BugFix Information Technology

After months of receiving spam through my contact forms I decided it was time to add reCAPTCHA to them in the hope of stemming the tide of garbage.  This now under the control of Google I thought there wasn’t going to be an issue with this. Having just installed reCAPTCHA on my works websites I knew what to do and all went well on those sites. On the Friday I did 3 forms on my own sites and all worked as expected, on the Saturday I did the last form I had, but that one didn’t work. All I kept getting was a ‘could not open socket’ error.

Initially I thought I must have made some error in the code but after checking the code against that which I had done the day before I could see no error. And more over the 3 forms I did the day before that worked, now no longer worked and displayed the same error message, what the hell?? Most frustrating was the fact that this was all the message said and gave no clue as to what was causing it. I made a number of attempts to find which section of code that was at fault by adding echo’s throughout the php code but none of them showed, only that damned error message. I thought there must be something wrong with the server.

Someone must have had this issue before so I turned my attention to Google for an answer. As I started to type ‘could not open socket’ the autocomplete came up with ‘could not open socket recaptcha’, ah ha! But I couldn’t think why it could have worked yesterday and not today? After reading many unhelpful posts’ I found this: http://code.google.com/p/recaptcha/issues/detail?id=26 which although didn’t have the exact answer it did help me to realise the answers to my own issues.

After reading through this thread I came to the conclusion that my problem was 2 fold and explained why it had worked yesterday and not today. The main problem was my web host, in their attempt to be helpful they introduced (a long time back) blocking of outgoing connections to remote IPs from within my sites. This is one to be aware of if you are auto blogging using wp-o-matic, any feed you add will most likely be blocked by this until you add the IP to the allowed list from within your control panel.

I assume there is a good reason for them doing this but it can imagine it has caused nightmares for the inexperienced. Obviously it had worked yesterday because it was new, once the server knew the connection was being made it blocked it. It was probably the number of tests I did that made the connection get noticed and was possibly a good job it was noticed so quickly or I might not have noticed it for some time.

So which IP was I to add to the allowed list? The line of code in recaptchalib.php identified as the problem in the above thread was:

define(“RECAPTCHA_VERIFY_SERVER”, www.google.com);

So what I needed was the IP of google.com. http://www.mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx is a very useful tool I have been using for a long time. A DNS lookup for google.com gave me 5 options for an IP, 74.125.227.48 to 74.125.227.52, so now I have:

define(“RECAPTCHA_VERIFY_SERVER”, “74.125.227.48″);

Adding this IP to the allowed remote IP list from within my control panel sorted the problem on all my forms. Score!

As marketers accumulate information about customers, it is also important to identify common characteristics and patterns to help guide messaging, engagement and offers.

Behaviors that contribute to your business objectives like, sales, advocacy, sharing, referrals and repeat business might contribute to your understanding of an “ideal” customer that can be characterized as a persona:

Admin Bob – Influences the CEO on software purchases and cares about price, service and speed.

Being able to identify your “best” customers also means there’s another end to the spectrum:  patterns that reflect undesirable customer behaviors and an “avoid” persona:

Gatekeeper Jane – Maintains power by filtering information to the CEO about software purchases. Cares about control, recognition and status quo.

Companies that solve different problems in different markets may determine that multiple personas best represent their target audience.

Understanding the pain points, goals and topical preferences of your customers’ personas provides invaluable insight into planning content to guide that customer through the buying cycle.  The motivations and context that bring a customer to search or tap into their social network for recommendations can then be translated into tactics.

How do you use personas in online marketing?

Content Planning  – Based on the need, pain point or goal for your ideal customer persona, identify if content already exists to meet it. If sufficient content does not exist, incorporate it into the content plan for story creation . Map your customer needs like “How can I back up my computer without having to worry about losing disks or remembering to schedule?” to specific content like an article, how to video or even a product page that will help guide that persona along in the sales cycle.

SEO – Keywords in demand that represent the product or service relevant to the persona’s need should be researched for popularity and competitiveness. Based on the back up example above, research more than the obvious “computer backup” to include phrases that describe situations or scenarios like “computer back up without disks” or “automatic computer back ups”.  Keyword optimize existing content and incorporate SEO copywriting into the task list for ongoing creation of content according to the content plan.

Social Media Presence & Engagement  – In what social channels does the customer persona participate? Where are they influenced? Based on persona participation, determine if a brand presence exists at all. If so, does it share and engage with content related to the ideal customer persona’s needs and goals? If not, factor that social content opportunity into the brand social media strategy for creating a social presence. What social topics is the persona motivated by? Do threads of discussion already exist in social channels relevant to the customer goals? How can your brand be an authoritative voice on those topics? Incorporate relevant social topics in your community management, social content and engagement approach relevant to the ideal customer persona.

In the assessment of existing web page and social assets, determine how well those search and social media assets perform in terms of ranking and social visibility. Reconcile the difference between current performance and the ideal in order to better attract, engage and inspire the target persona. Add new content, optimization and social engagement tasks accordingly.  Also consider what metrics will help you identify whether efforts to connect with your ideal persona are successful or not.

A fragmented effort within search, social media and content marketing helps no one. Not customers and certainly not companies. 

Competition for attention within search results and on the social web is only going to increase as more brands become publishers and more customers create and socially share content. The need to create a relevant experience for your target customers in an online world of information overload is more important now than ever.

Smart marketers would do well for themselves and the customers they’re trying to reach by investing in the development of customer personas that reflect the desires, goals and key traits of their best customers. Translating customer insight into quality keyword optimization of web pages, social content and digital assets for specific phrases according to the searcher’s needs in the buying cycle is an important step along with social engagement.  As a result, you’ll deliver a more relevant experience for both search engines and for customers that is worth sharing on the social web.

Next steps for leveraging customer personas in your digital marketing mix:

• What are the common characteristics of your best and worst customers?
• Collect information on common customer data points including: content preferences, search phrases, social networks, and the types of products or services they buy or “like”.
• Based on your research and “best customer” characteristics, create and name an “ideal” customer persona
• Map the needs and goals of customer personas to your web and social content planning.

Excerpt with permission from Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing, published by Wiley. (Affiliate Link)

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2013. |
How Personas Guide Meaningful Content Creation & Optimization | http://www.toprankblog.com

This article was originally posted on the Online Marketing Blog

With over 850,000 views on Slideshare in just 2 days, this 2013 Internet Trends report from Mary Meeker & Liang Wu from KPCB is a must read. There are over 2.4 billion internet users world-wide and huge opportunities in store. This report speaks to the state of content (including photos, video and audio) and how it is increasingly findable, shared and tagged. Digital content is created and shared 9 times more now than 5 years ago. Mobile use is expanding at a dramatic rate and implications for smartphones, tablets and even wearable devices are explored.

