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An Alternative Approach To Social Media Marketing - Your Social Brand

posted by Ty Velde @ Thursday, December 31, 2009 - 8:40 AM

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“Your Brand is what identifies your business to consumers.
It resides in the hearts and minds of your customers and prospects
as the sum total of their experiences with and perceptions of your company.”

- SEMPO
Branding With Search Marketing

If you were to ask most people about ‘branding” as it applies to their business they will most likely respond with an answer rooted in a company’s products and services. Sure, they will speak to the importance of emotionally connecting with their target audience, but at the heart of it all it still boils down to what you do or the products you produce. In short, for your brand to be effective it needs to sell and move product or services.

As we all know, companies spend untold amounts of money to develop a brand that connects with the hearts and minds of consumers, so as to ensure that they understand who, not just what, they’re all about. Therefore, if a company can form an emotional bond with consumer, it will lead to a much more long term and profitable relationship, as it’s more about the connection, than just about the product. However, while many brand marketers will speak of the effectiveness of a brand in terms of “awareness”, success is ultimately tied to and measured by units sold or profitably. What I mean here is that if people are aware but no one actually buys, are you really being successful?

Transactional Branding
I like to call this approach “Transactional Branding”, due to the fact that at the end of the day, while you are looking to emotionally connect with the hearts and minds of your consumers, it’s really about promoting products and services. Now, I will say that Transactional Branding makes complete sense due to the fact that it's rooted in common business strategy, which is to grow revenue and improve profitability. It also makes complete sense when used in the context of traditional media…broadcast, print, display and even search. The reason being is that in most cases you are using these forms of media to push a message out to consumers with the hope of connecting with them and pulling them back to purchase your product or service. While this type of brand connection does have the opportunity to facilitate a dialogue and customer relationship, it's ultimately based on the sale and/or product/service experience.

However, when it comes to Social Media, the paradigm is changing and many companies are trying to figure out what to do. The reason being is that the “Transactional Brand model” just does not seem to fit. Companies want to speak, but not be spoken to. They want to hear, but are afraid what might happen if they actually start to listen. The challenge for many companies is that when it comes to branding, they have built and developed their brand as a means to sell to, not socialize with, their target audience. However, for companies to leverage social media effectively, they need to be willing to socialize their brand, because that is what social media is all about…Socializing!

Now for companies that have the good fortune of a having a transactional brand, with a social angle, jumping into social media is not that big a stretch. The reason being is that these kinds of companies, such as Harley-Davidson, already have a very strong social relationship with their user and customer base. The reason why these types of companies are successful when it comes to social media is that they have figured out a way to “socialize” the “Transactional Branding relationship”. Therefore, when it comes to socializing with their customer base via social media, they are ready, prepared and willing to do so, because it’s been part of their core business and brand strategy all along.

However, there are many companies, such as those in highly regulated industries such as financial services that don’t have the luxury of being able to readily socialize with their audience. While many have very strong and trusted brands, they have been built from the top down and are not readily structured to be dissected via social media. The fact is, many companies in this arena have very carefully crafted brands and images and the thought of being exposed to the world of social media, scares the heck out of them. At the same time, they realize that there is an audience to be had and that they need to figure out a way to communicate with them via social media and establish a presence.

In my opinion, the mistake that these types of companies are making is that they are rooted in one size fits all model when it comes to branding and are flustered by the fact that they can not seem to fit their Transaction-based Brand model into a social environment. The lack of control scares them, and as a result instead of jumping into the social media space they have opted to just sit on the sidelines.

The Social Brand
This is where the notion of the “Social Brand” comes into play. While a brand should always be rooted in a company’s core values, how it’s developed, presented and executed within different forms of media, can enable a company to enter new and uncharted waters much more readily. Hence, while your Transactional Brand is aimed a facilitating sales, your Social Brand is aimed at facilitating socialization. Of course both are rooted in the same values and at the core express the same ideas, the content you put forth with your Social Brand, does not have to exactly mirror what you are doing with your Transactional Brand.

