Biznology Blog: June 2009

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June 30, 2009

Search Engine Conflicts We Don't Accept

Microsoft is selling Razorfish, the search consultancy it acquired as part of the bigger aQuantive acquisition. Microsoft has been criticized for owning a search consultancy that manages clients' paid search spending on search engines, including Microsoft's own search engine, Bing. Google was similarly pilloried for being in the same position with Performics when it acquired DoubleClick. For more, check out my latest post on Internet Evolution, "Search Engine Conflicts We Don't Accept."

Posted by MikeMoran at 2:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 29, 2009

Searching for profits more than answers

The refreshing thing about search marketing is the way that the little guy was on equal footing with the big guy. Yes, I said "was" on equal footing. I am noticing a disturbing trend in search results, from Bing and others, that leads to big companies having a distinct advantage in search, just as they do in most other forms of marketing. To see what I mean, check out my latest blog post for Search Engine Guide, "Searching for profits more than answers."

Posted by MikeMoran at 4:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 26, 2009

Twitter's Free to All Model is Wrong

by Frank Reed

I am going to write something that is likely to be unpopular. Today I experienced a "perfect storm" of sorts regarding the Internet and the idea of free is good. This apparent entitlement mentality that is pervasive among Internet users that everything should free is going to potentially ruin a lot of good opportunities. Of course, all of this is in my opinion so you can take it for what it's worth. At least reading it is free, right?

This week I have encountered SMB (small and medium business) people who love the idea of Internet marketing but they don't think that they should have to pay for it. I have read that free services suck because you can't get service when something breaks or fails. I have been doing free seminars for some folks for over a year but have closed nearly zero business from it (this last one may be because I just didn't do the right things to make them a customer which I can accept).

So free is in but for how long? Two of the most prolific Internet properties that are currently getting a serious amount of attention from business are Twitter and Facebook. They are both free to use. I am beginning to think that Facebook has a better mousetrap due to a wider breadth of services it ties together, but that's for another post. One thing that Twitter has is a ton of hype. This hype appears to outpace reality on a consistent basis. I think any stumbling blocks that Twitter is encountering is due to one facet of the service: it's free.

So should Twitter charge for the service? Here's a few things to mull over.

1. If Twitter were getting more people who actually used the service rather than signing up and then not using it within a month it would have more value. It may have a lot less users but it would be the people who actually get it. So how to you separate the wheat from the chaff? Make the service a paid one. Not much. Let's just say $24.99 per year. Just over two bucks a month. I would spend that in a heartbeat for Twitter. Why? Because I see the value and I would think that 2 bucks a month is a steal. Some quick math for you. If 50% of the 18 or so million Twitter users decided they would pay for the service at $24.99 per year you now have revenue of just under, gulp, $225 million. With overhead being as small as it is for Twitter you have plenty of profit, plenty of cash for R&D and even more for infrastructure. Oh and you also get 9 million users with skin in the game so they now become much more valuable to advertisers.
2. If Twitter had revenue, it could quit wasting time with everyone speculating how they were going to make money to survive and then just develop very cool ways to apply the service to businesses for their benefit.
3. If Twitter charged for use and could provide customer service. Nothing else needs to be said there.
4. Back to the R&D thought. If Twitter was making money it could work 24 / 7 to improve its search capabilities.  Many believe search is the true potential value of Twitter anyway. Think of the paid search model around highly targeted and engaged Twitter users based on keyword. The cash registers would ring a lot.
5. Twitter as a paid service would eliminate a lot of the noise. There would be less mundane reporting because users would have skin in the game.

I say all this because, while it's not as sexy as Twitter, LinkedIn is looking to be profitable for its second year in a row. That's right. Profit. No matter how many characters you get to make that point it's something that Twitter may never realize. Sure that's a strong statement but why not? Twitter is burned into everyone's brain as a free service and I suspect it may be too late for them to get back to where they need to be.

Look, I could be wrong here but one thing I am sure of. If anything is put out as free you will get what you pay for. To expect more and, even worse, to think that you shouldn't have to ever pay for any Internet services is ridiculous. Would you just give away your product or service? No, of course not. So why do you think that Twitter should?

Posted by FrankReed at 1:08 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

June 25, 2009

What if your boss is fraidy-scared of Internet marketing?

When I was a kid on Long Island (pronounced "Lon GUY-land"), I was one of those boys that was fraidy-scared a lot. Afraid of the bigger kids. Afraid of everyone realizing how unathletic I was. (OK, OK, of how unathletic I am.) So, I can sense fear when I see it, and I am seeing a lot of fraidy-scared marketers lately. They knew how to do their jobs in the old days but they don't know what this Internet thing is all about. If you're reading this post, you're unlikely to be one of those fraidy-scared folks, but you might work with or (horrors) for someone filled with fear. What do you do?

