Online Marketing Agency

Creativity Can Get Painful on Twitter

Anthony — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:23:28 +0000

According to a report on Twopcharts.com Twitter will hit 500 million registered users by this Wednesday. There is a certain level of skepticism about the legitimacy of this number and the site itself admits that its estimates are “based on limited information and interpretations that may or may not be accurate”. Nonetheless the Twitter online following is nothing short of impressive with Twitter admitting that they have more than 100 million active users. This is the important statistic as active users are what matters, they are engaging with the service and are playing a part in the online community.

Skepticism aside of the actual number, with a user base which toys with numbers in the 100-500 million range, it pays immense dividends to be recognised online. Though there are cases, most notably Youtube, where you just need a “funny talent” to accrue close to 30 million views, via Twitter, developing a following and growing the amount of followers requires time, effort and a certain amount of luck. Not to say this isn’t also applicable to Youtube. However what needs to be sprinkled over these elements is a spark of creativity and a unique proposition which connects and stirs the imagination of the Twitter user. A testament to these elements coming together is in the user Sebuyama where on a challenge by the President of Japanese firm Omocoro he was to have one of this tweets be retweeted by at least 1,000 people. A series of experimental tweets lead to a viral winner, Sebuyama pledging to attach a clothes peg to his body for every retweet he received.

When Viral Marketing Gets Painful

The originality of the idea attracted interest in Japan and even from across the globe. Not to say a successful viral Twitter campaign has to involve self inflicted pain and satisfying the sadistic pleasures of thousands of followers. But it does beg the question, how far does one have to go to go viral?

I wouldn’t attach 1000+ clothes pegs to myself. Unless I knew everyone was watching.

Understanding Social Media Marketing via the “Cluetrain”

Anthony — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 01:20:05 +0000

The Cluetrain Manifesto has been my ‘red pill’ in understanding the successful utilisation of Social Media networks by today’s companies. No doubt Social Media has been a desirable avenue for big business marketers and creative types with the unrivalled ability to connect, engage and market to a massive (and exponentially growing) online community. This is where their target buyer is. The primary contributor to their revenue stream.

Unfortunately, there is a world of difference in undertaking creative Social Media campaigns and undertaking successful Social Media campaigns, with many train wrecks littering the Social Media landscape of 2011. The Cluetrain Manifesto presented 95 theses each implicitly communicating the same core principle- “brands are conversations“. Companies need to humanise their voice, develop a genuine voice to their consumer, empathise with the real issues of their consumer and not get trapped in their own brand utopia. The three which particularly resounded to my own online sensibilities are:

Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.

Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them.

We want access to your corporate information, to your plans and strategies, your best thinking, your genuine knowledge. We will not settle for the 4-color brochure, for web sites chock-a-block with eye candy but lacking any substance.

One of the more notable disasters of 2011 was the #QantasLuxury hashtag disaster .

The challenge posed to followers:

With the prize of winning “a First Class gift pack feat. a luxury amenity kit and our famous QF PJs” the hashtag turned into a forum for disgruntled customers and stakeholders to vent their anger towards the operational and customer service issues which had plagued the airline having to ground its fleet in early November 2011.

The in-house Qantas Social Media team should have got on that Cluetrain.

My advice:

Use social media as an avenue to actively speak to your customer and respond to their praise and concerns with the same enthusiasm and approach. Be open, let them in on a secret, let social networks know first, let them know they are valuable, treasure their interest. Don’t speak down to them, speak with them.

A wise man once told me, Social Media is like babysitting the bastard child of marketing, PR and customer service. If you don’t look after it well, its parents aren’t going to be very happy. Don’t know about you guys, but I would be aiming for babysitter of the year.

What Do You SEO People Do Again?

admin — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 00:49:00 +0000

This photo was originally sent to me via social media, and while I have tried hard to find the original online so I can attribute it, I can’t find. If you are the author, let me know!

Facebook Timeline for Brand Pages

Luke — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:45:11 +0000

Adage has today reported that Facebook will begin the roll out of its new timeline page design for businesses at the first Facebook Marketing Conference on the 29th of February. Similar to the brand pages that we have recently seen appear on Twitter and Google plus this new design will provide page owners a much larger range of options in the customisation of their page.

The new prominence of photos is the major addition that timeline will bring. Currently when you look at a Facebook brand page, after the first few posts on a wall it starts to become a confusing mess of updates and audience interaction. This results in content or important updates potentially being missed by a brands intended audience.

