Since launching in June, Google+ has already acquired over 40 million active users.  Users have also uploaded over 3.5 billion photos in those short months.  According to Oestlien the goal of Google+ for enable marketers to interact with their fan base in a way that they never have before.  When developing Google+ the team set out to see how they could influence and impact as well as improve that way that marketers are utilizing Online Marketing today.

Google identified 5 key problems that marketers are commonly faced with including:

• Fragmented Marketing
• Recommendations Lack Staying Power
• Comments, Not Conversations
• Impersonal Messages
• Limited Insights

Determining Problems Is Only the First Step

After only a couple of days on the market Google+ Pages have already been adopted by some very influential brands

Current Problem: Fragmented Marketing
More often than not what marketers are doing socially is vastly different than how their marketing plans are executed. Google is aiming to change the way that you market both online and offline. Oestlien also notes that Google is not trying to bring something completely new to the market. They are simply trying to transform the way that your information is shared.

Google Solution: Google+ Page, Direct Connect
Google has never had a specific place for users to connect and communicate with brands directly. Now with Google+ Pages you can easily interact with your favorite brands. Direct Connect is also a new feature that has recently been introduced. With Direct Connect you simply type the + symbol and then the name of the brand to be sent immediately to their page without having to sift through search results.

Current Problem: Recommendations Lack Staying Power
We’ve all experienced a moment where we have tried to think of a recommendation that was given to us by a friend or colleague and no matter how hard we’ve tried, we just can’t remember the exact details.

Google Solution: Google +1 Button
Google plus pages allows brands to connect +1′s around their brand and anchor them to your brand at Google. This enables Google to take recommendations that the brand has received and disperse them through the internet, enabling marketers to extend their brand and get in front of users in everything that they are doing online. For end users Google has discovered that if a brand, product, location, or event has been recommended by someone they personally know (in their circle) they are much more likely to trust that recommendation.

Current Problem: Comments, Not Conversations
It has been difficult for many marketers to find a way of engaging with prospective customers.  Strategies are often centered around pushing information out onto social networks vs. engaging prospects on social networks.

Google Solution: Google+ Hangouts
Google+ Hangouts which was mentioned at the very beginning of the keynote has many practical B2B applications for business owners.  Imagine the ability to interact live with your customers, record live testimonials, facilitate customer service questions, gather a group of industry thought leaders, the list goes on and on.

Current Problem: Impersonal Messages
In daily life you have the ability to change or tweak your message depending on who you are talking to.  Unfortunately, that has not been the case with social networks.  Marketers have been able to cast a wide net and attempt to personalize the message slightly to included all members of the audience.

Google Solution: Google+ Circles
Circles is by far one of my favorite Google+ features.  This solution consists of intuitive groups which will allow marketers to directly target individual segments of their prospect or customer base.  It also solves a question many marketers ask regarding managing a professional and personal social networking platform.

Current Problem: Limited Insights
It is extremely important to understand and gather insight into how people are interacting with your content.  Why is this important?  According to Oestlien “over 77% of content around brands is being shared by the users not the brand.”

Google Solution: Google+ Ripples
Ripples creates a timeline of how posts are shared and interacted with.  Not only can you see who shared what information with who but you can also replay this information via a timeline to see what led to the success even if it is weeks or months down the road by the time you have discovered it.

I for one, found the keynote to be very helpful and practical for business applications.  If you haven’t already signed up your company for a Google+ Page, check it out here.  The team at TopRank Online Marketing will be sure to update you as frequently as we can on the changes that are sure to follow from Google+ and of course you can visit our Google+ Page for Online Marketing Blog.

If you are attending ad:tech New York, be sure to catch TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden and the Search Marketing Masters sessions with Intel, Volkswagen, REI, Salesforce, Bazaarvoice and Marin Software this morning at Room 13, Hall 1E, Level 1, in the Javits Center.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | Is it Time to Make Google+ Your Plus One? 5 Key Problems Solved by Google+ Pages @adtech NY Keynote with Christian Oestlien | http://www.toprankblog.com

Earlier this year the amazing Melanie Mitchell, SVP of Search at Digitas, was serving as a conference Marketing Master for the Search Engine Marketing track and she asked me to speak at my first ad:tech in San Francisco.  When I was asked to perform those same SEM track programming duties for the ad:tech New York show, I had to say yes!

ad:tech New York features some very impressive keynote presentations including: Christian Oestlien, Head of Social Advertising Products at Google; David Fischer,VP Advertising & Global Operations at Facebook; Wendy Clark, Sr. VP of Integrated MarketingCommunications & Capabilities at The Coca-Cola Company and many others.  Our roundup of pay per click and search engine optimization expertise is also impressive. You can check out two of the planned sessions below that I’ll be introducing and moderating:

Search Marketing: Integrating Search with the Rest of Your Marketing
Thursday, Nov 10 at 10:15 AM

Lauren Vaccarello – Director of Search, Display and Social Advertising, Salesforce.com
Title: Better Event Marketing With Integrated Search & Social Media
Presentation: Online marketing can be used for more than driving online demand. See how you can use search and social media marketing in every phase of offline event marketing from pre event registration to post event follow up.

Sara Devine – Manager Digital Media Integration, VW Marketing, Volkswagen of America, Inc
Title: Utilizing Search in Integrated Product Launch Campaigns
Presentation: As the announcement to launch journey unfolds, search is instrumental in capturing hand raisers and prospects leading up to the actual product launch where search maximizes the reach of what is often a large advertiser presence.  At this point, search is not only utilized as the “catcher’s mitt” for the other advertising efforts, but also becomes a barometer of those efforts – measuring in real time consumer awareness and interest in the product.

Matt Lawson - VP Marketing, Marin Software
Title: Taking Paid Search to the Next Level, Tips for Advanced Marketers
Presentation: As paid search advertising becomes increasingly competitive and complex, search marketers are constantly looking for the next trick to squeeze additional volume and ROI out of their campaigns.  In this informative session, Marin Software will reveal new professional tips to help sophisticated marketers improve the financial performance of their paid search programs.

After our first session that focuses on paid search, we’ll transition to a session that’s more focused on Search Engine Optimization:

Search Marketing: Cases and Best Practices for Maximizing SEO 
Thursday, NOV 10 at 11:30 AM

Corey Carrillo - Global Media Worldwide Search & Online Programs, Intel Corporation
Title: One is the Loneliest Number: SEM, SEO, Social Integration and Insights
Presentation: The role of Search Engine Marketing at Intel with specific examples, consumer and business about applied best practices/insights and programs for SEM campaigns/data to help bolster results in SEO, Social and PPC Social.

Jonathon Colman – Internet Marketing Program Manager, REI
Title: A Case Study on How to Increase Search Engine Crawling and Online Conversion
Presentation:  A discussion of the “silver bullet” when it comes to SEO and user experience (UX): Site speed and performance. A faster site reduces the costs of both infrastructure and releases by 50% or more.  Efficient sites simply cost less to run and provide for a better user experience. This presentation provides 4 site speed optimization steps and a case study on how REI saw a significant increase in site speed and overall conversions after optimization was implemented.

Michael DeHaven - Bazaarvoice
Title:  Social SEO: Strategic Optimization of User Reviews
Presentation: For many top online retailers, user-generated review content comprises 80 to 90% their site’s total rich content.  Michael DeHaven of Bazaarvoice will outline a proven strategy to organize and leverage review content to drive substantial increases in traffic from search.  This talk will open your eyes to a valuable, new segment of search traffic that often goes unnoticed when developing a search optimization strategy.

As you can see, this is going to be a fantastic set of sessions and a great group of speakers.  I’ll also be moderating an Exhibit Hall session of several speakers from Local.com, ideaLaunch, Brafton and  a few other companies serving the search marketing industry. If you’re attending ad:tech New York, I hope you’ll stop by Room 13, Hall 1E, Level 1 at the Javits Center.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | ad:tech New York Search Marketing Masters | http://www.toprankblog.com

After a great opening keynote presentation by Arianna Huffington, I was drawn into the nearby speaker ready room and ran into the always inspiring Brian Solis. Brian’s Marketing Masters track at ad:tech San Francisco was on my list for live blogging and as always, he shared a great mix of insights and inspiration about business on the social web.

I haven’t live blogged in a while, so forgive the rough edges

How do we improve the game for social media in business?