The boss might be afraid of spending money on a Web site. Or scared of handing over the company credit card for paid search. Or petrifiied of the risk of letting employees blog or tweet. How do you work with someone like that? You know what to do, but they are stopping you.

It might sound cynical, but sometimes the best thing to do is to fight fear with fear. When you are dealing with someone who is fear-based, you might need to scare them more about what happens if they ignore your advice. If our competitors all have Web sites and we don't. If our customers are searching for us and we are not there. If our clients want to get to know us and we are hiding. If we are not out there on the Web where our customers are (at least some of them), they won't come find us. They'll just work with someone else who is out there with them.

If your boss is fraidy-scared, you might need to scare him more. And then reduce the worry about what you are advising so it seems less scary than sitting still. Explain how we can do a quick Web site for very little money. Discuss how we can set limits on search spending to stay within the budget. Promise him that we'll train a few employees in social media so that they won't screw it up. And only after these experiments start to pay off will we really commit to them.

It's pointless to tell people who are afraid that there's nothing to worry about. Instead, persuade them by showing them standing still isn't as safe as they assume.

Posted by MikeMoran at 9:27 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

June 24, 2009

What's Listening 2.0? Can you stand to hear it?

I was fortunate to be invited to do a Webinar today on Listening 2.0, along with Mark Kovscek of VivaKi and Pauline Ores of IBM, on what's going on with all these conversation monitoring/mining/listening services that are suddenly popping up. As Chief Strategist for Converseon, I am kind of biased. I mean, we have the really good one, you see. But it was helpful to be part of a panel where we could talk about what kind of qualities make a good one and we got lots of great questions.

My piece of the talk focused on two key components of the new improved listening:

1. Insights. The early listening companies focused on automation of keyword snippets. They struggled to correctly label sarcasm as negative and they couldn't analyze a blog post with two negative comments and one positive, calling the whole thing neutral or mixed, when the client needs to see each individual insight, not some aggregated glob. With improved technology, but more important, with human analysts, Listening 2.0 companies can provide real customer insight rather than streams of keyword snippets.
2. Actions. But it's not just about understanding what customers say, it's about doing something about it. Companies need enterprise listening where the same service can be used across organizational boundaries, so that everyone hears the same things and, more importantly, can act on them using workflow tools common in other business processes.

Thanks to those of you who tuned in. For the rest, I've posted the slides of all three presenters for WOMMA's Listening 2.0 Webinar. I'd love to hear about what you are expecting out of your listening company.

Posted by MikeMoran at 6:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 23, 2009

Just what constitutes a spam blog comment?

make the decision several times every day, just like most blog owners. A comment comes in to one of our posts. I scan it and make a snap decision: is it spam or is it a legitimate comment for me to publish? But lately, I've been second-guessing my decisions, wondering whether I am canning spam or stifling real readers from providing feedback. Or maybe I am letting lots of spam through that lowers the conversation. If you've ever struggled with the spam or no spam decision on your blog comments, read my latest post on Search Engine Guide, "Just what constitutes a spam blog comment?"

Posted by MikeMoran at 8:53 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 22, 2009

A Walk Around the Digital Marketing Block

by Janine Y. Swenson

I was early to the event, so I chose to walk around my old neighborhood, south of Washington Square Park in New York City. I feared the neighborhood when I first moved in almost 29 years ago, viewed it as unmanageable, but it now seemed open, welcoming, and easy to navigate. How unfortunate that what I know now, I didn't know then. I could have taken advantage of so many things. I liken that experience to how many marketing managers of small, medium, and even large businesses view the Internet today. What they see as frightening, unfamiliar, and unmanageable could be a welcoming, easily-navigated direct link to their existing and new customers.

If those business leaders had attended the event that I was headed to, it could have helped them to see what they're missing. As I walked the neighborhood, I was on my way to half-day conference this past Friday by the Internet Strategy Forum of NYC. (ISF is a global peer networking group for Internet strategy managers.)

Fearful marketers needed to attend the ISF's panel discussion with digital marketing industry leaders on "Making the Right Moves for Digital Growth in Turbulent Times" (follow some of the Twitter tweets tagged #ISFJune19), I attended through the courtesy of Mike Moran and the ISF. (Mike tweeted that the ISF would give free admission to the first to tweet him back, and I was the first.) I have to say, fellow "tweeple," I was glad I was there and if you weren't, you really missed out on a great event.

