How to Create Successful Blogs: Lessons from Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo is one of the first banks to foray into the world of blogging. They are now running four different blogs, focused on different communities.

eM+C Magazine in their Jan/Feb 2008 issue offered four lessons learned from Wells Fargo on how to create successful blogs:

1. Respond and listen to your customers. Before launching a blog -- or changing one you already have -- it's important for you to really listen to your audience through the comments they enter and through the emails they send you. "Responding and listening to those dialogues -- and

2. Read blogs before publishing your own. Doing so will help you understand the culture of blogs and blog readers.

3. Don't look at social media like traditional marketing. It is important to understand the culture of social media and how it values authenticity, transparency, being honest and speaking plainly.

4. It's not about the age, it's about interest. The most important thing is to focus on an interested, passionate community -- no matter what the age,

Successful Management: Learning from Pepsi

Fortune Magazine has a very good article on Pepsi and their CEO, Indra Nooyi entitled "What Makes Pepsi Great?"

Here are some interesting lessons for business owners from how Pepsi works and how Ms. Nooyi manages this corporate giant:

• Not shy about asking for help when she needs it. One of the first things Ms. Nooyi did upon learning that she got the job of CEO was to hop on the plane to Cape Cod and convince Mike White, her main challenger for the job and a Pepsi CFO, to stay and help her.
• Understands the role the company plays in the overall scheme of things. She created the motto "Performance with Purpose," which "essentially boils down to balancing the profit motive with making healthier snacks, striving for a net-zero impact on the environment, and taking care of your workforce."
• Knows how to play the game in the global arena. The biggest opportunities for Pepsi lies overseas, and to succeed overseas, an American company needs to know how to play by their rules. Indra understands that she cannot view the rest of the world solely from an American perspective.
• Has the advantage of Pepsi's corporate culture. Pepsi is described as a "contrarian, risk-taking big company that prides itself on acting like a small company" with the merging of two corporate cultures: Frito Lay's get-things-done expertise and Pepsi Cola's never-take-anything-for-granted-underdog mentality.

Read Fortune's article on Pepsi

Learning from Starbucks

Here are two good articles on what small businesses can learn from the highly successful Starbucks coffee shops:

• Learning from Starbucks: 10 Lessons for Small Businesses
• Lessons from Success of Starbucks

How to Provide Excellent Customer Service: Learning from Nordstrom

Nordstom, the successful Seattle-based retailer catering to middle-to-upper income men and women, is famous for excellent customer service. The retailer has become a yardstick of other companies in terms of its legendary customer service. It has a unique commitment

The key to Nordstrom is their unique commitment to customer service. Their sales associates will do their utmost to make sure that customers leave the store satisfied and happy.

How can your business provide the same level of excellent customer service such as Nordstrom?

• Hire the right people. As Robert Spector in his book "Lessons from the Nordstrom Way: How Companies Are Emulating the #1 Customer Service Company," you can "hire nice people and teach them to sell, but we can’t hire salespeople and teach them to be nice."
• Provide customers with choices. The more choices you offer your customers, the more likely they will do business with you, rather than your competition
• Honor and reward outstanding acts of customer service. Employees at Nordstrom are encouraged to report to their manager customer service that goes above and beyond what is expected. Called "Heroics," the stars are featured in the Customer Service All Stars with their pictures proudly displayed in the customer service area. This gives other employees the standards to aspire to, while rewarding those who gave excellent customer service
• Go the extra mile for customers. Called "NPLUS: the extras you deserve," part of the program Nordstrom stands behind everything they sell and customer. They have expert tailoring and alterations available for any purchase, and offers complimentary gift boxes. If the item you want is not in stock, they will help track down the item in their other stores and give you a call when the item is available
• Empower employees to take ownership. Nordstrom gives its people on the sales floor the freedom to make entrepreneurial decisions, and management backs then on those decisions.

Apple's Out of the Box Strategy to Gain Buzz

Normally when a website is down, the business suffers -- no sales, no clicks on ads, visitors are turned off and may not come back, etc. But not Apple.

