jamesq's shared items in Google Reader

The art or sign flipping.

2010-10-21T20:12:31Z

The art or sign flipping.

Branded bike lanes in London

2010-10-22T15:41:50Z

Branded bike lanes in London:

This in from London, cool idea for Barclays who is sponsoring London bike lanes with branded paint scheme.

Google Analytics Event Tracking to Monitor Calls to Action

2010-05-18T21:56:18Z

Posted by chenry

Analytics is one of those things that hasn’t always been at the top of my priority list until recently. Google Analytics has many features I’ve never used before because I haven’t had the time to sit down and really investigate what they can do for me and my clients. A few months ago, in one of my late night GA adventures, I found a section on event tracking, a small love soon formed.

Like most of you out there I often find myself creating different CTA’s (Calls to Action) and wonder how effective they really are. Google Analytics allows you to setup goals but that really doesn’t track the effectiveness of your specific CTA’s. Through the combination of event tracking and CTA’s, you can easily find those CTA’s that are not making the cut and replace them with something more effective.

The Setup

First you will obviously need to have Google Analytics installed on your website. If you already GA installed on your website you need to make sure you have the most current, up to date, script. If your script in not current you can follow the instructions HERE depending on if you are using asynchronous snippet, traditional snippet, or the urchin.js tracking. Once your GA script is setup correct to allow tracking you are ready to setup the links you will be tracking.

Before we start to use event tracking we should take a quick look at the syntax and the way you can use it. The syntax for the _trackEvent() method is:

_trackEvent(category, action, label)

category (required)
The name you supply for the group of objects you want to track.
action (required)
A string that is uniquely paired with each category, and commonly used to define the type of user interaction for the web object.
label (optional)
An optional string to provide additional dimensions to the event data.

Example: seomoz.org

Lets first look at how you can use event tracking and use SEOmoz as an example. In the image below are two unique CTA’s that both end up at the same page. How would you tell if a user clicked on the top CTA or the bigger CTA in the middle of the screen? Using event tracking it would be quite clear what CTA was the most effective at getting clients to that page.

Implementing event tracking is quite simple, you just need to add a simple onClick javascript action fill that with the _trackEvent syntax and you’re done. Below is how I would setup link tracking for the two CTA’s we discussed above in the example section. It may look a little different for you depending on if you are using asynchronous snippet, traditional snippet, or the urchin.js tracking. The example below is for asynchronous tracking.

In the example you will see that the category for the tracking is set as “GoPro”, because the CTA is about becoming a PRO member. The action is “FrontPage” because both of these CTA’s are located on the front page, you could also place the URL or page in this area. The label is set as a unique identifier, either “TopMenu” or “MiddleImage”, which refers to the specific CTA that you are tracking. If you have similar CTA on different pages you could change the label to reflect the page of your CTA.

Once your links are setup and you can view the data in the Content -> Event Tracking section on GA. When you find CTA that are under producing, think about replacing them with something that might work better in that location. I often compare the number of clicks on my CTA's with the number of goals that were completed. If I find that I have a high number of clicks but lack the conversions, there may be a problem with the landing page. If I'm not getting the clicks on my CTA's then it may be a problem where my clients are not seeing my CTA's or they are not appealing, either way it helps me narrow down any issues I may have.

If you are having problems getting data to show up in your reports, please check the Common Pitfalls section or leave a comment below for some additional help.

Other Uses for Event Tracking

I’ve also been using event tracking for monitoring clicks on my external links. It provides a great way to find out what links your clients are using. Event tracking can also be used monitor load times on videos, though I have yet to experiment with that feature. Another way to use event tracking would be what Sam Niccolls post a few months back in step number 10 in 11 Conversion Rate Optimization Lessons Learned in 2009. In step 10, Sam talked about using Virtual Pageviews to track form abandonment. Unlike the old virtual page views method, using this method does not inflate page views and will not affect your overall data. In what way are you using event tracking that could help out everyone else in the community?

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4 Ways to Improve Your SEO Site Audit

2010-05-19T21:15:21Z

Posted by Lindsay

The preparation of an SEO Site Audit is something that every SEO, whether in-house, agency-side, or independent consultant, has done. They range from a brief assessment of an hour or two followed by a quick email to a mammoth document of more than 50 pages that can take a month or more to complete. A junior SEO might charge a few hundred dollars for a quick assessment and a well known consultancy can charge in the neighborhood of $40K for a report on the more complete end of the scale. For a process that gets that much time and money allocated it's way, I'm amazed at the lack of chatter on industry blogs. I suppose what elements we review and how we go about the process are among the things that SEOs hold close to their chest.

In true SEOmoz spirit, I'm cracking open the black box and sharing what I've learned along the way. This is the first post of many that you will see from me over the coming months on the topic of optimizing your SEO reviews. Today, I'll cover a few of the most significant elements that I've come up with over the years to include in all large SEO reviews.

1. SEO Scorecard

I'm starting with the single most important element of the SEO Audits I create. The idea was hammered out with the guidance of an executive at my old in-house gig. Woody wanted something to bring to the VCs that would summarize our SEO health across multiple web properties in a clean and concise summary. I told him SEO was too complicated for that, but he pushed me and together we came up with the SEO Scorecard.

The scorecard works on a five point rating scale and assesses the website's key pages in columns against a hearty list of categorized SEO factors in rows. Don't go overboard when selecting your key pages. I've never had to go over five even on the largest of websites. Once you dig in to a website you will usually find that 90% of the content is represented by a handful of templates. The SEO Scorecard is built and populated in Excel, then pulled into your audit document in screen shots.

I always feature the SEO Scorecard near the beginning of the document. It is an excellent way to anchor the rest of the report and gives you something to reference as you describe enhancements. I'm including a screen shot of the first bit of my current SEO Scorecard so you can visualize what I'm talking about.

2. Internal Linking

I'm not talking about the SEO factor here; I'm referring to how link within your SEO Audit Word document. If your reports are anything like the ones I've worked on, they end up huge in terms of length and file size. This is especially true if you are good at including screen shots and other graphic elements. Help your readers navigate the document with a click-able table of contents and plenty of embedded links between related sections and topics. Your readers will get more out of the document and will be able to navigate it in a way that makes the most sense to their learning style. This internal linking process might add an hour to the final editing process, but your clients will thank you. Believe me.

Here is a screen shot from the Most Pressing & Valuable Changes section of an audit.

3. Action Items

One of these days, I'll share the outline that I use in creating an SEO Review document. For now, you can imagine a series of headings and subheadings along with a whole lot of text and a sprinkling of screen shots. For the average Joe, an SEO Review is a brute of a document to read. The concepts are foreign and as they read they're mind is spinning with ideas of how they will implement the grand ideas you've presented. Don't burden your readers with the additional task of creating a to-do list as they read. After you've elaborated on the details of an issue and how it should be resolved, include a list of action items. These are meant as a brief summary, so keep them short and concise!

Here is a sample of action items that followed the Local Search section of a recent report I created.

4. Repetition

As much as you like to think that your clients will read your entire review document over and over with bated breath, they won't. More likely, your clients will skim the document looking for the most important issues and action items.

At SEOmoz, we not only covered key issues in the SEO Scorecard and in written detail within a dedicated section. We covered the most important components in one form or another a total of SIX times; Overview, Table of Contents, Scorecard, Most Pressing & Valuable Changes section, the topic section (most complete), the Action Items, and the document's Closing Summary. I'm not suggesting that you copy and paste your entire assessment six times, but what I am suggesting is that you mention key enhancements often and place internal links to the complete assessment within the document's dedicated section.

Tell 'em what your gunna tell 'em (Overview).
Tell 'em some details about the most important things your gunna tell 'em (Most Pressing & Valuable Changes).
Tell 'em where to find the info (Table of Contents, Internal Links).
Tell 'em just how bad it is on a scale of 1-5 (SEO Scorecard).
Tell 'em (the topic section).
Tell 'em what you told 'em (Closing Summary).

I've been writing audits for a long time and will say that it has become one of my favorite tasks as an SEO. It wasn't always that way. In the beginning it takes countless hours to get your groove and find your efficiencies. I hope that I've shared a few ideas here today that will improve your experience writing SEO Audits moving forward.

Keep your eyes out for more posts on the topic of SEO audits over the coming months. I plan to publish something every two weeks until I run out of interesting things to say. Topic suggestions are welcome.

Action Items

Create your own SEO Scorecard and use it to anchor your SEO Site Audit documents.
Link profusely within your audit document to ease navigation for your clients.
Summarize each section ~~of your audits~~ with a list of ~~clean and concise~~ action items.
Repeat yourself, A LOT.

Happy Auditing!

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Web Analytics Segmentation: Do Or Die, There Is No Try!

2010-05-18T08:24:16Z

My love for segmentation as the primary (only?) way of identify actionable insights is on display in pretty much every single blog post I write.

I have said: All data in aggregate is "crap".

Because it is.

One of my earliest blog posts extolled the glorious virtues of segmentation:
Excellent Analytics Tip#2: Segment Absolutely Everything.

Many paid web analytics clickstream analytics tools, even today (!), don't allow you to do on the fly segmentation of all your data (not without asking you to change javascript script tags every time you need to segment something, or not without paying extra or paying for additional "data warehouse" solutions).

So it was with absolute delight that I wrote a detailed post about the release of Advanced Segmentation feature in Google Analytics in Oct 2008:
Google Analytics Releases Advanced Segmentation: Now Be A Ninja!

Of course Yahoo! Web Analytics, the other wonderful free WA tool, had advanced segmentation from day one.

And as recently as two weeks ago I stressed the importance of effective segmentation as the cornerstone of the Web Analytics Measurement Framework.

The Problem.

