I was sitting in the duck blind just north of Clinton, Iowa about 30 years ago. I had my shotgun gripped tightly with the safety on. The ducks were flying right toward our decoys in a path that would lead them within 30 yards of our blind. I was ready to shoot my first bird and take my place as one of the great American hunters of our time. When the ducks were in range, my dad said, “Now!” I quickly pointed my shotgun at the ducks and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. I pointed again and pulled the trigger again. Nothing… the ducks were now out of range. My dad sat there smiling at me and patted me on the back. “Son, you have to remember to flip the safety off before you pull the trigger.” A little embarrassed, I rolled my eyes at myself and slouched back down in blind.

A couple of hours later, the same situation presented itself again. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. The ducks flew within range and my dad said, “Now!” I quickly point the gun, flipped the safety off, and pulled the trigger. I missed. I pointed again, and pulled the trigger again. I missed a second time. The ducks flew out of range.

Frustrated, I looked over at my dad who sat there smiling once again. He said, “Son, in order to shoot a duck you have to aim ahead of them. If you aim directly at them, you’ll always miss because your BB’s will end up where the duck WAS rather than where it IS. You have to lead the duck.”

There were no more chances that day, but I learned three lessons I’ll never forget.

1. To be successful, you have to turn off the safety before you pull the trigger.

2. You have to lead the duck. You can’t shoot for where your target is today, you have to aim where they are going.

3. My dad couldn’t do it for me. In order to be successful, I had to learn the mechanics and pull the trigger myself.

Hopefully, you’ve spent the last few years leading the duck. If you have, then here’s where you should be:

• You should have an effective website design that turns a percentage of visitors into new business opportunities or sales.
• You should have a blog or news section that keeps your audience informed and positions you as an expert in your industry.
• You should have a social media marketing presence that delivers your message where and how your audience wants to receive it.
• You should have an email marketing process and system in place that is very easy to maintain and predictable for your audience.

In a recent speech, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said, “Mobile is the hottest area of computer technology…The smartest developers now are writing apps for mobile devices before they write for Windows or Apple Mac desktop operating systems.”

Have you started to think about how you can make the best use of mobile technology to offer a new service or to better communicate with your audience, or are you still sitting with your safety on and pointing your gun at the duck?

My dad was an amazing duck hunter. I can’t remember a time he pulled the trigger and didn’t hit his target. He had the mechanics down pat. He was patient, but he was also very decisive and accurate when the time came. I would encourage everyone to be a little more like my dad. Be patient, but know when and how to be decisive and accurate. Make sure you have the pieces in place, and start thinking about pulling the trigger on your mobile marketing plan.

Another week of fun at HRB.

One of our brand teams was intimately involved in the internal brand launch of a major media client all last week during employee meetings. Re-branding brings up a lot of questions, but overall it was very well received. The video and animation we produced for the event kept the spirit upbeat and sent the participants off on a good note.

A large transportation client had a big public relations announcement last week. HRB supported that effort by putting together a plan, writing the elements and pitching it to the media.

HRB presented a seminar, “Tell Your Story Using the New Public Relations Strategies,” in Cedar Rapids. The group discussed tips and ways to incorporate social media into your public relations program and how traditional PR still has a strong role…you just have more territory to cover.

Our next live seminar will be delivered by HRB Senior Vice President Jeff McEachron in the Quad Cities at 11:30 am on May 20. His presentation, “If You’re Not Blogging -  You’re Missing a Marketing Goldmine” addresses the relationship-building and marketing power of blogging. Blogging is one of the most direct-to-the-consumer communications and marketing mediums of our day. It is unfiltered information coming directly from the company to the marketplace. Jeff is an expert on this subject. You can see for yourself by reading his blog entries on the HRB Website. Jeff will give this same live seminar in Cedar Rapids on June 2.

Our Web work continues to increase so we’re starting work on sites for a new health care client and a regional development agency. We continue to handle ongoing optimization and Internet marketing campaigns for a number of Web clients on a weekly basis.

We have a new graphic design intern from Drake University starting next week. Her name is Allison Maze and she will be a senior this fall. She just returned to her hometown of Cedar Rapids following a semester of college and working for a design firm in London. Welcome to HRB for the summer, Allison.

