December 30th, 2009 | Comments Off | Posted in Technology
The SkyNet funding bill is passed. SkyNet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware, and in a panic, they try to pull the plug.
It was a surprise to find Google.com down today at about 9:15 AM PST. It was also surprising that they don’t have a fail whale or better 404 page. Its 5 minutes since I checked and Google.ca works, but Google.com still down.
Considering that Google earns most of its revenue from advertising, and over 5 billion per quarter, it stands to lose approximately $1.7 million for the hour its been down. Gmail is down too. Not good.
This made me wonder what things would be like if Google disappeared. Had it never existed, we wouldn’t know any better. We’ve enjoy decent searches which probably contributed to the growing popularity of the web. Had we all been relying on Yahoo, their rate of updates (and relevancy) might have turned off a lot of people. Wait a minute, it already does. Guess that’s why Google has about 65% marketshare and Yahoo a little over 10%?
Makes you wonder what could be going on. It’s unlikely a ddos attack on Google would work. It must be skynet. Update: Google came back online a full hour later.
Personal branding is a topic that shouldn’t be taken lightly. It’s becoming more important everyday and a process that could have a big impact on your career in the future. It’s not just big brands that deal with reputation management anymore.
The following video presentation of David Armano (now with Edelman) provides some great thoughts on personal branding. No longer are brands limited to products, corporations or celebrities.
“The Internet has made it easier than ever to reach out to your target audience. Blogging and social networking are powerful and readily accessible ways to promote yourself.”
Personal Branding – Where to Start?
Blogging
If you’re not blogging, it’s time to start. There’s no better way to dive in than creating your own blog for personal branding. Make it a routine and post often. Create value with a conversation on your given topic and share your expertise. If you don’t feel you’re much of a writer, you might try video blogging.
Improve your online visibility with your blog and publish your thoughts. An excellent resource to help you get started with blogging is ProBlogger, which provides thoughts, tips and inspiration. Using a little objectivity, think about what makes you unique and tap into those qualities, and be remarkable at the same time. These days, people are proving themselves as thought leaders and sometimes receive job offers as the result of their blog.
Social Media
Have you taken the plunge and made use of social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and others? Keep in mind that participating on forums and commenting on blogs is also advised. Think about where your audience is, and be there to be part of the conversation.
With all the tools freely available through social media, personal branding isn’t all that difficult. A bigger challenge might be deciding which ones are right for you. Keep in mind you don’t have to engage in every single one.
When discussing personal branding with others, one name that comes up often is Gary Vaynerchuk, who is known for being very passionate on the subject and one of the best examples today. The video on the BusinessWeek page is worth watching as well.
You may also want to refer to this post on online branding for additional thoughts.
It’s been a long time coming. Advertising has been about the same for some 50 years, but things just don’t work the way they used to. Within the last 5 years social media has grown so much that customers are more reliant than ever on referrals.
Marketers facing this shift find themselves looking towards social media to get in front of their audience and its a whole new ballgame. One recent development that advertisers should be aware of is the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is watching the online space for signs that advertisers masquerading as independent third parties.
Now monitoring blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and many other social network platforms, the FTC is on the watch for advertisers posing as ordinary consumers raving or providing misleading testimonials on products or services. A recent example posted by Consumerist mentions a well known fast food chain posing as fans of a marketing campaign.
An excerpt from the FTC;
“The fundamental question is whether, viewed objectively, the relationship between the advertiser and the speaker is such that the speaker’s statement can be considered ’sponsored’ by the advertiser and therefore an ‘advertising message.’”
It’s probably a method used as long as the web has been around. I recall reading about ‘seeding’ being done by the music industry to launch new pop stars some years ago, and it probably continues today. But you can imagine how this might affect your online branding strategy should you be caught.
Online branding and reputation management is becoming more imperative to monitor, and with this news regarding the FTC, you’ll want to be listening to your endorsers as well as consumers.
What to take away from all this? Monitor, engage, and also be transparent, providing full disclosure where applicable.
December 17th, 2009 | Comments Off | Posted in Online Branding
This presentation from Razorfish (Digital Brand Experience Report 2009) discusses how technology is changing the way consumers engage with brands. Well worth a look.
December 16th, 2009 | Comments Off | Posted in Interesting
Seth Godin has organized a remarkable collaborative effort from 72 individuals who each provided a short essay of no more than 200 words on about what they were thinking about as we head into 2010. The goal of the book is to demonstrate that big thoughts and small actions make a difference.
What Matters Now includes such contributors such as Chris Anderson, Chip and Dan Heath, Guy Kawasaki, Mitch Joel, Gary Vaynerchuk, Ariana Huffington, and many more.
It’s now recognized that online branding is more than banners ads to raise awareness. As marketers looks for ways to stretch advertising dollars, the web has become mainstream for branding online, but with little information on just how create an Internet branding strategy, this post hopefully provides its readers a place to start for the vast opportunities of online branding.