In Other Online Marketing News…

Google blimps will bring the web to Africa. Search giant Google is intending to build huge wireless networks across Africa and Asia, using high-altitude balloons and blimps. The company is intending to finance, build and help operate networks from sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia, with the aim of connecting around a billion people to the web. Wired UK.

The Social Imperative for CEOs. A new study from KRC Research has found that 76% of executives think it is a good idea for CEOs to be social. The benefits of the Chief Social Evangelist role has many benefits ranging from boosting company reputation to impacting business performance. (Inlcudes a report, video and infographic). Weber Shandwick.

WordPress Turns 10. WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg reflected on the 10th birthday of his baby that now powers over 70 million websites and WordPress has grown to be the largest CMS in the world, powering an astounding 18% of the web. Happy Birthday WordPress! Mashable, WordPress.

Consumers Want A Mobile-Optimized Web.  A survey by Kentico Digital reports that 85% of smartphone owners use their phones to compare info before making a purchase. 75% of smartphone and tablet owners say the look and feel of a company’s mobile Web site plays into their purchase decision. When it comes to Web sites that aren’t mobile-optimized, 44% of tablet and smartphone users said they’ll never return to the site. MediaPost.

Twitter bumps lists from 20 to 1,000. Each of those 1,000 accounts can have up to 5,000 Twitter accounts listed.  The Next Web.

Google’s Impressive “Conversational Search” Goes Live On Chrome. According to Danny Sullivan, the conversational search feature demonstrated at the Google I/O conference has natural language, semantic search and more built into it.  Search Engine Land.

Only 37% of Marketers Think Their Facebook Advertising Is Effective. Citing the recent 2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report from Social Media Examiner, 92% of marketers surveyed use Facebook in their marketing mix, but less than 40% are satisfied. ClickZ.

Under pressure, Facebook targets sexist hate speech. Under mounting pressure from activists and advertisers, Facebook is ramping up efforts to stamp out hate speech, particularly depictions of violence against women. The move, announced Tuesday, came after a weeklong campaign by women’s groups targeting pages that celebrated or made light of rape, domestic violence and sexual degradation of women. CNN.

Gmail Updates the Inbox with Tabs. Tabs will appear at the top of the Gmail inbox where users can select personalized categories like Social, Promotions, Updates, and Primary. The new inbox is rolling out gradually. The desktop, Android and iOS versions will become available within the next few weeks.  Official Gmail Blog.

TopRank Community Comments

Yesterday’s The Truth About Content Marketing & SEO post struck a chord amongst some impressively credible marketers, who took the time to respond:

Robert Rose says: ”Here here…. Excellent post…. This is a constant battle these days as SEO remains so important, yet is changing so fundamentally. As I often tell clients – you can be a content production factory – and your content will do nothing but settle bar bets. Or, you can be remarkable, and perhaps reach fewer people. And as you point out, it’s not a zero sum game – and it’s the balanced approach that will ultimately win. Kudos my friend.”

Bernie Borges says: “Well said Lee….The truth is (as you say) that as content marketing has become mainstream, some brands are flying by the seat of their pants without regard for best practices. If they experience poor results, they’re the first ones to say, it doesn’t work.”

John Ellis says: “One of the biggest myths propagated by the SEO world’s definition of content marketing is that it simply means creating more content. Great statement +Lee Odden. Content without SEO is a waste. More content with out purpose or intent is also a waste. Extremes are typical in this industry. Go after the latest shiny object seo tactic without applying any actual SEO with the tactic. SEO is not a tool, not software, not marketing. It is a process.. plain and simple. A process that is applied to everything we do on the web. The skill that most do not understand is the natural application of the SEO process to our content and engagement around that content. Content Marketing is not a “subset” of SEO either. No it is not. Great article.”

TopRank in the News

Optimize was named one of the “5 Must Read Marketing Books for Small Business” by Intuit along with Content Rules by my friends Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman and The Rules of PR and Marketing by David Meermand Scott. Optimize is in great company!

My long time pal John Jantsch did a podcast interview with me on The Future of SEO (plus a good bit on what content marketing really means) over at the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2013. |
Online Marketing News: Google Blimps, Social CEOs, WordPress Turns 10, Future of Internet 2.4 Billion Strong | http://www.toprankblog.com

This article was originally posted on the Online Marketing Blog

Within the realm of B2B marketing, it’s stories, not “features and benefits” that allow brands to create relevant and engaging connections with prospective customers. Successful digital marketers use a variety of content marketing tactics to tell stories according to the goals of both brand and customer.

Even though 71% of B2B content marketers use case studies, they are often an under optimized form of brand storytelling. Case studies provide a structured problem and solution format that provide context, situation and challenges that the reader can empathize with. Case studies also supply insight into how a problem was solved, paving the way for the solution and measures of success.

As part of our ongoing series on content marketing tactics, this post will share some examples and best practices of organizations leveraging case studies as part of their content marketing mix.

Definition of Case Study:

A”case study” in the context of marketing is an analysis of a project, campaign or company that identifies a situation, recommended solutions, implementation actions and identification of those factors that contributed to failure or success.

Pros & Cons of Case Studies as a Content Marketing Tactic:

Pros

• Provides a structured problem and solution format, often including practical insights the reader can apply immediately to their own situation
• Demonstrates the solution provider’s approach to problem solving: methodical, creative, out of the box, disruptive
• In aggregate, a collection of case studies paints a picture of where the organization excels and what expertise differentiates them from competitors
• Keyword optimized case studies can serve as a direct point of entry via search to specific solutions the customer is looking for – shortens sales cycle considerably
• Case study content can be multi-purposed in text, image, video and document types: web page, PDF, Word, PPT, Slideshare. Case studies can serve a role in eBooks, white papers, guides & best practices, webinars and conference presentations.

Cons

• Case Study content can become outdated and needs to be maintained
• Required approval from parties involved can be difficult – not all companies want to explain how their marketing is successful
• Over duplication or repurposing of case study content can affect search visibility if not properly optimized (canonicalization and links)
• Boring or underwhelming performance cited in case studies can do a better job of turning prospects away than engaging them. Invest in great writing.