And, a new intern will be joining the public relations soon to work with PR VP Shelby Kraus and members of the Web team as those two functions continue their growing symbiotic relationship.

HRB President and partner Steve Erickson is a featured writer in the May issue of Edge Business. His piece, “Make your brand the life of the party,” makes a strong and compelling story on how to position your brand to make it attractive to your audience. And, he answers the question “How does a brand actually demonstrate a genuine interest in and engage its audience?” It’s really a good read for those interested in upping their brand game.

We would like to thank the 15 new clients who have joined the HRB team so far this year – clients who look to us to help them build their brands and grow their businesses.

Please take a look at our portfolio to see how we’ve been helping our clients with their marketing efforts.

In Part One of this series, I talked about the importance of getting your Web site design ready to receive visitors. In Part Two of this series, I talked about implementing a blog or news section on your Web site.  Once you have these two steps completed and are happy with your internal systems and processes to ensure consistency, it’s time to start leveraging your blog content into email marketing.

As a recommendation, let’s start out slowly. Assume you are writing one blog article per week. This means you have four articles to use as the foundation of a monthly newsletter. In other words, you don’t have to write all new content for a newsletter. Simply use the information you’ve already communicated via your blog in a slightly different format.

Let’s say your average blog article is several paragraphs long. I recommend using the title of each blog entry and the first paragraph as content for your email newsletter. If the recipient of your email wants to learn more, they can click on a link that takes them to your Web site to read the full article.  Here’s an example:

Question: Why would I use the same exact content in my blog and newsletter?

Answer: You have to communicate with your audience using the media they prefer or your message will not be received. Some of your audience will enjoy reading your blog. Some of your audience will prefer getting a monthly email newsletter. It will take approximately one hour or less to prepare and distribute your monthly email newsletter. The recipients of the newsletter have opted-in to receive the information, so you’re simply giving them what they have already asked for.  Another reason you want to do this is to get more people visiting your Web site to get them closer to your existing content.

In the email newsletter example above, I’ve included offers in a column on the right. These are offers for your readers to engage you further or gain additional information. In the HRB newsletter, we use these areas to promote:

• Seminars or other speaking engagements
• Free White Papers that can be downloaded and might be useful to our target market
• Contact information
• Other promotions

This also provides some insight into the next area we will be discussing – offers and further engagement.

To sum up our progress to date, we have implemented a new Web site design to prepare our site for visitors and to create easy paths for these visitors to contact us. Once the Web site was built, we added a news or blog section designed to educate and inform our target audience about things they care about. Now we’ve designed an email newsletter to re-purpose the blog information for the sector of our audience who prefers reading an email vs. a blog.

If you stop right here in the process, you’ve built a decent system to be transparent in your approach and to communicate your expertise to your audience. These are all really good things that will help you build a better relationship with people who are shopping your brand. This may cause a few people to contact you and you might see a slight increase in leads or sales, but it falls short of the well-rounded approach that will truly be most effective for your business. Unfortunately this is where a lot of companies stop.

My next article will discuss the art of the offer and building a following. While I’m noodling on that, take the time to review your internal processes and procedures. Are you leveraging your information?

How many times have you heard a salesperson use one of these lame lines to “push” you closer to buying from them:

• “Shall we meet next Tuesday morning or Thursday afternoon?”
• “Would you prefer to product one or product two?”
• “How about we get started next week?”
• “You’re the expert, so I know you understand why this is important.”
• “I’m not the expert on this, but the guy I work with is dynamite in this area.”

Study after study has shown these approaches are dying a rapid death and being replaced with transparency and inbound marketing. I’m not saying that there’s no need for sales in an organization, but I am saying the buyers of your product or service have gotten a lot smarter. The Internet (specifically social media) has increased transparency to a level where you can’t baffle everyone with BS. People still buy from people, but your next customers will likely know a lot more about you than what your aggressive sales person force feeds them. This is one reason why inbound marketing is the fastest growing segment in the marketing industry. Inbound marketing is when prospects seek out your company rather than the other way around.

In Building an Effective Online Marketing Approach – Part One, I talked about the importance of getting your Web site design ready to receive marketing. How you plan on marketing your Web site should be decided well before your site is even designed. In other words, are you ready to do some inbound marketing?

I have yet to find a company that couldn’t benefit from either a blog or news section as part of their Internet marketing strategy. In the natural progression of things, this is the next step. So what are you going to blog about? What should you include in your news section?