You can imagine then how absolutely heartbreaking it is for me to note that nearly all reporting that I see is data in aggregate.

All visits. Total revenue. Avg page views per visitors. Time on site. Overall customer satisfaction. And more. Tons of data "puking", all just aggregates.

The achingly tiny percent of time that the Analyst does segmentation it seems to stop at New vs. Returning Visitors! I have to admit I see that and I feel like throwing a tomato against the wall.

Yes new visitors and returning visitors are segments. But they are so lame that I dare you to find any insight worth, well, a tomato based on those two. You can't. Because new and returning are still two big indefinable globs!

Even if your business actually is tied to understanding the first and then subsequent visits by a person then you are far better off segmenting using Visitor Loyalty (in GA count of visits).

But I am getting off track (this whole non-segmentation business drives me bananas!).

Deep breath.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Segmenting your data is key to your success and that of your company.

It is not very difficult to segment your data. Many tools include some default segments you can apply to any report you are looking at.

For example when you look at your revenue or goal performance it takes a trivial amount of effort to look at All Visits but add to that report the Paid Search Traffic and Non-Paid Search Traffic and get deeper insights.

You can tell your boss: We made 900k, and while you are obsessed with Paid Search please note that 850k of the revenue came from Organic and only $25k from Paid.

PS: Our business is in trouble because we are over-reliant on Search!

See what I mean, a bit better insights.

Among things in the above image I love analyzing Direct (to understand value of the free traffic), Visits with Conversions (to understand my BFF sources and pages and behavior), and Non-bounce Visits (to understand people who give me a chance to do business with them).

But true glory will only come from going beyond the default segments.

Because default segments are created to appeal to everyone / the lowest common denominator, and we all know that there is no such thing as "everyone".

You are unique. The top three things your business is working on are unique. The multi-channel strategy you are executing is unique. Your investment in tools vs people in your company is unique (you are 90/10 instead of 10/90!). You are struggling with your own unique challenges.

You have to have a segmentation strategy that is unique to you. And if you don't then your employment with the company needs to be re-evaluated. (Sorry.)

So how do you go about identifying unique segments for your business or non-profit?

Ask a lot of questions. Tap into the tribal knowledge. Force your leaders (ok HiPPO's) to help you define Business Objectives, Goals and Targets. [Key elements of the Web Analytics Measurement Framework.]

Let me tell you that without the above there is no hope. The first two will tell you what is important and currently prioritized. The third will tell you where to focus you analytical horsepower (based on actuals vs targets).

If you have O, G & T then it is time to select the segments to focus on, the micro-groups of data you'll focus on.

The Segmentation Selector Framework.

My humble recommendation is that as a best practice you should pick at least a couple of segments in each of these three categories:

1. Acquisition. 2. Behavior. 3. Outcomes.

You'll choose to focus on the micro group that is of value to you, and just to you, in each category. You'll apply those segments to web analytics reports where you hope to find insights (and if you choose the right segments you will!).

Let us look at each category I am recommending.

Segment Category #1: Acquisition.

Acquisition refers to the activity you undertake to attract people (or robots!) to your website.

This would include campaigns you run, like pay per click marketing (PPC), email, affiliate deals, display / banner ads, facebook marketing campaigns.

Acquisition also includes search engine optimization (SEO), because it is an activity on which you spend time and money.

Ask yourself this question: "Where is my company currently spending most amount of time and money acquiring traffic?"

Bam! There's the most important segment you will focus on.

Why? If you do your analysis right you can lower cost (by identifying and eliminating the losers!) and you can increase revenue (by identifying and investing where things are going well).

See the process I followed there?

Ask the question to identify what's important / high priority for the business.

Create a segment (and then micro segments) for that one thing.

Apply on the relevant reports to measure performance using key performance indicators.

Take action. It will have an impact!

Don't just log into Site Catalyst or WebTrends and go on a fishing expedition, or treat every single thing with equal importance.

Paid search. A specific group of keywords. Television campaigns. Email campaigns to prospective customers in Florida, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. Coupon affiliates. "Social media campaigns" (context). Billboard ads on side on highways. Business cards handed out at trade shows.

All of the above are examples of acquisition strategies.

When you look at your web analytics data look at All Visits AND at least one of the above.

Two acquisition segments is normal.

If you make it three then choose one acquisition strategy that your company is experimenting with.

Say you have 1/10th of one person doing some tweeting or facebooking, :), then add that one segment to your top two. This will allow your management to look at what they are focused on and also one thing that sounds cool but they have no idea if it is actually worth it.

(Short term focus) Win – Win (Long term focus)

How To Apply Segments / Analyze Data.

The reports you'll apply your acquisition segment to will depend on the Key Performance Indicators you have chosen. But a typical set of metrics you'll evaluate will hopefully represent a spectrum of success, like for example. . .

The effort will be to try and understand if for our acquisition segment (say all my brand keywords or for email campaigns to increase sales of the most expensive products). . . .

How many visits did we get (to get context)

Of those how many were new visits (if that is a focus)

How many could we get to give us one pathetic click (bounce rate!)

What was the cost of acquisition (if you can get total cost give yourself a gold star)

What value could we extract at a per visit level

How many people could we get to convert (replace total goal completions with conversion rate if you want)

What was the total value added to our business or non-profit

As you look at your acquisition segments in context of all visits you can quickly see how you can start to find insights faster. Don't focus specifically on the metrics I have used above but rather the thought process behind their selection.

This is not the end of your journey but it is a darn good start!

[If you have Web Analytics 2.0 pop the CD at the back into your computer. In dashboard examples look for Stratigent_Sample_Dashboard.xls, via my friend Bill Bruno at Stratigent. It has an excellent example of segmented acquisition display, you can immediately steal it for your company!]

Segment Category #2: Behavior.

Behavior refers to the activity people are undertaking on your website.

When people show up, what is it that they are doing? Is there anything discernable / important in their behavior that is adding value to your online existence? Or, the flip side, what do we want people do to on our site, and is anyone exhibiting that behavior?

Even people who sometimes have segment their web analytics data often forget to segment by online behavior.

Many, but not all, behavior segments fall into these two buckets: People who see x pages. People who do y things.

Here are some specific examples (all of which you can create in Yahoo! Web Analytics or Google Analytics in a few seconds without having to pay anything extra for vars and slots or having to update your javascript tag or having to buy an add-on, you can also apply them to all your data including all your historical data).

Visits with more than three page views. . .

This can be so valuable on content only websites (more page views more impressions of irrelevant display ads!) or even on ecommerce websites (more pages views the deeper you sink your hook into the visitor, engagement baby!).

Where do these people come from? Do they buy a lot? A little? Do they write reviews? Did we acquire them or did they just show up? If they see so many pages what type of content are they interested in (politics? naked pictures? sports?)?

So on and so forth. Segmenting one behavior, understanding its value.

Similarly another could be focusing on people how add to cart and then abandon the site.

Or people who enter the site on the home page and their behavior. . .

Or all those who did not enter the site via the home page!

Or people who use the site's product comparison chart or car configurator or, my fav, internal site search. Vs. those that don't.

Or people whose Days to Purchase (/Transaction) are 5 vs for those for whom the Days to Purchase is 1. . .

Or, cuter, those whose last visit to our website was 100, or whatever, days ago. Why? And what do they want?

Or people who visited the site more than 9 times (!) during the current time period. . .

Where are these sweet delicious people coming from? (Note: To a blog updated only twice a month!) What do they read? What do they buy? What can we learn from them and do more of?

Those are the types of questions you'll answer from your behavioral segments.

The more you understand what people are doing on your site, the more likely it is that you'll stop the silliness on your site (kill content, redo navigation, make cross sells better, eliminate 80% of the ads, learn to live with 19 days to conversion, don't sell too hard, and so much more).

It is also likely (I want to say guaranteed) that you'll find the delta between what you want to have happen and what your customers want. You'll choose to make happier customers, who in turn, in the naughtiest way possible, will make you happy.

And it all stars with being able to identify and focus on the right behavior segments.

Pick at least two.

But I have to admit in this segment category I truly "play" with the data a lot because it is so hard to know what the right segments are, because visitor behavior is such a complicated thing (they are constantly trying to mess with us Analysts!).

It is only after experimentation (a lot) that I end up with something sweet.

Segment Category #3: Outcomes.

Outcomes are site activities that add value to you (business/non-profit).

I find that here the problem is less that the Analysis Ninjas don't segment, rather it is that they are incredibly unimaginative.

But first what is it?

Segments with outcomes are people or visits where you get a order (at an ecommerce website) or you get a lead (at Organizing for America).

Those two are obvious right?

Segment out people who delivered those two outcomes. Give them a warm hug and a kiss. Now go figure out what makes them unique when compared to everyone else who showed up at your website, all those other people who you worked so hard to impress but failed to.

Take the insights and do more of what works for this group.

Or segment out everyone whose order size is 50% more than the average order size. . .

These are your "whales", people who spend a lot of money with you. Don't you want to get to know them a lot better? : )

But there is more.

Remember macro AND micro conversions!

No one is going to sleep with you on the first date. (Ok maybe a few will!)

So focus on micro conversions that lead up to a macro conversion… like people playing a product video (or on content site watching five videos!). . .

Or adding a product to their Wish List.

Or signing up to show up for a protest for your ultra liberal policies!

Or apply for a trial, or download a trial product.

You can also focus on micro conversions that all by themselves are of value to you, even if not as much as the macro conversion.

For example submitting a job application.

Or signing up for a RSS feed.

Or clicking on a link to go to a different site you want them to go to (like clicking on the amazon link to go buy my book – great outcome :)).

Of course if you are really really good you'll also segment my absolute favorite metric in the whole wide world: Task Completion Rate. It is the ultimate measure of outcome (from your customer's perspective).

