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Social Media Isn’t Just for Kids Anymore!According to a new report from Forrester Research, social media isn’t just for kids any longer. The new report notes that more than 60 percent of baby boomers are actually engaged in social media channels, such as blogs, videos, podcasts, and forums. In 2007, the percentage of baby boomers consuming this media was at 46% for people ages 43 to 52, and 39% for people ages 53 to 63. By 2008, the number increased in a massive way, 67% and 62% respectively. In addition, the number of baby boomers responding to content posted online increased as well. For the younger boomers, responding to content doubled from 15% in 2007 to 34% in 2008. According to Forrester, this is now at a percentage that’s high enough to target this group with social media applications and content. When it comes to joining social networks, the activity has widely increased among baby boomers as well. Today, almost one in four of the younger boomers are actively engaged in social networks, up from 15% in 2007. The one aspect of social media that is up, but not at a significant increase when compared to the other activities, is the aspect of actually creating content. Besides updating their online profiles and leaving blog comments, the baby boomers are still not heavily involved in writing blog articles or creating videos and posting them online. In 2008, 16% of younger boomers were involved in content creation (up from 12% in 2007) and 15% of older boomers (up from 8% in 2007). Both groups saw an increase, but it still remains the least popular activity online for baby boomers. What Does this Mean? According to Forrester’s suggestion - the best bet for getting baby boomers involved in your content is to create blogs or videos that relate to the life and/or work style of baby boomers. And creating these content channels without so many complex sign-up processes are most likely the smartest direction to take your ideas, as the numbers above show that baby boomer’s feedback is limited - so consider the sensitivity of your channel. This research opens the door to start considering serious steps into creating social applications for this particular age group (ages 43 to 63). Although the group isn’t as active as the younger generations, their participation levels are now at a moderate level and increasing - very worth of a company to start to seriously consider marketing towards. So when thinking about marketing to this age group, consider the social networks that many of the baby boomers now favor. Websites like Eons, BOOMj.com, TeeBeeDee, Classmates Online, and AARP’s new online community. Labels: Application Development, Brand Awareness, Facebook, Social Media Marketing Overdrive Interactive Works the Bentley University Career Fair Today, Overdrive Interactive worked the Bentley University career fair; two Bentley alum represented the company: Ra Un and Laura Ragno. This is such a great recruiting opportunity for both students and employers. For those students who follow our blog and stopped by the booth, thank you for learning more about our company!For those graduating Seniors, May is just around the corner. We are hiring for multiple entry-level positions so check our the careers page of our site and submit your resume and cover letter if you wish to be considered. Labels: Campus Life, Events Paid Search Tips for Campaign OptimizationIf you've ever run a paid search campaign, chances are you've come across keywords that, while viable for your campaign, garner too much traffic and are just too expensive to bid on. However, what happens when the opposite is true? Some perfectly legitimate keywords carry such little frequency that Google may not show your ads consistently. I've highlighted some potential issues associated with low frequency keywords below and some tips on how to avoid this situation. When keywords carry an extremely low search frequency (by Google’s standards) paid search ads may not be displayed consistently. By increasing bids, this can counteract the low search frequency and increase the frequency of your ads being shown. The goal is to achieve a balance of ensuring your ads are being displayed while not increasing bids too high. Keywords Are Phrase Matched Normally for campaigns with a low cost per click you would want to broad match your terms, meaning that if someone entered any part of a keyword into a search query, your ads would show. This may not be possible though for a variety of reasons; maybe part of your keyword would not be relevant, maybe it would be too expensive broad matching certain terms Whatever the reason, a little elbow grease can help counteract this situation. Adding all variations of a term - misspellings, words in a different order, etc. - any variation you can think that would even remotely make sense, should be added to the campaign. This way you have a much better chance of bidding on the exact keyword a user entered, which in turn gives your ads a much better chance of showing up. While these tactics will definitely help, your