See SocialMedia.ws
By dan | September 25, 2007
This blog is no longer updated. Please see the social media marketing blog for current posts. (http://socialmedia.ws)
Thanks.
Topics: Social Media | No Comments »
SPAM! Does MySpace Need a Comments Manager, or what?
By dan | June 12, 2007
How much MySpace SPAM do you get daily?
If you have a MySpace profile, then you are probably aware that spammers frequently gain access to personal MySpace accounts of people who don’t have difficult passwords. The result of this is that you start to receive tons of crappy spam comments from people who are legitimate non-spammer friends. Granted it’s a huge problem, but I think that MySpace can help curb this craziness by implementing a couple low-tech solutions.
The proposed MySpace Comments Manager
Actually, there are two separate features that I would love to see implemented.
For comments left on my profile:
MySpace, please let me delete comments using a multiple-select function!
I get so much comment spam.
Why can’t I just scroll through comments posted on my profile and check a checkbox for each comment I want to delete? We all know that this “checkbox technology” has been available online since 1993-ish, right? So what’s the hold up MySpace? Thank you for granting me access to checkbox technology to delete spammy email messages. Please find a way to apply this to comments as well.
View my recently posted comments:
Another way to help fight the proliferation of MySpace comment spam is to allow everyone to view their history of comments they’ve posted on other people’s profiles. Many people who get their profiles hacked don’t even know that their profile is being used to post comment spam. By allowing people view their own recent comments posted, this creates a more informed community. Maybe even that elusively complex checkbox technology can be somehow applied to this as well, so people can quickly delete comments that they didn’t post themselves.
Even better, does MySpace offer a password generator to members? If they already do, that’s great. If not, MySpace should be helping members easily create more secure passwords for their account.
A little prevention goes a long way.
Topics: User-Generated, SPAM, Community, social networking, MySpace, Security | No Comments »
How to Guarantee Your Social Media Marketing Flops
By dan | May 11, 2007
What comes to mind you hear the term “social media marketing”?
Blogs? Podcasts? Wikis? Digg? YouTube? MySpace?
Yes, all of these topics float around in the social space. But blog posting and Digg diving should only afterthoughts in a well-planned social media marketing campaign.
As Jennifer Laycock of Search Engine Guide said at the SES Columbus morning training, “Digg is not a marketing strategy.”
I absolutely agree. Digg is not a strategy. Digg is a tactic.
In a moment I’ll spill the most powerful & profitable failsafe social media marketing strategy. You’re going to think it’s too straightforward to be true.
Anyway, after listening to the morning social media talk by Jennifer Laycock and Matt Bailey (of SiteLogic), it was obvious that many marketers are not getting the honest story on social media.
The common misconception to “just get your site on Digg” sounds just like any other get rick quick scheme.
The #1 factor in social media marketing success
Listen. Listen. Listen.
What? LISTEN.
Listen before launching your blog, MySpace profile, or Digg account.
Listen to the conversations in your market.
User-generated content exists in any niche. Take advantage of this. As a social media marketer, listen to find out exactly what customers/prospects are saying.
Without fully understanding the opinions, attitudes, and preferences of consumers in your market, the actual social media marketing tactics provide limited value.
They’re just shots in the dark. Lucky guesses.
Any marketing success experienced would be an isolated event that could not be readily replicated.
So before doing anything…
First listen to your market to gain meaningful & actionable insights into their lives.
And then?
Then use the information you’ve learned about your consumers to help them.
To improve their lives.
How to utilize consumer conversations
Examples of next steps…
- Be the trusted source of expert information that the community is lacking
- Provide a meaningful service that addresses consumer needs
When “listening” is step one in your SMM strategy, the tactics that you choose are more likely to resonate with your market’s needs.
Topics: Social Media, social networking, Listening | No Comments »
10 minutes to social media workshop
By dan | May 9, 2007
I’m in the presentation room right now here in Columbus. Hopefully, I’ll be able to Twitter my way through it. More soon… Get real time updates while I’m in the workshop. Text message “follow occasional” to 40404 (no quotes).
