Red Bull's Facebook post in which over 17% of engagements were shares

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If your prospects can’t find you at the Google search box, then it is well worth your time to optimize your content, keywords and entire web presence for organic search. And you want to because more than 1 billion Google searches are performed every day; 85% of those searchers are most likely to click on the organic side (left-hand side) of the search results.

Getting to the top of Google’s search results requires ongoing commitment to optimizing your entire web presence.

Here are five SEO tips and tactics that will help you improve your search engine rankings, increase eyeballs to your online store and impact sales.

1. How do you rank now?

Before investing any time in SEO it’s best to understand how you currently rank for the keywords that you want to be found for. Accurate SEO rankings are challenging to obtain because Google personalizes search results for everyone.

If you go to the Google search box and search on your own product, it may appear as though you are #1 because you’ve likely searched on the keyword before and Google is personalizing the search for you. However, a prospect searching for your product for the first time might see your website or product page ranked #7.

SEO ranking results are also different by country. So if you’re located in France but trying to be found in Google.com, it is almost impossible to understand your actual SEO ranking.

Gaining insight into your true, unskewed, non-personalized SEO ranking for a particular keyword phrase requires access to an SEO ranking tool.

2. Closing the keyword gap.

The keyword gap is a concept I use to describe the fact that your prospects are most likely using a different keyword to find your products and services compared to the keyword you would use. For example, if you are selling “gizmos” your prospects may actually refer to them as “gadgets” in the Google search box.

Closing your keyword gap is about understanding how your prospects and customers are searching and adjusting your keyword strategy to match their intentions.

The only way to close your keyword gap is through keyword research. Studying your website analytics as well as talking to your customers are two great ways to get started. (Download: Getting Your Keywords Right Workbook)

3. Continuous content.

A strong SEO strategy starts with a continuous commitment to content. Content is at the heart of SEO. Without content, you’ll never be found in Google. Keep in mind that Google loves fresh, relevant content.

Start with evaluating your website and deciding if you think the content throughout your site could be improved. How do you take what you learned in #2 above and work those keywords into your content?

A regular blogging strategy will also boost and help maintain high SEO rankings when the content is optimized for the keyword phrases you are attempting to rank for. Brainstorm blog topics in advance. Think about stories about your products, the clients that love them, how they use them, etc. Post your blog content on your blog site and also Tweet it, Facebook it, YouTube It and Google+ it.

4. YouTube; YouBeFound.

YouTube is the second busiest search engine only after its parent, Google. Once you close your keyword gap and have great content, putting in the extra effort to publish video content on YouTube and optimizing it for search will really pay off.

Not only will you be found when a prospect searches directly from the YouTube search box, but YouTube results can also be embedded in the Google search results page. This increases the likelihood of you occupying multiple rank positions in Google for your product. Who doesn’t want that?

Ensure you have sufficient links back to your website from the video page and reference the keyword in your voice over. And remember, your videos don’t have to be fancy or expensive.

5. Socialize your online store.

According to both Google and Bing, social signals now account for 8% to 10% of their organic search algorithms. Your social media presence now matters to SEO! This means that Google is evaluating the volume of social signals that are being produced by your web presence.

A social signal can be a Twitter tweet or retweet, a Facebook Like or Share, or a Google +1. Here are a few tips to help increase your social signals:

• Ensure you have the social sharing icons on every page of your website. Not just the home page, but every shopping cart page. It is about providing your shoppers with endless opportunities to click the Like or Share or Tweet button.
• Incorporate Facebook into your site wherever possible. For example, add a Facebook Fan Box to your web pages as well as the Facebook Comments App to your blog.
• If possible, add your customers to your Google+ Circles and follow them on Twitter. They may reciprocate and retweet your product tweets or share your content in their circles.
• SEO Your Business Facebook Page. There are even more tips and tricks available in this SEO Your Business Facebook Page How-To Guide.

All this “SEO stuff” may sound daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Take it one step at a time, spend an hour per day figuring it out and it will pay off. SEO results do not happen overnight, but they do happen. It is a never-ending process but one worth investing in.

It's still the wild west when it comes to mobile ad tracking and ad serving. Although some agencies have started to test out various third party ad serving solutions, the delivery of many campaigns are still reported on by publisher, ad network, and rich media company ad servers. Many of these ad servers are proprietary ad servers with a range of capabilities.

There are also companies that are in the process of developing their own "mobile cookie" or proprietary tracking solutions. Some of these solutions require the implementation of third party tracking tags that are Javascript tags. Javascript tags are not yet widely accepted by mobile publishers and ad networks for various reasons from concerns over security to lack of ability to implement it in the ad server. It is much like the early days of online advertising (think circa 1999) when online ads were still primarily gif and jpgs, only pixel tracking was common, and publisher ad server reporting was the norm. We are in a very similar stage right now in mobile and we need to come together as an industry to be open to new methods so we can start to provide better measurement solutions for our clients.

Naturally as more Smartphones come into the market, we will see more rich media advertising in mobile which will help drive ad serving improvements just as we saw online. Until then, let's push for testing new tracking options in the market so we aren't stuck partying like it's 1999.

