Status Watch

#SMCQ16 On Measuring Influence

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 06:43 GMT

Earlier this week, the SMC Editorial Board posed the question “How do you measure influencers and/or influential social media platforms?” having wondered aloud which combination of measurement and know-how equaled influence. As the community response demonstrated, influence is equal parts quantitative and qualitative. From ‘listening platforms' such as Radian6, eCairn and ScoutLabs which track and calculate conversation volume, page rank, comments and frequency as well as a host of other data garnered from Sales Force and CRM tools, to good old intuition, influence is subject to the eye of the beholder. Some notes from the online response field:

“I look for the number of followers and the number of participants who add comments. Equally important is the quality of the content and the comments. They should be well-written, intelligent, supported by references to sources, focus on the positive, succinct, and not reflect a strongly biased opinion.” — James O'Connor, Owner, Clutter Control, O'Connor Communications,

“So effective, efficient messages are key. Regularly is another. Transparent, non-promotional communications essential. Self-effacing humor is nice. But the most important aspect is just to be a part of the conversation and thought stream. One person with one comment at the exact right moment in time who we never hear from again can be a profound influencer.” —How Do You Measure Influencers,” by Bob Stewart,

@the_sophist: #SMCQ16 The act of measuriing influence, influences. Especially in the state of social consciousness. u can't measure u can only approximate

Suggested Reading:

“How to Measure Influence Online,” Mashable, by Micah Baldwin, March 2, 2009

“Do You Know Jack About Social Media Measurement,” MetricsMan, June 15, 2009

“Is PageRank the Ultimate Measure of Online Influence?” Nine By Blue, October 8, 2008

“Social Media Metrics Superlist,” Interactive Insights Group, by Robin Broitman, February 2nd, 2009

The SMC Editorial Board will be reviewing the responses and talking more about measuring influence, this Friday 10am PST on BlogTalk Radio Social Media Club. We welcome your participation.

The Year's Half Over. So How Are My Predictions Tracking?

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:40 GMT

I like to do this exercise from time to time - asking how my predictions for the year are holding up given six months have passed since I posted them.

Well, let's see, shall we?

1. We'll see an end to the recession, taken literally, by Q4 09.

I think most folks agree this will happen. I'm not saying it has, just that the consensus is we're on the way there.

2. The online media space will be hit hard by the economic downturn in the first half, but by year's end, will have chalked up moderate gains over last year in terms of gross spend.

Jury's out, hard to call this one, but my own experience indicates this has a good chance of happening.

3. Google will see search share decline significantly for the first time ever. It will also struggle to find an answer to the question of how it diversifies its revenue in 2009.

Ok, so is this significant?! Well, yes - it's the first share slip Google's had, and it happened this year, but it's tiny. Hey, it's a start. As for the answer to how it diversifies revenue? Well, the jury is out, but it's still all AdWords, all the time, so far. YouTube is struggling with a model, Google admits. Meanwhile, Facebook seems to have found one (in self service)...

4. Despite #3 above, Google stock will soar in by Q3-4 of 2009, mainly because demand will pick up, and when demand picks up, it's like rain on a field of newly sown wheat.

This is already starting to happen - GOOG has moved from below 300 in March to well over 400 now. But we'll see if it continues. Several analysts are predicting a return to 600 or 650, in fact.

5. Tied to #3 above, Microsoft will gain at least five points of search share in 2009, perhaps as much as 10.

I know, I'm crazy, right? But the company did release Bing just last month, already won two or so points of share, and has a 100mm marketing war chest, and its major distribution deals have yet to hit Comscore. Wait and see....

6. Yahoo and AOL will merge.

This one I may be wrong on, because first, AOL has to spin out. Or maybe it almost does but then combines with Yahoo this year....

7. ... in the second half of the year, Microsoft will buy its search monetization from the combined company.

Well...again, this takes longer to develop that this year, I'm guessing. I probably have egg on my face here.

8. Apple will see a significant reversal of recent fortunes.

Wow, I am so wrong on this so far. Even with Job's health issues, which are not what I meant when I wrote this. There is always the second half of the year.

9. Major brands will continue to struggle with the best way to interact with "social media."

True so far, but wow, what a great, great opportunity for folks who run companies in this space. Cough.

10. Agencies will increasingly see their role as that of publishers. Publishers will increasingly see their role as that of agencies.

I think this one has become obvious. I'll hope to prove it when I do my annual round up at the end of the year.

11. Twitter will continue its meteoric rise.

Remember, I said this back in January. Twitter was at 5.9mm uniques according to Compete. It's now broken 20mm there, and we all know it's way bigger than that. It took a pause last month, and we're all waiting to see what June's numbers look like....