Topics: Social Media, User-Generated, social networking | No Comments »
Columbus Search Engine Strategies Live! Event Two Days Away
By dan | May 7, 2007
I’m going! Are you? I’ll also be attending the social media workshop training session.
Throughout the day, I’ll be broadcasting updates on Twitter. You can receive all my updates from the SES Live! event sent directly to your mobile phone.
Simply text message “follow occasional” to 40404.
Topics: Social Media, SEO, social networking | No Comments »
Fact: Web Analytics Increases the Value of Your Business
By dan | April 25, 2007
Yes, it’s true. And here is why.
Web Analytics enables heightened content-targeting. It also allows you to tailor each offer based on a user’s behavioral and psychographic data.
Tailored Offers = Higher Conversion Rates
When users are presented with offers that are increasingly relevant to their situation, they purchase more. Often.
Higher conversion rates allow you a maintain a higher customer acquisition cost (such as pay-per-click bids) and still make a profit. High conversion rates would enable your site to bid more than your competitors can profitably afford to bid for the same terms. Obviously, this leads to increased business opportunities.
And if it comes time to sell the company, your business commands the higher value.
Topics: Web Analytics, Conversion Rate, Content, Personalization | No Comments »
Fact: Web Analytics Drives Relevant Content, Builds User Trust
By dan | April 25, 2007
The WebTrends seminar was great. Seriously, IMO WebTrends set an example as how informational and relevant a free seminar can be.
To be honest, I didn’t know what to expect. Another company in their position could have really turned event into a giant sales pitch.
But the WebTrends reps and their partners opened my eyes to the powerful effect that actionable web analytics software can have on your marketing.
Especially how it can increase your conversion rates.
A couple points I took away from this event:
Immediately Show Relevant Content
Don’t wait until the second page! Apparently, a 40% or higher bounce rate is common among most websites. Why do these visitors leave your site within the first five seconds of arriving? They did a quick scan of your site. And they judged it to be irrelevant to their immediate web quest.
This suggestion was to segment new visitors based on referrer data, and then display a version of the landing page that is relevant to that visitor. Segment the visitors before they browse or buy from you? Sounds great. Cut your bounce rates by greeting new visitors with content that they are likely to respond to.
Let’s use an apparel retailer site as an example. Say the site displayed featured items on its homepage. Well, if a visitor found the site by searching ‘womens shirts’ in Google, the site would display all the featured women’s shirts in the featured block on the homepage. And if a visitor was searching for menswear, then that visitor would see featured items that were relevant to that visitor.
Build Trust Through Relevance
It actually makes sense. Visitors trust sites that give them what they want.
Immediately. Consistently.
Trust encourages the visitor to interact with your site and provide you with more personal data. More user data means you can create additional relevant content for them. So yes, it just gets better and better over time.
Topics: Google, Web Analytics | No Comments »
WebTrends - Chicago Web Analytics Seminar
By dan | April 25, 2007
This should be an interesting day. Granted it’s free, so they will showcasing WebTrends software. But I don’t have a problem with that at all. In fact, I hope WebTrends representatives show me that WebTrends analytics can help me do what I do better. Here is more on the seminar.
Here’s the parts of the day’s agenda that I plan on attending:
Profitably Acquiring Customers through Effective Paid Search Engine Strategies
Speakers: John Rodkin, Ingrid Nielsen
By leveraging proven strategies, the power of web analytics, and new optimization technologies, companies can dramatically increase the effectiveness of their paid search campaigns. This session will provide best practices for leveraging paid search to drive your online business objectives.
In Search of… Online Optimization: Getting the Most Out of On-site Search
Speakers: Brian Rosenblat, Reza Kazemipour
We all know that on-site search technologies help customers find what they’re looking for on your web site. But by combining on-site search technologies with powerful web analytics insight, organizations can optimize user experiences and create profitable cross-sell opportunities as well. Find out how you can leverage this powerful combination on your site.
