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The 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing Blog

Best practices, training and innovations in Digital Strategy.

Simple Optimization

November 15, 2012 – 1:57 pm
Riyaad
 

Writing Search engine friendly content is not about writing to attract search engines, it’s about writing content to engage your readers. This seems like a simple enough concept but many optimizers tend to forget this. The result is un-readable, SPAMMY sounding content that never really gives the user what they’re looking for. Google and other major search engines are always looking for ways to increase user experience. In this case, it means weeding the top search engine result pages of irrelevant content written to ‘trick’ them into ranking a site.

Over the years, some of these measures to combat this have included the penalization of bolding several different keywords in abundance throughout the page, excessive amounts of in-links to your own site with exact match anchor text, too many on page links, and more. Great text content is about giving the reader the most useful information possible. Forget what you know about search engine optimization. Write first. Optimize later.

Once you have your content written, there are a few things you can do to optimize the page copy without going overboard. It’s important to keep in mind that the copy is just one aspect of your SEO. Aside from the basic h1 tags, bolded phrases, and interlinking, please also consider:

Code to Text Ratio – The amount of coding on your page to the amount of text can be very important to search engines. Not every page must be optimized in this manner, but a website with a small ratio can be indicative of a program, virus, or other questionable web-based enemy of your user. Google likes to see a nice balance of code to copy.

If you’re site is just HTML, you should have no problem with this. If the website is built on a CMS (which can be code heavy), you’re going to want to optimize your code to text ratio. The simplest way to do this is to add more text. If this is not an option, can you ask your website developer to reduce and clean up the coding on your site. YSlow and Google’s own Page Speed Report are generally good first steps in identifying opportunities. A comfortable code to text ratio lies in the pocket between 25-30% for me personally, though 20% for many is considered acceptable.

Check your code to text ratio with this free online tool: http://www.collinsinternet.com/code-to-text-ratio/

Keyword Density – After determining that you have significant copy on the page your next task is to ensure that the words or phrases that you want to compete for are mentioned in the site’s copy. It’s important that the keywords appear naturally in the sentences and that they’re not lumped together. Your target keywords spread throughout the page tastefully in the course of a sentence can drastically improve your site’s search engine performance. Optimal keyword density is between 3% and 7%.

This is a nice tool to help you check keyword density. http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php

The better written, the more a likely a user is to read your content. The ability of a site to have its content read will increase your time on site. It will also allow the reader to scroll further down the page and statistically increases the chances of them both clicking to another page on your site and decreasing bounce rate, and then ultimately converting. These are all positive aspects for your site’s SEO.

Bonus: Sometimes if you’ve been looking at a piece of optimized text for too long, it may make sense to you but may not read well for others. Always have another set of eyes look at the copy when optimizing your site. Have no friends? The Readability Index Calculator is the next best thing. Not fool proof at all, but simply copying and pasting your text in here will both give your readability score and an estimated grade level of your content.

 

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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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It’s About Time: Google’s Disavow Links

October 18, 2012 – 9:58 am
Riyaad
 

After years of asking and months of promises, Google has finally launched their disavow links feature. A little late behind the Bing Webmaster tool, disavowing links allows webmasters to discredit un-favorable links to their site.

Disavowing links has become more important than ever since the Penguin updates. These updates directly targeted ‘non-quality’ inbound links to your domain. This could have happened by optimizers SPAMMING their way to the top of the search engine results pages, either on behalf of your site or of a past owner of your domain. Unfavorable quality links included those from pop up websites, in comments sections of blogs, and more.

Trying to rid their top results pages of irrelevant content, Google’s Penguin update was a blessing for those search optimizers that have always relied on not only white hat SEO, but building actual, quality links. For those that have practiced bad link building, they saw their websites hit hard.

Up until now, clearing up bad links was a pain staking process. At times, you were able to build your way out of it. By creating actual, quality links, it was possible to minimize the negative effects of the older links by simply expanding the ratio of quality links to non-quality links. This did not work in every case though. Some sites were just buried too deep.