Rule #1 – Don’t do this:

Nobody really cares how cool you think your product or service is. They will judge that for themselves. Remember, the Internet has made business very transparent. People will be looking at your products or body of work to decide for themselves how “cool” you are.

It’s great your company won an award for this or that, but your future customers and clients care about how you can help them achieve their goals and objectives.

A wise man once told me, “The most boring person at the party is the one who spends the night talking about himself.” Give that a little thought… You just got an image of someone, right? Don’t be that person.

Rule #2 – Do this:

Educate and inform your audience about things they care about.

Regardless of what your company does, you are the experts. If you’re a law firm, then tell your audience about changes in the law and how it will affect them. If you’re a college or university, then tell your audience about the happenings on campus. If you’re an HR consulting firm, then tell people how the changes in health care will affect the business sector. The examples are endless. You have valuable information that can help people so share it. This simple act positions you as an expert who cares. Isn’t that the kind of organization you want to associate with?

So the decision is made. You’ve designed your new Web site and decided to start a news section or a blog. You’ve given it some thought and you have a general idea on how you can educate and inform your audience. Your next step will be to put a plan in place to ensure you are effectively delivering the content to your target audience.

As a side benefit, you know who to avoid at your next party…

This is the first of a series of blog articles where I’ll write about what needs to be done to effectively market your business online using a systematic approach based on fundamentals we all know. My goal is to package this approach in a way that helps you build an effective online marketing approach that delivers results.

There has been so much written about social media marketing. It seems so many people think it’s the silver bullet that will take your business to the next level. It’s not. In order for social media marketing or any other online marketing to work effectively, it’s critical to think of the entire structure of your online marketing efforts. As with every structure, you need a strong foundation in order to be successful.

The foundation of your online marketing, is your Web site. More specifically, your Web site design. Is your Web site designed and built as an online brochure where you talk AT your customers and clients, or is it built in a way that will educate them and entice them to contact you? Take the HRB Web site for example. Our site isn’t overly flashy, and it doesn’t have a lot of text on most pages. People simply won’t read a Web page that is text heavy and image light.

Instead of using a lot of text, we briefly explain most of our services and rely heavily on our portfolio section to show examples of our work. We rely on the HRB Blog as a means to educate our audience and provide insight into our expertise. Both of these serve to begin building a relationship with potential clients and hopefully building trust in our ability to help them. If people like our work and trust in our expertise, then we remain top of mind and are included in the conversation when they are in need of the services we offer.

If you look at our site, you’ll notice we have icons to our social media sites and an icon where people can subscribe to our blog. Another thing you’ll notice is the ability to subscribe to the HRB newsletter. In all of these cases, we are simply providing a way for our audience to receive information from us using the media of their choice. We’re not pushing our articles on people, but rather providing them with choices on how they prefer to receive our message.

On some of our blog articles, we provide an opportunity for people to download white papers that provide in-depth information on a topic. One example is our white paper titled “Learn how to avoid the 15 biggest marketing mistakes in 2010.” You can see an example of how we worked this white paper into our content in this article:

I’m Tired of Watching Companies Fail at Social Media Marketing

Finally, you’ll notice each page of our site has a link to Contact HRB. In the footer of the site, you see the addresses and phone numbers (mobile device compatible) for our locations in the Quad Cities and Cedar Rapids. Those are two items that virtually every Internet user has grown accustomed to. If you don’t deliver these elements, then you’ll quickly lose the user.

Hopefully it goes without saying that the HRB site is programmed to meet the very strict standards of the World Wide Web Consortium with search engine optimization built into the foundation and added to each new blog post and page built.

In summary, your Web site is your foundation. Be sure to offer multiple ways for your audience to engage you. Offer promotions and information that prompts the user to engage you further, or at least keeps you top of mind. Once this foundation is strong, you can begin some marketing efforts to test the effectiveness of your Web site design.

Twitter just released a report saying that there are now 50 million tweets every day (600 tweets per second). With such a substantial volume of people messaging each other it’s good to know that there’s tools out there to help you find, monitor, and automate exactly what you’re interested in. There’s tools that range from simple and easy to use to ones that provide a feature-set that is seemingly endless. So let’s start out covering the tools that everyone can jump in and start using before we go into the more advanced managing and monitoring services.