For starters, in developing your Social Brand you need to look at your company and what it does from a “Social Perspective”. This will enable you understand how and where people might want to socialize with your brand and what components are ripe for socialization. Therefore, while you may be in a regulated industry where you can not openly endorse or make claims about a product, you need to take a step outside of these parameters and look at other components of your business. For example, does your organization sponsor sporting events, support particular philanthropic endeavors or back particular social initiatives? While these items might not be tied directly to your products and services they are tied to your company. They are a brand component and most importantly convey its value system. These are also aspects of your business/brand that people can also readily connect and socialize with.

Now, I’m not endorsing the fact that when it comes to social media you should deny what your business is rooted in. What I am saying is that when it comes to social media, you need to think differently about your brand and how it can be leveraged to socialize with your audience.

By identifying and developing your Social Brand, you also have the opportunity to steer and guide the social conversation. Of course there’s always the potential that someone will address and bring-up product or service related issues, but by focusing on your Social Brand, you can help to guide the conversation around particular topics. Additionally, by focusing on and developing your Social Brand, you have the opportunity introduce your audience to a completely new side of your organization. Simultaneously, you will be likely grow your base, as you will bring people into the fold, who would not have previously engaged with your company, as you are now tapping a whole new set of interests.

How To Develop Your Social Brand
So, how does a company go about developing a Social Brand? The following are a few key points:

Alignment
For your Social Brand to be effective, it needs to be aligned with your core values and business plan. Therefore, it can’t just come out of left-field, rather people need to see how it relates and applies to your overall business positioning.
Social Segmentation
Take a look at your organization from a “social perspective” and identify which aspects and segment are ripe for socialization. Taking this approach will enable you to see what opportunities exist and the different ways you could socialize with your audience.

Content
After identifying how you can socialize with your audience, what are you going to say and communicate? This sounds more daunting than really is, as you are most likely doing this, but it's just not being surfaced within the context of outbound media channels. Rather the conent is being tied to the "social" initiative itself. For example, if your company sponsors a sporting event or is involved with a particular charity or social issue, focus on content that pertains and gets created in relation to these endeavors. Before you know it, you may find yourself becoming a hub for people passionate or connected to these issues, causes or events.
Socialization
Now comes the big leap, you need to be ready to socialize. Do you set-up a MySpace profile, YouTube Channel, Facebook Page, Twitter Account…all of the above or just some? The key here is that you don’t need to jump into everything all at once, focus on those areas that make the most sense and that best complement your Social Branding strategy.

Social media is definitely changing how we market and connect with consumers. Therefore as marketers, we need to also think differently about how we approach our business and look to connect with consumers. In the end traditional branding models will not always work, because they were not constructed to deal with a high degree of social interaction and input from consumers. Therefore, we need to look at branding as a form of subsets, including how we will and want to socialize with our target.

Developing a Social Brand, will help you provide a vision for your organization to approach the social media space and be comfortable with doing so. Yes, it will require you to think differently, but the development of a Social Branding strategy will also provide the vision and clarity needed to enter the social media space in a manner that compliments your overall business strategy and enables you to harness all the power that social media has to offer.

Labels: Advertising, Brand Awareness, Facebook, Integration, POV, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Twitter, twitter social media

Yahoo Picks Up Baggage for the Holidays

posted by Bianca Garcia @ Wednesday, December 30, 2009 - 11:42 PM

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On December 23 (the busiest travel day of the year), Yahoo sent employees to the San Francisco International and San Jose International airports and paid for airline customer's baggage fees. According to NBC Bay Area, this was "not a bad deal for travelers, who likely booked --and payed for -- their tickets, only to learn that they'd have to cough up a bit more dough for the privilege of actually traveling with luggage. The timing couldn't be better for Yahoo. For one thing, people leaving town will have a warm feeling in their hearts about the search company."

And according to AdAge, who called it a brilliant holiday marketing stunt, Yahoo hoped to inspire the Yahoo community to create a wave of goodwill. "Goodwill? Great. Putting the idea in consumers' heads that Yahoo is a company that will make navigating the world simpler and cheaper? Brilliant."

