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The 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing Blog

Best practices, training and innovations in Digital Strategy.

The Domino Game of Duplicate Content

January 2, 2013 – 3:23 pm
Cristiana
 

In the digital marketing era, many companies rely on organic search as a way of fostering interest in their brand and gaining leads. Organic search is popular because of its low cost, high ROI possibilities, with some companies able to rely on search engine optimization as their primary or even sole marketing engine.
Search engine optimization includes targeting specific keywords related to your website – in which you aim to rank for in user-generated searches. In a constant effort to eradicate the SERPs of ‘unworthy’ content, Google penalizes a number of elements that are aimed at taking down those that ‘SPAM’ their websites to trick search engines into ranking them. One of these factors is duplicate content.
In the past, optimizers were able to duplicate keyword rich content on their site. This did several things. It allowed search engines to index a higher number or pages – a ranking factor as well as opened up the number of entrance paths to their website. It also allowed several pages of keyword rich text to be tied to the domain, regardless of how relevant it was or if it were previously on the site. Nowadays, the existence of duplicate content on a website is a ranking factor – so webmasters must do all they can to ensure that content is relevant to a page and that it is unique (both to their own domain and to other sites online, and not just copied from someone else).

There are several tools available to check if you have duplicate content. You want to check both title tags as well as the copy itself. SEOMoz is a great tool that will compare your site to other pages within your domain and alert you to duplicate content. Google Webmaster Tools will also alert you to duplicate title tags.
Sometimes webmasters duplicate content and don’t even realize it. This happens one of two ways. We link to a particular page on our site and that exists in more than one subfolder. For instance, a page links from both the homepage and an inner page. Instead of linking a single URL, the webmaster will make the content available in both sections in an effort to keep the subfolder organized.
For instance:

http://www.bluelinerny.com/contact

http://www.bluelinerny.com/marketing/contact

While it may make sense to some webmasters follow the URL structure on individual pages, what this does it put the exact same content on two different parts of the site. This is most common on e-Commerce sites, with items in a ‘Sale’ section and their regular parent group as well. Search engines will read this as duplicate content and should be flagged for review. Unique content should only exist on a single page of your domain.
Another common cause for duplicate content issues is URLs themselves. URLs that feature varying upper and lowercase letters can be indexed by search engines, creating two identical pages of content without you knowing. Without checking in a tool, you can try this on your website by simply entering two different ways to write a unique URL.                                                                                                                                                                                        For instance:

http://www.bluelinerny.com/seo

http:://www.bluelinerny.com/SEO

http://www.bluelinerny.com/SeO

If all these URL variants were honored by the site (and you were allowed to visit each variation rather than be redirected), you may have a duplicate content issue.  Your next step is to check if these alterative URLs are being indexed.
If you have a small website, you may be able to rel=canonical the URLs with varying capitalizations. It’s important that all URLs canonical to a URL of similar structure. Thus, all should redirect to lowercase URLs (standard) and no uppercase letters should be honored.
It is possible that your URLs are too long or the site is too big and it’s not reasonable to rel=canonical URLs. A simple IIS rewrite rule (dotNetNuke) or script written for your .htaccess file can correct this by ignoring cases and matching URLs [A-Z].
There are several other instances of where duplicate content can appear, but these among the most common. Duplicate content can have very negative implications. While SEO is a long term plan of optimizing several smaller parts, fixing duplicate content issues is one of the few things you can correct and almost immediately see a positive impact. A duplicate content audit should be one of the first tasks undertaken in an SEO undertaking.

 

 

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Poll: Celebrity endorsement in advertising… It does not always work!

November 26, 2012 – 1:34 pm
Cristiana
 

Luxury brands are spending every year millions of dollars hoping to be able to engage as many fans as possible in as many ways as possible via as many channels as possible.

For instance, the famous Louis Vuitton brand had a $10 million advertising agreement with Angelina Jolie. With such a powerful celebrity endorsement, everyone would expect to automatically be an amazing success. But it depends on the way this tactic is approached.

The first question that everyone should ask himself is if the celebrity endorser is credible for a given product or category. Angelina Jolie is quite credible for Louis Vuitton – she is an icon of fashion and glamour and it’s not too hard to imagine her wearing Vuitton products by choice. James Gandolfini would be credible for cigars – it doesn’t require a whole lot of imagination to see the Tony Soprano actor smoking a Montecristo. Now if we change the roles, there will not be any relevance into this approach. So…is the celebrity endorsement cost-effective? Campaign budgets vary, and the situation is the same for celebrity price tags. But as a general matter, the kind of celebrities that could make a difference are not cheap at all.

