1. If you are in a selling business, you are primarily selling solutions. Solution to the needs and pain points of your target market. So find out what are the needs of your customers, select one or two needs that you can serve best and provide them with better solutions for these needs. The emphasis is on providing solutions that are BETTER than your competition.

2. Build your concept / communication around the solution you provide. Convey how your solution is better and how it serves the needs, whatever it may be, good-looking hair, a slim physique, a medical concern or pet grooming.

3. Set your communication objective.

4. Develop a sticky creative with a tagline, copy and include graphics (picture) to accentuate the creative into an aspiration, as a picture is better than thousand words. Remember, just one concept or offer per ad and leave plenty of white space.

5. Determine touch points for your target market. Implement an integrated media plan, that is, use more than one medium. If relevant, include digital and social media. These are cost-effective mediums and provide for excellent monitoring and measurement. Using more than one medium and leveraging online options is an efficient way to enhance Reach and get in-market synergy for increasing awareness.

6. Frequency is critical in getting heard and noticed. Opt for higher frequency. I believe if you have to select between number of mediums and frequency, reduce number of mediums to increase frequency. It pays to segment the market and become an active player in it.

7. Complete the loop by measuring market response, campaign results and the ROMI. Try incorporating built-in measuring tools. A communication initiative stays incomplete until you measure its effectiveness, learn from it and tweak the model for greater efficiency and effectiveness in future.

Did these companies really think that acting as leeches, riding on the coattails of Twitter’s success, would do anything for them? If your entire business model can come crashing down that easily, how stable of a business model was it in the first place?

Don’t get me wrong – I’m thankful for all the things that these services have provided us over the last couple of years – but no exit strategy is the worst kind of exit strategy.

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out as Twitter evolves as a company.

This is especially true when it comes to creating a web presence.

Here’s a scenario:

A business that specializes in large appliance sales & repairs has decided to launch a website. The goal is to increase overall revenue and profits. The strategy is to attract users (and potential customers) to the website by providing reviews of every product sold, as well as giving advice on do-it-yourself repairs and maintenance while simultaneously pushing professional services (see freemium).

How does it incorporate both strategic thinking and strategic planning?

The plan is laid out, but the reception of the public and the activities of the competition are uncontrollable. Knowing how to respond while continuing to work towards the objective is a balancing act. Strategic thinking and strategic planning are crucial here.

The introduction of strategic thinking to traditional SEO.

Strategic planning (sticking to protocol) has always been part of search optimization – keyword research is a cornerstone of all search optimization plans, for example, and the process of traditional search engine optimization is a procedural routine for many.

But fiddling around with on-page keywords, meta tags and alt text (although they still play a partial role) is no longer enough to stay competitive.

Individuals, agencies and departments that label themselves as SEO are increasingly expected to step into the realm of strategic thinking. This means coming up with original & alternative methods of generating traffic that deviate from typical routines.

More ways to get noticed = more planning is needed.

As I’ve noted previously, search engines are no longer the dominant tool for content discovery, so everyone working in SEO must learn to adapt to the increasingly convoluted system of internet usage. The web has grown in size and user behaviour has become more diverse.

So while strategic thinking is a growing necessity, it’s important that we don’t lose sight of our goals amidst the many channels of communication that are available. We can’t be everywhere at once, so strategic planning is still a valuable asset.

The bottom line? It all ties back to strategy in SEO.

Strategic thinking? Strategic planning? Either way, it’s still strategy, and it plays a prominent role in establishing a strong web presence.

That’s why it makes up the first 3rd of my redefinition of SEO (Strategy, Engagement and Optimization).

Before engagement, before optimization – there must be strategy. We’ve always done it, and now we’re doing more of it, and in more ways than ever before.