What Marketing Experts Say About Case Studies:

“Most case studies are focused on the solution and how great it is to the exclusion of any real “story.”  To be effective, case studies need that middle part where the magic happens. Case studies need a beginning, middle and end focused on the customer’s perspective – just like all other content. I advocate for two versions; a 1 pager with the facts for a quick read and a longer “story” version that helps prospects visualize themselves solving the problem.” Ardath Albee, CEO Marketing Interactions, Author.

“Case studies can be a wonderful piece of a B2B marketer’s content marketing strategy except that most of these marketers make the mistake and use it to beat their chests like Tarzan. They have to remember: it isn’t about them, their product or their service. It’s about their customer, their problems and how they got solved.”  Bryan Eisenberg, Best Selling Author, Keynote Speaker and Consultant.

“Customer case studies in all formats are impactful for both B2B and B2C marketers as a way to tap into the significant power of peer-generated reviews and recommendations. My first choice is shorter, video formats b/c you can use photos, faces voice, movement to convey a proven, real third party endorsement.” Sandra Zoratti, VP Global Marketing at Ricoh, Author.

Case studies are just stories. Too often these days, they’re presented in a formulaic manner, but when thought of as stories, they can be powerful. B2B marketers talk to each other. In fact, more B2B purchasers start their research online than B2C — with peers representing one of their most important resources. As long as it’s relevant and compelling, a story that conveys a solution to a problem in human terms should make for an effective piece of content. Shel Holtz, ABC, Principal of HC+T, Co-Host of For Immediate Release and Author.

How Are Case Studies Used in B2B Content Marketing?

When you search the phrase “case studies” plus terms that define your industry or situation, there are a wide variety of examples available.   A good example is the Killer Content Awards deck embed in this post.  Here are a few specific examples of companies successfully using case studies in their content marketing efforts.

MarketingSherpa does a great job of providing details in each of their marketing case studies, which you can find in their Library of resources. As a long time publisher of best practices, industry news and reports, expectations are high with MarketingSherpa. Just visit the Library section of their site and check the “case studies” filter in the left sidebar. Select any other refinements and you’ll get a list of case study articles. Each is written by a professional journalist and includes: Summary, Challenge, Campaign (with specific steps), Results and Creative Samples. The source is always cited as are related resources. What these case studies might lack in terms of visual fanfare, they more than make up for in terms of depth and insight.

Google Think Insights site contains an impressive collection of resources including case studies. As you can imagine, the search function is impressive but there are also a variety of ways to filter based on: Industry, Marketing Objective, Ad Type, Technology, Audience, Region and Type of Content you want to view.

Each case study follows a format of Goals, Approach, Results and may include a PDF download, creative assets or a video of the success story. Related case studies and content are also recommended.  Obviously Google has substantial resources to create nearly 700 case studies, but there are lessons to be learned from the case study content and how users find that content. Navigation is based on user self segmentation vs. a simple link to “Case Studies”. This approach gives Google some context to provide more relevant case study content.  In terms of the case study content, the combination of summary, web page, PDF and video provides different users with format options to choose from.

HubSpot is another example of a company that has collected a large number of customer stories and case studies. The previews for each case study include summary, bullets, a photo of of the customer with a testimonial, and clickable keyword tags. The actual case study pages vary quite a bit and do not follow a common template. But they do provide problem, solution, performance information. What HubSpot does really well is the ease of navigation, the summaries and calls to action. They are ready to do business.

Pinterest, as you can imagine, provides a more visual experience with their success stories. There are just a handful of case studies, which is something I think a lot of mid market or new companies can relate to. When you don’t have hundreds of case studies, then be sure to make the most of what you’ve got. With so few case studies, there is no categorization but that’s something Pinterest will want to consider as they add more. Each case study page includes stated Goals, and an endorsement/photo from the client. Most importantly, tactics, implementation and results information is provided in a story format using conversational language.

Mini How-To for Creating Great Case Studies:

Stories connect with us emotionally and people act based on emotions. However, they justify those decisions with logic. Effective case studies are stories that connect with the reader on an emotional level and at the same time, provide intellectual justification – data. Here are some key elements of a persuasive case study:

• Headline: Who, What, & Results – 10 to 15 words.
• Visual: Skip the stock photos and opt for images of real people when appropriate. Company logos and screen shots of results/performance information are handy as are any compelling visual elements that complement the story.
• Challenge: Start with the current situation. What is the trouble? Create friction and a sense of urgency that this problem needs to be solved.
• Solution: How does solving this problem create a positive business impact? What role did your brand play in the solution?  Offer justification for the recommendations through the approach and tactics.
• Results: Create points of comparison. Contrast “the trouble” with the solution. Provide KPIs & outcomes. Use raw data points, percentages and general quantifiables as appropriate. Results must be compelling, remarkable, impressive! Align those results with your brand and offer future direction. Include a quote or testimonial from the key person involved with the project. How did this help them and what has this success done for the business?
• Close it: Near or alongside the case study, include a call to action appropriate to the case study. Don’t leave the CTA to your website’s “contact us” link or button in the navigation.
• Media: In the B2B world, a PDF file is expected. Be sure to offer the case study as a web page and in PDF format at a minimum. But don’t overlook posting to services like Slideshare or repurposing for use in articles, reports, webinars or conference presentations.

What’s your opinion on case studies? Are they tool uncool for B2B marketing school? If you’ve been successful with case studies, what’s your secret sauce?

Image: Shutterstock

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2013. |
B2B Content Marketing Tactics: Pros, Cons & Best Practices of Case Studies | http://www.toprankblog.com

This article was originally posted on the Online Marketing Blog

U. S. Army Social Media Handbook

Today is Memorial Day in the U.S., a day to remember all the men and women who died serving in the U.S. Armed Forces: Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Marines. While much of the workforce in the U.S. takes today as a holiday and marks it as the start of Summer, it’s important to honor the sacrifices made by these brave individuals in service of our country.

Stories of remembrance during Memorial Day are often told through traditional news media covering parades or honoring the heroic actions of individuals and units. Social Media also plays a big role in military communications.

If you thought creating a social media policy and governance over employee social media activities is tricky, imaging the task of doing so in a military environment. It takes a lot more than a “Loose Lips Might Sink Ships” poster to communicate operational security for soldiers, units and other military organizations that maintain Facebook, Twitter and other social media profiles.

Remarkably, the U.S. military has made some significant accomplishments with its use of social media and in many ways, has lead the business community. One example of that was in 2008 with the U.S. Air Force publishing their guidelines for responding to blogs. I know at the time, one of the greatest fears companies had of social media revolved around the question, “What if people say bad things about our brand?” and not knowing what to do. That Air Force chart served as a guideline for many companies developing their social media policies.

