Search Marketing Gurus | Search Marketing Tips, Advice, Strategies & Tactics From Internet Marketing Professionals

What American Idol Can Teach You About Marketing

I'm not an American Idol watcher.  But as a marketer, and one who loves social media and word of mouth marketing, there's nothing greater than seeing this powerhouse show in action.  Some of the time, the "Wisdom of the Crowds" works out, sometimes it does not.  Sometimes the crowds are with the judges and sometimes, the judges are just so way off base (and I'm not talking about Paula's weird & wacky actions).

This year was the first year I have actually not seen one episode of American Idol.  Usually I at least watch the first few episodes that feature the rather "quirky" performance, hey they turned out William Hung, so it can't be that bad, right? It's it's not unusual that William Hung's awful talents grab the nation by storm, he had a story, his story was "hey I gave it my best shot" and "thank you".  Two things that seem so rare on the entertainment world.

David Cook was this year's American Idol winner.  Interesting thing about it this year was that all three judges (that'd be Scowling Simon, Ever-So-Cool Randy and Whacky Paula ) the night before pretty much were crowning David Archuletta as the winner.  However, the crowds had a lot to say, 97 million votes later David Cook's story and talents appealed to the masses more than his 17 year old competitor's.

The thing that makes American Idol such a powerhouse, and such a "sensation" year after year, is that it's good at telling stories.  So good that sometimes it's the stories behind the contestants that propel the winner into the top categories, or even to fame if they don't win.  Sometimes those stories help the contestant win the hearts of their local audiences, too, as in the case of Temptress Browne of Philladelphia.

Using Social Media to Research Customer Service Experiences

Think that people don't care about conversations about the customer service experience your company provides?  Think again!

According to a recently released study from The Society for New Communications Research on Customer Care, a lot more people are using Social Media to investigate Customer Service experiences dealing with companies.  In the study 91% percent of the respondents said they used some sort of Social Media either "Always", "Often", "Sometimes", or "Rarely".  That's saying something, and companies should start taking heed.

Letting Customers "Own" Your Brand - A Lesson from Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty

Relinquishing the slightest bit of control over a brand, is a very difficult thing for most companies to do.  Public Relations and even some Legal departments have a strangle hold on "brand integrity" so much so, that it can be depriving precious "oxygen" to the brains of the brand.  In today's world, of new medium marketing in places like social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, forums & message boards and blog, keeping a death grip on your brand could be the worse thing you can do if you want to continue to grow your business online.

The internet makes it easier now, more than ever, for consumers to demonstrate their brand loyalty. Of course its also just as easy to show off how upset you are too, as I explained in the "Troll vs. Upset Customer" post from last week.  So how is it that some companies can so easily "Let Go"?

Well, it's a change of thinking, and that's a definite culture shock for a lot of bigger companies, that's for sure.  But it's also a change in acting, and communicating, basically it is a culture change from the very top that needs to be passed down throughout the company.  These changes aren't done overnight, nor are they something companies can enter into lightly.  It's also knowing just how much control to hand over to your audience or customer base.  Companies cannot hand over full control of their brands to their audience because customers and audiences still need to understand what the boundaries are and still need to be guided.

Take for example the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty.  While at the WOMMA WOMM-U event, I got the opportunity to learn a little more about the campaign.  While I knew it was wildly successful, I didn't realize just how successful it was, and what a change in culture this had to be for Dove.  Carla Hendra, CEO of Ogilvy, who's company filmed the "Evolution" Video and launched it out on YouTube, explained they learned a lot through this campaign, as well.  The video itself cost very little to shoot and create, but in return it gave back millions in brand value.

Not only was the brand value monetary for Dove, it was also huge in perception.  Dove, mostly known for its soap, was the third most transformed brand in 2007 behind Google & Yahoo.  Folks, this is a soap brand, soap is not sexy, soap is not tech, soap cleans your face!  But here it is, Dove, ranking 3rd behind two "sexy" tech / web companies.  That's saying something.