Why have people begun to hate the term “social media”? It’s about what social media is not. Social media is neither one to many marketing or many to many. It’s about 1+1=many.

Social media is less about the technology and more about the sociology. It’s the idea of real people connected to real people. It’s not about collecting fans, friends and followers but real engagement. You are at the center of your own universe and define who you connect & interact with. That’s the “egosystem“.

We are no longer competing for the future but for the moment. It’s about real-time and we’re competing for relevance. The future of brand equity isn’t about what you say about yourself, but what others say about you. Brand equity is the culmination of the experiences we share.

Consumers will decide brand equity not by what a company says on its website, but what others say about that brand on the social web. The future of media is through shared experiences. If brands don’t engage their customers (through the social web) what are consumers left to say?

Most social media marketing is superficial – people are avatars. Contests to gain friends, fans & followers are not engagement. We have to stop looking at people as a pair of eyeballs and start thinking about creating experiences. We’re after an audience of an audience with audiences.

It’s not content, but context that’s King. They way brands are approaching social media isn’t necessarily what customers want from those brands via the social web. Find out: Ask customers what they want from the brand through social media channels.

Companies need to design social experiences that result in tangible outcomes and value for customers. Customers will break up with brands who do not deliver value now and over time. “Like” is not the objective.

[Exact Target & CoTweet study on why consumers disconnect from brands on the social web]

It turns out that obtaining tangible value is the top reason consumers connect with brands on the social web. So it’s not about “earning” the like or follow, but delivering value as part of an ongoing engagement effort.

The key to brand and consumer engagement on the social web is for brands to design meaningful social experiences that turn into tangible value for customers. 5 I’s of social marketing: Influence, Integration, Ideation, Insight, Intelligence. Instead of brands chasing influencers, they become social influencers.

Brands need to have a plan – after you attract a customer as a fan, what do you want them to do? How can you influence behaviors and outcomes?

How do you enter the consumer trust zone? Either by providing information, experiences or through another connected consumer. Once you gain trust, the doors are open for engagement. Engagement is defined by the result of the outcomes from shared experiences.

Social objects are the future of marketing and help transmit the brand story and influence outcomes.

If you are competing for the moment, how do you keep your program valuable and “on”. Once you have a hit, keep it going. Move from a campaign perspective to continuum. Example, Old Spice. Great campaign but since it was a campaign, it ended. What if the videos were designed to create an outcome? What if they were structured to be useful and add value over time to keep Old Spice in the conversation beyond the few days of the campaign?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | ad:tech SF – Social Media & The New Laws of Creativity with Brian Solis | http://www.toprankblog.com

While SEO is a billion dollar industry, many companies focused on advertising are quite new to how SEO might fit within an online marketing strategy. With plenty of outdated and mis-information online amidst a fast changing industry, it can be a challenge to have confidence in what’s true and best practices. Few marketers want to invest in something they don’t quite understand. Or at least not understand where it fits for connecting the brand and customers to drive revenue.

So part of the education process is a framing of what SEO is and more importantly where it fits within a digital marketing mix. While there may be appreciation for what SEO could do, there’s plenty of opportunity to clarify Search strategy, applications, business value, workflow and essentially where SEO might fit within the marketing mix. To that end, here are few tips:

1. What are a few best practices for getting your content out in front of the competition on today’s search engines?

Companies are creating content in many forms, whether it’s editorial or advertising. One of the ways to ensure engagement and value from that content is to make sure it’s findable. SEO is the primary method consumers use to discover new products and services that they then go and purchase. It only makes sense to be where your customers are looking. If you’re not there, then your competition certainly is.

SEO isn’t some wild animal that’s never been seen in real life. It’s a perfectly reasonable complement to web design, content strategy, social media, public relations, recruiting, customer service and any other function that publishes content online. If you have content that should be found online, it should be optimized. For marketers new to search engine optimization, here are the essentials:

• Pages and digital assets are “findable” by search engines that copy the web
• Keywords are incorporated into page copy and links between pages (on and off site)
• Content is promoted via social channels and attracts links from other, topically relevant websites

Focusing on those three things in your Content Marketing Strategy takes care of the essential blocking and tackling of SEO. Incorporate successful execution of those tasks throughout your organization. That means, anyone in a position to create and promote content is aware of the potential SEO impact of their actions. Keyword glossaries are shared with content creators, copywriters promote the content they create through social networks and marketers analyze performance data to continuously improve content creation, optimization and promotion in ways that are most relevant to the target audience.

2. What information for your brand and your Web site matters most to search engines?

Content designed to sell products and services is the low hanging fruit for SEO. Marketing is usually the department that funds investment in outside consultants or internal SEO staff. The drive for marketing to increase search traffic and online sales and leads is strong, so increasing revenue takes priority over other functions.

I would challenge marketers to think a little more about their customer’s information needs and how they can add value to the ongoing relationship. The information discovery needs for marketing and customer acquisition are the focus of most SEO efforts, but there are many other reasons prospects and customers use search. There are also other types of content besides products and services published by brands online that can affect the bottom line if easily discovered through search.

Of course marketing content should have the emphasis, but consider applying SEO best practices to improve the search discovery of other online content that will help advance business goals. News and public relations content for example. Journalists are working in bare bones newsrooms and increasingly using technology to make up for a lack of research resources. They use search to find news sources, releases, information about people and companies. Make your news content more “findable” and you can increase unsolicited media coverage.

A similar principle applies to job listings. It costs companies money to pay recruiters and certainly it costs to not have key positions filled. Make it easy for candidates to find job listings and you may increase the number of candidates for hire and positively affecting meeting talent acquisition goals.

Yet another opportunity for the application of holistic SEO is optimizing FAQ and knowledge base information. Think of the things customers most often ask about and not only compile those questions and answers, but make sure they are easy to find via search. Reducing the number of calls made to customer support reps can lower costs for the company but it can also lower the frustration and increase customer satisfaction because the answers to what they’re looking for are so easily found – via search.

Bottom line, focus on content that will be meaningful for your customers first and foremost. Then apply SEO best practices to ensure it’s easily discovered when and where they’re searching. That might start with marketing and extend holistically across other departments and businesses within the corporation.

3. What are some takeaway tools for building your SEO roadmap?

Marketers LOVE tools. Actually, it’s a little scary how much people will gravitate towards a flashy new SEO tool that either does nothing meaningful but does it in style or simply repackages what existing tools can do. With that in mind, the following tools can be quite useful for advertisers that want to get their feet wet with practical SEO.

• Google Keyword Tools – Great way to research keywords
• Scribe SEO – Analyzes pages and suggests keyword optimization edits
• Hubspot Page Grader – Rates your site’s pages according to SEO criteria
• SEMRush – Competitive Google ranking information and keyword valuation
• Majestic SEO – Link analysis
• Open Site Explorer – Link Analysis
• Google Analytics – Measure just about anything on your website or coming to your website

Other useful tools for auditing, managing and researching for a little more savvy SEO enthusiast include:

• SEOmoz Tools
• Raven Tools
• Screaming Frog SEO Spider
• Wordtracker – Wordstream – Keyword Discovery
• Ontolo Link Building Tools
• Xenu Link Sleuth
• SEO for Firefox

Thanks to my Twitter network for suggesting some of these tools they most often recommend for marketers that are new to SEO.

Clearly, there are many, many other SEO tools out there but a tool is really only as good as the exertise and intentions of the person using it, so I recommend trying a few of the basics out before seeking outside help. Then you can decide the right approach and mix of tools according to someone with experience and that can understand your individual situation.

Advertisers looking at SEO as a channel for driving relevant traffic should gain some fundamental understanding, test, seek outside advice if necessary and be patient. This isn’t renting traffic, it’s growing traffic organically with a flat rate investment in time, resources and budget. The longer good SEO practices are in place the better the performance. Not only is a holistic SEO approach a great complement to paid advertising, it provides additional benefits in terms of cost deflection and increased effectiveness of other business communications.

Update: Here’s an embed of the presentation I gave to complement this blog post. Enjoy!
(Feedback is greatly welcomed)

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | 3 Essential Social Media SEO Tips for Advertisers – ad:tech San Francisco | http://www.toprankblog.com

Here’s our second tip in a series of posts during the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose on “Getting the Most Out of Internet Marketing Conferences“. This one is from Brad Berens, Global Content Director for the esteemed ad:tech conferences and iMedia Connection.

