use in searching for information on potential vendors in your industry. This is particularly important if your business name is not unique. In such cases, prospects who hope to snoop your site might search on your company name plus your industry or city (e.g., Johnson + Consulting + Insurance).

Even if all of your business comes from personal referrals, you can’t afford to be invisible in search results. A prospective customer who is considering whether to include your firm in an RFP might conduct a search on your company, not just to find your Web site but to find out how prominent you are in your field. Does your name come up in news articles? Blogs and blog comments? Trade association Web sites? Being visible in peer and industry sites not only boosts your credibility in your field, but, if accompanied by links back to your site, can increase your site’s search ranking.

Below are just a few ideas for boosting your site’s visibility.

• Cultivate inbound links – The more external sites that point to your site, the better. While it may take some convincing and some valuable content to get bloggers and online media to link to your site, you can generate links quickly by registering your site with industry associations and chambers of commerce.
• Comment on blogs – Even if you can’t/won’t launch your own blog, you can still leave thoughtful comments on blogs that cover your industry. Good comments are always welcome. They not only reflect well on you and your company, but also result in inbound links to your site.
• Media sites – Sites like YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo and Slideshare are designed for content sharing. Your company might have content that could be uploaded to those sites as well, including photos of your headquarters, company party or annual meeting, PowerPoint sales presentations, videos of product demos, etc. As you set up and upload to these sites, be sure to include links back to your company web site in your profile page and in captions.
• Update your AboutUs.org page – Have you heard of this service? Go to AboutUs.org and you will probably find info about your company there. It has been “scraped” from your site. At no cost, you can register and modify the info. But for a couple hundred bucks, a professional staff writer will produce an in-depth article about your company, which will provide links back to specific pages on your web site.

Flexibility

If your business were to suddenly made a big move, say an acquisition or merger, or it were pummeled by negative news reports, how long would it take you to update your Web site in response? Could you post updated content to your site in a day? In hours? In minutes? What kind of content would you be able to post?

If your Web site feels old and inflexible, it’s probably for a reason, including programming, analysis paralysis or a simple lack of time and attention. To be fair, these are all valid excuses. But excuses don’t count in a competitive market or during a time of crisis. This is the age of instant publishing, in which anyone, especially your detractors, can publish content online and force you to play defense. In such an environment, your static, fussy Web site is no longer an asset. It’s a big liability.

How can you make your Web site more nimble? If you’re indeed on a skimpy budget, you may have to rule out the idea of rebuilding the entire site on even a basic content management platform. The cost of the platform is not the issue as much as the labor required to redesign the site and set up templates and then populate the site with content.

Instead, you should look for ways to apply low-to-no-cost content management tools to selected pages on your site:

• Start blogging. Many companies that keep blogs are able to cope with not only with crises but everyday industry challenges by posting their responses on the company blog. The tools are practically free. You just need a link from your main site to your blog and you’re all set.
• Use a free blogging account, such as Blogger, to feed your news and events pages. You create articles just like you would for a blog. A snippet of code on your site pulls in a feed from your blog account and displays headlines and articles on your site. Examples here and here.
• Post videos to Vimeo or YouTube and have them featured on your home page.
• Pull in and display a feed of your Twitter posts on your home page. (Drawback: you can’t edit your posts.)
• Use a service like PitchEngine for distributing and promoting your press releases. Again, you can pull in a feed of your press releases and display them on your news, press or home pages.

Experience

With a realistic sense of how your current site is faring in these areas, you may discover that you don’t have to overhaul your entire site. Instead, like a surgeon, you may be able to enhance the experience that prospects have when they visit your site.

Experience is a broad word and can encompass many things, but here is a short list of criteria on which you can evaluate your site’s experience.

• Performance – This used to be a common issue, back when the majority of people had dialup modems. Nowadays, a slow-loading site is a rarity, which makes it (when you do find one) a much less tolerable problem. However, site performance can be an issue at specific junctures within the site. Conduct an audit and make sure that your search, contact and other forms not only function as intended but provide a reasonable level of performance and responsiveness.
• Mobile-friendliness – Have you seen what your site looks like on a Blackberry, Windows Mobile phone or iPhone? If your site makes heavy use of Flash, you might be disappointed. Depending on your audience, mobile may be a bigger consideration going forward, particularly if you sell to C-suite executives, busy doctors or iPhone-carrying techies.
• Clarity – Does your site do a good job helping visitors understand the essentials about your company? Does it help visitors quickly assess the relevance of your products or services? Using a metrics tool, such as Google Analytics, zero in on your high-traffic pages (as well as critical pages that you believe deserve more traffic) and evaluate them with an objective eye. If that’s not possible, recruit prospects and customers to help you understand how those pages could communicate more powerfully.
• Conversion – Evaluate your product and service pages or any pages where visitors might logically want to make a purchase or request more information — and make sure your call to action is clear and the subsequent steps (specifiying a product, placing an order, filling out a contact form, etc.) are as streamlined as possible.