For those of you that track analytics or keyword reports, either on your own or through your agency, (not provided) should be old news. The not-so-recent search encryption update from Google has had a larger impact on analytics than expected, as (not provided) is polluting top keyword reports regardless of your industry. The update allows users that are logged into Google to encrypt their searches so that the keyword they used to find your site is not revealed in analytics and is instead (not provided). While this is a step forward for privacy – in theory (see below) – it has made the job of the Data Analysts and SEOs a bit harder. After all, if you don’t know which words your consumers are using to find your site, how can you properly target them online?

Now Firefox is getting in on the search encryption fun, if something like search encryption can really be considered fun. Their most recent browser update defaults to a private search, regardless of the search engine you’re using. In other words, if you’ve recently updated Firefox and have not changed your default settings, your search keyword is (not set) for Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. Search marketers are not seeing which keyword search led you to their site when they check their Google Analytics.

Alone, these two updates may not have amounted to much, but together they are hiding a fairly large portion of data, enough to force consideration of what analytics does for you and how you can replace the lost information. While some articles are providing specific examples of the damage (not provided) can do, even anecdotally it is clear that marketers needed to take notice of this update. However, having less than 10% of your data affected is not usually enough to cause real damage or a change in approach. But what if over 20%, or up to 40% of your data is hidden? With (not set) being triggered by Firefox in addition to Google’s (not provided), that is just what is happening to some site owners. Needless to say, if you have full data for 1,000 keyword searches you’re going to be more effective targeting users than if you have the data for just 600 such searches.

Why isn’t (not provided) Showing Up in AdWords Data?

I have no quarrel with Firefox offering an update that could appeal to users and help to differentiate itself from other browsers (read: Explorer), but here is where I pick a bone with the change. Those paying for ad placement within the Google search network can see which keywords led to a user clicking on their ad. So if you’re paying Google, they are providing you with the keyword search of their logged in users; it is just for organic search, the type for which marketers can’t pay for top placement, that the privacy implementation is coming into play.

It is worth repeating that if you click on an ad, and Google gets money for that ad, they will “unblock” your private search. That is because it has already been sold to marketers at an arranged cost – the cost of the ad placement. But if you click on a natural result, and Google gets no money, you can keep your privacy. So that begs the question: Why update privacy now? While I can’t get inside Google’s head (if I could, I’d be rich) and say for sure “why now,” I can say that marketers should be looking at other ways to collect data if they want the complete picture.

What this all means is that SEOs and other online search marketers for small business, the types that can’t afford an Omniture or a Webtrends analytics platform, must ponder a day when Google’s free analytics goes away or is diluted. While Google Analytics is currently the most cost-effective option for site performance measurement for most businesses, the day when Google makes you pay for the best, most actionable data seems a bit closer now than it had been a few months ago.

Given that, it might be time to consider your options for replacing the lost information, though there is no impetus act on those ideas immediately (or as long as GA remains free). While solutions will vary with site data needs, some options include more in up-front data collection such as User Experience studies, or perhaps generating an e-mail database and CRM campaign to collect user information. There are a lot of ways to collect data, and if Google has any additional plans to shift the access to data, you need to be ready with other solutions.

Banishing Short-Term and Shiny: A Look at Vail Resorts

This is how everyone should be thinking about digital marketing.

Via @ClarkKokich

Your Company Has Social Media Nailed. Now What?

An excellent series of questions to ask after you’ve reach the first level.

Via @RichardLevick

Facebook to Brands: You’re Posting Stuff Wrong

The subjects brands post about is the key to engagement. That’s why text analysis is the key to knowing what works on Facebook.

Why CMO Tenure is so Short

This has long been a known problem for both clients and agencies, and it’s interesting reading what some of these industry leaders have to say about it.

Via @emarxe & @djgeoffe

Facebook Dominates Mobile Social Networking

Facebook’s big story to me has always been the amount of time and frequency with which people use the site. Now it looks like that same behavior is tracking over to mobile. And to think they bought Instagram to better succeed in mobile.

Via @JackMarshall

Ad Account Guy Gets Man Lessons

I like this because a lot of people want to publish content, but aren’t sure what to write about. This guy found a way to get over that hump.

It’s obvious, but sometimes it takes a mother to show us that the well-worn path is not always the right path. And this is why your mother can actually buy media better than you.

Some Historical Perspective

See, here’s what she knew that can help online marketers right now. All online ad tracking systems used today are legacy systems built 15 years ago.  They erroneously give all credit for a conversion to the very last ad in line.  So if 10 ads were involved from the top of the conversion funnel to the bottom, the bottom one gets all credit.  You’ve heard of line cutters (folks who cut in line), these are funnel cutters—stealing all the credit by jumping in at the end. Why do we still measure everything this way?  Because that’s the way it was done, and we’re following everyone right off the media cliff.

We Are To Believe What?
Today, all those tracking systems have just one slot for which an online ad is credited with success (display/search social media/affiliate, etc).  Just one?  Are we to believe that college-educated media buyers pouring many hours over optimization should accept there’s only one ad responsible for a conversion?  Only one?  Even though the advertiser may be investing in five channels…there’s only one ad responsible for a conversion?  There are never two, three, or perhaps 17?