** Please note that this post addresses website optimization for search engines. There are many other aspects of a site that can be optimized, from technical performance (loading times and resource usage) to usability and accessibility (user experience and interaction with the site itself). Although they all fall under the Optimization category of “Strategy, Engagement and Optimization“, covering all of it would be far too daunting for a single blog post. **

Website Optimization for Search: It’s marketing, too!

Let’s break down the traditional search engine optimization planning process:

Like any marketing endeavour, it involves three components – a goal (what you want to accomplish and why), a strategy (how you’re going to accomplish it) and tactics (the specific steps that will make your strategy happen).

In most cases, all three components (in terms of search optimization) are as follows:

The goal is to increase site traffic by ranking highly on search engines for specifically-chosen key terms/keywords. The strategy involves determining what the key terms should be, and how you’ll target them. Finally, the tactics involve keyword research, producing content, measuring the effectiveness of the content, and constantly tweaking/maintaining the content to establish (or sustain) relevance*.

*This includes working with information architecture (the relationship between content) and site structure (the tech stuff), amongst other things.

These components are the essentials of on-page website optimization.

When done properly, a well-executed optimization plan will improve the quality and performance of a website.

But what happens when you can’t build a plan from scratch? What if you’re limited in resources, be it money or time (or both)?

Scaling Back: Working with smaller clients, smaller budgets and shorter timelines.

A full website optimization endeavour may be unfeasible or unwanted by a client. This can be especially true of small businesses who “just want a website“. Researching key terms, producing new content and constantly measuring/tweaking the content is simply out of the question.

Unfortunately there are a number of web developers who are more than happy to toss up sites without thinking twice about site optimization and search performance, even on a basic level. This is why you’ll find sites – often for local businesses in smaller markets – with generic page titles, duplicate content, broken links and inconsistent navigation. It sucks, but it’s a reality.

So this is where small-scale optimization kicks in.

Small-scale website optimization is to web development as home inspection is to residential construction.

Developers rush to meet deadlines and quotas. They may even cut corners to save time and money. These cut corners will inevitably cause problems at some point, so they need to be addressed.

Just as quality home inspection is intended to uncover problems in a house, quality small-scale optimization is intended to uncover problems on a site.

We’re not adding anything new with small-scale optimization; we’re just improving what’s already in place. We’re focusing on the little things that developers may have skipped over, because while they may be little, they’re still crucial components for a well-built website.

Look at it this way: A site with broken links and missing pages is like a house with broken plumbing and poor insulation. Like a home inspector, we figure out where the problems are – but unlike a home inspector, we take it upon ourselves to fix the problems.

We find the problems, we fix the problems, and everyone is  better off for it. Implementing a full optimization plan may be more thorough, but small-scale optimization is still effective and useful.

Don’t forget, however, that Optimization is only one part of SEO.

Strategy and Engagement are important, too! I’ll be covering them more thoroughly in my next couple of posts.

This website has gone through many iterations; none of them have been particularly successful. It’s a mixture of not knowing exactly what to write combined with an overwhelming urge to procrastinate. It’s a bad combo.

I’ve attempted to run a personal site on a consistent basis since late elementary school, so that’s a little over seven years. But it always seems to fall by the wayside; I never give it enough attention.

The one thing I’ve always lacked is a plan. I plan for everything else – business projects, client sites, academic assignments – but I never seem to plan for my own stuff. And that needs to change.

I’m writing this for my own good. I really don’t care if anyone reads it. It’s more of a confirmation that I’ve made a goal public; it’s posted, and it’s on record.

I will come up with a plan – a strategy – to guide everything I do online. To keep it consistent, to keep it on message. It’s a learning experience, first and foremost, and hopefully it will be the first step into something better down the road. I will divest from the endeavours that lead me nowhere, and I will invest in the endeavours that make the most sense.

As the saying goes, failing to plan is planning to fail.

Hopefully, in the coming weeks, my entire online presence will have a sufficient strategy to justify its existence. There is no school to blame for keeping me busy; there is no excuse to be made to allow me to procrastinate further.