Increasing Conversion through Dynamic, Relevant Content
Speakers: Colby Cavanaugh, Philippe Suchet
Through the dynamic combination of web analytics and behavioral targeting, you can automatically turn intelligence into action and boost the value of your customer relationships over time. Learn how to increase site conversion by targeting visitors with relevant offers and timely messages.
Turning Insight into Action with Targeted Email Marketing
Speakers: Barry Parshall, Joel Book, Scott Olrich
Being able to effectively segment and target valuable customers is the key to unlocking long-lasting and profitable relationships. This presentation will demonstrate the basics of segmentation, and provide ways to identify loyal customers and take action on customer intelligence.
I’m really looking forward to the bit on producing dynamic, relevant content. And while the session about segmenting valuable visitors is focused on email marketing, it can most likely be applied to other new media marketing tactics that also permit personalization and interactivity.
I’ll have more to say about this after the seminar…
Topics: Social Media, Web Analytics | 1 Comment »
Double Your Search Engine Traffic the Easy Way
By dan | April 23, 2007
I just started a new section of Marketing Mutation where I will list the actual software I use for SEO. (the new section can be found by clicking the navigation link labeled, SEO Tools. I will also write about how I use each tool to get results.
My first page of this section is first little text manipulation program I use to optimize sites for Long Tail keyword queries from search engines. Longtail search engine traffic is the ultimate low-hanging fruit. You’ll even find a fully working copy of the program available for download.
Topics: Google, SEO | No Comments »
Embrace Transparency To Reclaim Control of Your Brand Message
By dan | April 22, 2007
Marketing is no longer about crafting a rigid, isolated message.
Marketing is about how you handle your half of the conversation.
I just listened to an episode of Marketing Voices that featured an interview of Guy Kawasaki. It’s a short, feel-good interview that packs an education. One topic that was covered is the fact that widely-known brands (such as Coke) may have brand equity affected by consumer-to-consumer conversations that influence public opinions about their brand. In other words, a company is no longer the one and only source that creates influencial marketing messages about their brand. I’ll mention the same example used by Guy, the Diet Coke & Mentos phenomenon.
Swimming Downstream through the Social Networks
I agree with Guy, this incident should be embraced by those two companies. Perhaps Mentos should even encourage these experiments to try to prolong the brand’s time in the spotlight. It could produce and market a special edition Mentos that reacts twice as strongly to Diet Coke (or reacts differently in other ways). And then challenge people to take video of their most elaborate DC/Mentos experiments.
Who knows?! Why not?
The DC/Mentos event was positive. But what happens when blatantly negative news about your brand circulates throughout the social networks? Could this type of event be a brand-killer? Well, in most cases, your brand can overcome extremely negative brand equity - even end up stronger than before the incident happened.
Handling Negative Publicity in Social Networks
React strategically. How you react to consumer-generated messages can have a much stronger influence over public opinion than the original consumer-generated messages.
Obviously, this isn’t a new concept for Marketing & PR. Think about other similar contact points with consumers: disaster recovery PR or customer service. It is possible to create greater brand equity than ever existed before simply by strategically reacting to negative messages about your brand.
The Consumer Consensus
Consumers, generally speaking, are becoming more and more aware that companies cannot control everything said about their brand. Most consumers will even accept that companies do make mistakes or bad judgment calls. On top on that, many consumers understand that every opinion that arises in social space is not by default an expert voice. Because of this, most consumers will look to how a company reacts to complaints and other negativity.
How Social Networks Upped the Ante
Social networks have created one huge change in how companies need to handle public relations. After you make your PR statement, it only takes less than a hour for 10,000 resentful consumers to call you out for spouting bulls**t.
This wasn’t possible before blogs, podcasts, & social sites.
The Solution?
If negative publicity smacks your brand in the face, don’t gamble away your only chance for redemption. If your brand has one chance to publicly respond to negative publicity, don’t waste it by providing your critics fuel for their rebuttal.
New media has enabled communication between once isolated disenfranchised consumers. The best strategy is authenticity and transparency.
Topics: Social Media, Brand, User-Generated, Community, social networking | No Comments »
