Social Media

June 26, 2009

Friday Recap - Robo Edition

Welcome to your favorite part of the week -- the weekend! Or is your favorite part the Friday Recap? After the week you had, you deserve them both, so let's get this thing started!

The second Transformers movie was released Wednesday and the harsh reviews are getting almost as much buzz as the movie itself. Susan contends that there weren't enough giant robots in the original. Let's see if the sequel brings on the robots, because you dig giant robots. I dig giant robots. We dig giant robots. Chicks dig giant robots. Nice. [True story: This clip was actual facts my review of the first movie. --Susan]

Big news in the blogosphere this week. The FTC is moving forward to approve new guidelines regarding bloggers, sponsored blog reviews and the disclosure of blogger compensation. The guidelines take aim at the freebies and payoffs some bloggers receive in exchange for product reviews or mentions -- a conflict of interest which often remains undisclosed to blog readers. If the guidelines are passed, bloggers would be required to spell out any financial compensation received. Those interested may read the FTC's proposed guidelines and changes in Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising (pdf).

Some SEOs will be glad to see the new guidelines instituted considering a debate has long raged over the search engines' uneven enforcement of paid link penalties. The argument's been made that while some bloggers reap benefits of free cars and swag in exchange for links or product reviews, SEOs get slapped for omitting nofollow on paid links. Power tweeter Guy Kawasaki is sometimes used an example of a blogger fat on freebies, but earlier this week, Guy's Twitter account was hacked, reminding tweeters that no one's safe from malicious attacks online.

Lately Twitter has been greenwashed with vert-colored avatars intended to support democracy in Iran. Some have called such actions "armchair activism", and while I believe raising awareness is valuable, the Next Web has rounded up some other ways people can positively contribute to the cause.

Facebook became a little more like Twitter this week by opening user status updates to the public realm. Beta testers are currently trying out the program, which will let users specify whether select groups of friends or the entire Web will be able to view status info. Facebook users will appreciate the new option for flexibility, but everyone can enjoy the flexibility of these three ladies who make contortion look like a flippin' good time. [Why don't they make movies like that anymore? --Susan]

Photo by Ewen and Donabel

Steering back to the topic of blogs, I got a kick out of a collection of word clouds from a few popular Internet marketing blogs. I've used Wordle to make word clouds for some of my favorite search engine optimization blogs, but I've never looked at the clouds side by side. I think it's useful to see if you're actually talking about the content you think you're talking about. So who wins the exercise? My vote goes to David Mihm, whose word cloud shows just how topical the blog is to his core interest, local search.

Another favorite search-related blogger is Google's head of Web spam Matt Cutts. But Matt doesn't talk only about search and SEO on his blog. In fact, this week he's inviting readers to vote for his next 30-day project. "Bike to work" is currently in first with 25 percent of the vote. Want to chime in on what Matt should do?

The Semantic Technology Conference was held in San Jose last week and there's since been some helpful analysis offered up by attendees. While I hear a lot about how semantic technology will improve the quality of Web search, I'll admit that I'm still fuzzy on how such technology actually works. Dr. Riza Berkan, CEO of the natural language processing search engine Hakia, wrote a great primer on semantic search by clearing up what semantic technology is not. Sean Golliher, founder and publisher of SEMJ.org, explained the benefit of structured markup and its effect on search and the developer community.

Photo by atp_tyreseus

I think we can all agree that some very sharp minds are working on the problems of semantic technology. And robots. Smart people make robots, like one robot intelligence researcher and professor who built his twin to stand in and speak for him in class.

Speaking of freaky plastic people, how does everyone feel about the Burger King ads? BK's stream of odd ads has received awards for being edgy and creative, but apparently edgy and creative doesn't sell burgers. In the five years since ad agency Crispin Porter Bogusky has been in charge, Burger King's market share fell and annual sales grew at a pace slower than that of competitor McDonald's. Why people don't find a plastic-faced meat hawker appetizing I may never understand.

Rest in peace, Ed, Farrah and Michael.

Things I learned from Boing Boing this week:

• I know some people must think my choice of pet is a little odd, but one man's pet capybara helped me put things is perspective. [Come Lent, he'll also have an alternative to fish on Fridays. (No, really, look it up.) --Susan]
• Humans seem to have a preference for listening with the right ear. No joke. It's just weird.
• Virgin America and Google teamed up for Wednesday's Day in the Clouds competition. Find out how sky-high smarties played the game.
• What do you call a starfish having sex with a shrimp on tape? A prawnstar! Sorry, China, but you won't remember tomorrow anyway.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 06/26/09 at 12:24 PM | Comments (1)
See more entries in Blogging, Fun Stuff, Search Engine Optimization, Semantic Search, Social Media

June 8, 2009

A Look at One Brick and Mortar's Online Marketing Efforts

Friday night I danced, bounced and sang to my heart's content at the 311 concert at the Santa Barbara Bowl. I walked away with great memories, an adrenaline rush and, unexpectedly, a bit of fodder for the blog. Tucked inside the pages of the SB Bowl's concert program was a page dedicated to getting people involved with their online communities.

I see three great lessons we can take from the Bowl's online marketing approach, and one looming question for our industry to contemplate.

1. An Integrated Strategy that Speaks to the Audience

Photo by altemark via Creative Commons

First and foremost, big props go to the SB Bowl for utilizing online communities popular among their audience. They're working to drive community involvement online and you gotta love that! On the SB Bowl Twitter account they're providing useful info like traffic issues and responding to people's questions about venue rules, as well as letting people know about last-minute special events. They're encouraging people to review the venue on Yelp and to sign up for their email newsletter. They've also got a program with Yahoo and Internet Explorer where users can get the first word about announced shows or tickets that are on sale. And, wisely, they've got groups in YouTube and Flickr, although both are severely underutilized and there might be a good reason why. More on that later.

2. Using an Event to Drive Interest Online

Photo by gothopotam via Creative Commons

The next thing that stands out is the Bowl's strategy of using what awareness people already have to get them to learn more. While the Bowl has a captive audience, they're using the opportunity to drive more potential interest. Think about it. You're in the stands, twiddling around on your BlackBerry for lack of something better to do. You notice the brochure in the seat next to you, so you flip through, looking for something to catch your eye. People involved in social media seem to be very interested in info about their trusted networks. (Consider how many stories about Twitter get spread around the microblogging site.) So chances are, the Twitter or Flickr logos on the page will capture interest among readers. It's a tactic we can see being practiced by mammoth brands like Google and Microsoft following the Wave and Bing media blitzes. If people are looking to you for any reason, see if you can get them to stick around a while longer.

3. No Attempts to Control the Conversation

Photo by Aud1073cH via Creative Commons

Finally, I'm happy to see that the Santa Barbara Bowl isn't falling into a common newbie trap of online marketing: the desire to control the content. Sure there are a few big brands that can manage large-scale content control, with the help of a very happy legal team. NBC, for instance, retains control of their video content by policing the Web and hosting the videos on their own video site. But not everyone has the intimidating resources to enforce content ownership. If the Santa Barbara Bowl were to say any video filmed at the venue had to be posted to SBBowl.com, everyone would still be posting their videos to YouTube. Uh... maybe.

So... is the naïve pretense necessary?

I say "maybe" because, as it turns out, no one has posted a video to the SB Bowl's YouTube group. And while I'm not sure why this is the case, there's a good chance it has something to do with the big question we're left with. Why has the Santa Barbara Bowl gone through the trouble of feigning disapproval with photos and videos taken at the venue?

As you can see in the image, the SB Bowl YouTube and Flickr communities are shared with a bit of a disclaimer. The "we know you'd never do it, but if you did..." message leaves me with a question mark hanging over my head. Sure, it's kind of funny, but is the humor enough to get the audience over the concern that what they're doing is frowned upon? And if it does, does the humor create more of a positive response than would be driven with a straight-forward call to post pics and vids here? Maybe I'm missing a piece of the puzzle, but it seems like the Bowl is moving in the right direction while the mixed message may be forcing them backward. You tell me. Am I missing something, or is the Bowl?

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 06/ 8/09 at 3:59 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Online Video / Video SEO, Search Integration, Social Media

May 15, 2009

Friday Recap - A Buggy Edition

Friday's made its way back around and not a day too soon! After a big search week, everyone deserves a break -- in the form of a refreshing Friday Recap. Let's do it.

Grasshopper buzz was in full force as people across the country received the chocolate-covered buggers as part of a marketing campaign. The virtual office service provider, Grasshopper.com, expected to get some word of mouth flowing through their creative blogger outreach. I'm always one to oblige -- especially if you're clever and give me things.

So here's the one green sucker out of the five chocolate grasshoppers we received:

And here's Katie after eating one. We decided it tastes like Kit Kat with a woodsy aftertaste, hence the puzzled look:

Katie, James and I were the only ones with the guts to eat one so props to us! There are more pics on the Bruce Clay, Inc. flickr stream for your gagging pleasure. [I helped by taking the pictures. --Susan]

Google got a little buggy yesterday when a traffic jam caused two hours of down time for the search engine. A glitch caused U.S. search traffic to be routed through Asia, resulting in slow services and interruptions. Of course, pictures speak louder than words, so what's a Google traffic jam look like?

Twitter users' security may have been compromised with a seemingly innocent game. Earlier this week I noticed an eyebrow-raising trending topic on the micromessaging site. Turns out it may have been a ploy to make you reveal personal info. Keep mama's maiden name close to the belt, folks.

Now, Mother's Day was a couple weeks ago, but considering the power that moms wield, it's not a bad idea to keep her happy all year long. A recent survey showed that moms control 85 percent of household spending and more than ever are working at home thanks to the Internet. Almost 20 percent of the online population is a mother between 25 and 54 with a child under 18. More stats on how the mom pie breaks down can be found on MediaPost.

What we imagine Lisa's life is like. --Susan

Next time someone walks in to discover the writers cruising Cute Overload or I Can Has Cheezburger, we can point to a study that suggests looking at highly adorable pictures improves performance. Suspicions verified! The study was done using a group of women who were asked to play Operation after looking at kittens and puppies. How do you get that gig?

Other big news coming out of Google this week was about a change to the AdWords ad text trademark policy. Previously, Google prohibited the use of trademarks within ad copy. Now, retailers that sell brands and impartial review sites that evaluate brands can use brand-related trademarks within their U.S. ads.

Debra Mastaler, link builder extraordinaire, compiled a list of handy discounts for search marketers. The list includes discounts for directory submissions, conference registration, news services, link building services, SEO and research tools, and training.

And May's SEO Newsletter just hit mailboxes. Check it out for a roundup of headlines during the last month. There's also an article about XML Sitemaps for news, mobile, code, video and geographic content and one on how to write a strong call to action.

