5 Steps to Making Your Website Human

Make your content Lovable.

Making a website lovable is the hardest part of developing the brand of a business on the internet. There are many unpredictable variables that we still have no idea how to take into consideration when writing a social media plan. Will people leave comments on You Tube? Would they prefer if we uploaded to Vimeo instead? Will uploading to both sites hurt the feelings of one community or the other? We have no idea, but you also had no idea if your first love would say yes and you still if you could go on a date.

Here are a few things you can do to make it easy for your users to love you:

• Make your website easy to link to. The embed code from YouTube is a great example.
• Create accounts absolutely everywhere. Clamio is great for this, $129 bucks and you’ve got accounts on 300 networks.
• Include links to “favorite” your website at the bottom of each of your blog posts. Share This for regular websites, or Sexybookmarks if you’re using WordPress are both great tools for this.

Speak to your customers.

First step get a blog. Next step, speak honestly and openly about your business. Be creative, if you were trying to catch the attention of a party you’d do crazy things like buy the entire bar shots or jump into a pool naked off the roof of a hotel. Sure, the pool analogy might be a little crazy for some of our clients but for many that would be a hell of a social media hit.

Here are a few ways to make your web presence speak to your customers:

• Let your customers know what’s up  on the inside. Behind the scenes blog entries are great for this.
• Make a video podcast. Pictures can tell a thousand words, and videos have  millions of pictures.
• Search for potential customers with problems you can solve on twitter.

Build a community.

Accepting comments and input from  your customers is essential to any marketing campaign. You’re website needs  to make it as easy as for customers  to give you feedback. Don’t require long registration forms and verified logins just to leave a comment. Customers are doing you a favor by participating with you- accept their feedback and thank them for it.

Here are some ways to listen to your customers:

• Start a forum, make sure it’s free.
• Add a comment form to your blog. Make it threaded to encourage conversation.
• Use Hootsuite to manage multiple social media accounts.
• Start a social network with Buddypress.
• Give away something for free to members of your community. Expect nothing in return.

Make it something you can feel.

DC shoes is one of the companies with a history of finding social media gold. The trick is that they don’t leave it online. They make it real, with TV shows and Live Events. You need to get out there and go beyond just providing great content. Go to trade shows, chamber meetings, or any events in your industry. Find out who the movers and shakers are and talk with them. If you’re smart and can find ways to set yourself apart you’ll be the cream that rises to the top. If you’re lazy and dumb you’ll fail just like you would have in the business world 20 years ago, it’s just a little more accelerated now.

Here are some ways you can get some real human interaction out of the web:

• Go to an event and hand out stickers for free.
• Make a DVD of all your social media hits and send it to customers for free (require them to sign up for a newsletter).
• Put your product in the wild, tape it being used. (see the Keyboard Theory)
• Make it easy for fans to organize meetups in their area. (see Diggnation Live Shows)
• Make merchandised material, don’t look to make a profit on it.

Above all, trust success will come.

While all of the factors that have an impact in social media promotion are still unknown, we can always fall back on basic human instinct. If you feel tricked or taken advantage of you are going to be pissed off. If you’re treated with respect and feel included in a community you are going to support that community with everything you have.

Seriously, if you’re going to do all of this and not trust your customers to like your brand than you should choose a different business because your life is going to be miserable. Let them talk about you everywhere. Facebook, Yelp, Twitter, Gowalla. Respond to them every chance you get, and only moderate when they are being obscene. It’s a simple policy of openness and honesty, not some bullshit 30 page handbook that you hand to all of your employees.

So that’s what we do. What do you think?