Let’s take a minute to look at the development process and then consider some of the factors that might drive your project toward one of these methodologies, or a blend of both approaches.

The Development Process

The development process can contain many phases. Let’s quickly review the big four: define, design, build, and test.

• In the define phase, we determine what needs to go into the project by defining the business, functional, and technical requirements.
• In the design phase, we determine how it will get done by turning the requirements into technical solutions.
• In the build phase, we implement each of the technical solutions identify by the project.
• In the test phase, each of the technical solutions is verified to function correctly.

Comparing Methodologies

Now, let’s examine the differences between Waterfall and Agile methodologies.

• Waterfall – Each phase is executed in a linear fashion, meaning the define phase is executed before the design phase, and the design phase is executed before the build phase, and so on. This is completed for the project as a whole.
• Agile – The same big four development processes are executed but the process iterates through each of the requirements/solutions independently, usually in two week increments. This approach allows stakeholders an opportunity to reprioritize the requirements in mid-stream, or to even change project scope by introducing new requirements or by removing those that are no longer relevant.

What will work best for you? To answer that question, consider these important factors:

• Stakeholder involvement: If the project scope is fairly well known, minimal stakeholder involvement may be required. While this scenario works for either approach, an Agile approach benefits from greater stakeholder participation.
• Blended development team: A blended team can be a result of wanting to utilize available client resources, to foster the transfer of knowledge, and/or to accelerate a project timeline. An Agile approach can accommodate a fluctuation of resources by increasing or reducing the amount of work scheduled for a given n iteration.
• Project longevity: Will your project have a short lifespan or will it need to be supported long-term? A Waterfall approach typically places an emphasis on documenting requirements to support maintenance efforts for projects with a longer lifespan. For some marketing projects, an Agile approach may be more appropriate–for example, a microsite that may exist for only a few months.
• Project size: The bigger your team, the more you have to invest in ensuring clear project communication. For large project teams, a Waterfall approach works best.

How to Find the Middle Ground

However, it doesn’t have to be either or. And even if you want to transition from a strictly Waterfall to Agile approach, it can be daunting to stakeholders who haven’t used it before; they may be reluctant to try it, even if there’s a good business reason to use it. So, for many reasons, a hybrid development approach may be just the ticket for your project, allowing you to retain the comfort of Waterfall while reaping the benefits of Agile.

This can be accomplished by leaving the define phase mostly intact, as you would see in a traditional Waterfall approach, but then the team iterates through requirements/solutions in an Agile fashion by combining the design, build, and test phases. Ultimately, of course, your goal is to find the right balance of time spent to get to the end goal while minimizing the overall cost to produce it.

What has worked for Enlighten?

Over the years, as our projects have become increasingly complex, we’ve embraced a more Agile approach. In part, this is because our client’s marketing initiatives have required more complex technical integration with their existing enterprise systems. Traditionally, this meant integration with a single system: a Content Management System (CMS). But now other enterprise platforms are common—for example, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), as well as Marketing Automation tools. Since these engagements also require interaction with many different staff members, we’ve increased the number of deployments we undertake to facilitate greater collaboration, and to allow our clients more time for integration setup and testing. These additional (“iterative”) deployments reduce the risk to the overall project when compared to a single deployment scenario, known in the industry as a “big bang” rollout.

While we did not move from Waterfall to Agile overnight, we found that with each new engagement the number of iterations/deployments we undertake has increased from one to three then to six and, today, it’s as high as 20. Each iteration includes a blended team of internal and client resources, which is required to execute the defined scope. Those blended resources have included team members from across disciplines, including marketing, business analysts, designers, frontend and backend engineers and quality assurance. The Waterfall approach has lingered in some aspects as it pertains to the define phase but we think this allows us to better estimate projects using a fixed budget.

Using this hybrid approach, we have experienced an increase stakeholder satisfaction, a higher level of confidence in the client team taking ownership of the final deliverable after project completion, and a reduction in project cost by efficiently leveraging resource availability and contribution.

• Bring fiction into your Facebook communications – If you create a fictional world and characters that are positively perceived by consumers, they stand to help you build brand affinity.
• Let a mystery build your audience’s interest – This is one of those rare cases in content marketing where ambiguity can actually work in your favor.
• Leverage the allure of staggered content – Entertainment companies are known for making audiences want more. One way they do this is through the strategic release of content.

While these tactics were originally devised to promote entertainment content (think television and film), they have applications for other consumer products as well. Use them to surprise and delight your target audience. Just as they can’t resist a good blockbuster, they’ll be lining up to consume more of your content.

