Category: Social Media

Social Media

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Snowy Chicago Blogger Brunch

Several Chicago area bloggers, including Joi Podgorny, Liz Strauss and Jean Russell joined out of town visitor Tara Hunt for some breakfast grub at Over Easy where the delightful server Gwen brought us quite tasteful helpings quite flavorful food!

Though I’ve exchanged many emails with Tara before, I had never met her in person. After the meal we chatted and did some shopping. It was really nice talk to Tara as our conversation was focused and introspective – the kind of conversation that makes both people better for it, it was fun. Great fun with everyone chatting about things they are working on and things they want to achieve in 2008 and beyond.

Thanks to everyone who came out on a snowy Chicago morning (and those who didn’t) for some blogger bonding! May many future trackbacks take place…

Tara and Joi are fans of the site Ma.gnolia, is anyone else out there a big fan? I might have to try it out.

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SES Chicago 2007 : Troubleshooting Dynamic Website

Moderator:
Anne Kennedy, Manager, Managing Partner, Beyond Ink
Marketing Speakers:
Laura Thieme, President and Founder, Bizresearch
Matt Bailey, President, SiteLogic

Begin Your Research Project:

URL Structure
Search Engine Indices
Current Rankings
Spider Activity (Net tracker gives great spider research…)
Determine Target Terms
Overcome technology, resource and/or political challenges
Index, Optimize
Monitor improvements

Your Page Titles: Are they Really Optimized?

Example: Wine racks (Pier 1)

Page title – is it right?

Dynamic versus static – do they need to be static? No.

Basic Optimization Tactics – keyword embedding

Home page title matters – a lot!!!

Relevant Page Title page, Footer – best first quick steps

Are pages titles enough? H1, H2, Intro optimized, URL optimized, page rank updated.

Hierarchy of a website – URL, how deep and often is the crawl?

What We Found

– We found minimum of 3 issues

– Additional reports and trending are important

When that isn’t enough?

Universal Search?

Update the robots.txt file to remove things.

Canonical issues, soft 404’s get it right!

301 redirects – are they still in place?

Matt Bailey, Sitelogic

IT for marketers

IT and marketing need to work together.

Robot.txt is the welcome mat to your house…

Redirects.

Use Webbug

Architecture – if you using JavaScript, it will not work properly

Duplicate content – avoid it!

Cannibalization problems

Legacy spam – invisible text links…

When Google finds pages though natural crawling, its’ better – Using Webmaster Central helps…

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SES Chicago 2007 – Digital Shelf – The Search Marketing Opportunity for Packaged Goods (CPG)

Moderator:
Kevin Ryan, Vice President, Global Content Director, Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch
Marketing Speakers:
Matt Wilburn, Senior Category Director, CPG, Yahoo!
James Lamberti, Senior Vice President, Search and Media, comScore, Inc
Dana Todd, Board of Directors, SEMPO
Randy Peterson, Search Marketing Innovation Manager, Procter and Gamble

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Everyone on this panel clearly put a lot of long, hard work into the concepts, thought and research into this panel and this blog post won’t do the great conversation the justice it deserves. It’s bleeding edge, this is fun and interesting stuff that will eventually transform the way consumers chose products and discover need brands that specifically meet their needs.

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Does search help CPG? Comscore and Yahoo! provided the data for the SEMPO study.

James Lamberti, Comscore

The search marketing opportunity…100 million unique visitors in food alone, and babies

Who are these searchers? Average income, dramatically higher, 80% female

They enjoy cooking and entertaining.

Allergy sufferers are a prime underserved demographic. The opportunity to build brands via presences made through educational experiences.

Matt Wilburn, Yahoo!

Order of importance to searchers

– Information & Help

– Purchase Decision

– Promotion

– Company Website

Content matters more than a direct navigation. (I see a pattern developing here)

Consumers expect a digital shelf to be similar to a store shelf.

Out of stock, hard to find are issues.

Are you visible in paid and organic? Are you creating a nice impression?

Dana Todd, Sitelab

This is a compelling proposition. We believe in the promise of search for branding issues.

We need to think outside ROI. Back away from the spreadsheet. You need to get people thinking outside direct acquisition.

The first brand for cheese is on page three of the Google organic listings. Why?

Chinese toothpaste issue was a counter reaction to the ingredients article in Wired.

Develop problem and solution content.

If searchers are special, treat them as such!!!

End of session comments…

67% of searchers found a brand they weren’t aware of… (Kevin Ryan)

The term PPC is useless outdated and should be changed – Digital Point of Purchase? (Dana Todd).

Question by me in Chicago: Dana brought up the cheese in PPC and no brand organic terms, to use the Liz Strauss conversational blogging element, there are actually 10 posts on toilet paper on Technorati today, shouldn’t brand managers be engaging this, not only for the SEO benefits, but the innovation road map as well?

(all panel heads nod in agreement) Using the data during the planning process is the next frontier after this issue (which is still in the early days)…

This is certainly an area where the conversation will continue and evolve, it’s a challenging area due to the issues of massive change.

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SES Chicago 2007 – Bryan Eisenberg – Redefining the Customer Conversation

Bryan Eisenberg gave a great talk on the multitude of issues surrounding the challenges of successful customer conversions and conversation.

Marketing (r)Evolutions

Mass advertising on passive customers was what used to work.

People sleep while watching TV, hard to pay attention to advertising when sleeping.

Sleeping while surfing the Internet is not something that happens.