However, the AdAge article points out that the only issue with the stunt is scale. Instead of sending employees to just two airports near Silicon Valley, Yahoo could have spent more money - a lot more money - sponsoring baggage fees throughout the country for the whole holiday season.

I wholeheartedly agree. I think a bigger scale approach would get more attention and possibly build stronger brand affinity among consumers. Yahoo already launched Yahoo! for Good with a campaign spotlight on spreading kindness. Yahoo declares on its website:

This holiday, create a ripple of happiness triggered by your single act of kindness. Update your status to share what you're doing to spread joy. Then inspire others to join you by asking "You in?" The more people you tell, the larger your ripple. We'll use our network to share your good deeds with others. We'll also be doing our own acts of kindness inspired by your updates. So whether you pay for someone's groceries or drop off a coat for the homeless, your actions will encourage others around the world to join in. How big will your ripple of happiness be?

I personally find it endearing that this web giant is encouraging people to do random acts of kindness. But as an online marketer, I think the AdAge article had the issue spot on - this definitely could have been a much, much bigger campaign. Where is the social media component? There is already an inherent viral spread there (by updating your Yahoo status with your act of kindness, your actions will encourage others to join in), why didn't Yahoo leverage the power of social media to blow up "Yahoo! for Good"? For instance, Yahoo could have incorporated their Facebook page - maybe create a tab for this campaign - and not only generate user interaction but also build their fan base and create lasting connections. Yahoo could also have used Twitter to send updates about making the holidays better by paying for your luggage fees. And last but not least, what about Flickr? It would have been great to see pictures of delighted customers who were treated to Yahoo's generosity. Yahoo could have encouraged more people to comment, share stories, photos, videos, and basically engage with the brand.

These are just some of my thoughts, but in spite of all the could have's, I still want to give kudos to Yahoo for doing its part in making the holidays easier and brighter. Maybe next time they can send some employees to the Boston Logan airport :)

I wish everyone a stress-free, kindness-filled, happy New Year!

Labels: Advertising, Industry, POV, Social Media

Great Free Media Planning Tools

posted by Harry Gold @ Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - 10:54 AM

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Media planners have many tools at their disposal to research and select sites that will help clients reach their target audiences. Very often we're targeting large audiences by demographic or region, and we can use standard syndicated data tools such as @Plan, comScore, or the SRDS, a provider of media rates and data, to help us identify sites that index high with our target audiences. This is fine for clients who want to reach very large groups of people such as females 18 to 24 in the northeastern United States.

But what about when you're going after a niche audience such as users of a particular technology or collectors of classic cars? In these cases, those data sources are not as helpful because many niche sites do not show up on their radar screens. Instead, you have to start prospecting online to find sites that cater to those audiences. However, a slew of available tools and tactics can help you find and research those sites.

So here is a list of free resources that planners can use when trying to find hard-to-find sites:

Compete.com: A Web analytics tool that gathers information about consumers' online behavior from over 2 million U.S. Internet users. Its site profile section provides site traffic history for most every site on the Internet. Register with Compete, and you can compare traffic for up to five sites at one time.

Alexa: This technology crawls publicly available sites to collect traffic rankings, snapshots of sites, and links that point to sites and related sites. Type in a Web site URL where you know your target audience resides, click on "related links," and you will find a list of similar sites. Also, you can search for sites by country, language, or category.

Quantcast: This site uses data from audience insights to rank and sort sites. Quantcast has a free tool that allows planners to search for sites based on determined criteria, such as content category, audience demographics, geographic locations, and ad acceptance. Or just simply type in the site URL that you want to include in the media plan, and the results produce a list of sites the audience would also visit.

Google Ad Planner: With this tool, media planners can identify audiences by a series of criteria, such as demographics, geography, language, specific keywords, and category. You can even search by domain suffix, a feature that is helpful when trying to find international sites. If your client is running a display campaign through the Google Content Network, you can select to see sites that only accept advertising in the network.