Moderator Lee Huang, the Director of Digital Strategy at NBC Universal, kept the group of panelists engaged with the audience through thought-provoking questions and personal examples. The panel included Patrick Adams, SVP and CMO for Victoria's Secret Direct, Kip Morgan, CMO of eMusic, Chris Johnson, VP of Content & Business Development at Hearst Digital, and Michael Levin, Director of Product Development with NBC Universal. They speculated on candidates for the digital focus in this current economy, both short- and long-term, how to really understand the customer (what they want and how they want it), how to prioritize and monetize new ideas, and how to handle the competitive environment. They also openly discussed how they are handling emerging platforms such as mobile, gaming, and immersive sites.

If you're a marketer and view the Internet as uncharted territory, and your strategic plan is not quite ready for prime-time digital, then rethink that plan. If you wait until the Web becomes commonplace for every business, you'll waste the opportunity to be unique, an early adopter, and a trend setter.

For new and innovative digital ideas, take the crawl-walk-run approach, endorsed by Kip Morgan. Or jump right in and develop something unique and fun, like "Quidgits," a combination of a quiz and widget, which Mike Levin shared that NBC Universal has developed to push users to their learning sites. Patrick Adams, who manages every Victoria Direct marketing function under one roof, says this makes it easier to take on seasonal marketing planning, integrating the traditional with digital, email, stores, music, and Web cohesively and improves ease of execution. I especially liked what Chris Johnson shared, to shift from a brand-focused to a trust-focused strategy.

Regarding that trust, your biggest competitors might not be the known organizations with similar or approaching market share, but young, innovative, and fast-moving companies under your radar, establishing digital trust with your existing customer base. For every hundred of these, one might take off and take off big, because of their agility on the Web. Beating them now at the game will be less expensive than an acquisition later.

Walk around your own neighborhood, as Patrick Adams said, and shop your competitor. With your finger on the digital pulse of your industry, coupled with strong knowledge of your market, you can gain traction with innovative digital ideas appropriate to your marketing plan. Don't wait 29 years for the landscape to change so much that it becomes a different place, lamenting that you didn't take advantage early on of everything offered to you.

Posted by MikeMoran at 3:56 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 19, 2009

People Never Get Old on the Internet

by Frank Reed

I have been working in the Internet industry in some form or another for a total of seven years now. I have been in sales on the hosting side, sold commercial Internet connectivity, sold services from the VAR side, partnered in an Internet marketing agency and now I consult and write. I've seen a lot in the industry from the Fortune 50 clients to the local optician's office. I have a lot of "been there, done that" in me as it relates to the Internet.

I have noticed that there is one very old-fashioned common denominator that runs across all of those experiences. I use this "theme" to define whether the online-initiated experience was good or not. It's not about technology. It's not about process. It's not about delivery. It's about people. While the Internet is connection of networks, it's more
importantly a Web of people. Real people.

I had a great experience today. I helped connect a person with a need to a service that met the need, and it resulted in a happy client. Happy enough, in fact, that they wanted to make things easy by paying for their year's service in advance. Now that kind of thinking is wonderful to hear in this day and age. As a result, I was faced with a choice at this time. I could offer them the special year discount or simply just ignore it because they were going to buy anyway. My sales instincts told me to not say anything but the stronger part of me won out because it was the right thing to do. They were very happy and I think the money they saved was given back to me in goodwill for the future. I then spoke with their accounts payable person, who was having trouble making the payment, and she was just a genuinely nice person.

"What's the point?" you ask. While the only reason we were speaking was due to the Internet, the experience was very cool because of the people. The Internet was the means to an end. The end being interaction with good people for the right reasons.

That's what never goes out of style. I would even offer that as we become more sophisticated on the Internet technologically, that the people part of the equation is going to become more, rather than less, important. In the hard goods manufacturing sector, technology replaces people while with the Internet it forces people to the forefront to perform. The Internet business is a service business. The human side of the Internet helps to humanize a company that has been reached in an inhuman way. It takes the edge off the anonymity. It serves to make someone feel good about doing business with you. Technology can't do that. Technology is just a means to an end. A human end.

Never before in the history of commerce has there been a greater chance to differentiate yourself from the competition through the basic human tenets of human decency, respect, and desire to be of service. What the technology removes, or possibly dehumanizes at times, needs to be replaced by people in order to be most effective. Companies that get this, like Comcast, are going to crush their competition. I feel supremely confident of that. Even Google is learning that slowly but surely. There are now people who can be reached to actually talk to at Google. Of course, that is not perfect and never will be, but neither are people.

