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Will 2010 be the Year for Engagement

Written on December 13, 2009 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing, searchengineguide

by Eric Brown

It seems a lot of small and midsized businesses are starting to introduce Social Media into their marketing arsenal. Perhaps it is because of budget restrictions or they just want some of the profound buzz surrounding the Social Media Craze.

But what happens once the facebook fan page is up, but few fans, twitter account is live, but only a handful of followers and a blog with no comments and little interaction, Now What?

In order for Social Media to have compound effect it requires Engagement, otherwise you have missed the best effects of Social Media Marketing.

How much does Engagement have to do with your Brand, and with, well YOU.

Seth Godin in his blog post today defined Brand differently than we have thought about in the past;

A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another. If the consumer (whether it’s a business, a buyer, a voter or a donor) doesn’t pay a premium, make a selection or spread the word, then no brand value exists for that consumer.

A brand used to be something else. It used to be a logo or a design or a wrapper. Today, that’s a shadow of the brand, something that might mark the brand’s existence. But just as it takes more than a hat to be a cowboy, it takes more than a designer prattling on about texture to make a brand. If you’ve never heard of it, if you wouldn’t choose it, if you don’t recommend it, then there is no brand, at least not for you.

What Does This Have to Do With Engagement

What Seth is saying is that if folks aren’t talking about You, or your Brand isn’t worth talking about, you have little to no Brand Value. Similarly, if you aren’t doing anything special, Engagement becomes a challenge that even the best of PR can’t overcome.

Andy Sernovitz posted about Bill Samuels Jr., a 7th-generation bourbon maker and president of Maker’s Mark. His Ambassador Program is, time and again, considered the gold standard of product fan clubs. 500,000 people proudly carry a membership card to show their support for this brand.

Bills secret to creating an army of crazy-passionate fans:

1. Authenticity. Bill is Bill. When he emails the ambassadors to meet him for a drink you know he’ll be at the bar waiting to meet you. And he’ll love talking with you and he loves his bourbon.

2. Great Stuff. Maker’s is great. It’s been great for a long, long time — the distillery is a National Historic Landmark. You can’t motivate fans for an average product. For a great product, you don’t need to. They’ll come to you

So what is the special sauce required for Engagement, be Remarkable, do something worth talking about, build a product or service offering that stands out and away from the pack.

Check out our small business news site.

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Will 2010 be the Year for Engagement

Facebook’s Facelift (and Changes for Groups)

Written on October 21, 2009 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing

As we’ve heard before, Facebook is gearing up for yet another redesign. As we saw in leaked screenshots two weeks ago, Facebook is going to start sorting news feeds by Recent Activity and Top News stories (the ones with the most comments or likes). That change is supposed to also reduce load time, and relegates the Publisher box to an “Update Status” button.

So the new news in the latest leaks: Mashable has a four-page PDF from Facebook to its advertisers that outlines the changes they’ve made, and why. In addition to the aforementioned changes to the news feed, they’re adding back a lot of the friend activity information that was filtered out after the last redesign.

Facebook redesigns are notoriously unpopular. Of course, most people resist change, and it’s tough to please hundreds of millions of people.

Other important changes come from the Engagement ads and fan pages. As the PDF for advertisers explains, Facebook is working to help its advertisers receive good placement, so they’re adding fanning, RSVPs for events and virtual gifts to the news feed. (I know, just what you were waiting for.)

This will move these events out of the right-hand column, which would also make ads placed there more prominent.

FB says that their new pages will increase fan signups:

The opportunity to acquire Fans increases with this new home page design. This is due to several reasons including the migration of Fan stories into the center stream, and the increase in “Suggestions” from one to two connections.

They’re also premiering new layouts for Groups (and this one has already rolled out). In a blog post Monday, Facebook said that they’re revamping Groups pages to make them more like profiles and fan pages, and to surface more info to make it easier for members to keep up with group activities. You can also sort your news feed to show only stories from your groups (which isn’t a new feature, I believe, just a reminder).

In all, this “redesign” is more of a tweak to the last one. While no change will ever be well-received 100% by a group as big as FB’s user base, the “less is more” approach will probably lead to less opposition.

What do you think? Will this redesign go over well? Will there be as much protest this time around?

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Facebook’s Facelift (and Changes for Groups)

New Twitter “Ads” Appear? My Conspiracy Theory

Written on July 9, 2009 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

Remember when Twitter first launched its sidebar ads? Only, Twitter told us all that they weren’t actually ads? Then, guess what, they magically started turning into real ads.

OK, so explain this mysterious “public service tweet” that’s started showing up on Twitter:

Actually, Biz Stone has explained it and he says it’s not an ad, just a way to help users upgrade to a browser that supposedly will ensure a “better Web experience on Twitter.”