I think there are other lessons to be learned by the business community from the U.S. Military and their social media efforts. Here are 3 of the most important.

Social Media Guidelines – Each branch of the service publishes and maintains a set of social media guidelines: Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard. Probably one of the most important things military organizations can do in their effort to embrace the social web is to create guidelines about overall direction as well as specifics on what to do and not to do. Social Media Handbooks provide leadership and individuals with important guidance ranging from checklists and how to’s to FAQs and resources.

Lesson: While social media policies and guidelines have been around in the business community for a long time, many companies simply haven’t established them yet. Those that have, do not maintain them.

Whether you start with a basic social media policy tool, thoroughly research and create your own, or work with an experienced outside agency to help create one, it’s pretty important to do so. Then allocate the resources to maintain it in conjunction with your organization’s social media best practices used in marketing, PR, corporate communications, HR, legal and customer service.

Social Hub – Many branches maintain a repository of social media profiles and networks in a central location. Others, like the U.S. Army, and U.S. Air Force allow submission of social profiles for evaluation and inclusion in the hub. Aggregating social presence either as a list or by curating messaging (filtered of course) provides both internal (service members, families and other units looking for examples) and external audiences (recruits, news media) with a useful resource.

Lesson: Whether your company is small but with a big social footprint, or you have a large enterprise with numerous business units and branch operations, a social hub can provide a central location for internal staff and external audiences to find the right social resources within the organization.

Additionally, curating social messaging produced by your brand or talking about your brand can provide an interesting engagement opportunity for those curious about what people “really think” about your business.

Some good examples of social hubs that in the technology industry that curate brand messaging include: IBM Voices, Cisco, Dell, Intel.

Rich & Meaningful Media – As you can imagine, an all-volunteer military force requires a substantial recruiting effort. Social Media plays a critical part of communicating the stories and key messages of each branch to potential service members. Soldiers don’t get in the military for the money or because it’s a cush job. Each has his or her own reasons and the job of connecting with those diverse reasons is accomplished through images, video and engaging media that is designed for social media sharing.

Lesson: Companies need to understand the interests, needs and goals of those they wish to engage through the social web, whether it’s potential customers and employees, current customers and employees, news media, industry analysts, influencers and investors. When a business can create compelling stories that connect the interests of their target audience with the key messages of the brand, the results can be pretty impressive. As I like to say, facts tell but stories sell. What better medium to tell stories than video?

Video is hot for a reason. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video must be worth millions.  The magic of video isn’t just the format, it’s the message and the storytelling that matters. Companies would do well to investigate the role that a rich and meaningful media experience can play for attracting, engaging and persuading their target audience.

Without question, social media are a part of the life experience for every individual that participates on the web, whether working for a corporation or in the military. These are just a few examples of best practices worth considering as companies evolve from tactical experimentation to more strategic maturity of the social media operations.

What are some social media best practices you’ve seen in a military context that companies could learn from and use?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2013. |
Social Media and The U.S. Military – 3 Lessons for Business | http://www.toprankblog.com

This article was originally posted on the Online Marketing Blog

Kmart is at it again with a clever follow up to their highly popular video “Ship My Pants” that has had over 17 million views. The play on words this time is “Big Gas Savings” with over 1 million views in 2 days. Like the Old Spice videos that went ballistic, the question remains: They’re very creative and popular, but will these videos get shoppers in stores and buying at Kmart?

Flickr is Biggr. Users now get 1 terabyte of storage. I’ve been a pro Flickr user for many years and during Yahoo’s pre Marissa Mayer days, it had an uncertain future. Now Flickr is adding 1,000 x more storage for users and some new features including full resolution of images and new sharing functionality: “Upload once, send to any device, any screen, any friend, and any follower.”

The user interface has also been updated with the removal of small thumbnails and photos leading the experience, vs. text based navigation. I for one and looking forward to jumping back into using Flickr more often from the desktop, tablet and mobile. Via Flickr, Fast Company.

Arguably the big news in the SEO world this week was the roll out of Penguin 2.0, Google’s algorithmic webspam fighting effort. If your site is engaged in link buying, high volumes of exact match anchor text, or other link focused manipulations to improve search results, there’s a Penguin out to get you. More on Penguin from Matt Cutts, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Watch and of course, TopRank’s advice on Penguin 2.0 for Content Marketers.

Speaking of SEO and spam:

Google Notifies Sprint Of Spam Penalty; Seeks Advice In Google Help Forums. Apparently a portion of the Sprint site that was open for users to publish content was cited by Google for spamming. This is not a unique situation as Search Engine Land reports, since the BBC and Mozilla have had similar situations. Initially there was no help from Google outside of the notification but Matt Cutts eventually stepped in. As Barry notes in the SEL article, this is a tough one for brands to monitor, but they must if they expect to retain search positions and traffic form the almighty Google. Google Forum Thread. Thanks to Brian Larson for the heads up on this one.

Oh, How Pinteresting!, Introducing More Useful Pins for food, retail products, and movies. This week the nearly 50 million member strong Pinterest added a new feature directed towards commerce: Rich Pins. The new feature will make additional information available besides an image and description which many anticipate will give users more motivation to click through. Since Pinterest users tend to spend 70% more than buyers referred from non-social sites, there’s plenty of motivation for marketers to take advantage of these new features. Via Pinterest Blog, The Content Standard, Marketing Land.

Twitter announces ‘Lead Generation Cards’ to help brands drive qualified leads. Twitter has upped the ante for lead generation by adding 6 types of Twitter Cards as an advertising option for brands. Twitter cards (Summary, Large Image Summary, Photo, Gallery, App, Player and Product) make it possible for marketers to attach media experiences to Tweets that link to brand content. When someone expands your Tweet, they see a description of the offer and a call to action. Their name, @username, and email address are already pre-filled within the Card. Via Twitter Advertising Blog, TNW.

Yahoo has agreed to pay $1.1 billion for blogging platform and social network Tumblr, which is 6 years old and has 100 million blogs and about 300 million unique monthly visitors.What is Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer getting for all that Yahoo cash? Cats, porn and a lot of opportunity to connect with a very attractive demographic. Via Wall Street Journal.

But wait, there’s more!

Yahoo continued the buying spree and purchased a startup that powers games played on smartphones, tablets, consoles or personal computers called PlayerScale for an undisclosed sum. Via TechCrunch.

In other news about the social web:

According to a new Piper Jaffray study, Teens’ interest in Facebook is dropping but their use of Twitter has grown by 50% in 1 Year. I suspect the growth of teens’ use of Instagram and Snapchat is also on the rise.