So what's the takeaway? Never stop concentrating on the human side of your business, no matter how techy or geeky your company is. If you are too heavily weighted on the geek side of the equation you will be viewed as less accessible. Less accessibility in today's world means less interaction, which may lead to less business. We can automate the heck out of everything, but if there isn't a person to speak to about a problem or a success, the long-term viability of the customer is diminished very quickly. So, no matter how cool your Internet business is, you better not think you are too cool for people. You might still make a living but it won't make a life.

Posted by FrankReed at 12:06 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

June 18, 2009

Are you scaring PR people away from social media?

If you're reading this blog, I suspect that you "get it." Maybe you're not an expert at Internet marketing, but if someone asks you about, you don't involuntarily drool as you consider your answer. But what about the people that really don't understand? Are you helping them to take a baby step into the digital waters or are you scaring them away? I have been wondering lately if the way we explain social media to PR people is making them run for the hills, instead of to join in.

When you explain social media to someone who doesn't get it, does it sound like it's this completely new, totally cool way to reach customers? Does it rewrite everything we ever knew about public relations? Does it transform the entire PR industry? Does it turn communications on its ear?

To you, that sounds exciting, but to the average PR person, it might be very scary. I mean, who wants to hear that the job that they know, and that they know they are good at, is suddenly changing into something totally different that they don't understand and secretly fear they will never understand?

Instead, you'll probably do better with an approach that emphasizes what they already know. No, they don't understand YouTube, but they might understand what makes for a video that people want to watch. No, they don't understand blogs, but they do understand that when journalists criticize the company, you should reach out to engage them. No, they don't understand Twitter, but they do understand sound bites.

If you can reach PR people by starting with what they know instead of what they don't know, they might be willing to stretch a bit instead of recoiling in horror. Telling people, "You already know most of what you need to know, but let me explain what's different" is a lot more welcoming and calming than the scary, "Everything you knew is wrong." Instead of battling the people who don't get it, perhaps you'll really help them get it.

Remember that PR people are experts at storytelling. They know what will fly with the audience and what won't. They've spent a lifetime getting past the gatekeepers to that audience, such as the newspaper reporter or the TV producer. With social media, the gatekeepers are other customers who might be willing to pass along a really good story.

Don't scare off the people who are the best at identifying that story. Instead, make the PR people your storytelling experts, the ones who help the rest of the company operate in public to tell their stories, through YouTube, blogs, Twitter, or any other social media that comes down the road. Social media is PR democratized throughout the company. Don't throw away the experts before you start.

Posted by MikeMoran at 5:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 17, 2009

In social media, aspire to be reactive

Aspiring to be reactive seems to be shooting pretty low, huh? Well, if you're on the social media sidelines, maybe it's the best thing to try. You might be cruising for a public relations bruising if you are sitting out the whole social media dance. Are you just waiting for that blogger or Twitterer to turn the flames on you? If they did, would you be ready to respond in social media? To find out what you can do, besides being a sitting duck, read my latest post on Search Engine Guide, "In social media, aspire to be reactive."

Posted by MikeMoran at 4:31 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 16, 2009

Twitter communities

Some social media outlets foster a sense of a smaller communities among its members, with LinkedIn connections or even Facebook Groups. Twitter seems less oriented to forming smaller communities around any concept except who you follow and who your followers are. I traded e-mails recently with Kent Huffman, who has taken to creating and maintaining several marketing-related lists of Twitter users. They almost feel like a Facebook group that you need to qualify for, rather than join.

Kent decided to make lists of the top CMOs, marketing professors, and marketing book authors active on Twitter. Kent explained to me that he compiled the lists through online searches for "CMO," "Chief Marketing Officer," "marketing book author," and "marketing professor." He searched his 5,000+ followers on Twitter, used TweepSearch.com to find bios on Twitter, and used the Twitter search.

At that point, Kent says, "Once I posted and then tweeted about the lists, other Twitter users suggested additions (on behalf of themselves or others), which is why I update them every two weeks. So the lists are very fluid in nature, as they grow and change along with the Twitterers featured."

Kent shows the lists in order of the number of Twitter followers, and I asked him if he thought the number of followers indicated anything significant about the authors, for example. Kent had a quick answer: "I don't think that the authors toward the top of the list are better than the others toward the bottom, as the number of people who follow each of those authors can be affected by how long that author has been tweeting, how interesting his/her tweets are, how aggressive he/she is with the marketing process on Twitter, and a number of other factors. However, I had to publish the lists in some type of order and decided that organizing them by the number of followers would be somewhat logical, as it would at least be an indication of the number of people on Twitter who wanted to know what that person had to say."

This is clearly an experiment on Kent's part and I find the whole idea interesting, much like services like TwitterGrader rank all Twitter users on a number of factors. Kent updates the lists frequently and he uses Twitter to tell his followers who's on the new list each time.