Things I learned from Boing Boing this week:

• A long time lover of food, my food might finally love me back!
• A nine year old rocked Crazy Train harder than the Prince of Darkness himself. Mad skillz.
• Jumping on the data visualization bandwagon, freedom looks a lot like the stars. Look at me getting all poetic.
• If your boss ever gets mad at you for daydreaming on the job, show him how you were just warming up your brain.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 05/15/09 at 3:38 PM | Comments (1)
See more entries in Fun Stuff, Google, Social Media

May 6, 2009

SEM Synergy Extras - Niche Services Stand Out

One of my favorite things about planning and co-hosting Bruce Clay, Inc.'s weekly WebmasterRadio show, SEM Synergy, is getting access to the top minds in the Internet marketing industry. Every week is a new adventure into a special field, be it local business with Patrick Sexton, interest-based ads with David Szetela, analytics with Richard Zwicky, or information retrieval with David Harry. Even if slightly intimidated, I'm always awed by the depth of my guests' knowledge.

Today my guest was Jordan Kasteler, co-founder of the Internet marketing company Search & Social. After working as an in-house SEO and SEO director for several companies, Jordan decided he had collected the experience and expertise needed to start a new company specializing in, what else, search and social media marketing. Jordan is also a host for the WebmasterRadio program Mobile Presence along with Cindy Krum and Kim Dushinski. Jordan has found the niche marketing platforms that he excels in and has made a name for himself there.

This isn't intended to be a post all about how totally cool Jordan is -- although there's no denying that he is -- but rather, it struck me that Jordan has figured out the secret to successful marketing, not only for clients, but also for himself.

Photo by Nai. via Creative Commons

There are a lot of Internet marketing companies that offer to do it all. It makes sense because it's common for an SEO client to say, "Hey, can you add some link building to that contract of ours?" or "I was reading the other day about Facebook. Is that something you can manage for us?" The needs of each client are different and so every project evolves with its own unique demands. It doesn't make sense to reject a client's request if the request makes sense, right? And the tight economy has increased the frequency of such dilemmas because turning away work just isn't an option.

But this kind of necessity can lead marketers down a precarious path where they spread themselves too thin amongst services that aren't their strong suit. Contrary to intuition, the best thing for a marketer in this position might be to narrow the focus of their services rather than broaden them. By specializing in one field you can devote more time and energy into being the very best.

At Web Marketing Today, Dr. Ralph Wilson wrote a great guide to finding and defining your niche. Although it was published in 2004, the lessons it holds are evergreen. Ask yourself what you enjoy most. Brainstorm a list of keywords that describe those fields. Research the supply and demand of those keywords and the average bid price. And, finally, check out the competition in that field. If something jumps out that you like to do and are good at, that is a newly emerging field with great potential or that isn't saturated with competitors, you've found yourself a winner. Then again, you can flourish in even the most established and competitive fields if your determination and expertise rise above the rest.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 05/ 6/09 at 5:20 PM | Comments (2)
See more entries in SEM Industry, SEM Synergy, Social Media

April 16, 2009

Copy Cats and Wannabes of Web 2.0? The Social Media Expert

It's mind boggling. MarketingSherpa's chart of the week indicates that two-thirds of marketers with no social media experience consider themselves somewhat knowledgeable or very knowledgeable about social media strategy.

How Knowledgeable Are Marketers With No Social Media Experience?

Social media is today's big thing, finding its way onto every other blog, being used by everyone and their dog. I find myself reading about social media constantly. So, forgive me for adding to the cacophony, but this new study makes me wonder...

If I had no firsthand experience in social media marketing, it's possible that I might still answer yes to the question, provided a couple assumptions. First, I'd have to assume that knowledge does not require experience. And, of course, that's true. I can have knowledge of an historical phenomenon, the Rain of Fishes, for instance, but that doesn't mean I've experienced it. With me on this?

Second, we can't see the exact question our surveyed group was asked. As far as I can tell, the question could have been, "How familiar are you with social media?" in which case, being a regular user of Facebook and Twitter qualifies me to answer that I'm a somewhat knowledgeable social media user. If, on the other hand, the question was, "What is your expertise level of social media marketing strategy?" then that's another can of worms. I'm willing to give the surveyed group the benefit of the doubt, but that would be really boring for the purpose of this analysis, so let's not.

Assuming that our group of misguided marketers really thinks that because they're on Facebook they're a bona fide social media strategist, MarketingProf's conclusion would follow:

Clearly, there is a disconnect between personal exposure and professional ability that is unique to social media. And this disconnect is one of the most critical dangers to the successful adoption of social media as a marketing strategy.

If unqualified members of the marketing industry indeed are going around claiming the title of social media expert, well, we're in trouble. The social media guru is the next snake oil salesman and the truly experienced have to defend their services from such threats. But if the recession has brought one good thing, it's the fact that the true experts will stand high above imposters as intense scrutiny is projected on results and the bottom line.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 04/16/09 at 5:03 PM | Comments (6)
See more entries in SEM Industry, Social Media

April 7, 2009

Who Owns What on the Web?

Photo by foxypar4 via Creative Commons

It's a tricky question that's found its way into the spotlight yet again. As newspapers cry foul and the Associated Press goes for the kill (whether murder or suicide is yet to be seen), Danny Sullivan's response to traditional media publishers' misunderstanding of the Web environment shines a clear new light on the conversation. With the Web we've created a virally propagated content staging ground and, like a germ during flu season, it can be hard to figure out the point of origin.

I don't have any new answers to the media's desires to have their cake and eat it too -- how to maintain full ownership and receive search-driven traffic at once. But, at the risk of adding to the echo chamber, I'd like to play a little connect the dots. Let's see how tangled our Web of online content has become.

Traditional Media

Photo by Matt Callow via Creative Commons

As Danny points out in his piece above, Google has continually introduced features and implementations aimed at rewarding the old-schoolers of the news world. The ACAP, admittance into Google News long before anyone else, and even the Vince algo update are all measures that give more control and credibility (a la rankings) to long-established publishers. The truth is, the search giant just can't keep everyone happy -- no matter what they do.

The AP, not satisfied taking aim at only bloggers, is concocting schemes, like charging Google to obtain licensing agreements. Fortunately, it appears there are a few level-headed publishers left:

At a time when newspaper revenue is collapsing and some papers are closing, the prospect of a share of revenue from Yahoo or Google is more tempting than ever. But executives at some news organizations have called the ire at the search engines misguided, saying that much of their own Web traffic arrives through links on search pages.

Social Media Networks

Image by Mathias Pastwa via Creative Commons

As I see it, the social media space is host to two different content ownership dilemmas. The first is similar to that of traditional media -- the content producer vs. the traffic generator. Social bookmarking Digg set the standard for ethical content aggregation; that is, until they introduced DiggBar this week. The new feature directs users to the content through iframes hosted on the site, keeping users and spiders on Digg. Content creators are frustrated after losing many benefits from the traffic Digg previously generated when linking directly to the site.

On the other side of the social media content puzzle is the question of who owns the account -- the employee or the company? The advent of social media has hit some companies unexpectedly, and the challenges of the new communication technologies are still being sorted out. Company time vs. personal time and company accounts vs. personal accounts can fall under fuzzy designations. The obvious solution is to set out ownership beforehand, but if your company was scrambling to catch up in the social media realm, that conversation may not have happened. Regardless of what occurred when the account was created, it's likely that a lot of value and resources were invested in that account by all parties involved, so cut-and-dry ownership can be hard to determine.

User Content

Photo by Michell Zappa via Creative Commons

When one Pennsylvania couple sued Google for taking pictures of their private property for use in Street View, the judge ruled that the images did not constitute invasion of privacy. Kinda throws into question the concept of private property, doesn't it?

Then there's the content generated by users on the Web in what are believed to be "private" spaces. Facebook did a little hokey pokey dance when it changed its terms of service and then changed them back again. At first the social network wanted to claim ownership of users' data, but an angry mob convinced Facebook that wasn't the best idea. Now a project in the UK will attempt to archive Internet traffic over the next year. E-mails, VOIP telephone calls and Web history are all subject to the directive.

Obviously there are complex ownership issues that have emerged among search engines, content producers, social networks and individual users online. The Web is so named because everything is connected, but all the sticky situations seem pretty fitting, too.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 04/ 7/09 at 5:15 PM | Comments (6)
See more entries in Google, New Media, News & PR, SEM Industry, Search Engines, Social Media

March 26, 2009

An Update on Social Media Optimization

This session of the Social Media & Blogging track has a power lineup. Our moderator is
Kevin Newcomb, managing editor of Search Engine Watch. The speakers are: Liana Evans, director of Internet marketing at KeyRelevance; Dave Snyder, co-founder of Search & Social; Benu Aggarwal, founder and president of Milestone Internet Marketing; Marty Weintraub, president of aimClear; and Chris Winfield, president of 10e20, LLC.

Kevin says that they'll be covering basics as well as advanced concepts of social media to set the stage for the rest of the track today.

Liana Evans is up first.

Social Media's Rise: The Emergence and Rise of Mass Social Media

Rather than just passively accept marketing, people can share and express their experiences with like-minded people. As they do that the market is taking notice that this is where people are going to talk about us. Another industry has risen out of that.

The basics:

• Integral part of marketing plans (strategy)
• Complements sound SEO and PPC practices
• A medium to specifically strategize for
• Difficult and time consuming
• Has many different facets
• About conversations
• Not the same for everyone

People don't like to be marketed to in social media. It's about the end user and the new signals to search engines. It's no just about who is in your audience; it's about where they are.

Video sharing, social networks, photo sharing -- it's more than Digg and Facebook. Creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators and inactives are the different profiles of social media users. Most people are watching videos.

Define Your Goals Before Setting Out

There's a lot you can measure. Barack Obama did it right. He understood his audience. He started the conversation in the community. He added videos and his YouTube channel had more than 19 million views. It led to people creating their own videos. He put his photos on Flickr. This also led to people putting up their own photos. He started a LinkedIn profile and a BlackPlanet profile and discussions sprung up. His team tweeted, and it led to people talking and discussing him. He's dominating the SERPs with all these profiles.

Dave Snyder is next. The biggest problem he sees in SM is the cookie cutter approach. Every brand, consumer and social media platform is different. You can't anticipate that every social media campaign would be successful with the same tactics. When the cookie cutter goes wrong you're seeing practices that cost time and money. He'll be pointing out mistakes that companies have made to learn from.

Overstock.com put a community on their site that nobody used. It became a haven for spam. So then they tried to do it again on Facebook. In the last year only 20 comments were made. In 2007 another SMO meltdown happened. The put a feed into people's Facebook streams about purchases made on Overstock. People tweeting for the company put up irrelevant things like birds pooping on your head. Papa Johns has been abusing their Twitter feed by just saying "buy pizza" all the time.