Nutella Thanks Its Biggest Fan, Founder of World Nutella Day, by Sending Her a Cease and Desist reports AdWeek. But according to ABC News, they then took it back. When legal acts without social media savvy, it can be a sharp sting that gets them on the right track.

From the TopRank Online Marketing Blog Community:

Empathize to Optimize Your Customer’s Journey on the Search & Social Web – Carrie Morgan says: “A fantastic read on the same topic is Google’s Zero Moment of Truth, A must for every marketer to be familiar with! Nice post, Lee!! Great job story-telling. =)”

7 Steps to SEO at Scale, Patrick McFadden says: “Plan a Multi-Faceted Approach” Yes! The struggle many face with marketing online is a misguided impulse to put various tactics into separate boxes, instead of seeing each as an aspect of one strategic process.To this day, I see people referring to content marketing, social media marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO) as three different things — as if each is a tactic that can get you there alone. The smart way to treat these things as a holistic strategy.”

What are your thoughts on this week’s online marketing news? Was Tumblr a good call for Yahoo at 1.1 Billion? Do you like the new Flickr? How about Penguin 2.0 – is it doom and gloom or more like, “meh”.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2013. |
Online Marketing News: Biggr Flickr, Kmart Strikes Again, Yahoo Takes A Tumblr, Twitter Cards, Penguin 2 & SEO FUD | http://www.toprankblog.com

This article was originally posted on the Online Marketing Blog

comScore reports that in April 2013 there were over 20 billion search queries and of the 13 billion+ handled by Google, 16% of daily searches have never been seen before.  Each of those attempts represents buyers looking for solutions at the moment of need. Online marketers that take advantage of modern, scalable search engine optimization best practices as part of their overall digital marketing mix can gain a significant advantage over competitors to become “the best answer” when it matters most.

Understanding the basics of search engine optimization can be challenging given how often major search engines update and change the rules. However, buyers’ overwhelming use of search to find solutions is too great to ignore its influence on the buying cycle and achieving sales growth goals.

Along with managing the implementation of current SEO best practices, marketers must also take advantage of SEO performance improvement opportunities. In competitive industries, these opportunities come up regularly and without warning. Organic search is very much a race to the top, in that one brand’s loss of positioning is another’s opportunity to move up the ranks.

Of course, ranking well for keywords that customers use when searching for solutions is useless to your business unless that positioning brings inquiries and conversions. The good news is, SEO best practices help achieve better positioning as well as the performance of those rankings. Business growth feeds the online marketing budget; brands dedicate more resources to online marketing tactics like SEO as they show growth in ROI. Marketers able to successfully manage SEO as part of the online marketing mix and demonstrate ROI can scale their SEO programs for even greater success.

But how do you do scale SEO? This post will outline 7 steps towards scaling up your search optimization strategy from benchmarks to conversions so you can create the framework for even more success with organic search.

Get Your Ducks in a Row

Planning for growth first requires an inventory of all existing assets, challenges, and opportunities. This insight helps drive a strategy based on a realistic understanding of where your business sits in the eyes of potential and existing customers –  and in comparison to competitors. Some assets can be retooled, while you will realize other areas where new assets would be beneficial.  Take stock of your situation and the variety of influencing factors, in order to begin planning from an informed and prepared place.

Make Your Business Case

Scalable SEO requires buy-in from company decision-makers, throughout planning and execution. You don’t need to know exactly what will happen and clearly, you don’t have a crystal ball. However, you should know enough of your business, industry, marketplace and opportunity to make educated projections based on a variety of scenarios and tactics you could employ.

A successful business case will clearly show decision-makers exactly how your proposed strategy and tactics will work and why they are necessary. Marketers need to take care to explain the opportunities (and detriment if action is not taken) in a way those outside of SEO will understand. Tie each facet of your SEO strategy to a business objective to win over those who will make or break your plans with their decisions. Most importantly, give them options. Don’t become married to one way of doing things, because there are always alternatives. Having more than one path in mind to your goal gives you the opportunity to refute rejections with alternate plans of action. It also helps decision-makers feel more involved and invested in the process when they are able to actually make decisions instead of being asked to sign off on the entire plan as a whole.

Have Resources at the Ready

If you’re handling your SEO strategy in-house, prepare training material and documentation to help new team members quickly get up to speed. Taking on new hires during growth can be challenging, as everyone involved is in learning mode.

If you are working with an agency, choose one from the start with the talent and resources to grow with your SEO needs. Remember that your SEO strategy is an investment; the cheapest option may not be the one that can scale with your growing company and its needs.

Plan a Multi-Faceted Approach

If you are responsible for the entire online marketing plan, SEO is just one of  your considerations as the company grows and online marketing needs increase. If you are responsible for SEO only, you had better have a good working relationship with those who handle online advertising, public relations, social media and content marketing.

Sustainable growth requires that each component of your online marketing strategy work together. Assets from content marketing are critical to your search strategy. Social media is needed to build community, drive traffic and amplify your messaging. Email marketing can help close the leads earned through search. Integrating all aspects of your online marketing strategy brings a better ROI for each individual component and delivers a better, more personalized experience for customers.

Get Back to Basics and Best Practices

SEO changes rapidly, yet there are underlying best practices and basics that ensure your site and online presence is a good foundation for the actions you will take as your business grows. One client we worked with recently was able to increase their pageviews and conversion simply by getting back to basics, putting their customer journey first, and making on-site changes to bring them in line with SEO best practices.

Plan to Succeed and Avoid Playing Catch-up

At TopRank Online Marketing, we recently worked with a B2B online services provider looking for greater exposure of their company website in search where interested prospects were looking. They were looking to attract a very targeted subset of professionals to use their service and current SEO efforts were not effective. Though a strategic approach that included a series of SEO audits covering the content management system, content, keywords and both internal and externa links, a set of recommendations were made to optimize search visibility and performance of content in search. The result? Nearly 400% YoY increase in organic search traffic with a flat monthly investment. That’s the beauty of well planned SEO implemented over time: cost efficiency and a cumulative effect on performance.

Bringing on an online marketing agency to get their SEO strategy up to speed helped this B2B services company increase visibility where customers were looking when it mattered most. However, since the SEO strategy was not applied universally, the company did not benefit from substantial increases in search traffic for all parts of the business.  By demonstrating the value of strategic SEO, TopRank was able to convince the B2B marketer to implement a cohesive optimization program based both on search engine visibility and unique content to answer prospect needs. As a result, the overall quality of traffic and the number of customers driven from search improved significantly. Imagine the results if their SEO strategy had kept pace!