Kent says that he plans to "add a few more new lists in the coming weeks and months--all connected in some way to the core subject of marketing." So my question is, "Is this a form of community building?" Can we use Twitter to build communities in this way?

Posted by MikeMoran at 2:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 15, 2009

The Need for Speed in Internet Marketing

Most of you know that I wrote a book on Internet marketing called "Do It Wrong Quickly"--but some overlook how important the "quickly" part is, because otherwise you're just doing it wrong. The point of the book is to experiment with your marketing until something starts to work. You can't overemphasize how important speed has become in marketing.

Think about how you end up with the right approach. You don't know the right answer to start with—you find it by trying a number of possibilities and seeing which ones work best. The former CTO of Amazon once told me they could change a font at 9 am and by noon know if it was a mistake or not. Then they'd change it again, always searching for improvement.

Contrast this approach with that of the average company, which redesigns their Web site once a year. If it takes ten tries to get the right font, Amazon figures that out in a few days. The average company takes ten years.

What about your company? Do you spend your time lamenting about how those new cool Web companies seem to have better ideas? Mayeb they don't. Maybe they just execute faster. Maybe instead of studying an idea until the it whimpers and cries for mercy, they just try it. If it works, it's a keeper. If not, well, not.

Posted by MikeMoran at 10:33 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

June 12, 2009

In Internet marketing, does the song remain the same?

by Frank Reed

I am going to act as if you care about my musical tastes (you may skip directly to the next paragraph rife with Internet marketing wisdom if you don't want to indulge me--I won't mind). I grew up in the era where what is considered classic rock now was called AOR (album oriented rock) then. Led Zeppelin pulled a rare triple play in that era by releasing a live album (yes, as in vinyl) of a Madison Square Garden concert, that was turned into a movie that was named "The Song Remains the Same" which was actually also a song from a previous album thus tying in a lot of product in one fell swoop. In today's Internet space people would laugh at such simplistic cross promotion because of the new world order of marketing brought on by the Internet.

On to the point. While I still enjoy the music I don't embrace the messages like I used to. I've changed. In fact, to play in the Internet marketing space you have to come to grips with the simple truth that nothing remains the same for any extended period of time. Change is the true constant and as Internet marketers. Or is it?

Take Twitter, for instance. With all the momentum that has been built up over the past six months including the Pied Piper like behavior of those who actually care about Oprah Winfrey and Ashton Kutcher, you would think that the meteoric rise of the service was at its critical mass and just ready to move to auto pilot. Not so fast. There are new studies that are showing that Twitter may be losing some feathers. A new study from Harvard tells us that 90% of the tweets come from 10% of Twitter accounts.

The other, from HubSpot, tells us in just a nine month period the percentage of Twitter users who have filled out a bio went from 80% down to 24%. That means that most newbies on the Twitter roller coaster aren't even engaged enough to fill out some basic data that would help them connect with others. There is now a report that Twitter traffic has, gulp, flattened out or dropped off. If Twitter went away would we truly change?

Do these kinds of changes suddenly render Twitter useless as a business tool? Absolutely not, but it certainly can change the opinions or plans of those who are considering how they integrate it into their Internet marketing mix. Many bigger companies took that nine month period where the change occurred just to formulate a plan only now to be given this new data that might change their plans significantly.

I had a friend say to me recently that there was no reason to worry, though, because the next cool social network will show up soon enough.  Remember Friendster? It's still around but it doesn't show up on the cover of Time anymore. Maybe that's what will happen to Twitter. Maybe it won't. There may be change or there may not be. Either way I have to figure out how to deal with it.

Is change the only dependable facet of Internet marketing? For all the change that we talk about, maybe the song really does remain the same after all. It's the song of communication. We just adjust the tune a bit each time the Internet version of "the greatest thing since sliced bread comes along."

So relax. No matter what the vehicle it's still communication, not brain surgery. Maybe as Internet marketers we need to talk about communication and de-emphasize the fads. I don't have the answers. I think I'll just wait a while to see what's next and see if it really changes anything.

Posted by FrankReed at 2:26 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

June 11, 2009

Why should PR people care about paid search?

Public relations is about getting free attention to your message, so you'd think that paid search is the last thing that any PR person would need to care about. Paid search, after all, is the quintessential "buy now" form of marketing. But paid search is increasingly becoming a valuable tool for PR people in a crisis, and you should think about it, too.

Think about what happens when you face a crisis. You're spending most of your time fielding incoming media requests, getting your story out there, and trying to get ahead of the story. One of the ways that some companies do that is with advertising--you've seen those full-page ads from a big company when a crisis hits.

