A Review of Hyros setup in Second Life

Second Life Marketing Review

I was reading the Digital Media magazine that came with my B&T and noticed Hyro had setup a Second Life Recruitment Hub. So I have decided to provide you with a review of what I found.

Hyro's Second Life Recruitment Hub Review
Firstly I am not a Second Life guru but would more place myself into the Noob demographic. I think this post might be quite interesting from the perspective of a marketer in some of the things to cover when marketing in Second Life. I struggled a bit trying to actually find the Hyro establishment. Its not listed on their press release where the actual coordinates of the Hyro Recruitment Hub were. I actually found where it was by reading a different Second Life blog.

Second Life convenient links that actually teleport your character directly to the place in question.

(BTW The Hyro Second Life Recruitment Hub coordinates are as follows. You need to have your Second Life application open at the same time.)

Whats inside?
So I really like whats inside the Hyro Recruitment Hub! Here is what's listed in the index:

A picture of the index in the complex

1. Theatre Block
Contruction site - Something thats still being built.
Theatre - This is a big theatre with lots of seats to sit down in. Quite nice. There is a big ad on the wall saying "Heavy Mobile TV. Coming Soon". I might have to revist to see what thats all about?

2. Conference Centre

Submit your application here. I struggled and couldnt quite work it out.

Recruitment Hub - This is the all famous place where you can submit your application. I couldnt figure out how to get the application onto my character. I consider myself to be fairly technically savvy but still a Second Life n00b so maybe there was a little trick to it. Perhaps, because none of the Hyro people were present they set it not to function?
The Space Station - This is a conference room with lots of seats and a table styled like a space station.
The Forest - This is a conference room with lots of seats and a table styled like a forrest. I didnt really bother going in here as it was the same as the other.
The Beach - This is a conference room with lots of seats and a table styled like a beach, I liked this one because of the lifesaver flags.

3. Showrooms
News & Awards - Some listings of the awards and recent news Hyro has received.
Web & Interactive - Some portfolio screenshots of work
Wireless & Mobile - Same as above.
Construction site - Something being built here.

4. Workshop
A place to meet with tables and chairs where you could submit your application for a job again. Again I didnt figure out how to get my application form.

This is a perspective of the different levels that are in the complex.

I decided to take a bit of a tour around and had some fun shooting my avatar around in the cannons. But because no one was there to enjoy it with me I left.

Conclusion
All and all an interesting experience and I learnt a bit about moving around in Second Life. Was super keen to get that application form but perhaps its just a bug they are fixing. I just went over to this castle near by and have found my first Second Life person to speak to. They are French so lets see how I go!

Usability is just the on-ramp to a persuasive website

Make your website easy for your visitors to use and they'll become more proficient users. But if you want them to become customers, you have to think beyond usability.

Imagine a website which was super easy to use and continued making usability the top priority in updating the website. You would infer that this website was not setup for marketing or selling anything. A website that persuades users to take specific actions and provides them with relevant and timely information to make decisions and purchases does not put usability as its top priority. Sure the website needs to be usable and when users go to your shopping cart and checkout its important that they can do this seamlessly. But let's face facts, who wants a website where users have an experience but don't purchase? I would prefer if they purchased but had a bad experience. We can fix the experience with the funds from the sales made but its tough to fix the sales without any proof of concept.

Let's get our priorities straight:

1. Sales
2. Usability

Don't get me wrong I believe in user centred design for processes and functions but I place marketing and persuasion above usability. If the website is completely unusable you are not going to make any sales in the first place. But if your website isn’t selling for you now I wouldn’t suggest that you burst out of the sheds and make the experience of browsing through and using the website better. This will just get happy tyre kickers lurking around your site. I would instead suggest go back to some core principles within each of your web pages.

3 Questions to Ask Yourself when Designing a New Webpage

Here are 3 questions you need to ask yourself before you design and populate a webpage with content.

1. What action needs to be taken? Buy, Upsell, Upgrade, Renew, Install or Download are actions you want your users to take. Define this and be clear as to how best you could represent it on the web page.
2. Who needs to take that action? What personas (types of visitors) need to be persuaded to take the above action? Each persona will have different ways of interpreting information and required actions. E.g. A transport expert might view the action “Download” different to an Internet Service Provider technician.
   
3. How do we persuade that person to take the action we desire? – What information, images, diagrams or text do they require to take the action? Depending on your answer to the 2 previous questions your persona you are targeting and the particular action will setup some key questions they might have when challenged by the action you want them to take. E.g. If you want to persuade a single male to apply for a credit card they might look for the benefits program. Where as a single mother when applying for a credit card might look for how many days interest free you will receive.

How to give your FMCG Brand advocates Control of your marketing

How to get your customers to make big waves with your FMCG brand?

What happens when you get your consumers to send you photos of them using your product? Well in Up and Go's case they go nuts. Below is a screenshot of some of the photos NEW Up and Go Energize drinkers have been sending in to show how extreme they are.

Up and Go Energize giving extreme drinkers a voice

So how in the world can Up and Go get this to happen. Here are 4 rules to follow if you want to get user generated content from your advocates.

How to get User Generated Content from your FMCG Brand Advocates?