Understand Your Customer Journey and Invest in CRO

If you want to be top of mind in a competitive industry, make your customers and their journey top of mind as you plan and execute your SEO strategy. Search engine optimization has to factor in what people will do, what action they will take, once they actually get to your site. CRO is the logical next step in any SEO plan, but also an important consideration in scalable SEO. Getting the right eyes on your site and helping them fulfill the need that brought them there needs to happen in tandem.

Clearly, preparation is vital to the success of an online marketing strategy that leverages SEO to better attract, engage and convert new business. We need to be able to plan, yet stay agile and able to quickly react to – or even anticipate – changing needs and opportunities based on changes within search engines and the customer dynamic.

What challenges or successes in scaling your SEO strategy to meet demand have you experienced?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2013. |
7 Steps to SEO at Scale: How to Ramp Up Your Search Engine Optimization Strategy | http://www.toprankblog.com

This article was originally posted on the Online Marketing Blog

For some of my research I have been delving into the details on how exactly station devices in an IEEE 802.11 network associate with an access point. As far as I understand from the standard station nodes have two possibilities.

1. Active
In this case the station nodes send out probe requests to see if any access points respond during a timeout period

2. Passive
In this case the station nodes just sit and listen over a timeout period to see if any aps send out beacons.

In either case, according to the standard, the station node is supposed to rank the APs according to received signal strength (RSS). While this is recognized as a bad method for various reasons – it is a simple and quick way to select an AP.

In NS3 (3.16), as far as I can tell, there is no measure of RSS. The station node simply associates with the first AP that it receives either a probe response or beacon from (depending on active or passive). Usually this ends up being the closest AP to the user station because it has the lowest propagation delay due to the lower distance. However, depending on when the stations start up, a farther station is sometimes selected – at least initially until enough beacons are missed that an AP disassociation occurs, and the process starts over with the closer AP being selected.

In NS 3.16, the code which controls AP association is located in src/wifi/model/sta-wifi-mac.cc.

Looking at the code details, and confirming with some extra logging I added – a Wi-Fi station when starting, broadcasts a probe request (in active probing mode). It then waits for a probe response.

If you look in the “StaWifiMac::Receive (Ptr packet, const WifiMacHeader *hdr)” function, you can see that immediately when it receives one of these responses, it sends an association request to the AP. This is one place where changes must occur if one wishes to make a smarter decision for selecting an AP. In my case, instead of immediately sending an association request, I record the probe response and continue to wait for more until the probe timeout occurs.

If you look at “StaWifiMac::ProbeRequestTimeout (void)” you can see this is where you can now implement the association decision. After the timeout has occured, we now have a list of all of the received probe packets and can make the decision and associate like before.

This article was orginally posted on Jason’s Computer Science Blog.

Where do advertorials, also know in politically correct terms as “native advertising”, fit into the content marketing toolkit?  To answer this question, we first have to understand what advertorials are – and also that the definition of content marketing itself is a hotly contested topic.

Adam Stetzer of HubShout, in his recent investigation into the purported Google penalization of Interflora for employing advertorial content, insists advertorials are NOT content marketing.

“Advertorials are advertisements, regardless of how you try to dress them up”, he says, “while content marketing is educational. Advertorials are biased; content marketing is free of any bias. The two may share a commercial motive, but are completely different and should be treated as separate entities”.

However, Lewis DVorkin, Chief Product Officer at Forbes Media, defines content marketing as “Brands using the tools of digital media and social sharing to behave like original-content publishers.”

His definition of content marketing includes AdVoice, the Forbes service he was speaking of at the time. “First launched 20 months ago, it’s a fully transparent way for marketers to publish and curate content on Forbes.com and in our magazine.”  In fact, Lee Odden was included (unbeknownst to him) in a recent Forbes AdVoice article published by CapitalOne, “Use Content Marketing to Boost Your Business” which looks and reads pretty much the same as regular Forbes content.

It seems, then, that DVorkin’s vision of content marketing is not restricted to the unbiased, but that advertorial content is acceptable where parties ensure transparency for readers. “Content is content,” he says, “and transparency makes it possible for many different credible sources to provide useful information.”

Are Advertorials Evil By Their Very Nature?

Marketers like John Bethune at B2BMemes take exception with DVorkin’s definition. In a post questioning this expansion of content beyond owned into paid, he asks, “When a publication buys content (from staff writers or contributors), that clearly counts as editorial. But when the publication is paid to publish it (by advertisers), is it still editorial?”

It’s a valid question.

Advertorials have been around since the 1940s, when savvy newspaper publishers realized the potential of ad content posing as editorial. Then came infomercials, those wonderful paid programming spots that helped networks fill the dead air and increase their off-time revenue.

Fast forward to the modern web; advertorials might also be known as native advertising, or more commonly, sponsored content. They typically appear in blogs as well as print and online magazines and newspapers. Sponsored content allows brands to reach beyond their own audiences, to inform, engage and convert readers through content that (ideally) reads as editorial despite the underlying advertising message.

Google itself has pushed the envelope as far as clearly indicating which of their content is organic or paid and has had many conversations with the FTC as a result. So while some have rightly questioned whether Google’s stance on advertorials is a move designed to cut their paid advertising competitors off at the knees, it doesn’t seem so. The penalization of flower brand Interflora for participating in BBC advertorials seems a natural extension of their paid links policy. As Stetzer points out in his evaluation of the situation, penalization for advertorial content can be prevented/remedied by ensuring all links in the content are no-follow and do not pass PageRank.

Still, we have the ethical question: do advertorials have a place in your strategy as one of the content marketing tactics to consider?

Are Advertorials Even Content Marketing At All?

When Lee Odden recently asked his social network of marketers to share their definitions of content, the range of answers was surprising:

• Information designed for consumption, seasoned for enjoyment, and packaged to share.
• Content comes in any form (audio, text, video), and it informs, entertains, enlightens, or teaches people who consume it.
• Content is high quality, useful information that conveys a story presented in a contextually relevant manner with the goal of soliciting an emotion or engagement.
• Relevant, compelling, timely and valued knowledge and/or entertainment.
• Original and opinion-charged copy with a focused message and personalized voice.

In fact, after perusing the 40+ definitions of content, I don’t see anything about paid content falling within the bounds of content marketing territory. Then again, I see nothing definitively excluding it as a viable tactic, either.