Are we to believe that even though the purchase funnel was created in 1898 by E. Lewis there’s no purchase funnel online…beginning with Awareness, Intent, Desire, and Action.  None?

Committing Media Suicide
Of course, anyone who looked at this situation with some perspective (like your mom) would  draw some parallels.  Your mom knows it takes many dates before you get married in the real world--and in the online world, it takes many impressions and clicks to convert.  Not just one.

What would your mom say?  In a slightly surprised and slightly irritated tone, she’d say, “What are you doing?  Just because everyone else is doing it that way, why would you do that!!  If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do it, too?  Of course not; you’re smarter than that!”

Your mom is or was smarter than every online advertiser who’s not using an attribution model.  And if your mom can see it, your client and your boss are going to see it very soon.

Now What?
What moms do is take a very complex problem and make it simple.  Same thing with attribution. It involves millions of views and clicks and thousands of transactions and attribution when used with a two-way communication platform, makes it easy enough that even your mom could buy media better than you (if you continue using legacy ad tracking systems).

Here’s how.  In a fractional attribution model, 100% of revenue, say from a Zappos transaction, is split and attributed among Originators, Assists, Converters plus what we call a Roster.  This can be done so that all four pieces of the pie equal 100%, and each of these four has a very different pie percentage--by industry, and by client.

Each ad player deemed worthy of attribution credit is tied to purchase funnel chronology with algorithms, like skipping brand term search credit when in last position and skipping credit for non-viewable impressions.  The fractional revenue is apportioned to the ad players on the team, which become the numerator of a fraction--and the cost of the ad player becomes the denominator of the fraction.  Divide them, and you have a trademark number called attributed value-to-spend-ratio.  A ratio of 2.0 means:  for every $1 you spent on a certain ad you get $2 in attributed revenue back.

With this one number, attribution modeling takes complex, big data and simplifies it.  You just gave birth to a new way of measurement:  an accurate way of measurement.

Growing Up
But as your fractional attribution baby grows up, its capabilities grow, too.  You might want to run sensitivity analyses or even conjoint analyses in C3 Metrics’ attribution sandbox as your data set gets more robust--or have our team of award-winning marketing scientists and Ph.D.s validate and adjust weights at finer levels with transaction-stream detail.  But for now, by not jumping off the media cliff with everyone else, your mom can buy media better than most.

You’re smarter than that.  Your mom knows it, too.

Mark Hughes is CEO of C3 Metrics

The Rise of the Visual Social Network

Infographic on the increasing use of photos in social media. Several weeks ago I posted a report on the Zuum blog on research we found that indicates that photos and videos drive sharing much more than status updates and links. Although these visual forms of content are often more difficult (read: expensive) to produce for brands, they're also seeing better response rates. And that can justify the added expense.

Via @adverblog

Mark Zuckerberg joins Viddy – it might really become ‘Instagram for video’ now

If you're wondering what the next Instagram might be, that headline pretty much covers it. Unless you want to see Zuckerberg's first video upload -- of his dog. To manage your expectations, I'll just say that David Fincher's job isn't in jeopardy with this.

Via @Aerocles

Hertz Creates Their Own Groupon Style Deals on Facebook

While this isn't a new idea, that doesn't mean it can't work. I guess the real question is, What's a Share worth? If it's $20 like this offer would indicate, then a lot of speculators are going to have to recalculate what a Facebook fan is worth.

Via @jasonkeath

More PR Agencies Get Into Media-Buying Game

This is a big indicator of the content marketing trend. PR agencies as much as anyone understand the media value of a good story. Once you have a good story, paid media becomes a way to distribute it. Of course, the biggest question is still, What makes a good story. That's where understanding what engages your audience comes in. And developing content accordingly.

Via @alexbruell

How Microsoft Leveraged Bloggers for a Successful Product Launch

Remember when a social media campaign was mainly about engaging bloggers? It can still work.

Via @Mike_Stelzner

Not-So-Slow Recovery: U.S. Agency Revenue Surges Nearly 8% in 2011

Remarkable, industry-leading 17% revenue increase last year for digital shops.

Via @bradage

No UGC, please – but will the Olympics’ social media strategy work?

The Olympic Committee's dilemma captures the challenges media companies and corporations all over the world are facing regarding social media. And like most, they don't have a clear cut policy, which is probably impossible outside of complete openness, anyway. Click through to see one of the better editorial images I've seen in a while.

Via @gigaom

Back in the good old days of advertising, when the Don Drapers of the world launched a campaign for a client, there was only one performance indicator – sales figures. If sales went up, the campaign was considered a success, even though no one really had any idea what truly caused the lift. Then, along came online advertising, which brought with it a whole new, more granular way of looking at campaign performance.

When you run an online campaign you have the ability to track your campaign from day one, in almost real-time. This accessibility and abundance of data is both a blessing and a curse. While it gives us the power to finely tune campaigns to maximize ROI and minimize spend, the online portion of the buy becomes highly scrutinized, while the inherent value of “traditional” tactics such as billboards often go unquestioned.

