Social Media Disaster Aversion Program (How Not to Ruin Your Reputation)

Posted on October 23, 2009 in , Social Media Marketing

zippermouth Social Media “Gurus” have thrown out some tremendous statistics illustrating how everyone needs to embrace social media in order to succeed. As a result, one business after another is jumping on the social media boat and drifting away into the unknown. For those lost at sea, here is a disaster aversion plan that might help you save face. (And by the way, these are all things your mother told you.)

LESSON #1: Stop Trying To Be Edgy (Mind Your Manners)

Acting out your frat boy fantasies is not going to help you with social media marketing. Just because one risqué iPhone app did well with the masses doesn’t mean your saucy approach is a good idea. You need to remember that you are dealing with a diverse group of people in Social Media Land, approximately half of which are women.

Women deserve respect, which should be a part of our upbringing. If you’ve reached adulthood and you still think you can get away with offending women, you have missed some important lessons. For now, suffice it to say that they are very active in the social media/app world.

Pepsi, a billion-dollar company, just pulled out its “AMP Up Before You Score” app. Let this be a lesson to you: don’t kill your marketing apps on the altar of “edginess.”

Pepsi Model:
iPhone App Development: $100,000
Marketing “Gurus” Who Approved It: 250,000
Cost of Damage to Brand Image: Priceless!

LESSON #2: Don’t Go There…

There are some brand suicide areas you need to avoid. No matter what your Guru is telling you, stay away from PRRGNS = Politics, Religion, Race, Gender, Nationality, Sexuality. These topics have always been a house of pain, and can quickly throw things severely out of your control. Remember, brand building and controversy usually don’t go hand in hand. Once damage is done by commenting on one of these forbidden topics, there is usually nothing you can say or do to make it better.

LESSON #3: The Thumper Rule

For those of you who need remedial Disney, this means, “If you can’t say something nice…don’t say anything at all.” Personal attacks and negativity will always make you look like a child, so resist the urge to go Ape Shitake (Thanks, Guy) on someone. Take time to think before you type. Twitter and Facebook are not going to shut down in the next five minutes, so please relax and clear your mind before responding with negativity. Going code red on every comment you receive is only going to increase the risk of untimely death for you.

LESSON #4: Don’t Give In to Peer Pressure

Just because you have a friend or competitor engaging in various types of social media, that doesn’t mean you need to jump in. The important question is: Do you have something to say?
Answer = YES: Go ahead…Make my day. Start tweeting right now!
Answer = NO: Please get back to working on real world things, like improving your business to a level at which you do have something to say. Once you establish how you are different from everyone else, guess what? You will be ready to join the social media revolution.

LESSON #5: Don’t Waste Your Time!

Don’t you have some real work to do? Twitter and Facebook can be good tools, but put some limits on the time you spend there. Tweeting and Facebooking away your entire day makes your personal and professional life suffer. Your time is valuable – make sure you are allocating your time where it counts the most, and not getting wrapped up in endless social media spirals.

The Most Important SEO Questions That Clients NEVER Ask…

Posted on October 19, 2009 in Search Marketing, Social Media Marketing

The Most Important SEO Questions that clients NEVER ask are…

What is good content? And, how do I create good content?

This is a follow-up to what Vikram posted last week.

Last Tuesday, Vikram gave a great restaurant analogy of how website and business owners need to view their website content and content creation strategy. I would like to dive a bit deeper into this topic and give some examples of what I think is good quality content.

There are a lot of people throwing around the phrase “Content is King” – but, most business and website owners don’t know what that phrase ACTUALLY means and therefore cannot create an actionable plan for developing good content and thus their sites will remain subpar.

In my opinion, good content must do 1 of 2 things: Completely Answer a Question (be informational) or Entertain the Audience (be remarkable).

So, I would like to offer a few examples of pages that I think illustrate my points. Notice that some of the sites I give have a dated design…the point here is that good/popular content comes in a variety of styles.