More and more, I'm seeing companies turning to paid search in a crisis. Right now, I am seeing big companies doing it, which makes sense, but I suspect that small companies will find this an affordable part of their crisis management even though they never used offline advertising for PR in the past.

Coca-Cola used paid search a few years ago in the face of the "Killer Coke" allegations brought by Colombian union organizers--charges that were thrown out of court. Coke used paid search in the days following that court victory to get the word out. The Killer Coke campaign had caused several colleges to ban Coke from campuses and paid search seemed a great way to get the word out to anyone searching on the subject.

More recently, Hunts Tomoatoes found its business imperiled by the tomato scare of 2008 that embroiled McDonalds and other businesses selling foods containing salmonella-tainted tomoatoes. Hunts responded with paid search ads proclaiming, "Hunts Tomatoes Are Safe" which led to a special landing page explaining the issue so that consumers recongnized not all tomatoes had the problem.

In both of these cases, the costs were probably less than what those old-style full-page ads would have cost, but they also have another advantage. When you buy those full-page ads, you're doubtless exposing some customers to the negative message that they'd never seen before. By focusing on negative search terms, you're aiming to persuade only those customers that have already heard the bad news.

But what about small businesses? Can it work for them? I think that in the right situation, it can. I'd love to hear about anyone who's tried it, but small businesses would likely pay much less for very targeted keywords than the big boys do for their broader ones. In addition, local businesses can use geotargeting so that their paid search ads are shown only within the area they do business.

If you're a small business, you might not have found paid search a worthwhile investment, but in order to use it in a crisis, you need to take steps now. Open accounts on at least Google, but perhaps other search engines, too. The cost is minimal or free for almost every search engine worldwide and you don't need to run any advertising until you really need it.

Think about what kinds of issues might crop up for yourself and prepare a few ads and landing pages in advance. Then actually run them for a bit--you can do it for some weird keyword that no one will enter but you. Test to be sure that you know what you are doing. Do a little keyword research. Change your bids.

Why? In a crisis, you won't have time to learn something new. If the account is open, you know what you're doing, and all you need do is tweak some ads and landing pages and then submit, then you'll be as ready as you can be.

Think about paid search as another weapon in your fight for your good name. When bad news strikes, you need to respond and paid search is one of the ways to do it.

Posted by MikeMoran at 1:06 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

June 10, 2009

Why Twitter is creepy

No, it's not just the bird. And, no it's not my opinion. One of my teenagers told me that Twitter is creepy. And I saw a recent post by Paul Dunay where his fourteen-year-old's friends "wanted nothing to do with [Twitter]." Given the meteoric rise of Twitter, how can it be that at least some members of the digital generation have such negative reactions? These very same kids are active in Facebook beyond all bounds of time management, so they are not cyber-shy. I think it has to do with Twitter's user experience.

I had lunch with Paul today and we briefly talked about that common experience that our teens have with Twitter. I think one of the clues to the perception lies in another comment my daughter made. Upon walking into my office, she saw Twitter up on the screen and said, "Oh yeah, that's your stalker site."

Stalker, eh? There's a brand image that any company would love to have, huh? Well, maybe not. And I have to wonder whether some of that negative perception is driven by the simple choice of words. In Twitter, you "follow" someone, which certainly connotes more of a stalker connection than Facebook's "friend."

But perhaps there's more here. On Facebook, friends request to be connected and you must approve, while on Twitter, they follow freely and you must block them to prevent it. You can lock your Twitter stream to force approvals of anyone with a follow request, but it's not the default, so few do. The default is "opt out" rather than "opt in," a subtle difference, perhaps, but it might lead to an out-of-control feeling. About such things do perceptions revolve, in case you haven't paid due deference to usability gurus. For some reason, Facebook seems comfortable while Twitter seems creepy.

I wonder if the new digital generation can perceive creepiness in a Web site as easily as us oldsters can see it in a person's face. Perhaps they've become so attuned to the digital world that they perceive things that we miss. Well, a sample size of a few teens does not give us enough data to reach a conclusion, but I'll be interested to see the next study that shows Twitter users by age.

Posted by MikeMoran at 12:54 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

June 9, 2009

Data beats opinions in any decision

Don't look now, but I think I've been breaking my own rule. I am constantly reminding other people never to rely on opinion when you can test the conclusion yourself, but I think I've been doing just that. But it's not too late to reform. If you want to know how you can stop going with your gut and start relying on real information, check out my latest post on Search Engine Guide, "Data beats opinions in any decision."