The danger of simply looking at web analytics in a silo is that you truly miss the bigger picture. Yes, the Google search campaign was likely responsible for the most conversions, but that doesn’t even begin to answer the question of why people were even searching to begin with. Did they see an offline ad? Read an email? See an article in a publication or maybe a banner ad? The marketing analytics give you the opportunity to look at the campaign as a whole, and get a better understanding of how all the pieces work together to eventually culminate in a conversion.

At Star, measurement is a critical component of our approach to client challenges. Be it awareness, perception, lead generation or sales, we are rigorous in determining the impact of our efforts on the consumer’s mind (awareness and perception) as well as their actions (leads and sales).

This article written by a member of the Hubspot team further explains the benefits of examining marketing analytics, and how they could help you learn more about your customer base and their conversion process. While the author makes some very good points about the questions you need to ask in order to fully examine the effectiveness of a campaign, it seems as though offline advertising is still not taken into account. To truly gauge the campaign as a whole, you have to examine all of the parts, (online and offline) and determine how they best work together.

Even outside of the web, Star’s approach in all media channels strives to be ROI-based against marketing/media spend, especially when prospect and customer acquisition is the goal. We understand that “moving the needle” – in all its forms - is critical, and that’s why we employ a variety of measurement tools in order to gauge the achievements of our efforts.

We all love Mad Men, but today we need to measure beyond the Don Draper effect. Do you have a measurement system in place that is delivering the right feedback and analysis?

If you are a marketer you must be thinking, “How do I know if we are maximizing our SEO investment given all the changes Google has introduced?” If you are an SEO or marketing consultant you are probably asking yourself, “How do I sell my services and prove value to my clients?”

Although a lot has changed, two aspects of SEO remain certain:

1. SEO is not dead, nor will it die in the foreseeable future. Billions of marketing dollars are invested every year into “being found” organically in the search engines and this trend will continue. With more than a billion Google searches performed worldwide every day SEO is not going away.
2. The way we perform and measure organic search optimization has to change and is changing. Blatantly building out backlinks and optimizing on-site content is not enough. Measuring only rank and position is not enough either. Today organic search is about fresh, relevant, findable, optimized content that generates leads.

A New Theory: The Hierarchy of Web Presence Optimization

The idea of building out a hierarchy of web presence optimization (WPO) comes from the belief that basic fundamentals are required before organic search success can be achieved. The purpose is to visualize how the execution of SEO and the services required to perform SEO have evolved due to Google’s algorithm enhancements, and to maximize your SEO efforts and investment.

There are five different tiers in The Hierarchy of Web Presence Optimization:

1) Technical SEO Fundamentals & Foundation

If you are serious about being found in Google and optimizing your entire web presence, it is important to start with a strong baseline or foundation. We call this first tier Technical SEO Fundamentals & Foundation. A strong base layer will accelerate your efforts in the higher tiers by ensuring your web presence has a strong infrastructure, can be effectively indexed and is identifiable.

Technical SEO Fundamentals & Foundation accounts for approximately 10% of the SEO efforts often consisting of one-time tasks such as:

• Setting up Robots.txt, 301 redirects, sitemap, title tags, etc.
• Configuration and cross referencing of a blog presence and social accounts including: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Google+ and any other industry-specific social media or sharing sites.
• Implementation of social sharing icons throughout the main web and blog sites.
• Backlinking from respected industry and local directories.
• Setting up Google Places listings.
• Understanding web page load time and server details that may affect rankings.

This is not an exhaustive list and is bound to change as Google continues to tweak its algorithm to serve up the most relevant search results.

2) Keyword & Competitive Research

At the core of every organic search strategy are keywords. Coincidentally, at the core of Google’s organic search algorithm is relevance for keywords. There will be constant competition for every keyword you are trying to rank for – guaranteed.

The Keyword & Competitive Research tier is an on-going process that will expand and evolve as you venture deeper into your organic search optimization strategy. It is important to understand that the keyword phrases your prospects use will change as they progress through the buying cycle.

Approximately 25% of your organic search optimization efforts should be focused on continually understanding the keyword phrases that drive targeted traffic and conversions.

Before advancing any further up the WPO pyramid, become very focused on your keywords and your competition for those keywords. To get started, determine a shortlist of (two to four) unbranded keyword phrases your prospects are actually searching for to find the products and services you are selling. Only after you develop a keyword list should you scale your efforts into the next tier – The Optimized Content Marketing Plan.

3) The Optimized Content Marketing Plan

Content marketing is experiencing a lot of buzz lately, and it should be! Content marketing is not new, but “optimized content marketing” is. Optimized content marketing is at the intersection of organic search optimization, social media, all the recent Google algorithm changes, and content marketing. Planning and creating your optimized content accounts for the majority of your SEO efforts - approximately 55%.

The Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs interviewed 1,092 B2B marketers in August 2011 and found that 60% plan to increase their content marketing budgets in 2012. Also, 40% are using SEO rankings as a measurement of the success of their content marketing campaigns.

So what would the impact be to your organic search rankings, impressions and clickthroughs if you optimized your next major piece of content for the keyword discovered in the previous tier?