Image Source: www.mashable.com

The new timeline design not only displays photos and thumbnails in a much more attractive manner, but also includes the addition of a cover photo seen as a header to the page. This new space will provide page owners even more options in regard to the messages that they wish to send to their audience and add to the branding of their page. No doubt many new features will continue to be announced for all the major social media platforms as we move through the year. These will add to the already potent potential for customer and audience interaction that we see today.

Google Dynamic Search Ads – Adwords Becoming More Like Normal Search?

admin — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 23:27:48 +0000

What are Dynamic Search Ads?

Dynamic Search ads were introduced to Google Adwords in October 2011, ostensibly aimed at covering the ‘long tail’ of your business site, and enabling you to have adgroups, ad copy and keywords covering an infinite range of relevant searches that your customers might care to type in to Google.

Basically, once you are opted in to Dynamic Search Ads, Google reads your pages, and then matches it to searches based on the content on the page. Not only will it match your landing page with a searcher, but it will automatically generate an ad headline to match the user’s intent, by presenting a snippet of the page’s meta data. (Sound familiar? Google uses their organic web crawling technology to maintain a fresh index of your site, and matches it to relevant queries. Like natural search!)

So, in theory, the user is sent straight to the most relevant landing page (according to Google), and shown a uniquely relevant headline in the ad copy.

DSA could benefit sites with huge numbers of products, or products which are updated very regularly, because it will allow your ads to be generated automatically without you having to add keywords, landing page URLs or ad copy.

Google says that 16% of searches each day have never been seen before, which means that there is a market for this kind of instantaneous and dynamic matching of user intent, rather than just trying to anticipate what the searchers will be looking for.

Who Can Use Them?

You still have to wait to be whitelisted by your Google Account manager, which means that many sites (especially in Australia), will not be able to use this feature yet unless they are approved for the Beta, which you can apply for here.

Pros

Allows you to display more relevant ads to searchers, covering a lot more products and details than you might be able to within normal Adwords campaigns
Delivers searchers to the most relevant landing page, helping them towards your conversion
Supposedly they will let your keyword targeted ads win any auction, allowing DSA to just be a ‘filler’ for missed searches.
You can easily see in the interface the keywords, dynamically generated headline, and landing page for each search where your ad was shown (VERY interesting report).

Cons

Limited Control. If you have a huge site, but don’t want visits from generic terms (only the cheaper, more valuable targeted terms), it will be almost impossible for you to filter them all out, which means you need to be vigilantly looking at the ‘See Search Terms’ report to constantly identify inappropriate kw.
In campaigns we tested – DSA is winning ad auctions against other keyword-targeted ads in other campaigns.
In campaigns we tested – Conversion costs are not always competitive with our regular keyword targeted campaigns, but like anything, I guess it requires testing.

Best For

Any sites with very large numbers of products/listings or those with regularly updated products/listings. For example;

Real estate websites with many listings
Classifieds sites
Job Sites
Retail websites

Tips

On the ‘Auto Target’ page, make sure to use ‘exclusions’ (down the bottom, like on the keywords tab for negative keywords’). You might want to exclude pages using “page_content” excluders, like “job is no longer available”. Alternatively you can use Category, URL or Page Title exclusions.
Keep your eye on the “See Search Terms” report, which will not only show search terms, but also Ad titles and destination URLs. Make sure these are all valuable and relevant.
Use keyword exclusions
Make sure your meta titles are appropriate, as these will be used by DSA.

SEO Tips

Due to the use of the Organic search robot within DSA, you can use the ‘See Search Terms’ report on the Auto Targets tab in Adwords for some SEO purposes.

- It can help alert you to URLs which are broken, or shouldn’t be being indexed by search

- It can help you see whether Google judges the importance of your pages the way you want them to be seen.

- It can help you quickly see whether the page titles are relevant for the page content and traffic.

On huge sites with many listings, this report is a great way to prioritise the pages you should be looking at, by those which get impressions, traffic and sales.

Google Now Paying to Look Over Your Shoulder

Luke — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 23:35:28 +0000

As one of the world’s biggest advertising company’s Goggle’s bread and butter is the collection on data about what users do when they are on the internet and how they can then use this data to help advertisers get their message to the right people. Till now the user data that Google collects (while there are numerous claims otherwise) is broad and unidentifiable stats gained from any Google product that you may use. This changed today with the announcement of Google Screenwise. Google Screenwise is a new program where in their own words Google would like you to;

“add a browser extension that will share with Google the sites you visit and how you use them. What we learn from you, and others like you, will help us improve Google products and services and make a better online experience for everyone.”

In exchange for this you will receive up to $25 in Amazon gift cards, $5 at sign up, and another $5 every three months for a year. In addition to this there is also a second level to this program involving a hardware instillation (see below) on your home network for which you will receive $100 at sign up, and $20 every month you stay in the program.