To find out an answer to the question stated above, Adweek/Harris Interactive recently conducted a poll about celebrity endorsements in advertising, and the results are as follows:

  • 77% of respondents claimed that “when a sports star, movie star or other celebrity endorses a product” they are no more or less likely to buy it.
  • 14% stated they are less likely to buy.
  • Only 4% stated they are more likely to buy. What’s more, these results were remarkably consistent across age groups and gender.

Of course, this poll, as any other opinion survey takes into consideration three big assumptions:

a) that respondents are aware enough of their, often subconscious, mental processes to assess their reaction
b) that they will openly admit  their views; and
c) that their stated views are predictive of their actual behavior

In other words is the celebrity endorser credible for a product category? The answer is simple: not always. For instance, if we take into consideration categories such as perfume, liquor or fashion, celebrity endorsements can bring a lot in terms of credibility while if we refer to financial services, a Hollywood star will never have a positive impact simply because he is not a finance specialist and second because he does not represent the portrait of a potential customer who may need such services.

So, what marketers should do first is to analyze the advertising tactic from different perspectives and be very cautious regarding who is going to endorse the respective product or service because the category and the celebrity are chosen wrongly, then even if the company spends $10 million it may not bring any brand capital.

The following infographics speak for themselves:

 

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#Sandy: Social Media – more than social!

November 5, 2012 – 9:20 am
Cristiana
 

Organizations operating within emergency management are adjusting their communication policies and procedures in order to make the entire process of dealing with disasters more efficient. Due to the social media explosion as a communications tool, it has been obvious that the next step in approaching disasters’ management process will be the use of social media as an efficient method.

The American Red Cross conducted a survey on uses of social media and found: “1/3 of respondents would use social media to alert family and friends that they were safe. 80% felt that emergency response organizations should monitor social media sites regularly. The internet is the third most popular way for the public to gather information about emergencies.

And the recent Sandy Hurricane has demonstrated the power of social media. Therefore, it has been proven that social media is more than social, it has actually become a useful tool in disaster management operations. Thus, Twitter created a special page dedicated to Sandy that include accounts of government, politicians, public safety officials and weather reports.

The social analytics firm Topsy reported nearly 3.5 million tweets with the hashtag #sandy in the first 24 hours of the Sandy Hurricane.The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for instance, tweeted direction for finding shelters using SMS messages such as: #Sandy East coast, search for open shelters by texting: SHELTER + a zip code to 43362 (4FEMA). Ex: Shelter 01234 (std rates apply)
To prove how important social media (especially Twitter) has become in all this process, the next 3 charts speak for themselves:The first graph below presents the number of tweets containing in addition to the word “earthquake” also the word “collapse” between 11/28/2011 – 01/17/2012…

 

The 2nd graph below shows a graph with the number of tweets containing in addition to the word “earthquake” also the word “nuclear”.

The graph below shows a graph with the total number of tweets containing the word “earthquake” in the same period of time.

The first and most important future trend that is emphasized is the technological and social integration in the disaster management. Generally speaking, agencies/organizations are trying to make available reports regarding disasters management via as many mobile devices as possible. Basically, everyone involved in a disaster management process and having a mobile device becomes a live correspondent and let people know what is going on.

Therefore, GDACS (The Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System) is planning to extend the Twitter parser they have already created by more disaster keywords (e.g. “flood“, “tsunami“,“storm“, “hurricane“ etc.) and by more languages. Practically, the analysis will be automatically included into the GDACS website as an additional valuable source of information for the international disaster response community.
Not only has launched the company a mobile application in 2012, but their plan is to be able to correctly process the information for the added pieces of info, in this way trying to resemble with Twitter analysis of the respective data. Basically, their idea is to be able to generate accurate reports of the added information similar to the ones Twitter is providing users with.

Overall, social media has become much more than an entertainment or a marketing tool but more importantly, it proves each and every day how useful it can be when disasters occurs and when saving lives is a priority….

 

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Monday Fun Facts: Youtube

October 22, 2012 – 8:17 am
Cristiana
 

Did you know that there is so much content uploaded on YouTube that it takes 1700 years to watch all of it?

Did you know that Google bought YouTube on 2006 for $1.65 billion, equivalent to the cost of 5 Airbus A 380 which is the largest passenger airliner in the world?

Did you know that it is the 3rd most visited website according to Alexa score?  In fact, the Alexa score should not surprise anybody since the website has 2 billion views every single day. In other words, 1 out of 10 Internet users opens YouTube.