So how did this spread?  Dove loosened their grip and allowed this video to be owned by the audience.  Not only that ,they allowed themselves to have a sense of humor.  By being able to do both, the rewards they reaped were beyond their wildest expectations.  This goes far beyond caring about gaining a link, or a search engine ranking from social media sites, that wasn't even in their minds when this campaign was set loose on YouTube.  What Dove accomplished by using Social Media to launch their Word of Mouth campaign is really at its heart what Social Media is all about.

Dove allowed users to be "Social" with the video, if you do a search for "Dove Evolution" on YouTube you see this video isn't in just the Dove/Ogilvy creator's account, it is many users accounts.  If you add up all those accounts this video has been played more than 12.4 million times on the first set of results alone.  Then you also have to remember, this is just YouTube.  This video Dove made is also out on MetaCafe, Yahoo Video, AOL and several other video sharing sites.  That's brand exposure and active engagement that no search engine result nor a commercial on the Super Bowl can give you. 

Along with being free with the video in a manner that allowed others to "own" it in their video accounts, Dove allowed themselves to have a sense of humor.  When the parodies started to appear, unlike James Blunt's record label squashing a Weird Al parody, they let the parodies remain.  This only helped to strengthen Dove's public perception.  When the "Slob Evolution" hit, this further strengthened the brand with pubic and just got the audiences talking all over again about Dove.

 

It's tough for big brands to release their death grip on their brands.  It's scary and it's a culture change that can make any legal or PR team of these big brands turn colors paler than ghosts.  However, in today's society with the internet, with the culture that has only just begun to form - customer can and do own your brand.  It's only when brands wake up and realize these conversations are going on, become active in the conversation and loosen the death grip do the rewards come like they did for Dove.

Trolls or Upset Customers? Do You Know the Difference

Shining a bright light on a troll isn't always the wisest thing to do (especially when they are certifiably crazy, or have had issues in the past).  You have to be careful because sometimes they will steal your goat, or steal your baby (as those old fairy tales would tell us) or they will flame you in a community or even write nasty blog posts about you, your product or service.  Trolls do that because they have a limited scope of view, most only see the world through their own tunnel vision of how they demand the world to work. 

Then you have customers, customers who are vocal, and customers who are passionate.  These customers aren't certifiable, they are normal everyday people who've been wronged in some way or some form by your company, your employees or maybe your product or service.  At times, their passion can be mistaken for something that's "troll like", but if you take the time to look, you'll definitely see the difference 

How do you tell the difference between the Troll and the Upset Customer?  I've been asked this by many clients stepping into this new online world that includes social media and search marketing.  With fears of negative comments, blog posts or being flamed in a community, understanding the difference between a passionate (but upset) customer and a troll can mean a huge difference in time spent on resources to defend accusations and opportunities to turn a focused detractor into a passionate advocate.

Here's a few tips to tell the difference:

• Look at their past conversations in the community.  Does the person seem to contribute in a conversation?  Have they asked sensible questions in the past, and have the participated in a manner that shows there's the ability for a normal conversation?  If so, you likely just have a passionate customer on your hands.
  
  
  
• Are their past conversations on the community are consistently accusatory of other members of the community?  Are their past conversations seemingly self centered, or focused just on one thing?  If someone disagrees with their point of views and they claim "hurt" right away?  This is really "Troll Like" actions, so be forewarned, you're most likely dealing with a troll.
  
  
  
• Take a look at the person's blog.  Do they constantly seem to invoke drama?  Do they announce that they are leaving their blog, and then few hours or days later they announce their triumphant return and apologize for the drama?  Do they flame others and then take down the posts?  Do they lambaste people in their comments who disagree with them?   You are most likely dealing with a troll in this case.
  
  
  
• If you look at the blog and it seems like the blog is engaging in great conversation.  Informative posts, interesting opinions and great conversation in the comments, this is when you'll want to stand up and take notice if they are writing a post about you that isn't so nice.  You've got a passionate customer on your hands.  Take the time to notice they've taken the time to write about their experience and engage this person in professional manner to help resolve the situation.  You could turn that angry customer into a passionate brand evangelist.
  