Brad also blogs about culture, new media, marketing and community over at Mediavorous.

First, accept that you can’t do everything– believe me I’ve tried! I’ve gone to events where I’m speaking, networking AND covering things up for a publication. That’s a 20 hour day and it shortens your life in a hurry. It’s important to think — before you get on that plane – about why you’re going and why you aren’t and make choices accordingly.

My second tip is to be strategic. Look at the agenda while you’re still at the office and choose a small number of things that you simply must do. By “small” I mean four per day, say two sessions and two meetings.

Everybody will pressure you to RSVP to a million things, but if you do that then you’re not really doing ANYTHING well and there’s no serendipity. I have a lot of great conversations in the elevator, the halls, the expo, the press room, at the bar… All because I’m not overscheduled. Except, of course, when it’s one of MY events.

Thanks Brad. Time is of the essence and especially time management. Great advice from a guy who knows.

Next up in our series of conference tips is Kevin Ryan of Incisive, or more formally, “Kevin M. Ryan, Vice President, Global Content Director, Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch”.

We know many of our readers have been to a ton of events and some just one. Either way, you learned a few things that made you think, “I’m going to do things differently next time”. What tips can you share? Maybe we should have a Reader Poll to see who offers the best tips and win something cool from TopRank!

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Internet Marketing Conference Tips: Brad Berens iMedia Connection | http://www.toprankblog.com

With Search Engine Strategies San Jose just around the corner, I thought it timely and appropriate to share insights on how you can get the most out of marketing conferences.

TopRank is very active attending, speaking and blogging a variety of internet marketing events, conferences and workshops. These aren’t the only reasons to attend a marketing conference though and the next 9 posts will offer some excellent insights from TopRank as well as a incredible mix of industry thought leaders that may just compound the value of your staff already attending plus motivate you to send more.

Recession or not, look no further than the headlines in any business publication and you’ll see increasing numbers of articles offering advice on how companies can best deal with tighter marketing budgets.

Combine the need to generate more marketing performance with fewer resources, continuous changes in the online marketing industry and increasing numbers of companies bringing search marketing functions in house, and you have a formidable training challenge.

There are many options for companies to train their new internet marketing staff and to keep tenured employees up to date. Conferences such as: ad:tech, Search Engine Strategies, Search Marketing Expo, DMA conferences, numerous regional events and an increasing number of web based offerings including SEMPO Institute and the DMA Search Engine Marketing Certification program provide a wealth of training opportunities.

However, conferences are not inexpensive. Add travel, hotel, pre/post training and conference fees as well as meals and incidentals and companies are paying $2500 – $5000 per employee per conference. Plus there is the cost of time away from the office not performing billable work. Such costs in a budget conscious marketing environment make it even more important for companies and individuals to get the most out of their educational investments.

Despite these costs, TopRank’s agency’s conference involvement is very active involving speaking, blogging and attending as a delegate 12-15 search marketing, public relations and interactive marketing events per year. The experience from promoting, attending and liveblogging numerous marketing conferences has resulted in a valuable collection of insights that have enabled a substantial return.

Whether the investment in attending a conference is on the company’s dime or the individual, it’s important that conference attendees get the most out of their time at events by setting goals. Managers sending individuals to conferences should be clear about expectations. Company staff should be sure to talk with others within the organization or teams that have attended the same or similar events to gain their insight.

Depending on the purpose for attending a conference, goals may vary. Here are some common goals that TopRank has identified based on the various reasons for attending any kind of marketing conference:

• Networking – how many qualified prospects, marketing partners, vendors to outsource to and job candidates will you meeting? Each day, tally them up and plan how you will follow up.

• Knowledge – how many sessions will you attend and how will you capture the information? Notes, photos, video (where allowed) When meeting new people, discuss the sessions with them. Compare notes – it’s a great way to network and to get other opinions. Before the conference, make a grid or a plan for which specific sessions you’ll be attending. Often times, there is not much time between sessions and the difference between getting a good seat and standing room only can be a matter of minutes.

• Content – how will you leverage your conference experience to create new content for your company blog, articles, or process documentation? Set goals for how many you’ll create each day. The content you capture and create can supply a company blog with numerous posts and show clients, staff and prospective clients that you are on top of what’s happening in the industry. At TopRank, our staff is required to publish at least 3 blog posts for each day of conference attended. Set goals for how many blog posts, articles or other types of content will be created each day of the conference. It doesn’t have to be all text – take photos of people, and presentation slides. Take videos where allowed.

• Knowledge Transfer – How will you pass on the information you’ve acquired to the rest of the team? TopRank staff take the highlights and any specific tactics of use and create presentations which they share with the rest of the TopRank team. Knowing you will be required to present the information you are gaining with the team back at the office helps focus on takeaways and practical interpretations of the new information.

• Socialize – Where there’s a conference, there’s a party. After hours events are exceptional opportunities for conference attendees to relax, network and share information. Make no mistake, post session networking can be an art form. Make a point to relax and have fun, but be clear about objectives and make a goal of attending a dinner each night of the event if possible. Some dinners are a tradition amongst long time friends, some are sponsored by vendors and some are at hoc events that occur as a result of likeminded individuals wanting to continue the day’s discussion.

As you can see, there are many more opportunities to get value from marketing conference participation than keeping up to date with an industry. Pre conference goal setting and planning, well defined processes as well as follow up and post event knowledge sharing can all multiple the value organizations realize by sending employees to educational events.

Not all organizations are positioned to take full advantage of these insights, but through simple analysis, it can become clear pretty quickly how much is being left on the table or to competitors who are sending the same numbers of people and incurring the same costs.

Understand the conference offerings, set goals and make the time to pre-plan conference involvement. Leverage content creation, networking, recruiting, competitive intelligence as well as prospecting opportunities and industry conferences can move pretty quickly from an expense with an uncertain effect to an investment with multiples of return.

So what do other conference organizers, programmers, speakers and attendees have to say? Watch for the next in our series of posts on getting the most out of internet marketing conferences from Brad Berens, Kevin Ryan, Rebecca Lieb, Robert Scoble, Danny Sullivan, Chris Sherman, David Berkowitz, Heather Lloyd Martin and Michael Brito.

What are your best tips on getting more out of conferences, workshops and training seminars? Please share and we’ll pick the best suggestions for something pretty cool from TopRank.

(This post is a version of a TopRank article that ran at iMedia Connection “Get better returns on your conference investment“.)

Make sure you check Online Marketing Blog this week for live conference coverage with 5 bloggers: (Thomas, Dana, Jessica, Ashley and Lee) covering the event in posts, images and video.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | Getting the Most Out of Internet Marketing Conferences | http://www.toprankblog.com

Jeremiah Owyang posted recently asking his readers what conferences they would be attending in the coming months and I thought that would be a great question for Online Marketing Blog readers as well.

Over the past 3 years we’ve been focused on search marketing conferences but have expanded more into direct marketing, interactive and PR. We’ll continue that trend the rest of this year but with more conferences outside of search as our online marketing agency evolves.

Conferences that I’m attending in the coming months include:

• May: ACCM in Florida
• Jun: PRSA Digital Impact in NYC
• Jul: ad:tech in Chicago
• Aug: Search Engine Strategies in San Jose
• Sep: Blogworld Expo in Las Vegas
• Oct: DMA08 in Vegas
• Oct PRSA International Conference in Detroit
• Nov: Pubcon in Vegas

Personally, I try my best to limit conferences to one per month and those I am speaking at. The above list is not comprehensive for the TopRank team of course, since we do typically blog most SES and SMX conferences. We’ll definitely be at SMX Advanced this year as well as SES Chicago in December. It just won’t be me that attends. There are several other events that I may attend or speak at, I’m just not confirmed that far out.

There are many other great conferences with programming that touches on search, social, interactive and PR the rest of this year. What conferences are you attending in the coming months and remainder of 2008?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2008. | What Conferences Are You Attending? | http://www.toprankblog.com

Topics for this morning’s keynote centered on the notion of the “new P” platforms, video advertising and random references to Gilligan’s Island and weird porn.