To learn more, you can read my article in full at the Content Marketing Institute: Brand Storytelling Lessons You Can Steal from Hollywood

Enlighten’s user-generated, image-based historical database is the recent winner of another English accolade: the FWA (Favourite Website Award). Why all the international recognition? It might have something to do with the nature of the project. WhatWasThere receives visits from almost every country in the world. Images have been uploaded from users on every continent apart from Antarctica. Site visitors can explore Villaviciosa, Spain on the Bay of Biscay from 1890 to modern day, Zakho on the Iraqi-Turkish border in 1930, and London’s Piccadilly Circus…the way it appeared back in 1910. With crowdsourced photographs and Google-based maps, our geographic history of the world is at the world’s fingertips.

It was only a matter of time before it took notice.

Check out our submission.

So, how do you go about achieving an optimal keyword ranking on Google? To improve your natural search visibility, I recommend that you consider these three very important factors:

1. Understand what your audience is looking for

First and foremost, you must understand who is most likely to consume your content. Beyond demographics, you should understand how they think, including the type of vocabulary they use to describe their needs and the solutions you offer. This will help identify the words they are most likely to use when searching for information on Google. Jargony marketing phrases have no place in SEO, as the average consumer isn’t likely to use this kind of language when searching. Instead, keep it simple, using common everyday phrases that describe your goods and services.

A quick review of your site analytics will reveal the keyword phrases currently generating the most traffic to your site. These phrases should give you a good indication of the types of words your visitors are using to find your content. Building on these phrases, you will develop a “priority search keyword list”—that is, a list of the most likely phrases your target audience uses to find what you offer. Look for ways to work these keywords into your content as it makes sense.

While keywords are the most well-known aspect of SEO, they are only a part of the equation.

2. Make sure your site is “search-engine friendly”

So, now you have some great content on your site. What next? Well, search engines regularly crawl the internet looking for new pages to index—and you want to make sure they find yours.

Search engines are essentially the “middle men”—they connect searchers with content providers. It’s important to understand that search engines compete with each other to provide the most relevant content to users. Loyalty only goes so far: You may have Google as your home page, but, if every time you searched, the results didn’t really satisfy your need, would you continue using Google or would you consider another search engine? I thought so.

Understanding this, you can see why a search engine is more concerned with satisfying the searcher than the content provider. This is why SEO is more than just keywords—much more. Search engines utilize many sources to understand what your content is really about and whether it truly has value for consumers. This is one reason why it’s important to ensure that your site is built with search engine-friendly formats. This includes:

• A strong site structure, including clear navigational paths and intuitive links across content areas to support easy browsing
• Search engine-friendly URLs
• Proper use of page metadata, including title tags and page descriptions
• Appropriate distribution of your priority search keyword phrases on relevant pages across your site

All these factors will help the search bots easily index your content.

3. Gain content validation from credible external sources

Additionally, search engines consider outside sources as a means of determining the value of your content. This is where link building comes in. Essentially, link building establishes a relationship between your site and other content producers or sources, including organizations, groups, and individuals. You want to develop relationships with sources willing to “validate” your content by telling their community about it and pointing them to your site.

Link building is an ongoing effort—it has the longest positive impact on natural search. Here’s an analogy I like to make: When you’re providing a potential employer with a list of references, do you give them an exhaustive list of names, including every person you’ve ever met? Or do you provide a highly selective list composed of your most reputable references? Link building follows the same rules. When it comes to link building, as is true with many things in life, it’s not the quantity that counts but the quality.

It’s no secret, as a culture we’re up against it when it comes to healthcare. People are living longer and the big time baby boom is still ramping up for its very costly dénouement. It follows that anything and everything we can do now to help people get and stay healthy as long as possible will be a boon for all.

The struggle to deal with runaway health costs runs the gamut from individuals to families to companies large and small. Everyone is affected. The irony? We, as individuals—taken in aggregate—are largely responsible for the mess. Heredity and early exposure to pollutants aside, how we behave—what we eat, how we handle stress, our relationship to the Barcalounger®, our work/life balance—these are the true predictors of our individual physical futures. What to do? Change the behavior. Change the future.

Companies have been arm-wrestling this conundrum for decades now. But it’s only recently that insights into how to truly affect positive behavior change, combined with the scalable means to impact large employee populations, have become available. The key, as it turns out was staring us in the face all along: Manageable, incremental steps ignited and made persistent by powerful intrinsic motivators that are deeply meaningful, personalized, purposeful, and mission-driven. Problem solved? Dream on.

