I was speaking with a friend recently who was sharing with me a web site idea. Quite honestly the idea wasn’t the greatest or maybe I just wasn’t that interested. Regardless, I have the same problem nearly every time someone tries to get me excited about their whizzbang new idea – they don’t know how to pitch it to me and so they don't reel me in.

What typically happens is that the person gets lost in the weeds - caught up in the small details such as what the site will look like or what they are going to call it. That isn’t what I want to hear. You need to be able to tell me three things:

1. What the site does (Technical)
2. Who it is for (Target Market)
3. Why it’s better than what’s out there (Competition)

You can have the best idea in the world, but if you can’t answer these questions you have a problem. All the other details can be filled in after this. Sure it’s nice to have a conception of what you want your site to look like, but if you’re not a designer you shouldn't get too caught up with this because what you envision probably isn't web friendly or practical.

If you have an idea that has you excited enough to go out and try and find funding or someone to join your endeavor, that's fantastic. I don't want to be a killjoy here, but do it right or don't do it at all.

Be careful when converting your company name / brand name into an (available) domain name; it can have embarrassing repercussions.

I was reminded of this fact recently when seeing an email in my inbox that was sent to multiple recipients, including myself. One of the recipients was someone at arsecommerce.com. This domain name may appear rather ordinary to us Americans. But to those who speak "the Queen's English" - including those in the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand - I bet they get a chuckle when they see it. I can imagine them thinking to themselves "Is this the company that put the "arse" in commerce?". The company is ARS Ecommerce, not Arse Commerce.

Company names that work well in one context may not work so well in another. I remember a classic example of this from a hilarious piece in Business 2.0 magazine (circa 2001) called "Boo! And the 100 Other Dumbest Moments in e-Business History". Here's the money quote:

In October 1998, an e-commerce software vendor launches with the name Accompany, which, when said aloud, sounds exactly like "a company." As in "Hi, I'm calling from Accompany." "Which company?" "Accompany." And so forth. It changes its name to MobShop in March 2000.

In my post on the News.com blog titled "Eleven steps to buying a domain name that doesn't suck, I give another classic example of a domain name faux pas: therapistfinder.com. No, it's a site for finding therapists, not rapists.

You also have to consider whether your choice of domain name will get you inadvertently blocked by email firewalls or the search engines' adult filters.

Take for example this parts store - partsexpress.com - hyphenating the two words would have been a good idea. Ditto for whorepresents.com, an agency that represents celebrities.

Here are a few other examples of domain names gone horribly wrong:

• cumstore.co.uk for Cumbria Storage Systems, Ltd.
• choosespain.com to travel in Spain, pain-free!
• mammotherection.com deals with modern architecture and engineering
• cummingfirst.com is for a church in Cumming, Georgia

While these are pretty funny (and/or disturbing, depending upon your point-of-view), these are reputation management nightmares. Sadly, they were all preventable -- usually with merely a well-placed hyphen or change in keywords. NYCanal.com could have saved themselves a lot of embarrassment by choosing ny-canal.com or newyorkcanal.com instead.

With the glut of online marketers and the holiday season gearing up, many businesses are having a hard time getting your attention. Enter the world of the weird, the wacky, and the downright crazy to make you go "Hmmm..."

Have you seen the "Mentos Intern"? You can order lunch, chat, watch a live feed while he works, schedule his work day, rate his efforts, and much, much more. The campaign is hilarious, and effective. The "Mentos Intern" grabs our attention simply because we can all relate to his predicament. Who hasn't been a lackey, working for 'The Man' at some point in their life? The campaign also includes the best of the best for social media marketing; Trevor is accessible through Myspace, Facebook, Blogs, and gaming! He's your friend, he's your buddy...he's the "Mentos Intern." The best part about this site is, that it's gone viral all across the web, and the "Mentos" name is tagging right along. What better way to promote your company (and your brand) than to take advantage of the net?

Here's another one that has been sweeping across the web. Sling Media is a company that designs and markets technology to control (and access) your basic cable from anywhere. Their home page features an interactive salesperson with a catch. Sling Media knows that salespeople are annoying--and exploits them. Their home page has an interactive Flash-based site that gives you the opportunity to be as mean as you could possibly be to "The Sling Man."