Keep away from the cookie cutter:

• Find out where your consumers play.
• Find out the kind of content that plays best on those platforms.
• Don't be afraid of the niche.
• Don't be afraid to lose the big brand names.
• Set measurable goals before your campaign.
• Use an analytical approach to measurement.

There are lots of ways to measure social media. Many social platforms offer analytics solutions as well.

The number one rule is that you get what you give.

Benu Aggarwal is next and she asks how many people have found themselves in a management nightmare when it comes to social media. It is coming from the agency/customer side -- what are the easy tools to help you integrate your online and offline campaigns in a packaged format.

Decide which profiles you are going to play in. Then put each in a bucket: social networks, UGC, articles/news/events, videos, blogs, bookmarking, and photos.

UGC: What Should You Do?

• Create and enhance your profiles in the online UGC channels.
• How to enhance your profile?
  • Photos, descriptions, links, videos
  • Tag with most important keywords
  • Buy sponsored listings/banners in UGC channels
  • Update information about your product

Online Video Optimized

1. Keyword research, content, voice over
2. Optimize existing videos, develop video from photos or create an HD informative video
3. Encode the video
4. Surround video with HTML
5. Create media RSS

Online Photos

• Create a profile for your brand or business on photo sharing sites
• Upload pictures and tag them with relevant keyword phrases
• Reference your business photo sharing profiles on local profiles
• Reference pictures uploaded on these profiles while writing blog posts or content
• Reference pictures on community map

Be sure to include all your SM profiles in your local listings.

Personal Social Networks

• Create a business profile
• Add widgets, Twitter feeds, blog feed, Flickr account feed, YouTube feed
• Join Groups and Association networks, add special offers, give away whitepapers, tutorials, etc.
• MySpace can be customized in design

Blogs

Take into account your online marketing plan, do keyword research, think of design and development and promotion. Decide the architecture of your blog based on all of that. If it's not doing well, put your blog on your home page and include all the social media profiles. When her company did that the PageRank of the social media profiles went up.

Pulling It All Together

Invite users to join social media networks with a social media dash board. Create an incentive, for instance with time sensitive offers. If you have a Facebook account, check out the plugins that area available.

Marty Weintraub is going to share the things that blow his mind the most.

You can use PPC for SEO multivariate testing. PPC moves much faster and is precise and controllable. You can prove your funnels, conversion, design and more. This kind of testing validates your instincts. You can test SM ideas on Twitter. If you tweet it and it gets a lot of interest that's positive feedback. Twitter is a great research tool. It's a real time proving ground. Test blog post topics, headlines and so much more. With TweetDeck you can have great demographic filtering. Find out if your demographic is talking about the subject.

There's a new intersection of content management and social media. You have to be able to publish yourself in the proper way. It's possible to pre-wire powerful personal distribution networks and touch millions of users quickly. Auto-push your feeds to Twitter.

Great marketing starts with your team members. Use an inside out strategy and identify insiders who are already active. Expand the inner circle and give them a reason to care.

Do the math. If you have 5,000 people in your first degree circle, multiply it by about however many people they are connected to.

Crappy sock puppets are dead! Long live professional avatars! (He's using a sock on his hand as a puppet!) People want actual engaged ambassadors, not fake LinkedIn or Facebook "people". Be authentic and holistic, whether using your actual name or not. Complement your brand with superior resources and it won't help if you're not likable. He makes the wise recommendation not to out bloggers. ;)

Chris Winfield is up next with back to the basics of SMM. With all the new sites/mediums, make sure you use what works for you. Companies are investing in the wrong thing. Look at your logs and analytics to see where people are coming from. Ask customers or potential customers where they spend their time and make buying decisions.

Experiment, test and try new things. But don't get caught up in the hype. If something isn't working for you, don't waste your time. Balance what works for you:

• Facebook pages vs. Facebook groups
• Micro-blogging vs. forums
• Flickr groups vs. wikis

Too many people totally ignore forums. But if that's where your customers are every day, participating in that will be one of the most effective uses of your time. Big-forums.com ranks forums by users, comments, etc., and you might be surprised at where people are.

Strategy:

• Join communities and participate
• You get out what you put in
• Don't use Twitter just to tweet
• Mix Twitter with other mediums

How large sites work:

You're on Digg. Digg connects to TechCrunch, Lifehacker, TMZ, which feeds to Reddit, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Facebook, and these are seen by more and more people who share with mainstream press and forums and non-profits and aggregators.

Niche social news sites are great for gaining a targeted audience and building relevant links. Digg won't work for everyone but you can find a targeted niche social news site for you. There are about 40 that he thinks could work well for niche markets. It will be less people but it will be very targeted. Become a contributor in your niche. Smaller communities mean it's easier to reach the home page.

Finance:

• Tip'd
• Feed the Bull
• Motley Fool Caps
• Value Investing News

Products and commerce:

• Dealspl.us
• iliketotallyloveit
• Dealigg
• ThisNext

Sports and leisure:

• ArmchairGM
• BallHype
• Yardbarker
• AutoSpies

Art and design:

• Design Float
• PhotographyVoter
• PixelGroovy

There are more and he'll put them on the 10e20 blog tomorrow.

Final tips:

• Find out what works through tests
• Scrap what doesn't work
• Be active and helpful in communities
• Leverage different social sites -- if a blogger picks you up, promote it like it's your own
• Find your niche

Q&A

Kevin starts of the questions: Some say there's a right and wrong way for social media. Do you have guidelines for ethics or appropriateness?

Li: What would my mom or grandma think about what I'm doing? It's about being honest and transparent.

Dave: What's going to make me money is his guiding principle. Social media ethics are a fallacy -- if he's not hurting anyone he's not doing anything wrong. The grey things he may do may serve better content than people who serve things "ethically" (air quotes).

Chris: Look at the same things as SEO. Look at the type of company and the potential repercussions. A smaller company may have a higher risk threshold than a Fortune 500.

Benu: Small businesses may get excited about things they don't understand. They may not have the bandwidth or the time to invest. Let them know.

Marty: He's first concerned about what the law says. You don't want you or your client getting sued. The other thing is the topic of brand ambassador avatars. He thinks it's okay to manipulate to serve people as long as the friendships you make are real.

If you have a multi-lingual company and are on social sites, can you write social content in both languages?

Chris: Check out mediame (I'm not sure if I got that right). Use that as an example of what to do. Content can get popular there if you translate it into Spanish. It's okay if just a straight translation.

Li: If your audience already expects you to be bilingual, then using more than one language on one page is okay. And it won't hurt you to be in two places if they expect you to be in both places anyway.

Are you seeing lifts from older social media activities?

Everyone cries out an adamant "yes".

I've heard clients that are fearful of giving up their secrets on social media.

Chris: Companies can't be entering social media because they think it's cool. There have to be goals, like links and traffic. He wouldn't suggest companies give up secrets. A big mistake companies make is going from zero to 60. Pick where you can specialize and drive business results.

Benu: Last year she gave tips for social media in a YouTube video. Companies were sharing the video. If you know something, don't be afraid to share. It's not about knowing, it's about doing. There will be few people that will actually do it even if they know how.

Can you make your competitors social media efforts less successful?

Benu: Make you content better than theirs.

Marty: Make your tools for communicating more relevant. Render your competitors obsolete by removing all of your communication barriers.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/26/09 at 8:59 AM | Comments (2)
See more entries in Liveblog, SES New York 2009, Social Media

March 25, 2009

Small Voices, Big Impact: Social Media for the Little Guy

Good morning and welcome to day two of SES New York. Forget the pleasantries; I skipped coffee this morning after an argument with my alarm clock. And Kim Krause Berg of cre8pc and Lisa Barone of Outspoken Media are both blogging this one as well. I see Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR and Mike McDonald of Web Pro News up front as well. I should probably skip over to another session to avoid this battle of the bloggers. Instead I'm just going to make this good.

The moderator is Stoney deGeyter, president of Pole Position Marketing. Our speakers are Amber Naslund, director of community at Radian6; Jennifer Evans Laycock, director of social media at SiteLogic; Christina Kerley, marketing specialist at ckEpiphany; and Tim Kendall, director of monetization at Facebook.

It's going to be mostly Q&A but Jennifer Laycock is going to start off with an overview.

Social media marketing is the name but it's really about conversations. You have to get in conversations with your customers so you can improve your business.

Social media is the bleeding edge of marketing -- they call it that because it hurts. Technologies pop up and clones come along, there's always the next big thing. Social media existed before Facebook and Twitter. It's anything online that lets people connect with one another.

It's not about finding the next big thing. Look for what has already taken hold and go there. This is how you get the biggest audience. Focus your efforts on the established areas. The people at the frontlines are also marketers -- not the people you're trying to reach.

She shows an XKCD comic of the map of online communities.

Consumers Hunt for Info --> Social Media Conversations <-- Marketers Hunting for Consumers

Social Media Launch Point: Flickr

This platform is largely ignored by marketers. But images are very powerful. The people on Flickr are very engaged because they're already taking the time to post their pictures. There is conversation taking place about products and businesses.

Flickr can also be a tool on the links front. You won't get link juice but you can get engaged traffic. You can post pics with links in the description. If you have anything that's visual about your products or services, do some research and see if that's somewhere you can be. [More on the value of Flickr for link building from Lisa's great article for Search Engine Land.]

Why you love it: Flickr is affordable -- $25/year for a pro account -- and it's easy to access.

Social Media Launch Point: Twitter

She describes Twitter as a giant wall covered in post-it notes. You could read a huge amount of conversation, but you want to narrow it down to what is important to you. There are also messages about you. Twitter search makes it possible to narrow down the conversations.

The power of the retweet is that things you say get shared to more networks than just your own. This is what makes Twitter great for news and viral sharing. You can also ask for feedback quickly.

Why you love it: You can use it anywhere and it's easy to get started.

Social Media Launch Point: YouTube

YouTube is being ignored in favor of sexier, newer mediums, but it's really only second in search market share to Google. You can optimize YouTube content the same way as content on your site. The Will It Blend campaign from Blendtec is a great example of using YouTube for marketing right. It's catchy and an entertaining and it also proves the value of the product. The first five videos cost roughly $100. These videos got covered by the Today Show, Newsweek and the NY Times. Their online sales quadrupled. Greg Jarboe pops in to say Blendtec saw a 700 percent increase in online sales (as a result of the campaign).

Why you love it: You can organize, customize and utilize YouTube videos.

Social Media Launch Point: Networks

LinkedIn is often overlooked because people don't know how to use it. One of the big benefits is figuring out how you're connected to someone. If you're looking to connect with someone, find out who you know also knows them.

The Value Triangle

Blogs and articles (the top is the widest point)
Social reviews
Discussion forums
Search results
Social news
Microblogging (the bottom is the narrowest point)

More context is at the top and more competition for attention is at the bottom. Figure out where you'll get the most bang for your buck.

Q&A

How has marketing changed?