When Advertorials Are Okay:

Unfortunately, many online marketing tactics that show promise are milked to death and taken way too far by overzealous marketers. Instead of an outright ban on advertorial content, maybe what we need is a set of common sense, ethical guidelines for its use.

“With today’s savvy consumers, sponsored content, native advertising and advertorial isn’t effective unless it provides valuable and useful information,” TopRank CEO Lee Odden recently told a German business magazine. “With reputable publications, similar, if not the same, editorial standards apply as they do for pure editorial content. The only difference is the means of inclusion: payment or editorial.”

With that in mind, here are some common sense guidelines for advertorial, native advertising or sponsored content:

• Top quality – never forget the “editorial” part of the equation. Your competitors may have former journalists and professional editors at their disposal, as should your brand.
• Avoid overtly promotional language because it’s ineffective and makes you look silly.
• Aim to inform, educate, and/or entertain readers, as with other types of unpaid content.
• Offer transparency and does not attempt to trick readers into believing they are reading unbiased, journalistic content.
• Use no-follow links to avoid passing PageRank and falling outside Google’s guidelines.
• Serves its purpose through careful planning and alignment with your business goals.
• An accurate reflection of your brand voice, company culture and capabilities.

Advertorial content has been a sticky topic lately, although it doesn’t have to be dismissed without consideration. If sponsored content makes sense as a marketing tactic for your company and you can find an opportunity for placement with a reputable publication and measurable ROI, it may be worth considering. Just remember that content, whether it’s published purely based on editorial merits or as part of an advertising program, isn’t effective unless it creates value for the reader.

Are you using advertorial content as part of your marketing strategy? Share your tips or thoughts on the practice in the comments.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2013. |
Do Advertorials & Native Advertising Fit In Your Content Marketing Strategy? | http://www.toprankblog.com

This article was originally posted on the Online Marketing Blog

Brands understand the importance of content marketing, yet most have not yet addressed their content needs on either a strategic or tactical level, according to Altimeter’s Rebecca Lieb.

Researchers for the company conducted interviews with executives actively engaged in content strategy or marketing; their findings were the basis of a new report, Organizing for Content: Models to Incorporate Content Strategy and Content Marketing in the Enterprise. Lieb and report co-authors guide brand marketers through a variety of organizational models for content, with recommendations to help companies execute an effective content strategy. Read the full report on SlideShare.

Trust Can Make or Break the B2B Buyer Relationship: Study

Buyers are overwhelmed by the amount of content available to them, making the content marketer’s challenge greater than ever, according to a new study from Demand Gen Report. Content plays an increasingly important role in B2B purchase decision making, with 68% of survey respondents indicating they rely more on content than they did last year. Variety is key: five out of nine content formats gained in popularity, while only podcasts and interactive presentations lost traction. Researchers found that three specific content formats stand out in 2013: white papers, E-books and webinars.

Sales messages are a huge turnoff for buyers, 61% of whom said sales-heavy content has been a problem for them in the past year. Survey respondents indicated they would like B2B marketers to focus on making content more readable, adding value, and showing their research to their audience.

Google Launches Interactive Customer Path to Purchase Tool

The customer journey is complex, with engagement happening across platforms, devices and possible over a period of time, says Google. Their new tool on the Think Insights website aims to help marketers “explore and understand the customer journey to improve your marketing programs.”

Users can toggle through different industries and countries including the US, Canada, Brazil, UK and Germany in order to see whether channels tend to play an “assist” or “last interaction” role in the typical path to purchase. The length of the customer journey can impact purchase value; Google’s tool also allows marketers to explore combinations of number of days or steps to purchase, industries and countries, with their resultant effect on average order value. In the example above, Google shows that 66% of total US retail revenue comes from purchases made in more than one step. Their findings are based on Google Analytics data and should offer valuable macro-level insight for marketers.

Bing Research Shows Over 50% of Users Click on the First Results on the SERP

The majority of searchers click on the first link available on a search engine results page, with a dramatic reduction in clicks for each position thereafter, according to Dr. Ronny Kohavi from Bing’s Research & Development team. By the time you reach the 8th link on a results page, less than 1% of users will choose it, as shown below.

Dr. Kohavi explained in the announcement of their findings, “The figure (above) shows the click-through rate dropping from position 3 on, where position 3 could contain an Instant Answer, or the 2^nd web result that was pushed down because there was an Instant Answer above it, etc.”

Expect more changes in the near future. “These are our first steps in dynamically sizing the page,” Kohavi wrote. “ If you’re getting different number of results, you’re probably in one of our ongoing experiments.”

Goodbye, Google Instant Previews

If you noticed that Instant Previews are now absent from Google search results, you’re not alone. Search Engine Land went on a quest to find out what had happened to the feature Google promised on its launch it 2010 would result in greater user satisfaction. After confirming Instant Previews are indeed gone, SEL found an online help thread with a statement from a Googler reading, “Instant previews saw very low usage by our users, and we’ve decided to focus on streamlining the page to benefit more users.”

New Social Platforms Venture Beyond Real-Time Marketing to Predictive?

Two major players and a startup all released new social platforms this month. ClickZ’s Susan Kuchinskas shares details on Social.com, the new offering from Salesforce, and Adobe’s Predictive Publishing for Facebook dashboard plug-in.

It gets really interesting with startup Blab, launched April 9. “We don’t do projections, we do predictions based on the pattern and behavior of the actual conversation,” Tamsen Galloway, vice president of Blab, told Kuchinskas. “We can see where a conversation will be in 24 hours, and how that may change between 48 and 72 hours later.”

Blab uses a “conversation canvas,” as shown above, for each brand interest or goal, ie.: brand mentions, competitor mentions, news around events or topic, etc. Kuchinskas explains, “The platform applies its patented predictive and analytic technologies to data streams from social channels and the web, analyzing some 1.3 terabytes of data at any moment.” This gives brands a unique opportunity to actually get ahead of conversations, with time to craft messaging and content in anticipation of opportunities.

This Week in the @TopRank Community

Members of the @TopRank social community tuned in for TopRank CEO Lee Odden’s content marketing presentation at Content2Conversion this week in New York. Attendees shared livetweets, photos and even a cool takeaways Vine on Twitter throughout the event.

Over in the TopRank Facebook community, 10 fans will each win a copy of Lee Odden’s Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing as we reach a milestone with 25,000 members in our community. Stop by and check it out; page comments get preference!

Check out the @toprank Twitter channel and stay tuned to #trnews for breaking news across the digital marketing landscape in the weeks ahead!