  
  
• Look around the communities to see if this person who's speaking "ill" of you does the same things on each community.  Are they constantly crying "foul".  Do they have inappropriate conversations on professional marketing channels?  Do they stir up drama wherever they go on the social media sites?  Do they seem like attention hounds on the sites?  If you can answer yes, then you've likely got a Troll on your hands.  They feed on the attention of inappropriate comments on Twitter can get them, or the constant change of relationship status on Facebook garners them.  Don't waste your time on feeding the Troll.
  
  
  
• If the person engages in normal conversations on the various social networks and communities, leaves normal comments, or updates at what seems like a normal rate on Facebook and then all of a sudden now starts chatting up how bad their experience was with your brand, you might want to pay attention to this person.  This is a passionate customer and you've got an opportunity to fix the wrong.

Trolls are time and resource wasters, really you should just leave them under the dark bridges where they live.  Knowing how to spot them can not only help your bottom line, but can also allow you to spend more time focused on helping those customers who've truly been wronged by an experience with your brand, product or service.  Customer Evangelists are what every company wishes for, all you have to do is listen for the opportunity to create one!

* Illustration Credit (Troll under bridge):  Mitchell Cotie

Twitter Policy - Do You Have One In Place?

Twitter is growing at a phenomenal pace.  There's no doubt that as more and more companies adopt new communication platforms like Twitter into their marketing strategies, as well as allowing their employees to use them, some rules should be set up along the way.

Back in December I wrote a piece about "Is Twitter Really Dangerous?", which was prompted by Michael Krigsman's "Twitter Is Dangerous" article.  I was reminded of this again, when I happened upon TwitterLocal.net  (shout out to Drew Olanoff for the tip), and I stumbled across a local user in my area, who actually had his own Twitter policy.  He's just an individual blogger, but he has a link right in his profile on twitter to his policy about who he will and won't follow, and what his guidelines are.

I don't want to put a finger on this person, as I believe he does have a right to privacy, but I just found it fascinating that this person actually took the time to write up his own Twitter policy.  Here's just two of his disclaimers:

• If you’re twittering more than 10 tweets a day, I may have to stop following just so I can keep up with other folks.
• If you add my feed, I will certainly check to see who you are, but if there’s zero identifying information on your profile, why would I add you back?

And he's got a few guidelines he himself tried to follow:

• I’ll post links to things only now and then, since I know Twitter is very often used in (and was intended for) mobile contexts; and when I do, I’ll give some context, rather than just “this is cool …”
• In spite of my best intentions, I’ll probably break these guidelines now and then, but hopefully not too much, whatever “too much” is.

Now why do I find this so fascinating?  Mostly because major brands are out here on twitter and haven't even taken the time to define a Twitter policy. There's a lot of things to consider when you start an account on a place like Twitter or even Facebook or MySpace.  Thinking about the following items might help you come up with a decent Twitter policy that can define it very easily to your audience how you intend to communicate with them.

• Who will you follow?
• How do you hold conversations?
• What will you talk about?
• Who is the account with? (Who Owns The Account?)
  
  • Is it a company representative?  If so who's the rep?
  • Is it a number of company representatives?
  • Is it an authorized twitter account from the company?
• What's the twitter account's purpose?
  • To hold conversations with an audience?
  • Get feedback on products / services?
  • Promote special sales or events?
• Why do you "unfollow"?
• How many tweets do you tweet a day?
• How do you respond to direct messages or replies? (@'s)
• Do you promote others on twitter?
• Is your blog part of your twitter account?

As you can see these are just a few things that companies should think about.  Heck, even popular individuals probably should think about having a twitter policy.  This can help to head off a lot of hassles, headaches and misunderstandings a head of time.  It can also lead to a much better conversation with your community if they understand where you are coming from in the first place.

When big companies start a Twitter account these days, sometimes its because they see it as the "latest" thing they should be involved in.  Without even thinking about some consequences, before they know it things can spiral out of control. 