Search: Natural search is one of the quickest and easiest ways to find sites. Search for Web sites using your target audience plus keywords that would identify the target audience's interest. Sites that appear on the first or second pages of Google search engine results page are more likely to have relevant content. For more obscure target audiences, you may have to dig a little deeper for sites that may not be optimized for SEO (define). Once you find a relevant site, click on "similar" to find other relevant sites.

Online newspaper resources: Sites such as OnlineNewspapers.com and Newspapers.com are another way to find online news sites by state and country. OnlineNewspapers.com indicates the newspaper language and city, and Newspapers.com gives a brief description of the newspaper.

Open Directory Project (ODP): This is a user-generated and classified directory of sites in multiple languages. ODP uses hundreds of portals and search engines to list and categorize Web sites. Type in "owners of classic cars," and you will find a list of sites from all over the world and description of each site that relates to classic cars.

Wikipedia: Wikipedia is a user-generated reference site with more than 75,000 active contributors who have posted information in over 260 languages. If your client is looking to advertise on online newspaper sites in Ghana, type in "Ghana newspapers," and you will get a list of Ghana-based newspapers and links to their Wikipedia listings.

Blog search: Narrow down the blogosphere by using search tools on sites such as Technorati.com or Google Blog Search. Technorati.com was founded as a blog search engine and has since grown into a social media network. Type in your target audience in the search field, and results reveal a list of relevant blogs, a graph depicting blog post mentions by day, and videos about the target audience. Google Blog Search will also list relevant blogs, but you can also sign up for blog alerts to keep up-to-date on newly posted blog content.

As with all my columns, I am sure this is not a complete list, so if I left anything out, please let me know. Also, I must give a special thanks to Barbara for helping me to research and compile this list.

Labels: Blog Outreach, ClickZ, Online Media, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Strategy

Google-Yelp Deal Could Create Powerful Local Marketing Tool

posted by Melanie DAcchioli @ Monday, December 21, 2009 - 1:17 PM

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For obvious reasons, local "mom and pop" businesses need to have different marketing tactics than large enterprises. What this means in the end, is that local businesses simply can't afford to advertise in the same places as their big-business counterparts. Even Google pay-per-click ads, which are low in cost, may be inefficient for some local businesses because the larger companies whom they compete against will inevitably show up in top positions and likely fill the first page, which is the most important place to be to generate impressions and clicks.

Google already has the Local Business Center, which has helped local businesses with smaller budgets to show up atop search results based on users' geography. However, if Google's $500 million+ acquisition of local business and review site Yelp goes through, this could really open up the local search advertising market. It would also help to generate more data about local markets for advertisers.

The benefit that Yelp would bring to Google is its hundreds of thousands of reviews on local businesses and services, across cities and towns large and small and every vertical you can imagine. According to Adam Bunn, head of SEO at Greenlight, the acquisition would give "direct access to structured data allowing them to reliably and accurately incorporate that data into their search results."

Additionally, Yelp has been building a powerful mobile search platform. According to John Havens, VP of social media at Porter Novelli (via TechNewsWorld), "Right now, Yelp has a tool called 'Monocle' - a user holds up a phone using the app and pans it from left to right. Let's say you are in San Francisco and want to find a coffee shop. You start panning the phone around, and you can see the icons for coffee shops, along with consumers' comments about each shop." Combined with Google's capabilities, this could become a huge and influential tool for local marketing worldwide.

According to MarketingVox, the Google/Yelp deal still has some kinks to work out and there are some doubts about its certainty. MarketingVox states, "...in fact, with its news made public participants reportedly fear that competitors may offer a higher bid for Yelp - a testament to the huge importance local business data has to the online search and ad community."

To read more about the pending acquisition, click here.

Source: MarketingVox

Labels: Google, Local Search Marketing, Paid Search, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Yelp

Rage Against the Machine Saves Christmas - Facebook Campaign Leads to Surprise Viral Victory

posted by Nick Cifuentes @ Sunday, December 20, 2009 - 9:59 PM

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The ageless metal-rap rockers, Rage Against the Machine, are making noise again, and this time it's by pure accident. The political-driven rock group hasn't released an album since retiring back in 2000, however, they surfaced last week on the UK's biggest radio station, BBC Radio One, to talk about how they suddenly emerged on the UK pop music charts for the much fought over "Christmas Number One" title for 2009.

