Search and social media are key to cultivating publicity online

11 December 2008

“You could once, to an extent, control what and where consumers read about you”

The website has been the currency of online communication since the internet began. Online marketing might have changed, but in large part it remains about driving consumers to a company’s website.

This is changing, though. Developments in how consumers navigate and interact with the web mean monolithic corporate websites aren’t as relevant as they once were. Brands now need to think about connecting with their customers in ways that are relevant and useful.

There are two elements that underpin consumer behaviour online: search and social media. Search is navigation: how people find their way around the web. Social media is conversation: the networks where people interact, influence and are influenced by others. If you can understand how these work and make your brand relevant to them, then you can begin to really connect with consumers.

One part of this change is about distributed content. You could once, to an extent, control what and where consumers read about you. In a search and social world, you can’t. The best you can do is make sure relevant and useful content from or about you appears in the networks.

Working on a major insurance brand recently, we took the view that rather than just buying keywords and building a website, we would work with journalists and celebrities to create useful, relevant and interesting content that told its story. Then, rather than trying to drive everyone to a site displaying this content, we did everything we could to get it distributed around their consumers’ online networks. Rather than forcing consumer behaviour, we tried to connect with where those consumers were already active online.

Measurement also looks different in this world of connected brands. Counting the visitors who come to your website and looking at what they do there is fine, but you’re not getting the whole picture. Channel 4 recognised this when it launched its Disarming Britain TV series. It could see its own site, but the nature of off-site, social commentary remained hidden. To remedy this, we created a measurement framework that not only counted the volume of discussion on relevant online networks, but also measured the content, whether positive or negative, and the interactions related to the series.

These two examples are just the beginning. Identifying, understanding and connecting with consumers’ networks is the key to the new world of online marketing. For the moment, you still need a website — you just need to know that it’s the beginning, not the end, of your online strategy.