Quite the opposite can happen, like in the case of Delta Airlines.  Delta Airlines has a twitter account but it's not the official account from the company.  Its actually kind of sad, because it is such a great tool and it's just an employee, not an "official" channel Delta customer could speak with.  If you are a big brand, or a popular brand, you should at least snag up that twitter account name so well-intentioned employees don't do it for you.

Twitter is a great way to hold a conversation with your community.  A great way to make sure the conversation stays on track and doesn't get derailed or ended, it to put a Twitter Policy in place.

*Twitter Shirt Picture Credit: Luisdrk, Twitter Art Picture Credit:  jmtucu

WOMMA WOMM-U: Jen Gulvik Presents Houlihan's WOMM Case Study

Houlihan's went through an entire restructuring, down to even changing the forks and the music.

Half the people who live within a 3 mile radius of the restaurants, have never been to a Houlihan's or were lapse customers.  The only people who really knew about Houlihan's was employees, current customers and a "few" others.  They do limited mass media advertising.  They really win their customers over one at a time.  They are in an environment where their competition have millions of dollars to spend in mass media.  That climate made them look at other ways to work with marketing.

They started with emails to 100,000k members.  Customers are focused on culture.  And Houlihan's focuses on the customer.  The CEO reads every single customer comments, Jen responds to 70% of them.  What they have noticed lately, they have been getting more fan mail.  She believes this is because of the change in the environment, that customers want to help take control of the brand.

They get a ton of fun, funny comments.

WOMMA WOMM-U: Bob Pearson from Dell Keynote

Bob Pearson, of Dell is presenting the first keynote of the morning.  He hates podiums so he's actually walking through the crowd.  So what Dell's Learned so far?

#1  the online world is undergoing the most significant transformation so far.  There is growth ever second.  A month ago China over took the US with the number of people online.  Over 500k people go online for the first time everyday. Do we know their purchase habits?  Do we know their searching habits?  No!

#2  The # of conversations is exploding.  Digital data is exploding. It's increased 6 times over the past 4 years.  The amount of conversations is going up exponentially.

#3  customers want to speak with us in their first language.  English reaches 1/3 of thw orld in a good day.  People want to do business in the language they are comfortable in.  2/3 of what happens in the world is in 9 other languages.Japan is actually the #1 country in the world for conversations - text messages and blogs contribute to this.

Truth in Marketing - Customers Demand It, Even Online

Social media is fast becoming an integral part of marketing campaigns.  The more the internet pushes the boundaries of communication and how fast it can deliver multimedia such as videos and photos, the more it becomes ingrained into the very essence of everyone's day to day activities.  People communicate in much broader ways now than they every have.

We used to have the pony express, then it was the telegraph, then the phone brought us even closer even though were hundreds of miles apart.  When the computer started to be a way to communicate (think ARPANET here), that's when things really started to expand - emails, message boards, then instant messenger soon came along.  Forums & message boards never went away, they just began to morph into communities, soon enough you had intricate profiles, as well as blogs and now even multimedia can be added in.

So where am I going with this? 

Online Marketing Tips: Social Media Types Video (Part 3)

This week’s online marketing tips video covers the third part of the Social Media series where I discuss another type of social media and two specific sites - Wikipedia and StumbleUpon.  You can utilize these sites in your online marketing strategies, if you are upfront and transparent. 

The video is about 5 minutes long this week - I actually changed things just a bit thanks to a tip from a friend.  Check out this Tuesday’s video and remember I’ll be back next week with the next installment of Tuesday's Tips in Online Marketing.

Full transcript of the video after the jump....

Conversion Rate: What's Your Website Tracking As A Conversion?

When you  hear the word "conversion" do you automatically think "shopping cart", "secure server", or "SSL"?  It's O.K. if you do, most people think along those lines when they hear talk about converting visitors to buyers.  When people first started talking about successful websites and how to measure the success of a website, conversion rates went hand in hand with retail sites.

The world of online marketing and being held accountable for the bottom line has advanced quite rapidly in the past few years.  It is no longer the retail site that is concerned about the "conversion".  Just about every site on the internet can track some kind of conversion.  Now you are probably scratching your head and thinking "what's she talking about"?  Well lets take a look at the different types of conversion rates you can track - and help to prove the success or the failure of your online marketing efforts.

