photo credit: jamestruepenny photo credit: jamestruepenny

I engaged in a debate with a friend yesterday regarding commercials for “The Big Game”. (sub note: I find it infuriating that “Superbowl” is copyrighted and marketers are not allowed to use it in advertising anymore but instead use “The Big Game”, especially considering “The Big Game” is actually the name of a college game played annually since 1892 as well as also a name of a high stakes poker game played annually). Superbowl Big Game commercials have taken on a whole new life with social media in the past few years.

We’ve seen usage of the #hashtag in the commercial; Facebook pages created specifically for the commercials; and this year will see apps created specifically to be played during the game itself. GoDaddy.com, possibly considered pioneers, even created an entire section of the business website dedicated to the commercials that aired (sometimes for “unrated” content) and were one of the first online companies to advertise during this game in order to drive traffic to their website. Heck, last year even saw Google produce a commercial (which were a rare commodity to begin with prior to the SB commercial).

These commercials create a lot of buzz. For one, this timeslot is gernally the highest watched timeslot of the year and thus their are more eyeballs than most other times. Second, advertising companies have deemed the “Big Game” as the beginning of the year for advertising, and thus typically all new commercials come out during this game. Finally, it is expensive to purchase advertising time for this game, thus there is a general thought that “the best” commercials are put forth during this time.

I for one am a big fan of the commercials aired during the game. Most of the time. I tend to be a bigger critic of these commercials. Further, I remember going home after the game or maybe the day after and “Googling” to try to find a re-run of the commercial because I couldn’t wait until I saw it again. More recently, I became a fan of websites that would compile the commercials and / or rate the commercials and allow users to give their own ratings. In the last 2-3 years though, the new trend is to “leak” the commercial before the day of the game, typically in the 2 weeks leading up to the actual game.

Not all advertisers do this, but plenty do (there are about a dozen commercials available for viewing already). So does this diminish the value of the ad? This is where my argument began (of sorts). Non-sports fans used to turn on the “Big Game” in order to watch the commericals, so will they still do this now that “the best” commercials can be viewed beforehand? I’m guessing that they still will, because “the best” is an opinionated word as well, people always want to see everything, and further, they want to see it live and experience it like everyone else. On top of this, the number of views generated on YouTube and other portals, is already tremendous, which is probably the main reason for leaking these commercials - Quantification.

Last year some of “the best” commercials had tens of millions of views on YouTube AFTER the game ended. So by releasing the commercials earlier, advertisers will want to see if they can beat the numbers from last year (and in theory this should be fairly easy to do). In my opinion, Nielsen Ratings is a “soft” metric. Sure they can say that 13.5 million people “watched’ the game, based on their machine sampling and extrapolation. But there’s no way to really know how many people watched the game, since there are typically more than the average household number watching the game. Further, there’s no guarantee that just because the TV is on that people are actually paying attention. Thus my “beef” with Nielson Ratings as a measurement tool.

YouTube views are a much more concrete metric. You have to click a button in order to view. Sure there’s a small percent who may begin the video but not finish it, but typically when a user clicks something they are engaged with it, at least for a few seconds. Much more so, than standing around with a plate of meatballs anguishing over a missed fieldgoal with a friend. Further, the video will probably include a link to a website and the viewer can more easily navigate to that site. Thus you also get a “visit”, if not more!

A second and almost as equally important reason for “leaking” is the viral marketing that this does. When someone says, “You have to see this”, you watch. It annoys me that, the full commercial has been leaked because I think you can achieve the same or at least similar viral success by just leaking a part of the commercial. But for those who have seen the full length commercial they can give a fully credited review of the commercial and recommend it (or not recommend it).

The purist in me hates all of this. “It’s ruined the game!” Technically, the ads themselves have ruined the game, as the game has become more about the glam and the glitz and less about crowning a champion of the NFL season. But similarly to how websites such as TripAdvisor have taken a lot of the surprise and adventure out of “trying something out” by giving testimonies and personal recommendations, I think leaking the commercials ruins the surprise of what commercial will come out next.

The marketer and analyst in me loves all of the integration and progress that has been made! I look forward to the apps and use of mobile with this year’s commercials. Although I’ve seen several commercials, I look forward to watching them with others. Finally, I get it from an advertising perspective. The buzz and viral marketing that is generated is worth every cent spent.

My only question is, why pay the $3-4 million for the timeslot? Why not just create a commercial and put it up on YouTube, market it through the major media channels and then not actually have a commercial that is aired? Sure they would come out and state that this commercial is not airing but that will just create more buzz for the commercial. Not very ethical, I guess…
photo credit: JohnSeb

If you are a business owner with questions about emerging media practices such as mobile marketing or social media, or if you are a marketer interested in knowing more about how you can utilize the data coming from your emerging media channels this book provides details, case studies and a step by step instruction on what you need to do.