Informational Content – Cover a Niche Topic in its Entirety
Don’t simply write your opinion, give facts & examples to back up your thoughts and gain credibility.

TheSurfingSite.com is a great example of covering niche topics in their entirety. Notice how these 2 articles cover the topics from start to finish, and offer both opinion and facts:

http://www.thesurfingsite.com/Body-Surf.html – ranks #2 for “how to body surf”
http://www.thesurfingsite.com/Surf-Conditions.html – ranks #1 for “how to read a surf report”

Another great example of covering a Niche Topic is from SFDJ.com, the South Florida Dive Journal. They have very informative pages that cover all aspects of diving and free diving.

http://www.sfdj.com/sand/freedive.html – ranks #3 for “free diving” and #1 for “free diving in south florida”

Notice how the page gives instruction with photos, as well as tips on buying equipment and camera gear, free diving spots in South Florida, and how to improve your technique. This page illustrates the point that good content will always outrank a cool website design with poor content.

Again, this page ranks #3 for “free diving” – just below Wikipedia and freediving.net

Entertainment + Informational Value from an Authority figure
Recently, I can across SandersUnfiltered.com – this is one of the best sites I’ve come across in a long time. I love the content that is provided on this site, it is both information and entertaining. New content is only posted once per week, but it’s of high quality video and print from a trusted source – Senator Sanders of Vermont.

Here are 2 good examples from SandersUnfiltered.com:
http://sandersunfiltered.com/blog/?p=43
and
http://sandersunfiltered.com/blog/?p=41

Entertainment – Remarkable or Outrageous Content
2 years ago a video surfaced of a guy surfing a wave that was generated by throwing a stick of dynamite into a lake in Copenhagen, Denmark:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xfBNxNds0Q&feature=fvst

This video generated over 880,000 views and received over 500 comments on YouTube alone.

It was a stunt that was completely staged and edited by Quiksilver, the surf wear company. The ‘kids’ were actors dressed in Quiksilver clothes, and the bridge was the Dronning Louise Bridge over Copenhagen’s Lake Sortedams. This is a good example of a viral video that was passed and shared by millions, and gave Quiksilver a lot of press.

In Summary
I hope these examples help illustrate how good content will improve the quality of your website, online marketing ability and eventually improve search engine rankings. Truth is developing good quality content takes time and money, which is why it’s important to have a solid content development strategy in-place. Most websites and businesses do not, which is why it is so difficult for them to gain any visibility on search or social media sites.

So, please concentrate on these 2 principals when developing website content:
• Work on surpassing the reader’s expectations in terms of providing helpful information on a particular topic. Ask yourself, is this all of the information that someone will want when they visit my page/site?
• Give readers something new and fresh. Give them something funny, outrageous and unexpected, and they will reward you by sharing with others, either through social media sites, leaving comments or emailing to their friends.

Good content IS hard to write, but bad content is EVEN HARDER to get ranked in search or spread through social media communities. Awesome ideas do take time to develop, but they are often worth the wait. So, please take the time to analyze your market and develop a content strategy that fits the needs of your business and surpasses audience expectations.

Develop a Taste for Good Content. Your Website and Business Will Thrive!

Posted on October 13, 2009 in Search Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Website Design & Usability

Content is the single most important element when it comes to websites. This simple yet powerful fact needs to be a guiding light when you are ready to consider investing and reinvesting in your site.

Here is a restaurant analogy that I hope will emphasize how good content can make or break a website.

steak-1 Restaurant = your website
Food = the content on your website
Restaurant critics = search engines
Restaurant fans = social media

The Restaurant

You can have the glitziest restaurant with the most expensive silver, fancy décor and welcoming ambiance. But ultimately, good food is what will keep you in business. Similarly, a flashy, star-studded website can only build your business if you provide the visitors with delectable content. Content that satisfies their hunger for knowledge turns your visitors into return visitors and your browsers into buyers.

