by Shonda Ponder
© 2002, Shonda Ponder
When building your website there are certain rules that you must follow in order to insure that your site will get promoted through the natural process of "word of mouth". So, in this section we are going to talk about a few of those rules.
Do you remember (if you are old enough...) back in the 70's when you would watch television and see all the commercials that would appear during your favorite prime-time tv show or sit-com? One that comes to me are the Coca-cola commercials:
Coke: It's the Real Thing!
Or, there was the song: "I want to buy the world a coke and live in harmony...." (or something like that, don't quote me).
And then, there were the Dr. Pepper commercials. My mom still remembers one from when she was a child:
"Dr. Pepper is the friendly pepper-upper"
And, of course, there is the famous Oscar Mayer commercials:
"My bologna has a first name, it's O-S-C-A-R
My bologna has a second name it's M-A-Y-E-R
I love to eat it every day,
and if you ask me why I'll say ...
Because Oscar Mayer has a way with B-O-L-O-G-N-A!"
Who could forget that?
It's that very quality -- the "unforgettableness" -- that makes promotion work. The way a business goes about implanting images or "seeds" in your mind about their product by the way they present their product is called "branding". As a web-site, Friends of Liberty uses branding techniques to help get the word out about Friends of Liberty on the World Wide Web. After all, writing, "Dear Friends of Liberty" is much better sounding than "Dear whoever values freedom and liberty". The meaning of the words, "Friends of Liberty" can change to fit whatever context you are using it in at the time.
For instance: Friends of Liberty, as the name of a website, makes it obvious that when you come to this web site, you are going to be presented with information from those who value liberty. Friends of Liberty as an organization makes obvious that this organization is about and for those who believe in Liberty. Friends of Liberty as a person, when speaking to those on our email lists, makes the title a more personal one for our readers to understand and enjoy. And, last of all, the title "Friends of Liberty" is an invitation in itself to become involved.
This type of advertising is also called "Branding". Branding is usually done by using logos. Logos are "subtitles" that tell the potential recruit what your site is about in about as easy as possible a language so that they will remember. Branding is like putting a face on the written word.
Your title should be something that everyone in America can relate to and identify with. In the Patriot Community, in some cases, it should be something that America should identify with if they don't. Your title and logo will be what makes or breaks your organization.
Before Friends of Liberty was Friends of Liberty, our title was "Freedom-Lovers International". Some family-friendly search engines would not accept our links because the filters on those engines would quarantine the title, due to the "lovers" part of the title. This caused the filters to treat it as a possible pornographic site. So, rather than be stubborn and take the chance of much needed information getting out to the public, we changed our name. As I look back on this, I am sometimes thankful, because Friends of Liberty has had much more success than Freedom-Lovers International ever had.
The name "Friends of Liberty" was suggested by a nomination process, and agreed upon by our readers before we ever used the title. (At this point, I'd like to give a big "THANK YOU" to Daniel New, who first presented the title as a possible alternative).
Once you have your title and your logo all planned out, you need to make sure your site has certain pages on it that the readers can go to for reference about yourself. You should have a page dedicated solely to telling the readers who you (or your organization) are and what you believe, and why you have created that web site or organization.
Then, you need to put your organization's contact information on another page. Some smaller organizations can include the contact on the "about" page, but for larger organizations that use multiple email accounts, a separate page is more convenient.
You should NEVER post everything on one page. This is because if you have great numbers of different types of information, the page can become rather large, and it makes it hard to download. If a potential recruit sees your link and decides to find out more about you, and then when he gets to your page he has trouble downloading it, or it takes more than 60-seconds to download it, he will simply skip it, and you will have lost another potential recruit -- plus many more under him.
A good rule of thumb to remember is that most people are in a hurry even when they are not in a hurry. Most people, by nature, are impatient and demanding. This is not a bad thing. This is why and how things finally get done. But, coupled with impatience and demanding attitudes are people who constantly seek to get away with doing as little as possible. If you make them work in order to get your message, then they will simply not read it at all.
This is why good communication skills are a must.
Last, but not least, you should ALWAYS include a press release page on your website. Let's face it, the reason most media won't touch the content on your website is because they don't have permission to do so. Press releases that are issued regularly help the media by giving them certain permissions to contact you that you otherwise would not have.
We will go into more about press releases later, as they will be the most important work you will do in your promotional endeavors.
This is Part 6 of "Promotional Skills for the Chronically Amateur"
-----
Permission granted to repost any article in its entirety, so long as the URL is included in the post, and proper credit is given to the author, unless
otherwise specified.
===============================
No comments:
Post a Comment