The panel was moderated by Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of IAB. Panelists included:

• Suzie Reider, Head of Ad Sales YouTube.com
• Michael Barrett, EVP, Chief Revenue Officer Fox Interactive Media
• Arianna Huffington, c-founder and Editor in Chief Huffington Post
• Matt Freeman, CEO Tribal DDB Worldwide

Randy Rothenberg of the IAB started out with a brief overview citing promosing industry statistics: The interactive advertising industry is near $20 billion, there are over one billion internet users world wide and 80% of adults use the internet.Despite that progress and good news, the interactive advertising industry is at risk due to possible regulation from “anti consumer advocates”. The FTC has raised the spectre of regulation not only of cookies but reccommendations to implement opt in requirements for all ads. The regulation advocates’ position is basically, “The time for fact finding is over, it’s time for us to regulate.”

The interactive industry will only remain strong and vibrant if we respect the consumer. Companies need to watch more than what’s affecting their own organization, but also what’s happening at the federal and state levels.

Let’s talk about the “new P”. What have been known as portals are now calling themselves platforms including Google, Yahoo, MSN and of course Facebook. Is the trend towards platforms important or is it just a fad? What will the relationship be between platforms, agencies and publishers?

Suzie Reider believes we’ll continue to go in this direction with the shift towards user generated content. The idea of platform is less a label but more about giving users tools to contribute and interact.

According to Matt Freeman, platforms and user generated content create a challenge for agencies as media production costs drop, allowing users to easily create their own media. It ends the dominance in the supply chain of media production by the big media companies.

Michael Barrett says by definition, MySpace is a platform. Bringing together disparate tools that empower users to communicate, share and discover is what spurs the growth of social networking sites like MySpace.

There’s a lot of good coming from platforms in terms of data collection – enabling advertisers to get the right ad to the right person at the right time. Platforms provide publishers with monetization opportunities and they help agencies through lower costs to deliver services. “Those with the data hold the cards”.

OK, so platforms help users and agencies, what about publishers? Arianna Huffington spiced things up on the panel not only with her deep insight as a successful publisher, but more than intersting references to Ginger and Marianne along with something about weird porn woke up more than a few early session attendees.

She believes that Huffington Post is itself a platform. What started out as a political publishing brand has been a launching point for engaging users other interests as well, which spurred the launch of other topical verticals and tools to facilitate user interaction.

The more interactive tools you can give a community, the more time they spend on the platform. Community is key to platforms. AS an example, there were over 250k moderated comments last month on the Huffington Post and there are also 1800 bloggers.

Now the conversation turns to video. A year ago at ad:tech, the buzz was focused on video content and advertising. Moderator Randall Rothenberg asks, “Did that buzz live up to the promise?”

With examples like the one given by Suzie Reider involving the Opera channel launching on YouTube.com and attracting massive numbers of subscribers in just a few days, video is indeed meeting expectations. But there are challenges.

Video is increasingly important for Huffington Post and they are working to find more innovative ways to work with video advertising in place of pre-roll video ads and truncated RSS feeds. Huffington post is forgoing such tactics and providing this kind of content ad free. Readers are responding with more site visits.

Other challenges with video advertising include format lengths according to the type of content, whether it’s a produced show, made for media like lonelygirl15 or user generated content. Michael Barrett says agencies need to experiment and see what works. A 30 second pre-roll ad for a 60 second video isn’t going to appeal to anyone.

With the increased popularity of online video, many advertisers looked at video platforms as just another place to run their commercials, says Michael Barrett. The role of agencies is not to create ads, but to create ads as content. Agencies need to make brands destinations in and of themselves, says Matt Freeman.

If insertion is too obtrusive for consumers, then how do you get paid? Arinanna Huffington gave the example of a program where she and readers at the Huffington Post shared photos of themselves and their Prius’. Huffington Post “got paid” for the program and Toyota gained substantial exposure from a community of brand enthusiasts.

It was inevitable that the conversation would turn to Facebook. With the announcement that Facebook will offering targeted advertising, Randy Rothenberg asks, “How are we going to construct the line between consumer privacy expectations and the interest from marketers in social media?”

The number one complaint from consumers is to make ads more relevant and explaining what it will take to provide more personalized ads is an ongoing educational challenge. One that the IAB is undertaking with a campaign about an ad supported internet.

One of the more interesting questions from the audience concerned the future of the pre-roll ad. Will pre-roll go away and where does that leave the agencies? Is the agency best to create the content or the community?

Suzie Reider agreed with the panel that pre-rolls are too obtrusive and gave a good example of YouTube implementing an overlay ad on the bottom third of videos. There are smarter ways to get advertising sponsorship into the media.

Be sure to visit the Flickr set on ad:tech NYC 2007 as well as daily coverage on the ad:tech blog.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2007. | ad:tech New York Keynote: State of the Industry | http://www.toprankblog.com

Arriving at JFK was surprisingly un-eventful and smooth. Carry on is certainly the way to go. I walked right off the plane and to the taxi area where a town car agreed to take me to Midtown for the same price as a cab. There is no substitute for a ride with legroom.

Upon arrival at the Hilton where the ad:tech NYC conference was being held, I ran into Patrick Gavin of Text Link Ads/Media Whiz. A great guy and very successful as well. I didn’t think to take a photo, but in case you don’t know him, he looks like that fellow on the show “The Bachelor”.

Next I ran into Bruce Clay who will speak Thursday on what is arguably the only session in the whole conference dedicated to search engine optimization. Unfortunately I have to fly out before the session.

In the press room I had the pleasure of running into Larry Chase which turned into (as always) a great conversation about online marketing and in this case, applications for repurposing blog content while avoiding duplicate content issues. David Berkowitz of 360i and Mediapost’s Search Insider Summit was in press room attendance as well.

After meeting with Larry, Kevin Lee stopped by with his new book, “The Eyes Have It”, which I plan on reading when I get back to Minnesota. Congrats to Kevin on the new book.

The exhibit hall floors here at the Hilton are PACKED. There’s literally a maze of rooms on level one with more ad networks and affiliate program vendors than I ever thought a market could bear.

Cheese! On the floor Becky Ryan was doing her magic at the Trellian booth and along came Brandy Shapiro-Babin of WebmasterRadio.FM. We hope Daron gets better ASAP.

While ad:tech is notorious for booth babes, this NYC event had some more colorful characters.

I wasn’t scheduled to cover any sessions today but I did stop by the Internet Economy Session

Oliver Ryan of Fortune moderated and panelists included: Imran Khan, Bob Davis, Gene DeRose and Larry Harris. The conversation ranged from social networks (Facebook) to ad networks to Google phone to valuations for companies in the space.

After the session the scholarly looking Sara Houlebeck said hello along with Jay Sears of ContextWeb. You can find more photos at the ad:tech NYC Flickr Set. You can also find daily blog coverage on the official ad:tech blog where I’ll be posting tomorrow.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2007. | ad:tech NYC Day One Photos | http://www.toprankblog.com

Next week I’ll be attending my last “blogging only” conference of the year, ad:tech New York, and possibly for quite a while. I will be performing blogging duties for the adtechblog.com along with Sara Holoubek, Richard Cacciato, Craig Peters, Steve Hall, Angela Natividad and Robert Gorell. With that many bloggers and over 10,000 people registered for the event, that’s what I call a blogger bonanza!

Attending conferences purely to blog has been great the past few years but speaking and performing editor duties for our media sponsorships has taken a much higher priority. Of course, when I am fortunate enough to be able to speak at a conference there’s always some blogging that goes along with it.

Since I am in NYC just for Tuesday afternoon and all of Wednesday, I’ll only be covering 3 sessions and exhibit hall observations for adtechblog but will post everything here at Online Marketing Blog. Tuesday will be a tour of the Exhibit Hall with several short video interviews involving vendors serving the Search Marketing industry and a few SEM notables.

The sessions I am slated to cover include:

Wednesday 9am – Keynote Roundtable: The State of the Industry
Consumer Generated Content. Social Networking. Online Video. Ad Networks. Activation. Engagement. Mobile Marketing. The death of television as we know it. And so much more. The digital revolution is in full swing and the velocity of change only seems to be increasing.

MODERATOR:

• Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, Interactive Advertising Bureau

PANELISTS:

• Michael Barrett, Executive VP, Chief Revenue Officer, Fox Interactive Media
• Matt Freeman, CEO, Tribal DDB Worldwide
• Arianna Huffington, Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Huffington Post
• Suzie Reider, Head of Advertising Sales, YouTube.com

Wednesday 4pm – The Empowered Consumer: Are We Losing Control of Our Brands?
The old content delivery model has been turned on its head and the rules have changed. Consumers have unprecedented control in regards to how and when they access their content, and the current marketplace sees content production costs spiraling downward.