Christina: Overall, think of where you before you purchase something. We're looking for our information from other customers rather than salespeople. That's the biggest thing that's changed. The other thing that's changed is how the marketing message is delivered. Now it's back and forth rather than just one way.

Amber: The pace and volume is what's overwhelming to marketers today. You have to be incredibly targeted and focused in talking to the people you want to talk to.

Jennifer: It hasn't changed as much as it's taken us back to a long time ago. 100 years ago you'd go to the same vendor for your meat and they'd know what cut of meat you like and even save it for you. Then the big box retailers came on the scene and you weren't known personally. Now consumers have the option to choose who they want to purchase from -- anywhere around the world.

Christina: The tools have broken down the boundaries and extend your reach. You can give a small business type customer service even though you're a big business.

How do you pull yourself away from traditional marketing? Social media takes a log of opportunity cost but traditional media costs a lot up front but you don't have to manage it.

Amber: She works for a small software startup that started in 2006. She says that the company has spent less than $2000 on traditional media. They knew that the opportunity cost was high but by building organically over time, the customers are intensely loyal and those who aren't customers are fans because of the community building, engendering good will even though they've never done business with them.

What if your audience skews older and isn't really involved with social media?

Christina: There's a misunderstanding that only the young are on social networking sites. There are more seniors that are joining online communities. For those that aren't, it's a great opportunity to introduce them to the new online tools. It has to be done in simple ways, which will make marketers better communicators.

Jennifer: We forget sometimes about all the things that count as social media. Blogs are clicked on through search engine results. Product reviews are filled out on Amazon. People are doing those things and reporting that they don't take part in social media.

Amber: The reason it's important to investigate is to find whether or not social media is right for your business. It's not right for every business but you have to find out.

Christina: If nothing else, use social media for research. You don't have to write a blog but you do have to listen. You'd be amazed at what you can find out for free.

What are the top ways that Facebook is being monetized? What do you see small business taking advantage of?

Tim: FB is primarily getting money through advertising. They have two types of offerings. The brand offering is an engagement ad that shows up on the right side. They also have a self-service PPC offering. You can target your ad very granularly. The primary tool they see people using are Facebook pages. There are seeing a lot of businesses getting good distribution through the presence of a Facebook page and people can choose to affiliate themselves with you.

What is keeping business from jumping into social media?

Christina: Businesses are mostly afraid of people that will speak negatively about the product or service. But they'll be giving you your feedback freely. 99 percent of the time it works out really well.

Amber: Social media didn't create criticism. It's just easier to hear it. Her company is big on listening and engagement because they recognize that when someone is complaining about you, they just want someone to listen. You can help them and are given an opportunity to fix their situation. It's an opportunity to respond in a way that's never been available.

How can reach out to people within a radius of your location?

Christina: On Twitter you can target you geography. On Facebook you can as well. Use the tools to filter the information to geo-specific conversations.

We're going to see another presentation now, this time by Tim Kendall.

Building your customer base with Facebook

How do you create a presence? Build a profile. You can customize depending on what type of customers are coming. People who are already fans will see a wall with the latest information. For people coming for the first time, you can default to a different tab and put out a flashy message.

There's an ability to share photos, video and other multimedia content. That shows up on the wall and is published in front of all the people following you on Facebook. Another cool thing you get is insights into who's on your page. Page views, uniques, fans, gender and age are all broken down, among other things. You can tailor your marketing campaigns based on these insights.

The most important thing to remember about these pages is that they can be powerful distribution tools. A user can show that they "like" a piece of content. It's a lightweight way to show you like something and it's shared with their friends as well.

In the ad space, there's paid search. It's a good way to show something to someone who has explicitly said they are interested in something. But there are a lot of people who maybe aren't searching for a product but they'd still be interested in buying it. Facebook is an effective way to reach those customers before it occurs to them to search. For ads you can target by city or state, you can target by age and sex and relationship status.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/25/09 at 8:27 AM | Comments (2)
See more entries in Liveblog, SEO Tips & Tricks, SES New York 2009, Social Media

March 24, 2009

Beyond Googling: Where Will Your Customers Be Searching in Five Years?

After stepping into the wrong session with a similar name, I'm coming in a few minutes late to this search and the future session.

Anne Kennedy is currently on the podium. She is the managing partner and founder of Beyond Ink and is also on the SES Advisory Board. It sounds like in her presentation the future is all about video. Although, I heard some talk of mobile as I walked in.

ComScore says that in the UK, the mobile video audience has increased 10 percent. In the U.S. it's doubled.

Points to ponder

• Online U.S. ad spending will increase despite declining total advertising spending.
• Now nascent video online advertising will grow most.

What's in it for Google?

• Google YouTube = video platform
• Google TV = video ad platform

Suppose Nike could:

• Broadcast a game on YouTube.
• Embed a link or two.
• Would their viewers bcome buyers?

Small screen video is the next big thing in search

Concrete Networks TV in 2 years had 1 million views. DIY searches on YouTube are greater in quantity than traditional Google traffic to their site.

Pauline Ores is next and is going to go outside the box with the deep Web and semantic search. She is also on the SES advisory Board and is senior marketing manager of social media engagement at IBM. She asks if people have heard of the deep Web. The public info on the deep Web is currently 400 to 550 times larger than the commonly defined World Wide Web.

The deep Web contains nearly 550 billion individual documents.

The other thing she hears people talk about is the semantic Web. If she's looking for a pizzeria, she has more requirements, such as equidistant between her friends, gluten-free for the vegan, etc. Semantic Web would be able to handle all these questions for you.

Deep Web and semantic Web are more complex than the current Meta data now available through current search engines. Deep content has to do with expertise. The best way to get into a database like that is to find someone who specializes in that. Semantic is something people are better at than current algorithms. Tourists in NY stop her all the time to find something located between such and such places. She thinks that beyond the Meta model will be another model. She says that that's been started with human-based Web resources. The artificial intelligence of computers is not going to be as good as humans. As far as search engines, it'll be about figuring out the semantic and getting to more deep, niche content. Social media can help with the semantic needs.

John Marshall, the moderator and CTO of Market Motive, says that Yahoo Answers and Mahalo are much more successful than Google's Answers program. But Anne says that that model was pre-social. Now people go to Twitter to ask their network for help and answers. It's still possible that people can utilize those networks.

Frank Watson is next to talk about Twitter. He is the CEO of Kangamurra Media. John says that in the session they aren't going to predict that Twitter as a company or brand is going to be able to do all the following, but the technology in general.

Frank says that he had a script worked out but he walked out to get a newspaper this morning and the front page was about a woman tweeting her giving birth. He says the existence of an alternative has to make you smile.

Twittering, Tweeple, Twilly

People like communing and being social. There are a number of services built on Twitter (TwitLinks, TweetValue, twhirl, TwitPic, tsurch, etc.). There are a lot of companies making money on Twitter because it generates serious traffic.

Could Twitter be Google's Excite?

• Google should buy Twitter
• Alta Vista, Lycos, Excite
• GoTo -- Overture -- AdSense

Real Time Search

• Natural disasters
• Major accidents
• Newswire
• Polls

How Google loses

• Real time search may be seen as better.
• Ask friends instead of search engines.
• Momentum can cause change.
• Greater Twitter traffic sources seen.

How Google wins

• Becomes too spammy.
• Something else comes along.
• Google buys it.
• Everyeone gets bored.
• Twitter gets eaten by whales.

John says that when he hears about new technologies, he feels like he did 15 years ago when he tried to explain email to his parents. A key way to think about things is email is for old people. Pauline says that her kids think of email as FedEx. Anne says that her kids have figured out that to reach her they DM her and it shows up in her email.

Q&A

What monitoring tools would you recommend for brand and reputation management?

Frank says that you can use Search.Twitter but there are a number of other tools. Guy mentioned some good ways to do keyword monitoring. Anne says that you can build a dashboard to monitor via iGoogle. Check it out at sempdx.com

How do you differentiate between innovative branding and innovative technology when there are so many fast-changing channels.

Frank: You don't absolutely know but you might as well surf the good waves while they're around. It's hard to say but as an industry you look at it and you know that the social media elements are taking over a lot of our communication. As a technology, search is more than just search engines. Take opportunities to monetize all of the elements that are growing into what we do.

Pauline: What peers say is very important. Doing CRM is a big part of what you can do and it's blending into Twitter.

Frank: There's a Salesforce app for Twitter now. There's a lot of information out there.

Google is taking over the world and buying everything, but how's it going to work in the future? Is all information about us going to be sold? Are the things we're searching always going to be private?

Pauline: You are being tracked and we don't want Minority Report to be a reality.

Anne: The ACLU has said that we give up our privacy for convenience. It is something to remain concerned about. As much as we may not like it, it's reality. Stay vigilant.

Pauline: At some point you do need regulations because it's not the big bad Google that's selling your data; it's organizations that are compiling lots of little things and putting the pieces together.

There's a lot of search happening on social. There's also a lot of social results coming up in search. What do you think of that cross-over?

Frank: He says it's great for reputation management. If you have something you want to push down you can try to move up social pages by registering for more.

Anne: It was inevitable and here we are.

John: Social media is more transient. If you think you can use Twitter because it's focused on real time, content then appears on search. Social pages are now treated as a peer of other results, but he wouldn't be surprised if Google started to devalue social pages since they change so quickly.

Anne: As marketers we have to be aware of new things and how to use them. Start thinking of the new models and how to use them.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/24/09 at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Liveblog, SES New York 2009, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media

Opening Keynote by Guy Kawasaki: Twitter as a Tool for Social Media

After a harrowing plane ride and the revelry of the IM Charity Party, it's time to get down to business. Welcome to SES New York!

A couple weeks ago I attended a webcast preview of this morning's presentation by Guy Kawasaki. Based on the discussion spurred then, I think I'm not the only one looking forward to what Guy has to say today. I'm a little rusty in the liveblogging department but let's see if I can do this presentation justice.

I see Guy up on the stage now staring intently at a computer screen. Any bets he's tweeting?

I'm skipping Kevin's intro in favor of figuring out the wireless.

Guy asks how many people are on Twitter right now. A big chunk of the audience raises their hand. He says there are people who are going to say "Guy thinks everyone should go out and spam Twitter, so just start the rumors now."

He loves Twitter because it democratizes the social media space. No matter who you are, you get 140 characters.

How about a historical example? In ice harvesting, there was ice 1.0. It needed to be winter, you had horses to do the heavy pulling and a saw to cut blocks of ice. In ice 2.0 there were ice factories -- the ability to make it cold no matter where you were. Ice 3.0 was the refrigerator curve. Instead of going to the ice factory, you have your own PC - personal chiller.

On the Web, 1.0 was Web sites. 2.0 is blogging -- anyone can do it. Version 3.0 of online marketing is a tweet. He loves Twitter and thinks it's the most powerful tool in online marketing. You can reach hundreds of thousands of people and it's free.