Image source: www.engadget.com

So why is Google doing this? The answer is simple really, they want user data to help improve their various products, and people are willing to submit it for the right price.

“Like many other web and media companies, we do panel research to help better serve our users by learning more about people’s media use, on the web and elsewhere. This panel is one such small project that started near the beginning of the year. Of course, this is completely optional to join. People can choose to participate if it’s of interest (or if the gift appeals) and everyone who does participate has complete transparency and control over what Internet use is being included in the panel. People can stay on the panel as long as they’d like, or leave at any time.”

As with most subjects of this nature, there is already a large group of people outraged at Google both at why they need this information and where it will end up. While it would be unwise to jump into this program without first looking into it, the reality of the situation is that it is completely optional and the people involved will be receiving compensation. Looking at it in the most simple way, there is very little difference between this and what Nielsen has been doing with our TV’s for years.

Google Remains the #1 Source for Search Traffic to Top Websites

Anthony — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 02:40:12 +0000

A recent report by Citi Analyst Mark Mahaney highlighted what most of us already know, top sites receive their traffic from Google. Received by Search Engine Land, the report identified that 23 of the top 30 websites obtain traffic from Google, scrutinising search traffic in six key areas focussing on the top five websites of each vertical. The key areas involved were Media, Retail, Travel, Autos, Finance and Health.

Google still holds dominance over Bing and Yahoo in all key verticals

Though Google saw a 1 percent drop in comparison to January 2011, primary competitors Yahoo and Bing failed to make any significant ground, in January 2012, Google comprised of 16 percent of all traffic versus 11 percent from Yahoo and 6 percent from Bing.

Mahaney made comment that Yahoo’s stagnant growth in traffic is a positive sign where there is a market perception that the company/site is a “deteriorating asset”. Inversely these findings according to Mahaney are a “negative surprise” considering the market share gains made by Microsoft concerning the search site. In the past three years, Microsoft has been aggressive in its acquisition of market share, most notably its Bing product placements in prime time television shows such as Gossip Girl, Hawaii 5-0, The Vampire Diaries and How I Met Your Mother. Not remarkably subtle but effective in generating brand/product awareness it makes you wonder is this the best approach? Where there is a creation of market share without conversion to search traffic to show for it?

Check out the Bing Placement in this clip from Hawaii 5-0 below and you be the judge.

Google’s Privacy Policy Change

Luke — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 05:17:15 +0000

The past week or so there has been a lot of angst directed toward Google following the announcement that they would be consolidating the privacy policies for over 60 different products into one global policy that would cover every interaction you have with Google on the internet. In response to this a number of companies including Microsoft and the Technology news website Gizmodo have quickly jumped on the Google bashing ship. Microsoft has published a number of newspaper adds essentially saying Google is evil, come use our products instead. Gizmodo, the eager to be controversial tech news blog that brought us the iPhone 4 leak fiasco a number of years ago also published a piece titled “Google’s Broken Promise: The End of ‘Don’t Be Evil’”.

Following this Google has issued a response in the form of a post on its public policy blog clearly stating what they do and do not do. Like two kids having a fight in the school yard Microsoft then replied to this blog with another that in simple English translated to “nah you’re the worst”. To truly understand the impact of this change and ignore the sensationalist information around the internet you just need to stop and think for a second what Google is and what they are trying to do.

Image source http://www.gizmodo.com.au/

On one hand (some say the evil hand) you have Google the advertising company who collects information about its users so that it can then sell ad space to other company’s on the chance that people will click or look at the given ad. No doubt the more data Google has about you the more likely that you will be shown an ad that may interest you and thus click earns Google money. On the other hand there is the Google that provides a large variety of free services some of which have indisputably changed the course of the world.

So what does this policy change mean to you and I? At its basic level it means that separate Google products can now look relevant advertising data collected about users from other products. For example YouTube can now display ad’s based on what types of android app’s you download. Going back to that good Google bad Google I spoke of before, this change will now doubt make it easier for Google to offer advertisers targeted ad’s that have a higher likelihood of being clicked on. On the other hand Google is providing more relevant information to its consumers (ignoring the medium). For the average person, these changes will have no impact on them at all and the reality of this situation is like for most high profile items of news, there will always be someone there to sensationalise it for their own benefit (selling apps or gaining readers).

Facebook Goes Public

Anthony — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:41:44 +0000

Social media juggernaut, Facebook made a much anticipated move on Wednesday, becoming a publicly traded company eight years after CEO Mark Zuckerberg kick started the basic form of the website at Harvard University.