MODERATOR:

• Bart Sichel, Principal, McKinsey & Company, Inc.

PANELISTS:

• Jean Phillipe Maheu, Chief Digital Officer, Ogilvy North America
• Jeff Kaplan, VP, Online Marketing, Ann Taylor Stores Corporation
• Chris Grosso, VP Strategy and Business Development, NBC Universal Digital Media
• Mel Clements, Advertising and Digital Manager, Basketball, Nike, Inc.

Wednesday 5:15pm – Tactical Search: Local and Mobile Search Strategies
One of the original promises of the Internet was geographically relevant and targeted content for all. Local marketing strategies are effective and have widespread application, yet many marketers have yet to gain a solid understanding of the marketplace.

MODERATOR:

• Dana Todd, Agency Principal, SiteLab and Immediate Past President, SEMPO, SiteLab International Inc.

PANELISTS:

• Michael Bayle, GM, Global Monetization, Connected Life, Yahoo! Inc.
• Janice Rohn, VP of Consumer Experience, Yellowpages.com
• Pawan K. Divakarla, Marketing Process Manager, Progressive Insurance
• Erynn Peterson, Senior Manager, Advertising Platform Evangelism, Microsoft
• Michael Fisher, Mobile Strategiv Partner Development Manager, Google

Thanks to Steve Hall of adrants and adgabber for including me in the ad:tech NYC blogger bonanza.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2007. | ad:tech New York Blogger Bonanza | http://www.toprankblog.com

The second keynote speech at ad tech Chicago included a panel of leading marketing folks discussing how to build great brands in the digital age.

The panelists, including those below, shared their insight on building brands such as YouTube.com, Ponitac Sunfire, McDonalds and its recent collaboration with Shrek and the like:
Marc Landsberg, President, Arc Worldwide
Suzie Reider, Head of Advertising Sales, YouTube.com
Tor Myhren, Executive Creative Director, Executive VP, Leo Burnett Detroit
Robert Leverone, VP, Television, Dow Jones

An overarching theme of ad:tech this week was how to engage prospects and consumer in conversation with company and/or client brands.

Boyd Peterson, Senior VP, Consumer Research, Yankee Group Research who moderated the panel brought up a good point about consumers and their desire (or lack thereof) to communicate with brands. His point was that he doesn’t get up in the morning and think ‘man, I wish I could talk to my friend Coke today’.

This point spurred conversation among the panel that highlighted consumers’ tendency to talk to their friends and families about brands, but not necessarily talk to the brand itself.

As an example, Nike has created an online lounge where runners can talk, collaborate and share information about running and they do this by leveraging tools such as blogs and RSS feeds provided by Nike. This sets up a great scenario where consumers are talking to one another about running but Nike’s brand is kept top of mind because they are providing the tools to make it all possible.

In terms of marketing and brand building with social media, social networks like MySpace and Facebook have provided an excellent platform for the creation of tools and widgets that allow brand enthusiasts to mashup, repurpose and spread topics of interest without direct interaction with the brand itself.

A key lesson here is that engaging customers directly with brands will continue to give way to empowering customers to spread brand messages within their own networks by providing content and tools to enable conversations.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2007. | ad:tech Chicago Keynote: Building Brands in a Digital Age | http://www.toprankblog.com

This morning I attended an absolutely fantastic session entitled: Aha! How to Ignite a Creative Spark at your Next Brainstorming Session presented by Jordan Ayan, CEO & Founder of SubscriberMail, LLC.

Creativity and the ability to be creative is a topic we have been discussing at TopRank quite a bit lately in order to provide the most effective campaigns and tactics for our clients.

However, we all run into creative roadblocks now and again. A common roadblock to creativity is what Ayan refers to as “Mental Models” and “Patterned Thinking”.

One of the first step Ayan led us through was letting go of our mental baggage by writing them all down on a colorful piece of paper. For fun, my ‘mental baggage’ – or those items I was thinking about and therefore could cloud my creativity – included the new blister on my foot and wanting to play with the creativity dice we were given.

Ayan then had us fold our mental baggage into a paper airplane, stand up and aim at a target at the front of the room. 1, 2, 3, let them fly. Only one ‘plane’ even came close and that’s because one very creative attendee wadded his plane up into a ball to get closer to his target! Aha! – He broke the mental mold of the paper airplane, changed the form of his paper to reach the objective and won free copy of Ayan’s book – Aha!

The Torrence Test of Creative Thinking explains why we follow these mental models through research. The test discovered that originality scores in creatively markedly decrease as we age. Research found the following decline in creativity across age groups:

Age 5 – 90%
Age 7 – 20%
Age 45 – 2%

Why is this? Because, the more we are exposed to schools, social norms, the business world the more we are trained and told how to think leading to patterned thinking which blocks our creativity ability.

Within organizations creativity is key and brainstorming is often an activity used to develop and nurture new ideas. Ayan recommends the following 8 brainstorming keys:

1. Have Fun – if it’s too serious, breakthroughs will be rare
2. State the Goal – make sure you have identified the problem
3. Challenge Assumptions – eliminate any assumptions built into the statement to ensure that you are solving the right problem
4. No Premature Evaluation – no compliments, criticism or questions
5. ‘Wild’ Ideas Are Welcome – all ideas have possibilities so don’t limit yourself or your team
6. Don’t Wait – an approved forum for interrupting co-workers and blurting out ideas as they come to mind
7. Quantity is Key – the more you produce, the better the chance you’ll find the gem
8. Piggyback on Others’ Ideas – combine, modify and expand on other ideas to create new ones

These steps should help us all get more creative enabling us create more creative and effective strategies and tactics for our clients. What examples of a creative campaign/tactic have you deployed recently?

You can find even more coverage of the Chicago 2007 ad:tech conference on the ad:tech blog.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2007. | ad:tech Chicago – Keys to Removing Creativity Roadblocks | http://www.toprankblog.com

Ad:Tech Chicago kicked off this morning with a key note speech from Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine and author of The Long Tail.

A great session, Chris highlighted the shift in the marketplace away from the “One Size Fits All” mentality of decades past. According to Chris, the age of the blockbuster album, movie or product just might be over.

For example, NSnyc’s album ‘No Strings Attached’ released in 2000 is the all-time bestselling album and according to Chris, a record that will never be broken because no longer do consumers necessarily flock to what they are told is the best, most popular mind-blowing thing. Consumers are deciding for themselves what they want more than ever. Some statistics to back this up include the fact that records that reach record status have fallen by over 60%, but more music is made and consumed than ever before. Why?

This change is caused by the redistribution of individuals’ tastes. We are no longer listening to and/or watching what mass media and marketers deem popular. Thanks to sites like iTunes, Amazon and Ebay, consumers can find what they what, not what marketers tell them they want.

Consumers have control and are demanding products and services that cater to them and their needs. The “1 Size Fits 1″ marketplace is upon us, noted by the attention marketers are paying to the ‘long tail’.

For the uninitiated, the notion of the long tail – shown below in yellow – is the idea that in aggregate there are just as many long tail consumers outside the ‘head of distribution’ – show in green. As most experienced search marketers know, mastering the ability for visibility within the long tail can provide a significant competitive advantage.

Because of the long tail, marketers are considering that failure might be the new success. For example, Zappos.com has over 750,000 kinds of shoes. Because of limitless shelf space, the site only has to sell 2 of each shoe a year for the shoe to be successful. On the other hand, Wal-Mart products have to sell 2 per week to be successful.

As our audiences become more segmented, we as marketers may need to redefine what we consider a successful campaign.
I’m curious, what Online Marketing Blog readers are doing with long tail marketing for search marketing? For social media? For public relations?

You can find even more coverage of the Chicago 2007 ad:tech conference on the ad:tech blog.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2007. | ad:tech Chicago – Failure is the New Success, Chris Anderson | http://www.toprankblog.com

Bruce Clay is one of the best known brands in the world of search marketing and if you attend Search Engine Strategies, WebmasterWorld Pubcon or ad:tech conferences, you’re sure to see him and his team on the exhibit hall and/or presenting to attendees. Thousands of people have used his SEO tools and participated in his company’s SEO training programs.

