At Flat Creek, most of our clients are professional firms — lawyers, architects, fellow marketers, etc. But for every great client we have, there’s a prospective client who tells me “I don’t need a website. Most of my business comes through word of mouth.”

Actually, if most of your business comes through word of mouth, then you definitely need a website. According to a recent study on eMarketer.com, online word-of-mouth recommendations are huge, even among baby boomers:

1. When baby boomers go online, 66 percent of the time it is to research purchasing decisions.

1. Baby boomers get 45 percent of their word-of-mouth recommendations online.

Let me emphasize: these numbers aren’t for teenagers. These are specifically baby boomers (42-60).

It’s easy to see where our friends who still cling to “traditional” word-of-mouth marketing are coming from though. They work in traditional professions with traditional means of reaching clients.

Think about the last time someone referred you to an accountant or attorney. If you didn’t have their phone number already, chances are you went to their website. Actually that’s why most people go to a website - to find a phone number (consider that my free tip for the day).

So take that step, put some muscle behind your website, and wow prospective clients who were just told to check out your firm. Your bottom line will thank you.

Communications professionals tend to spend more time with print reporters than journalists from any other medium. It’s time we challenged that notion.

Granted, PR flacks have chuckled to themselves over the last several years as traditional newspaper empires have wasted away under the pressure from online media. But what they haven’t done is change their daily routine and priorities.

In order for a communications strategy to be effective in the Web 2.0 era, the media mix needs to be re-prioritized:

1. Online media: The Internet has changed everything, so the cliche goes, so it should change how we look at media relations as well. Too often we look at blogs, YouTube, and other sites but we don’t engage in the conversation. Our day should start and end by researching relevant websites, commenting on blogs, and injecting new information into the conversation. Create YouTube video, podcasts, and fresh content for your website. If you don’t tell your story online, others will tell it for you.
2. Events: if you don’t hold/attend creative, meaningful events with a message, there’s really not much to cover now is there? You have a message/policy/product that you want to share with the world. For heavens sake, give them a good reason to find out about it. Seminars, briefings, speakers, rallies, press conferences - the options really are only limited by your creativity.
3. Radio: This may seem counter intuitive, but it could be that your target audience spends more time in the car than anywhere else (other than in front of a computer). Leverage that valuable time when your target audiences are tuned in. Take the time to work with producers and hosts to get your product/service/issue on the air. You may not reach the numbers of people as other media, but you will reach the right people.
4. Print media: Ah, the bread and butter of public relations. Until now. See #1, then spend your time developing relationships with your key reporters. We’re talking daily papers here, not magazines or weeklies. Don’t send them a press release. Call them. Tell them your story. Tell them why it’s important to their readers. Invite them to your event (see #2). Take their call after you’ve been mentioned on the radio. Be persistent but courteous. Your value to your organization will increase exponentially.
5. TV: Let’s face it, out of a 30-minute evening newscast, there’s about five minutes for everything that isn’t sports, weather or house fires. The competition to get on the air is intense and the payoff can be elusive. But if you have prioritized and are ready to take on TV, then be sure you’re pitching them some good visuals. They don’t want stale walls, they want noise and people and colors. How do you do that? Go back to #2.

I know there are others, such as specialty media and long-lead magazines, and going after those may make sense in some cases, but not until you’ve got a handle on the big five. The media environment has shifted. Our media relations strategies should as well.

Not really. Just some April Fools Day fun, Google style.

We’ve talked before about Web 2.0 and its impact on everything from web design to March Madness brackets. Today, I present your life’s goals - 2.0 style.

One of the fundamental tenants of Web 2.0 is allowing website visitors to create their own content on the site and share it with other users, who can then comment, review, ignore, or whatever. The concept is called social networking.

The website 43Things.com does just that, allowing users to upload not their photos or video but their goals. As the site creator says:

We all have stories about what we care about. Writing down your progress on a goal can help someone else learn about something you both want to do. When you see a goal you’ve achieved, click on the “I’ve done this” button and share a story about how you did it.

Putting your goals online is intensely personal, and that’s just what this site is hoping for. Because if someone trusts a site enough to put their own personal goals online and share how they reached their goals with others, they will probably be extremely loyal site users. And a loyal audience drives ad revenue, which makes a site like this profitable.

Not only will they be loyal, but they will encourage other users to participate. They will create communities within the site, driven by shared goals. They will encourage each other and have very personal conversations, developing relationships they may not have anywhere else.

This is quintessential Web 2.0 — relying on the users to create content instead of just reading it.

So what are your goals? Get started on 43Things.com now.

A new study indicates that more and more people are donating to political causes online. For political junkies, this is really exciting as it opens the door to new donors.

The George Washington University Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet along with the Campaign Finance Institute found that a quarter of donations to Republicans and more than half of donations to Democrats are now made online. Especially exciting is that many of these are first-time donors:

A large portion of small online contributors ($100 or less) gave unsolicited donations. About 46 percent said their first donation was self-motivated, not triggered by a phone call, letter or email. In years past, unsolicited donators had to work harder to find a way to make a contribution.