ads still might not show up 100% of the time. The key is to closely monitor your campaign and find an acceptable balance of keyword bids and impression levels. If you would like Overdrive to help with your search engine marketing efforts, feel free to contact us anytime: 617-254-5000 x1100. Labels: Google, Paid Search, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Listening to your ConsumersTropicana found out the hard way that consumers who are passionate about the brand, will talk about the brand; and it's not always in the most positive light. In January, Tropicana launched a new packaging design for its Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice. Previously, the design featured an orange with a straw sticking out. The brand name with the type of juice, such as “No Pulp” stood out on the design. The new design features a glass of orange juice, with less prominence placed on the brand and type of OJ, and more on the “100% orange” guarantee. Upset consumers wrote letters, emails, and called to complain about the new packaging. They even turned to social networks to rally against the new design. If you search for "Tropicana packaging" in Facebook, 4 group profiles appear with names such as "I loathe the new Tropicana repackaging." These group pages may not have a lot of members (the one I mentioned only had 99), but Tropicana took notice. Tropicana underestimated the emotional bond that consumers had with the brand. As a result of consumer feedback, Tropicana is pulling the redesigned packaging from the shelf in favor of the previous packaging. A recent NY Times article by Stuart Elliot, stated that "It was not the volume of the outcries that led to the corporate change of heart," because according to Neil Campbell, president at Tropicana North America, "it was a fraction of a percent of the people who buy the product.” However the feedback was from loyal consumers who are passionate about the brand. "You used to wait to go to the water cooler or a cocktail party to talk over something," said Richard Laermer, chief executive at RLM Public Relations in New York. "Now, every minute is a cocktail party," he added. "You write an e-mail and in an hour, you’ve got a fan base agreeing with you." This is a good example of how a company has listened to its consumers and made changes in response to feedback. Social media has helped to build relationships between companies and consumers. However, instead of being reactive to consumer feedback, companies need to embrace social media to gather feedback before something such as a package redesign launches. Tools such as polling and surveying on Facebook can give companies insight into the minds of the consumer. As Mr. Campbell mentioned, "…if consumers are speaking, you have to listen." Labels: Advertising, Brand Awareness, Facebook, Social Media, Social Media Marketing Glam Takes Editing Twitter Feeds to Another Level, and Makes MoneyGlam.com, a style website targeted toward women, took a unique approach last Sunday night to 'Twittering' the Oscars. Run by Glam Media, an advertising and publishing network of more than 900 lifestyle websites and blogs, is now seeking to make money by editing streams for Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook's status updates. So, during the Oscars on Sunday, Glam launched a widget on its homepage that allowed users to tweet their thoughts about the night's events. But, one thing was different from a normal Twitter stream (#Oscars), Glam decided to edit who could take part in it. The entertainment editors for Glam.com decided they would call the shots as to who would be allowed to tweet in the stream, avoiding having to show any posts or comments that they might feel are inappropriate. Glam said this was done so that advertisers would feel more comfortable with the conversation and what was happening during the evening. Some say this might be playing favorites and avoiding a 'true' conversation stream as Glam is simply choosing what users are allowed to tweet during the event. However, because of tying in these limitations, Glam was able to sell sponsorships of the Oscars widget to Aveeno, a woman's beauty brand.  In a published report, Glam chief executive Samir Arora said Glam first launched the idea last week during Fashion Week in New York, and within three days, Glam had top bloggers and fashion reporters participating in the maintenance of the streams. Glam is now comprising a list of freelance curators it can trust to maintain streams, as this will help reduce maintenance costs involved with updating and monitoring the streams.. In addition, publishers in Glam's network using the widget will get a share of the revenue generated by the advertising. When you look at using this idea in offline events, such as the Oscars, you limit the conversation to what the event is about - so you don't get any 'excess', which advertisers would want to avoid. And a sponsor, like Aveeno, can buy branding on everything from the widget box, to the physical event itself - as Glam had organized events in LA the weekend surrounding the