[If you use 4Q then now you can do some very very cool segmentation directly in Google Analytics! Watch this video to learn how to merge your quantitative GA data with your qualitative 4Q data. Pretty sweet.]

Net, net. . . it is absolutely critical that you segment your data by the key outcomes important to your business. Not just because your site exists to add economic value, but also because I cannot think of another way you can earn the love of your boss or get promoted.

By understanding what it is about people who deliver outcomes you can understand what to do with all those that don't convert.

Outcomes. Outcomes. Outcomes!

Pick at least two.

If you pick three or four that is ok.

If you pick nine it might be a signal you don't know what you are doing (and you want to corner your boss in a non-HR-violation manner and ask her to help you focus on the most important).

In Summary.

Segment or die.

It is as simple as that.

The next time you start to do true analysis of your data I hope you have your minimum six segments in hand (two for each category). If you do you'll find that web analytics, this world full of web metrics and what not, suddenly becomes a lot more interesting (and you no longer feel like jumping out of your office window in frustration!).

Love, money and glory await you.

Not to mention how proud I'll be of you when I see your analysis. ; )

Ok now your turn.

Are you a segmentation God? What are some of your favorite segments? Have you used this three category framework in the past to find segments? Do you think they'll work in real life? In the context of segments what do you think is missing from this blog post? What did I overlook / not stress enough?

What's your excuse for not leveraging segmentation? (Best answer to this question win's a copy of Web Analytics 2.0!)

Please share your thoughts / wisdom / critique / guidance.

Thanks.

PS:
Couple other related posts you might find interesting:

Web Analytics Segmentation: Do Or Die, There Is No Try! is a post from: Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik

The 8-Step SEO Strategy, Step 1: Define Your Target Audience and Their Needs

2010-04-06T12:20:25Z

Posted by laura

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

Until recently I headed up technical marketing for Yahoo Media, where our competition was in verticals like news, sports, movies, games, and finance to name a few. In terms of online competitiveness, this is nothing to sneeze at. This is how I learned to base everything I do on strategy.

A LESSON LEARNED

Let me tell you a story. Early in my tenure at Yahoo we tried to get into the site dev process in the early stages in order to work SEO into the Product Recommendations Documents (PRD) before wireframing began. But as a fairly new horizontal group not reporting into any of the products, this was often difficult. Nay, damn near impossible. So usually we made friends with the product teams and got in where we could.

On one specific project, one of the SEOs on my team was brought in during the wireframe stage. The entire product team held SEO-specific meetings every week to go over specific recommendations, taking them very seriously, and leaning on every word our team said. We were thrilled. We were hailing their efforts, promising big wins for the relaunch, and even hyping up the launch and it’s projected SEO results in the company SEO newsletter.

Then the site relaunched. Initially we saw a drop. This is expected, especially when you relaunch an entire site of that magnitude. Three weeks passed, and results were flat. Five weeks passed, no upward trend. Three months passed and the product team stopped talking to us. Results never went back up.

Like many SEOs, I was hired with one vague responsibility: to set up an SEO program and achieve results. Like many SEOs, we jumped right in and started spewing out SEO audits, rewriting title tags, offering up link suggestions, rewriting URLs and so on. And like many SEOs we promised results. But what we didn’t do, until that fateful launch, was develop a comprehensive strategy. Sure, we did keyword research, we recommended partnerships and widgets and architecture advice, but we didn’t step back and take a good look at our target audiences, what sites were meeting their specific needs in search results, and what we specifically could build into the product that would be far more desirable than what everyone else had (not even thought of yet ideally) to make sure our entire site is superior, resulting in the inevitable stealing of search traffic from our competitors.

Instead, in this instance, we started at wireframe stage, plopping in keywords and meta tags. Of course, the site really needed those things, and although it launched technically “optimized”, it wasn’t enough to provide a better product than our top competitor(s). A product that people want to visit, revisit, email to friends, share on social networks, and link to more than our competitors. It wasn’t even enough to move up in the rankings.

From that point on, if a property didn’t consult our team during the early concepting stages of a project, we shied away from working on that project at all. And let me tell you, things got a lot better.

AN 8-STEP STRATEGY FOR YOU TO USE

Doing SEO strategy right takes targeted competitive insight and very specific recommendations, beyond any SEO basics rulebook. And ideally a good relationship with the product (site) manager.

Over the next few posts, and starting with this one, I’m going to share with you a detailed 8-step process for creating your own SEO strategy (what I often refer to as an SRD (SEO Research Document)), beginning with defining target audiences and taking it all the way through some fairly comprehensive competitive research, search traffic projections, content strategies, and specific goals and prioritizations. The steps behind this are something you can templatize and use for every project, and your boss/clients will love it, I promise.

I’ll be writing this as I go, so I’d be interested in hearing how you do strategy now, and if there are any types of things you’d like to see covered in the posts.

Strategy is the type of thing that moves you up to the next level of SEO superstar. Ready?

STEP 1: DEFINE YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE AND THEIR INTERESTS

The first step in most marketing campaigns, Search Marketing included, is to start by defining your target audience. Your target audience is a defined set of people who you are marketing your product to.

Traditionally, defining a target audience involves determining their age, sex, geographic locations, and especially their needs (aka pain points). Check out usability.gov’s description of personas and how to do task analysis & scenarios for more details, or better yet, read Vanessa Fox’s upcoming book about personas related to search and conversion.

What we want to zero in on for our SEO Strategy are those pain points. What do they want? What are their needs that aren’t being met? Knowing these things will help us better define a content strategy and prioritize content to bring to the forefront.

There are two reasons we start with audience needs rather than jumping straight into keyword research

Content Strategy: You want to provide content and tools that are as relevant and useful as possible to your target audiences. This goes beyond regular SEO practices and into site strategy, although providing relevant, useful content in itself is linkbait. For example, let’s say I have a health site. I have several types of articles on health, drug information, and information on types of diseases and conditions. My angle on the site is that I’m targeting seniors. If I find out seniors are primarily interested in information on prescription drug plans and cheap Viagra, then I know that I want to provide information specifically on those things. This allows me to hone in on that market’s needs and deprioritize or bypass other content.
Targeted Keyword Discovery: Ideally you’ll want to do keyword research based on what the audience wants, not solely on what content the site already has (or plans to have sans audience targeting), which may be limited. I can do keyword research on health conditions and drugs (content I have on my site) and determine what the general population is searching for and optimize my current content, or I can cast my net wide and look at what my target audience wants first, then do my keyword research. You may find there are needs that your site is not meeting. Knowing my senior audience is interested in primarily in prescription drug plans and cheap Viagra, I can first make sure I’m providing that content, and then further determine the top keywords in these areas (in the next article Step 2), and use those terms in relevant and high visibility areas on my site.

This screenshot from my own Strategy template below simply suggests adding information on the target audience and what they want. Specifics are as good as the research you do, and will likely be very different with each project. Let your Strategy template give you breathing room.

So how do you get target market info? Lets start with these scenarios.

Scenario 1: I know who my target audiences are, but I don’t know their pain points:

Check out market research studies* online (you can find many free reports, but in-depth ones will usually cost you some money).
Conduct surveys of your audience by putting surveys on your site, sending emails, hiring survey professionals, or using survey sites like SurveyMonkey
Conduct focus groups – either on your own (if you can gather a group of people that you know are in your targeted demographic) or through a professional market research company
Use social media listening platforms that provide topic buzz volume and sentiment by demographic (Nielsen Buzz Metrics and NetBase are two options, although not cheap)
Forrester has a nifty little demographic profiling tool for social behavior online by audience

Scenario 2: I know my industry but don’t know whom exactly to target:

Check out industry research studies* online (you can find many free reports, but in-depth ones will usually cost you some money).
Search for industry statistics online. For example, here I found some great statistics on seniors that would allow me to better understand their current situation and what they need.
Hire a research company that specializes on your industry
Use social media listening platforms that provide topic buzz volume and sentiment by industry. I haven’t tested any social listening platforms with specific industries in mind to know exactly who provides demographic info based on industry. If you happen to know of tools that do this, please share with us in the comments.

*A few of the places you can find industry/market statistics:

Social media tools are especially useful if you’re planning on integrating search and social campaigns, as they are great research tools for both channels. Here’s a screenshot from NetBase that shows a demographics module on the left, as well as demographic results for the Crest Pro-Health brand being searched.

Research can get expensive when you really get into it, but you can find data if it exists on your industry/demographic, and you’re an experienced searcher. Be sure to check your sources, and don’t be afraid to email people and ask where they got their information if you need to.

Here’s what I found in free online info about my seniors audience in the Healthcare industry

Seniors’ specific conditions (source)
- Data found: Arthritis, hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, and respiratory disorders are some of the leading causes of activity limitations among older people. Alzheimer’s disease and dementia alone afflict 4 million Americans, a figure expected to increase 350% by 2050 if no cure is found.
- What this means to me: These are topics I will provide extra information and tools on
More senior women with disabilities than men (source)
- Data Found: Older women were more likely than older men to experience disability, 43 percent and 40 percent, respectively
- What this means to me: I will put a little more emphasis on targeting senior women on my site, with articles and tools specifically geared to women.
Top geographic locations where seniors are (source)
- Data Found: Florida, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia were the states with the highest proportions 65 and older in 2000: 17.6 percent, 15.6 percent, and 15.3 percent, respectively
- What this means to me: I can provide local information like pharmacies, doctors, caregivers, nursing homes, etc with those primary areas highlighted. I can also target PPC ads in those geographic locations.
Retirement info for single seniors (source)
- Data Found: Fewer [seniors] who are married with children from a previous relationship and single females have a clear vision of what they hope to experience in—and what they must do to prepare for—retirement.
- What this means to me: Provide advice column content on retirement, especially geared towards these seniors.
Caregivers are a secondary target (source)
- Data Found: 34 million adults (16% of population) provide care to adults 50+ years.
- What this means to me: I might want to consider a section and/or tools/and/or articles targeted at people taking care of seniors as well.
Potential advertising partners (source)
- Data Found: Forty-eight percent of caregivers reported using at least one of seven outside services (e.g., transportation, home-delivered meals, respite, etc.) to supplement their caregiving
- What this means to me: These outside services are good targets for partnerships and advertising for the site.