1. Forget the A List

With blogs, you needed the famous to promote your stuff. Their wisdom would trickle down to the masses and get you in front of eyeballs. The new mental model is not trickling down but bubbling up. The beauty of people is that people can find you. Don't ignore the A List -- TechCrunch can still get you lots of traffic. But there are people in the community that loves what you do and embraces what you do, bubbles up for you and becomes your evangelist.

2. De-Focus

In the Twitter world, in the social media world you don't know who will be your most useful follower. Rather than the top dogs it's always some person that you've never heard of that will carry your message forward for you.

3. Get lots of followers

Twitter is a numbers game. If you want stuff to bubble up, you need more swamps. This is controversial because some people believe that rather than numbers, it's about the depth of relationships. He doesn't buy it and says it's a game of big numbers. Here are some tips for getting big numbers.

He says he was late to the Twitter game -- he didn't understand why he would want to know about someone's cat. Side lesson: if someone unfollows you, it's not necessarily okay to unfollow them back. Twitter is not rational.

Step 1: Follow everyone back that follows you. He goes to SocialToo.com. It monitors all followers and auto-follows back. He thinks it's inherently arrogant that you're more worthy of following than the person following you. The other reason he follows back is that he wants to enable people to DM him. He only deals with @s and DMs -- that means he's more open to discussion that way.

Step 2: The best measure of how valuable your tweets are is the number of retweets. He goes to Retweetist.com, which is what he uses to measure his retweets. He's in a competition with Pete Cashmore at Mashable to see who gets more retweets. He's currently number one. Retweeting is the highest form of flattery.

Step 3: Followers are not the best measure of how successful your tweeting is. TwitterCounter.com shows that Barack Obama is at the top of the list. He points to Twitter's suggested users and says that being in that box automatically gives you a huge advantage. Twitalyzer has an algo that he doesn't understand but it takes into account followers, retweets, "generosity", and more. It's another way to figure out your influence on Twitter.

Step 4: Find interesting stuff to tweet. StumbleUpon is very useful for getting more followers. He'll point someone to a good story on SU and then shorten the URL at Adjix which can automatically tweet it. He uses Alltop the same way as SU. There will be someone following him who loves peanut butter cheesecake and they would retweet it.

Adjix is somewhat controversial as well. He says people think that he uses it to get the ad revenue, but that's not true. It has a Firefox button, you can schedule in advance, and it lets you track how many people click on the link. 140 people have already clicked on the peanut butter cheesecake link.

4. Monitor what people are saying about you

He has a dedicated search at Search.Twitter. The search is "guykawasaki OR alltop -alltop.com" (he subtracts to domain so he doesn't have to see people's links to alltop). He watches this all day and responds to people, debate people, etc.

5. Copy other people/companies

Twibs.com tracks what companies are doing on Twitter. Whole Foods, MTV, DunkinDonuts, Comcast, etc. You can find companies to copy and be inspired. Comcastcares is an outstanding example of how to use Twitter as a company. Mr. Comcastcares monitors and responds to all people talking about them on Twitter. When he once tweeted "I'm throwing DirecTV out of my house," an exec called him the next day to find out what's wrong. He understands the argument that not everyone would get that service, but it shows they know what's going on. @amazondeals is doing it right and driving sales through short-term sales broadcast on Twitter. They are worth copying.

6. Search

This was how Guy finally got it. He does a simple Twitter search for "scion" [my car!]. If you sell Scion aftermarket parts, monitor people asking about Scion and you can tweet people that are looking for your service. You can do an advanced search for a radius around a zip code (e.g.: seo near:10019 within:100mi) and find people looking for you within a 50 mile radius. You can see how this could be used for direct marketing.

7. Use the right tools

Tool 1: TweetDeck

The panes (direct messages, searches) let you see lots of things at once. The limitation is that you can only be in one account at a time. He knows they are working on a solution to do this, but now he uses twhirl.

Tool 2: Twhirl

He has two accounts and can see both in one window. Buttons at the bottom let you switch through @s, DMs, etc. in each column/account. You can see that a lot of people are talking about this presentation right now!

Tool 3: CoTweet

It's Web-based for users/companies with multiple accounts. It's still in beta but is powerful for a company with multiple people with Twitter accounts. He thinks it will be very useful when it's released in full.

Tool 4: Tynt

The greatest lie right now is: "It's only one line of JavaScript". But Tynt is a line of JS that when people copy something from your site it will be pasted with a link to the original source. The Tynt dashboard tells you how many times something was copied and even which paragraphs were the most copied.

8. Squeeze the trigger

People are afraid to use Twitter for commercial or marketing purposes, but you need to be able to squeeze the trigger. TwitterHawk.com is interesting because you can set up searches. Auto tweets are generated for people that tweet about a subject you are monitoring. You can auto-send or manually approve.

If you're thinking this is the ultimate spam tool, there are some measures in place. It costs a nickel to reply this way. There are certain blacklisted words (like "the) so that you can't abuse the service. He knows people are saying that this is spam and Guy is a spammer, but he says "tough" -- he can handle it. He also manually approves tweets so that when someone tweets something negative about the search topic, it's not appropriate to send his suggestion to check out Alltop's dedicated page. TwitterHawk records if you've already sent a tweet to someone so you don't send the same tweet twice.

He's not sure that TwitterHawk is good for everyone, but if it's appropriate, it's very useful.

9. Make it easy to share

On Alltop there is a tweet button right on the page that will draft a tweet like "Pretty good stuff about (blank)" and lots of people use this function every day. He thinks that giving too many choices (Digg, SU, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) confuse users. He believes you can just choose Twitter.

Another good way to share is Twitterfeed. It's is a tool that lets you feed your RSS into your tweets. It also lets other people sign up to your feed and they will also automatically tweet your tweet. The downside is that if you're following those people, you'll see those tweets again. But an unanticipated upside is that it is a convo starter for those signed up to retweet your Twitterfeed.

10. Take the heat: UFM

You'll get heat that you're a spammer, that you're not using Twitter right. That it should only be used as a social networking tool. There are people that believe that and it's legitimate, but there are other legitimate ways to tweet. To those who disagree he says "UFM" -- unfollow me.

So there you go. Twitter as a marketing tool. Maybe you can make Twitter work for you as a marketing tool, too.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/24/09 at 9:04 AM | Comments (2)
See more entries in Liveblog, SES New York 2009, Social Media

March 16, 2009

Highlights from This Month's SEO Newsletter

The SEO Newsletter touched down in your inbox and on our site this afternoon. Feel free to subscribe if you enjoy a healthy monthly dose of comprehensive Internet marketing news and articles. For those who require a little persuasion before committing precious time to an article, this is what you can look forward to in this month's featured articles.

Press Release Basics for SEO Success

BC's senior tech writer Paula Allen covers the bases of optimizing press releases. From SEO considerations to the distribution channels that will give you the most bang for your buck to tips for attracting social media visibility, look no further for an intro guide to search engine optimization through public relations.

This Wednesday, TopRank Online Marketing's Lee Odden will be presenting a webinar in partnership with RPWeb. The webinar, Using Your News to Drive SEO, will focus on tactics to take advantage of news search and the potential traffic it can generate. As mentioned in the article, social media marketing can be connected to online PR with stellar results. Once your press release is live, don't forget to monitor the buzz.

10 Engaging Ways to Incorporate Engagement Objects

Katie Wertz brings you a quick-and-dirty top-ten list of engagement object ideas. Well-known features such as videos and images sit alongside the less-touted polls, maps and macros. I won't give it all away here, but each category includes an example or two that will stir up engagement, if not your lunch. (I swear I'm talking about the meatloaf cake and not Christopher Hart's serenade.) [I am absolutely having meatloaf for dinner. Nom nom nom. --Susan]

There are plenty of resources out there to help get your creative juices flowing. Copyblogger has explained how the rule of three is a magic number for engagement, bringing storytelling, stickiness and humor to a whole new level. In fact, I think crafting your content around any number helps draw in eyeballs. As David Snyder of Search & Social points out, there are no hard rules (or ethics) in social media. The key is to have an idea of what works in your niche and with people in general.

So there's your taste of what's going on in this month's newsletter. If I've whet your appetite, turns out these topics and more are covered in great detail in our upcoming SEO All-In-One Desk Reference for Dummies. When the time comes, you can bet we'll be sharing our big news through PR channels and engagement objects. 'Cause hey, even a two-inch thick instructional manual can be engaging.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 03/16/09 at 5:25 PM | Comments (4)
See more entries in Linking Strategy, News & PR, SEO Tips & Tricks, Social Media

February 19, 2009

True Confessions of a Boring Blogger

Hi, my name's Virginia and I used to be boring.

I'm here today because I get it.

No, I think I finally get it.

Marketing. The science. The art. Its value to humanity. Its relationship building potential. Its place in this whole big world of ours. I get it now.

It started as a directive.

For some time now I've watched the number of comments flat line on the blog. Since I took on the job of BCI's main blogger, page views have been down, comments have been down, and the reputation for being a constant source of search industry insight has all but disappeared. I silently pondered the problem... until Bruce called me out.

Two weeks ago I got an email from the big guy. He had noticed. Where were the comments on the blog? Where were the Sphinns? The social media nods? The community? He asked Susan and I to think of ways to remedy this, to get conversations going, to increase engagement. And there it was. I couldn't ignore the glaring omission any longer. Something had to be done. But first, we had to figure out what had gone wrong.

The problem was actually obvious.

To me, at least. There had been one very big change and it stood as a clear divider between the time people shared and cared about the Bruce Clay, Inc. blog and the time people, well, stopped. Lisa Barone, long the heart and soul of the blog, had left and taken her loyal readers with her. She'd taken her quirky personality, ruthless pursuit of ethics and insatiable appetite for speaking her mind. And of course, that's what people were really after when they stopped by.

Luckily for all of us, Lisa wasn't gone long. I don't think I'm alone in saying that at her new home, Outspoken Media, she's more inspiring than ever. Lisa clearly gets it. No, she lives it. There are no half-schemed attempts to fill blank space. Every word channeled through her keyboard adds meaning or perspective or a new dimension to conversation. The people she connects with become more than colleagues -- they become friends. Although I had set out to carry on her tradition, I was missing this essential understanding. I was doomed from the start.

So I studied the masters.

Scott Polk turned me on to Gary Vaynerchuk after he returned from Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas last month. Gary had delivered the opening keynote of the conference and he shared with me the video that is available online. Man, that is a keynote. Gary, like Lisa, is someone who gets the power and potential of online relationships. The key, he explains, is that successful communication is based on "cool", "real" and "authentic" interactions. The Internet is merely a tool for communication. People love each other, and the reason social media has taken off so fast is because we crave connections.

And then it struck me.