In that case, it required sorting through sometimes tens of thousands of inbound links, then denoting the page rank, domain and page authority, page location, etc. With Penguin those once useful links counted against your site more than ever. In order to disavow them yourself, it required hours of sifting through websites looking for contact information or looking the domain up on WhoIs or a similar site if not listed. Then you would have to request that the link be removed via email. Some webmasters oblige, while others you won’t even get a response from. Following up and keeping track of the links removed and those you were waiting on could consume a massive amount of hours depending on how many there were.

And this was just for Google. Bing has allowed you to one by one, enter and confirm the page you wished to be disavowed in Webmaster Tools. Google came back with something even easier. Simply upload the text file of the list of websites that you’d like disavowed, and Google will do it. They warned not to go crazy with this feature and to tread lightly, as removing the wrong links can also have a negative impact on your site. It can also take up to several weeks for the link to be disavowed, but none the less, the Google Disavow Link tool is here and we couldn’t be happier!

 

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Dove – The Ad That Doesn’t Look Like It

October 10, 2012 – 4:03 pm
Cristiana
 

Social media can be a very powerful and persuasive tool for businesses. Facebook’s own simplified language patterns have shown to both target and engage customers on several fronts.

What if a brand decided to swim against the current and rewrite the story of innovation? Dove created a very successful Facebook Ad campaign using a very simple concept they discovered during their research. Dove’s research showed them that only 4% of women feel beautiful.

Using this information, Dove created a Facebook app designed to replace the ads that made women feel guilty about their own physical appearance. To participate, users had to select the message(s) they wanted to send, followed by the name of the woman that they wanted to target. The ads would appear on that users Facebook stream, replacing ads typically targeted to them by other companies. This successful app allowed the user to choose the demographics in which Dove would target.

This simple but efficient marketing strategy targeted an issue that has always been a hot topic for women. It was able to directly connect and generate emotional responses from a wide demographic. The campaign also easily takes on a life of its own and has all the necessary requirements to being shared on a viral level.

The benefits to this kind of campaign do not stop here. People generally feel better about themselves when they have contributed something to the benefit of someone else. The campaign left both the sender and receiver of these messages in good spirits. Dove included their logo in every message to build its own brand equity and hopes the positive energy they’ve put forth will come back to both their brand and their revenues.

 

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Timing Is Everything

October 4, 2012 – 3:10 pm
Riyaad
 

The art of the product release is something that many companies still have trouble coming to grips with. We see this across several verticals. Media management and timing is arguably one of the most influential aspects of a campaign and can help to subtly influence the psyche of the consumer and positively or negatively affect the launch of a product.

We can also draw several parallels to event marketing as well. Timing truly is everything. The time that a product is announced should cover several bases. This includes ensuring that your message is targeted and the call to action is not only feasible, but likely. Everything from picking a time where you know your target audience is willing and able to listen to ensuring they are connected to you by means most conducive to react is highly important.

Attendance to an event may or may not be a concern. If the event details a product launch, it may not be as important, but there are still several other aspects to keep in mind. For instance – What are you doing to promote the product or service after the event? When will it be ready? What is the time between the announcement and release? Does the timing allow you to dominate the press or blogosphere or will you be overwhelmed by another announcement within your industry or vertical that takes precedent?

This touches on several aspects of marketing, both traditional and digital. Whether you’re looking at a retention strategy or outreach, it’s important that your timelines are conducive to a positive consumer experience and take advantage of the psychological effects of a quickly moving, high turnover market.

Apple has learned this very well. Like clock-work they release their updated devices. Everyone knows when to expect updates. Apple makes consumers wait 1 year for a new device or version and after a highly publicized press event, immediately begin to sell the device to take advantage of the excitement among consumers. When they don’t sell immediately, it’s been a relatively quick introduction into the market. If the device went on sale a week or two after the event, they’ve granted limited access to the device and increased it over the course of the interim period to garner and maintain excitement. The company does not wear the device out making it outdated by time it’s released. It promptly plays on the emotion and immediate reaction of consumers to purchase the devices.