An optimized content marketing plan addresses four major Google algorithm changes from the past year:

a) Freshness Updates – Google favors fresh, relevant content in the form of press releases, blogs, case studies, news and events.

b) Panda Updates – Optimized content distributed to valid, reliable sources will assist in building strong backlinks that are less likely to be penalized.

c) Google+ – Social networks and social media are about relationships and relationships prove relevance. Google’s social network, Google+, is indeed factored into its search algorithm. Build your Google+ presence and circles and start sharing your content today.

d) Search plus Your World – Most importantly, when you share your content publicly in Google+ it has a broader reach and a longer life than any other social network including Facebook and Twitter.

Additionally, an optimized content marketing plan will provide you with sustenance for other lead generation techniques such as paid search campaigns (i.e. Google AdWords and banner ads) and email marketing. And you need content to be successful at generating social signals, which is the fourth tier.

4) Publishing, Socializing & Sharing Content

Now that you have effective, optimized content that your prospects want, you need to tell them about it. Distributing your content effectively and frequently should occupy about 5% of your SEO effort. Here’s where to publish your content:

• Corporate website and blog site
• If a blog post, then to industry specific blog sites that your prospects will visit
• If a press release, then through a newswire such as PRWeb or Marketwire
• Social channels including: LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Facebook (with Twitter the content should be tweeted multiple times over a specified period of time)
• Subscribers and client base via email marketing

The distribution of your optimized content marketing is key because it accomplishes the following goals for your SEO campaign:

• Backlink building
• Indexing by Google so it can ultimately be found
• Social signals creation (Tweets, Retweets, Likes, Shares, Views)
• Beginnings of a sales conversation with prospects

5) Measurement & Improvement

In order to improve a content marketing campaign for further execution, not only must you master the previous tiers, but you must measure, benchmark, tweak and repeat. This is the final and ultimate tier - the remaining 5% of your SEO effort.

But how do you measure the success of an SEO campaign? Compare the following SEO metrics to other marketing campaigns (i.e. Google AdWords, email marketing, banner ads):

• Impressions
• Clickthroughs
• Conversions
• Social signals
• Backlinks
• Keyword Rank

Conclusion

As organic search optimization and the services required to “get found” evolve, so too must our tools, techniques and tactics. The Hierarchy of Web Presence Optimization can be used by marketers to guide their in-house SEO efforts, as well as by agencies in their sales conversations and implementation processes.

Oreo's post this week: "Fan Lisa T. was born in 1912 - the same year Oreo cookies were introduced. Wish her a special happy birthday below!"

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ABOUT ZUUM

Zuum is a tool that helps brands increase their engagement level with their Facebook fans by knowing what works on Facebook. For their brand and their competitors.
www.ZuumSocial.com

I don't think I need to make a case for politics being digital, so I won't bore you with that. But politics is branding. And just like a brand, political campaigns and political issue initiatives need to know where their customers come from. In politics the customers are different. They’re called voters, donors, influencers, or volunteers. By identifying the media patterns of those “constituents” and ensuring that ads you run to support a campaign are relevant and visible, campaigns can act like the most successful brands.

Political Campaigns Are Brands
This ability to advertise to constituents like the most successful brands becomes eminently more urgent because of two trends. The first is the SuperPAC.  SuperPACs are the Super Bowl of political spending. They are the force to dominate the battle of the airwaves with big impact. But as any battle tested brand knows, eventually you need to reach constituents on a micro level, giving way to the second most important trend in a political race:  micro-donations. Here's what I mean. Four years and three months ago, an election was determined by fund-raising, and the different approaches were apparent.

If you’ll remember, at the time, Obama and Hilary Rodham Clinton were in a tight race.  In January 2008, Clinton announced she raised $8.5 million and put in an additional $5 million of her own money for that month’s fundraise.

Obama nearly quadrupled Clinton in fundraising, clocking a raise of $32 million that month.  It was the final nail in the coffin for the Presidential nomination.   Clinton used old school strategy seeking big checks from few people.  Obama departed from the strategy right before Super Tuesday as the $32 million haul came predominantly from donations of $100 or less, with a staggering 90% of those donated on the web.

Micro Donations are Todays Super PAC
Fast-forward. Mitt Romney’s campaign, which has raised $86 million with only 9% of donations coming from $100 or less, is now appealing to smaller donors, which will have to carry the campaign through fall. Ted Moon, president of Washington DC-based interactive firm Pathfinder Interactive, says, “When the average voter plunks down their twenty dollars, things change.  They become actively vested in the campaign and start showing their support with stickers, yard signs, and today’s electronic yard sign:  Facebook.”

But a lot has changed in four years on the web.  Sites like Votizen didn’t exist, and ad technology was just coming into its own with display banner exchanges and real-time-bidding for Internet display banners, which were only an idea back then.

Micro Metrics Are Needed for Micro Donations
“Internet technology has gotten incredibly complex,” says Moon. “The biggest issue is attribution.  Campaigns spend precious ad dollars trying to rope in a donation of $20.  The difficulty is figuring out which ads on what sites and what geographies were the most efficient at raising those $20 donations which will soon amount to $50 million a month for the Presidential nominee.  So if you spend $10 or $30 million of ad dollars to get that $50 million, the difference could be $20 million a month either wasted or kept within the campaign to rope in even more donations.  It’s a huge difference.”