This was all free information I found online in less than an hour, that gives me some great ideas for content, partnerships and potential tools to build into my site to be relevant and useful to my target audience. Of course this is just some quick loose data, so I'll emphasize again: be careful where your data comes from (try to validate when possible), and think about how to use your data wisely.

START CREATING RECOMMENDATIONS IN YOUR STRATEGY DOCUMENT

Each of these discoveries is potential content or strategy, and should be written up in your SEO Strategy document. Provide as much data and reasoning as possible for why you recommend this content.

See the screenshot below for some of the sections for specific recommendations that you can add which will provide the meat of the document. Keep in mind this is a very flexible document – add recommendations that make sense (for example you may not always have specific design considerations for a project). Remember, it will be different every time you do it.

For each piece of content you are recommending, try to provide:

Backup Data: Provide information backing up why this content will appeal to your audience
Specifics: Be as specific as you can with your recommendations. For example if you’re suggesting partnering with meal home delivery sites, find out which ones are going to provide the most relevant info, at what cost if possible, and what the ideal partnership would look like for content and SEO purposes. Even provide contact information if you can.

This doesn’t have to be completely formalized right now because we’ll be getting even more insights to layer on top of this from our keyword research and competitive research in later steps. But add as much information as possible for now – you can always add more, change it or even change your mind and get rid of it later. We will finalize recommendations in Step 5.

NEXT STEP: KEYWORD RESEARCH

In the next article we’ll take a look at some methods for doing categorized keyword research that allows you to further prioritize content based on the popularity of categories of keywords.

In the meantime, do you have any suggestions, insights, tool recommendations or great places to find market research data or create personas? Please share!

Do you like this post? Yes No

8 Easy Ways to Network on Twitter

2010-03-25T12:00:09Z

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could develop a valuable business network online? Twitter’s real-time communication capability makes it a great business networking platform you can’t afford to ignore.

By honing your social networking skills and adapting them to this fast-paced environment, you can use Twitter as the starting point to build a strong business network.

There are two parts to networking on Twitter:

First, you need to connect with the people you want to get to know.
Second, you need to find a way to establish relationships with the right people and get beyond the scope of Twitter.

Just like in the offline world, you’ll find people with different styles of communication and different levels of people skills.

We don’t all have Mari Smith’s communication pizzazz.

But don’t let this deter you. You simply need to identify the communication styles used by the people you want to connect with and then join in.

Here are 8 different ways to begin networking on Twitter.

#1: Show Others What You Want to Talk About

First, remember to show others what you are most interested in. You communicate your areas of interest in several ways:

Paint a picture of who you are with your Twitter bio.
Shows others what you like to talk about with the content you tweet.
Share the conversations you are interested in by using hashtags in your tweets.
Tell others who’s important to you with the names of your Twitter lists.
The lists you are on show how others see you.

By paying attention to the consistency of your Twitter presence, you’ll send a strong message of what interests you and you’ll attract the people you want to connect with most.

#2: Get Your Actions Right

Your first impression always counts, even on Twitter. Others will notice content on your Twitter profile page: your Twitter handle, your photo, your name, the page you link to and your bio. And they will also notice the actions you take.

Follow. Do you have approximately the same number of followers as the number of people following you?
Autofollow. Do you automatically follow everyone?
Welcome messages. Do you send a welcome message? Is it a personalized message or one that looks like an automated message? Does it promote something or does it show you want to connect and care?

There are no absolute guidelineson what you should do. You simply need to act in an appropriate way for the people you want to connect with.

Twitter monitoring will help you find out how to make the right first impression. Regular monitoring will also keep you up to date on any changing trends in Twitter etiquette so you can adjust your tactics when needed.

#3: Retweet Others

Do you feel uncomfortable about reaching out to others on Twitter? Retweeting is a great way to start networking but you usually need to do a bit more to get a response and start a dialogue. For example, add some personal comments to the retweet. Notice how others engage with people and copy the ones you like.

"Good morning!" The simplest tweets often work best.

#4: Shout Out to Others

If you want to connect with someone on Twitter and just don’t know where to start, here are some ways of simply shouting out to people on Twitter to get them to notice you.

Consider mentioning them for #FollowFriday. You do this by simply saying something nice about the person, include their Twitter ID and “#FollowFriday” or “#ff”.

Another option is a public mention of someone you appreciate.

Show your appreciation after connecting elsewhere.

#5: Link to ‘Other’ Social Conversations

As you monitor Twitter and other social media platforms, you’ll notice more conversations. Show others you are paying attention to their conversations.

When you notice someone’s birthday on Facebook, send a “Happy Birthday” with their @name on Twitter to show you are paying attention to them.
When you come across a great LinkedIn question, link to it and give the @name of the author on Twitter.
When you read a great blog post, share the link and take the time to find and mention the author’s @name in your tweet.

The more you show others you are listening to them, the more they’ll pay attention to you.

#6: Write Tweets to Engage Conversations

After getting on other people’s radar, it’s time to take the networking up a notch and try to begin a real conversation.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to reply to a tweet and add value.

Add useful information.
Ask a good question.
Show you are sincerely interested in the topic.

Make it easy to respond to your tweets.

#7: Introduce People

As you meet more people on Twitter, you’ll see people with similar interests. Take the initiative and introduce people! This is a great way of strengthening your own network because others will notice your introductions and make associations.

Introductions are easy to make.

#8: Create Opportunities to Network Further

What can you do when networking opportunities just do not seem to pop up naturally? Create a reason to network with the people who interest you! Tweetups and Twitter discussions are a great way to do this.

Another easy first step is to start a public list of people you recommend on Twitter. As you come across people to add to this list, give them a shout out to show your recognition. You’ll find it much easier to connect with people this way.

You might also want an additional step to feel more comfortable with the people you meet on Twitter. Sometimes you need a good ice-breaker. I find Twitter Interviews helpful because they are usually a fun experience for both participants and I also get to know more about the people I interview.

Networking Beyond Twitter

As you begin to develop your network on Twitter, you’ll want to regularly spend time making connections beyond Twitter. A phone call or a chat on Skype is always a good step.

Twitter will simply become one of the communication tools you use in your overall business networking plan.

Do you network on Twitter? What tactics do you use to reach out and connect with others? I’d love to hear about what works best for you. Please share your stories in the comments below.

Creating an Online Video Strategy

2010-03-24T08:22:59Z

Shared by jamesq
Great post on optimising video and creating a strategy.

Posted by katemats

Hi SEOmoz community!

Let me take a moment to introduce myself since this is my first post on the blog. My name is Kate Matsudaira (Kate Mats for short), and I started here in November as VP Engineering for the fabulous technology team here at SEOmoz. Before that I worked for an online video platform called Delve Networks - where I learned a lot about online video, how people are using it, and perhaps more relevant to this audience, how to make it work for your business. All this experience working with lots of customers to get their video online has given me a lot of insight into the many different ways to use video, monetize video, and optimize it to deliver the highest ROI. In this post I am going to lay out a few tips and tricks for getting started with a video content strategy.

Lots of us keep hearing about how video is such a compelling medium and a great way to engage your customers. Not long ago Rand presented a Whiteboard Friday Video where he covers some of the basics around video SEO, like the trade offs between using a third party site, or hosting the video yourself. In the following post, I hope to add a little more to that topic and talk about some additional strategies that combine these ideas - starting with a 3 step process to help you get started with creating a video strategy for your website

Step 1: Getting Video on Your Website

So you have decided you want to add video to your site - let's talk about some potential strategies to make the most of your efforts.

There are two options central options for getting video on your site - you can choose a 3rd party or you can host the video yourself.

Generally hosting video yourself is not recommended unless you have lots of technical resources at your disposal (there are lots of moving parts to a video hosting project including: hosting the files, serving up video and the resulting bandwidth costs, selecting and customizing a player, collecting metrics and analytics, etc) - it used to be that this was the best option, but that is no longer the case. For most people choosing a 3rd party video platform is a better solution because they will offer better bandwidth costs, provide you lots of tools to manage your video and help create a compelling user experience.

For this article I am going to assume you are choosing a third party platform and not building everything yourself (although if you were, some of the advice may still be relevant for your project).

Once you've chosen a platform (there are lots of options like YouTube, Delve Networks, Ooyala, Brightcove, Fliqz, and more - evaluating each of these could warrant a whole post in and of itself!) you have to think about your video strategy - do you just want video on your site, or do you want videos hosted off-site as well?

Step 2: Defining your strategy - should you host it or post it?

Once you've evaluated some options and feel like you know how to get video on your site, the next step is to decide should you just host the video on your site, post it to the video sharing sites, or both*.

* Note: I wouldn't suggest posting the same video (in the same way) since you really want users to link to your website, not YouTube, for the same content, or you would want your site to show up in the SERPS instead of the video sharing site's version of your content. But this is not a one size fits all recommendation and there may be cases where this is appropriate; such as when you pay to produce a high quality piece of content and want it on your web site, but want to take advantage of the traffic from a video sharing site - more on this below.

Everyone knows that sites like YouTube, MetaCafe, and DailyMotion get a lot of traffic, and that posting to these video sharing sites can be a great way to get exposure and expand your reach.