Godaddy.com Super Bowl XL TV commercials didn’t use the same model on the web site. Did Godaddy leave money on the table.

Money is better than traffic.

Apple had to give rebates due to word of mouth on iphone pricing.

Marketers still think customers are dogs.

But search puts the power of when and how in their hands (the sonsumer).

Overcoming sales friction – 85% of car purchases start online – you arrive knowing more than the salesman in many cases. Attack of the blogs – Consumers trust other consumers more than marketers. 54% resist, 56% avoid, 69% block ads – yet we still want to buy.

Customers will control the conversation. People have forgotten how to have relationships.

The web is a major influencer, a mere 26% of consumers were SATISFIED with the experience. They are missing the BASICS. Conversation rates are continuing to fall.

All new brands are based on the experience model. Invest in the customer experience.

We are obsessed with the how many, not the who. This needs to change.

Customers desire great and meaningful experiences.

SCENT, ads must think it has scent to be useful.

80% of traffic dies off within three clicks.

GEICO – connects the story…

Zafu – bras in launch video didn’t match website.

Usability – Frederick Winslow Taylor is the father.

We are all connected and customers will control the conversation. It involves persuasion architecture!!!

Traffic generation is about money. Don’t imitate your competitors. It’s the tiny pieces that matter. Focus on making your service better.

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Business Week Article – So Many Ads, So Few Clicks

Nice article talking about he decline in click through rates of ads.  It includes this statement:

But as responsiveness declines, ad targeting grows more attractive. Marketers see increases of 30% to 300% in click rates when ads are customized based on criteria such as the location, content of Web pages visited, or information researched on search engines.

Exciting data indeed for a project I’m working on right now. It’s all about relevancy, not quantity, of viewers.

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FCF07 – Social Media Brought My Jacket Back!!!

Wow!!! On Friday when I posted about my lost jacket, I stated this:

Then I had a talk with security who informed me that there are multiple video cameras in the Grand Ballroom and if someone did walk off with it’s highly likely that they would be able to pinpoint the person especially since the room was 3/4 empty at that point.

Then you find out who your friends in the blogosphere are, Jeremiah Owyang mentioned it on his blog and verbally to several conference luminaries.

The rest of Friday I heard nothing and considered the jacket lost. Then on Saturday 44 hours after the time I lost it, an anonymous person turned the jacket in at the front desk and declined to be named when asked! When the Hilton called me I couldn’t believe it at first! While the blog posts and Jeremiah’s efforts were likely directly responsible, I must say that I’m pleased that whomever had it decided that turning it in was the right thing to do whether it was out of good intentions, guilt or fear being exposed by the videotape. It’s one of those events that strengthens my faith in the goodness of people and that things can turn out for the best – so in the end that is the positive message – be transparent, communicate and good things will happen!

I’d also like to sincerely thank Ray Stokes at the Hilton for his amazing helpfulness during this event, it will long be remembered.

Thank you everybody!

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FCF07 – My Leather Jacket is Missing

Let’s experiment to see if the power of Social Media can bring my jacket back to me at the Forrester Consumer Forum!!!

Yesterday after keynote speaker Robert J. Bach from Microsoft spoke, I lost/had stolen one of my most valuable possessions, a rather expensive size 46 leather jacket that I bought a few years back. I *loved* this jacket. It didn’t have that motorcycle look, it didn’t look like it cost 8 zillion dollars. It just look professional and nice – always – and was appropriate in any type of social gathering whether upscale or downscale. That’s how you know something is perfect, you feel comfortable in it anywhere. It took me a long time to find that coat and to say that I feel like my better half is missing this morning is not an understatement.

It all happened as I was reading this awesome summary blog post by Jeremiah and I was talking to Mellissa Stock from Yahoo!. All of the sudden, Sean McDonald from Dell interrupted us and asked to inspect my laptop based on an earlier conversation in the day. As Melissa grew a bit tired of that conversation and started to get up, I asked Sean if we could finish the conversation later. I then walked out with her and didn’t notice I was missing the jacket until I was giving Karl Long a giant hug on Ustream for the world to see. I went back to the location, only about 15 minutes or so after I had left and the jacket was gone. 50 feet away was a jacket that was ready for the trash – it’s my gut feeling that someone ditched that jacket and walked off with mine. But in a crowd of people at a Forrester Consumer Forum? I would expect people to do the right thing and I’m hopeful that they still will.

I then retraced my steps in the hotel just to be doubly sure I didn’t leave it somewhere else. Then I had a talk with security who informed me that there are multiple video cameras in the Grand Ballroom and if someone did walk off with it’s highly likely that they would be able to pinpoint the person especially since the room was 3/4 empty at that point. So if it doesn’t turn up by Noon today at the Forrester coat check or hotel security, I will be filing a police report and hotel security will start the investigation.

I then took my cold trip home, I’m sure Jeff Jarvis might blog about how “Dell Hell froze over today”, but the combination of the flurry of activity, being interrupted and the fact that it’s been warm here for the past week and I wasn’t in “jacket mode” is more likely the cause. Irregardless, if it doesn’t turn up, theft is theft and it’s majorly uncool.

If anyone knows anything about this situation, please email me. My cell phone charger for my Nokia N73 was in the bag and my phone has very little juice left!

Based on the video cameras, it would be wise for whomever has this to do the right thing and turn it in – no questions asked.

Thanks in advance for everyone’s help in this manner. But hey who knows, maybe it’s a sign from a higher power that I’m about to move to a warmer climate where jackets aren’t necessary.