Now political marketers are confronted with the same shock that commercial marketers are now grappling with:  outdated online tracking systems mistakenly using what’s called last ad attribution.  It may take 27 banner ad exposures to get that $20 donation.  The last ad attribution problem with online ad tracking is that entire credit is erroneously given to the very last, 27^th ad, ignoring the value (and the cost) driven by other 26 ads.  Marketers have no idea what websites first prompted the $20 donation.  They only know what ad inaccurately stole credit by being the very last ad.

Perhaps it’s the only industry where you get rewarded for last place, but there’s a history to this flaw, which is estimated to bleed 30-45% from the $30 billion a year U.S. Internet ad industry.  These legacy ad tracking systems were built at the infancy of the Internet in the mid 1990’s.  In 2000, the NASDAQ crashed and tech investors ran for the hills, and everyone forgot about tracking infrastructure as thousands were laid off from Internet jobs.  But in 2004, the financial markets came back, and advertisers came back with it.  As money continued to pour online, YouTube exploded, blogs became the norm, browsers became multi-tabbed, and people began taking advantage of more research, reviews, and opinions before making a decision with their money.

Advertising Attribution is the Solution
In 2008 C3 Metrics began solving the problem by replacing current ad tracking systems so advertisers could finally determine what actually creates and accelerates demand. The longest running study on Attribution from C3 Metrics demonstrated $5 million in additional profit within 12 months.

“In a world of uncertain politics, one thing is certain,” said Moon. “The success of the Presidential race depends on how efficient the candidate is in spending ad dollars to corral $20 donations, which will amount to $50 million a month.  Without a change to the way Internet ad dollars are measured for fund raising, a campaign is dead.  From Super Tuesday on, it’s how 90% of donations will be raised.”

Inside The AP’s Social Strategy

Great read for both a brief but interesting backdrop to the APs history, as well as how a 150 year old news organization is using Facebook and Twitter. They state that Twitter is their primary engagement vehicle, but Twitter is where they find the breaking stories, which I definitely agree with.

Via @joshsternberg & @bmorrissey

Market With Messages That Tap Into Man’s Primal Urges

Sometimes we get caught up in trying to rationalize strategies and key product benefits. I like this level-set on how it all tracks back to very core emotions.

Nike Auction – Bid Your Sweat

I really like this as a way of rewarding what in this case is literally Nike’s ‘most active’ customers. It would obviously have to be a very limited offer, but instead of just throwing out a 10% off sale, why not give the discount to loyal customer’s who’ve worked for it?

Via @adverblog

Content Strategy Ain’t Just For Large Companies

Good article with three key points for getting started in content marketing. Not only is it also for small businesses, when you consider the costs of paid media, it could be even more for small businesses than large.

Via @Robert_Rose

Top 5 News

A very simple content curation site. The top 5 stories from the top news publications.

Via @learmonth

How tech’s giants want to re-invent journalism

Since we have a bit of a news theme on this post, I’ll continue with a look at how news publishing really isn’t changing, despite the technical advances. In a content marketing world, how news is gathered and distributed will always be a key topic to be on top of.

Via @ckanal

Facebook Now Has 901 Million Users

On track to hit 1b by end of year. Remarkable.

Via @AdTech

Facebook generates $1.21 per user on average worldwide in Q1

With all the talk about what a Facebook Fan is worth, this is what they’re worth to Facebook.

Via @brittanydarwell

Your SEO efforts are worth paying attention to on a regular basis because everyone looks at the organic side of search, and over 85% of searchers click on organic search results over paid results.

The following 10 SEO metrics are useful for tracking the progress of a web presence in organic search. Each metric provides signals as to what is working and what is not so your SEO efforts can be constantly tweaked and results improved.

1. SEO Rankings

Track your online organic search visibility for the keywords your organization wants to be found for in the search results. Following your SEO ranking metric every day, week or month will allow you to understand if your organization is expanding its web presence.

2. Unique Keywords (Discovery Index)

How many unique keywords are being used to find your organization on a monthly basis? If that number is trending upwards that means more and more unique keywords are being used in the search engines to discover your organization’s web presence. This is called the discovery index. Look at these terms and add a few to your content strategy each month to capture even more qualified traffic.

3. Backlinks

Are you growing the quantity and quality of the websites linking to your web presence over time? The number of backlinks should increase as you build out your optimized content strategy of blog posts, press releases and case studies. The associated anchor text as well as the domain authority of the websites linking to your content affect the quality of your backlinks.

4. Indexed Pages

Is the number of web pages from your web presence increasing or decreasing in the Google index? The more pages indexed in Google, the more opportunity you have to be found. For example, it would be difficult to rank for 100 keywords if you only have five web pages indexed in Google. As you build out your optimized content strategy adding new blog posts, web pages and press releases on a regular basis, your index count will grow.

5. Social Signals

Google and Bing factor social signals into their search algorithm to determine relevancy and rank. Social signals are metrics such as: Facebook comments, likes and shares, tweets and retweets, LinkedIn shares, and Google +1’s and shares – all of which include a backlink to a web page. gShift tracks the number of social signals during a specified time period to all your web content including web pages, blog posts, and press releases.

