Against the Grain: Technology

If you’ve never heard of Great Ape Trust, now is your chance to check out the fascinating science, research and conservation that this world-class organization has to offer.

Trilix recently partnered with Great Ape Trust on a website redevelopment project that allows users to experience Great Ape Trust in a whole new light. This latest version of the website has been nearly eight years in the making as Trilix and Great Ape Trust have partnered on various marketing communications efforts over that time – including the Trust’s original award winning website. The new site has allowed everyone involved with this project an opportunity to tell Great Ape Trust’s story in a captivating way like never before.  

Great Ape Trust is a scientific research facility in Des Moines, Iowa, dedicated to understanding the origins and future of culture, language, tools and intelligence, and to the preservation of endangered great apes in their natural habitats. The Trust is home to a colony of six bonobos involved in noninvasive interdisciplinary studies of their cognitive and communicative capabilities. The Trust is also currently home to six orangutans.

With limited visitation to their campus, the Trust relies heavily on its website to provide visitors with the scientific research, photos, videos and conservation projects that encapsulate the efforts of the scientists and staff that work with these magnificent apes.

One unique challenge set forth during initial planning stages for the new site was to give the user a first hand look into exactly how the apes and scientists at Great Ape Trust communicate. Bonobos use lexigrams made up of 128 symbols per board representing various words. Trilix worked closely with Great Ape Trust to develop an Interactive Lexigram experience for users representing a replica of the current boards that would allow users to interact with nearly 400 words used by the bonobos.

An extensive look into Great Ape Trust’s conservation initiative in Gishwati, Rwanda – the Forest of Hope – is highlighted within the site with features such as a blog, team member profiles, an interactive magazine, chimpanzee cam and various facts about Rwanda’s geography, people, government and economy.

Great Ape Trust also uses their website as the hub for their communications with social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. The new site allows for easy sharing and integration among these extremely valuable communication channels.

The most important element taken into consideration during development of this new site was Great Ape Trust’s need to be able to self administer a large majority of the sites content following its initial launch. This included scientist and ape biographies, photography, video footage, various resources, news releases and site features such as banners, buttons, breaking news and more. The new content management system will allow Great Ape Trust the ability to keep their site fresh and vibrant with the latest news and information as it happens.    

Experience Great Ape Trust Like Never Before at www.GreatApeTrust.org.    

Last week, I attended the National AgriMarketing (NAMA) conference in Kansas City. The 2010 conference drew a record number of agri-marketing professionals and featured two days of social media, e-mail marketing and branding discussions. Armed with my beloved BlackBerry, Twitter app and the conference hash tag, I was anxious to catch up with old friends, meet new ones and share everything I learned with my Twitter followers.

I was amazed by the number of attendees I recognized by their Twitter avatars and how many conversations began with, “Hey, I know you! I’m @KeyleeP.” As I chatted with tweeps, I jokingly suggested our Twitter handles should be listed on our name tags. But seriously, they should’ve been! How opportunities to make a face-to-face connection with online “friends” did I miss because I didn't recognize them? Most marketers would agree that we're in a relationship business and the ability to network is key to unlocking new opportunities. The beauty of Twitter is that it creates an introduction, a virtual handshake if you will, to make real life connections that can help your business grow.

In addition to its networking perks, Twitter is a great platform to raise awareness about your company and promote your products and services. Some companies are fearful of using social media because they lose control of their messaging. But it’s time for these timid, late-adapters to be brave and log-in. Customers are already talking about your company, products and services and you'd better be monitoring what they're saying. Tweets can spread through the Twitterverse like wild fire and if the messages are negative, you’d better be ready to respond — STAT!

Social media has added a new dynamic to the marketing mix. You must get engaged in the online conversation to connect with your current and potential clients and monitor what they're saying about your brand. You never know who is listening. The next virtual hand you shake may just open the door to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Cell phones... everyone has one these days. Your family, friends, co-workers... even grandma doesn't leave home without it. These mobile communication devices have become a way of life in the 21st century.

With the many features available on cell phones, text messaging has become a very popular form of communication. It is estimated that about 12 billion texts are sent out across the United States each month and approximately 42 percent of texters would be open to text marketing if it were relevant to them. Companies are beginning to realize this trend has some advertising potential – if used wisely.

No one wants to think that they could possibly be bombarded with "junk" texts all day long. That is why companies have to require customers to opt in. The customer chooses to receive messages from an organization. Should they find these messages to be not useful, they can opt out at any time.

The use of text advertising could be used for a variety of businesses and customers. Malls can use it for special promotions, local bars and restaurants can use it to attract more customers on slow nights and stores can promote sales or special savings for those who receive the text.

Let's take, for example, your favorite local restaurant. They may put table tents out promoting the text messaging program and give you a number to text to opt in. By doing so, you will receive reminders of special events – first Tuesday of the month, kids eat free – and also random special offers. By opting in, you will receive a confirmation text and you will need to reply to confirm that you wish to be added to the list.