• Purchase Conversion:
  This is the type of conversion that most equate with the term "conversion".  This is where a visitor comes to your website or web page and then eventually, either in that visit or a subsequent visit depending on your analytics tracking, purchases a product or service that your website offers.  This type of conversion is pretty clean cut as you can clearly tie back advertising spend, resources and product/service costs to the conversion.
  
  
  
• Email Sign-Up Conversion:
  Signing up for an email newsletter is a conversion?  You bet!  You have engaged the visitor enough for them to check that box, fill out that form and hit the submit button.  Although not quite a clean cut to tie back resources too, some companies assign a specific value to each sign up, in order to be able to track the success or failure of the campaign.
  
  

Why Blogging Is A Lot Like Karaoke

You laughed!  I know you did! :)

Yesterday, as I was driving to Via Roma which is my usual Friday night hangout with friends, I was just thinking about the different aspects of blogging, and it really hit me that it's actually a lot like Karaoke.  Of course in most cases, this is without the music and a mic, unless you are podcasting or vodcasting.

There's a lot that you have to overcome in karaoke, just as you do in blogging.  You have to be able to take the criticism with the applause.  You need to realize and know what works and what doesn't (honestly, I really just can't do rap!), and there's likely a few other thousand minute things that can compare blogging with karaoke.  So maybe I'm just a little odd, but hey - I like to have fun and I figured it could be fun comparing my two passions - if anything this could give you a little weekend humor.

It Takes Practice... American Idol Doesn't Come To You
It's rare that even with the words on the screen, do you get a song right the first time you sing it.  You could hit a certain part of the song off key, hold a note too long or mess up the words.  Overnight sensations in Karaoke really don't happen (regardless if Kenny Chesney sings about it or not).  American Idol doesn't sit in karaoke bars, so it's ok to be "off" on somethings, until you get it right.  The same is with blogging. 

It's rare that you have a overnight success in blogging, or that a post hits digg within the first few minutes of posting.  Both karaoke and blogging take practice.  With karaoke, when you finally know a song well because you've practiced a few times, your confidence builds and your voice can just shine through.  The same goes for blogging, when you start getting comments, when people start submitting your posts to stumble upon or reddit or sphinn, you know your practice has helped.  It's true you know, practice makes perfect!

Cheer Others On!
There's one rule with my friends Terri & Glen, who run the karaoke where I go, have and that's you cheer others on.  Now, that may sound a little forced, but honestly it's not.  It also helps a heck of a lot to build up some confidence.  There are those who are first time singers, or maybe they are veterans who've just had a bad day and those few rounds of applause can ease the nervousness or pick up their day.

The same is true in blogging.  Sending a link to a blogger who you thought had a great post.  Leaving a comment because their post touched you in some way.  Subscribing to their feed.  Sending and email or a tweet and saying "hey what you wrote, really rocked!" are all tiny ways of cheering others on. 

These are simple things that can go a long way to encourage others or pick up their day.  It can boost the confidence of a new blogger or it can re-ignite the passion of someone who's wondering "why the heck am I doing this?".  Cheer someone on, it can also put a smile on your own face.

Online Content Strategies: One Hit Wonders or Writing for Your Audience?

While I was at Unleashed, I got the opportunity to sit in on Matt Bailey's Analytics presentation.  If you haven't gotten the chance to see Matt speak, you should make it a point to do so in the near future.  Matt has a passion for relating information to an audience in a very enthusiastic way.

During SES, I let Brian Cosgrove have the honors of blogging about his session at SES NYC.  Brian's got a great summation about Matt's session at SES, which people were spilling out into the hallway to hear him speak.

Why I mention Matt's presentation, is because another post on Seth Godin's blog really got me to thinking.  Add that together with all the furor over Jason Calacanis' reported comments at SMX Social, (by the way Danny has clarified and I also got some clarification on this direct from Jason and he has promised a video response).  It really got me to thinking, seriously thinking.

Do you know, truly know who your audience is?