Posted by MikeMoran at 9:23 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 8, 2009

Google Gives Sentiment Analysis a Multistar Rating

Perhaps you've heard of sentiment analysis, a software technique that can decide whether something a person wrote is positive or negative in tone. Recently, Google made headlines with an addition of reviews to its search results, with the interesting part being that it uses sentiment analysis to add five-star ratings to what people wrote. If you want to hear more about how it's done, check out my latest post on Internet Evolution, "Google Gives Sentiment Analysis Multistar Rating."

Posted by MikeMoran at 12:11 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

June 5, 2009

Everyone's on Twitter, Right?

by Frank Reed

We live in a world of hype. New and improved this. Best of breed that. I have been involved in many different industries over my career and there has been none that matches the hyperbole that is the Internet and in particular, Internet marketing. Well, there has been so much said about Twitter and the revolution that will ensue because we can now tweet about everything. You should be receiving an avalanche of business because of Twitter, right? If you tweet it, they will come.

The truth is that this is great business theater but not true in most cases. Let's look at a few numbers. There are about 200 million Facebook users and that has taken 5 years to amass that group. Very impressive indeed. Twitter is about 2 years old now but just getting widespread attention in the past 6 months. The total users is now somewhere north of 25 million and growing rapidly. Twitter gets a ridiculous amount of press and therein lies the rub.

To the uninitiated, it looks like everyone is moving to Twitter and using it 24/7. Once again, not true. In fact, a report this week out of the Harvard Business School posits that 90% of the tweets on Twitter come from 10% of the users. Some quick math takes that 25 million user number down to 2.5 million like that. Of course of those users a good portion of them are probably the tech / geek type that gave the service its start oh so long ago.

So what does this mean to business? Here's my thoughts.

1. Businesses need to do research. If their target market is on Twitter already, great. Go for it. If they aren't, though? Does that mean that you don't use it as part of your marketing mix? Maybe. This is a serious business decision and not a vanity one. Twitter twakes twime. If you don't have it, and your audience is elsewhere, then move on. There's nothing to see here.
2. You can build your own Twitter community. If your customers are not on Twitter, you need to let them know that you are. If Twitter was smart, they would put together programs that help companies get their customers on the service tofollow that company. Once they are in and learn how to properly use the service, their usage may expand. Their intro to the service, however, could be through a business they are interested in knowing more about.
3. Content is still king. Whether it's 300 words on a Web page, 500 words in a blog post, or 140 characters in a tweet, if the content stinks, then people will go away. Don't automate or appear to be fake. You will regret the day you decided to jump in once you have been found out to be a "fraud" of sorts.
4. Twitter is not a silver bullet. In fact, I would argue that it will challenge your business acumen like nothing else. No one has established hard-and-fast rules that can guarantee even modest success. Many come to it and leave almost immediately. If you are not prepared for a long haul that is typified by patience, the awareness that mistakes will be made, and the thick skin needed to take whatever Twitter dishes out, then you need to think long and hard about jumping in.

Everyone's not on Twitter, despite what you read. It is not for everyone, despite what we may feel. It can be, however, incredibly powerful if you use it strategically and realistically. How that happens is entirely up to you. Are you ready?

Posted by FrankReed at 2:02 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

June 4, 2009

On and Off Marketing--Online and Offline, that is

I realized that I never posted my slides from last week's Dallas Inbound Marketing Summit. I'd only tweeted them to my Twitter followers. So, today, I am posting a longer version of those slides, called Internet Marketing by the Numbers, but I also want to tell you something about those slides. They make my phone ring a lot, with so many companies struggling to measure their marketing in terms of sales, all because they sell offline.

You see, e-Commerce marketers seemingly have it easy, because the same Web metrics programs, such as Google Analytics, that count visitors and page views can also count actual online sales. So, every move the marketer makes can be tracked and judged on its success and failure. You do more of what works and less of what doesn't, and suddenly you have a very successful business.

Online marketers that sell offline envy that kind of clarity. They live in a world where they attract more visitors to the site, they show them some information, and then those visitors vanish. We hope that they pop up offline with a phone call or a store visit, or some other way to restart the sales cycle, but often we can't tell which Web visitors did so and which ones just dropped out.

Our mistake is to treat this situation as though its uncorrectable. It's not. As I show in the slides, direct marketers pride themselves on the many ways that they connect their marketing activities to sales. The venerable, "Call 800-555-1212 and ask for Alice" is one version of this technique, where "Alice" is a code name for the particular issue of the magazine the ad ran in. By coding each piece of marketing, you can measure which ones worked better than others.

So, how can you tie customers offline activity back to their online activity? Let them press a button to send an e-mail. Let them print a coupon to turn in at the store. It doesn't matter what the technique is, as long as both your customers and your offline sales folks are willing to do it.