This article offers a handful of options for improving your Web site and your broader online marketing efforts. But in reality, there are many low-cost options available, especially if you have more time than budget. The first step is to conduct a frank evaluation of your online marketing efforts. From there, you can explore and prioritize strategies for connecting with your prospects, being more relevant and making it easier for them to move toward a purchase decision.

Photo: Wishes by Shioshvili

Just when you thought you’d seen every Google Maps mashup imaginable, the Commercial Crime Services division of the ICC (International Chamber of Commerce) has launched the Live Piracy Map. The map shows the locations of piracy incidents across the globe.

This is a great example of “data marketing” – disseminating meaningful data in order to help your prospects better understand their needs and/or your company’s relevance in meeting their needs. In this case, the ICC is not a business but a trade organization. But why couldn’t a maritime security company have produced such a map?

Via the ever-entertaining BLDGBLOG

Over at myRagan.com, an online community for corporate communicators, lisam recently posted:

Coworkers regularly make me aware of blogs and online media sites that either include negative commentary about our company’s products, or mention all of our competitors but not us. My coworkers ask me, “Can we have someone reply to this blog post telling them how great our products are?” Or something to that effect.

I always hesitate at this, partly because we don’t have a network we can tap into for this purpose… but also because I have ethical reservations about taking such action. That said, I tend to be a conservative communicator. Am I being too timid?

I don’t see anything wrong with commenting on behalf of the company but I think it all depends on how you approach it. I think you’ll be seen as a shill if you post comments that invalidate people’s feelings, go against verifiable facts or defy common sense. Those are the kinds of corporate responses that make many of us cringe and make Lisa understandably gun shy.

I follow @comcastcares on Twitter and I think the way Frank Eliason handles it is perfect. He serves as an ombudsman, listening for mentions of Comcast and then addressing people’s concerns, often hooking them up directly with service reps and then asking for public feedback on how the problem’s being resolved. I’m sure he can only help a handful of people on any given day, but there are tons of us listening in, so the impact is multiplied. For me, as an observer, the takeaway isn’t that the entire Comcast Corporation truly cares (puh-leeze), but I am impressed that they’ve hired at least one very personable guy, who is trying and is willing to be held accountable.

Back to the context Lisa brought up, which is the propriety/effectiveness of commenting on blogs, I think that corporate communicators actually do have the power to make a positive impression, if they are willing to:

1. Identify yourself and your position with the company. Be clear on whether you are commenting in an official capacity or just as a concerned employee. DON’T EVER COMMENT ANONYMOUSLY! You can be found out and much bigger trouble will ensue.
2. Validate the poster’s feelings (”Sorry you had that experience at our store. It must have been frustrating.”) Apologize, if that’s appropriate and at all possible (yes, legal issues abound).
3. Offer the company’s official position in a dispassionate manner.
4. Provide the factual basis or rationale behind the company’s position, so others can at least see why the company might be choosing to handle things a certain way.
5. If possible, describe what the company is working on to address the issue. Be as specific as possible.
6. If the company isn’t doing anything (or doesn’t plan on doing anything) about the poster’s complaint, be honest about it and explain the business reasons behind that decision.
7. Provide links to supporting information.
8. Provide links to additional related information, even information that is not officially supported by the company.
9. Provide specific solutions and help (e.g., the name/number of a CSR, store manager, refund page, etc.) that gives the original poster some options for getting satisfaction.

In these matters, I think intent counts for a lot, because it will show in your writing. It shows respect if you don’t try to vigorously convert people to the company’s view, but rather offer another perspective and then demonstrate your desire to be helpful. If you do that, I think few people will object to your presence in their comment section.

I just got wind of a old (Jan. 25, 2007) report by Forrester that takes on a real sticky wicket: calculating the ROI of running a corporate blog.

I’ve ranted on more than one occasion that marketers should use social media, including blogs, as an R&D tool and not to expect a hard return. But, if anyone can build a more hard-core argument for blogging, I’m all for it. After all, these are difficult times, which means money talks.

According to this post on Forrester’s Groundswell blog, if R&D (i.e., gathering customer insight) is one of your goals, you can measure your ROI by figuring what it would cost you to gather those insights via traditional means, such as focus groups, surveys, ethnographic studies, etc. If you can gather comparable or better insights via your blog at a lower cost, the difference is your ROI. If a monthly focus group costs $15k and your blog costs you $10k, your ROI is $5k.

The article makes some interesting points, including:

• There is no standard ROI model for blogs
• Your ROI depends on your metrics, which depend on your specific goals
• Measurable blogging goals might include:

- Increased brand visibility
- Savings on customer insight
- Rduction of impact from negative user-generated blogs
- Increased sales efficiency

Update:

I nearly forgot, but Gary Vaynerchuk recently posted a frantic and entertaining rant on the benefits and ROI of online marketing in a soft business market. Ya gotta check it out!