Are you creating content for your audience, or are you creating content for the search engines, or for the hopes of getting to the top of Digg, or maybe making it big at StumbleUpon?  Sure, these sites (search engines included) bring in, as Matt stated in his presentation, "butt loads" of traffic an links, however, is this really who you want coming into your site?

Jason isn't far off the mark, and neither is Seth, and Matt's right on the money.  Creating content for your audience is what website owners should be doing.  Now, don't get me wrong here, I'm not in the slightest way saying "SEO is bullshit", you still need the SEO to have that content found.  However, if all you are doing is constantly creating "Top Ten Lists" or insane videos, and these really don't reflect your brand, product or service - you are just going to get that spike in traffic and nothing more.

One hit wonders in viral marketing and linkbait tend to create nothing in the way of decent targeted audience members.  While viral marketing can be great and wonderful for that bounce in traffic and maybe to get a new site discovered, can you sit down and analyze that segmented traffic and see if it was truly successful?  Did these visitors just come and view one page (your linkbait or viral piece) and leave?  Did they navigate any further in your site?  Did they subscribe to your newsletter or blog?  Did they read another article on you blog or even leave a comment?  Did you even have a goal for that viral strategy to begin with, because honestly "just getting hits" really isn't enough these days.

If you can't see that your content isn't appealing to your true audience, and is only being a one hit wonder to sites like Digg and Stumbleupon, maybe you should be rethinking your online content strategy.  Do you even have one to begin with or are you just hoping that with each launch of a viral campaign, this will be the "thing" that launches you into stardom on the internet?

Write content for your audience first, they are the ones that will buy what you are selling - not the "one hit wonders."  If you don't believe me, take a look at your analytics and see how high your bounce rate is for that segmented traffic.

Building Communities in Social Media

Wendy Piersall started her blog as a hobby, the blog was an extension of her business, a tool to compliment it.  Within three months, Wendy’s eMom's at Home blog became its own full time job.  She had to rethink her strategy about the business.  Within 2 years Wendy had a thriving community on her hands, with thousands of readers and subscribers. How did this happen?

Conversation.

Communities thrive on it, we humans crave it.  Unless you are a hermit or a person on a religious quest that requires seclusion and not speaking, we seek out human interaction.  We want to hear other people’s thoughts, we long for interaction to know if our own thoughts are in line with common thinking or if we are out of line, or are we rebels (with or without a cause).

Communities are nothing new.  Communities bond upon a single or a few commonalities.  It was how this nation (the United States) was formed, a common bond of the wish to have freedom of religion.  Later on for immigrants coming through Ellis Island, the bond was the dream of a better life.  It is no different even with all of our gadgets, speed and technologies, we as humans still need to bond, and it is why we seek out communities online.

Wendy’s community grew and thrived because she fostered a great conversation.  She listened and she also conversed with her audience – she never spoke "at" them.  She constantly listened and she participated in the conversation, always keeping in mind “what would her audience get” from each conversation she would invoke with her blog posts.

Wendy was also wise enough to realize the conversation wasn’t just going on, on her blog.  There were other blogs out there having similar conversations that she felt helped or contributed to the conversation.  Wendy wisely not only sought them out and commented about on their blogs she included them in her own conversation as well.  By doing this,  she was eventually pulling in their audiences to participate in the conversation.

Now a little over 2 years later, realizing that what started out as her “hobby” has grown into this enormous community and her original thoughts for the blog my limit the potential for the conversations growth, Wendy reached out to her community.  Wendy asked and the community overwhelming responded and now eMoms at Home is opening to an even wider community by becoming SparkPlugging, focusing on the entrepreneurial community.  Wendy's own blog is getting renamed to Sparkplug CEO, as well.

When you recognize that a conversation is happening and you embrace it and foster it, a community can grow around that conversation.  Hard sells, preaching a message, and advertorials just don’t work, those methods do not foster and grow communities.   You really have to have a love, a passion for your conversation, you have to care about it, if it is going to even have any shot at succeeding in this new online social world. 