12. Facebook will do something entirely shocking and unpredictable....As I think about it, it might be as simple as making Facebook Connect truly open, and changing its policies to make it drop dead easy to get data out of the service. Also, Facebook will build a Twitter competitor, but it will never leave beta and will ultimately be abandoned as not worth the time. Instead, Facebook will "friend" Twitter and the two companies will become strong partners.

Wow. They did it. At least the first part of it. We'll see about the second part.

13. Lucky #13 is reserved for my eternal mobile prediction: 2009 will see the year mobility becomes presumptive in every aspect of the web.

I think finally, this one will be true.

14. Lastly, I promise, I will have sold my book and will be hard at work on it.

Well, we'll see....

Thanks for keeping me honest!

Bing Starts to Get Real (Time)

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:29 GMT

I've been complaining that nearly no search engines surface real time data (for now, that's Twitter, but Facebook is coming soon enough, and there will be tons more). In fact, I complained to Microsoft about this well before the launch of Bing, and then complained some more when Twitter results were not surfaced in initial beta versions of the service. Man, I'm grumpy lately, eh?

Well, that's changing. Sort of. From a Bing blog post today:

There has been much discussion of real-time search and the premium on immediacy of data that has been created primarily by Twitter. We’ve been watching this phenomenon with great interest, and listening carefully to what consumers really want in this space. Today we’re unveiling an initial foray into integrating more real time data into our search results, starting with some of the more prominent and prolific Twitterers from a variety of spheres. This includes Tweets from folks from our own search technology and business sphere like Danny Sullivan or Kara Swisher as well as those from spheres of more general consumer appeal like Al Gore or Ryan Seacrest. Starting later today, when you search for these folks names in association with Twitter, you’ll see their latest Tweets come up in real time on Bing’s search results.

Oh boy! I wonder if maybe...I'm one of those folks? Sigh. No such luck. Although, to be honest, I can't seem to make it work for anyone, including Danny and Kara. Maybe it's not working yet in my area.

In any case, what DOES come up is my and everyone else I tested's Twitter account, at least when I add "Twitter" to the query. That's a major step forward from where Bing was even at launch. That said, there is NO reason to make folks put the word "Twitter" into the query. None. That is a failed use case. Commit, or don't commit, but don't ask users to specify Twitter to know what someone might be saying in real time. Better to indicate that the query has real time results, and offer them if a searcher wants them. Or figure out some other clever UI solution. Real time is here to stay, may as well design to it, and not ask users to do it for you.

After all, with the whole Websquared thing, we'll soon be leaving real time trails all over the globe, and we may well want them surfaced by our favorite search engine, no?

But good on ya, Microsoft, for dipping your toe into the water. Google, your ball.

Juxtaposition Fun

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:07 GMT

Seen in my feedreader just now.

I dunno, it just struck me, Google can't do a helluva lot to help you, Newspaper Industry.

It May Be Free, But It's Sure As Hell Underwritten

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:57 GMT

There's quite a wonderful authorial kerfuffle happening between Chris Anderson, whose recent book "Free" has been the target both of plagiarism charges (from Wikipedia, of all places, oh the wonderful irony, one might think Chris actually planted the whole damn thing...) and Malcolm Gladwell, who never met a clever anecdote he couldn't convert into a well turned (and dammingly entertaining) book of his own.

I won't go into the whole thing, because, honestly, I just don't have the, er, free time.

However, I do find it noteworthy that Chris's much-linked to riposte to Malcolm's initial evisceration comes on Wired.com, where, shock of all shocks, advertising is prominently featured. Free, of course, doesn't come without a business model.

And a NYT Profile of Aardvark..

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:56 GMT

..which I've been talking about for some time...from the piece:

Having humans, not software, supply the advice is important. Max Ventilla, who formerly was at Google and is now Aardvark’s chief executive, said, “Often the most useful answers don’t answer the original question. Example: ‘You don’t want to go to the Caribbean now — it’s the rainy season — you want to go to Hawaii.’ ” ONCE you try Aardvark’s service, you can’t look at Yahoo Answers, the current leader in questions-and-answers, without feeling pity for its now-manifest limitations.

Profile of Google Lobbyist...

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:35 GMT

...in the NYT today.

Google has begun this public-relations offensive because it is in the midst of a treacherous rite of passage for powerful technology companies — regulators are intensely scrutinizing its every move, as they once did with AT&T, I.B.M., Intel and Microsoft. Some analysts say that government opposition, here or in Europe, could pose the biggest threat to Google’s continued success.

#SMCQ16 How do you measure influence?