Seesmic Look (Twitter)

Seesmic Look is the latest Twitter application to be released, and is also one of the most interesting. It’s unique focus on making it obvious to the that the information being received is updated “real-time” helps beginning users grasp the concept of the always connected and always up-to-date websites that have been emerging. In addition to it’s new interface, it provides the ability to easily browse other users and popular topics people are talking about. The most useful feature is its search functionality. You can search for a term and Look will give you a list of “tweets” where the term was mentioned. The search term can be saved and easily monitored throughout the day.

Google Alerts has been around for years, but it’s still greatly valuable. Google has been watching social media sites very closely and has been integrating them into search results. One benefit of including social media sites is you can use a Google Alert to send an email to you whenever a certain term is mentioned on the web. This great because these notifications include every result in Google’s massive search index.

Seesmic Desktop (Twitter & Facebook)

What if you’re active on both Twitter and Facebook and require something more real-time than Google Alerts? Surely you don’t want to use separate applications for each website when there’s Seesmic Desktop. With the integration of both Facebook and Twitter, Seesmic Desktop takes the browsing and searching features of Look and makes them more customizable.The multiple column layout might take some time to get used to, but the ability to monitor multiple social media accounts, saved searches, users, and groups of users at all at once is a great time saver.

There’s also Seesmic Web, a website with similar features & functionality but is lacking facebook support.

HootSuite (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, & more)

HootSuite is one of the most robust social media tool available today, and is a publisher’s best friend. It shares the same column view that Seesmic Desktop uses and includes all of the features that the program has to offer. That’s just the start though, because there’s a pretty large feature list. The way it handles accounts is pretty unique, and very useful. They allow you to add “editors” that can access/update your accounts (you choose which accounts each editor has access to). In terms of posting, you have the ability to schedule a tweet/post/etc. and even have it publish out to multiple accounts at once. You can automate your posts by attaching an RSS feed to an account and choosing the behavior of how it’s going to publish new items. Being a publishing tool, they allow you to take any of the columns you create and embed it on a website as a self-contained widget. An important feature that most tools are lacking is the ability to track referrers,  click throughs, and other statistics for each of your accounts. HootSuite is highly recommended if you’re taking your social media relations seriously, and are willing to spend the time to learn the tool.

With out using tools, social media and brand monitoring and be a very expensive and time consuming task. These are a few solutions that will help automate the process, save you time, and save your organization money. In terms of tools, there’s a good chance you’ll find what you’re looking whether you’re a beginner or someone or social media junkie.

Over the last couple of years, I have witnessed far too many companies who get started in Social Media and abandon their efforts within a few months because they don’t get the results they were looking for. These companies all have one thing in common. The expectations were unrealistic and they failed to commit the appropriate resources required to be effective.

First, let’s talk about expectations. The president, CEO, and vice president levels of organizations simply don’t know what to expect from social media. As a result and because the down economy is driving a need to get a quick return on investment, they are looking for short-term financial results. For 99% of businesses, this simply isn’t going to happen. Social media marketing is about building a following, building relationships, and leveraging these relationships for long-term mutual gain. If you’re expecting someone to land on your Facebook page and hop straight into your sales funnel, it isn’t going to happen. Here is what you can expect from social media marketing that is well planned and executed:

• Increased Sales Efficiency
• Improved Reputation
• Differentiation
• Risk Reduction
• Client Retention
• Brand Association
• Long Term Revenue
• Opportunity Creation
• Perception Shifting
• Public Relations Exposure
• Client Education
• Network Growth
• Building Trust
• Innovation

Some companies will look at this list and say, “That’s not what we’re looking for.” If you find yourself in this situation, then ask yourself if this is what your clients or customers are looking for. Like many of our clients, you may have to do some research to figure this out.

If your company decides to move forward with social media marketing, then the next step is critical to your success. You have to allocate and dedicate the appropriate resources to be successful or you will fail. Social media marketing represents a shift in your thinking and potentially a shift in your spending.

Connect with HRB:

Let’s say you have a marketing budget of $10,000 per month. In the past, you’ve paid an advertising agency this money in exchange for their services. If you’ve made the decision to enter the social media world, you have two choices.