It’s why companies who really do care about what people think about their brands, or their products or services succeed in overwhelming ways in social media.  If you only care about selling a soda (think Sprite Sips on Facebook ), or getting people into your store (think Walmart Flogs) you likely won’t get very far since your conversation is only one way and isn’t really genuine.  However, if you are like Wendy, or BlendTec or even Lionel Menchaca from Dell, your community grows at astounding rates.

The key to building communities?  Conversation and realizing that as much as they involve speaking to someone, building communities involves a lot more listening and understanding.  So, stop and think – are you preaching or are you conversing?

I said yesterday that Mack Collier inspired me to love Blogging again.  Wendy also inspired me about communities and she made me excited about the potential of building a great community. To read about Wendy's presentation at SEG's Unleashed Conference for Small Business Marketing, check out David's take on Wendy's session.  Hop on over to SEG to get all the coverage of what happened at SEG's Unleashed Conference in Houston.

You can also find Wendy on Twitter, Mack on Twitter and even me on Twitter, too. Why not start a conversation with us?  :)

Blogging for Business - Mack Collier at Unleashed Small Business Marketing Conference

Mack Collier, who writes the Viral Garden blog, presented at Search Engine Guide's Unleashed conference in Houston yesterday April 21, 2008.  I came away from his presentation with a renewed outlook on blogging.  It's refreshing to hear a perspective about blogging that is so totally removed from the Search Marketing Industry, so totally refreshing and I'm very glad Jennifer Laycock brought Mack in to present this session.

In our world of links and ranking, as search marketers we see blogs as another "tool" to make a website pop.  It's another way to dominate the rankings for keywords whether they be general keywords or long tail keywords.  We all stop to worry about how many Sphinns a blog post got, or how many links the blog post generated or how fast the blog post you wrote got to the top of Digg.

That, my friends and fellow colleagues, is how search marketers think about blogging and also social media.  That's not how the rest of the world thinks about blogging and social media, and we are in a minority (believe it or not).

What Mack really drove home to me, and made me re-open my eyes to, is that blogging is about the community, and the conversation that community is having with you, about you and without you.  If you are only in it to get links, it's probably not a good reason to be blogging.  If you are only in it to get rankings, then again, it's not a good reason to be blogging.  If you are in it to have a conversation around your product, service, brand or something you love - then you should be blogging.

Mack gave a great presentation that highlighted everything from Dell's Linoel Menchaca to Stormhoek and their use of blogging.  Even how a marketing executive from Universal took 30 minutes out of his day to talk to a blogger and how that exposure helped promote his movie.  Not once did Mack focus on how many links these blog posts brought in - it was totally focused on the community.

To read more about Mack's presentation and the rest of the sessions at Unleashed visit Search Engine Guide.  As always if you like to see photo coverage, check out the Unleashed Small Business Marketing Photos on Flickr.

Twitter & the Democratic Presidential Candidates

Twitter is growing by leaps and bounds.  It is starting to reach into the main stream, especially when you consider how even the 2008 Presidential Candidates are using it to get the message out about their campaigns.  I looked at all three candidates presently still alive in the race, Hillary Clinton & Barack Obama on the Democrat side, and John McCain on the Republican side and how they used twitter. 

I wanted to be fair and show both sides, but when I went and looked at all three, and I couldn't find the "official" Twitter page for John McCain. However, I did find two popular ones McCain News & JohnMcCain2008.  Not sure who it is that really has the John McCain Twitter account, but its obviously not the John McCain running for President.  Searches on Twitter for John McCain don't produce the official twitter account either.  Since that campaign isn't utilizing Twitter at this point as a campaign tool, I'm just going to focus on the Democrats.

Hillary Clinton & Twitter

I sit here at my keys wondering how to start this.  Well you know that term "elitist" that's been tossed around these days before the upcoming Pennsylvania primary?  Well if you looked at Twitter, you honestly would be thinking the opposite of what the press tells us here in Pennsylvania (mind you I take what the press tells me with a grain of salt) or this candidate.  When you look at Hillary Clinton's Twitter account, you see that she follows NO ONE.  Seriously, no one. 