Being accessible from anywhere in the world, YouTube has not only become a tool to upload videos, podcasts, “How to” productions, webinars, Conferences or any kind of events, but also, a perfect way for businesses to insure they can get exposure for their products/services.

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Guess who’s back!?

September 26, 2012 – 1:10 pm
Damjan Dano
 

Do you remember MySpace? Yes, the social network which we all used before Facebook was cool?
Yep, the one with the animated, noisy and colorful backgrounds and with that  creepy Tom guy being added to your friends automatically….

Well guess what? MySpace is coming back!

This time, (btw this would be  their second relaunch), Specific Media and Justin Timberlake are in charge. News Corp is out of the picture. Justin Timberlake and Specific Media bought the social networking site MySpace for $35 million from News Corp. and are planning to make a social network that will practically be the summary of all your social networks.

To a general surprise, the video showing the new design and functionalities, which was published on the internet this Tuesday, got impressive reactions and positive critics. It seems that they did a good job at restructuring the old platform and turning it into something that can be a combination of Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter.

Check out the video below:

The official launch date is still unknown, but rumors are saying that it will start at beginning of 2013.

What do you think, can MySpace endanger Facebook’s dominance in social media? Can they make a good comeback?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below…

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The power of marketing language: when it is time to say “STOP”!

September 21, 2012 – 12:36 pm
Cristiana
 

The rising popularity of social media represents a real opportunity for many businesses with one condition: to be used in an intelligent manner in such a way to boost their brand.

With millions of people chatting, sharing pictures and networking, companies have a real chance to use these platforms to pitch their products or get their customers’ feedback. If companies do know how to use these social platforms in a correct manner, they will arrive in a position where their customers will create/produce the advertising ads for them and then share the new media products with their friends. All these – for free.

But what happens if something goes wrong?

What happens if there is too much creativity and things get out of control?

It is very important to understand that same tools that can bring your brand to a point it has never been before, can carry many risks that sometimes can be unpredicted.

For instance, Toyota Matrix -   the advertising company that worked for this client decided to create an innovative social media campaign with real-life elements… Unfortunately, no one knew what this “high-end creative process’ would lead to. Basically, their concept was based on the famous MTV show (Punk’d). According to the plan, a prospective buyer of a Matrix would single out a friend to be the target of a prank. This may be the perfect scenario for some free marketing across social media channels.

Things got out of control when one of the targets – Amber Duick, received a series of emails from a fictious British soccer hooligan (Sebastian Bowler). He told her in the emails he would come to visit her and will bring out his pit bull as well. One of these emails contained a fake bill for damages made by Bowler in a hotel room. According to the information Duick got, the soccer hooligan had left as contact information her email address.

The consequence was easy to guess… Duick filed a lawsuit of $10 million.

To defend themselves, Toyota and their advertising company considered the claim as being “”entirely without merit adding that Duick had already granted her permission to receive e-mails and other communications from Toyota.

While the plaintiff was terrified – according to her lawyer, the next question is….had the email specified the entire process was an advertising campaign? If so, the woman would not have been so scared….

Again, beyond creativity and beyond any kind of sophisticated strategy it has to be about marketing language!

This is one of the situations when it makes a difference of $10 million (damage that can be counted) but the brand damage as a whole cannot be estimated because it is reflected not only in social media (number of impressions or other variables) but also in sales.

This is the story of ‘Your Other You’ campaign that failed because the language was inappropriate and because no one took into consideration that such an approach is so unpredictable and consequently, marketers have to be very careful when they judge any kind of approach as being creative –crazy –not interesting-risky. In other words, this is a part of marketing where focus groups cannot really help just like new scripts for a indie movie. You cannot predict, you cannot test your customer’s taste – you risk a lot. This being said, do not put additional pressure on your campaign by trying to pass over the edge but rather create a positive context and engage your prospective customer into it rather than building a real life situation that is turning into a sinister joke…..

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The customer you are looking for, you already have

September 20, 2012 – 9:22 am
Damjan Dano
 

The latest research done by Adobe Inc. and their Digital Index section of the website shows that the Pareto principle should not be forgotten and still plays a valuable role in the business planning process.  The research outlines that 41% of online revenue comes from returning (customers who have already purchased something twice on your website) and repeat purchases (post-second purchase visitors that buy more stuff), who represent only 8% of total visitors to your online store.

The research states that in the US, only 1% of shoppers actually make a purchase, but more then 75% of retail marketing budgets are spent on search and display advertising to attract these type of visitors, not to bring or to increase the brand loyalty with the repeat purchasers.