While you may not know what SlingMedia does, this viral campaign drives traffic to their site because it piques your curiosity and is pretty darn funny. This is a good example of how wacky viral marketing can get attention to an unknown brand; beneath the "Sling Man" are some brand-and-product links that will help you understand what their flagship product, the Slingbox, is all about.

What kinds of wacky viral marketing campaigns have you seen on the web? Does it work for you?

With tens of millions of users (but probably not the purported 100 million though), MySpace.com is a force to be reckoned with. Especially when you consider that MySpace apparently drives more traffic to online retailers than MSN Search, according to some recent Hitwise data.

But MySpace is hard for us adults to get our heads around. It just doesn't seem logical: How does it hold the interest of so many -- young people, with short attention spans, in particular -- despite the facts that the design/usability is so atrocious, the web page creation platform is so frustratingly restrictive, and it's chock full of so many junk/spam/abandoned profiles?

Um, it's about looking cool, fitting in, and hanging out. Duh!

Then where do us adults feature in this? Besides offering a tempting place for stalkers and voyeurs to hang out (can you say "Creepy!"?), it's a promising venue for marketers to hawk their wares. But do you have what it takes to crack it? The most unlikely of marketers seem to have it -- bars, bands, and quirky dotcoms (disclaimer: these guys are a client) , whereas big brands like Blockbuster don't seem to have a clue.

MySpace is a real slice of humanity. Amongst the throngs of teenagers (many of which have their profiles set to private), the MySpace ecosystem is host to concerned parents trying to keep tabs on their kids, college students, obsessed sports fans, realtors. In other words, the Average Joe or Jane. And of course marketers. Clueless marketers. I'll readily admit I'm one of the clueless ones. Thankfully there is someone I can lean for guidance through this teen marketing minefield... my 15 year old daughter Chloe. You may recall she's the one with the Neopets blog whom I've blogged about before (BTW, she was featured recently on BloggerStories.com... I'm so proud of her!). Chloe has a MySpace page (a private one, so don't bother looking), and she gets MySpace. I plan to enlist Chloe's help in marketing within MySpace. At 15, she'll be the youngest marketing consultant I know!

Before you start marketing in MySpace, you'd better understand it. Because if you don't, the MySpace community can turn on you the moment you make your first misstep. Just like bloggers can. (Note: many MySpace users are bloggers too. MySpace supports blogging within its platform.) The cardinal rule in MySpace is the same one as in the blogosphere: 'Keep it real'.

You know who else gets MySpace? Site owners like this one who provide layouts, backgrounds, funny photos etc. to the MySpace community. Those folks are sitting back, sipping pina coladas and watching the moulah from Google AdSense roll in.

Sometime when I get a chance I'll write a follow-up post to this one and share some specifics about MySpace marketing, like getting large numbers of Friends, using photo animation, customizing your layout, etc. So stay tuned!

Have you considered incorporating content partners and marketing partners into your online strategy? For example, partnering with content providers who could augment your own content with additional related content? Or partering with sites whose visitors match your target market?  If, for example, you wanted to reach women online, you could partner with a site like iVillage.com and build a microsite together, then have them promote it through their site and subscription lists.

Think about the sites you advertise on as potential partners. Join forces and create a microsite together and then promote it to a joint captive audience. Or make a deal with them and syndicate some useful content onto their site. For example, you could develop a whole library of useful tips and, rather than doing standard banner ads, you could provide these tips to your partner, who would then fold it with the rest of their content. Et voila!... "Sponsored content"!

Even better if, between the two of you, you can develop some sort of "hook" or viral component, such as a funny video, an addictive game, a downloadable ebook, worksheet, calculator, widget, etc. 

Got an example to share of a site where the whole is greater than the sum of the partners? Post a comment!

Your advertising and marketing should add value. It should help your target audience make their life (or business) a little easier, a little more productive, etc. This is exactly the sort of thing I preach to our (Netconcepts') clients: deliver something useful to your target audience through your web site, your search ads, your email campaigns, your blog, your RSS feeds, and so on.

Here's an example of value-added advertising that I stumbled across last week. State Insurance, an insurance company in New Zealand, has an ad campaign called "That's helpful." They're running TV commercials and have print materials, like posters at their offices, supporting the campaign. Each poster offers a very practical and useful tip, like...