Adversely, Motorola is not so good in this department. On September 5th, they had announced their devices ahead of Apple’s. This ensured Motorola’s dominance in the blogosphere, a great move on their part. By pre-cursing Apple’s release by 1 full week, this thoughtful timing allowed Motorola a dominant voice online and ensured they would not be overshadowed by another device on the market. This worked out very well, and Motorola (and Nokia too) enjoyed a full week or full press coverage throughout the web.

Many felt that Motorola did make a few mistakes. They offered consumers too many choices and diluted the attention that each could have gotten by increasing the quantity of their targets. They announced 3 devices. 2 of those are high end (and virtually the same) and 1 is a mid ranged device. They made the mid range device available immediately. The problem with this was that consumers already knew that a better version was on its way. Most consumers are waiting to see both to make a decision. This automatically hindered the immediate sales potential of the $99, Razr M.

Secondly, they didn’t announce a release date for the other two devices (which they should have tested and picked between, rather than releasing both). Motorola gave a vague ‘before the holidays’ answer when questioned about the release. This gives them a window of 3 months in which they can release their device without any further details. The event was anti-climatic. Giving the consumer the information required to make an educated decision is one of the first things they should have considered. The release date or approximate release date of the device is certainly one of those.

What were the consequences? Rather than competing with Apple, they let those with expiring cell phone contracts buy Apple first and left their device to be an after-thought. Nearly 4 weeks after the announcement, Motorola has yet to make the official announcement on its availability. To no one’s surprise, users are getting sick of waiting and are left out in the dark. With no timeline to adhere to, users have continued to buy Apple’s new device and not wait for Motorola to come through.

Weeks after its release, the Apple device is still very popular and still selling out at retail outlets across the country.  On the other side, Motorola is now rumored to be dealing with an antenna issue on their new device that can delay the launch even further. The issue is similar to that of the one faced on the iPhone 4, dubbed ‘Antenna Gate’.

After the much publicized issue with the iPhone 4, surely Motorola should have known about this design probability and should have accounted for it prior to the announcement. This is a huge oversight and one that may delay the release of the product for a significant amount of time. The device was clearly not ready to be released when Motorola had their press event.

They chose to rush the conference to beat out Apple for press coverage and instead showed up to the game too early without something fit for market release. Even worse, Motorola has not displayed a strong strategy for keeping users engaged or interested in their products since its announcement.  Seems like Motorola should look at Apple or Samsung to see how it’s done.

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Whooper Sacrifice. 1 Friend=$0.36

October 1, 2012 – 2:15 pm
Cristiana
 

Every now and then a social media campaign is launched that not only has a significant impact on the brand, but stays in the hearts and minds of consumers for a long time. For me, one of those is undoubtedly the Whopper de-friending campaign. It’s been one of my favorites of the past few years. For those that don’t remember and need a great example of thinking outside of the box, let’s take a stroll down memory lane.

The Whooper Sacrifice as they called it ran on Facebook. This campaign featured a bit of customization, but was worth it. The campaign promised a coupon for a free Whopper if participants deleted 10 of their Facebook friends on the social network. It begged to ask the question – how important of a friend are you? Are you worth a Whopper? Many were dismayed to find out that they were, while some others absolutely understood the necessity of their friend to enjoy Burger King’s Whopper.

The Facebook application was installed by approximately 60,000 in just a couple of days. The results? Burger King gave out nearly 20,000 Whopper coupons, and well over 200,000 Facebook friends were deleted from accounts of their friends.

Facebook participants created unofficial groups where they recruited ‘friends’ that they can subsequently delete for the sake of gaining a free Whopper. This spared many hurt feelings. To promote the Whopper Sacrifice, Burger King went with the simple yet effective press release and a variety of Facebook banners.

Unfortunately, the campaign violated Facebook’s own rules, thus the campaign was disabled. The campaign, in order to further spread the message had to inform the friends that had been sacrificed for the Whopper that they had in fact been de-friended. Facebook does not do this and has strict policies against other applications doing this. After ten days, this vital part of the campaign got the application taken down.

