mattyford.com

I am posting pretty late in the game on this one, but Skittles have recently implemented a new overhaul to their website that essentially does the opposite of traditional strategy - completely remove the website and replace it with their Social Media presence. This experiment is a pretty gutsy move by the brand, but one that seems to have generated huge buzz and success.

Essentially, if you go to the Skittles homepage, you now access a Skittles “Channel”. After confirming your birthdate and the Terms of Service, you are directed to a default page (their YouTube channel), while a small widget in the corner lets you navigate to areas of Social Media for the brand, such as their Twitter feed, Facebook page, or Flickr page.

What this means is they have completely removed a Corporate Website, and have now leveraged their entire web presence into Social Media tools, letting consumers drive the content and provide comments and feedback. From Twittering about the your love for the product, to posting photos, or commenting on their amazingly random videos, consumers are now driving the dialogue and creating a community of like minded individuals.

This may be the most impressive thing about this new strategy - essentially Skittles are only a candy, but have found a way to create a massive amount of free PR and engagement online that has generated a massive amount of awareness (and a huge amount of talk of the Internet). 

Will this be the death of a traditional Corporate Website? Probably not, as any brand to follow this model probably won’t capitalise on the huge amount of free press that followed Skittles move. But they should be applauded for trying a bold, aggressive experiment in the Social Media landscape.

Getting good quality Inbound Links is an important way of improving your websites SEO. But how do you find out what sort of links you are currently getting to your website?

The easiest and fastest way is to use a search engine. Simply go to Google, and type the following into the Search Box:

site: mysite.com

(With “mysite” being the target URL you are searching. Make sure to keep a space after the colon).

This allows you to see what links are coming in, or the kind of links other sites are getting such as your competitors. Try searching for an established website in your industry - if they are receiving links from a free directory or listing, you should aim to get on them straight away.

In the business world, and especially in the B2B environment, the benefits of Social Media are becoming increasingly apparent to the point that organisations who don’t embrace these technologies stand the chance of being wiped out by smaller and more savvy competitors.

This poses the challenge of convincing the Marketing Department and Upper Management of adopting new “Inbound Marketing” technologies that can essentially fly in the face of traditional practices, and push them outside their comfort zone. This may also be compounded by the very nature of the word they are being asked to adopt - Social Media.

Lets look at the first word:

Social = Fun, relaxed, with friends (time wasting) 
Social = Activities outside of work (not business) 

How many times have you said you don’t have time for social activities because you are too busy working? 

In addition, many organisations block a range of Social Media sites for this very reason - they view them as time wasting or not business activities. I have at least three friends who are not able to access Facebook in their offices. 

What I would suggest is adopting a new term to explain Social Media to CXO roles in order to present the benefits and eliminate the negatives associated with “social”. My own suggestion would be Business Networking Media. 

The analogy is this, think of a Business Networking Event you have attended recently. Now think of this same event not constrained by time, space or location - and with the benefits enhanced. That is the power delivered by Business Networking Media solutions, an effective tool to add to your marketing mix.