Really? OK, I’ll buy that these are nothing more than a PSA, but I’ll also give it 6 months before ads start showing up in the exact same place–maybe even linked to the #hashtags you’ve clicked on. Oh wait, you didn’t realize that Twitter made #hashtags clickable, so it could track your interests?

These types of ads work well on many free apps that Twitter users download to their desktops and, just like Google tests new ads placements before deciding if they should be fully released, I believe Twitter is testing the engagement levels of these ads messages.

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New Twitter “Ads” Appear? My Conspiracy Theory

Bing’s Got Some Zing

Written on July 9, 2009 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, marketing

Just last week the earliest of the early reports claimed that Bing had made some impact in the search engine arms race. Those numbers were met with a fair amount of skepticism due to the timing etc. Now Mashable reports that Compete.com has released US traffic stats that shows Bing is making some progress in more than just search.

So after a month, where are we? We knew that Bing was growing, but the numbers being released tonight tell a tale of success, as Bing is now the 13th most visited site on the web.

It doesn’t matter who you are or how down on Microsoft you can get that is not a bad start. Sure, much of the early success can be attributed to the $100 million in advertising etc but that’s why companies do those kinds of things, right? Microsoft must feel at least a little joy from seeing this kind of reaction out of the gate. After all, there were more than a handful of folks who felt that the whole Bing thing would be a ginormous fail but that appears to be just some of the usual Microsoft ‘nay saying’ at this point in time.

So early on, and with the obvious benefit of a ton of Bing buzz, Bing had more US visitors in June than Digg, Twitter and CNN. We all need to take a deep breath though before we anoint Bing a true success.

Where will the search decision engine be in the 4th quarter as the online holiday shopping season progresses (or doesn’t since this year already looks like it might be a dud)? Will the professed strengths of Bing really make an impact thus influencing search behavior which then turns into market share gain against Google and Yahoo? Those are the better questions but for now we’ll let Microsoft have a restrained celebration for this good start.

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Bing’s Got Some Zing

Meebo Guarantees Engagement with New Popups

Written on July 1, 2009 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, book, chat, marketing

If you found an ad format that could be up to 900 x 400, feature rich media and guarantee audience engagement for at least 30 seconds—with testing showing average engagement of over a minute—you’d think it was too good to be true, right?

But that’s the newest ad format and promises from Meebo. In addition to on-site chat and free-standing IM (integrated with popular clients), the instant messaging company powers MySpace IM and Facebook Chat and some forty other good-sized networking sites. Their new ad format already has up to 85 interested websites signed up.

Reuters reports that new ad format shows up first as an icon on the chat toolbar on a partner’s page. Interested users can click on the tab to open the full ad as an overlay (although in the image below, it says “rollover,” not “click”).

Meebo’s COO, Martin Green, says that because only interested users view the full ad, the engagement is far higher than with traditional ads:

We have done this in testing and in the last couple of months we get on average over a minute of time spent, which is a massive amount of time with advertisers’ content. Part of the reason is you only get people who are interested in checking it out.

As shown in the example above, Toyota has already signed on for the new ad format, as has AT&T.

And as for that guarantee? If you don’t get your audience’s engagement for at least 30 seconds, “Green says the company will make up the time by running a proportional amount of ads to cover the discrepancy.”

What do you think? Has Meebo found a key to advertising by only appealing to interested parties? Or will the appeal still be so limited that it’s simply not worth advertisers’ time?

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Meebo Guarantees Engagement with New Popups

Is Google Taking Steps to Prevent Top Talent from Defecting?

Written on July 1, 2009 by admin

Filed Under: marketing, seo

What do you do if you no longer need your Chief Technology Officer, but don’t want your rivals to get their grubby mitts on him either? Well, if you’re Google you quietly move him out of that role, give him some other projects to work on, and hope that no one notices.

Unfortunately, All Things Digital noticed:

[YouTube co-founder Steve] Chen left his spot as chief technology officer last fall, though he remains employed at Google, which bought his company for $1.65 billion in 2006. “Steve shifted his focus to help with some Google engineering projects. He’s still involved with YouTube and invested in its success,” says YouTube spokesman Ricardo Reyes via email.

Still involved with YouTube–except his role of CTO doesn’t actually exist anymore!

The online video space is a tough market these days. While some companies are thriving, others aren’t fairing so well. Reading between the lines, it seems as though Chen’s not as important to YouTube–now that a whole army of engineers are at its disposal–but he could play a vital role at one of its competitors.

We’re seeing execs playing a lot of musical chairs these days, so it would make sense that Google would want to try and keep their top talent from defecting to a rival.

What do you think?

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Is Google Taking Steps to Prevent Top Talent from Defecting?