There are some clear advantages of these big video sharing sites including:

Easy to upload video
No bandwidth costs
Lots of traffic
Easy to share (embed, email to friends, rss feeds, etc)

But there are also some disadvantages:

Videos are watched on their site, not yours!
Harder to monetize - if you are pursuing a video ad strategy to monetize your content this harder to do on big video sharing sites
No link juice if people embed/share your video
Limited analytics to understand user engagement, video bounce rate, etc
Tend to be lower quality
Ads appear on your content
Limited length/duration

These sites can provide a powerful marketing channel to your site, brand and content. However, if your ultimate goal is conversions you need to have clear plan on how to get traffic and viewership on that track (and that for most of us, means back on your website). This means that you need to think carefully about a strategy that makes sense.

Here is a good list of questions that might help you pick a strategy that works for you.

Do you want increased brand awareness?
Are you planning to put ads on your content or charge a premium or pay per view model for your video?
How are you going to get users to come to your site using your video?
Are you concerned about bandwidth costs?
Do you just want something simple, or is having a full fledged platform important to your business goals?
Is your content long, or is high definitely/quality really important to you?
Can you create entertaining or useful videos that would gain traction and views on a video sharing site?
Or is your content very product specific and best used to help your current traffic convert?

Of course you don't have to pick one or the other, you can use a hybrid strategy. Some ideas I've seen work well in practice include:

Put mini videos on YouTube, and the longer length content on your site.
This will act like a teaser and encourage users to come to the site for the rest of the content.

Here is an example of a Yoga web site trying to sell their DVDs - in this case they are trying to build up their YouTube brand (see the call to action encouraging users to subscribe), but are also trying to drive traffic to their site by enticing you with the first part of a DVD series. =

YouTube compresses video to a lower quality, so you can offer an high definition or higher quality version on your site.
This is particularly compelling for entertainment based content, or any content that would be thoroughly more enjoyable in full screen mode.

In this example, 4KidsTV offers a cartoon series that offers the lower quality versions on YouTube, but direct people to their site to watch the higher resolution content as seen below.

Offer relevant materials (articles, white papers, quizzes, etc) on your site that compliment the content in the video.
Indicating this in the video description will encourage users to visit your site for additional information.

In this YouTube video, there are instructions on how to style your hair a particular way using Foxy Hair Extensions. This user has several of these videos that are very useful and instructional, but they also encourage viewers to purchase the product in the video they are selling.

Put the same video on both YouTube and your site.
Typically you would do this if you wanted to leverage the YouTube distribution channel, but you wanted something else that YouTube didn't offer - for example some other video providers offer customizable players, substantial analytics, subtitles, etc - or perhaps you have limited resources and want to put the video both places. This strategy allows you to still take advantage of the audience on a big sharing site, but also gives you the ability to showcase the video content to your users as well.

If you are going to use the same video on both YouTube and your site - it is duplicate content in some sense (which in SEO is generally bad), but you can skirt "duplicate content" for video by having a different title/description when you post to YouTube vs. your own site. And this approach could potentially get dual benefits (findability of content on YouTube + visibility on your site and ability to serve advertising/content/have video sitemaps/etc).

If you do go this approach I recommend you think about your users - make sure your web site adds additional value in supplemental, relevant content or a superior experience. And also make sure that the video you are using is designed to help your strategy - if you want more brand recommendation make sure your video showcases your brand in the content, if you want to drive your users to take an action make sure that call to action is clear in the video, etc.

One thing you might want to stay away from is having the the exact same video on your homepage (or the landing page you are steering people to via your video). In general it wouldn't be a great feeling for a user who watched the video, to go looking for more information and see the exact same video they just watched - you need to give them something different and relevant. For best results, drive people to a specific landing page or microsite (with a very short and easy to remember url) via your video that is tailored to the actions and conversions you want them to take (and this also allows you to track the traffic coming to that page since users have to type in links and can't click on them in the video).

Finally, it is also important to pick the right content for this strategy. This means creating content that drives your objectives. For example, choose a video that will showcase your brand - that way if it is embedded elsewhere it will carry your branding along to those sites. Having your url or landing page url actually in the video content will show viewers where to go to get more information or similar content. Give them call to actions - tell them what they get if they go to your site - tease them with more content, make it clear what you want them to do.

Step 3: You have a plan, now optimize it!

There are several pieces to optimizing your video marketing - since several of these are likely worth of a whole post, in the interest of brevity I have broken it down into two areas: the video itself, and the metadata for the video (either on your site or the video sharing site).

For the video:

Showcase your brand in the video.
Edit your videos to showcase your brand in the introduction (pre-roll), or in an overlay like a sub-title (these are easy to add with most video editing software), or in a backdrop in the content (think about interviewing people in front of a big canvas with your brand on it - like celeb pictures at movie reviews). These can be very effective since your branding will travel with the video. Videos sharing sites make it very easy to share (now, there is a compelling statement!) and could end up embedded or ripped on lots of other sites, or in search results, etc. Thus, adding your branding to the video file itself ensures that your company information, brand, or website URL travel along with your content.
Use descriptive filenames.
When you create a video some cameras will name files things like a234rt.mp4, this isn't terribly useful to search engines. So just like using descriptive names for your images, renaming your videos to something more meaningful (i.e. dog-walking.mp4) will help with video SEO efforts.
Add a call to action at the end of the video.
Make it clear to users what to do next -- give them your website address, send them to a link to learn more, direct them to similar videos on your site. This is your great chance to steer them where you want them to go. Make it clear to the user what they get if they go to your site.
Make your audio clear!
A recent NPR story noted that YouTube engineers are creating automated video transcripts to aid in video search. Having clear, understandable audio will help get more accurate transcripts (which not only improves searchability but also accessibility for hearing-impaired users). This is also great for regular users, too, since sometimes it is hard to hear when you have poor quality audio, multiple sources talking at the same time, or music playing during someone's dialogue.
Think about the duration of your content.
Some video sharing sites, like YouTube, limit content to 10 minutes, but generally breaking up your video into small digestible chunks will make it both better for the user (they don't have to watch 10 minutes on a topic they don't care about to get to the 3 minute segmented they are truly interested in viewing) and give you more unique and (hopefully) compelling content. Plus if you are using a 3rd party solution this can help minimize bandwidth costs.
Add text titles, textual graphics, and other text in your videos.
Much like OCR technology Google is employing new technology to help understand video, so if you put captions and other textual elements into your videos that can help both users and search engines (think about these elements like headings used in news broadcasts)
Create interesting content.
In general this should go without saying; but I figured I should state it clearly since I have had someone say "I don't understand why people aren't watching my [very boring and dry] commercial on product X"

And the metadata:

Fill out all of the information fields.
If there are fields to be completed like title and description, make sure you fill them out (and use your keywords where appropriate). Use the same approach you'd employ when optimizing your web pages for SEO; video search is very similar to classic web search. Don't leave any information blank since this is how the video sharing sites expose your content to their audience.
Use descriptive and catchy titles.
This helps users know what your video is about and can assist with viral efforts. Using keywords in your title, description and tags will make it easier for users to find and discover your content - and they can help you rank higher for those keywords. But like most things in SEO, don't go overboard - pick a few relevant keywords/tags to focus on that will have the most relevance to users viewing that video. (For example, if you made a video on how to cook pancakes, but you are trying to drive traffic to your kitchen supplies e-commerce site - keywords like pancakes, cooking, etc are probably better choices than "griddle" because they are far more relevant to the user)
Take the time to setup a profile, channel, etc.
Like Twitter and Facebook, taking the time to fill out your profile and make it meaningful will help users understand your brand and can help you gain more traffic share on the video sharing sites. Many of the video sharing sites make use of channels, so having a channel with organized content gives your account credibility - generally like other community based websites being part of the community will improve your visibility and spending time on these sharing communities should fit into your overall video strategy.
Choose a good thumbnail.
It is the first thing users see and plays an important role on whether they click or not. Make sure you try to pick a thumbnail that is compelling and relevant. You could probably write a whole post on picking compelling thumbnails, but at a basic level, use common sense and try to answer the question "what photo best encapsulates the content of my video?"
Put meaningful content around the video.
If you put the video on your site, having great indexable and meaningful content around the video will help search engines understand the context of the video and related content. This is also great for your users. For example, if you have a video on making pancakes, content about pancakes, the history of pancakes, or recipes would all be great surrounding content. For interviews, a summary or other relevant articles would be helpful for the user. And in some cases, transcripts of the video make *excellent* accompanying content.
Create a transcript.
Some video sharing sites allow you to submit transcripts, there are also some players that allow you to share this with users. This can help a lot with content since transcripts can be understood and indexed by search engines. And if accessibility is a concern for you, creating transcripts is likely hugely beneficial to your customers in the first place.
Submit a video sitemap to Google.
This is the easiest way to increase your chances of your video showing up in Google search results. You can find more information on that at Google Webmaster Support. [Special tip for those of you reading this in detail: if you want to drive users to your site and only have the thumbnail show up in search results make sure and set the parameter allow_embed="no" ]
Take advantage of mRSS and HTML 5.
There are lots of great attributes you can specify for the video including things like tags, that make it easier for the search engines to understand and index your content. And with mRSS you can submit the feed to Google, so as soon as you publish new video it will be pushed to them - just like RSS and your blog!

Once you get it on the page, and you spend some time optimizing your content for maximum usability and impact - make sure you have setup some sort of way to measure you success. You should certainly pay attention to views (even better if you can get more detailed video engagement metrics), but many platforms offer even more detailed metrics to help you measure and track the effectiveness of your strategy.

That should be a good first set of things to do to get started with a video strategy. And of course, this is just the beginning there are lots of options and many creative ways to leverage this compelling medium to aid your goals.