I had spent so much time and energy writing content that I had overlooked the point of sharing it. On my social networks I had continually reaped the benefits of the stories and links and opinions shared while rarely ever contributing to the conversation. After taking so much without giving anything back, it could come as no surprise that apathy started to creep in to people's opinion of the blog -- of me.

Yesterday Tony Adam wrote a blog post about a common issue he's noticed on the social networking front. Too many times he's seen people growing their network at the expense of building quality relationships. When networks become too big, when the content you're pushing pollutes feed readers, when value becomes lost in the noise, the odds of really reaching people diminish. I commented that the opposite holds true, too -- I see these issues as two sides of the same coin. When the give-and-take nature of communication becomes lopsided the message is lost.

And there you have it. My latest adventure in a journey toward marketing enlightenment. It's humbling, and I know I'm still learning, but I think I finally get the big picture. The truth I found is that good marketing occurs when everyone wins. It's not about comments, a paycheck or cleverly crafted prose. It's about you and me and the electricity we feel when we talk to each other -- when we really share.

So let me start. One thing you may not know about me is that I don't like to make the same mistake twice. I don't intend to.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 02/19/09 at 5:06 PM | Comments (22)
See more entries in Blogging, Branding, Social Media

January 20, 2009

An Internet Inauguration

Photo credit mobileme via Creative Commons

Happy Inauguration Day!

It's an historic day for our nation. America's first African-American president has been sworn in. A record-setting two million people attended the inauguration ceremony. And for the first time an astounding number of viewers watched the event via the Internet.

This morning my colleagues and I gathered around a computer monitor to see the 44th president of the United States take office. We could have chosen from a number of live streaming broadcasts, but we chose CNN.com's coverage of the event, which featured the ground-breaking integration of Facebook statuses.

Through the power of the Internet we skipped the lines at inaugural balls, compared the new and former administrations' open door policies, and shared our thoughts and photos as history was written.

In his speech, President Obama declared:

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends -- honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- these things are old.

And that about sums it up. We're connecting with one another -- the most basic of human desires -- through new technologies that help us to communicate more quickly and efficiently. Our new administration knows that. Savvy Internet adoption helped Obama get elected in the first place, and the administration will continue to leverage the Internet moving forward.

Many of us are looking ahead, optimistic of what the future holds. Take bloggers, for instance. If the newly launched White House blog doesn't give new-found respect to the title of blogger, I don't know what will.

Update: Over at Mashable, Mark Ghuneim shared some great graphs of social media usage during the inauguration.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 01/20/09 at 5:03 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in New Media, Social Media

January 14, 2009

SEM Synergy Extras

Alternate title: A Spammer in SEO's Clothing

A few times a week, my fellow writer Paula gets a call on her cell phone from a mystery number. The voice on the other end is that of a woman who regrets to inform her that the warranty on her vehicle has expired. Paula, unconcerned yet irritated, hangs up. The calls are just another incarnation of spam.

Efforts to stop the madness have so far been unfruitful. She can't block the number. The message comes from a different number each time. She can't ignore it. What if it's important? She can't tell them to stop calling. It's a recording. I've suggested that she register for the National Do Not Call Registry, but I still receive solicitation calls despite being on the list. Somehow Paula's number fell into the wrong hands and those spammers aren't going to let go until they've wringed some personal information out of her cold dead hands -- a death, I might add, hastened by the incessant spammy phone calls that hound her multiple times each week!

So I've engaged in a bit of hyperbole, but you know what I mean. No one is safe. Gamers are a new favorite target. MP3 spam has been spotted. Forget about a safe haven for social networks. And of course, no matter how many addresses I add to my blocked sender list, the junk emails keep coming. [I've maxed out my allowed blocked senders. Why on earth would there be a maximum? --Susan]

Today's episode of SEM Synergy is all about spam. Since having Matt Cutts as a guest on the show last month, the SEM Synergy team was reminded of how pervasive spam is and how fast it seems to mutate to fit the various media channels present on the Web.

On the show, guest Scott Polk breaks down why social media is such a hot target for spam. Susan, Maryann and I warn of the tactics to steer clear of in order to avoid having your site designated as spam by the search engines. And Bruce explains the increasingly malicious nature of spam, which is more often intentional than accidental these days.

The funny thing about spam is how often it is linked to the search engine optimization community. Social media spam has become a hot topic in the last few years, and those blogging about it seem to have no reservations in labeling spammers as SEOs. By increasing visibility and awareness we might be able to help clean up the image of the SEO community. It's about time, don't you think?

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 01/14/09 at 12:37 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in SEM Industry, SEM Synergy, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media

January 12, 2009

The Trust Factor of Internet Marketing

Photo credit Joe Nangle via Creative Commons

The word of the day is "trust". I imagine it was completely by accident that a number of my favorite bloggers wrote about or touched upon the subject in the last several days, leading me to read several different posts on the topic when I opened my feed reader this Monday morning. I chock it up to some trust-centric telekinetic energy surrounding the search marketing community. That, or everyone's talking about trust because it's a really important factor in online communities, sales and education efforts.

Here's what the blogosphere taught me about trust and the Internet today.

Why Trust Matters & How To Earn It

Over at his Small Business SEM blog, Matt McGee details the role of trust in the current Web economy. Trust makes up the top block of Matt's SEO Success Pyramid. To document the nitty-gritty details of why trust matters and how to earn it, Matt turns to the experts to explain how trust plays into search engine rankings, social media and local search, among other things. The story was tweeted and retweeted a whole bunch this morning, in an ironically fitting display of how trusted content is leveraged in online social communities. It's no coincidence that the SEO Success Pyramid shows buzz and community as the means of climbing the ranks.

Affiliate Summit West - Day 1 Recap

Lisa Barone is a guest blogging for Rae Hoffman while at Affiliate Summit this week. I got a chance to see Lisa in Las Vegas the night before the conference started (well-timed, last-minute family vacation FTW!), so I was very interested to hear about the lessons she has gleaned from the new marketing venture she's embarked on. No stranger to the power of trust, Lisa explained in her day one conference coverage that relationship building is an important aspect of affiliate marketing. What better gauge of the quality of a relationship than the trust one party has for another? Also, it's no stretch to see how building relationships, and in turn, trust, aren't only necessary in affiliate marketing. It's important for all marketing and, really, life in general!

7 Reasons Your Social Media Marketing Failed (and how to fix it!)

Likewise, successful social media marketing depends on trust. Todd Malicoat writes on his blog Stuntdubl.com that forgetting to build trust with your audience is one of seven ways to make sure your social media marketing campaign will be unsuccessful. There are lots of ways to get people to lose their trust in you, but all of them lead to failure. Remember that social media marketing depends on your credibility (gained over time) and users' confidence that you provide quality stuff, including genuine relationships.

Top 10 Tips for Green Hat SEM

Guest blogger Falko Luedtke shared his tips for making money with search marketing on the Winning the Web blog this morning. Two of the ten tips revolve around the need for trust. The first is to be trusted and create trust -- straightforward enough. The second is to build a brand and be a brand. A brand brings together all the qualities and messages identified with a company or an individual. Your customers' perceptions of your credibility and trustworthiness are deeply connected to your brand. Be sure to take that aspect of branding into account when building your brand.

As usual, I'm behind on catching up on my feeds. Did you come across any additional insights into the role of trust during your surfing this week? How do you go about building trust with your site's visitors? In your experience, what online platforms hold the most power for building trust? How else can trust be of value?

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 01/12/09 at 5:18 PM | Comments (2)
See more entries in Branding, Social Media

December 29, 2008

Best of Search Conferences 2008: Day 1

Close your eyes. You've just entered a conference hall where voices are mingling and people are milling about. A bag of conference swag is perched over your left shoulder and a cup of coffee is clutched in your right hand. You're navigating your way toward the music, following a hunch it will lead you to the main hall. There you know a keynote address will be kicking off what's sure to be a rocking three-day conference. You spy a table of breakfast pastries on the way. Maybe a blueberry muffin would appease your grumbling belly. Or a croissant?

Okay, so we're not really providing any breakfast, lunch or afternoon snacks, but we do hope you're hungry. The Internet and search marketing conferences of 2008 offered a smorgasbord of information built on a foundation of months of preparation and hard work. We at Bruce Clay, Inc. want to thank all the conference organizers and speakers for providing these invaluable learning experiences and look forward to next year's undoubtedly awesome growth.

In the meantime, there's so much to be gleaned from the ghosts of sessions past, so prepare yourself for the first day of the Best of Search Conferences 2008. It starts right now.

Keynotes

Keynote Kickoff Address - PubCon Las Vegas, Nov. 11-14
Speaker: Shawn Rorick

• There are more marketing channels than ever. Media fragmentation means users are picking where, how and when they consume media.
• The "halo media" approach addresses the multi-faceted marketing environment. Create a "circle of presence" around your company by entering all the logical marketing channels. That way you will be where the consumer is when they're looking for your services.
• Online media spending is currently going to search, display ads, classifieds, videos, rich media and email. Social media, mobile, widgets, desktop applications and RSS are emerging. Remember that new media tactics are not always applicable.

Keynote Roundtable: Technical and Informational Giants - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Speakers: Matt Cutts, Danny Sullivan, Tim Westergreen, Robert Scoble, Kirsten Mangers, and Rich LeFurgy

• Google is going to be the dominant search engine for years to come. The best competition anyone can give to Google will be available in incremental stages. The term "Google killer" has been used too lightly in the past.
• Danny Sullivan didn't think 2008 was the year of mobile and it won't be 2009 either. Mobile search will see gradual growth because smart phone technology is not yet cheap enough.
• Internet marketers should continue to look on the horizon. What makes a great search marketer is someone that understands how people look for information. When people start turning toward new ways to search, understand those venues and how to get there but don't get distracted from what you're best at.

Basic/Intermediate Search Engine Optimization

Top Takeaways:

• Representatives from Google, Yahoo and Live Search recommend adding unique content (images, reviews, etc.) to a page containing duplicate content (such as a manufacturer's product description) in order to avoid duplicate filtering in SERPs.
• If you're working with a very tight budget, look for ways to virally spread your unique, quality content.
• Images posted on Flickr can drive traffic as long as the image either captures excellent subject matter or is of excellent quality.
• Get creative with link building. Some ideas include hiring a student intern and getting a link from their student account, participating on services like Yahoo Answers, and utilizing your partners and affiliates for links.
• Personalized, behavioral, intent-based and blended search have changed the way search engine optimizers can measure success. Rather than focusing on rankings, look at traffic and conversions on the site.