It’s one thing to understand how to effectively initiate and sustain positive change in an individual—it’s quite another to deliver that experience across a broad population that, by its very human nature, demonstrates a near intractable refusal to rock the boat. As humans, we take our comfort zones very seriously. We also each carry within us a richly interwoven array of disparate physical conditions that absolutely cannot be effectively addressed as one-offs. The inconvenient truth—the Achilles’ heel of the industry—is this: you can build it and they won’t necessarily come. Driving population participation and engagement, as it’s known in the industry, is a million-dollar nut much in need of cracking.

The following are a few thoughts and tactics to consider applying pressure to; results, of course, may vary (as the lawyers never tire of saying):

1. HR is not marketing. Human resource folks don’t think like marketers. They’re not trained to do so and rarely have the time to figure it out on the fly. Still, they’re held to account when an expensive wellness program brought in under their aegis falls on its face.

What to do: Work with your digital partner to create a year-long, integrated promotional campaign; on- and off-line. Make it unexpected, provocative, progressive, and experience-based. Address entrenched skepticism head on. Don’t talk at, talk with. Lead from above and below simultaneously with authentic messages from the CEO and the garage attendant. Make it real. Make it aspirational. And sustain and build the effort.

2. Channeling health. A powerful behavior change solution delivers personalized insights, not just repackaged health information. Problem is, most of the channel communications promoting health and wellness solutions are anything but. Narrowing that experiential gap can help lead the way to significant up-ticks in participation.

What to do: Look for ways to make channel communications increasingly personalized over time. Wherever possible include program opt-ins for personalized emails, SMS, MMS, video blogs, even targeted display units (within the company intranet). Personalization amps up meaning and relevancy while ensuring that the communications are timely and actionable.

3. Device and conquer. There’s a revolution going on, often referred to as the “quantifiable self” movement that can play a significant role in helping drive increased engagement and prolonged individual success. From Nike+ to the mounting shelf-load of devices designed to talk to mobile and tablet apps, programs can now integrate potent, affordable health tracking activities and feedback as part of a meaningful, measureable behavior change initiative.

What to do: Develop a communication strategy that integrates with, and capitalizes on, this powerful movement at both the individual and group levels. Create a one-off promotional campaign that introduces self-measurement to your employee population. Build campaign variants based on the different devices being employed (i.e. pedometers, blood pressure readers, pulse monitors, body mass index measurements, etc.). Build momentum through cross-channel synchronization, for instance, footprints in the hallways herald a “Walk-It-Off” pedometer-centric event that’s promoted via SMS, and then amplified via real-time, intranet-based video blogging.

4. Seer to peer. Organizations get nervous when the words “social” and “health” are mentioned in the same sentence by their agency. Privacy regulations, when it comes to health information, are necessarily strict and uncompromising. No argument there. But, does that mean there’s no place for social when it comes to getting healthy?

What to do: Launch an anonymous company health network where employees can interact with one another around health issues and topics while not compromising their privacy. Departments can challenge one another—first group to reach 500,000 steps wins. The entire employee population can set, and then monitor, progress towards a healthy organizational goal. And perhaps most compelling of all, individual employees can buddy up (anonymously, at least at first) so that one employee can mentor and support another in overcoming a condition or barrier they’ve already confronted themselves.

As the healthcare debate continues to rage on unabated in Washington, all of us outside the beltway can influence the outcome through a proactive embrace of the latest insights, technologies, and solutions coming together now around the topic of healthy organizational behavior change.

The digital marketing space has dozens of these. Over the years we’ve been privileged to work with many publications, providing regular submissions on behalf of employees within each of Enlighten’s core teams. I hitched my wagon to ClickZ early on, and as a result I’m now honored to be celebrating 10 straight years of weekly contributions to the largest interactive marketing resource in the biz.

Much has changed since the days of my first columns, and it’s been fascinating to watch as some trends become part of our digital landscape while others fade away. What follows are five digital channels, technologies, and formats that charmed digital marketers over the past decade—all but one have endured. Perhaps we can glean some insight from their fruition and evolution and apply it to our future campaigns. At the very least we can laugh, and groan and ruminate on our status as industry old timers.

1. Search. Ten years ago paid search (otherwise known as pay-per-click, pay-per-search, pay-for-performance or search engine marketing) was only just starting to get the credit it deserved. Brands were experimenting with paid search listing providers like Ah-Ha, FindWhat, Kanoodle, Mamma.com, and Sprinks, but it was Overture (now Yahoo!) and Google that set into motion the meteoric rise of search marketing. In 2002 both companies released a strict new set of submission guidelines that required greater attention to ad relevance (and provided the ability to set a daily spending budget!). The rest, as they say, is history.