The UK "Christmas Number One" title has normally been held by the UK series, X Factor, winner - a version of American Idol produced in the UK. For four straight years, the "Christmas Number One" winner has been held by the X Factor winner, and this year it was Joe Mcelderry, who was expected to win the title for singing the Miley Cyrus song "The Climb."

However, a Facebook inspired campaign that was launched by UK resident Jon Morter as an entertaining (joke) protest against the mainstream pop that in most ways does dominate music charts across the globe these days. Morter's Facebook group "Rage Against the Machine for Christmas Number 1" quickly grew to 800,000 fans, and was overspread with users who pledged to buy the track to help push the band to the top of the charts. The Facebook Group currently has more than 970,000 members as of Dec. 20.

The mainstream news picked up the story after the first two weeks of December when the Facebook group, which launched in the beginning of December began to grow quickly, and while going offline many times during the beginning days of December, prompted some to make several claims of foul play - however it didn't slow the Rage Against the Machine victory.

And once Joe McElderry's track was released in a hard copy on CD, unlike Rage Against the Machine, the X Factor winner from the UK began to close the gap on the suddenly popular American rock band and their 1992 produced single "Killing in the Name Of."

On December 20, BBC Radio One announced the final winner, and thanks to a surge of downloads via blog posts, Facebook comments, and Twitter tweets - the infectious campaign influenced social media channels and led to a Rage Against the Machine victory.

As announced in an interview with BBC Radio One before being announced winners, the band said if they did end up winning, they would play a free concert in the UK in early 2010.

Analysis Breakdown

Starting in the beginning of December, from Dec. 1 - Dec. 11; while the Facebook Group was going on and offline sporadically, the number of social media mentions among Twitter, Blogs and Facebook were small in numbers of original posts to users' profiles. However, after December 11 when the group went back up live, it kicked over dominoes that sent tweets, blog posts and Facebook updates soaring in numbers.

The mainstream news did not pick up the story until December 14; with social media leading the majority of the charge based on the following data:

(In the following charts, only the keywords "RATM" & "Rage Against the Machine" & "Christmas Number One" & "Joe McElderry" were used in this analysis. All data was taken from the social media monitoring tool Radian6. The dates of Dec. 1 - Dec. 20 were used in this analysis.)

Twitter, Blogs, & Facebook (46,337 posts):

Mainstream News Posts (3,565 Posts):

Twitter Posts (26,664 Posts):

Blog Posts (18,129 Posts):

**The charts above include only a limited set of data, due to a number of other keywords that could have been used in Twitter, Facebook Updates and Blogs; keywords like "Rage"; which were too broad to analyze more specifically at the time of this posting. The above posts do however represent the trending to their exact details.

Social Media Extras:

The campaign also led to the creation of a separate mini-site that housed the interview with RATM and BBC last week, a separate Twitter account and an already established YouTube channel that held the video seen above where the band performed their smash hit, "Killing in the Name Of" live Thursday, Dec. 17, 2009 on BBC Radio One.

Microsite: RATM/BBC Interview

Twitter Account: @RATM4Xmas; 2,698 followers

YouTube Channel: A user-created channel that garnered two YouTube awards during the week of Dec. 14 -20; #61 Most Viewed Channel in the UK & #14 Most Viewed Directors Channel in the UK

Conclusion

It is really nice to see the effect a viral marketing campaign that had no direction, but was more led by a crowdsourcing effort to push a final result -putting RATM at the top of the charts. It normally takes many dollars to create such a buzz in the matter of a few weeks, and this was done with nothing but spirit and passion for the push to the top - led by users with little outside influence, and all with the help of social media!

Labels: Facebook, Rage Against the Machine, Social Media Marketing, Twitter, Viral Marketing

John Mayer vs. Bon Jovi

posted by Ty Velde @ Friday, December 18, 2009 - 5:11 PM

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When it comes to social media, many have looked to music and entertainment as key forces that have helped to shape and evolve this medium.