If you liked this information or found it useful or have thoughts on video related topics you would like to learn more about, I would love to hear your feedback so please post it in the comments!

Do you like this post? Yes No

Creating an Online Video Strategy

2010-03-23T21:53:28Z

Posted by katemats

Hi SEOmoz community!

Step 1: Getting Video on Your Website

Step 2: Defining your strategy - should you host it or post it?

Easy to upload video
No bandwidth costs
Lots of traffic
Easy to share (embed, email to friends, rss feeds, etc)

But there are also some disadvantages:

Videos are watched on their site, not yours!
Harder to monetize - if you are pursuing a video ad strategy to monetize your content this harder to do on big video sharing sites
No link juice if people embed/share your video
Limited analytics to understand user engagement, video bounce rate, etc
Tend to be lower quality
Ads appear on your content
Limited length/duration

Do you want increased brand awareness?
Are you planning to put ads on your content or charge a premium or pay per view model for your video?
How are you going to get users to come to your site using your video?
Are you concerned about bandwidth costs?
Do you just want something simple, or is having a full fledged platform important to your business goals?
Is your content long, or is high definitely/quality really important to you?
Can you create entertaining or useful videos that would gain traction and views on a video sharing site?
Or is your content very product specific and best used to help your current traffic convert?

Of course you don't have to pick one or the other, you can use a hybrid strategy. Some ideas I've seen work well in practice include:

Put mini videos on YouTube, and the longer length content on your site.
This will act like a teaser and encourage users to come to the site for the rest of the content.

In this example, 4KidsTV offers a cartoon series that offers the lower quality versions on YouTube, but direct people to their site to watch the higher resolution content as seen below.

Step 3: You have a plan, now optimize it!

Showcase your brand in the video.
Edit your videos to showcase your brand in the introduction (pre-roll), or in an overlay like a sub-title (these are easy to add with most video editing software), or in a backdrop in the content (think about interviewing people in front of a big canvas with your brand on it - like celeb pictures at movie reviews). These can be very effective since your branding will travel with the video. Videos sharing sites make it very easy to share (now, there is a compelling statement!) and could end up embedded or ripped on lots of other sites, or in search results, etc. Thus, adding your branding to the video file itself ensures that your company information, brand, or website URL travel along with your content.
Use descriptive filenames.
When you create a video some cameras will name files things like a234rt.mp4, this isn't terribly useful to search engines. So just like using descriptive names for your images, renaming your videos to something more meaningful (i.e. dog-walking.mp4) will help with video SEO efforts.
Add a call to action at the end of the video.
Make it clear to users what to do next -- give them your website address, send them to a link to learn more, direct them to similar videos on your site. This is your great chance to steer them where you want them to go. Make it clear to the user what they get if they go to your site.
Make your audio clear!
A recent NPR story noted that YouTube engineers are creating automated video transcripts to aid in video search. Having clear, understandable audio will help get more accurate transcripts (which not only improves searchability but also accessibility for hearing-impaired users). This is also great for regular users, too, since sometimes it is hard to hear when you have poor quality audio, multiple sources talking at the same time, or music playing during someone's dialogue.
Think about the duration of your content.
Some video sharing sites, like YouTube, limit content to 10 minutes, but generally breaking up your video into small digestible chunks will make it both better for the user (they don't have to watch 10 minutes on a topic they don't care about to get to the 3 minute segmented they are truly interested in viewing) and give you more unique and (hopefully) compelling content. Plus if you are using a 3rd party solution this can help minimize bandwidth costs.
Add text titles, textual graphics, and other text in your videos.
Much like OCR technology Google is employing new technology to help understand video, so if you put captions and other textual elements into your videos that can help both users and search engines (think about these elements like headings used in news broadcasts)
Create interesting content.
In general this should go without saying; but I figured I should state it clearly since I have had someone say "I don't understand why people aren't watching my [very boring and dry] commercial on product X"

And the metadata:

Fill out all of the information fields.
If there are fields to be completed like title and description, make sure you fill them out (and use your keywords where appropriate). Use the same approach you'd employ when optimizing your web pages for SEO; video search is very similar to classic web search. Don't leave any information blank since this is how the video sharing sites expose your content to their audience.
Use descriptive and catchy titles.
This helps users know what your video is about and can assist with viral efforts. Using keywords in your title, description and tags will make it easier for users to find and discover your content - and they can help you rank higher for those keywords. But like most things in SEO, don't go overboard - pick a few relevant keywords/tags to focus on that will have the most relevance to users viewing that video. (For example, if you made a video on how to cook pancakes, but you are trying to drive traffic to your kitchen supplies e-commerce site - keywords like pancakes, cooking, etc are probably better choices than "griddle" because they are far more relevant to the user)
Take the time to setup a profile, channel, etc.
Like Twitter and Facebook, taking the time to fill out your profile and make it meaningful will help users understand your brand and can help you gain more traffic share on the video sharing sites. Many of the video sharing sites make use of channels, so having a channel with organized content gives your account credibility - generally like other community based websites being part of the community will improve your visibility and spending time on these sharing communities should fit into your overall video strategy.
Choose a good thumbnail.
It is the first thing users see and plays an important role on whether they click or not. Make sure you try to pick a thumbnail that is compelling and relevant. You could probably write a whole post on picking compelling thumbnails, but at a basic level, use common sense and try to answer the question "what photo best encapsulates the content of my video?"
Put meaningful content around the video.
If you put the video on your site, having great indexable and meaningful content around the video will help search engines understand the context of the video and related content. This is also great for your users. For example, if you have a video on making pancakes, content about pancakes, the history of pancakes, or recipes would all be great surrounding content. For interviews, a summary or other relevant articles would be helpful for the user. And in some cases, transcripts of the video make *excellent* accompanying content.
Create a transcript.
Some video sharing sites allow you to submit transcripts, there are also some players that allow you to share this with users. This can help a lot with content since transcripts can be understood and indexed by search engines. And if accessibility is a concern for you, creating transcripts is likely hugely beneficial to your customers in the first place.
Submit a video sitemap to Google.
This is the easiest way to increase your chances of your video showing up in Google search results. You can find more information on that at Google Webmaster Support. [Special tip for those of you reading this in detail: if you want to drive users to your site and only have the thumbnail show up in search results make sure and set the parameter allow_embed="no" ]
Take advantage of mRSS and HTML 5.
There are lots of great attributes you can specify for the video including things like tags, that make it easier for the search engines to understand and index your content. And with mRSS you can submit the feed to Google, so as soon as you publish new video it will be pushed to them - just like RSS and your blog!

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6 Powerful LinkedIn Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

2010-03-10T13:00:23Z

Let’s face it, LinkedIn is a very underutilized social media network. Most people believe that it’s too hard to make connections, and therefore use it more as a résumé site. There is so much more potential with this professional social media network.

How many of us have created a LinkedIn account and left it dormant for months?

It was my goal recently to attend more LinkedIn webinars and teleseminars to learn more about this mysterious network. I have often thought to myself, “I’m a professional. Why am I not utilizing this site?” I’ve even heard LinkedIn referred to as the “red-headed stepchild” of social media.

Here are some interesting facts that I learned about this often misunderstood network:

LinkedIn is a search engine and has a ton of authority on Google and other popular search engines.

Likely if you Google your name and you have a LinkedIn profile, it will show up on the first page of Google. This demonstrates the ranking authority of LinkedIn on Google.

Here are the top 6 things that I learned about this powerful network:

#1: Boosting Your Search Engine Optimization

There are three areas to add website links to your LinkedIn profile. Instead of displaying “My Blog” & “My Website,” click on Edit and then click on Other. Type in a keyword phrase that describes how people can search to find your business.

For example, I changed my main mortgage website to say Foreclosure Options

I changed “My Blog” to say Social Media Marketing

I changed my Facebook fan page to say Facebook Marketing

What an incredibly easy way to boost your rankings in the search engines! Be sure to optimize your LinkedIn profile as soon as possible before your next client enters your main keyword(s) and finds your competition.

#2: Promoting Your Blog Feed

It is also possible to import your Wordpress blog feed to your profile by searching for the Wordpress application. This is a quick way for others to scan your blog content at a glance.

There is also another blog application on LinkedIn—Blog Link—which supports TypePad, Movable Type, Vox, Wordpress.com, Wordpress.org, Blogger, LiveJournal and many more.

Promote your blog and develop your personal brand. Everyone knows blogs are the best way to cultivate your personal brand. Now you can share your thoughts and insights on your blog on your professional home, LinkedIn.

#3: Creating LinkedIn Ad Campaigns

I had no clue that LinkedIn has its own Direct Ads Campaign targeted to professionals. I felt like I found a hidden treasure at the bottom of a huge sea! Because LinkedIn is a professional site, there is less likelihood of views from random people; rather, more from people interested in business-related information. I will definitely be utilizing this advertising feature this year.

Reach a rapidly growing community of over 57 million professionals (average household income: US $108,000), and select your ad’s audience by seniority, industry, job function, company size, and more.

It is possible to write, target, and start your ad in minutes, pay by clicks or impressions and get started with as little as US $50. Be sure to leverage the power of LinkedIn by using your professional brand to put a face to your business.

#4: Utilizing Events to Engage Clients

I really love LinkedIn’s event features because I “plan” to be an event planner in my next life. It’s not required to be the event coordinator to create an event. An event can be created if you have an interest in going to an event or will be an attendee.

Invitations can also be sent to your LinkedIn network, which will give you an opportunity to meet face to face if they decide to attend. The best feature is the ability to view at a glance all of your network’s upcoming events. As an event planner geek, it rocks my world to promote business events online just like I do in my personal hemisphere.