So just how much is a Facebook friend worth? The Atlanta-based company Virtue, seems to have an answer. They conducted extensive research on over 45 million fans of brands on Facebook in order to determine the value of a friend. According to their study, 1 million impressions on the brand’s page times two wall posts/day for 30 days equals 60 million impressions/month. At a $5 CPM (cost per 1,000 clicks), the 60 million impressions equal $300,000 every month. This simply means…$3.60. Despite of some assumptions that still need to be double checked (the impact generated towards each viewer), this would be the basic level associating the value of a friendship with a cost. A Whopper costs $3.60 and if you un-friend 10 people from your list, every friend has a value of 0.36 cents.

 

 

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Your Meta Mapping Style

September 27, 2012 – 2:11 pm
Riyaad
 

It’s not uncommon to see a great keyword list poorly executed. This can result in hard work gone to waste and your website can see little to no SEO improvements.

By the same merit, a terrible keyword list properly mapped throughout a site can assist in your SEO success. Keyword mapping is often the first stage of writing meta data. There is not right way to do this. Every SEO optimizer has their own technique for allocating keywords to a page. Some like to just wing it and write each page as they go along, and some like to attack in stages.

In the past, keyword stuffing had been effective. We can still see some sites that have effective search results with stuffing. Though, when we examine their larger keyword strategy, we can quickly identify the short-comings with this method.

Proper keyword strategy includes allocating specific keywords to relevant pages. The keywords you have chosen should be uniquely (ideally) relevant to a particular page or set of pages on your website. Some search optimizers like to make one big list from which they’ll make their selections. This certainly is a popular method and I’ve done this in the past as well as seen it work well with others.

Blueliner’s keyword list approach is unique. Based on the 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing techniques and best practices, Blueliner’s keyword lists use a tiered approach. A typical keyword list is broken into 5-8 tiers, depending on the size of the site. These tiers represent the level of importance these keywords have to you and how you will distribute them throughout the site.

The keywords in Tier 1 are more important to you and thus distributed more freely throughout your content and in your meta-data. Tiers are developed based on several factors, including volume, relativity, specificity, competitiveness, and more. Each keyword is given a score based on these verticals. The system works well as it forces the optimizer into providing justification for their keyword selection and why they deem one more important than the other. Even more importantly, the scoring system (which is complex and I won’t get into) allows for flexibility. Because of this, the same system has been effective for websites across an array of industries.

I personally prefer a multi-tiered approach. It’s exactly Blueliner’s strategy but makes it easier me when optimizing and analyzing a website. The first thing I do when I look at a website is break out the different sections. When doing keyword research, I like the break out the optimization based on subject matter. Thus if a website’s content can be broken out into six different talking points or subjects, I’ll create seven smaller keyword lists. The first keyword list will be general and speak to the website as a whole. These keywords represent those that will be distributed and represented throughout the entire site.

I tend to find inspiration for keywords based on what the website currently ranks for, what their competitors rank for, and by just reading the site copy. Although I know some of that will change, one can never underestimate the ideas or directions they’ll come up with based on the site copy. Unfortunately, this is not common practice for everyone. Reading almost an entire website is one of the first things I do when creating a keyword list.

The other 6 mini lists include keywords specifically targeted to the variant website subjects. The keywords within these lists are broken down and organized the same way as Blueliner’s tiered strategy. When I create a sitemap, I’ll assign each page a subject. I tend to color code this in Excel and correlate this to the color coding on my individual keyword lists. From there, I’m able to easily allocate the keywords based on subject to the most relevant pages of the site. I will always take at least one keyword from the general list and incorporate it into the page.

This helps to put it into perspective a bit. I now know which keywords are on which page, why they’re there, and can easily affirm their relevancy.

After implementation, this multi-tiered approach makes link building easier as well. I can now track link building to sets of keywords, rather than a keyword list where I sometimes have to wonder if a certain part of a site has gotten enough attention.

When analyzing, refreshing website data, or doing a routine competitive analysis, the multi-tiered approach can also assist in determining how much of a voice you have. It allows you to single out how competitive you are for the different aspects of your website against varying competitors, allowing for a different perspective on where improvements can be made.

This is just my method though. There are tons of great ways to stay organized from the very beginning, making subsequent aspects of your SEO easier on you. Write in the comments below, and let us know what little things you’ve done over the years that have helped you keep a handle on large and complex websites.

 

 

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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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