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 12:55 GMT

Metrics, popularity, comment counts, network buzz or simple word-of-mouth credibility? There are a huge number of factors that go into determining the influence of a blogger or online platform, but how can you tell who or what truly influences both individual and community behavior. What does true influence even mean? On this week's Social Media Question of the Week call, our Editorial board discussed how the meaning of influence in an ever-more-vocal online environment. When do you listen and when do you tune out a blogger's opinion or other online source of information? How do you choose and rate your sources? We want to know:

#SMCQ16 How do you measure social media influencers and/or influential online communities?

How to join the Social Media Clubs Question of the Week discussion: Our goal with the Question of the Week initiative is to create a truly collaborative conversation within and around the most up-to-the-minute issues affecting Social Media. Each week, the Social Media Club editorial board looks at trends, topics and news affecting social media during a Blogtalk Radio broadcast. During the call, the editorial board forms the question. This is where YOU come in: we’d love for you to post your thoughts on your blog, via Twitter or by commenting on the Social Media Club site. Please tag your blogs and posts with a hash tag, ‘#’, so we can track the conversation. For example, if you wrote a response to Social Media Club Question of the Week 13, please tag your post ‘#SMCQ13’ and we’ll be able to find it, track back, and link the post to the original post. Your answers will all be included in the weekly Conversation post & Blogtalk Radio broadcast review of the answers we received. We also invite you to call in to the shows to share your viewpoint. Instructions about how to call in will be given on this site by the end of each week. Thanks for joining the club!

When Value Is Created, Let It Be Curated At Scale

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:17 GMT

Facebook's opening up even more, as CNet reports. Facebook has posted an update to its "Publisher" settings - basically, the instrumentation to your status updates - that makes it possible to broadcast the value you create in the social web through composition - of a status update, a blog post, or any other action that you might wish to declare. You can instrument it to be seen only by your network, or your network's network, or everyone - and it's that everyone part that makes Facebook a lot more like Twitter in terms of the ability for developers to create interesting executions based on that firehose. Think about what Microsoft did with ExecTweets, but with Facebook scale. Of course, that's just the tip o' the iceberg. Exciting stuff.

#SMCQ15 On truth-finding

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:56 GMT

This week's SMCQ15: How do you know who to trust within the social media environment? was especially pertinent given the dramatic impact Social Media had amidst the election and protests in Iran. The online conversation and direct responses we received pointed out the need for self responsibility and incorporating a journalistic standard for fact checking.

Some notes from the online conversation:

“Is Twitter The CNN Of The New Media Generation?,” by Brian Solis, TechCrunch, June 17, 2009

“Fact checking is a vital part of the news business and is ultimately what separates amateurs from experts. But researching fact from hearsay or even opinion is almost impossible on Twitter for most users. Keen believed that citizen media is corrupting the very institution of news media because most of the individuals publishing information using social tools, he argues in his book, are “grossly misinformed.” While Morris didn’t make the sweeping assertion that Keen expressed, his point is noteworthy and deserves further examination”

Iran + Twitter = Trust, But Don't Verify, by Farel Chideya, The Huffington Post

“So, how do you verify? Well… some people say, just… don't. It's a cul-de-sac you can go around again and again. I am not saying don't follow Twitter (again, that would be useless). I do want to follow Twitter, on #IranElections and all else. What I don't want to do is give up the idea of verifying information.”

“How Do You Know What Tweets are True? Exactly the Same Way You Source Everything Else” by Sarah Delman, Corporate Memo

“Social media isn’t some separate sphere: it’s similar, in fact, to all other source building. If you don’t know who to trust, online or off, then you’re not doing your job. It’s what reporters do: they figure out who to trust before they need to. You should have built social media sources beforehand in exactly the same way you build offline sources.”

“Twitter and Social Media in Iran,” By Anthony Caruana, Hydrapinion, June 24, 2009

“solely relying on Twitter where particularly poignant or inflammatory Tweets are heavily retweeted doesn't equate with accuracy.”

Highlights from The Twitter Stream:

@rustytanton There's nothing in the question to imply that mainstream media or what you hear on the street is superior in any way

@dwiggins: How different from other sources? Same question. Most folks think answers found on Google correct! Info literacy a core need here.

@znmeb posted twice on the question: I don't think “social media” are any different regarding trust than any other communication channel”
and, noting need for self responsibility, @znmeb: #SMCQ15 fool me once, shame on you … fool me twice, shame on me

@ baurecom: nowadays you can't really trust anybody. You have to thoroughly check the validity of the source b4 you broadcast it.