Online Branding
Online Advertising
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is the process of on-page and off-page optimization to improve your rank in the search results for keyword phrases that have been targeted. This practice is highly recommended for online branding as once you rank your customers will associate you with particular phrases. The SEO process is not a fast track to branding online and often have marketers questioning how long does SEO take?
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Also known as Contextual Advertising or Pay Per Click (PPC), this is one of the fastest ways to launch a campaign or raise awareness for your brand. Although the amount of clicks approximately 20% of what you might receive via natural/organic search results, Search Marketing is often used until an SEO campaign starts to work.
Video Marketing
With online video views increasing so much, marketers are looking at ways to include this in the mix. While it’s no small feat to create a successful viral video, you can create your own videos inexpensively (which can also go on your blog) that will be available for others to find. A recent report suggests viewers of online video are on the rise.
Online advertising allows many options, but display advertising (i.e. banners) is still the most popular. Available as both static and animated, recent advancements now include video and interactive advertisements. For the latest news see the IAB website.
Classified Advertising
Online advertising often mirrors offline publications in advertising options, and classified advertising sites like Craigslist and Kijiji allow almost everything to be posted, often for free. Although not commonly used, classifieds provide another opportunity to promote your brand.
Mobile Marketing
A fast developing area, this includes forms of advertising such as with game/video, banners, it is mostly dominated by SMS advertising. A recent report by Gartner suggests mobile ad spending will increase significantly in 2011.
Email Marketing
This can include either marketing communications with your own list of customers or placing ads in email newsletters. This form of communications can be an effective form of communications to keep customers and fans informed of company developments.
Affiliate Marketing
By creating an affiliate program for your product or service can extend your reach and marketing efforts by way of compensation to others for promoting your offering. This is typically provided as a per lead or per sale basis.
Social Media
Social Networks
Most social networks focus on connecting users to share interests, information or activities. With tremendous growth in the last few years, these types of sites are looking to monetize their user base and often have various ways of segmenting their audience due to the information at their disposal. Ad performance is said to be average, but the more advance targeting options make it a viable option. Some of the bigger Social Networking sites include Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, LinkedIn and other social media sites.
Online Marketing Spending 2009
Top Social Networks - Jan. 2009
Social Bookmarking
A popular way for web users to share sites of interest, social bookmarking also allows users to vote and comment on the sites, blogs, videos, articles and other media that is submitted. As opposed to search engines, which rank websites based on an algorithm to determine what site is most relevant to the search query, social bookmarking sites allow their members to vote can which bring a particular site into the popular category. There are numerous social bookmarking sites covering many categories. Some of the most popular are Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Kaboodle, and Slashdot.
Blogging
Short for Web Log, blogs are online journals on just about every topic which allow its author to write entries and include images and/or video and allows readers to comment on blog entries (AKA posts). There are several platforms like LiveJournal and Moveable Type, but the most popular is WordPress. A free blog platform usd by many is called BlogSpot. Many blogs have become some of the most popular websites on the web. Blogs went through some blowback from journalists for re-reporting the news, but have gained credibility in recent years. To see some of the top blogs you can refer to the Technorati Top 100.
Micro Blogging
A condensed form of blogging, it allows users to create brief updates which followers of that user can see. Entries are smaller in size and usually limit the author to one or two sentences. Some of the more notable options being Twitter, Tumblr, and Identi.
Niche Networks
As social networks caught on, many spin offs developed evolved to cater to who wanted more specific groups and conversations of interest. An extensive list of niche networks covering everything from booklovers, artists, lawyers and more is available at Mashable.
Multimedia
Available in many formats, some of the more popular being text, audio, video, animation, and images. Sites like Youtube allow for video sharing, Scribd allows users to shares documents and presentations, and Flickr is a popular site for sharing photos.
Events
Coordinating events and meetups with social tools make party planning and event management much easier for groups and communities with sites like EventBrite or Wild Apricot.
Wikis
A wiki is a website allowing a group or community of users to collaboratively manage content. Popular examples include Wikipedia and Google’s Knol.
Reviews and Opinions
These types of social communities allow members to share comments and vote on assorted products and often include price comparison options. With little policing of postings, their popularity has diminished due to debate of authenticity for some posts. The features of reviews and ratings have since been incorporated into many ecommerce and social media platforms.
If your organization hasn’t taken the leap its time to get started. Besides making announcements on company news, sharing viewpoints on interesting articles and online resources can prove valuable. Some corporate blogs are run by CEOs and others have multiple contributors to carry on the conversation. List of top corporate blogs.