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TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2013. |
Online Marketing News: Predictive Social Tools, Content Marketing & The Customer Journey | http://www.toprankblog.com

This article was originally posted on the Online Marketing Blog

So you want your campaign to go viral…

Let’s keep in mind your business objectives, shall we? As these social marketing fails will show, campaigns may take off but go seriously sideways if companies place popularity above purpose.

Some companies can afford more risk and racier campaigns than others, yet risk in business must always be mitigated and justifiable based on the potential rewards. You might disagree with my opinion on the campaigns featured in this post, but I believe the risks should have been evident from the start and far outweighed the potential payoff.

These examples may cause you to shake your head, or enjoy a good belly laugh, but each is a fantastic learning opportunity for social media marketers.

Money Can’t Buy You Love – nor Common Sense

We’ll kick off with KFC’s #IatetheBones. Fried chicken execs are literally throwing everything they’ve got at their viral tagline, which they expect to be the next “Where’s the Beef?” Launched April 14^th, the campaign has invested in it an estimated $50 million budget, Interpublic’s DraftFCB agency and an Academy Award winning director for the ads. Considering this tagline is to take them boldly into their new position as a boneless chicken brand, the budget and scope are not all that surprising.

Why, then, did no one stop to consider the potential negative effects of associating a food brand with sexual innuendo and dead bodies? Worse still, did they consider it and decide it was worth rolling the dice? When you read the user-generated content on #IatetheBones, that a food brand would approve of the association puts KFC squarely in Quizno’s horrendous “2 Girls, 1 Sub” space.

As I’m writing this, one sentiment analysis tool puts the amount of positive buzz around #IatetheBones at just 51%. Compare that to 80% positive sentiment for the @kfc brand itself on Twitter. The hashtag sentiment analysis came from a sample of 50 tweets, so I tried another tool to compare, which analyzed in real-time and came up with 74% negativity around the #IatetheBones hashtag.

Apparently the hashtag did well in test markets and inspired people to go online and share videos and comments. Unfortunately, people are sharing memes of people choking on chicken bones, or Hannibal Lecter:

They’re resurfacing years-old animal rights videos and tagging them with #IatetheBones, making those videos appear in social search again with this new campaign. They’re blindly tweeting on the hashtag with no message at all, trying to make it trend. Is this convincing anyone to go buy boneless or think better of the brand? Probably not when they’re sharing tweets about how much fun they’re having with their chicken and dead girls:

Did no one on the entire team it took to put all of this together realize or even care that “bone” invites all kinds of not-even-subtle phallic and cannibalistic commentary?

“Where’s the Beef?” worked because it’s catchy, cute and relatable. Everyone has a beef at some point. We’re not all going to eat the bones. Ya dig?

Then, I could be completely wrong. Maybe this one really will take off and KFC will have ushered in a new pop culture catchphrase as the result of their clever marketing. I still think it seems far more likely the conversation is going to continue its downward spiral, finally crashing and burning at the precise point that reading the tweets on #IatetheBones would make Tommy Lee blush.

If You Want to Gamble on User-Generated Content, At Least Be Sure Customers Like You

Moving right along, another memorable social campaign fail also came from a fast food giant – THE fast food giant – by way of #McDStories. McDonalds’ campaign kicked off innocently enough, with two tweets sharing stories about their employees, food and suppliers.

The problem with viral marketing is that it takes users generating and sharing content to make it popular. As McDonald’s learned, you just never know what people are going to share. #McDStories tweets told tales of everything from throwing up Happy Meals to animal abuse to things I can’t even type as they make me a bit queasy.

Is that good branding? Is the gamble on a viral tagline worth potentially damaging your brand to the point people are still talking about the episode over a year later? I’m guessing in McDonald’s case, their sales didn’t suffer too terribly, though you have to wonder if their investment was money well spent. McDonald’s later admitted that “#mcdstories did not go as planned.” Fail.

A Reputation Takes Years to Build and One Stupid Social Campaign to Destroy

Next up:

Yes, friends, this actually happened. Some social media rocket scientist thought this was a good thing to post to Belvedere’s Facebook and Twitter pages.  Do I even need to elaborate? No, the portrayal of a rape scene is not a good endorsement for your alcoholic beverage. Spokespeople for the company were sorry. Unfortunately, this was so ill-conceived – and there were so many stops along the way someone should have thrown up a roadblock – that no one really cared how sorry they were.

Other dishonorable mentions for social media campaigns that should never have seemed a good idea, even at the time, go to:

• American Apparel for their completely classless Hurricane Sandy sale.
• Microsoft for asking Windows Phone Twitter followers to share horror stories about Android phones on the hashtag #DroidRage. Followers virtually ripped off Microsoft’s arms and verbally beat them with the stumps, leaving a bloody trail of Windows jabs in their wake.
• Kia for attempting to ride the coattails of the popular Cheezburger brand with a meme campaign that had one user tell the auto brand to “Get off of the internet.”

The moral of the story, marketers, is that you can probably pull off something wildly popular and crazy and risqué if you try hard enough and throw enough money at it… but do you really want to? Part of any campaign worth its salt is a critical evaluation of each element and any potential risks. Are those risks manageable? Is it really worth the risk when you can’t control your social audience?

Plan to Succeed and Never Appear in a Fail Blog

First, consider the purpose of your social marketing strategy. You may be trying to:

• gain insight into your community
• build brand visibility and authority
• influence buyers
• promote products and services
• drive traffic to your website
• increase search visibility

…or some combination thereof. Once you’ve established your goals, you’ll plan to employ specific tactics to help your brand achieve them. A social media marketing checklist like this one Lee Odden created and shared can help you get the right people and processes in place to execute your plan. As you implement, measure, and hopefully improve your social strategy, it’s important to remember your social presence is an extension of your business presence. You can’t get away with any more online than on television or radio; the same people are listening and they see everything you do online in an instant.

Whether all of your planning and social management takes place in-house or with the assistance of an agency, you must protect your brand. Work with professionals who value your reputation as much as you do. Choose agency partners that value performance, brand loyalty and measurable results over cutesy campaigns and “buzz.”

If you’re not sure, stop. Just stop. Calculated risk is one thing. Diving head first into issues you don’t understand (or have no real reason to talk about) simply because they’re popular or trending is an invitation for a social PR disaster – and we’ve seen plenty lately. Share the most memorable social fails you’ve seen in the comments!

Top image courtesy of Shutterstock.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2013. |
Brands Gone Wild: Social Media Marketing Fails & Lessons Learned | http://www.toprankblog.com

This article was originally posted on the Online Marketing Blog