This year, the Bruce Clay brand has been elevated further with the blog post stylings of Lisa Barone and Susan Esparza via the Bruce Clay blog. In this short interview, Bruce talks about the differences between the SES, Pubcon and ad:tech conferences as well as his decision to dedicate full time writers to a company blog.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Visit the Bruce Clay blog here.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2006. | SES Chicago SEO Videos – Bruce Clay | http://www.toprankblog.com

Coverage by the ad:tech blog:

It’s Hard Out Here for a Traffic Pimp
Waiting for Your Cat to Bark
Developing an Integrated Local Media Strategy
Local Integration
TV Is Changing And TV Companies Better Follow
AdSpace on MySpace – Advertising with Social Media
Making Search Even More Efficient! Increasing Your Search Ranking Via PR and Search as a Branding Mechanism
Intelligence and Idiocy Fill ad:tech Chicago’s Party Scene
Customer Analytics and Marketing Dashboards – The Gift that Keeps on Giving
Booth Babe Offers Relief From Long, Hard Day
Mastering Your Domains
Link Building – It’s All About Quality
Many Monday Night Parties Emerge at Chicago ad:tech
Bullets ‘R Us: Best Practices in Design
Creative Blather Concludes ‘Creative Is Non-Linear’
Sessions covered here at Online Marketing Blog:

Link Building
Big Brands and Podcasting
Warm and Cozy SEO
Waiting for Your Cat to Bark
Advertising with Social Media
ad:tech Announces New Programming Chair Drew Ianni
ad:tech Chicago 2006 – Day One Roundup

Posts by Frank Gruber for iMedia Connection:
WOM in the New Social Media Landscape
Creating the Positive User Experience
Advertising on Social Networks
Integrate Your Local Media Strategy

Posts from the team at DMNews:
Big-Brand Marketers Take Time, Care With New Initiatives
Keynoter Offers Model, Metrics for Cross-Channel Engagement
Ad:tech: Integrated Media Spurs Innovation
Panel: Consumers Trail Speeding TV Technology
Panelists Talk Soaring Mobile Platform
Ad:tech: Keynote Focuses on Design Through Creativity, Social Responsibility
How Many Keywords Does FedEx Have?
Ad:tech Chicago: Key Trends Impacting Advertising, Media and Technology
Drew Ianni Succeeds Susan Bratton as ad:tech Chair

Overall, a pretty good show! Thanks to ad:tech and Steve Hall for having me participate in the conference coverage. You can find out more about ad:tech and upcoming shows at the ad:tech web site.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2006. | ad:tech Chicago 2006 – Day Two Roundup | http://www.toprankblog.com

This session, “Waiting for Your Cat to Bark – Persuasion Architecture – Persuading Customers When they Ignore Marketing” with Bryan Eisenberg of Future Now is titled after the book of the same name. Basically this session was about marketers getting poor results because they are using old Pavolovian rules of marketing and that consumers buy differently than in the past. Customers are less like compliant dogs and more like finicky cats. Hence the title.

Marketers are concerned customers ignore marketing. Mass market media are under performing. Marketing execs are burning out. Not getting results. They’re using outdated formulas. Current marketing models are simply not working.

As an illustration of how seemingly successful campaigns are still leaving money on the table, Eisenburg shows the GoDaddy Super bowl commercial which increased sales by 35%. However, the commercial drives viewers to a home page that is not branded with the commercial. The disconnect cost GoDaddy money.

Another indication of changing customer behavior is the speed of which consumers connect with each other through word of mouth.

Marketing has been redefined. We’re moving away from push and towards pull.

54% of customers are resistant to marketing. 69% use technology to block advertising. Customer B.S. meters are hypersensitive,

Marketers need to find ways to educate people and give them the answers they are looking for and not use old models of “selling”.

Achieving the ultimate experience.
Eisenberg gives examples of Starbucks, Google and JetBlue. Word of mouth is more powerful than traditional advertising.

How do we trigger word of mouth?
Word of mouth is triggered when your customer experiences something far beyond what was expected. Slightly exceeding their expectations just won’t do it.

Ways to trigger WOM:
1. Architectural.
2. Kinetic
3. and/or generous (one of the cheapest ways to buy WOM)

The web has become a major influencer, yet only 56% of marketing executives say the web was the hub of their organization’s marketing.

Blogs – is there anyway to fight back? Forbes article in 2005. No. AOL cancellation and Comcast tech falling asleep at customer’s house – spread through YouTube very quickly resulting in significant media attention. That would not have happened 5 years ago. Things are changing.

Conversion rates are disappointing. A common misperception is that the web is the best as a direct marketing vehicle.

Traffic costs are increasing and sites fail to deliver. Why?
- Marketer doesn’t understand visitor needs
- Stopped being relevant to their buying needs

Jared Spool – a web page either has the content to what the user is looking for or a link to the content they are looking for. If not, visitors stop clicking.

Irrelevant ads cause a disconnect – bad scent. Relevant ads and content offer “good scent”.

An example search on Google for “web analytics” shows irrelevant search results – bad scent.

Shows Victoria’s Secret example. Ad creative sends you through a process. Brand, image, offer, category, product – good scent.

Fundamental problem with marketing is following old rules and that does not satisfy customer needs.

Unless you are an avid reader of Grok.com and the ClickZ column ROI Marketing, it is pretty obvious there is a need to read the book, “Waiting for Your Cat to Bark”, in order to fully understand the content of this presentation. Bryan went through slides pretty quickly and presented a lot of information on creating personas and creating persuasion architecture.

Basically he described the importance of understanding customers and how they buy through personas. Learn what their motivations are and plan scenarios. An example was provided using a diamond retailer that resulted in an increase in conversions from less than 1% to over 50%.

Personas do not represent actual customers; they are indications of modes of behavior.

Now to audience questions.

Audience: Google editorial guidelines do not allow landing pages that are not exactly related to the keywords, but creatively so. Previous example referenced: Sony bidding on plasma tvs and showing a page that says “We don’t sell plasma TVs but LCDs are a better choice.”
Bryan: It’s arguable as long as you’re presenting information in the right context.

Audience: How is a service sale different than a product sale?
Bryan: We use consumer examples because people can easily understand that. The process changes and becomes more robust.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2006. | ad:tech Chicago – Waiting for Your Cat to Bark | http://www.toprankblog.com

Rather than a presentation format, moderator David Carlick of Vantage Point Venture Partners introduces “Social Media: The Dynamics of the Genre and the Opportunities for Marketers” as a Q and A session.

Carlick starts things out talking about MySpace as a way to explain social media and social networking. He shows a MySpace news clip: MySpace most popular site over Yahoo and Google. The challenge with MySpace is how to leverage advertising.

He goes on to show a sample search of MySpace for a particular demographic and example profiles as well as the kinds of ads that show up. Most of the ads had nothing to do with the content on the profile pages. The content on the profiles for the younger MySpace members was a bit racy. Racy content makes brands tentative about advertising on MySpace.

MySpace is more fun that television! But how do you monetize it?

New we get into the moderator/panel commentary and Q and A.

Amy Gibby of eCRUSH.com starts out with:
Is social networking something advertisers can ignore?
She sites an Economist article that discusses the evolution of advertising:

The Wanamaker Era:
“Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The problem is, I don’t know which half.”

Tobaccowala Era:
“Advertisers now make lots of spearheads and then get people to impale themselves.”

Gibby recommends an article, “Parenting your Brand in the social media space by Pete Blackshaw of Intelliseek.

eCrush got into the social networking game in 2002 with “eSpin the Bottle” that serves as a forum for participation with advertisers. As you enter different social media spaces, there are different rules for engagement. The social media space is not a fad.

The Spin the Bottle social networking service profile experience is very controlled. That information makes it easier to target for advertisers. Allows advertisers to target very specific demographics. Members control the content as well as the advertising.

Next up is Shawn Gold, Senior VP, Marketing and Content, MySpace.com:
Is social networking a fad or an enduring behavior?
MySpace is a place for “friends”. Whether social networking is a fad or not is an interesting question, because social networking has been around since the beginning of time. Social networking online is evolving and the question is asked a lot. Probably because many of the big players in social networking have come and gone.

Gold goes on to explain social networking in the context of 1.0 and 2.0.
Social networking 1.0 was characterized by services like Geocities and Angelfire. They’re not around anymore because the install base was not ripe. The early services focused on expression and were weak at that. The core of MySpace popularity and success is individuality and the ability to make connections. Social networking 1.0 was pre-digital camera and pre-many other media tools for expression. Also, the social networking 1.0 services served the business side and not the consumer base.