The below article is from a newsletter that I subscribe to called, The Lefsetz Letter , which I felt provided a pretty interesting view of how social media is being used (or not) and its impact on two of today's most well known artists - John Mayer and Bon Jovi.

What I like about this article is how it compares how both artists are leveraging social media and using it to navigate today's cultural landscape. Its a clear demonstration of the fact that when it comes to social media, its not necessarily a question of whether or not to get involved, that's basically a given, but how well and effectively its being used to build and connect with your base. In short, as more and more organizations get involved with social media, its clear that some know what they are doing, while others don't have a clue, but feel that they need to be there, simply because everyone else is.

While the below article focuses on a number of different topics, the key theme that runs through it, is that we live in a connected world, where people expect to be able to connect with you and each other, on a personal level. To not acknowledge this, is to not understand the world we live in and how your audience wants to be reached.

Just look at what Bob has to say about John & Jon, and you'll get my point.

In short, we can't ignore that Social Media has truly changed the rules of engagement, and if you are going to be successful in today's environment, you can't soley rely on what's worked in the past. Because if you want remain relevant, you need to chart a course for the future by leveraging the technologies of today, which means being open, honest and not afraid to connect directly with your audience.

Enjoy!

-------------------------------

If older folk still buy music and younger people steal it, why did John Mayer sell almost twice as many albums the first week out as Bon Jovi?

Yes, according to hitsdailydouble.com, John Mayer sold 301,204 copies of his new album, "Battle Studies", this week. Whereas last week, Bon Jovi moved 165,871 copies of "The Circle".

Ready for some truly horrifying news? The following week "The Circle" fell all the way to number 19, selling 50,153 copies, a whopping drop of 70%. Whew!

What's the difference between John and Jon?

One is living in 2009 and the other is living in the last century.

Jon Bon Jovi was positively old media, tying in with NBC.

John Mayer was new media, appearing in concert on Fuse and tweeting up a storm.

It doesn't matter the total reach, it matters who actually watches and what the perception is.

Fuse would be canceled, the entire channel, if its programming was on NBC. To say the ratings are anemic would be charitable. But Fuse airs music, unlike MTV. And most people watching the shows featuring Bon Jovi on NBC don't give a shit about the man's music. In other words, Jon's shoving it down the wrong people's throats.

Jon Bon Jovi has a fawning documentary on Showtime.

John Mayer is all over Twitter.

Did you watch any of the Bon Jovi doc? Shot like it was footage for "America's Next Top Model", everyone looked beautiful and spouted humble platitudes, like we were still living in the eighties and rock stars were established on MTV and made a fucking fortune. Whereas the truth is everybody's scrambling, giving concert tickets away in some instances. Bon Jovi reflecting is like Lloyd Blankfein saying Goldman Sachs is doing "God's work". Huh?

Laughable.

If you Google "Bon Jovi Twitter", the first result is: http://m.twitter.com/backstagejbj a page that doesn't exist. The second result is http://twitter.com/bonjovimerch

Wow, someone in JBJ's camp doesn't understand Twitter. It's not for selling, its for CONNECTING!

Meanwhile, the Bon Jovi merch page has 1,540 followers. Google "John Mayer Twitter" and you get the following page: http://twitter.com/jOhnCmAYer John Mayer has 2,657,425 Twitter followers. Furthermore, he's following 72 people, so you get an idea of what he's into.

Bon Jovi's old school, playing behind a wall, just like Doug Morris and Jimmy Iovine, rarely coming out to play and only in circumstances they can control.

John Mayer is new school. Putting it all out there unfiltered, getting into arguments with Perez Hilton, never backing down, not afraid to look like a tool.

It's the honesty that grabs you. That's why people are following John Mayer, that's why they care about him.

Furthermore, in an era where album sales represent only a fraction of your fan base, you want to get attention where you can. Not by batting people over the head, telling them they must endure you, but being so provocative, so interesting that they want to tune in.

Nobody plays the new media game better than Mr. Mayer.