Ask the Search Engines - SMX East, Oct. 6-8
Moderator: Danny Sullivan; Panelists: Nathan Buggia, Aaron D'Souza, and Sean Suchter

Mostly Viral Top Traffic Alternatives, or SEO on a Shoestring Budget - PubCon Las Vegas, Nov. 11-14
Moderator: Carolyn Shelby; Panelists: Brett Tabke, Marty Weintraub, Jessie Stricchiola, and Gary Kirk

Give It Up: White Hat Edition - SMX East, Oct. 6-8
Moderator: Danny Sullivan; Panelists: Michael Gray, Kimberly Krause Berg, Kate Morris, Tyler Shears, Stephan Spencer, Rob Kerry, and Shari Thurow

Top Shelf Organic SEO - PubCon Las Vegas, Nov. 11-14
Moderator: Mark Jackson; Panelists: Jill Whalen, Bill Hunt, Ash Nallawalla, and Bruce Clay

Basic/Intermediate Pay Per Click

Top Takeaways:

• When it comes to finding the best keywords, look at your site, your competitors' sites and trade literature, and remember that brands are often the best performing keywords. Don't forget to filter out negative keywords to help maintain your Quality Score.
• Many of the shopping search engines offer paid inclusion programs, and while the clicks may cost more than in the general search engines, the users are usually closer to the conversion stage of the buying cycle.
• To protect your paid search advertising budget, define your goals and metrics for success so that you can then prove the return on investment.
• Testing is of course important to optimizing your search ad campaign, but while testing, don't manage the campaign as a test. You want to have data based on real-world performance.
• Qualified traffic is the key to post-click conversions. Carry the message the visitor was looking for through the segmented path they entered with.

Search Advertising 101 - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Moderator: Rebecca Lieb; Panelists: Dana Todd and Matt Van Wagner

Defending Your Paid Search Budget Against New Ad Fads - SMX West, Feb. 26-28
Moderators: Jeffrey K. Rohrs and Rob Kerry; Panelists: Brian Combs, Adam Jewell, and Kchitiz Regmi

Ad Testing: Research and Findings - SES New York, Mar. 17-20
Panelists: Andrew Goodman, Bill Barnes, and Anton Konikoff

Post-Click Marketing: Converting Search Engine Traffic - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Moderator: Anna Maria Virzi; Panelists: Carrie Hill, Laura Wilson, Scott Brinker, and Tom Leung

Basic/Intermediate Social Media Marketing

Top Takeaways:

• The point of social media marketing is not conversions. Social media is about gaining reach, increasing branding opportunities, generating links and driving traffic.
• Top 10 lists, how-to articles, current events, offbeat or extreme stories and images and videos are major categories of linkbait.
• Getting a community power user to submit your site's content is an advantage that should not be underestimated.
• Micro communities, or niche portals where communities gather, offer high relevance, increased branding opportunities, and the potential to have a loud voice in a small community.
• Social search, or search that relies at least somewhat on human involvement (i.e., collaborative harvesters like Digg and collaborative directories like DMOZ), disrupted search as we know it. However, with social search comes new potential and possibilities to increase influence and gain traffic.

Linkbait - Chumming for Traffic on Social Media Sites - SMX Social, Apr. 22-23
Moderator: Danny Sullivan; Panelists: Brent Csutoras, Jane Copland, and Cameron Olthuis

Social Media Marketing: What Is It and What Is It Good For? - SES San Jose, Aug. 18-21
Moderator: Pauline Ores; Panelists: Erik Qualman, Brent Csutoras, and Vanina Delobelle

Micro Communities - SMX Social, Apr. 22-23
Moderator: Danny Sullivan; Panelist: Rand Fishkin

Search 4.0: Will the Social Graph Change Search? - SMX West, Feb. 26-28
Moderator: Chris Sherman and Danny Sullivan; Panelists: Aditya Agarwal and Sean Lyndersay

Basic/Intermediate Branding

Top Takeaways:

• Traditional marketing channels make up less than half of the marketing channels available today. Create a consistent customer experience by providing great customer service through new and old media channels alike.
• Proactively protect your brand online; Buy MyBrandSucks.com, buy CEOName.com, register your brand name on social media platforms and quickly respond to negative publicity.
• Match your online and offline marketing message. For example, tests have shown that search volume rises after the start of a print campaign and remains high after the conclusion of a TV campaign.
• Before joining a digital ad network, make sure the network meets your needs. What is the level of quality control? How focused can you get? What is the reach? What is the business relationship like?
• You can measure the success of branding efforts with an engagement index. Involvement is reflected in the number of visits, the time spent and the number of page views. Interaction is measured through comments and reviews. Intimacy is seen in the sentiment and positioning of such comments. Influence is gauged by the user's likelihood to recommend, share or link.

Brand Management - PubCon Las Vegas, Nov. 11-14
Moderator: Joe Laratro; Panelists: Brian Combs, Lauren Vaccarello, Tony Wright, and Jessica L. Bowman

Old Timers - The Impact of Search on Brand Health Metrics - SES New York, Mar. 17-20
Moderator: Kevin Ryan; Panelists: Rob Graham, Kevin Lee, Doron Wesly, and Stephen DiMarco

Digital Ad Networks: Are They Safe for Brands? - ad:Tech San Francisco, Apr. 15-17
Moderator: Brad Berens; Panelists: Jocelyn Griffing, Dave Zinman, Tim Vanderhook, and Sean Cheyney

Reputation Management in a Social Media World and on Your Site - eMetrics Summit San Francisco, May 4-7
Panelists: Katie Delahaye Paine and Steve Bernstein

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 12/29/08 at 12:49 PM | Comments (0)
See more entries in Best Of Search Cons 2008, Branding, Liveblog, Pay Per Click / Online Ads, SEM Events, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media

December 15, 2008

Welcoming New Social Network Friends

I've been on this thing called Twitter since May. Have you heard of it?

Heh.

So anyway, in all that time I've racked up an impressive -- wait for it -- 330 tweets. Needless to say, I'm still pretty green in the ways of Twitter. [I have 3123 and we're both just babies in the tweet world. --Susan]

Let me start by saying yes, I have a closed account. I'm not comfortable broadcasting my inner monologue to the masses and I don't expect that to change any time soon. However, if you mention SEO or Internet marketing in your bio, I will gladly accept your follow request and I will likely follow you, too. I'm easy to find on social networks, always opting for the obvious, in this case @virginianussey.

One thing I started doing differently is greeting new followers with a personal DM. In the past I've gotten sweet little personalized messages from new followers I've accepted and from people I'm newly following. But a recent message gave me the warm fuzzies:

All this savvy Tweeter had to do was take a look at my bio and everything he or she needed to throw together a quick, easy, and most importantly, personal welcome message was right there. The J. Paul Getty Museum is clearly doing social media marketing right.

In part two of his Twitter Rockstar series, David Brown shares a social media case study on how he welcomed his new followers to his feed. In 38 short seconds, David's welcome video introduces who he is and touches on his social media passions. Not only were followers impressed, but David reaped the benefits of additional subscribers to his YouTube channel and hundreds of new friends on social networking sites. (If you're new like me and not quite in the position to produce a welcome video, check out part one of the series, How to Become A Twitter Rockstar - Sort Of for some great tips on making the most of Twitter.)

At MarketingProfs last week, an article explained how welcome emails can drive customer engagement and ROI. The same holds true within social networks and communities as well. The welcome message performs many vital marketing tasks:

• Confirm that they are now your friend or follower. This can act as an additional branding opportunity.
• Affirm your value proposition. Remind the new friend or follower what great stuff you can offer them.
• Invite new friends or followers to take an action. On Twitter, the most natural opportunity for this is inviting someone to subscribe to a blog or newsletter.

Personal welcome messages don't have to take long. With just a few friendly words, you could be building a foundation for a lasting relationship. Judging from the smile that stretched across my face after reading @GettyMuseum's personalized message to me, I realize that, hey, it really works.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 12/15/08 at 5:24 PM | Comments (1)
See more entries in Branding, Social Media

December 2, 2008

Can Social Media Really Be Monetized?

Social sites like Facebook and MySpace have long struggled to effectively monetize the social networking space. The Internet's watering holes have tempted advertisers with an engaged and captive audience. But advertisers have seen minimal success with users who balk at unwelcomed and overt advertising tactics.

An article over at Wired today asks Is Social Advertising an Oxymoron? One interactive marketing executive points out the problem with advertising on social media sites: "Who said this is media? Consumers weren't trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody... We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it."

Facebook Connect is a new feature of the most populous social networking site, which aims to let users take their social networks with them as the surf the Web. Participating third-party Web sites allow users to connect to their Facebook identity and circle of friends while on the site. For example, with Facebook Connect a user could alert her friends to the fact that she is watching a video on Hulu.com (one of the latest partners to jump on board) and invite them to watch along with her. Apart from the innovative access given to users to easily share interesting finds and stories, Facebook is hopeful that the new feature will lead to advertising revenue from partner sites.

From The New York Times:

A survey last week from the research firm IDC suggested that social networks were a miserable place for advertisers: just 57 percent of all users of social networks clicked on an ad in the last year, and only 11 percent of those clicks led to a purchase, IDC said. [...] This is where Facebook Connect could help. [...] Facebook has detailed information about its users: their real identities, what they like and dislike and whom they associate with. With a member's permission, it could use that data to help other Web sites deliver more personalized ads. Similarly, those sites could tell Facebook what its users are doing elsewhere, helping to make its own ads more targeted.

Will it work?

When you visit The New York Times Web site, have you ever noticed the bar at the top of the page inviting you to join TimesPeople? I've been hesitant to join because I don't like broadcasting my activities to others and I'm reluctant to add another social network to my ever-growing list. Facebook Connect would eliminate the latter concern while limiting such broadcasts to a small group of people that I actually care to share my interests with. From the user's perspective, Facebook Connect doesn't sound like an altogether bad idea.

But can it really be leveraged by advertisers? Possibly. We're starting to see more and more attempts, anyway.

One interesting case study of social media monetization comes from the Times itself. In a recent campaign, The New York Times asked its Facebook followers what the first act of the president-elect should be when he takes office. The message reached 68.3 million people and resulted in a staggering jump in the number of Facebook fans for the news organization. According to the story, the number of fans multiplied three-fold, from 49,000 to 164,000. That could be three times more eyeballs reading Times stories and, importantly, Times ads. This is reflected in the fact that the publication saw a four-time return on their investment.

Several other darlings of the social space, like YouTube and MySpace, are also trying their hand at programs designed to improve monetization of their sites. MySpace touts its detailed user demographics and YouTube leans on its engaging content. Most social networks worth an advertiser's consideration can boast impressive traffic stats and that coveted audience of expendable-income-laden 18 to 40 year olds. But only time will tell if advertising to people in their cozy social space is worth the effort after all.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 12/ 2/08 at 5:16 PM | Comments (7)
See more entries in Social Media

November 19, 2008

Why Blogger Outreach Can Fail

On Wednesdays, I usually share SEM Synergy Extras with the readers of this blog. And while this week's show covered excellent topics -- thanks, Sage Lewis! -- there is another issue on my mind today: blogging, buzz and community building.