This deal is good this week only and you must buy through our website (link above)!

Thanks,

Carlos and Jeff

Ok, maybe it’s not tested, which could be a part of the reason why there is pushback when redesigns happen and become more annoying than helpful. Then again, when Facebook went through a major redesign several months ago, the users pushed back initially, then accepted. Now they push back again with their most recent redesign, but my guess is that it will be widely accepted within a few weeks.

What’s more interesting is how quickly things are merging together. These new media are learning how a shared space is better than a separate space. Mobile and Geo-location almost always go hand in hand, but being able to add in the social aspect really starts to pay dividends for companies. In our latest book “A Strategic Framework for Emerging Media”, we provide some ideas for improvement between social, mobile and geo location media. Many of the ideas are things that co-mingle these technologies. Unsurprisingly, some of these ideas must have been common ideas because they’ve been mentioned or have been put into place by these technologies before our book was put into publication or is being released just weeks after our book publication.

I discovered an example of the types of ideas that we talk about in our book while checking in on Foursquare last night. Upon check-in I noticed that I had unlocked a deal. When I opened the deal, I was informed that there was a ‘Groupon Now’ deal for the restaurant that I was at. I was able to save $5 off my meal, just by checking in! Had I not checked in, I would not have known about this deal. I probably could have checked Groupon and possibly would have seen the deal without going to Foursquare (geo-location app). I could have even checked Groupon from home and possibly would have seen the deal without using my mobile device. But in this perfect storm, I checked into a geo location app, using my mobile device, and made a purchase through a social site.

I talked to the manager of the restaurant about this and told her how cool it was that all of this transpired. She mentioned that in a month I could repeat the process. This is where there is still a step missing which we talk about in our strategy section of our book. You most likely have my info through Groupon, so why not either email me in a month, or start serving retargeting ads with a new Groupon deal for repeat business? Most likely the people that use these three technologies are going to be comfortable with a company targeting them.

Find out more about these types of strategies in our book!

Your web analytics data will also give you some clues as to where your current visitor base is arriving from, but be aware that there are opportunities here that you won’t see, because you aren’t represented or linked to from that platform yet. You might find that organically, your users visit Facebook prior to visiting your website. Or you might find that while Twitter draws a much lower amount of traffic, these visitors are viewing product and converting at a higher rate than some other type of traffic. These insights will be useful for finding new opportunities and identifying what success will look like on new platforms.

Data on web usage, upstream and downstream traffic flow, and demographics can reliably be found from organizations like Pew Research, Nielsen Group, Google Trends, ComScore, and Quantcast. If you are working with a consultant or agency this is where they will be finding their data. All of these providers regularly update their data on time scales ranging from monthly to yearly cycles. Each has an area where they are fairly reliable or offer a unique perspective; you should take advantage of all of their free content. Regardless of your findings it will likely be advantageous to engage multiple platforms.

Some demographics about the major platforms[1]:

• Twitter – 55% female; 45% 18-34; 69% Caucasian; 60% make greater than $60,000/yr
• Facebook – 55% female; 42% 18-34; 75% Caucasian; 62% make greater than $60,000/yr
• LinkedIN – 52% male; 38% 35-49; 83% Caucasian; 69% make greater than $60,000/yr

Bringing this type of data together with consideration of how people access these portals results in Targeted Social Engagement. Once you know who you are talking to you need to consider how they like to be approached. If you enter a new social media platform in a way that breaks their rules of etiquette you will be in for some rough times.

Targeted Social Engagement utilizes demographic, location, and device factors to inform your social marketing strategy.

Individually, each factor represents an important way of looking at your social user data. By layering Device factors (e.g. Mobile, Desktop, or Game Console) with Demographic factors (e.g. Age, Income, and Gender) and Location factors (e.g. Self-report, GPS, or Location Agnostic) you can quickly filter down to the right strategy. When your strategy considers who you are talking to, how you are talking with them, and where they are you will achieve real engagement.

You will be most likely to find the future champions of your brand and the most people open to your message where the important factors overlap. You will also be cultivating your receptive pool for announcements and pointed questions about on site experience.

In May 2011 Jeff and I are releasing User Driven Change: Targeted Social Engagement. We will cover how we choose performance indicators and set-up both a large business and a small business to have an effective social media foundation.

We started out trying to the write the book described in the poll, but over the last 6-months it evolved a bit. It had to. The social media space has seen a lot of changes over the last year. New laws are separating the wired and wireless infrastructures, making mobile a necessary chapter. And new laws are changing the way you are allowed to track.