#5: Using Groups to Connect With People

Most people join groups and never come back to participate in them. I can raise my hand and say that I’m guilty of this bad practice too. I’ve started changing and participating in a lot more groups lately. However, STARTING a group is a great way to have access to email and stay in touch with your group as it grows. It does take some focused effort to grow your group but a great place to start is to invite your current network. As the people from your network join your group, this is visible to their networks’ news feeds which can potentially pique new interest.

I’m really amazed at the size of various groups on LinkedIn. Then I remember that professionals really enjoy networking, so I really shouldn’t be so surprised. Let’s take a look at a few groups on LinkedIn:

Social Media Today—18,078 members at the time of this writing

On Startups—Community of Entrepreneurs—123,680 members at the time of this writing

Real Estate Open Networkers—17,795 members at the time of this writing

Can you imagine having access to this many people at your fingertips?

#6: Getting Recommendations to Attract More Clients

Recommendations are one of the unique features of LinkedIn that sets it apart from other social media networks. What better way to really market your business than by having your colleagues and clients share your expertise?

I’m sure your next question is, “How can I obtain recommendations?” The best way is to live by the old adage:

“Give and you shall receive.”

Recommend your peers and they will return the favor. This is one area that I need to work on this year. It doesn’t take that much time, but if we don’t make it a focus, it won’t happen.

So what about you? Do you feel that LinkedIn is the red-headed stepchild of social media? Do you have any plans for this network in 2010? Let us know in the comments.

Winsome Words: 18 Examples of Typography in Web Design

2010-02-08T18:00:21Z

[ By Steph in Architecture & Design, Gadgets & Geek Art. ]

“Web design is 95% typography.” That quote has been repeated around the internet so many times it has practically become gospel – probably because it’s true. While images are important, most of what we process while browsing the web is text. Using the same old boring fonts doesn’t make for exciting design, so some graphic artists have turned typography on the web into a stunning art form unto itself. These 18 websites use typography to inform, but also as an (often interactive) design element that’s like a magnet for our eyeballs.

Espira Web Technology

Priorities, priorities, priorities. Espira Web Technology has emphasized the most important words on the page using large, eye-catching typography that’s a seamless part of the overall design of the site. Following the cardinal rule of using serif typefaces only for headings, the text is easy to read and almost forcibly pulls you in regardless of whether you even speak Spanish.

Jesus Rodriguez Velasco

Sometimes, typography is used in web design to firmly establish the theme or essence of what the site is all about. In this case, archaic-looking typeface and hand-painted symbols hint at what’s inside: “a veritable panoply of literary, visual and aural diversions related (or not) to academic pursuits, arcane (or simply dusty) vagaries and very earnest but most likely misguided contemporary concerns.” The author, Jesus Rodriquez Velasco, is a medieval and early modern studies professor at Columbia University.

Oliver Kavanaugh Design

It’s big. It’s loud. It’s overwhelmingly the most important element on the page, and that’s the point. Graphic and web designer Oliver Kavanaugh managed to make jumbled, overlapping text that might be far too busy in the wrong hands work with subtle texture, a controlled color scheme and careful attention to composition.

Ryan Keiser Design

“I create usable accessible colorful experiences.” All three of those adjectives also apply to the typography-centered design of this website, helping Ryan Keiser establish his brand in a way that’s immediate and memorable.

Denise Chandler Design

Can you resist scrolling further down the page after getting a look at this web header? It’s clean and simple yet dynamic – even without the cute animated insects. Web and graphic designer Denise Chandler showcases her talent with an online portfolio that’s classic and modern all at once.

The New York Moon

Sure, the most eye-catching element of this page is that huge vintage radio. But though it may be subtle, the typography on The New York Moon website still shines. It’s a great example of how less can be more – the type doesn’t have to be acid-bright or two inches tall to call attention to itself and help define the page.

Kidd 81 Design

It’s not hard to tell that Paul Jamie Kidd really loves his job. Everything about the playful, colorful typography on his website screams “fun” – but not in an annoying way, thanks to the balanced white space and neutral brown background.

Circus Family Design, Direction, Animation & Production

Whoa – four different typefaces in a row? That’s usually a terrible idea (especially on the web) – but Circus Family pulls it off here with an austere layout and monochromatic color scheme. The chosen typefaces give the site a very “edgy silent film” feel – appropriate given the nature of the company’s work.

Alpha Multimedia

How can a brand name force itself into your head without screaming like a headache-inducing car dealership commercial? Alpha Multimedia gets it done with excellent use of negative space, filling in the entire header with the word and subsequently drawing your eye down the page to view their featured work samples.

Lorem Ipsum Design

There’s an argument to be made that using ‘lorem ipsum’ isn’t a great idea when designing a website, but that doesn’t extend to using the graphic design agency of the same name. Lorem Ipsum Design goes bold and, well, graphic with a home page featuring nothing but two fonts, one a stark sans serif and the other a hand-written scrawl on a moveable post-it.

Maurivan Luiz Design

The word ‘WELCOME!’ in huge typeface with an exclamation point at the top of a website can be a sign of an amateur designer. That’s definitely not the case here. Maurivan Luiz keeps the friendliness from being cliché – the greeting warmly sets the tone for the site and balances well with the white background and the italicized serif text below it.

The Astonishing Adventures of Lord Likely

What would the blog of a hedonistic Victorian gentleman with a penchant for getting sidetracked by the ladies while solving mystifying mysteries look like? A little something like LordLikely.com, a rather racy account of all sorts of mustachioed aristocratic adventures. The chosen typefaces and parchment-like background are evocative of the era, but the clean design is a nod to the modern world.

Love Freelancing

Sometimes, the right balance of typography is like music – it flows with its own rhythm and harmony. Web designer Kai Branch created this little site to hype an ebook of web designer interviews, and it does the subject proud with a beautiful composition of type in various fonts, sizes and orientations.

Giant Creative Web Design & Development

Who needs fancy illustrations when you’re this good with nothing but type? A web design and development firm called Giant Creative literally makes typography the center of attention on their own website. The design is clean yet fun, using a font that’s just playful enough to give a lighthearted yet professional impression.

Ben Lind Design

“I create simple, clean websites that are easy to use and fun to look at.” So says designer Ben Lind on his own website, but perhaps he needn’t have. The design of his site says it all, with a large typography graphic in the center that not only reads “Hi, I’m Ben, I love making websites” but also forms an L for his last name.

Elysium Burns Design

Graphic designer Sean Baker goes for bold sans-serif type for headlines and titles and a more elegant serif font for the text blocks, but with a tightly controlled color scheme and varying font sizes, it all comes together into a cohesive design.

FL2 Blog

It doesn’t get much bolder than this. Interactive agency FL2 isn’t shy about making typography just about as big as it can be both on their blog and website, leaving you with absolutely no question whatsoever which page you’ve landed on.

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[ WebUrbanist - By Steph in Architecture & Design, Gadgets & Geek Art. ]

Manx Loaghtan Lamb tasting

2010-02-03T21:44:41Z

Radcliffe Butchers in Castletown will be holding a Manx Loaghtan Lamb tasting on Saturday 20th February. So make sure you get down to the butchers shop on Malew Street in Castletown for some tasty treats! All the tasting will be taking place from 10.30am to 12 noon and you will be able to sample some delicious [...]

Students Failing English Due to Twitter, Facebook

2010-01-31T21:25:00Z

The freeform writing style of social networks like Twitter and Facebook is changing the way people communicate, and causing students to fail English. That’s the claim of a piece out this afternoon f...

The Benwahs on BBC WM Introducing

2010-01-29T23:37:41Z

The Benwahs were played on BBC WM Introducing last night!

BBC WM Introducing is a show on a Birmingham radio station dedicated to introducing unsigned bands of the West Midlands and the Black Country to the masses.

Introducing… chatted about the birth of The Benwahs and played ‘Come To Mine’, title track from The Benwahs debut ep.

It’s our first time on British radio. We are on a few American and Canadian stations but it’s so ace to hear us played on a station that we all know and love and one we know all our mates and fans can listen to too!

We hope this will make more people aware of us and get more people to our gigs so we can play and party in style!!!! That’s the best bit!!!!!

If you missed the show last night you can re run the fun here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0062rrk/BBC_WM_Introducing…_28_01_2010/

The Benwahs feature 54 minutes in if you’re in a hurry!!!!
Thanks everyone!

For now…..

Much Love,
The Benwahs
xxxx

More Isle of Man Photographs from Castletown and Derbyhaven

2010-01-30T18:35:15Z

We took a trip out today to Castletown and Derbyhaven to make the most of there being some sunshine. We had a bit of a photo competition as we went round. Not really sure who won but here’s the photos anyway. Got to say I made more of an effort by actually getting out of the car. All of Don’s are taken from out the car window as she wasn’t prepared to move from the hot air blowers!

Yahoo Adds Feature to Import Google Adwords Campaigns

2010-01-15T11:51:48Z

I just scanned the last six posts here at MP and they all have the Google logo attached to them. What’s strange about this story is that while Yahoo is announcing an improvement in their paid search offering it still relates to Google. As for bing? Where are you? The company that is having their search platform replaced by you is making more noise.

So what has Yahoo done? It has created an easy way for users of the Yahoo paid search platform to import data from their Google Adwords campaigns. In other words, Yahoo is saying “We know how much you use Google Adwords so just ‘copy and paste’ it to us and spend with us. Please!” MediaPost reports on this and let’s us hear Yahoo’s version.

Despite the agreement with Microsoft to power the search engine’s backend infrastructure, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo continues to invest in advertising and consumer search tools. This time the company is releasing Network Distribution, and Import Campaigns.