Social networking 2.0 pioneer Friendster failed. Why? They could not support the user base from a technology perspective. The core audience on Friendster is older than on MySpace. Many people tried it out and then went back to email and IM. Friendster limited users’ ability to express themselves. When users hacked the Friendster templates, they were booted off. MySpace encourages such customization.

Friendster was limited in what you could share. The ability to connect was limited. The ability to blog was added later. Alternatively, MySpace creates tools for the influencers in the respective areas of popular culture, and then creates tools for their fans to interact.

Arguments for why MySpace is going to fail:

- MySpace is a fad because everything is going mobile: MySpace is launching mobile features.
- MySpace will become uncool. – Out of 100m users, some are probably not cool, but that does not make MySpace “uncool”.
- Core audience will grow out of it – MySpace is not a technology to the younger users, it’s “just there”, its part of what they do.
- Spam will kill MySpace – MySpace is empowering users with control over who can and cannot contact them.
- If features do not evolve – True, MySpace understands that and will continue to evolve.

The “Secret sauce” is respect for the users. Tom is a figure head and does a good job empathizing with the user base and finding out what is important to them.

Amy from eCrush.com mentions that the session is not whether MySpace a fad, but whether social media is a fad. Her comment to the audience was, “Don’t sidestep the social media space based on what’s happening with one player (like the success of failure of MySpace)”

Now we have Ted McConnell, Interactive Innovation Director, Procter & Gamble:
Are the social networks safe places for advertisers?

How “they” as college students, they thought we as companies should talk to them.
Reply was a picture of head with 2 pipes going into it. One for friends and one for companies. Ignore companies and pay attention to friends.

They did research on the topic and one slide of note: The key to polite behavior is the balance between intimacy and intrusiveness.

How well you do as an ad in a social networking space, is how well you balance the intimacy and intrusiveness of a message.

Next slide shows a graph of “Intrusiveness in the wrong context creates negative effect towards brand.”
More dislike of brand after receiving ads in more intimate, more intrusive channels. Ex: Hey, check out this video, when the video is an ad. Elicited responses such as WTF?

Concern is that the opportunity with social networking will be ruined if users are not respected. Respect the intimacy of the channel.

The last panelist is Kris Oser, Director of Strategic Communications, eMarketer:
How do advertisers deal with the social networking environment?

Her answer? “Gingerly – like new parents holding a new baby”. However, that doesn’t stop advertisers from spending money.

$280m will be spent on social networking sites, mostly creating profiles. eMarketer predicts that by 2010 it will increase to $2.5 billion. Why? Thhere is nothing more popular on the web. MySpace has had a 367% increase in traffic this year alone.

The big question is whether social networking will attract blue chip advertisers. Oser says social networking is a cultural phenomenon that advertisers are not going to ignore. Advertisers are finding alternative spaces to show ads, such as the advertiser safe area on MySpace.

Even if a brand isn’t ready to setup a profile, they should get involved such as though monitoring their brand on social networks and paying attention to what users are saying.

Advertising on social networks is 1 to 1 to many. Example: a single user gets a targeted message who then passes it on to an influencer who spreads the message to their network. Examples of how social networks have been influential include the movies, “Snakes on a Plane” and “Pirates of the Caribbean”.

Now we move to the Q and A:

Audience: What is P&G doing with social networking?
P&G: There are some typical campaigns that are being tested, not going to mention specifics.

Audience: What does the panel think of Second Life and avatar based environments and also of those environments as a place for advertising?
MySpace: Advertising can be done anywhere as long as it’s done credibly and it helps further the reason users engage in the medium in the first place. The kind of advertising that works with youth culture is Humor, Irony the unvarnished truth regardless of where it occurs.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2006. | ad:tech Chicago – Advertising with Social Media | http://www.toprankblog.com

Link Building
Big Brands and Podcasting
Warm and Cozy SEO

Also, Carlen Lea Lesser covered: “Managing Ultra-Complex Search Campaigns”

In the morning I had the chance to briefly meet keynote speaker, Fay Ferguson and chat a bit with fellow ad:tech blogger David Berkowitz of 360i and contributor to Media Post Search Insider. I also had a most enjoyable conversation with Mickey Alam Kahn, Senior Editor of DMNews.

Later in the day I bumped into Dr. Amanda Watlington, my partner in crime on the DMA Search Engine Marketing Council blog and fellow speaker at the DMA06 Annual conference. We’ll be presenting with Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts about blogs, RSS and podcasts.

A shorn Greg Jarboe and I attended several sessions together in the morning. I should have taken a photo as Greg looks good in a crew cut and a short beard. Greg tells me SEO PR has something exciting in store in the next few weeks or months. I’m pretty sure I know what it is already, but I’ll let him tell me officially.

While working on translating my garbled notes from a session into a comprehensible blog post, I received a comment from Frank Gruber saying that we should connect here at the conference. I did not know he was attending. I replied that I was in the press room. Turns out, so was Frank! He’s here helping cover the conference for iMedia Connection. Frank walked over and we had a great talk about some of the exciting things he’s doing here in Chicago to connect web 2.0 companies and people.

I had a brief opportunity to walk the exhibit hall in the morning and then again at the end of the day when there was a party hosted by CIMA and BlueLithium. I had the chance to meet Don Knox, VP of ad:tech and it was interesting when we met that he recognized me from reading Online Marketing Blog. I think that’s pretty cool actually.

CIMA also sponsored a nice get together at Fulton’s on the River, which is a huge seafood restaurant. Lots of sushi and a huge spread of other delectables was available as well as abundant libations. There I had some very interesting conversations with companies big and small before heading back to my hotel.

Deciding not to eat anything at the CIMA event, I did decide to check out Don Shula’s restaurant in my Hotel before closing down for the day and had an excellent, but not wisely chosen due to the time of day, dinner. This kind of eating schedule blows away my “SEO is like weight loss” idea.

Day two of ad:tech Chicago for Online Marketing Blog will include a session on social media with P&G and MySpace and to hear Bryan Eisenberg talk about persuasion architecture and his new book, “Waiting for Your Cat to Bark.”

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2006. | ad:tech Chicago 2006 – Day One Roundup | http://www.toprankblog.com

This SEO related session was two thirds full, which dispells my earlier suggestion that interest in SEO might be slipping here at ad:tech. What was to be a rounded topic of on-page and off-page optimization turned out to be focused on linking as one of the presenters was not able to attend.

It was good to see different speakers on SEO here at ad:tech, but SES or Pubcon veterans would have balked at some parts of Dan Perry’s presentation as being too basic or not entirely useful. However, this is ad:tech and many aspects of SEO are still a mystery to most attendees. As a result, the information presented by Dan may have been more palatable and provoking of questions as there was a good Q/A session afterwards.

Rob Garner of iCrossing had started things out by talking about the importance of understanding the impact of a site redesign on search engine rankings. He provided a worst case example of a re-launched site with renamed urls and no redirection plan. The results were disastrous with lost rankings, traffic and worst of all, lost sales. The lesson is to preserve “your url equity”.

When planning a site redesign, it is important to bring a search strategist in early. Here are some questions to ask your web marketing team:

1. How can the URL architecture be included in the business and technical requirement?
Many have the mis-perception that SEO is done in the middle and at the end of a site desig/redesign and it is important that these considerations are part of the site planning from day one.
2. How much value do you currently have in your URLS? Look at the quality of the inbound and site wide links. Look at the age and history of domain URLs. Look at your files to see whether links are driving traffic or not.
3. How can we preserve the existing URL structure?
4. what impact will other development and business requirements have on URL equity?

Rob also offered some further insight on valuing links and calculating deeplink ratio. Rather than use Rob’s formula, there is a tool that calculates this pointed out in Dan’s presentation below.

Overall, redesigning a site does not have to have negative consequences on your site rankings. If the search marketing experts can be involved as soon in the process as possible, and proper planning is in place, negative effects can be minimized.

Next up is Dan Perry from Career Education Corporation who discusses various aspects about linking. Dan does the “here’s why I am up here and you’re not” speech which is a bit odd. Since his company manages .edu sites, it is easy to get inbound links. They are however, very conservative about outbound links.

Dan emphasizes that it’s not the quantity it’s the quality that matters with links because the search engines care about quality and so should you. When link building, Dan says it is important to think about how likely would someone visiting your site convert if they came from a particular link source? If you don’t think site visitors would convert, then don’t bother asking for a link from that site.