What you will find in User Driven Change: Targeted Social Engagement:

• Social Media
  • A brief history of how we came from Bulletin Board Systems to  Modern Social Media.
  • Tagging, tracking, and choosing your social media platforms.
• Geo-location
  • How location can be captured.
  • How location can be used.
  • How location interacts with social media and mobile Internet
• Mobile Internet
  • A brief history of mobile growth; the laws and technology that support mobile; and the challenges that mobile creates for tracking.
  • How mobile can be leveraged for you business.
• Local Business Use Case – we layout what we would do with a single location, not yet e-commerce ready, business, including chosen platforms and tracking.
• National Brand Use Case – we layout what we would aim for in a multi-store chain that functions on separate profit-and-loss sheets.
• A Blank Framework - a section where you can fill in the pertinent information about your business.

While we seal up the final bits before publishing we would love to get your thoughts. Particularly, we want to know what portion of the above information would you like as separate digital assets? Would you like the Use Case? The blank framework? Let us know.

Pre-Order Targeted Social Engagement and get a FREE copy of Give Them What They Want

Image hosted on the Denver Post

For the past two years, I’ve posted something about the Superbowl, however neither we’re very data driven. Two years ago, I wrote about branding during commercials. Last year I wrote about how brands were beginning to use social media as an alternative to the traditional paid media channels. This year’s Superbowl was truly all access, mostly due to the effect that social media has continued to have on our society.

To this end commercials were even geared toward a more social perspective. Groupon.com advertised several commercials explaining the benefits of group deal buying. Many brands again took to the social space ad launched campaigns there. Foursquare even had “the superbowl” as a top trending location to check into. However, after checking in I was disappointed to learn that my location was not close enough to the actual Superbowl to earn points or a badge.

Several brands attempted to create a tie in between traditional media and social media. Specifically, Audi and Mercedes-Benz. Each launched a twitter campaign with the hope of creating a trend. These campaigns were actually divulged well before the Superbowl, so I was able to collect some data on them. (Data for this article is from RowFeeder and from Lithium)

Audi

Audi claims to have been the first company to use a hashtag in a commercial. As such this was their campaign. I believe their intentions were good and I’m surprised that more brands have not used a hashtag in their commercials. They are quite abundant in online media, so it only seemed a matter of time before they become a regular occurance in traditional media. That said, Audi’s execution of the plan was poor and thus led to a poor showing in the results.

Audi’s recent ad campaign has been directed at Mercedes and it’s seemingly stuffy clientele. A play on the children’s story “Goodnight moon” was in a commercial that aired during the AFC and NFC championship games two weeks ago. It was well received. It’s commercial that aired on Sunday was also well received, as they made good use of a cameo by Kenny G. However the campaign itself and the use of the twitter hashtag, were convoluted and not quite connected to the campaign. They chose the term #progresseIs and it was show very briefly between the “end” of the commercial and before Kenny G appeared on screen.  To clarify, this is spelling “Progress Is”, not “Progress Els”. Audi’s mission for this current campaign is that their cars are for people who are living a more progressive lifestyle. So I can see the relevance, but I could write an entire blog on why this is a terrible hashtag. I can also see why they chose to capitalize the “I”, but again, the point here is pretty evident –poor execution on their campaign.

The data tells a very interesting story.

In the days leading up to the Superbowl, @Audi averaged roughly 50 mentions per day, until the story about their campaign came out on 2/3. On this day, Audi  is mentioned 446 times on Twitter. #progressIs has no mentions until 2/2 where it has 29 mentions (someone with some inside knowledge I assume!) Then on 2/3 when the story broke this hashtag had 722 mentions and became a trending topic (the hashtag ending “els” had an additional 229 mentions on 2/3). On Superbowl Sunday @Audi had 1,131 mentions compared to 113 mentions of “progress Is” and 29 mentions of “progress els”.

So it wasn’t a complete loss for Audi. They did manage to create some buzz for their brand at the very least. And the author who broke the story of “progressIs” managed to create a ton of buzz for the hashtag.

Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes-Benz is arguably a more recognizable brand than Audi, thus it was not surprising to find that it averaged 1,800 mentions a day on Twitter for the week leading up to Superbowl. So the campaign by Audi, was seemingly just a small chink in the armor. However, while their execution of generating Twitter buzz may have had a slightly better result, the data seems to show that the execution may have been just as marginal. Mercedes-Benz attempted to host a ‘tweet-race’ in which four teams competed in a race based on how many tweets they received. Mentions of “mbtweetrace” were 2,995 on 2/3 when the story broke (the event had actually been going on for several days before the story however). 2/4 saw another 2,550 mentions, however the mentions fell off dramatically by Saturday with only 296 and on Superbowl Sunday there were only 91 mentions of #mbtweetrace.

That said, the individual teams which were “fueled” by Twitter mentions of their specific team names, or Twitter handles actually saw much more traffic than the race hashtag itself. There’s an interesting geo-location aspect here as well, since the teams traveled from four different locations across the country. The team from L.A. received nearly double the amount of mentions as did second place from NYC and almost triple the amount of mentions as the teams from Chicago and Tampa. None of these teams received significant mentions on Superbowl Sunday (150 mentions for the team from L.A., but every other team was well below 100 mentions).