Then there's the Hillary Clinton Twitter account for her MySpace page.  Alright, that one does a little bit better, they are following one person on twitter (as of this writing).  There are a bunch of other Twitter accounts out there about Hillary Clinton as well and those fare better in the way of following their followers. 

Talk about wanting to put out a very controlled message.  Everything that comes into the Hillary Clinton Twitter account is a reflection of her blog, but added with the words "I am" or "I'm".  There's no opportunity for two way conversations when you think of it, and there's nothing more than what's on her blog.  It's all about delivering the "spin" in a very tight, precise and controlled fashion - typical of "old politics" and how they like to run campaigns.  Trouble is - we're in a new world now and on the internet there's not a lot you can control when you enter the Social Media realm.  It's also why it doesn't appeal to the younger set of voters, they see this as typical "old politics" - not the opportunity to have their voice heard.

There are a lot of other Hillary Clinton based or themed Twitter accounts out there.  When you do a search on Hillary Clinton in the Twitter site you return 12 results, and the official Hillary Clinton Twitter account doesn't appear to near the bottom of the page.  Some of these are detractors (take a look at the icon for third result in this screen capture of the search results for 'Hillary Clinton'), but some are fans and supportors that are reporting on the news that Clinton is making in the media.  These accounts actually are engaging in conversation about Hillary Clinton, unfortunately for the Clinton campaign they can't control it.

Barack Obama & Twitter

By contrast, you look at the Barack Obama Twitter account and you see this account is following just as many as are following him (sometimes it falls behind).  Who ever is running the account (I find it hard to believe that either candidate is "Twittering" like us "somewhat normal" folks are), is actively engaging in following people who choose to follow them, and they are twittering in a way that isn't as controlled.

If you look at the type of Tweets that are coming out of the Barack Obama Twitter account, they seem a lot more personable and less "contrived".  There is the "I'm doing this" but it's also including things like "why don't you come and see me" or "take a look for yourself" parts of a conversation that engage the audience and ask them to do something.  Compared to the Clinton Twitter account its refreshing to see this account seeming to interact with its followers rather than bragging about doing this or doing that.

Barack Obama's campaign team has also really promoted and used twitter, not just to say "I'm at this debate" or "I'm at this place speaking", they use it to say "hey come take a look at our video" and use it to promote different things with the campaign.  It must be working, because they have over 7 times the followers that Hillary Clinton does.  I think this also goes to show how Barack Obama is Rocking the Youth Vote, where Hillary Clinton does not.  All of this really makes me wonder, if they (Barack's campaign) took it to the next level and said "Hey voters in PA, tell us what you think about XYZ", how this might engage more supporters and voters?

A search on Twitter for "Barack Obama" shows 17 different accounts on Twitter, and the official Barack Obama account is right at the top.  It's also a little easier to see that if you just typed in "Obama" into Twitter, of those 90+ results - the majority of those are Barack Obama supporters.  Its easy to see this because his name is pretty unique, unlike typing in "Hillary" or "Clinton" where it is a lot more murky as those names are more common as people's first names or last.

So what's the conclusion in all of this, does it translate over votes?  Well a lot would point to Ron Paul and how he grew on the internet as a force to be reckoned with, but yet that didn't translate into votes that it probably doesn't. 

I think Barack Obama's campaign is fairing a lot better, thanks in part, not just to Twitter but to them recognizing how to use social media on a whole to communicate (yes two way conversations) with the younger set of voters in this country.  Look at the exit polling numbers, look at the data of the record number of youth votes in this primary - and then look at who they voted for.  I'd say social media definitely has some kind of influence there, don't you?

Online Marketing Tips: Social Media Types Video (Part 1)

Tuesday's Tips in Online Marketing is back for it's 2nd edition.  This week's video features discussion of the different types of social media that is available for online marketing campaign use.  Since Social Media is such a huge area of Online Marketing and it covers a lot of different aspects, this is going to be part 1 of a 3 part series.

View this video on other video share services: Yahoo, MySpace, Metacafe, Google, Revver, DailyMotion, Blip.