Further Reading

“Crisis Communications Online: Social Media Usage during a Crisis with Leysia Palen,” by Eric Schwartzman, On the Record, June 4, 2009

“Thumbs To The News: Public Turns To Twitter,” by Wendy Kaufman, NPR, April 20, 2009

“Finding Truth on the Internet,” Wired, by Louise Witt, September 4, 2004

Have thoughts to share on the subject? Please tune into BlogTalkRadio this Friday @ 10am PST as the Social Media Club Editorial Board reviews the conversation. We welcome your input.

A new social media song and music video by Pete Codella

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:14 GMT

A couple months ago, as I was returning home after presenting at a social media conference in Las Vegas, I had an idea: what if I took a fun, popular song and changed the words to tell a story about social media?

My idea came to reality with the help of my wife and some great friends these past few weeks.

I debuted my new social media music video, Crazy Little Thing the Web, today at a presentation I gave in Denver for the America’s Blood Centers annual conference.

The reason I choose this outlet is because it brings some of my musical theater training into my practice as a digital public relations counselor and practitioner. It combines something fun and creative with the world of social media and communication.

Other Applications

Are there ways your company or organization can utilize multimedia sharing sites like YouTube to tell your message in a new, engaging and creative way?

If so, what will be the end result? In other words, why would you want to tell something in a different way?

Are you looking for greater awareness, for more members, to sell products?

Perhaps an indirect, creative message — one that demonstrates your expertise without a blatant sales pitch — will produce increased engagement and enhance your communication efforts. At least it’ll show you’re creative and willing to step out and do something different.

We all know the definition of insanity: repeating the same actions and expecting a different result.

Challenge

Social Media Club: what do you bring to the table? How have you engaged constituents in new and creative ways? What will you be known for? What makes you unique and different from everyone else?

Enjoy Crazy Little Thing the Web

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the fruits of my labor with this new entree into the world of songs about social media.

Please feel free to take this new social media song and share it, tweak it, edit it, revise it, improve upon it, etc.

It’s all about the creative process and collectively creating something better than the sum of its parts.

Published on the Codella Marketing YouTube channel on June 24, 2009.

Introduction to RDFa

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 04:00 GMT

In part one of a two-part primer on RDFa, learn how semantic features normally confined to the head of an HTML document can be used to add semantic richness to the elements of the body. Mark Birbeck shows us how.

Visual Decision Making

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 04:00 GMT

If it takes only 50 milliseconds for users to form an aesthetic opinion of your site's credibility and trustworthiness, are designers who create visually compelling sites simply wasting time and treasure on graphic indulgences? Patrick Lynch doesn't think so.

Google v. Facebook? What We Learn from Twitter.

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:41 GMT

Last week I wrote a post in which I opined a bit about Facebook search. In it I wrote:

Facebook is way more than its newsfeed, and its search play is key to proving that value, and extending it....No doubt building Facebook search today is akin to building Google ten years ago - bigger, most likely, in terms of data, algorithmic, and platform challenges.

If only I had waited a few days, I could have pointed to Fred's piece in Wired, out this week. He profiles the ongoing feud between the King of Search, Google, and the upstart, Facebook. In his piece, he writes:

For the last decade or so, the Web has been defined by Google's algorithms—rigorous and efficient equations that parse practically every byte of online activity to build a dispassionate atlas of the online world. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions a more personalized, humanized Web, where our network of friends, colleagues, peers, and family is our primary source of information, just as it is offline. In Zuckerberg's vision, users will query this "social graph" to find a doctor, the best camera, or someone to hire—rather than tapping the cold mathematics of a Google search. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the center. In other words, right where Google is now.

I agree that of all the contenders out there right now (including Twitter), Facebook has the most data, position, and potential to upset Google's dominance of the web. But I disagree with one premise of the piece, which is that Facebook's proprietary approach to the data it stores presents a blind spot to Google that gives Facebook a competitive edge. Fred writes:

Together, this data comprises a mammoth amount of activity, almost a second Internet. By Facebook's estimates, every month users share 4 billion pieces of information—news stories, status updates, birthday wishes, and so on. They also upload 850 million photos and 8 million videos. But anyone wanting to access that stuff must go through Facebook; the social network treats it all as proprietary data, largely shielding it from Google's crawlers. Except for the mostly cursory information that users choose to make public, what happens on Facebook's servers stays on Facebook's servers. That represents a massive and fast-growing blind spot for Google, whose long-stated goal is to "organize the world's information."

I think it's a major strategic mistake to not offer this information to Google (and anyone else that wants to crawl it.) In fact, I'd argue that the right thing to do is to make just about everything possible available to Google to crawl, then sit back and watch while Google struggles with whether or not to "organize it and make it universally available." A regular damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario, that....