So, in all I think there was some evidence of a bump in brand awareness on Twitter for these two brands, but moreso for Audi than Mercedes. However, as evidenced in both campaigns, a better execution will need to happen before another brand tries to influence a hashtag via traditional media. At the very minimum an easier hashtag should be used and it should be made more prominent in the traditional advertisement.

Coming later this week: tracking a team and player Twitter mentions for the entire season through the Superbowl.

credit: WorldIslandInfo.com

Here is a five step plan for kicking off your SEO campaigns. These are the processes that I go through in building an SEO Strategy for my clients:

Step 1 – Plan

• Create a list of your competitors and phrases that describe your business, product or services.
• Use web traffic analysis software (Google Analytics, Omtiture, WebTrends, etc.) to set benchmarks for search engine traffic and referring sites.
• Create a list of sites that rank for your desired starter keyword set and for your brand name.

Step 2 – Research

• Catalog the server set-up, language coding and site technologies used for the site.
• Investigate link profiles using tools like http://www.opensiteexplorer.com or http://www.majesticseo.com. Compile a list of sites that are linking to you and to your competitors.
• Create a benchmark of competitor performance with data from multiple sources like Compete.com, Quantcast, SEOmoz.org, SpyFu, SEMRush, etc. [These sites are going to give you a thumbnail. Most of these sites have incomplete data. Use their data on your site to get a sense of the difference between their estimates and reality.]
• Create a keyword list using WordTracker, Wordstream, AdWords and AdCenter tools etc. Create priorities using search volume and search result competition.
• Use tools like Webmaster Central and advanced search operators to benchmark search engine crawl frequency and depth.
• Catalog current usage of Titles, URLs, Image Tags, Internal Link Usage, and Site Architecture.

Step 3 – Define Success

• Choose goal keywords and phrases.
• Define traffic and link building goals based on link profile analysis and search volume of prized keywords.
• Define strategy for content creation and link building
• Choose tracking methods for search engine traffic, site ranking, and site indexation.
• Build segmentation of search traffic into your web analysis reports.
• Set review schedule.

Step 4 – Optimize

• Implement architecture, URL, and internal linking projects.
• Implement content changes (page-by-page changes).
• Begin link building.
• Begin social media linking and external content creation.

Step 5 – Track and Renovate (every 30-90 days)
Dependent on  the volume of traffic that you began with you should be setting your milestones at different places. If you have high traffic (>10,000 unique visitors per month) you may want to renovate your plan monthly. But if you are a low traffic site you may not have any value in change over the first 90-days. In either case you should be revisiting your keyword research every 90-days to make sure that you aren’t missing any new opportunities.

Searchers are the individual users of the Internet, they are the consumers of websites. Searchers define what is valuable through their usage and consumption. Searchers find content through a variety of methods: word-of-mouth (online this is social media), links (from one sit to another) and search engines (Google, Bing, Baidu).

Websites are the content of the Internet. Every day new content appears. This content, in many cases, serves the needs of a searcher. Website content is the structure that search engines derive value from. If the search engines can’t see the content they can’t satisfy the searchers queries. If search engines can’t find answers searchers will use links to find the content they want. Links are the way websites promote each other. Links indicate value and pass searchers through from one place to another.

Search engines act as a mediator between searcher and website. Search engines ride on top of other peoples content and attempt to sort websites based on the available visible content, authority of content, relationship of content, and search intent to provide a best fit result. They can’t rank content they don’t see and they don’t display content they aren’t asked for.

The Search Engine Cycle

When websites change their content, architecture, and acquire links to improve their ranking based on search criteria, either algorithm or search phrase, they change the environment and competition for the phrase. As competition increases in a business there is more incentive to engage in optimization to secure position. Because there are a limited number of viable condoned tactics the sites become increasingly similar. Search engines adjust the way websites are assessed to compensate for this saturation of very similar sites.

The Basic Categories of Optimization

What you can do to help your website better serve searchers’ needs and search engines requirements.

Searcher Based Optimization

• Keyword Research – finding how users search and the language they use to travel from unaware to knowledgeable on the subject.
• Query Space Seeding – introducing new and potential customers to your business language to drive searches on phrases where you have solid ranking.
• Content Creation – making content that addresses the need of the searcher.

Search Engine Based Optimization

• Content Creation – making the content that search engines are asked provide by searchers.
• Site Architecture – creating site flow and internal linking to maximize the depth and efficiency of search indexation.
• Link Building – increasing the number and focus of links coming into your site.
• Site Coding – increase the focus of your site through code link URL naming and structural tags.

Additionally, your SEO initiatives should integrate with other marketing efforts to make potential searchers aware of your business and web presence.