The lesson from the report is to invest in brand loyalty, to make sure your current customers are satisfied and are coming back or referring you to their social circles, before you go and spend money chasing new customers that most likely will not convert. Tools like e-mail marketing, social media strategies and loyalty promotions and even simple thank you notes are the channels that should be used to target your valuable customers.

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Is advertising on social media worth it?

September 14, 2012 – 5:15 pm
Damjan Dano
 

One can argue that those who doubt online ads are those who have never tried them… Can we say the same for the social media ads? Recently Hubspot published some stats that share a pretty good light on social media and the ROI from it…

The statistics show that 42% from the audience that was surveyed by the company are claiming that Facebook is critical for the success of their company. Back in 2009, the number for the same thing was 24%. This increase is most likely due to change in consumer behavior and user’s tendency to use social media more.

62% of marketers have said that social media is becoming more important part to their marketing campaigns over the past 6 months. If you are wondering what happened over the past 6 months: Facebook made changes to their platform, introduced timeline and changed their algorithms to support sponsored stories, promoted status updated, to show more page activities from friends and etc… things that actually helped business pages to show more in news feeds.

Wondering what is the industry that gives best ROI in social media? Answer is obvious: retail.

So what would you really get if you jump into the social media world? This graphic outlines the benefits:

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Marketing for children or children for marketing?

September 14, 2012 – 4:12 pm
Cristiana
 

Marketing and advertising for children has already been more challenging and complex. It is always related to emotional impact both for children and parents and more (very much more) psychology. The reason is simple: children are seeing things that they wish (toys, chocolate bars/cakes, clothing, etc). The next step is relatively easy: they start putting pressure on their parents to purchase the respective “new asset” that is going to be forgotten one week later when something new, more trendy comes up on the market. Moreover, children (even if they are less than 5), they are aware that for instance, they cannot socialize properly with other children if they have an old-dated toy or if they do not go to a specific movie (usually this kind of movie is watched in groups with parents). So, again everything is very strong related to “outside”; if parents believe their children are very young so there is no need for huge expenses, they should think twice. The problem is related to the fact that your child can be rejected from a group, because other children would not accept to socialize with someone who does not have the latest “gadgets” in terms of toys.

Marketers know very well all these aspects. That is why they are closely working with psychologists to figure out the best way to market different products for the young audience. In her book “Advertising to children: Is it ethical?”, Rebecca A. Clay is citing psychologist Allen D. Kanner, PhD who has been asking his younger clients what they wanted to do when they grew up. The answer used to be “nurse,” “astronaut” or some other occupation with intrinsic appeal.
But today the answer has changed into ” I want to make money.” For Kanner, one explanation for that shift can be found in advertising.

“Advertising is a massive, multi-million dollar project that’s having an enormous impact on child development,” says Kanner, who is also an associate faculty member at a clinical psychology training program called the Wright Institute. “The sheer volume of advertising is growing rapidly and invading new areas of childhood, like our schools.”

According to Kanner, the result is not only an epidemic of materialistic values among children, but also something he calls “narcissistic wounding” of children.

Besides this, I would use my expertise in Media to add that Marketing is a strong component of manipulation as well. Marketers are using Psychologists to understand children’s social behavior and their parents’ reaction in different circumstances. This has A LOT to do with the product placement and finally with the overall profit of a company.

According to  Betsy Wagner’s book called, `Our class is brought to you today by…advertisers target a captive market: school kids’, US News & World Report, Vol. 118, No. 16 (1995), p. 63; France, op.cit.; Rhoda H. Karpatkin and Anita Holmes, `Making schools ad-free zones’, Educational Leadership, Vol. 53, No. 1 (1995):  “In the US there are over 57 million school age children and teenagers who spend about $100 billion each year of their own and their family’s money on sweets, food, drinks, video and electronic products, toys, games, movies, sports, clothes and shoes.” These statistics show the best the great potential for this market.

A perfect case-study for marketing for children (and the same time, a very  recent one), is Ron Albanese, formerly known as Polka Dot, who had a very nice social/cultural marketing approach for children combined with a lot of rock & roll.

Remember that a couple of lines above I was mentioning about the fabulous cooperation between marketers and psychologists? Well… the lyrics of many songs that Polka Dot is playing are related to “The Robot from Honolulu”, “A Lotta Energy” and “I don’t wanna go to school”. The titles of these songs express exactly the behavior of almost any typical child. Consequently, the songs are enjoyed a lot, because their songs reflect EXACTLY the thoughts of children.