6. Website Traffic Breakdown

Tracking your topline website traffic on a regular basis is important. Are you growing your organic traffic? Or are you getting most of it from direct traffic? Is your referral traffic increasing? What traffic is converting better - organic, referral or social? Tracking these website traffic metrics can help you understand both your SEO and content marketing strategies.

7. Organic Conversions

It is also important to understand what percentage of your organic search traffic takes action on your website. Which keywords are driving the most conversions? Which keywords are leading to a high bounce rate (only visiting one web page)? Are your conversions increasing based on your optimized content marketing strategy?

8. Organic Market Share

Your organic market share is calculated based on the number of keyword phrases that your organization is following or wants to rank for organically. Calculate the volume of searches for those terms, how you rank, and then apply a “potential” click-through metric to determine the number of potential visitors you would get if you were ranking in the top three organic positions.

9. Organic Search Value

What is the dollar value of your organic search traffic as compared to what you would have paid for the same traffic via a paid marketing program such as Google AdWords? This metric can help set your budget for organic search and content marketing.

10. Branded versus Non-Branded Keywords

Out of the discovery index, how many keywords are branded? If 95% of your organic traffic comes from branded keywords, then your organization has an issue with your online visibility. A goal would be to increase your non-branded keyword phrases by building out your content marketing strategy.

SEO is one of the most difficult marketing tactics to measure and manage – but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. And once you’ve mastered SEO for your organization the increase in leads and conversions will be worth the effort. Our recommendation is to pick a few SEO metrics to get started, measure them on a consistent basis and take action from the data.

Reviewing the previously discussed policies, (Assign each touchpoint a specific objective & task to carry out) and (Use consumer passions to design your “Digital 4P’s”), discloses a common theme. That is, consumer centric research provides the foundation for a better digital marketing ROI.

Now that your thinking is prompted after covering the first two policies, do you still think you can afford to ignore consumer perspectives when designing a digital marketing initiative? We have seen the outcome of digital marketing without consumer centric research lead to wasted time, resources, and capital as depicted in the case below.

Mobile Site Gone Astray
In one such example, when going to market without a digital marketing insurance policy, a brand had to rework an entire mobile experience that was the first to market for the category. The mobile experience was originally designed for accessibility and utilization while the consumer is at the point of purchase. Naturally taking these whereabouts into account, the design of the mobile site featured information and tools surrounding an in-store experience. However, research uncovered that 92% of mobile site visitors actually surf the site from home (directly after seeing a TV commercial). Interestingly, 49% of visitor motivation was to find store locations for purchasing the product, followed by another 26% who wanted product information. Thinking back to the initial design of the site, the facets of info that the visitor expected were completely missed. With the mobile strategy gone astray, consumers left the site unable to find where to purchase the product, resulting in drastically low future purchase intent scores.

The above case is an example of breakdown at each factor of production (time, resource, and capital). Furthermore, when visitors do not connect with the interactive experience, KPI’s are significantly damaged, along with the potential loss of brand recommendations and purchase consideration. The breakdown in factors of production resulted in:

--Wasted time slowed down brand progress and growth. Adjustments made within a fast paced environment is at times detrimental for a competitive foothold, leaving room for competitors to slip in with an optimized experience during the time period reworks are taking place.

--Man hours spent fixing the wrongs using temporary band-aids and re-working efforts waste resources.

--When a complete overhaul/redesign is needed, profits decrease while capital investments increase.

Key takeaway for policy #3: It is particularly important to gather consumer feedback prior to bringing the digital initiatives to market, but if that is not possible, these policies still can be applied when already in market. The result? Time, resources and capital are allocated in an appropriate manner and there are now answers to the many unanswered questions that occurred during the design phase.

Wrapping Up: The “Insurance” Quote
In exchange for the security of insurance, each brand team/agency are required to look at the ecology of the digital medium from a consumer perspective: Touchpoint preferences and touchpoint behaviors. Only at that time will the insurance kick in to develop direction for each touchpoint, guide content refreshes and define the role of each touchpoint within the media mix (working to remove in-market risk and optimize at each factor of production).

A large part of being successful within the digital arena is to be in the right place at the right time according to what consumers are already engaging with. Following the three insurance policies provided does not to attempt to change consumer behavior, but instead plays upon existing passions and connects with them on their own turf. It is about reaching consumers where they already are and giving them something new to fuel their passions.

In summation, said best by CRM Metrix President, Hemen Patel, “Communication hinges on what you say and how you say it, but within Online, it also matters where you say it”.

A special thanks to CRM Metrix President, Hemen Patel, for inspiring the content of this post with his concept for the process toward a better digital marketing ROI.

Confessions of an Agency Mobile Specialist

This is a good series from Digiday. Kind of the WikiLeaks for advertising.

Via @JackMarshall

INFOGRAPHIC: How Fortune 500s Use Social Media

23% of Fortune 500 companies have a public facing blog. 58% of Fortune 500 companies have a corporate Facebook page. I get the argument that brands should be driving traffic to their site, but you also have to consider where the masses are gathering. To follow the money, you have to follow the traffic. With these numbers, the top brands are basically saying the money’s on Facebook.