2. Blogs. It was in 2002 that famed blogging magnate Nick Denton launched the first Gawker Media blogs from his apartment in SoHo. Before that fated day consumers were only vaguely familiar with the concept of blogs. “Why would I want to post diary entries to the Web for everyone to see?” they would ask. “Why would I want to read those of others?”

Within a few years analysts were reporting an estimated $100 million in blog ad sales and blogs were threatening to overturn traditional mediums like print; a recent UN report predicts “(printed) newspapers will only be available in museums by 2040.” As I write this blog post, two of the top 20 global sites are blogging platforms (Blogspot and WordPress) – and that’s not including a little microblogging service called Twitter. Where would we be without blogs like The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Mashable, Boing Boing and Engadget? This is one medium that launched with a bang and promises more fireworks to come.

3. Pop-Ups. What a dirty word this used to be (still is). And yet, Dynamic Logic reported in 2002 that Internet users were willing to accept pop-ups in limited doses. How times have changed. After several years of untargeted, uncapped pop-up ads (brands must have forgotten the “limited doses” part of the report), we witnessed a consumer uprising against online ads that we’re still feeling the residual effects of today. We learned a valuable lesson from this Dark Age, though: consumers don’t like overly aggressive ads. Although you’ll still encounter some vestiges of those days the marketing community has finally recognized that pop-ups and their ilk are better replaced with formats that, in addition to being relevant and providing real value, provide consumers some degree of control.

4. Video. According to Forrester Research, US online video ad spending will reach $5.4 billion by 2016, up from $2.0 billion in 2011. Whether we’re incorporating video into rich media display ads, marketing online with video demos, or posting product videos on Google, marketers are embracing this medium and using it to our advantage.

We all know how important online video is in consumer’s daily lives, but this is a relatively recent trend. Ten years ago the comedic clips that now draw millions of viewers hadn’t yet made their way online, and viral marketing with video was non-existent. It wasn’t until 2005 that the first video was posted on YouTube, and “video-blogging” took off. Today, according to comScore, online video ads reach half of the US online population, with more than 85 percent of consumers watching video online in an average month.

5. Social Networks. I remember exactly where I was when I created my Facebook account. It was late 2006 and Facebook had just opened its doors to all Internet users. Apart from a few industry contacts, I couldn’t find a single person I knew on the site.

It’s five years later, and Pew Internet reports that social media now counts 65 percent of US online adults among its users. By 2013, according to eMarketer, social network ad revenue worldwide is expected to reach $10 billion (revenues in the U.S. alone continue to double year over year). To put this in perspective, Facebook only introduced its Facebook Ads in 2007, LinkedIn Direct Ads launched in 2008, and Twitter launched Promoted Tweets in 2010. And there is no end to the growth of this digital channel in sight.

What will the next 10 years bring? Next time I write a post like this, I fully expect to be publishing it in the clouds.

This marks the crowdsourced historical photograph site’s first win of the year after receiving a prestigious “Outstanding Website” award in the 2011 Web Marketing Association’s WebAward competition. It’s particularly desirable for two reasons: mass exposure and industry respect.

The FWA site receives about 4.7 million visits per month from over 180 different countries. Couple that with WhatWasThere’s fast-growing international audience and it bodes very well for a record-breaking traffic year.

There are always benefits to being singled out, but never more than when the distinction comes from a panel of our peers. Not only are all submissions reviewed by the public, but they’re also evaluated by a band of agency and client-side experts from around the world. Sites are judged on design (40%), navigation (25%), graphics (15%), content (15%) and personality (5%). A special shout out to the Enlighten team responsible for the great work: Steve Glauberman, founder and CEO; Laurel Erickson, senior digital strategist; Mike Gatto, executive art director; Adam Kempa, senior software engineer; Karen Ford, software engineer; and Voratima Orawannukul, software engineer.

Thanks to The FWA for highlighting WhatWasThere as one of the great websites of 2012. Our year is off to a great start.

For more information, contact:
Tessa Wegert, Communications Director
734.929.1937
twegert@enlighten.com

“I’m excited to serve on the SoDA board again, and to be counted among the industry veterans who will be shaping its strategic imperatives this year,” Steve Glauberman says. “I will also be doing my part to represent SoDA by attending and speaking at industry events, including SXSW 2012.”

SoDa was created in 2008 by 13 leading digital marketing agency CEOs to promote knowledge sharing and collaboration within the industry. Enlighten joined the elite, invitation-only organization, which counts Adobe Systems among its industry sponsorship partners, in 2009, and in addition to actively supporting its work has contributed numerous articles to its much-anticipated annual SoDA Reports.