The Food

Serving up cheap food in an expensive restaurant is sure to tank its reputation. It’s interesting to note that people often make a beeline for the plainest looking restaurant. The simple reason people trek across the city to a hole in the wall is for the food. Same is true for websites: even if your website is not particularly fancy and or flashy, people will still flock to it for informational content. Going cheap with content is like picking cheap ingredients for your restaurant menu. It is sure to leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.

Restaurant Critics

These guys can make or break a restaurant. A good review can flood you with people willing to try your restaurant. Search engines can have a similar effect on your website traffic. Good website content delivered to the search engines by the right programming and structure is bound to increase your overall rankings. Top rankings in return deliver more visitors to your website, as the search engines are the ultimate content critics.

Restaurant Fans

Some people will love your restaurant because they just plain like what you have. They may like your location, ambiance, staff, celebrity…anything that makes you unique. Your food still has to be good, but your real-life fans can share all the different things they enjoy about their restaurant experience with the people they know.

For a website, social media traffic is a direct fan base. This is word of mouth so powerful that it often holds more weight than the word of the critics. Social media, when handled correctly, is a way into people’s hearts and wallets if you have something special to offer. Social media works for a website just as well as word of mouth does for a restaurant. And I couldn’t tell you how many times I have gone to a restaurant just because one of my friends told me “I just have to try it.”

Bottom Line

What I’m trying to say is that it’s great to develop a website experience for your visitors: design, color, flash, usability, etc. It all matters. But none of it matters enough if you neglect the website’s meat and potatoes: CONTENT. Make sure you leave aside some budget for professionally written content that provides the information your prospective buyers are looking for. Optimize it for the search engines. Spell everything correctly. And keep it updated.

Bon appetit!

Consumer Engagement, Word-of-Mouth Advocacy & Increasing Brand Loyalty: Study Reveals the Social Media Objectives Trinity

Posted on October 8, 2009 in Ecommerce, Online Branding, Social Media Marketing

While it should come as no surprise to anyone by now that many companies are embracing the use of social media as part of their overall marketing plan, a recent study reveals that brands are more likely to implement the use of social media now than ever before. The use of Facebook and Twitter by brands and merchants is at an all-time high, and customer reviews rank as the number one driving force for both consumer engagement and sales.

Community and Social Media Study

This survey of US web retailers was conducted by the e-tailing group and PowerReviews in August and September of 2009 for their “Community and Social Media Study.” Those surveyed were asked to answer questions about how they have adopted social media, and what they were trying to accomplish or what problems they were trying to solve using social media tools. The study surveyed 117 companies in total, a group which included multi-channel retailers (44%), brands & manufacturers (26%), pure-play retailers (12%), catalogers (9%), and suppliers/agencies (9%).

Social Media Tools

According to the survey, Facebook holds the top position for the most users, with 86% of online retailers currently using Facebook Fan Pages, and 10% planning to begin sometime in the 12 months. Twitter came in second, with 65% currently using and 19% planning to over the next year. Other social media tools and current usage are Customer Reviews (55%), Blogs (55%) and Viral Videos (50%).

Brand and Merchant Objectives for Using Social Media

Brands and merchants listed their objectives in order of priority (apart from increasing sales). The following three, the “social media trinity”, came in at the top:

greater customer engagement (39%)
mobilizing advocates to drive “word of mouth” (30%)
increasing brand loyalty (21%)

Social Media Concerns

The top three concerns the survey respondents had in relation to social media were:

brand degradation fear – “people can trash my products in front of a large audience” (49%)
competence fear – “I am using outdated marketing/merchandising techniques” (34%)
competitive fear – “customer might leave my site to find a more socially-engaging site” (26%)

Implications & What’s Next

Lauren Freedman, President of the e-tailing group, states, “The integration of community and social networking within e-commerce has reached critical mass and as such is now a benchmark that we will be tracking annually. Customer engagement has become a metric to be reckoned with, where failing to engage consumers via community and social media will have brand and bottom-line implications. All merchants must test and understand how to effectively deploy it for their brands to retain customers, encourage sales, and avoid abandonment to competitors who’ve better embraced its marketing potential.”

