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Several non-related posts today got me thinking about the seemingly endless challenges that we as online marketers struggle with to keep both our own and client’s websites highly visible.  Obviously we’re in this space for a reason.  For me, after years on the traditional printing side of newspapers I fell in love with the speed of delivery of online and the allure of not being tied to a legacy system.   But there are days where I wish we would slow down.

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As part of the Business Builder Seminars, one of the areas I stress is that the Internet provides an unparalleled tool for communication between businesses and their customers. I talk about the importance of:

• Providing several options for your customer to reach out to you
• Being timely in your responses to any and all communication
• Answering the question asked in an empathetic tone

Image via Wikipedia

Why? Because the bad news is that in today’s digital age anyone can wield an enormously large stick if unhappy with your product or service.

Why? Because the good news is that in today’s day-and-age of CRMs, customer service alone can be an untouchable value statement for a business.

I cite Jeff Jarvis (as many do) as a disappointed customer who used the internet to call attention to a billion-dollar brand’s disregard for his concerns and needs.

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In a rush to meet deadlines or share a blog post with the masses, many of us fail to dedicate the necessary time and effort to the most critical and viewed element of any article: the headline. The headline is the first — and often only — means of converting a viewer to reader. Fail at this and you negate any reason for writing the article at all.

Recently, I read that Google knows of 1 trillion unique URLs on the web. That’s a tremendously large sea of content in which your article will either sink or swim. Without a compelling headline to not only grab attention but also lure the reader into the body copy, you’ll quickly find your article slipping into its murky depths.

I certainly haven’t expended enough energy on my post titles historically, but in having conversations with many of you regarding growing your online audience, I’m attempting to collect my thoughts and put my money where my mouth is. My long-term hope is to continue this conversation as a series that addresses headline creation tools, search engine optimization, social networking and keyword/ keyphrase consideration.

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With my recent speaking gigs across the country on how to start an online initiative and the art of effective marketing,  I’ve been trying to focus my thoughts and writing on online marketing and the specific technologies that support those efforts online.  I’ve always attempted to write about the online industry as a whole, however now with every post will I ask myself the question, “How would one use this information to either introduce or enforce a brand online?”

With my renewed focus, I was glad that I found Wordle:

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.

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As the economy continue to slow, more and more marketers are being forced to make tougher decisions about where their advertising dollars are being spent.  Online advertising, which has been growing fast over the past decade, will start to tighten its collective purse-strings.

Already, publishers like Yahoo!, Bankrate, and Edmunds are forecasting and/or blaming the economy for softening revenues.  Just months ago, it seemed as though the online advertising industry would get through this tough economy unscathed, but publishers and ad networks continue to report disappointing earnings.

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