On a slow night, the manager might decide to send out a message offering a free appetizer or dessert with the purchase of two meals. It is a very timely message and only those who have opted in to receive them will know about the special that night. This also benefits the restaurant that may see an increase in traffic they otherwise would not have that night.

One trap companies do not want to fall into is sending out too many texts. Texts must be timely and offer the customer something of perceived value. Otherwise, they may start viewing your messages as junk and opt out as a result.

Texting is an excellent opportunity for companies to get timely messages out to their audience. Since many people have their phones on them at all times, the message hits them almost instantly.

Although there are billions and billions of pages on the World Wide Web, and it’s arguably one of the most diverse and democratic ideas our culture has ever produced, it’s still dominated by a few big boys. And none of those big boys is bigger than Google — the 800 lb. gorilla of the online world, whose search engine is the gateway to the Web for much of the world.

Because of Google’s dominance, as well as the presence of many lesser search engines, success in today’s online-centric world is often directly relatable to just how high you can climb up the rankings of the world’s most powerful search engine. Doing this, however, can be a tricky proposition because Google is awfully tight-lipped about how the ever-changing algorithm behind its search engine works. This has given rise to a discipline called Search Engine Optimization. SEO, as it’s often called, is the art and science of making websites, or particularly Web pages, more friendly and accessible to search engines. When done right, it can touch nearly every aspect of your site, from the programming and code to the design and writing.

Let’s examine this issue by asking, and answering, a few key questions.

Question One: Why is SEO important?

It probably goes without saying that the highest-ranking searches returned by Goggle or other search engines receive the most click-throughs. But what is startling is just how top-heavy those click-through results are. When an Internet user searches using keywords, the visibility percent is listed as follows for the top ten results:

Rank 1     100%
Rank 2     100%
Rank 3     100%
Rank 4     85%
Rank 5     60%
Rank 6     50%
Rank 7     50%
Rank 8     30%
Rank 9     30%
Rank 10     20%

In other words, less than half of searchers ever see a site listed 8th on the page. A mere one-fifth see the site ranked 10th.

Thus, the higher the rank, the greater the chance an Internet user will choose to visit your site. As for those sites ranked outside the top 30 for any particular keyword search, they might as well be invisible. Research has shown that users hardly ever go beyond the top 30 search engine rankings for a single search (according to Forrester Research Inc.). It is estimated that the top 30 results receive over 90% of search traffic.

Question Two: What on-the-page factors influence my ranking and how can I improve them?

Keyword optimization
All search engines rank as an index by keyword. Thus, when you are optimizing your site, you optimize for a particular keyword, sets of keywords, or phrases. Keeping that in mind, a question such as "How does my page rank on Google?" is a meaningless musing. A valid question would be "How does my page rank on Google when someone queries XYZ". Therefore, be wary of people promising to "increase your rank on Google". Without any more qualifications than that, making your page rank at the number one spot for "Turbid Hamster Sunday Jet Race" would both fulfill such a promise as well as introduce your site to a new and interesting — and utterly worthless — demographic.

It's important to note that the rules for ranking pages constantly change. In point of fact, the old reliable methods of stuffing meta tags and repeating keywords have become not only useless but detrimental. Google and others now view such efforts as intentionally deceptive and, more often than not, will reduce a page's ranking for a gross over-playing of keywords.

So, how do you improve your site's ranking? While there are entire books written on this subject, there are a few core concepts that are guaranteed to increase your pages' rankings in relevance to its target keyword(s).

Create good content
No, really. Many people are actually surprised to learn that the most effective way to have a page rank higher for a particular keyword, is to have content that is relevant to that keyword. For optimum consideration, copy should be written with a keyword weight of around 5% and should consist of about 300 words per page.

Choose the right keywords
Not all keywords are equal. Once the content for your site has been created, the appropriate keywords for that content then need to be assigned. A good measure of such keyword effectiveness is the KEI, or Keyword Effectiveness Index. The KEI compares the number of times a keyword appears in your copy with the number of competing Web pages, to determine the viability of a particular keyword for your site. "Baseball Bat" is different from "Baseball Bats", which is also different from Baseball Bats, without quotes (adding quotes searches the two words only when found together on the page, whereas a search without quotes will return results that merely contain the two words anywhere on the page).

There are several tools available to calculate the KEI for a particular site, which are inexpensive and readily available.

In general, more descriptive phrases, such as "Iowa Flood Insurance Company" are more beneficial than less descriptive, more competitive phrases like "Flood Insurance".

Place the keywords appropriately
The keywords for your site can find usefulness not only in your body copy, but in other areas such as between header tags and within title tags. In fact, Google in particular is very structured in its identification of text, so even placing keywords within bold tags can help a page rank higher for a particular keyword or phrase.