Blogger Relations
If you want to be effective at online branding, you’ll need to get others talking about you. Bloggers are a great channel to get your story out, so long as you follow some PR pitching guidelines you should be able to include them along with mainstream media in your online branding strategy. Some of the more important ones include being relevant in your pitch. Taking the time to find the right bloggers will pay off in more mentions in the long run. The old “throw it at the wall and see what sticks” method never works. Also, a personalized pitch is far more effective than drafting a one size fits all email and using BCC to blast away. Keeping it brief and to the point with a sentence or two (think elevator pitch of 15 seconds) and a link to where more info is available is usually one of the best ways to get buzz. Much better than pasting a press release of 500 plus words that will never be read.
Video News Release (VNR)
Regarded as the video equivalent to a news release, these are often used by corporations and agencies to inform on products or services.
New Zealand Sustainable Tourism – Video News Release
Social Media News Release (SMR)
The social media release consolidates many of the options available today into a single page that combines traditional and emerging forms of communications such as links, social bookmarking, multimedia, video, and other communications tools.
Overview of a Social Media Release
Reputation Management
Monitoring your brand online and the conversation on blogs, forums, websites and in the news used to be an almost impossible chore, but with social media and reputation management tools in your arsenal you can spend more time building your brand online.
You can also make use of Google Alerts for media mentions.
Also see this list of reputation management tools.
One of the things to keep in mind for online branding is you’re seeding the idea to pave a path to your website. Whether you choose SEO, Social Media, PR, or all of them, the idea is to engage and be part of the conversation or search.
There’s no end to the real opportunities of Internet branding and online marketing. Some of the opportunities worth investigating include mobile applications, social network applications, widgets, crowdsourcing, video blogging, lifestreams, virtual advertising, sponsorships, and more.
There’s an interesting article at BusinessWeek that talks about the self-proclaimed experts of Social Media. I’ve felt similar sentiments on occassion, and while I believe that social media is an important part to online branding, I’ve noticed that a lot of people have jumped on board the social media band wagon. And most of them seem to be saying the same things. There’s a lot of preaching about building a following for your community, reputation management, and online branding.
They’re often valid points and advisable for an online strategy, but like anything worthwhile it doesn’t come easy either. If you feel that social media is something you wish to do for your business, it’s not only essential to have the right person, they need to be invested in it full time.
Probably this newest label of hucksters is partly because of the endless hype and large influx of gurus. The amount of conferences on the topic, both local and beyond, has businesses drinking the kool aid. But without the right Internet marketing goals in place, many start slinging comments about snake oil salesmen.
There are numerous social media success stories, and even more failures. Probably similar to a business startup, without a good strategy I’d bet than close to 90% of the social media strategies flop. From my experiences, its like most cases involving strategy, even the best one fall short without proper implementation and follow through.
SEO has gone through the snake oil cycle, and depending who you talk to, its still stuck in that light. The main problem in either case is the business often doesn’t understand enough about how it works and what to expect, which can often lead to hiring the wrong individual and being soured on the entire experience.
In most cases, either are important to your business. Both can drive sales, and both can help with online branding. While I tend to favor SEO as I can justify why one might invest in it, there are are numerous examples of social media success as well.
Offline marketing is vastly different to doing so online. With traditional advertising, a media buyer takes a budget and selects a few channels (print, outdoor, tv, radio, etc) and decides on which are the best match for the demographic of the product or service. After organizing the buy, they present their recommendation and then usually move forward with their selections. And they’re done.
Internet marketing shares a few similarities, like targeting to a suitable demographic, but not a lot. The creative which might work offline doesn’t necessarily translate well to an online audience, or tweaks need to be made to work with the campaign. With online advertising you’re able to track effectiveness and use split testing to optimize for the best possible conversion. And with online markeitng data available in near real-time, you can adjust your campaign to dial up or down, or move your budget to better performing options.
Internet Marketing
Many companies measure the success of online advertising or social media simply by the increase in web traffic versus their usual traffic volume. Defining your goals is the ideal place to start for online advertising, search marketing, online branding, or social media. Some of the goals you might pursue for these are;
Search Engine Rankings – when your SEO strategy is moving in the right direction, you should see your site improve in the search results pages (SERPs) for predetermined phrases that you have chosen to pursue. The end result is an increase in both web traffic and leads.
Online Branding – while this includes an SEO component, an online branding strategy also includes internet marketing and social media. Online branding is not just ranking to have your website become synonymous with certain searched phrases, it also involves advertising online within the right circles to create that top of mind awareness with your brand. Additionally, it also employs social media tactics to develop your online brand essence and assist with online reputation management. Another way to measure is noting an increase in mentions on other websites, hopefully for the better.
Increase Sales – SEO can drive leads to your site, and if you’ve optimized for conversion, those leads should result in an increase in sales. This is a more common metric that is preferred, but not always the right one. If you’re running a pay per click (PPC) campain, then it might make sense, but if you’re campaign is social media or SEO, more suitable metrics might be followers or ranking.