Ever the innovator, Apple has learned to turn a negative into a positive. When the site is down and a note "We'll be back soon" is posted on the site, media, bloggers and customers now know that new products will be launched. Tech blogs such as Engadget and Gizmondo and business publications such as BusinessWeek are all abuzz as to what these new products are.

On February 5, for example, Apple's site went down. And went live with two new products: The 16 GB iPhone for $499, and a 32 GB iPod Touch, also for $499.

Apple's obsessive customer base and their rep for being highly innovative allows them to get away with using a site outage into a publicity stunt.

It's hard for a small business to get away with this type of marketing strategy (will anyone really care that your site is down?). But it is a good lesson on how to think out of the box and finding new ways to generate buzz for your business.

Learning from HP Shopping

The VP of Merchandising for HP Shopping in an article at the Internet Retailer magazine shared a very insightful lesson for those selling online:

"The whole idea is to show more than just the basics .... Not all shoppers want to research a product by just its features and functions. They may want to research how a product fits their lifestyle or figure out exactly what they want a product to do.".

This is idea behind their "Learn, Use, Create" section, which shows customers how to use their products. They have guides on how to buy the right camera and printers, how to take better photos, how to print and share photos, even online lessons on how to more efficiently use their products.

HP's strategy is excellent. Selling online is not just about putting up a picture and writing a description of the product features. You need to engage the customer. Unfortunately with the Web, that is not easy to do. The prospective customer cannot touch, feel or try the product unlike the traditional store experience.

So as an online retailer, you need to put some context into the product: how it should be used and how it can make their live better. HP's guides and how-tos help users get more excited and engaged with the products -- and that gives them more reasons to buy the products.

Tapping the Social Networking Teens: Lessons from Wal-Mart's Failed Experiment

Teens are one of the most coveted demographics by marketers. According to the study by Mintel International Group, teens spent a whopping $153 billion in 2006.

However, teens are not the easiest demographic to tap. Just ask Wal-Mart.

In July 2006, Wal-Mart launched a social networking site called The Hub (School Your Way). It was supposed to be an online hang out for teens, competing squarely with MySpace. Teens can post their profiles and network with other teens -- and praise Wal-Mart's cool clothes and electronics. The site was basically a thinly-veiled advertising vehicle for Wal-mart, rather than an honest attempt to create a new networking place for teens.

Unfortunately, teens smelled that the site was bogus and ignored the site. Four months later, Wal-Mart pulled the plug and decided to close the Hub

Here are some articles about this failed Wal-mart experiment:

• Forbes.com's "Wal-mart's MySpace Experiment Ends
• WalMart Clones MySpace, Badly

LESSONS TO BE LEARNED

Big businesses such as the mighty Wal-mart certainly are not immune to missteps. Unfortunately, their mistakes are seen and reported by the media.

Wal-mart's mistake with The Hub highlights the need to carefully study your target audience. You can't set up a website and expect your target audience to flock to it and use it based on how you imagine it to be. You need to understand what makes your target market ticks. In the case of teens, they can smell phonies a mile away.

How the Big Boys are Using Metatags to Improve Web Visibility

One of the basics of optimizing your website for the search engines is through ensuring that the site has the right metatags. Your metatags should be descriptive of the content of the web page, and should contain the right keywords for your page.

However, many small online businesses make the mistake of:

• Having the same metatag for all pages, even for different content
• Metatag that fails to capture the keywords of the page
• Too short meta title
• Putting only the name of the site in the meta title, with no keywords
• Keyword metatags stuffed with too many keywords
• Meta description tags that fail to reinforce the title tag with the absence of the main keywords

So how are the big boys writing up their metatags? Here are five big businesses and the respective metatags of their homepages:

AMAZON.com

• TITLE TAG: Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more


• DESCRIPTION TAG: "Online shopping from the earth's biggest selection of books, magazines, music, DVDs, videos, electronics, computers, software, apparel & accessories, shoes, jewelry, tools & hardware, housewares, furniture, sporting goods, beauty & personal care, broadband & dsl, gourmet food & just about anything else."


