9 Questions Every Director, CEO or Business Owner Should be Asking

Over the coming decades the web will redefine our personal relationship with our world and the peoples within it. Businesses especially will be forced to adjust to a faster, less predictable, more connected operating environment. Whether this is regarded as a business threat or an opportunity depends on how wedded to the status quo any organisation is.

Your answers either way to any of the 9 questions below may not have mattered for much only a few years ago; but the questions now have more immediacy as the price of inaction increases. Check these out and ask if you need seolytics to point you in the right direction?

1. 
Who’s driving your website and online marketing communications?

Hopefully not the IT department – these are marketing and PR functions requiring a deep understanding of your market from a customer and segmentation perspective. The technology itself is relatively simple and inexpensive; leveraging the technology for business ends is where the challenge lays.

2. 
Do you know what your customers are saying about your company,  
your brands and your competitors?

Make it your business to know by utilising any number of free online monitoring tools. It’s a market research and insight opportunity too good to ignore.

3. 
Are you issuing your own press releases via your own website
and/or an online wire service?

Press releasing to the web, directly to your target audiences via the search engines is effective and virtually costless PR.

4. 
Is your website Search Engine Optimised?

Google serves its results pages based on a fairly easily understood set of dynamics. Use this to your competitive advantage to drive costless, qualified traffic to your website.

5. 
Does you’re website have analytics and actionable reporting in  place?

If not, you’re missing the necessary information to further drive the website as a search engine magnet, lead generator, conversion platform, and information dissemination point. Google Analytics is free to install and use, so there’s really no excuse.

6. 
Can you add pages to your website and create multimedia content on-the-fly?

If not, install a Content Management System (CMS), train and then compel the marketing comms folk to frequently use it. Websites should be positioned as scalable, dynamic workhorses that earn their keep based on measurable indicators. Static, show pony websites quickly lose their sheen, and deliver little.

7. 
Do you have a social media policy and education program in place?

Your organisation may not be directly engaged with social media, but many of your employees will already be active in the space; a seemingly innocent but misplaced tweet or post can cause real business damage.

8. 
Are you maximising your online ‘share of attention’ by marketing  
beyond the boundaries of your own website?

Third party online platforms such as YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and LinkedIn offer businesses a low cost means of extending rich, multimedia business communications to an increasingly fragmented marketplace.

9. 
Are you building up your in-house internet marketing and online 
communications skill-sets?

An over reliance on external providers will financially cost you more in the medium term, and will slow you down. The formulation and release of your marketing communications in an online context should be rapid and ongoing.

One example of an Australian based business that has embraced a very new online technology with a good dose of common business sense is Optus. They’re using Twitter as a costless real-time monitoring and market research platform, but have also effectively positioned their branded channel as a global inbound customer service touchpoint. A successful business initiative probably driven by 1 part technology and 9 parts strategy.