For an example of what I mean, look no further than Twitter. That service makes every single tweet available as a crawlable resource. And Google certainly is crawling Twitter pages, but the key thing to watch is whether the service is surfacing "superfresh" results when the query merits it. So far, the answer is a definitive NO.

Why?

Well, perhaps I'm being cynical, but I think it's because Google doesn't want to push massive value and traffic to Twitter without a business deal in place where it gets to monetize those real time results.

Is that "organizing the world's information and making it universally available?" Well, no. At least, not yet.

By making all its information available to Google's crawlers (and fixing its terrible URL structure in the process), Facebook could shine an awfully bright light on this interesting conflict in interest.

Thoughts on Online Marketing

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 22:23 GMT

Many folks have asked me when CM Summit videos would be posted, several are up now. They include the opener, above, in which I give a short overview of the state of online marketing from my perspective - start at about 6 mins in if you want to miss the throat clearing of setting up the show and thanking folks I've worked with. Perhaps the key thoughts: People Don't Join Ad Networks, and Publishers Are Communities of Mind.

Presented By:

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#SMCQ15 Who to trust? Verifying social media information

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 11:30 GMT

Receiving retweeted information that doesn't have a clear source, mail from hijacked email accounts and coming across yet another poorly fact-checked blog post represent the down side of the instant information age. How does one determine the accuracy of information found online? And how do you verify sources to ensure that you're getting the truth, be it business, personal or political? During last Friday's Question of the Week call, the Social Media Club Editorial Board discussed the conundrum of finding the most accurate sources of news amid a vast ocean of information. Now we want to hear from you. We welcome your thoughts on this week's question:

#SMCQ15 How do you know who to trust within the social media environment?

Please tag your response, posts and tweets #SMCQ15.

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The Corporate Social Media Ecosystem

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:23 GMT

It’s an interactive evening at the Social Media Club, San Francisco / Silicon Valley, at Citizen Space. HP alum Ravit Lichtenberg of Ustrategy ignited the event presenting before dozens of the social media digerati on “The Corporate Social Media Ecosystem.”

“What are you?,” she asks. An expert, agency, first timer? Now, let’s get started. Companies have become collaborative with multiple customers, and those customers are interacting with other customers. One to one marketing from company to customer is a thing of the past.

The social media corporate ecosystem has also changed. What used to be a discrete relationship between companies and their customers; companies and their partners, has become a much more pliable system. Corporations now count on customers to inform other customers, and often partner with startups—not just established companies. The corporation, customer and partner are all together having a ‘conversation.’ Corporations want to create relationships; customers want the interaction; and start-ups want the money. The “glue” between them all is marketing, business development, and capabilities.

Recap: What is social media again? The desktop solutions (and previous web apps) have changed the conversation – and people are overwhelmed. The focus used to be on the customers as eyeballs, but now those same customers have a face, an actual “voice that’s being heard.”

Over 60 percent of Americans regularly use social media (RWW/Cone research from Compete.com). Ninety-three percent of consumers believe a company should have a presence on social media sites. According to Forrester Research, people are open to most social tools from brand they like. Online discussion forums are on the rise, so are online videos while blogs and podcasts are coming down in popularity.

“Corporations care about social media!,” Ravit stresses. Cisco, Google, HP, Intel, Pepsico, Microsoft, eBay, and others are marking budget for social media, and making it part of their products, online and off-line.

The “gold standard” for social media use is marketing and collaboration – offline integration with online. And, brands are trying to get that right. HP spends 50 percent of its budget on marketing, and brands who use social media spend 10-25 percent of their marketing dollars.

“Lots of money being spent on social media and some are getting it right…” Remember how Burger King asked you to sacrifice your friends? Burger King got 20,000 people to each sacrifice 10 of their friends for a total of 200,000 people engaging with the brand. Procter & Gamble’s “BeingGirl” is a location for what it’s like to be a young girl. And, then those girls go to the store for the first time and, it’s a Procter & Gamble product they’re looking at first, of course.

But, most brands don’t get it… More than 50 percent of brand campaigns fail. Worst ad campaigns were HP Pay Per Post, Subway, Walmart Across America, as outlined at SXSW this year (SXSW blog and Forrester Research). These brands were unable to articulate and show ROI.

Startups know there’s a need. Facebook created a global need. Yammer’s another good example. Some succeed and others don’t. Some are generic or too customized, can’t get a handle on the business model, don’t share consistency or dependability, need integration and a quality interaction, need to show better understanding of customer benefits, and have to reach the right decision makers.

“So now what?”

Each player in the ecosystem cares about different things. How to measure ROI, what tools are best, how to get IT’s buy in, are the old ways best? Customers want to know what they get out of all of this: What do I get, why should I spend time here, will I have control over privacy? Start-up / partners are asking will we get a deal, will we beat our competition, are we creating a need to fill?