• KEYWORDS TAG: "Amazon, Amazon.com, Books, Online Shopping, Book Store, Magazine, Subscription, Music, CDs, DVDs, Videos, Electronics, Video Games, Computers, Cell Phones, Toys, Games, Apparel, Accessories, Shoes, Jewelry, Watches, Office Products, Sports & Outdoors, Sporting Goods, Baby Products, Health, Personal Care, Beauty, Home, Garden, Bed & Bath, Furniture, Tools, Hardware, Vacuums, Outdoor Living, Automotive Parts, Pet Supplies, Broadband, DSL"

SEARS.com

• TITLE TAG: Buy Craftsman Tools Fitness Equipment Kenmore Home Appliances Lawn & Garden Equipment Sears.com - Where It All Begins


• DESCRIPTION TAG: "Find everything you need to make your house a home at Sears.com. From Craftsman tools to Kenmore appliances, fitness equipment to lawn and garden supplies, with our easy online shopping, the things you want the most are just a click away."


• KEYWORD TAG: "craftsman tools, home appliance, fitness equipment, lawn & garden"

DELL.com

• TITLE TAG: Learn about Dell's laptops, desktops, monitors, printers plus computer electronics & accessories.


• KEYWORDS TAG: "Homepage, laptop, laptops, computer, computers, notebook, notebooks, Desktops, desktop, monitors, monitor, printer, printers, storage, server, Dell, dell support, dell technical support forums, Ideas for Dell, dell reviews, computer games, gaming, projector, projectors, computer accessories, electronics, sales, deals, value "


• DESCRIPTION TAG: "Visit Dell to buy computers and accessories for your Home or Small, Medium & Large Business. Explore our company information, learning sites, eSupport Center or participate in our community forums and Idea Storm."

L.L. BEAN

• TITLE TAG: L.L.Bean: Over 150 New Products - Outerwear, Swimwear and More


• DESCRIPTION TAG: "Find L.L.Bean outdoor apparel and gear, casual clothing, footwear, home furnishings and luggage at llbean.com."


• KEYWORD TAG: "ll bean, outdoor apparel and gear, footwear, home furnishings, travel"

FORBES.com

• TITLE TAG: Business News and Financial News at Forbes.com


• DESCRIPTION TAG: "Business news and financial news by Forbes.com. Core topics include business, technology, stock markets, personal finance, and lifestyle. Personal finance advice, tools, and investing tips provided by Forbes and affiliated publications."


• KEYWORDS TAG: "Business and Financial News, Financial Markets Coverage, Personal Financial Advice, Financial Markets, Forbes Magazine, Markets News, Financial Investments"

LESSONS TO BE LEARNED

Looking at the metatags of the above big businesses, here are some lessons that you can use for your small business:

1. Meta title tags should contain the company name and keywords. Don't make the mistake of simply putting in your website name in the title tag as that spells huge opportunity costs. Putting only the name of the website works (such as BestBuy.com) if your business has already established a strong brand and high user awareness. If not, craft a title with about 60-65 characters that contain your site name as well as relevant keywords. Note the length of the title tags of the above retailers and how they use their main products as keywords in the title.

2. Identify what it is you are really selling, and put that in your metatag. What is your website all about? L.L. Bean is about outerware, while Dell.com is laptops, desktops, and similar products. Forbes.com is all about business and financial news.

3. The keywords in the title tag should also be present in your meta description and title tags. You'd want to reinforce to the search engines as to what your site is all about

4. Keep your keyword tags relevant. Don't overdo it and stuff it with keywords. LL Bean and Sears have very sparse keyword tags.

5. Make sure that you have distinct metatags for each page. If the page is about desktop computers, keep it relevant and different compared to a page about laptops.

6. Experiment with your metatags. If you think the tags are no longer working, or you want to improve visibility for a particular keyword, you can tweak your tags and give more prominence to this product line.