It's a relevant subject in our social media world -- one where bloggers are the big influencers being courted by corporations to hype some new product release or, in the case of Pepsi, logo update.

In her article on Pepsi's latest new media outreach attempt, Jennifer Laycock explains her reaction to the campaign, namely, that corporations are missing the mark by not reaching out to their evangelists. She asks how long it will take before companies stop focusing on marketing to bloggers and start marketing to their customers. This is the difference between hype and buzz.

What Pepsi's doing now will generate hype. There will be numerous blog posts on the subject. I imagine that some will be favorably skewed -- I know I'd want to gush if Pepsi hand-picked me to be one of its 25 influencers. Then others, like those in our industry, are going to write posts deconstructing the campaign, pointing to what it says about the increasing shift to social media marketing. This word-of-mouth will put Pepsi on the radar [As opposed to where they are now? It's Pepsi, for Pete's sake. --Susan] and the new logo will see a flash of interest. But there won't be the aura of trust that occurs when a message comes from a true evangelist. When evangelists share the message out of genuine support for the product, buzz is generated because those listening want to learn more about it and try it themselves. Hype can develop into a bubble just waiting to burst, but buzz is flexible as it builds, grows and spreads.

As I see it, social media isn't about talking to the people that other people listen to. It's about talking to the people who care about what you have to say. Building a community where those people can communicate is key.

The FriendFeed Pepsi room is a good place to start building a community -- creating a place to gather is a fine first step. But it looks like Pepsi hasn't yet shaken off its old media habit of trying to control the conversation. While joined by like interests, no community will agree on everything, including your corporate message.

Pepsi is on the right track and deserves a pat on the back for their embrace of new media marketing channels. The real challenge, though, is getting it right. Remember that the moment your message hits the Web, the conversation isn't yours anymore. Be involved in the communities around you. And, most importantly, focus on talking to the people who care.

Posted by Virginia Nussey on 11/19/08 at 5:07 PM | Comments (3)
See more entries in Blogging, Branding, Social Media

November 13, 2008

Super Session: Search Engines and Webmasters - aka: The Search Engine Smackdown

I could not be more excited for this session. Not because this is an easy session to recap, because it's totally not, but because it's the very last one and after this one is over, I get to go home.

Brett Tabke has a whole group of search engine reps on the stage right now: Matt Cutts, Software Engineer, Google Inc.; Sean Suchter, VP, Yahoo! Search Technology Engineering, Yahoo!; and Nathan Buggia, Live Search Webmaster Central, Lead Program Manager, Microsoft. Brett's getting ready to torture them to give up all their secrets.

Brett just called Matt the last man standing. Then the last engine standing. Ouch. He means that everyone else is a new face on this panel, but the truth, she hurts.

Nathan Buggia is up first to give us a Live Search State of the Union. He's going to reframe Satya's keynote from this morning in a more technical way. Oh dear.

Relevance is key. They measure internally in a representative sample of query terms with "how good it is?" from all three engines. Are they in the ball park? They've found they're very similar. Some things they do well, some not so good. Freshness is a factor for them.

• Improved crawling performance
• Standardization of Robots Exclusion Protocol rule -- MSNbot supports regular expressions in robots.txt
• Sitemaps anywhere -- they don't have to be hosted under your root domain anymore. They use them for canonicalization issues as well as for page discovery.
• "Significant" increase in crawling activity

Their webmaster tools are useful for troubleshooting. You can find reports on:

• 404 errors
• Too many parameters
• Blocked by REP
• Unsupported content
• Malware infected -- they won't allow clicks on malware from Live Search

They can crawl up to two sub-domains and two directories down.

You can do an audit to find all your URLs and all the pages linked to those pages. Once you fix a malware issue, you can request a re-crawl and they'll get it done in a couple of days.

Ranking:

• Static ranking
• Dynamic rank within site
• Backlinks
• Penalties -- and steps to resolution

They provide direct support through their forums. They'll get back to you within three days.

The adCenter Excel Keyword research tool pulls data from adCenter and from Passport and you should use it.

They've studied use patterns and they found there are several: targeted, exploratory to targeted, exploratory to multi-targeted, etc. As a result they're providing more rich media to try to give more information upfront for the exploratory pattern. This gives you more ways to reach users: products, reviews, links and videos. This is showing up not just in search results but in other products like Hotmail.

Back to Project Silk Road:

• Increase engagement
• Encance your site with Live Search Web results
• Customize 404 error pages with Web Error Toolkit
• Create rich user experiences with Virtual Earth and Silverlight

Generate traffic:

• Optimize your site with webmaster tools
• Deep content partnerships

[Missed the last pillar]

Live Search API: Based on feedback from publishers, they're giving back control.

• Reorder the results
• Skin results and ads
• Filter out 300 ad providers

Maximum flexibility:

• Unlimited queries (unless you're a scraper)
• Rich query language (advanced queries like site:)
• Many types of content
  • Web
  • News
  • Images
  • Encarta Answers
  • Spelling
  • Implement all standard protocols (REST, JSON, RSS, SOAP)

Check out: APIs, Webmaster Center, adCenter

Sean Suchter is next for Yahoo!

The main thing they're working on is getting past the ten blue links, as well as getting past the limited choice.

They've gotten a lot of response on their search assist features.

They're trying to get from "to do" to "done". They're trying to get people to the answer, to reduce frustration, and to bring out structured information from the Web. He thinks the music integration feature was cool -- full songs off of artist searches.

They're focused on more information in one search. Drawing out deep links, news information, rich media.

The ecosystem is looking at building a richer, more relevant and more personal search experience. SearchMonkey brings outside in and gives control outside of the core search. What does opening search mean? It's a clear win for developers, site owners, users and Yahoo. Before, you had ten simple blue links. Afterwards, you get an engaging look at more information that gets you straight to the answers, increases the quality of site traffic, increases usability and fosters loyalty.

They're continually testing and revising the presentation and testing out different ways to present structured information to provide a better experience.

They have a developer tool to create the applications, pulling data from publishers and sending it to users who can opt in or out.

Some publishers using the application:

• People
• Rotten Tomatoes
• Flickr
• Yelp
• Yahoo! properties

The reverse of this is BOSS. It's sending data out and opening it up to help with the indexing and the crawling. No matter where you are on the Web, search experiences are relevant, comprehensive and fresh.

Sites using BOSS:

• 4hoursearch: it is very simple and open
• PlayerSearch: focused on sports
• Newsline: timeline-based news information pulled out of the search engine
• Tianamo: ...I don't even know. It's topographical. Neat.

Last it's Matt Cutts. His presentation is "State of the Index: What's going on with Google?"

Google Chrome: wicked fast browser -- competition makes everyone better
Android: open-source operating system (He has a Google phone. Jealous.)

• Better machine translation
• Better voice translation
• Google Suggest
• Improving personalization and Universal/blended search

Lots of small things:

• 2001 search index
• Video and voice chat in Gmail
• Ability to track the flu

Google Trends: You can use this to figure out how to target your keywords, compare web site interest.

Google Ad Manager

Google Ad Planner -- doesn't have to be Google ads

2008 Webmaster launches:

• Optical character recognition in PDF docs
• Better crawling of Flash , -- this is NOT license to build your pages entirely in Flash
• Mobile will still break

They're getting better at keyword spam and gibberish. He brings up the 404 link finder in Webmaster Tools and jokes that it's free links when you get them fixed. He also points out the 404 help page.

• Advanced segmentation on Google Analytics
• On-demand indexing for Google Custom Search Engines -- get ten pages re-indexed free immediately
• Webmaster APIs for hosters and Gdata
• Translation gadget for your Web site

Google held three webmaster chats in the last year (700+ people in the last call). They are blogging more and doing more videos. Google added new languages for blogs. Yesterday they released a 30-page beginning SEO guide. Google does not hate SEO.

2009 black hat trends

Jeevesretirement.com -- DO NOT GO THERE -- was bought by Ask when Jeeves retired, but they didn't get it renewed. Now it's a porn site.

He thinks hacking is actually going to get worse -- like real illegal hacking. A Googler actually got hacked. They're getting hacked and linking over to other sites that they're hacked. Black hat moves toward the outright illegal.

Matt has a complicated example of hacking. You'll just have to imagine it until he posts it somewhere for me to link to. Did you hear me, Matt? Post the slide.

• SEOs need to decide on risk tolerance.
• Google will keep communicating with webmasters.
• Google will provide tools to help webmasters. They're working on a tool for canonicalization or preferred URLs.

Q&A

Are you going to change what you present to people in terms of intent?

Sean: Yes.

Matt: There are three types of searches: navigational, informational and transactional. Site links are for the navigational.

Can you send out acknowledgements to reconsideration requests?

Matt: Part of the problem is that you don't want to tell a spammer that you did or did not catch a problem, so Google doesn't want to do that. But he says he thought it might be nice to just say "a computer looked at it at such and such time". They're looking at that.

Can we get a default SearchMonkey format so that we don't have to wait for users to opt in?

Sean: They're trying to test and determine how to auto-on the right things. You need to create the most useful possible added-value apps with your clients so that users can get a better experience. The better that happens, the closer it gets to auto-on.

Matt wants to talk about Rip-off Report. He doesn't think they're spam. They only remove for spam or court order. There's not enough material on Rip-Off Report for him to remove it as spam. If you really hate it that much, get a court order and then they can take action on it. There are free speech and first amendment right issues there. They will take strong action when there is spam but it's not there yet. They already get enough "Google is just taking them out because they don't like them" criticisms.

How about a negative link?

Matt says it's a thought.

Are you guys going to be looking at a way to tell Google News something different than Googlebot?

Matt: You have to prioritize by feedback. [They're going to talk later.]

The cheapest product seems to win in Live Search. Doesn't that compete with my actually good PPC/SEO links?

Nathan: Those products get in through productupload.live.com. They're free and he thinks it's a good feature. [He really did answer the question but I didn't catch it.]

I hear First Click Free is in jeopardy? How do we stay in compliance with that?

Matt: [He explains briefly how First Click Free works.] He thinks they're at a good balance right now, but the challenge is how do they regulate it. They're still doing it. They've just about finalized their policies for it.

I paid for links. [The entire audience turns to look at him.] All our sites were penalized in Google Webmaster Tools. How much privacy is there? Second question, when are you going to share revenue from BOSS with publishers?

Matt: They have tools where they can pretty much always find the related sites.

Sean: He doesn't know the details but there are people actively working on the monetization plan. It's definitely being worked on.

Nathan jumps in to talk about monetization opportunities at Live Search. Poor Nathan, no one cares.

Why is there no way to authenticate that a bot is a bot?

Matt: You can. It's a kind of a hassle, but it's a two step process. Search for "verifying googlebot". It works for all the engines.

Posted by Susan Esparza on 11/13/08 at 3:17 PM | Comments (0)
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