To turn the corporation social…

They need to move from “selling to caring!” Focus on relationships, get to know the customers, go to where the customers are, develop meaningful communication, make it easy for them, give tools to the advocates, reward the enthusiasts, turn boring into excitement, enlist the right subject matter experts, and bring on board the right solutions.

And, of course, corporations must have a STRATEGY!

Agree on the business objectives, understand customers’ objectives, identify the relevant channels, establish relevant metrics, have right people on board, align with ongoing marketing strategy, prioritize, develop a plan, identify the right tools, then…IMPLEMENT!

AND NOW (DRUM ROLL)

Ravit mobilizes the audience with an exercise. We’ve got to develop a strategy that we can take to a corporation. We break into groups and start to work..

Here’s what Ravit’s tasked us to do…

1.    Choose a sector: technology, financial, or retail
2.    Identity a product you’re passionate about
3.    Identify a set of customer needs
a.    What’s important to these customers?
b.    Where do these customers spend time?
c.    How do they like to get information?
d.    What do they like to talk about? With whom?
4.    Identify corporate objectives
a.    What does the corporation want to achieve?
b.    Determine the decision maker in the organization
c.    They’re looking for a solution…what’s important to them?
5.    Envision a social media strategy
6.    Propose it to the organization

To see the rest of the photos from this event, please check our Flickr album.

Ravit’s perspective?

I wanted people to leave with two key takeaways. First, that Social Media is about much more than getting on facebook, twitter, or having a blog. Just like traditional marketing, for Social Media efforts to succeed, it needs to be treated as strategy with objectives, metrics, and implementation plan. Second, for a Social Media strategy to succeed, it needs to speak to the corporate ecosystem and to the needs of each of the ecosystem players. Without this holistic perspective, any Social Media initiative will face significant barriers to success.

I greatly enjoyed seeing how people took to these concepts and worked together to create Social Media strategies. We went from a strategy for a local bank focused on small business lending, to a Social Media strategy for the Flip camera, to cloud storage, to turning the boring Dr. Scholl insoles to a sexy Executive-in-Hills campaign. It’s not hard…but it does require a shift in the way people think of Social Media. With sessions like the ones the Social Media Club organizes we are getting closer by the day.

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RE: SMCQ14 Dumbing Down or Getting Smart?

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:40 GMT

“Now along comes Twitter, which totally reduces our collective thought leadership to 140 characters or less and in doing so, belittles and minimizes every big thought into a punch line or social limerick. It’s premature articulation if you ask me and it’s very unsatisfying.” — Joseph Jaffe, “Blogging is Dying, Twitter is to Blame,”

In this week's question, the editorial board asked “What are the consequences of exposure to a constant high-volume stream of info?”#SMCQ14

A quick tour of the blogosphere (I picked up one actual book this week, a novel, which give you a hint of how much information I get online), revealed many pundits, theories and postulations on how hyperconnectivity may be damaging our ability to pay attention as much as it opens up a door of infinite knowledge. We'll be summarizing the comments we received, but in the meantime, here are some notes from the field:

“I learned that instant feedback from the web had caused me to change the “voice” of my writing. Over time I had learned how to post messages and content that maximized chances of “retweets” “blog postings” , blah, blah, blah.Instead of saying what I believed - I was writing based on what I thought the audience wanted. The result was a “dumbing down” of my messages. And, a lack of authenticity.“ —Doug Hall, “Why Instant Feedback on the Internet Can be Bad,” Communty Marketing Blog

“In the digital age, with its overabundance of information, the modern newsweekly is in a particularly poignant position. Designed nearly a century ago to be all things to all people, it Chaplin-esquely tries to straddle thousands of rapidly fragmenting micro-niches, a mainframe in an iTouch world. The audience it was created to serve—middlebrow; curious, but not too curious; engaged, but only to a point—no longer exists.”—Michael Hirschorn, “The Newsweekly's Last Stand,” The Atlantic

“Multitasking messes with the brain in several ways. At the most basic level, the mental balancing acts that it requires—the constant switching and pivoting—energize regions of the brain that specialize in visual processing and physical coordination and simultaneously appear to shortchange some of the higher areas related to memory and learning. We concentrate on the act of concentration at the expense of whatever it is that we’re supposed to be concentrating on. ” —by Walter Kirn, “The Autumn of Multitaskers,” The Atlantic

“The sheer volume of information which many of us are exposed to every day may actually impair our performance and add stress to our lives.” Data Smog (thanks @matt_klein)

Have thoughts to share on the subject? Please add your comments or tune into BlogTalkRadio this Friday @ 10am PST.