1. Ensure your brand is loved - If no one loves your brand your not going to get good User generated content, your going to get bad user generated content. If more than 5% of traffic in your niche go to YourBrandSucks.com you need to do something about it. Now, dont put your brand on show and let people shoot it down. Get your CEO on a blog to personally answer each question openly and honestly. If your brand is under heat right now and there are some customers who dont love you right now e.g. James Hardie(Killing people), Telstra (Poor share price), BHP (Too much uranium and digging up the earth), Ford (Too much pollution) or JetStar (Treating people like herd animals, hey, i dont feel like that on Virgin?? They make it fun!) stay away from this space.
2. Give them to tools - Make sure its easy and in laymens terms what you need to do in order to get my picture on the website. Assume I am a 2 year old and give me 1 simple function I need to do in order to make me famous.
3. Make sure you page can be viral - If your entire site is flash make sure there is a URL people can still forward to their friends. One of the drawbacks of pure flash websites is that its almost impossible to send someone a link to the content inside the flash to show somone else what you see. Even easier is to just give them a little button to tell someone else.
4. Choose your tribe of people you want interacting - Be selective and just get people who are super keen together. In Up and Go's case we have the extremists. They are the kinda people who will go out there and wind surf one day and then go rock climbing in the afternoon. They will fly over to South America to climb a massive mountain that only 200 people have ever done. These are the people we have surrounding this brand and these are the ones who we want their content from because their peers will like it too.

What web marketing have I been working on?

What you been working on and whats coming up?

Heres some insights from my recent clients and what they are doing.

Search Engine Marketing for Business to Business Clients

Infra Corporation - These guys supply Help Desk and ITIL Service Management software. Its the kind of entreprise software you need when you have a lot of asset management and some serious help desk enquiries from all around your entreprise. Its an Aussie company and they actually work together with another one of my clients Integrated Research who do IP Telephony Monitoring software. I believe Infra actually supply their software to Integrated Research! We have been working on some serious Search engine marketing and optimisation and online marketing updates to convert more traffic.

New product Launch Coming Soon!

I have been working on a new product launch for Sanitarium. I can't tell you what the product is you will have to wait until it launches. Its a real disruptive innovation and I think it will make quite a bit impact into the category they are entering! We are going to be doing some hardcore online marketing for this new product and really hit the grassroots level to build up ground swell. I will keep you posted on this as it will be a great case study and something to really learn from when launching a new FMCG product online.

Tourism Online Marketing

We have just started rebuilding the Visit Las Vegas Website (The Australian version) in conjunction with Gate 7 a great tourism marketing agency. The girls over at Gate 7 are absolutely wonderful. Their dedication to their clients is amazing! I love the buzz of their office, they are just such positive people!



NEW Online Marketing Consumer Campagin for CA

Our campaign for CA's Vet anti-virus software has just launched! Tell me what you think of the creative. Its a great offer really.. getting the optimiser to speed up your hard disk and the anti-virus protection for 1 year for $99. I love the AJAX in there. I really like this landing page and might write a blog post about all the items on it that make it rock!

5 Ways to Integrate your Offline Advertising with your Online Marketing

Offline and Online Marketing Integration Tips

Here is a quick check list of things to do to make sure you get the best results when integrating for your campaigns.

1. Put the website address on your offline materials – Sure that sounds easy but make sure that you put your URL with caps of each beginning letter. Here is a comparision www.onlinemarketingsydney.com.au versus www.OnlineMarketingSydney.com.au
2. Give them a reason to go online – “Free article when you visit www.OnlineMarketingSydney.com.au” give them a free listing on your directory. Some sort of little enticement is going to lengthen your campaign just that little bit further and engage them with your website.
3. Put a screenshot of your website – Show they what they are likely to see when they get to your website. Put an enticing screenshot that builds interest in the users mind e.g. a big “FREE” or a Hot looking girl or an interesting diagram. Usually they will see something and this will tip them over the edge to take action and go online to your website. A little teaser preview of what they can expect online might just be what entices them.
4. Keep the creative consistent – Make sure that when your user enters your online site it is still relevant to what they read offline. E.g. Keep the same headline image at the top as the one in your TV ad, perhaps use similar fonts and iconography or even just put your TV ad on your website. A little bit of consistency here with a good simple call to action will extend your relationship with this visitor a little further to take some more action.
5. Buy multiple domain names to capture mispellers – Most people including myself can’t spell. So it’s a good idea to buy multiple domain names that are centred around or close to the spelling of your main domain name. E.g. if you go to www.blogge.com you wont go to blogger.com. In my mind this is a bit of a debacle and a blunder. A website which does this well is RSVP.com.au they own every which way under the sun domain near and in their space.

How will the new .au second level domain effect your search engine optimisation?

Immediately when I heard about this new second level domain (Example.au) opening I thought wow what an opportunity for search engine marketers. I couple of things are going through my mind and I will take you through them and would be keen on your feedback.

1. Which domain will be priortised over which? - When it comes to SEO most SEO'rs prioritise .com over say .biz and .net. I myself believe that Google has a preferece towards .com domains over the other ones. So, will Google rank .au over .com.au or the other way around??

2. What a branding opportunity! - There are so many domains out there that big businesses have been trying to get a hold of and havent been able to. Now is a great chance. In my mind Weetbix.au is better than Weetbix.com.au as there are less characters and it seems more local.

What do you think?

ANTOR talk - Thank you to all the attendees at ANTOR

Ask your Search Engine Marketing Questions Now!

I had a great time talking at the Sydney seminar for ANTOR. I was fielding a lot of questions in regards to Google Adwords and I think this might be an opportunity for everyone to ask away. So if you have a question post it as a comment and I will answer it to the best of my ability.