It was a live performance that took place in Hoboken, NJ. The concept was easy: call to action (parents, grandparents and children) united for a light summer evening. Apparently, this should have been all. But it wasn’t. And here is why: in the pause between ‘The robot from Honolulu”  and “Dress to impress” (interpreted by Ron’s daughter) the artist introduced some special thanks to the City’s Hall that… is organizing on the 30th September 2012 the Arts and Music Festival in Hoboken. This time, the event is more destined to parents but to children as well, because Ron will also perform then. In other words, while addressing special thanks (a message that was obviously for parents and grandparents) making a strong mental note about an upcoming event where Polka Dot will be and about a city event that will occur soon. Going deeper, always during events for children marketers introduce messages for parents as well (because it is obvious that children under 5 for example cannot join events by themselves). I went there just to have fun and I enjoyed this performance a lot even if it was not targeted to me. I felt child again and I experienced the children’s joy. They made my day!

However, my journalistic education does not leave me to remain on this perspective, but encourages me to go further and analyze the purpose of the event. Overall, it was a very enjoyable evening, it was a good branding/marketing tool for upcoming events organized by the City Hall and last but not least, an intelligent self-promotion. If I had to describe the event in 1 word it would be impossible because it was a bit of all these. It was not disturbing. I realized the other 2 purposes but I chose to focus on the first one: having fun.

This case study represents a very interesting way to understand that marketing has extended not only to product placement (in this situation even if the “product placement” was not tangible it was efficient through an event) but also to music and consequently to lyrics. There is a bit of manipulation everywhere.

I am not saying this is necessarily bad because at the end of the day it is your own decision if you accept to be manipulated or not. But what I do say is that marketing has extended in places where has never been before: elevator, subway tunnels and even on the sky. Marketing is everywhere and subliminal messages have strongly touched over the years.

The question for marketers still remains: shall we create events for children where parents will come anyway? Or would it be better to create events for parents with sections especially for children because adults will take them anyway?

To digest all this, you definitely need “a lotta energy”!

 

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Digital Nation and Multi-Tasking – Impact on Marketing’s Language

September 10, 2012 – 7:56 am
Cristiana
 

Social Media has changed the way people think, the way people react, the way people communicate and the way companies brand themselves. For many, it is an integral part of their overall business, PR, and CRM strategies as well.

Moreover, Social Media has changed the structure of the brain itself by becoming an addiction. Addiction forces new generations to function in a self inflicted multitasking learning environment. For instance, studies have found that students studying at Ivy League Universities have problems with their capacity to stay focused on a single task. This leads to misunderstandings, disorganized memory and lack of capacity to think clearly. This has made reputable professors ask themselves if they are just unable to prepare capable-thinking students, as the quality of the learning process has been decreasing.

According to a recent study in Korea, children are spending 50 hours/week playing computer games. This sort of behavior is considered a psychiatric disorder. The Korean Government decided to support the creation of schools to treat computer addiction, where children having such issues can stay for 2 weeks and partake in a free training. This issue is part of a broader problem – multitasking syndrome – which is generating constant interruptions. Consequently, the ability of students to focus single tasks are hampered.

Brilliant students from top universities that are concentrating on multiple fronts the same time “by profession”, have been asked if they were able to perform well while multitasking, and their answers were positive. The actual experiment on them showed otherwise: the capacity of the brain while switching from task to task modified their capacity to stay focused.

Technology has changed the way new generations are thinking, communicating and behaving. In another experiment, listening to one stimulus while watching another unrelated, led to reduced brain activity when compared with listening or looking alone.

Of course the first question that comes to one’s mind is “What does this have to do with marketing?” It’s up to marketers to position a brand in an efficient manner, especially for this target.  This may mean that marketers should start working closely with psychologists /sociologists to understand people’s behavior according to demographics and psycho-graphics.

How will digital marketing adapt to this? This market has different potential and has to be approached differently – not in the same manner this audience was targeted 10 years ago.

Not only is Technology changing and improving itself, but it also changes people and the structure of the society from a relational perspective. Marketing has to change the platforms of their message and adapt to consumers by the way it structures its visual stimulants and language. This is most easily likened to the “elevator pitch”.  Attention has to be caught in the first moments otherwise you risk the distraction from another element. The challenge is an alternative form of getting the customer to understand your brand or product in under 3 minutes, or some may argue less (when distraction typically occurs).

In other words, the new generations, coming from Ivy League Universities or not, change the perspective of the education process itself, change the way technology repositions its newest devices and most importantly, change marketing’s way to address messages (language and platforms).

Do you know what is the common asset of all these? The brain itself….

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