For more information on SoDA, please visit http://societyofdigitalagencies.org.

For more information, contact:
Tessa Wegert, Communications Director
734.929.1937
twegert@enlighten.com

Innocently named, PIPA & SOPA have been masterfully lobbied for and are in serious danger of passing. On the surface, both seem to have valid goals – to protect copyright owners from piracy.

So why are so many experts, lawyers, civil liberty organizations and business owners adamantly against these bills and actively blacking their sites out today in protest against these bills?

These bills would cause irreparable harm to both existing websites and stifle innovations in future websites. The government and corporations would gain new powers to block American’s access to websites and to cut off advertising, payments and donations to sites they don’t like.

These two bills are harmful because they would:

• Censor the Internet and harm free speech
• Harm creativity and innovation
• Impose harmful regulations on America businesses
• Contain provisions that will tinker with (and harm) the fundamental fabric of the Internet
  • Note: The DNS-blocking provision may be removed from the bill
• Weaken Internet security
• Put the liability for the fight against piracy on third-party service providers
• Give no adequate means for a website owner to defend themselves against allegations

Fighting online piracy is important. Here at Enlighten, we are sensitive to this issue, as many of our clients have digital and intellectual properties that need to be protected against piracy.

But these bills would not help reduce piracy and have costly side effects if passed. The proposed solutions would not work to prevent people from accessing the websites they are initially targeting, and would allow governments and corporations to block any site, foreign or domestic, if they can convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.” The government has already used existing laws to wrongly shut down sites, and corporations regularly misuse tools they already have to remove legitimate content from websites.

The solutions presented in these bills are not the correct solution to these problems, and we urge our readers to educate themselves on these issues. For more information or to find out how you can contact your representatives about this bill, visit americancensorship.org.

View the following video for more info.

And unlike the poetry audience, which is mostly imaginary, we actually know a lot about who reads our digital marketing missives. When we send out an email to our CRM database list, for example, our trusty, hard-working (and much smarter) analytics team can tell us who was actually listening. (Poets just assume no one is). We know how many people opened, clicked through, unsubscribed—and from this data, we can develop and evolve our subject lines and email content, giving our customers more of what they want. So, from the fuzzy world of poetry, unicorns and fairy dust, here’s what I’ve learned about crafting effective marketing emails and subject lines:

1. Offers, Opinions, Timeliness

Offers: The first one is a no-brainer. If you send an email out to people and want them to open it, and then want them to click through to the next site, you have to give them a little something in return. This can be coupons and samples, but it can also just be interesting, useful content, like tips, advice, or new product offerings.

Opinions: Everyone’s a critic. So let people tell you what they think of your product or your company. If you are offering a quality product or service, they will usually say really nice stuff, anyway. So it’s a win-win.

Timeliness: Separate your email or offer from the crowd by grounding it in the consumer’s actual life, their lifestyle and interests, or the time of year. Make it timely and relevant. Not a one-size-fits-all, anytime, anywhere offer.

2. Let your CRM database list self-select

When sending an email to thousands of people, the subject line should be specific enough that the consumers know if this offer is relevant to them. Tell them what’s really inside, and let them decide if they want it. For example, if you get an email with the subject line, Sale on Sports-Bras, and you are part of the 50% of the adult population that doesn’t wear a bra, you won’t need to open this. If we say, Sale on Sports Apparel, we may get a higher open-rate, but our click-through rate will plummet—plus there’ll be a lot of annoyed men whose time we just wasted. By letting customers tell us which emails they want to read, we can more accurately segment our lists, and send people relevant offers and content.

3. Subject Lines in 6 words or less

Industry best practices say the most effective subject lines can be communicated in around 6 words. That’s the shortest poem ever. Not even a Haiku.

Let’s practice:

1. Keep Earning Rewards and Free Products
2. Tell Us What You Really Think
3. Enter For Your Chance To Win
4. Baby Bump Charlie Sheen Wife Swap

Even though it’s not a ton of space, you really can say a lot.

4. Tell them what you want to hear

Remember, whether we call them our target, consumers, database or some other marketing jargon term, the people we send emails to are actually just people. Like you and me. If you don’t want to get an email with the subject line, FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE, then don’t send one. Analytics can tell us how effective we are at reaching people. But we should also keep in mind our own preferences. As my creative director once told me, write as if you were talking to your little sister. Or best friend. Or mom. Someone you genuinely want to communicate with. That way you build trust with your consumers and don’t waste their time.