5 Ways Businesses Are Using Facebook Timelines

A quick, fun read with good visuals.

Via @KentHuffman

CP+B Taps Henry to Get Creative With Insights

The best bite is in the last paragraph. Quote: “From a right-brain standpoint, where analytics is really heading is storytelling. Analytics has too often been columns and rows of data, and where that needs to evolve to is creative narratives. There’s a very creative element in driving action out of insights. Left and right brain both need to be used to maximize the impact of what can be seen simply as raw data.”

Via @NoreenOLeary

Facebook becomes No. 1 most visited site in Brazil, according to Experian Hitwise

Brazil has always been an interesting social media study to me, because it’s the one place where Google, via Orkut, has experiences social media dominance over Facebook. Perhaps it’s confusion over Google+, and the Brazilian Orkut users got lost in the shuffle. But even if that was the case, it’s interesting that users there seem to be making the shift to Facebook and not Google+.

Via @brittanydarwell

Proof that Facebook fans are worth more to brands

The finding is that Facebook fans of a brand are significantly more likely to purchase, consider, or recommend the brand than those who aren’t page fans. The obvious caveat is that this survey seems to have been given to consumers in general, and thus the ones who are Facebook fans are also likely already customers. And naturally current customers would be more likely to purchase than non-customers.

Great copywriting in a Craig’s List ad

Artful, long form copywriting is not dead. It’s just moved to Craig’s list. And if you want ROI on this, it sold within two days. Bidding wars, I hear.

Via @_GregCollins

This Thursday we have an report coming out in iMediaConnection that shows a distinct relationship between content type and engagement type. We’re seeing a consistent trend that photos and videos drive more sharing than status updates. It’s something we’re seeing again in this week’s data.

YouTube's post this week: Top 10 Greatest Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Moments

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Zuum is a tool that helps brands increase their engagement level with their Facebook fans by knowing what works on Facebook. For their brand and their competitors.
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New Research: Americans Hate Social Media Promotions

Great point made here, drawing a distinction between companies ‘being social’ and ‘doing social’.

Via @jaybaer

What was it about Instagram that made it worth a $1B acquisition by Facebook?

This is really more about the mobile opportunity Facebook sees, and the value that data will bring to marketers.

Via Via @ckanal

7 Lessons From Content Marketing’s Greatest Hits

As the article says, lately it’s been almost impossible to not read something about the subject of content marketing. So let me add to those odds.

Via @juntajoe

The Digiday Dictionary: What It Really Means

Not sure what all the industry buzz-words ‘really’ mean? This gives you the meaning behind the meaning. (Funny stuff.)

Via @sweissman and @JackMarshall

Wisconsin Cheese Develops Global Following: Case Study

I really like the way they’re working to provide a comprehensive knowledge base on their subject. I’m not sure about spreading the brand across so many properties, as it’s really sub-branding, which always takes more marketing budget than getting a single brand across.

Experiment: “If Anyone Wants to Talk About Anything, Call Me” (or Text If You Prefer)

A human interest story around technology. I like how the writer delves into the fuzzier side of technology. Craig (the aforementioned writer) just joined HuffPo, and it looks like they’re giving him some nice territory to explore.

Via @ckanal

Sponsored Filters? How Facebook Could Monetize Instagram

Another view on what Facebook might do with Instagram.

Via @mcmains1965 and @kheussner

And I guess when you think about it, in this case, coffee does go very well with eggs.

Starbucks' post this week: Look what I just found -- Happy Easter!

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Zuum is a tool that helps brands increase their engagement level with their Facebook fans by knowing what works on Facebook. For their brand and their competitors.
www.ZuumSocial.com

Etch A Sketch’s Stock Tripled Overnight After The Romney Gaffe

People are always asking what the ROI is in the area of social media, content marketing, and PR. In this case, we have a stock price tripling in one day. That’s a pretty good “Return”.

Etch-A-Sketch Puts Out Gaffe-Inspired Print Ads

Paired with the above link, this shows how the brand seized the opportunity to make a splash. Nice, simple creative.

Websites as Evening Gowns

Very quirky way to visualize different online properties. And a good example of the randomness you’ll find on deviantART.

Via @Aerocles

Conan O’Brien Takes Over Mashable for April Fools’ Day

One of the better April Fools gags.

The Twitter Hashtag is the New Neon Sign

A look at some innovative ways Twitter hashtags are being used.

Machinima! Adventures of a Digital Content Company

Fascinating look into the world of Machinima. This touches the ad industry in a number of areas, including content marketing, consumer-generated content and the growth of niche communities as target markets.

Via @digitalshields

An Ingenious, Radical Branding Campaign, Lost In Current TV’s Woes

I have long wondered why brands don’t use subtle animation in online logos. This is a great example of how that can work.

Quaker Oats Man Gets a Makeover to Look Healthier

Odd that the icon for one of the most health-related food products, oatmeal, wasn’t healthy-looking enough. Was a double-chin a sign of health at one point?