Oscars. Also, Aveeno can purchase display ads on Glam's sites, referring to Oscar related content, as well as ads on video content throughout the network. When you think about it, Glam has done something really interesting, creating a way for third-party publishers to create their own edited versions of micro-blogging streams, embed their own widgets, and make money from advertising! Could you be doing something like this? Labels: Facebook, Friendfeed, Social Media Marketing, Twitter, Widgets Good Example of Someone Listening in the Social SpaceAs a part of our company’s social media marketing strategy, we continue to seek new applications and services which best meet our SM needs. When we began using Twitter, we really needed a site that allowed us to schedule tweets in order to manage the account effectively. We decided to use TweetLater, who proved today they really know how to listen to their users. A frustration which bothered me about TweetLater was the lack of navigational links on the homepage. Each day I used the site I would have to click at least two or three times until I reached the section I needed to schedule a new tweet. I was very close to looking for a new service when I decided to send a tweet to @dewaldp, the creator of TweetLater. To my surprise, my frustration was resolved in less than half an hour and a new link was added to the TweetLater homepage! Here is the conversation which occurred: @dewaldp (Mon, Feb 23, 3:40PM) It would be very useful to have "manage account" link right on the homepage This is a great example of how companies should be utilizing social media. By listening to your clients, customers, or followers you are building a brand image and relationship with them that is stronger than any advertisement. The experience I had today was memorable and I will continue to use TweetLater since they have proved they care about the service they are providing. Labels: Online Media, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Strategy, TweetLater, Twitter Twitter Talks up a Corporate-Account PlanTwitter stirred the emotional 'tweeting' world last week when a rumor was unveiled that it could soon charge companies to 'interact' on Twitter. Based on comments made by Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams, the possible idea (rumor) is to charge companies for accounts with special privileges. In a New York Magazine article last week, Stone and Williams said that charging companies for brand verification is something they are seriously looking into. They said that a paid corporate account could have features like a prompt when a new user joins a company's feed. This makes a lot of sense on many levels, one being to keep the Twitter-sphere clean of fake & spam-like profiles. There has been a slew of fake profiles that have been created on Twitter, one most recently was an account for the Dalai Lama that was removed. If this were to go into effect in the following months, it is not anything that wasn't expected. Companies have been using Twitter successfully since its creation - essentially to connect with their customers on a more personal level.  Zappos and Comcast are two of the most prominent company profiles on Twitter who have engaged their audience effectively. Both brands scan Twitter (via Twitter Search & other social media monitoring platforms) to see who is 'tweeting' about them daily. The companies then connect with those users, whether it is positive or negative feedback, and send messages, communicating directly with the individual users on a personal level. Personally, I have connected with Comcast's Twitter account rep, Frank Eliason, who tweets from the account ComcastCares. He was able to handle my personal complaint with Comcast quickly. He had someone call me within a day to 'listen' to my issue I was having with their service and they quickly offered me compensation for my inconvenience. Do you see the power here? Marketing on Twitter however is a much more fruitful idea from a revenue perspective. Last year, Dell reported that it had made over $1 million in revenue thanks to Twitter. Dell offers a number of exclusive deals through Twitter to users who follow their accounts. There is clearly a revenue-generating opportunity here, question is though, does Twitter somehow incorporate a business model to try and make money off those sales directly? Maybe... If Twitter were to honestly try and sew themselves into the direct revenue stream that companies could generate through the Twitter platform, it would be questioned on two specific levels. First, how complicated will a system like that be, impacting IT and other marketing channels of an organization. And secondly, the cost - at what level or percentage would Twitter try and 'fit' themselves into this model. Both are clear questions that have to be answered directly before any idea like this can possibly be implemented. Despite the rumors, Twitter for now is and will remain free to use by everyone - individuals, companies, celebrities, etc. And for those who are unaware of how Twitter generates revenue currently - they don't!