He makes a deal with BlackBerry and it looks cool. Kind of like a rapper, ripping off the man, because you know he uses a BlackBerry anyway! Whereas U2 makes a deal with BlackBerry and you see dollar signs, you see promotion, you see a deal. If you endorse a product you truly use is it a sell-out? The classic rock acts would probably say yes, you don't want to tarnish your image.

But Mr. Mayer is at the bleeding edge of a new paradigm, where the rules are being made up as we go. He's so overexposed that he's establishing a new way of doing it, you almost feel like he's a guy at your high school, that you know him. Does anybody really know Jon Bon Jovi? Who never has a bad word to say about anyone?

Old school: You're afraid of pissing anybody off, you're Justin Timberlake at the Super Bowl, apologizing. New school: Dixie Chicks. Fuck with me and I'll give you the middle finger.

In other words, it's been a long strange trip, but we're suddenly back in the sixties. It's about artistry, it's about music, it's about honesty. You don't triangulate, construct a phony identity for public consumption.

You're better off being your real self. Hell, the Internet will tease out your flaws anyway, why not admit them? Jon Bon Jovi utters irrelevant platitudes and John Mayer sings "Who says I can't get stoned?" Politicians have to lie about doing dope. But artists are supposed to speak the truth, and the public has to deal with it. Which is why we love our artists more than any political figure.

That's a question confronting everyone online. Do you make contact or let the sleeping dogs of the past lie? Bon Jovi, Mimi, all the stars of the MTV era are still living in it, oblivious to the fact that the nineties were ten years ago, and that in Internet time, a decade is equivalent to a century. It's not a three year cycle, you're on a day to day regimen. "Any tweet that takes more than 90 seconds to write is not a tweet worth sending."

Yes, we used to make records in an afternoon and get them on the radio in a week. Now, TV and movies are more topical than music. Let it out, go knee-jerk, don't massage, don't focus on the marketing plan, focus on the music.

And stay in touch with your audience CONSTANTLY!

Labels: Social Media Marketing, Twitter, twitter social media

Hypertargeting Registered Users

posted by Harry Gold @ Tuesday, December 8, 2009 - 10:46 AM

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Hypertargeting, a term coined by MySpace, describes the social network's ability, as it puts it, to, "tap into self-expressed user information" and "reach the consumers most likely to be receptive to your brand." Basically, MySpace is saying that you can target consumers by the information they post in their registration information and profiles. The team at MySpace adds, "Thanks to the unsurpassed reach of MySpace, you can target highly specific user interests while still reaching a significant audience." This is basically saying that even though you are getting super specific about the consumers you are trying to target, there are so many people on MySpace who have registered and populated their profiles that you can still reach tons of people.

While MySpace hasn't been the top dog for some time, let's give credit where credit is due. Its term, hypertargeting, perfectly describes what social networking, dating sites, and other sites that require registration can offer to marketers. They can enable marketers to target consumers with unbelievable accuracy and efficiency.

As consumers we get a great deal as well. We get a huge variety of free and low cost Web services for simply letting companies advertise to us in a more relevant and targeted way.

Typically, there are three main buckets of information that enable the "hypertargeting" of consumers, based on registration information a person reveals when joining a site or making a purchase. The buckets include:

Registration information: the information one enters into a site when setting up a profile or gaining access. This can include age, sex, geography, and other basics.
Profile information: the content a person actually posts on his or her profile such as favorite movies, music, books, restaurants, activities, and more.
Behavioral data: things that one does or looks at online, interacts with, and buys on a site or network of sites.

Read these sites' privacy policies to get a sense of the targeting capabilities. In its privacy statement, Facebook says marketers can reach people by geography, age, and interests such as soccer.

"We allow advertisers to choose the characteristics of users who will see their advertisements and we may use any of the non-personally identifiable attributes we have collected (including information you may have decided not to show to other users, such as your birth year or other sensitive personal information or preferences) to select the appropriate audience for those advertisements. For example, we might use your interest in soccer to show you ads for soccer equipment, but we do not tell the soccer equipment company who you are."
So if I wanted to, I could reach males ages 18 to 26 in New England who are interested in soccer. And because Facebook has 350 million registered users, chances are that even with that narrowly defined selects I will still reach a pretty good size audience.