For anyone who has ever had to file a campaign finance report, compliance can be a nightmare. Trying to hunt down a donor’s details can be time consuming and many times fruitless. Online donations don’t have that problem, as donors are required to enter their information before the donation is processed.

Through our experience designing political websites, campaign websites, and policy websites, we have found several online donation tools with reasonable transaction fees and great service. It really can open the door to new donors, both today and down the road.

There’s been a lot of talk about Web 2.0 and just what that means. One of the major themes of a Web 2.0 site is how well users can interact and contribute content to the site. Enter Yahoo! Sports and the 2007 NCAA Tournament.

Using the Yahoo! Sports Tournament Pick’em feature, users can join a group, create a group, or just fill out their own bracket. Completely online and interactive. Users contributing content. Online fantasy sports groups are in many ways the precursors of today’s Web 2.0 trends.

Remember when your friends used to e-mail around a spreadsheet w/ the tournament picks in it? No more. Sites like this allow users to contribute their own content and complete the bracket online. Then print it out, share it, rub it in people’s faces after three rounds… whatever.

So welcome to Web 2.0. March Madness style.

We have always looked for ways to build interactive projects that are more in tune with business goals. But at some point, business goals need to look for ways to better integrate online activities. Toward that end, we developed the concept of The Interactive Firm. It’s nothing fancy, just a look at how, in an ideal world, a professional firm can embrace technology in a way that is both technologically advanced and strategically deployed.

So without further ado, here are the five core traits that are the foundation of The Interactive Firm:

• 1. Places value on developing relationships via online media beyond an online brochure.
• 2. Embraces cutting edge one-to-one communication opportunities.
• 3. Understands its target audience.
• 4. Pours its culture into marketing communications.
• 5. Leverages technology to meet client needs and provide better, more efficient service.

Comments? Suggestions? Heated debate? We’re up for it!

Just had a great conversation with a reporter who asked if we work on WAP websites. Well, as I told her, we don’t anymore. WAP sites have become absorbed in the greater web accessibility movement. Whether you call it 508 compliant, liquid design, or device independent, today’s websites should be able to show up on a PC, Mac, Nokia, BlackBerry, or kiosk equally well.

The source of this ability is liquid design, which uses XHTML and CSS, two complementary technologies that make web pages both easier to download and update. Liquid design separates the content of a page from it’s design, or layout. So instead of being stuck in a table, the site is fluid, able to rearrange itself and mold to the screen.

Take for example the recent website we launched for former Congressman Bob Beauprez: www.alineofsight.com. A Line of Sight was created to provide policymakers with resources that may be helpful in a pinch, such as just before a vote or on the way to an event. With limited time, these policymakers get their information one way: via BlackBerry. So not only does the site need to look good on a desktop, it needs to be user-friendly on the small screen.

So we used liquid design, which helps the site mold to BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices with ease. The simple text of the page is in one file, and the design/placement of that content is in another file. The text file references the design file to figure out how to display correctly, no matter what size screen it’s headed for.

So that begs the question: is your site mobile ready? Bank of America just announced that they are adding a feature to allow customers to access account information via cell phones. Yahoo! continues to update its mobile device offerings, called Yahoo! Go 2.0. Google’s homepage has long been accessible via cell phone and PDA, and the search leader is now offering lots of stuff for cell and PDA, such as e-mail and maps. Europeans have used cell phones for web surfing for years, and now Americans are quickly catching up.

So is your site mobile ready? I sure hope so…

Just to reiterate the point from my post a moment ago, Steve Rubel yesterday linked to Technorati’s “state of the blogosphere” analysis, with the obvious implication that having a blog is not enough. Core marketing principles, once again, are core.

According to Technorati, 13.7 million bloggers are still posting three months after launch. So much for staying power. Not only that, but Technorati is now tracking nearly 50,000 blog posts per hour. While early adopters could gain traffic simply by posting new content, that’s way too much volume today to expect that diligent posting will lead to an audience.

So, ironically, we come back to core marketing principles, regardless of the tactical application. Regardless of the medium — be it blogs, podcasts, newsletters, etc — small business marketers still need to think creatively about how to reach their target audiences. Probably these tools are a good way to do that, but it still comes down to proactive outreach with relevant services (and content).

This morning the New York Times published a full-on editorial about blogs, based on Technorati’s report “State of the Blogsphere” that came out earlier this week. This is interesting, especially in light of falling newspaper circulation, as noted in Denver this week.

The implication, as MicroPersuation’s Steve Rubel indicates, is to step up and know how to use them strategically. That’s why Flat Creek has taken interactive marketing seriously - as traditional advertising and PR channels become more fragmented and cost prohibitive for small businesses, online channels offer a new opportunity to reach targeted audiences more effectively. A strategic online marketing plan that includes search engine marketing, a monthly e-newsletter, and a regularly updated blog can bring direct benefits to your organization. Contact us to talk about bringing blogs into your marketing mix.