Anticipated within three to four months, Facebook, hoping to trade under the ticker “FB”; on the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq Stock Exchange, will become one of the world’s most valuable companies hoping to raise $5 billion in its IPO. This amount comes to no surprise where IPO filing documents reveal Facebook’s revenue, the company earned $668 million on revenue of $3.7 billion last year, according to the filing. Speculation involving the potential market value of Facebook quotes figures of $100 billion upwards.

The main source of Facebook’s revenue stream is its highly targeted advertising placements which caters to a high level of market segmentation based on a user’s demographic, behavioural and psychographic factors (the information on a user’s profile such as interests, hobbies, relationships). This creates a desirable avenue for a brand’s marketing team as it allows better exposure to the relevant target market.

Facebook isn’t one of the first Internet start ups to go public. Zynga Inc, which specialises in integrated Facebook applications, represents one of the disappointments of Internet IPOs entering the public domain, with its stock price falling 5% below its IPO price on the first day of trading. Facebook may avoid this as its offering provides a human connection, allowing people to catch up all over the world, play hours of repetitive, pointless but addictive games and enables people to share every minute detail of their day. Furthermore it offers a public channel for celebrities, politicians and companies to connect and interact.

Mark Zuckerberg initiates Facebook's IPO

It will be easy to see why this Facebook status update will be liked by hundreds of Facebook employees. This move turns them into instant millionaires due to an accumulated portfolio of FB stock obtained at prices lower than what they will be valued once placed on the open market. Facebook employed 3,200 people at the end of last year.

SEO for Video and YouTube

Tracy — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 05:56:58 +0000

Adding videos to your website? Did you remember to optimise them for search? They might be corporate, creative or instructional videos – but whatever they are, you can get extra value from them by optimising the pages they are on (even if they’re on YouTube).

Remember that Google is using blended searches more and more, so your content can show up in both the normal search results, or in a selection of video results – or both!

Since Google can’t actually get in and look at the content on your video, all the optimisations will have to be done to the code on your page and around your video – still, there’s lots you can do;

SEO for Video on Your Own Site

The tips below relate to the page your video is on on your actual site (i.e. not hosted pages on Vimeo, YouTube, etc).

Keywords – similar to all good SEO projects, start out with defining your keywords. This can help you (if you haven’t made your video yet) in finding out what areas of your niche are most popular and in need of video content.

If you already have made your video – use keyword research and tools to find out the best terms to describe and promote your video in order to connect with the largest relevant audience possible. Use the normal keyword tools, but also consider the YouTube keyword tool (although doesn’t seem to have particularly good results for Australia).

Normal Page Optimisation -as per normal SEO, try to optimise the meta titles, H tags and URL where possible with your keywords. Also, make a unique meta description for the page, and put alt text on images and videos where possible (although difficult with normal YouTube embeds)

Text content – don’t have a page where the only content is your video. Include other relevant text content on your page to support your video – a transcript is usually a great idea

Video Sitemap - You can create and submit video sitemaps to Google to help Google index your video content. Video content can include web pages with embedded video, URLs to players for videos or URLs of raw video content hosted on your site.

SEO for Videos on YouTube

While Social Media is having an increasing impact on search results – on YouTube, it is already one of the most important factors in helping your video be seen. The more your video is viewed, rated, liked and commented on – the better. You need to encourage it through engaging with the community, asking for feedback within the video content, and using your existing networks to help seed and spread the content.

If you have good content, this kind of thing will come naturally – but it can’t hurt to help it along a bit. Natalie Tran is a great example of this – she asks questions within her videos, and then in her next video she will respond verbally to some of the questions and comments raised (also known as music slash comment time).

However, I’m not going to leave you hanging – there are also some concrete things you can do right away to help improve your chances in YouTube;

Keywords – as above, start with some keyword research.

Titles – Similar to normal SEO, keywords should be at the front where possible, but keep in mind the importance of the title for click throughs – no one is going to click through on a spammy video title.

Description

Use as much space as they give you – be as descriptive as possible

Again, use keywords at the front. There does seem to be some indication that, unlike Google, keywords in YouTube descriptions are taken into accoun

You might want to include your site channel, or website URL, in the description. Just note that any links must have http://

Category – Choose appropriate categories carefully – evidence seems to show that changing your categories later can have a detrimental effect on your rankings.

Tags – You can use many tags, but ensure they are all relevant, and include your keywords. You might want to get detailed and try to define your niche as much as possible using these tags

File name - Optimise the raw video file name with your keywords

Video responses - to index new videos quickly, you might want to try using video responses

Closed captions – upload a transcript to YouTube to help those with hearing impairments, language difficulties and to improve discoverability.