In summary, these days, consumer engagement should be considered a marketing objective rather then simply a strategy, right along with sales. It will become increasingly important as more companies continue to engage their customers via social media in the future.

The End of the SEO Rankings Era, aka The Rise of the Universal-Social-Mobile Search Trinity

Posted on July 23, 2009 in Mobile Marketing, Search Engine News, Search Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Universal Search

The SEO industry and their clients used to live and die by their rankings. But this ranking race is changing drastically as each day goes by. What is killing the ranking mania that has ruled search engine marketing for so long? Who is the rankings dragon slayer?

Answer: The Trinity of Universal Search, Social Media, and Web-Enabled Phones.

Universal Search

This is something amazing that has happened right in front of our eyes (for those of us awake and watching). From nowhere, the Google “Golden Triangle” got covered with Map Listings, You Tube Videos and Shopping RSS Feeds, completely pushing down the traditional SEO rankings way below the fold. Result? Even your #1 ranking for a competitive keyword is not going to help you get many clicks. Now users can choose from a smorgasbord of information that Google has laid out for them. Their Map Listings provide a website URL, phone number, directions, and reviews in one neat package.

Social Media

All of us have friends, and our friends are usually full of information on at least one topic that they are passionate about (no matter how dull they are). With the gargantuan increase in the use of social media, your friends and their friends are now connected and forming a pool of collective information. A great vacation, a crappy airline, a great deal on socks…everything is being discussed online between friends, acquaintances, and near strangers. Web searchers have more sources of information than ever, and many of these sources now are people they know and trust.

Example: You see a great review of a hotel/restaurant on tripadvisor.com or zagat.com. But then your close friend “tweets” about the terrible time he had at that establishment. Who are you more likely to trust? This is your big vacation, and the word of your buddy is always going to have more influence than “independent” review websites or even Google, who is just aggregating reviews from different websites into its SERPs (search engine results pages). Therefore, the great reviews about your business on review websites, even your top rankings and detailed map listings are no match for the guy who talks to his friends online about you.

Mobile Phones

For those of you following my writing on this topic, you know I have been very bullish about mobile phones. The growth in mobile phone internet usage has been tremendous. 2012 will usher in over 1.2 billion 3G phones on the planet…wow.

Mobile phone searches have one thing in common: a small screen. This translates into a very slim chance of getting clicks for #1 SEO rankings. Google is in the middle of a massive push to sell AdWords ads. That’s what brings them money, and they have a lot less real estate to sell on the tiny mobile screens.

Guess what else is on the phone? Your friends! They can answer questions through SMS, MMS, Email, Messenger Chat, and even a phone conversation. All this open communication further dilutes the ranking power that is still on the minds of so many owners and marketers.

And the winner is…

Conversions!

I have always considered conversions to be the true metric of online success. I have seen clients and SEO agencies lose their heads over every change in their Google rankings. This obsession with rankings is a waste of time and money, and becoming more so every day.

When it comes to the e-commerce and travel sectors, the conversion factor is huge. Their volumes are big, and even a minor tweak in conversions translates into increased revenue. Yet the search engine marketing industry is still very heavy on selling rankings: Castles in the air, without doors or windows. This is where I draw the line with our agency. The ranking-obsessed are given a cup of tea and shown the door.

Unfortunately, many SEOs have figured out that it is relatively easy to convince prospective clients to follow the simple formula “higher rankings = more traffic = more sales.” If making a sale is your goal, this is the easiest strategy to lay down. But it’s not a good one. Successful web marketing today demands a much more sophisticated approach.

Here is what I found in a fortune cookie once: “Beware what you wish for. Pick conversions over rankings and you will always be a winner!”

Social Media Disaster Aversion Program (How Not to Ruin Your Reputation)