Your first choice would be to pay a company like HRB to manage your blogging and social media efforts. Your second choice would be to keep that work in-house. If you keep that work in-house, I recommend you initially dedicate about 2 to 4 hours per day of someone’s time to manage your blog, social media, and email marketing activities. I would shift some of this money away from and “downsize” your traditional media efforts that have lost effectiveness over time. This allows you keep your costs in check and move into a new avenue of marketing. If you fail to clearly and effectively allocate these resources, your social media efforts will fail.

I think every business can benefit from a well planned and well executed social media strategy. How important is it to your business model, and how much of your marketing budget should be allocated? It varies from company to company, and only you can make the decision on the shape and scope of your efforts. Like all marketing, it is a risk. Unlike a lot of marketing, it is fairly measurable because of the vast statistics available on the Web.

So what’s my advice to you? Do it well, or don’t do it at all. I don’t want to see you fail.

Last week, I was fortunate enough to present a seminar to the Rotary Club of East Moline/Silvis. The topic was “Getting Started in Social Media.” We had about 60 people in the crowd, including some very young people and some seasoned business veterans.

Before my presentation I had the opportunity to scan the crowd. I was able to listen to some of the conversation and get a feel for the audience. While I was sitting there, I realized that part of my presentation didn’t quite fit the audience. I quickly whipped out my laptop, made a few adjustments, and started my presentation a few minutes later.

There are a couple of points that shouldn’t be lost in what happened that day. First, I scanned the audience and paid attention to the demographics. I listened to them, and I changed my presentation to speak more directly to the crowd. This is exactly what you should do in your social media marketing efforts. Scan the crowd, listen, and speak directly to them.

This all seems pretty easy and straight forward, right?

Well, if you look at the majority of small to medium sized companies Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, many have something in common. Either they spend a lot of time publishing useless information, or they spend a lot of time talking about themselves and pushing promotions that are based solely on convincing the audience to give up their contact information. Both of these will turn your audience away in short order.

It’s OK to talk about your company once in awhile. It’s OK to offer a promotion to try and build your email marketing list once in awhile. It’s just not OK to make either of these your main focus. You don’t have to listen to me on this, your audience will tell you by choosing not to engage you. Instead, speak directly to your audience. Provide useful information that helps them. If you’re a B2B company, then provide tips and educational articles that will help your audience be better at their job or profession. If you’re a B2C company, then provide information the consumer cares about and needs to know.

If you use the approach I’m recommending, you’ll soon find that your existing relationships will grow stronger and new relationships will begin to form. Once you make a commitment to helping your audience, you will gain their trust and stay top of mind. The next time they need your service or product, it’s much more likely they’ll give you a call.

Scan the crowd, listen, and speak directly to them.

Once you shoot television commercials you need to edit them and take care of all of those details necessary to get them on the air. That’s what we’ve been doing this week for our restaurant client, and that work will likely continue into early next week. Can’t wait to see the finished spot where a spy drops down out of the ceiling and hits the floor (safely and with a stunt guy, of course). While the shooting took place in the middle of the night, the editing is going on pretty much between 8 and 5.

HRB partners Steve Erickson and Jim Thebeau were interviewed for an article on niche marketing for an upcoming issues of the Edge Business Journal. They discussed the three basic rules for niche marketing, including Meeting the Unique Needs of the Niche, Understanding the Markets Hot Buttons, Business and Language, and Testing the Market.

HRB Senior Vice President and Director of Internet Operations, Jeff McEachron had the opportunity to speak about “Getting Started in Social Media” to a group of about 60 at the Rotary Club of East Moline / Silvis. The most important message was the importance of having a plan and committing the appropriate resources before you begin. Jeff’s next presentation will be at the Cedar Rapids Chamber Academy on February 9th. View a list of upcoming HRB events.

Our Web site designers stayed busy this week helping a new client fix a broken Web site, programming a few others, and developing an animation that will be used to help unveil a new brand for one of the most recognized organizations in Cedar Rapids. Stay tuned and keep your eyes open for this one!

There’s something new at HRB. Starting February 1, HRB started Growth, its strategic planning and growth division. It’s so new that there is nothing on our Web site yet. For years, HRB has been in the business of growing brands and growing business, but this new division takes our strategic planning and business building to a higher level. We even offer pay for performance options.

Finally, we are getting close to completing a new logo and brand identity for a large architectural/engineering firm.