However, it’s important to note that whatever we come up with, Twitter will remain free to use by everyone—individuals, companies, celebrities, etc. What we’re thinking about is adding value in places where we are already seeing traction, not imposing fees on existing services. We are still very early in the idea stage and we don’t have anything to share just yet despite a recent surge in speculation. When we do, we’ll be sure to let you know. Feel free to follow Overdrive Interactive on Twitter here: @ovrdrv Labels: Online Monitoring, Social Media Marketing, Twitter Marketers are Doing a Poor Job of Monitoring Brands OnlineWhen is the last time you thought about your customer? Or, an even more important question, when was the last time you considered what people might be saying about your brand? According to a recent report released by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council, marketers are doing a poor job of monitoring their brands and their customer's experience online, despite the dynamic growth of message boards, social networks and word of mouth chatter. The Calif.-based organization surveyed more than 400 senior marketers on the way they measure and address customer experience. The report discovered that few people are capitalizing on the opportunity to leverage customer feedback. Of all the participants that were surveyed, only 16 percent are monitoring message boards and social networking websites. Some other findings in the survey included: * Only 37 percent of companies gather customer insight from customer engagements situations. * About 60 percent did not compensate employees or executives for helping build customer loyalty or satisfaction. * Only 23 percent track or measure customer feedback emails. The biggest issue here is the lack of companies listening to what customers have to say. It is not difficult to continuously monitor conversations online, and the cost that comes along with this task is not overly priced. With the right technology, you can easily listen in on those conversations and draw out meaningful data. The platforms that exist are not too expensive, and gather data effectively - measuring all levels of the conversation happening around your brand. Buzzlogic, Radian6, and Buzzmetrics, are just a few of the many hosted platforms that monitor media coverage and help you measure online sentiment. These channels help you gather data quickly, so you avoid losing any disconnect with your customers. Remember, it is the customer that matters in the end. Many marketers don't have enough strategies for recovering lost customers. Measuring social media, discussion boards and the always powerful, word-of-mouth, will help with your customer retention effectiveness, and always keep you aware of what 'people' are saying about your brand. Without the proper monitoring, feedback from customers gathered through social channels is usually gathered by companies and processed in a manner of thinking how quickly a complaint or issue can be addressed. Instead, you need to be thinking of how to use this information to gain insight. It's about thinking more qualitative about the information, rather than the usual quantitative approach marketers traditionally take. Consider your brand for a moment; are you properly monitoring the discussion happening with your company? Labels: Brand Awareness, Online Monitoring, Social Media Facebook to Launch Redesigned PagesRemember when Facebook revamped itself last year? When it launched a redesigned Home Page and Profile Page, with a less cluttered, more organized format (tabs in the Profile)? Recently, news has been going around that Facebook will be rolling out the same redesign for its business Pages. (Just to clarify for those not entirely familiar yet with Facebook terminology: the Profile is your personal page, while a business Page is usually a corporate/branded page that you are a "Fan" of). According to Inside Facebook, "With the Pages redesign, business Pages will now look much more like Facebook profile pages... [with] a “Wall and tabs” design:
As we know, Facebook Pages offer brands a powerful presence in their consumers' daily lives. The new Page design will make it easier for Pages to reach out to Fans, and for users to interact more with the Page. Below is a sample of the Facebook Page new design:  Basically, the new Wall tab will make the Pages more updated and interactive as users can easily see the notes, photos, videos, and other info shared by the brands/companies/celebrities/musicians, etc. Content posted on the Wall will also show up on the Fans' News Feed, which will not only lessen the need to send an email update each time there is a new update but also give the Page a more organic feel.Also, Pages will have status updates too (again just to clarify, a status update is when you see individual users stating things like "Bianca is currently watching the Celtics game." So for the new Page redesign, a business page can have a status like "Overdrive Interactive is currently hosting a Social Media Webinar" ). With the multiple tabs, Page owners can also choose a "landing page" where users will be directed to when visiting the page. And of course with the Boxes tab, the new Pages will present more opportunities to innovate and promote applications. We are excited for this because it will give brands more leeway and valuable space to customize content. The same article on Inside Facebook discusses more specifics, and key next steps for Page admins/owners:
Labels: Facebook, Industry, Social Media Don't Know Your Twitter From Your Widget? More Webinar Dates Released!Overdrive Interactive just released new webinar dates for the popular lecture series, "Social Media Is About Socializing". Harry Gold, CEO of Overdrive Interactive, explains to businesses that decoding the social media landscape is no longer a maybe, it's a must. His webinar is aimed at demystifying social media and providing building blocks on how to get started in this space. During the hour-long webinar, Gold tackles the most noteworthy trends in social media—particularly YouTube, Blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. He encourages new users to begin the same way any person would - by building an account, then post relevant news or information on your page or profile and, ultimately, amass friends, fans and followers. Upcoming free webinars will be broadcast on Wednesday, March 4th and Wednesday, March 11th at 2:00 p.m. EST. Details and registration information can be found at http://www.ovrdrv.com/social-webinar/. Labels: Events, Social Media, Social Media Marketing Online Advertising for B2BAt our agency, we do a lot of work for B2B (define) companies that look want to reach people by job title or function. Especially today, advertisers want to hone in their targeting as accurately as possible to reach the right people who can buy or influence the purchase of their products and services. So I worked with Bianca Garcia, one of our media planners who does a fair amount of B2B online advertising, to list a few options -- and she came up with these great ideas. Here are six approaches or places to target people online by job function or title. Labels: ClickZ, Online Media, Social Media Marketing Google Sets Out To Kill The Duplicate Content Issue Once and For AllOn the web, there's raging paranoia and misunderstanding regarding the definition and effects of having duplicate content on a website. Today, Google set out to put the duplicate content issue to rest once and for all (at least for duplicate content issues within a site) with the... drum roll please... The Canonical Link Tag  In brief, a webmaster can place this tag in the head section of an HTML document to specify what the canonical URL of a page should be. You can read more about the mechanics of the new tag on the Official Google Webmaster Blog. For search engine optimizers, this innovation signals the establishment of a new best practice for page coding: Each webpage should contain a "canonical link tag". The canonical link tag also eliminates a mess of duplicate content issues caused by database drive websites and may prove to be a far more effective means of preventing identical versions of pages from being indexed than Robots.txt, nofollows, 301 Redirects, and .htaccess workarounds. Labels: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Website Development Google Suggest Extension for Firefox displaying PPC Ads?This morning I discovered what appears to be partial paid search ad within the Google Suggest drop-down menu. It appears that the Firefox extension is pulling the 25 character ad headline and display URL right into the drop-down menu.  As an advertiser on Google, I was surprised not to have heard of this development. It has yet to be determined if these partial impressions are counted in the AdWords tally. What is more concerning is the fact that none of these paid ads actually appear to work. All of the paid partial ads point to the page below showing the page www.google.com/www.displayurl.com/ does not exist. I would assume that these "clicks" to the partial ads within the Suggest menu are not actually being counted since the user never hits the destination page, but this has yet to be confirmed. It looks like there are still some bugs to be worked out here obviously, but this is something advertisers should be aware of. Impressions on text ads might not be as valuable as impressions for other ad units, but they can still have a major impact, especially for users early in the decision making process that are compiling a short list of potential solutions or products. So, if 70 characters of your impression are missing, the value is undoubtedly decreased, as benefit statements and offers that most often influence click behavior are missing. Furthermore, as an advertiser I would be concerned about the partial impressions and how these partial impressions could bring down the click through rate, which in turn decreases the Quality Score and brings down the performance of the AdGroup and Campaign as a whole. Hopefully Google will allow for an option to block these impressions so that advertisers have the ability to save their limited funds for full ad impressions that don't dilute Quality Score overall campaign metrics. Labels: Advertising, Google, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) 25 Random Things About Overdrive InteractiveUnless you've been living under a rock for the last month, you have probably been tagged in one of your friend's '25 Random Things About Me' on Facebook. The New York Times last week reported that running a Google search on '25 Random Things About Me" yielded 35,700 pages of results within a two week period! We decided by participating in this as a company, we would have a fun way to share with our friends and fans a 'behind-the-scenes' look at what goes on at Overdrive. There is a mix of just about everything from: #16 Overdrive has an unspoken employee stand-off each day - it’s called ‘who will get stuck replacing the water jug’ to #21 A member of our SEO team graduated from college at 15 years old! For a full read through of our 25 random things, please visit our Facebook page. Labels: Campus Life, Facebook, Social Media Best Practices for Google Content TargetingThe lines between search marketing and online media have been blurring for some time. This is especially true with the Google AdSense network. It's basically a huge ad network where content sites run ads for Google. In a Google search program, this is also known as content targeting. Even though you manage these ads through the Google interface and they're often targeted by keywords that don't show up in search listings, they show up in Web sites, just like online media. A debate recently popped up in our agency about whether Google content ads, banners, and click-to-play videos managed by our search term could also be managed by our online media campaign managers as part of a media buy. Online media campaign managers should be able to manage these ads too, because -- to reiterate -- ads running in the Google content network aren't in search results. The ads are on regular Web sites and can be targeted on a site-by-site basis. |
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