#SMCQ14

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A Wish List for Facebook Search

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:26 GMT

(This post was swallowed whole by my Ecto software, stay tuned...)

Worth Noting: Search By Voice on Google Maps/Android

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:51 GMT

This is another step in what I've been calling the conversational interface...

Hunch

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:17 GMT

I have not yet grokked Hunch, the decision engine from flickr co-founder Caterina Fake and co., but from the coverage, the launch is a hit. Here's Caterina's post announcing it...

Microsoft Goes After Click Fraudsters

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:09 GMT

It's been a while since I've seen click fraud in the news, but this Times story caught my eye, in particular because it was Microsoft. Google usually gets all the headlines around this issue, but it's interesting to see Microsoft leading the charge in this arena. The story is worth reading, it sheds some light on the darker underpinnings of the search economy. From it:

Microsoft’s theory is that Mr. Lam was running or working for low-ranking sites that took potential client information for auto insurers. The complaint said that he directed traffic to competitors’ Web sites so they would pay for those clicks and exhaust their advertising budgets quickly, which let the lower-ranking sites that he sponsored move up in the paid-search results.

When people clicked through to his site, it asked them to supply contact information, which he then resold to auto insurance companies, according to Microsoft’s complaint, which estimated his profit at $250,000. In the complaint, it also said it had to credit back $1.5 million to advertisers because of the Lams’ alleged fake clicks. Microsoft is seeking $750,000 in damages from the defendants.

Although small advertisers have sued search firms, complaining the firms did not do enough to prevent fraudulent clicks, this is among the first cases where a search provider has gone after a suspected perpetrator.

Mashable on a Tear

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 22:36 GMT

I'm finding Mashable, an FM site, on a tear lately. These headlines over the past two days caught my attention:

Google vs. Bing Battle Heating Up: Is Google Scared?

Google to Launch a Twitter Search Engine?

Social Media Goo: Cadbury Campaign Going Viral

Apparently I am not alone in noticing Mashable's ascendance.

SMCLA Panel Recap: Improve Your Search Engine Optimization Using Social Media

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:57 GMT

Combine a panel of SEO experts and a roomful of Social Media Club Los Angeles members and what do you get?

A mountain of amazing tips and tricks to immediately apply to your own website's inbound marketing strategy
25 of the top SEO tools and links used by proven experts who have multiple top ranking sites for keywords
Tactics to use if you want to get to the front page of Digg, StumbleUpon or Reddit
How to research Google keywords and apply them to create the highest ranking blog posts with maximum SEO
And so much more…

: SEO Cat Wantz Yer Link Juis

The panelists included (listed by order of personal page rank):

Sean Percival (PR5): Sean Percival is an online content producer from Los Angeles, California. For work Sean is the Director of Content for Tsavo, for play the founder of lalawag.
Jeffrey Henderson (PR4): Jeff is an Internet entrepreneur and founder/CEO of Adept Marketing Concepts, a firm offering SEO, reputation management, website design, domaining and sales outsourcing.
Tony Adam (PR3): works for Yahoo! as an SEO Manager for it’s Audience Marketing group. His “About Tony Adam” page is worth visiting.
Barbara Boser (PR3):Barbara Boser is a “Social media consultant, wife, mom, marketer.”

Moderating her final SMCLA event as club director/founder was Jackie Peters: founding partner of Heavy Bag Media, a communication strategy firm based in Los Angeles.

What are some of the myths surrounding SEO and social media?

Barbara: SEO and Social Media are not one in the same. They absolutely do not equal each other.
Tony: There is no secret sauce. There is no one trick. It's a holistic process.
Jeffrey: Search is constant traffic. Spikes occur from Social Media. Search is where they find you, SM is where they hear about you.
Sean: A big misconception is that you need to be ranked #1. You can still get a lot of traffic by ranking anywhere on the first page. Google is using a “freshness” rule to see who continually hits the keyword. Social Media is not a replacement for search. Search will always be #1 driver.

How important are social bookmarking sites to your SEO strategy?

Barbara: The goal is to get your content picked up and passed along via shared links. Driving comments and bookmarks to your site gives your page “authority”. It feeds upon itself with scrapers and reposters.
Tony: Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit are not for ALL of your content. Be selective and have a strategy.
Jeffrey: Digg/Reddit-write a sensational headline. Use IM to ask people for Diggs and be sure to build out a good network of Digg friends (using social media, in-life events, good old fashioned friendships). Be authentic or else you'll get trashed.

Are there certain social bookmarking sites for certain content?