• Chewing gum while cutting onions will stop you from crying.
• Remove scuff marks from wooden floors with an eraser.
• Dangle a tennis ball from your garage ceiling. It will show you where to stop.
• When on holiday, get your neighbor to clear your letterbox.
• Instead of washing your paintbrush, wrap it up in a plastic bag and put it in the freezer.
• If you want visitors to take their shoes off, leave extra pairs at the door.

I quite like that campaign. They could do a lot more with it though. They haven't used their website to support the campaign at all. The phrase "That's helpful" doesn't even appear anywhere on the site. What a missed opportunity! They should have compiled a big pile of helpful tips into a free e-book and made it available for download on the site and then promoted the e-book in their print materials, commercials, email campaigns, and of course on the website itself.

Stanford's web credibility research surveyed 4500 people and took over three years to compile, but the 10 guidelines that came out of this study are worth repeating here.

1. Make it easy to verify the accuracy of information on your site
2. Show that there is a real organization behind your site
3. Highlight the expertise in your organization and in the content and services you provide
4. Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site
5. Make it easy to contact you
6. Design your site so it looks professional (or is appropriate for your purpose)
7. Make your site easy to use – and useful
8. Update your site's content often (at least show it's been reviewed recently)
9. Use restraint with any promotional content (eg ads, offers)
10. Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem

Read the full report.

Larry Chase of WDFM pontificates about key trends for Internet marketing in 2006. These include, in summary:

1. RSS? Yes, but...
   
   Real Simple Syndication (RSS) finally takes off, and while great for stuff like sampling content, subscriber acquisition, product updates, and grabbing the attention of search engines, he contends that neither is it the second coming for advertising nor is it the replacement for email.
2. Podcast Means "Narrowcast"
   
   It may have been the 2005 Word of the Year, but to employ "podcast" technology for marketing purposes? The ability to "timeshift" and consume content on-the-go on your schedule is innovative, but isn't it possible most of these sound files are being listened to on desktop or laptop computers? And when considering podcasts as part of your marketing plan, think about the payback. A simple press release may be better.
3. Email Marketing - The Tower of Babble
   
   Improve email campaign deliverability by adding your SPF text record to your domain's DNS record. Mail servers look for the sending server's IP address before passing the email through to the recipient. Also look into adopting SenderID and the other competing protocols put forward by inbox providers and ISPs, to further ensure your emails get delivered. And remember, the cleaner your list, the more emails will be delivered.
4. Video Downloads Will Be Huge
   
   With millions of videos already being downloaded from iTunes, it's a growing market. While folks are tapping into a missed episode of their favorite TV program sans commercials or downloading entire movies, what is the application for marketers? Video on the Internet featuring product demos, or how-to videos to help buyers with their purchase decision, perhaps?
5. Newspapers Get Bold
   
   Print media has had to rev up its act to tap into the new generations. The world's #1 most downloaded podcast The Ricky Gervais Show at Guardian Unlimited is a glimpse of great things to come from the newspaper industry. But where is the money? It's got to be about more than traffic.
6. Multidimensional Marketing
   
   Sure, mashing online maps with overlays of data have far-reaching implications for Internet Marketing. Mapping properties for sale or rent, visualizing where visitors to your website come from, or finding WiFi hotspots or dead zones for cellular networks, are all great applications. And there will be more exciting innovations to come. The rapid advances in Internet technology will be a boon to marketers and researchers alike. But in the urge to innovate or die, don't make the classic mistake of assuming your audiences are adopting new technologies at the same rate you are. There's still a place for the traditional.

What do I think about Larry's predictions? I say he's pretty much spot on. Of course we won't know for sure until the end of the year. ;-)

Web guru Seth Godin has revealed his top five predictions for 2006:

1. Inventory of adsense begins to catch up with demand
2. Thumbnail photos show up in adwords
3. Web pages get DRAMATICALLY better at teaching and interacting
4. Several large marketers cease to do TV
5. The Supreme Court bans email attachments.

Get 'em while they're hot!

• Beginner's Guide to Business Blogging by business blogging & copywriting guru Debbie Weil. Available free until January 25. Get this one NOW!
• Marketing Wisdom for 2005 published by MarketingSherpa. Contains 105 real-life stories and tips for marketers, from marketers.