Note that this technology is typically used in a very ethical way. All of this stuff is no more intrusive or dangerous than credit card companies targeting people with offers from partners and vendors via direct mail. As Facebook puts it in its privacy policy:

"We don't share your information with advertisers without your consent...For example, we might use your interest in soccer to show you ads for soccer equipment, but we do not tell the soccer equipment company who you are."

Now, the ability to target consumers based on registration information is nothing new. Sites and services like Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, and gated publications like the Wall Street Journal have been able to do it for a long time. But now that you have behemoth social networking and user-generated content sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTube, and even Match.com with hundreds of millions of users, the universe of hypertargeting opportunities is bigger than ever and promises to continue to grow. And, the addition of "self expressed" information that people post to their profiles combined with behavioral data makes for an even richer spectrum of targeting options. In many ways, this type of targeting is the future of advertising.

Furthermore, companies like IAC own an entire network of sites including Match.com, Ask, Evite, Citysearch, and Shoebuy. Reading excerpts from Match.com's privacy policy is very revealing. (See below.) Basically, it shows that IAC is combining registration information from different sites to formulate some pretty amazing targeting options for marketers -- all on an anonymous basis of course.

"We may collect information that can identify you ("personal information"), such as your name and email address, (i) when you (or other users) provide it to us when using our website or in some other manner, or (ii) from other IAC businesses, from our business partners, and from other third parties. We may combine the personal information that we receive from different sources."
It goes on to explain how this combined information may be used:

"We may use information to:

Fulfill your requests for products and services;
Offer products and services that may be of interest to you;
Customize the advertising and content that you see on our website;
Facilitate use of our website;
Manage your account and your preferences;
Analyze use of and improve our website, products and services;
Identify and protect against fraudulent transactions and other misuses of our website; and
Enforce our Terms of Use."

Like Facebook, IAC clearly states that in regards to the companies that advertise: "We do not provide any personal information to these companies."

The purpose of this column is not to whip up a whole needless privacy debate. All people need to do is not use these primarily free sites, clear their cookies, or opt out of ad targeting by all member companies at the Network Advertising Initiative.

Instead, my goal is to share the huge opportunity that we, as online marketers, have to hypertarget consumers more efficiently than ever dreamed possible in numbers that will soon make for viable advertising campaigns using exclusively hypertargeted media. This is huge and represents the future of advertising!

Labels: ClickZ, Facebook, online marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

Google Announces Real-Time Search

posted by Lauren @ - 9:24 AM

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Google recently released its real-time search option, online and for iPhone and Android smart phone devices, enabling users to receive search results as they happen.

How does it work? When users enter a search term, results are automatically updated from live Tweets, news articles, Yahoo Answers and web pages. If users do not want to continue receiving live results, a pause option stops the search results from refreshing. Additionally, users are able to filter search results to just status updates from sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Another feature of Google's live search is the trending topics, similar to Twitter's, including topics from the "hour" and "day."

Over the next few days, the search engine will roll the option out to users.

Labels: Google

FarmVille More Popular Than Twitter

posted by Lauren @ Friday, December 4, 2009 - 9:53 AM

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As Facebook hits 350 million users around the globe, one of its most popular applications, FarmVille, is rivaling another popular social media site, Twitter.

In a meeting with TechRadar, Facebook revealed that its website garnered about 200 billion page views per month, with 1.6 billion messages sent daily and 2.5 billion photos uploaded per month.

FarmVille is an addicting game that allows players to develop their own farm from scratch by plowing land, harvesting crops and trees and raising cows, chickens and other various animals. Players can also decorate their farm with buildings, scarecrows, hay bales and other farm accessories. According to Facebook, the application (just one of the 90,000 available on Facebook) has 69 million users - more than Twitter's user base.

Facebook also released other statistics related its user demographics. The social networking site's average user base is getting older, as the 35+ category is the fastest growing. Furthermore, at least 53% of Facebook users visit the site on a daily basis, demonstrating how integrated the site is in the lives of its users.

To read the article on TechRadar, click here.

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