David Pann, vice president and general manager of Yahoo Search Advertising, tells Online Media Daily that Yahoo’s investment in targeting tools provides another option for advertisers to reach consumers — an alternative to Google AdWords. So the hope is that these tools will end up in Microsoft’s search platform and adCenter.

Boy, if that doesn’t sound like someone who has simply decided to bow to the superiority of Google’s offering and settle for the crumbs from its table. By saying that Yahoo’s Search Advertising provides another option (read: something other than Google AdWords) it sounds like Mr. Pann is trying to remind people that “Hey, we do paid search advertising too!”

While this is all well and good one has to wonder what the impact will be for Yahoo if any. The following example provided from the article tells the tale much better than I can.

One of the biggest complaints from advertisers has been the tedious process of importing online campaigns into more than one search platform. Each engine relies on different types of files and formats. Many advertisers such as Brad Butler, chief operating officer at Asadart Ecommerce Specialty Shops, begin their campaigns on Google, simply because AdWords has been easier to understand and use.

“Nice idea, but at the end of the day I want results,” were the first words out of Butler’s mouth after hearing about the new features.

Butler runs several online stores. “It’s like putting lipstick on a pig,” he says. “It’s a good idea, but I remember talking to my rep about it a few years ago. Hey, guys, you’re three years late to the party.”

I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but I can smell a “So what?!” response from a mile away. How about we let Mr. Butler put it in even clearer business English, the one that involves dollar signs.

Butler’s Yahoo account reps used to import AdWords files for him. The rep would come back a week later after completing the job. It just took too long, he says. That’s one reason that last year, Butler spent about $50,000 with Yahoo, compared with $1.2 million with Google.

I have to guess that Mr. Butler won’t be moving a lot of that spend over to Yahoo but that’s just me. Well, while I am glad that at least someone else is trying to do something in the search space I hope that there might be a little more innovation and less playing catch up in the future.

Search advertisers weigh in on this and just how much you use other paid search options outside of Google. The world needs to see if there is a pulse on the industry outside of the Googleplex.

Restaurants Are Obvious Choices To Engage In Social Media

2009-12-31T12:51:00Z

Lately, it seems much of my attention has been turned toward restaurants and their use of social media for marketing.

Just the other day, my friend Mary McKnight and I were discussing the matter and both agreed restaurants, bars and such other consumer-centric local businesses are obvious choices for use of the medium. (From our joint perspective as marketing consultants, we also agreed they were “low hanging fruit” too — obvious prospects for our services.)

Take, for example, what’s happened with Naked Pizza down in New Orleans. Their entire approach to marketing has been revamped to include social media, especially Twitter. So novel was it, the restaurant garnered coverage in the New York Times as well as investment from Mark Cuban.
The same can be said for Ramon DeLeon, owner of several Domino’s Pizza restaurants in Chicago. He has mastered the art of using social media to sell his products and created a very loyal following in the process. In fact, his popularity has taken on almost Gary Vaynerchukesque proportions.
Recently, I noticed a number of articles and blog posts on the topic of restaurants using social media. Here are a few:

Where fine dining and social media meet – SmartBrief on Social Media
Take a Tip from Restaurants on Email Marketing & Social Media – Vertical Response blog
Atlanta Restaurants Band Together on Niche Social Media Site – 11Alive.com

A year ago I asked the question on Twitter, “If I were a restaurant, I’d use Twitter to…” and received a number of responses ranging from, “I would tweet my lunch specials at lunch time; tweet whether there’s a wait; tweet my best desert of the day” to “ask customers to submit their best homemade recipes and hold a contest, the winner gets dish on the menu 4 a yr & named after them.”
Truly, Facebook Pages and Twitter accounts were made in the shade for restaurants. I can’t think of one good reason why every such establishment shouldn’t have both.
In fact, even though I work as Internet marketing director for a Web design and development company, I once told a client who came to us for consulting on social media marketing that they didn’t need a Web site, and that a Facebook Page would suffice. (And, no, that advise didn’t get me fired.)
In this particular case, the restaurant in question was a lunch counter in an office building, not a full-service restaurant. In their case, a Web site would have been overkill. (For the record, I do believe every full-service restaurant should have a Web site.)
I’d really like to hear from restaurant owners and patrons alike. If you’re a restaurateur, how are you currently using social media? If a patron (and aren’t we all), how do you see social media being a good fit, and in what ways would you encourage its use? Also, please feel free to share links to any restaurant, bar, etc., that’s using social media for marketing purposes and tell me what you think of their use of it.
(NOTE: This is the latest in a series I started last year entitled Social Media Works for Small Business. I Have Proof. See previous entries here, here and here.)

Share and Enjoy:

Car Talk: Ford, Social Media and Me

2010-01-14T12:20:00Z

Ford Motor Company integrated social media into its marketing in a big way in 2009, and this year is moving 25% of its traditional media budget to the digital space. Earlier this week, Ford further demonstrated its commitment to social and digital tools as a way to reach out to new media and, of course, new audiences.

Ford executives from across the globe Monday participated in a 12-hour marathon social media conference at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, that featured live interviews, Facebook wall-posts, blogger interviews, and interactive twitter Q&A’s. From the floor of the show, Jim Farley, group VP of marketing, fielded questions from Brian Solis and me about how the company will use social media as well as talked up the Focus, the first car Ford is marketing to buyers globally.

It’s been a big weeks for Ford: Also this week, the automaker won both the North American Car and Truck of the Year Awards at the kickoff of the Detroit show (with the Ford Fusion Hybrid sedan winning Car of the Year and the Ford Transit Connect van named Truck of the Year). And at last week’s Consumer Electronics Show, Ford won the highest honor in the car tech category for its new MyFord touch interface, a touch-screen made for a car dashboard. (It narrowly lost overall Best in Show to a Panasonic 3D-compatible flat-panel HDTV, said Scott Monty, who heads up social media at Ford.)

Highlights of the yesterday’s chat with Jim Farley (edited for clarity) are below:

On the One Ford initiative:
“Here in Detroit, seems that people finally realize what One Ford means. One car across the world….’

On Ford’s focus on in-car technology for music, entertainment, communications and information:
“The bottom line; when you enter your car, it should be as cool as your iPhone.” Ford’s in-vehicle communications platform, Sync, should also host applications like an iPhone. “My point of view is that we create an open platform like iPhone (for developers) and let the applications flow based on Sync. This seems odd since you would think we want $, but we want the Sync community to grow and these applications are more creative than we can create.”

To critics who say the touch-screen dash is distracting to drivers:
“To be honest – how Sync is executed allows for a richer experience without distractions. I am a believer and have dumped my earphones.”

On envisioning one car, one Focus, across multiple social networks:
Ford’s social media strategy is global: “We are working regionally to assess the best places to be and investing in those places. Honestly, the Fiesta Movement idea came from a social media site in China.”

On working with CEO Alan Mulally:
“Alan is so unique. He is deadly serious business leader and he combines this with a passion for putting the customer first. I knew that I needed to join the team when I met Alan; he gets it. He had a vision for efficient transportation and tech for all. (He is an engineer, after all.) Lastly, he as such an engaging personality, he makes working in a team environment fun.”

On the advantages/limitations of moving 25% of your traditional budget over to social and digital:
“Limits are our fears. Giving 100 Fiestas out meant some would crash; other owners would get in trouble. Also, we need to have enough creative horsepower to come up with unique ideas that viewers will find fun. [But the] advantages are credibility and efficiency.”

On the challenge in building/selling cars in this economy:
“Well, we have such a cool engineering and design team at Ford that the limit is the money we can give them to dream up cool stuff. The difficulty is having people fall in love with Ford again.”

On the keys to changing people’s minds about what their perceptions of what Ford is and the products it builds:
“Having proof about both. Hype doesn’t work anymore. Goodwill for Ford is high but we need proof around fuel economy, leadership, tech, fun to drive, great design, etc. These proof points then demonstrate we are different and worth a look.”

On the “a-ha moment” when Farley grasped the power of social media:
“The a-ha for me was Scion. [Farley spent 17 years at Toyota, joining Ford in 2007.] I learned that for a brand that people don’t know or trust, the company must rely on others to tell the story. People don’t trust big companies, they do trust their friends.”

On measuring the effectiveness of social media:
“We measure program by program, not overall. We tie it to sentiment and volume of buzz around the brand.”

On convincing the C suite on the value of social media:
“Either they get it or they don’t. Thankfully we do.”

The full transcript is here.

Photos at Midday

2010-01-17T14:11:35Z

I know that for the best light you should really take photos early in the morning or in the evening, but at this time of year at these latitudes there can even be some fairly rich light at midday.

I just wandered over to the beach for some fresh air. There wasn’t much going on or much to take photos of, but I took a few anyway and the rich golden light looked quite nice.

Lazy Beach Days

Golden Beach Light

Twitter Premium Accounts Coming by Year’s End

2009-11-19T23:18:43Z

Speaking at a Nesta panel this morning in London, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone stated that long-rumored premium corporate accounts for the most popular microblogging service will come by year’s end.

Although business accounts have long been a source of speculation for the site’s monetization plans, it’s not true that all business accounts will be charged for using the service. Instead, the premium accounts will feature additional analytics data and enhanced features.

Back in August, they said they were in the first phases of rolling out these accounts.

Also on the panel, celebritwit Stephen Fry criticized the move. According to Clickz:

He . . . said he didn’t intend to be “anti-commercial,” but that if Twitter becomes “annoying to users” and there was “a sense of being guided by a big corporate brother,” the company risks alienating its user base.

Which, of course, is a good point. Fry also asked about the possibility of display ads (specifically annoying banners), which Stone dismissed: “the plan has always been to create a [revenue] model that would be native to Twitter.”

What do you think? Are you interested in a premium account? Do you think Twitter will ever cave on display ads?