Dan’s linking tips are divided between Basic, Advanced, Expert and Bonus. I am not sure I would have labeled them that way as the Advanced and Expert tips were a bit old hat. At least to an old SEO like myself.

The fundamentals include submitting to directories. Here is a list of directories from the Search Engine Watch Forum. A useful tool is Google directory, where sites are listed by page rank.

The advanced linking tips offered included competitive intelligence using MarkeLeap tools and Link Hounds Link Harvester tool. Link Harvester provides deep link percentage and segments inbound links by type. It also shows whois, archive.org, Google cache, home page text, Dmoz listing, Yahoo and MSN listings.

As for expert linking tips, Dan offered up a backlink builder tool that allows you to enter a keyword and display links to possible linking opportunities. This tool uses variations of the keywords you enter and a predefined list of phrases often found on websites that encourage submissions. Dan offers this tip with a bit of caution as it may not be right for every web site in terms of quality links.

The other expert tip focused on researching links to a site on Google using the syntax: @ www.domain.com rather than link:www.domain.com to identify all the sites linking to a particular URL as well as all the pages that mention the URL but do not link to it.

Now it’s time for the bonus tips: Use the $80 PRWeb option which Dan says will get you into Yahoo News which is much more popular than Google News. Also, be sure to post releases to your web site which will help attract long tail search visibility.

Another bonus tip is to require a link in your contracts with vendors and partners.

Dan mentions that link building work is a great task for a summer intern who can clean up current links and perform competitive research.

With only two presenters, there is ample time for audience questions.

Audience: What do you think about paid text links?
Both Rob and Dan believe that eventually search engines will devalue paid text links.
Fionn: Focus on links for traffic. Paid links for benefit on search engines can get you in trouble.

Audience: Do you have to be a publicly traded company to distribute on PRWeb and can you have links in the press releases?
Dan: No, PRWeb will take press releases from anyone. Yes you can have links in the releases.

Audience: What’s the best way to get links from .edu sites? Can I buy links from your .edu sites?
Dan: Not from us. .edu domains are acquired differently than regular domains. One tip is that students at some schools are selling links from their home pages.
Fionn: Create some content that is useful to visitors to a .edu site. When you contact them for a link, you can offer something of value to link to.

Audience: What weight would you give on page vs. off page?
Dan and Rob: More weight towards links. Too many “on page” factors can be spammed and links still serve as credible indicator of page quality.

Audience: Are there analytics packages ideal for measuring the value of links?
Rob: If you see a lift in your positioning, then your web analytics can be used to determine the source of the traffic, allowing you to assign value to links.

Audience: What is your advice for asking for links?
Rob: Email is inefficient. A phone call can be a lot more productive.
Dan: The prevalence of link spam is reducing the trust worthiness of link building email.
Fionn: Content is the best way to get links. A link directory of many different websites on your site can get you penalized, so remove it.
Rob: Many web marketers are realizing that they are now publishers. So content is inline with effective link building.

This session was a bit more like basic link building than links and content optimization, but it did reinforce sage ideas about focusing on what is important for the user as well as focusing on quality rather than quantity. What I would like to have seen more of was information about using linkable content, viral linking and link bait. Perhaps those are topics for the next ad:tech.

For more coverage of ad:tech Chicago 2006, visit the ad:tech blog.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2006. | ad:tech Chicago – Link Building | http://www.toprankblog.com

With a slight delay, this standing room only session started off with Moderator Henry Copeland of blogads.com introducing the speakers which included: Michael Moore of Nestle Purina Pet Care, Robert Claypoole “Consumer and Professional Relationship Marketing” for Johnson and Johnson Vision Care division, Heather Sefcik of Henkel Consumer Adhesives (Duck Tape) and Brian Bloom of Ligget Stashower, a marketing PR firm that works with the Duck Tape brand.

Heather and Brian Bloom did a tag team presentation with Heather starting things off by offering a quick Duck Tape 101 history. Starting in WWII, Duck Tape today is a household name with a cult like following. Duck Tape has “become cool”.

Duck Tape decided to do a test with podcasts to supplement programs and expand market reach using some pretty creative ideas including: A Duck Tape prom, a contest where kids were encouraged to attend prom wearing outfits made of duck tape. The promotion received local and national play. They also sponsored the world’s largest duck tape flag day, with a flag the size of a basketball court, Rock About the Roll, which was based on user submitted songs about Duck Tape and the Avon Heritage Duck Tape Festival which highlighted product features and uses.

Next up was Michael Moore of Purina to talk about their new media and podcasting efforts available at http://www.purina.com/downloads/
The first version of Purina downloads was launched in 2005 offering mobile ring tones and wallpapers, pet care tips via SMS and RSS feeds. Version 2 launched early July 2006 with an enhanced mobile offering, aggregated RSS feeds and audio/video podcasts.

Purina created the podcasts by taking radio show content and editing the audio with bumper music. They also segmented video into 5 minute portions as video podcasts. The focus of the initiative was offer existing content in a way that would be appealing to their audience without creating new content.

Examples repurposing content included: Customer dog pictures available as RSS feed. Cat advice, consumer generated stories about their pets and dog care advice from veterinarians all available via RSS feed.

Success metrics for Purina showed that ring tones were most popular followed by wall paper and tips via SMS. It was interesting that audio podcasts far more popular than video podcasts. Overall usage of the content is growing and the effect of promotions could be seen with slight peaks. Purina’s agency was even able to get iTunes to create a dedicated page for Purina called Purina Petcasting.

Next up is Robert Claypoole of Johnson and Johnson. Podcasting was a great choice for a “test and learn” and to establish benchmarking for other emerging media.

The podcasting initiative started out by creating five episode talk shows over five weeks targeting teens. The shows were hosted by a pair of teens “Heather and Janelle” who helped create the editorial strategy. Initial podcast branding of Acuvue was very subtle, but by the last show was much more direct.

Johnson and Johnson attracted an audience to the podcasts through emails to super advocates and internal data base, distributed content via iTunes, word of mouth, banner advertising, celebrities and shout outs from other podcasts.

Results exceeded goals in terms of listeners, downloads, brand connection, buzz with internal and external PR. Five weeks turned into a 5 month project, “thanks to lawyers”.

What did Johnson and Johnson learn?. Measure everything: high level to detail. It’s also important to find authentic chemistry with hosts. Production of the podcasts should be good, but not “too good”. Listeners appreciate forums for participation and feedback. With editorial, insist on authentic language. Keep in mind that the approval process can heavily impact the release schedule. One particularly important lesson was the need to integrate into existing marketing. The audience is savvy, so be transparent about the brand as far as the content.

The final slide showed this message: “If only our lawyers were excited about this as everyone else” to the laughter of the audience.

The presentations were followed by a Q and A.

For J&J podcasting is more workable because there is a bit more control over the content and exposure/interaction with it compared to blogging. There are legal issues to be dealt with in blogging

Audience: How do you make podcasts search engine friendly?
Purina: It’s something we’re working on.
J&J: Linking has been important for rankings.

Audience: What were the direct response results?
Purina: We do a lot of direct response via email and the open rate results they are seeing with podcasts are similar to email.
J&J: Direct response was lower than their lowest expectations. For repeat programs, they will be sure to incorporate with other marketing programs.

Audience: What do you think about advertising on existing podcasts rather than creating your own?
Purina: Tried that and audience perceived it as an overt branding effort. It was easier to create podcasts with repurposed content.
J&J: In order to work in the branding for J&J, they needed to create their own podcast rather than reaching out to a similar podcast because it would probably ruin the podcast if that happened.

Audience: Where do you see budgets going?
J&J: The budget follows what you’re trying to accomplish: PR, branding or direct response.
Purina: Seeing a shift in budgets more towards new media.
Duck Tape: Have not traditionally any advertising, so podcasting worked well.

Audience: What about vidcasting?
Duck Tape: Looking into it, but budget is a concern. Vidcasting should be an ideal medium.

For the most part, this session seemed to focus on podcasting more than on blogging or vidcasting. But that makes sense since podcasting offers more control than outright blogging.

For more coverage of ad:tech Chicago 2006, visit the ad:tech blog.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2006. | ad:tech Chicago – Big Brands and Podcasting | http://www.toprankblog.com