And that's why my phone keeps ringing, with company after company calling to figure out how to measure the effectiveness of their online marketing activities to offline sales. It's exciting to see so many marketers taking the leap to measurable outcomes. Once they do, they can start experimenting just like those e-Commerce companies--doing more of what works and less of what doesn't.

Posted by MikeMoran at 7:50 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 3, 2009

Listening sites a marketer should know about

by Eva Lyford

What are your customers saying behind your back? Marketers spend a lot of time wondering how to get inside the customer's head. In the past, this meant phone surveys, customer focus groups, and high-quality analytic demographic studies for those lucky few marketers who had the budget. Today, there are are two really easy ways to find out what your customers think of you. And one other way.

Sure you probably use Google Alerts. And if you have the budget, you should be investing in conversation monitoring tools. But what if you don't have any money to spend at all? What can you do besides Google Alerts?

First, recognize that for savvy shoppers it is common practice to research pricing online before making a purchase. To mimic the customer behavior, go to your favorite coupon code site. I use retailmenot but there are many others. Search for coupons for your products and check out the ongoing discussion. How does this commentary reflect upon your price?

Second, you'll want to find out what happened to the product post purchase. Head over to the customer support forums at fixya or wikihow or your alternative support forum of choice. Many of these also have recommendations or ratings from the community about your product. How does what these customers say reflect upon your product?

Third, consider setting up your own hosted community to provide pricing and product support info. having a community built around your product could be a pretty handy thing for a marketer. It's not as cheap or easy as the first two ideas, but how would setting up a customer gathering place reflect upon you?

Companies, even ones without big budgets, need to be listening to their customers in new ways. Not only is it important that companies hear what customers say, but a company's brand image is often affected by whether customers feel heard. What are you doing to listen to your customers?

Posted by EvaLyford at 7:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 2, 2009

One keyword per page: once more with feeling

Stop me before I blog again! I really thought I had laid this subject to rest with last week's post, but more folks have been explaining just how wrong-headed my advice is, with one labeling it "utter nonsense" (which is, I think, the worst kind of nonsense around). If your eyes have still not glazed over on this topic, go ahead and read my last (I promise) Search Engine Guide post on the subject: "One keyword per page: once more with feeling."

Posted by MikeMoran at 7:13 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 1, 2009

What does Bing mean to Internet marketers?

Bing Crosby? No, Bing the new search engine. It's the latest Google-killer from Microsoft that debuts today. (If you don't believe it's a Google-killer, just ask them.) But my opinion is that Internet marketers should pay about as much attention to the Bing search engine as to Bing Crosby. No disrespect to Bing, which seems like a good search engine to me, but you should know that I think Microsoft Live Search is pretty good, too--and that's the one they are getting rid of, because it was the last Google-killer. But Internet marketers (me included) often get excited when something new comes along. And we really should know better.

Now, understand, there's nothing wrong with getting excited about some new thing coming along. I mean, if this is fun for you, that's great. Whatever blows your skirt up. But in terms of what marketers should care about to run their business? Move along citizens, there's nothing to see here.

Here's what I mean. Google has about 70% of the search query volume in the U.S., so I think you should already care about Yahoo! Search and Live Search, because where else do you routinely write off 30% of your market? So, if you already cared about reaching every searcher you could, then Bing doesn't really change anything.

On the other hand, if you already decided that you didn't care about Microsoft's market share in search, then Microsoft changing their search engine shouldn't change your mind. You see, the mere introduction of something new gives pundits smarter than me a chance to write about something. It's new and it's news. But it doesn't change the fundamental market. Microsoft's share the day Bing replaces Live Search will be just about what it was the day before. Now, it's something that you might want to watch--perhaps Bing will be a really good search engine that starts to steal share from its competitors. So if you have a Google-only strategy, that might cause you to re-evaluate. But that's about it.

Unfortunately, we often fall for the new thing. We waste our precious time checking out what is new instead of limiting ourselves to what is working. Now, I am a search engine guy and I am very interested to see if Bing is indeed better than Live Search, Yahoo! Search, and Google. But as a marketer, you should reserve your time for more practical matters.

You should spend your day the same way you would if the word "bing" merely brought to mind a bowl of cherries. Whatever you were going to do today, I urge you to follow through. Figure out what change you can make to your Web site or your marketing campaign to make it a little better than yesterday. I bet whatever it is, it has nothing to do with whatever Microsoft is debuting today. Focus on your business and let the pundits write about the exciting new stuff. By the time it's important to you, trust me, you'll hear about it.

Posted by MikeMoran at 3:30 PM | Comments (10) | TrackBack