Expose your navigation
Make sure that all your important pages are accessible by clear text links. If your site utilizes javascript-based or flash-based navigation, you must also provide a means of reaching these pages through common text links. Creating a sitemap page can assist with this, as well as a variety of secondary navigation techniques.

Include some out-bound links
Pages that are optimized for Google will score best when there are at least a few links to outside sites that are related to similar topics, because this establishes a page's reputation as an authority. Even if these sites do not link back to yours, they can still increase the page ranking.

Pay attention to your sandbox
"Sandboxing" is an algorithm of indexing a site's pages by the frequency of its updates. Pages are ranked higher when they are more frequently updated. Inclusions of highly-updated content such as blogs and news posting can significantly increase a site's ranking.

Question Three: What off-the-page factors influence my ranking and how can I improve them?

There are many factors a site can employ that do not exist on the site itself.

In-Bound links
A large contribution to a site's ranking is attributed to how many other sites with similar content link back to that particular site. When more sites of similar content and of a high page rank link to your site, the higher your rank will be. Getting others to link to you is possibly the most cost-effective way to increase the page rank. Often, it merely takes a simple "Link to me and I'll link to you" phone call. It's a win-win that most people don't reject.

Submitting to Directories
It helps to let people know you exist. Submitting your site to Google will ensure your site gets indexed. Above and beyond that, however, there are directories to which you can purchase an inclusion. In fact, the two directories, Open Directory Project and Yahoo! can help your page's visibility and ranking. Directories such as Yahoo! are actually reviewed by humans and are largely trusted for their relevance.

Because the directories are compiled by humans and for humans (unlike the search engine listings which are compiled by robots for humans), the relevancy of directory results is very high and search engines know that. Almost any search engine spider starts its regular crawl at a directory like Yahoo!

Additionally, directories themselves have high Page Rank values (as a rule). Thus, when the directories link to your site, that counts as a high-ranking site linking directly to you.

It is possible to get listed in Yahoo! for free. Submitting for free does not guarantee a site will be included, but if the reviewers think the content is worthwhile, they will include it in the directory. Otherwise, there is a cost for submission.

Question Four: Does everyone need Search Engine Optimization?

If your business relies on your website to generate leads or make sales, then SEO is something you should be doing on some level. Doing all the things listed above may be overkill if your Web site is just a small part of your marketing mix, but some simple SEO has value for nearly everyone.

Of course, no amount of SEO can take the place of good offline marketing. Search engine rankings are always a response to a consumer’s request and therefore can’t build brands, raise mass awareness or change consumer behavior. Those things require an integrated effort aimed at building a brand over the long term.

Turning your “online brochure” into a true marketing tool.

Websites. Everybody has one these days. Your company, church, lawn guy, corner barbershop… heck, even your four-year-old… they’ve all staked a claim to their own little corner of cyberspace. And you know what, most of the sites look pretty darn sharp. Especially the one your four-year-old knocked out between episodes of Dora The Explorer.

The problem? Nowadays, having a sharp-looking web presence and being Googleable isn’t enough to make you stand out. Adding a photo gallery? Nice, but you’re not even close yet. Video? How very 2006 of you.

It’s time to leave behind the “online brochure” approach to building a website. That’s a term we often use for a site that is little more than a collection of words and pictures with a simple navigation. Not inherently bad, just not something that is going to move the marketing needle. On the other hand, creating a site that is interactive, measureable, updatable in real time… now that’s the sort of thing that can move a brand (and a company) forward.

What follows are a few strategic and tactical additions you can make to your site that will turn that online brochure into a true marketing tool.

First Things First

Lead Collection
Does your site allow you to collect the email addresses and/or other contact information of interested prospects? Can they email or call for immediate assistance?

Registration
Your website should be your organization’s hub for customer contact. Can a customer use your site to set an appointment? Register for an event? Reserve tickets or other such things?

Regular Updates
When was the last time your website was updated? Was it this week? This month? This year? Use recent news, press releases, and other regular updates to keep your site fresh and encourage return visits.

A Bit More Advanced

Start a Conversation
Blogs, message boards and other such features encourage customer interactivity and provide a way for you to stay in touch with your audience’s ever-changing desires.

RSS Feeds
Use this powerful tool to make customers and prospects aware when your site is updated. RSS feeds play especially nice with blogs and message boards.

Now We’re Talking … er… Marketing!

Google Analytics
Learn more about where your visitors come from and how they’re interacting with your site. Write better ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives, and create higher-converting websites.

User-Specific Tracking
By giving each user a username and password, it becomes possible to track when, where and how they use your site. Spend a lot of time checking out a demo of your latest product? Maybe it’s time to give them a call and try to close the deal. You did remember to gather their phone number, didn’t you?

Using these tools and others like them will ensure that your site doesn’t get lumped in with the other also-ran site floating around out there in cyberspace. Then perhaps you’ll begin to reap the rewards that Web pundits have been talking up all these years.