Sean: The female demographic stuff will not make it to Digg. There's actually a female-targeted social bookmarking site called Kirtsy for that. Reddit is the “smart” version of Digg and focuses more political and analytical. StumbleUpon is for your aunt who has an AOL address and sends you random sites.
Jackie: StumbleUpon delivers the largest spikes for her sites.
Sean: StumbleUpon may deliver traffic, but it's all NoFollow links, so don't expect to get any authority along with your traffic spikes. Digg is for male sites & new sites (Monolith content hits Digg homepage 2-3 times a week). StumbleUpon is basically for random, unfocused, one-off posts.
Jeffrey: StumbleUpon is the gift that keeps on giving…very long tail for traffic with random spikes

What is link juice (and why does it make me feel so dirty) ?

Tony: Described the history of Page Ranking and how things have evolved from HTML Meta tagging to # of linkbacks (inbound links from other sites to yours), and how things are now evolving into needing to do all of the on-page SEO stuff but also having a strategy to get to the front of Digg so that you get picked up by authority passing sites like TechCrunch or Read Write Web to give you the bump you really need. That passed “authority” is basically what “link juice refers to”. Think of it as a vote from one site to another…only not all votes are created equal.
Sean: The more inbound links to your site the better. There is a new emphasis on relevancy and freshness. Google will add more emphasis to a relevant backlink. Anchor text needs to be varied or else it raises flags (so be careful if you send out specific HTML for people to include in their posts)
Barbara: Backlinking relevance is very important. For example, if you're an automotive site, a backlink from a site with high relevance to toys (but no relevance to automotive) is not really worth much

Top SEO Tips

Sean: For relevance, use the tilde character (”~”) before a search term on Google to perform a search. The resulting page will show you synonyms to the term you're looking at in bold. For example, if you're searching for “wave”, you'd type “~wave” and the results page would show terms like “surf, ocean, beach” in bold and bring back those results as well.
Sean: See the backlinks to your site using the Google search box. Type “link:yoursite.com” to see who links to your site. You can filter it down to the page if you'd like. (Ex: http://www.google.com/search?q=link%3Asocialmediaclub.la Hey! How come we don't have more?)
Barbara: Tip: Know who the groups are who push things to the front page. Look at posts that go to the front quickly and see who the usernames are who are pushing these things forward. It's kind of an insider community, but see what you can do to get into it or to figure out how to do something similar with a group of your own.
Sean: There is an art to writing a post for your blog/site that is positioned well to capitalize on trends, but also relates the trend itself to the subject of your site. Trends can be a very powerful tool to grabbing traffic (and subsequently authority and ranking).
Tony: .GOV and .EDU sites pass more backlink authority than regular sites. Consider engaging a university on a project, donation, sponsorship to get your logo with a high authority backlink to your site as a tactic to increase page ranking
Barbara: Don't be greedy with only internal links. Link outward and you'll get some reciprocal links from friendly people. Play in a “safe neighborhood” by linking to other sites with relevance. Writing a post on a trending topic can get good inbound links with authority, but spin it so it's relevant to your keywords.

15 Useful SEO Tools

Trellian SEO Toolkit: includes everything you need to optimize and promote your web pages, to increase your web site traffic and search engine visibility.
StumbleUpon Toolbar”>StumbleUpon Toolbar (Firefox): discovers web sites based on your interests, learns what you like and brings you more.
Instant Messaging: To communicate to people that it's time to spread the link love and get busy with the social bookmarking, tweeting and re-tweeting.
Majestic SEO is a company that offers a service for SEO that Barbara recommends for competitive link intelligence.
SEO Toolbar by SEOBook.com: The SEO Toolbar pulls in many useful marketing data points to make it easy get a holistic view of the competitive landscape of a market directly in the search results.
Yahoo Site Explorer: Use this tool to see who is linking to you. Or, better yet, use it to see who is linking to your competitors! Pages here are listed by rank, so pay close attention to those that show up first and learn from them.
Del.icio.us Toolbar (Firefox): Quick and easy access to save sites into your del.icio.us social bookmarking stream.
Digg.com/tools/firefox”>Digg Toolbar (Firefox)
Google Keyword Tool: type in a keyword and get back tons of information about volume of searches, trends related to that term, local and global data about that keyword and synonymous words.
Google Keyword Search-Related Keyword Tool: similar to the keyword tool, but adds what Google thinks is related based on search patterns
SEO Quake (Firefox or IE): allows user to obtain and investigate many important SEO parameters of the internet project under study on the fly.
Google Webmaster Tools: a one-stop shop for webmaster resources that will help you with your crawling and indexing questions, introduce you to offerings that can enhance and increase traffic to your site, and connect you with your visitors.
WordTracker: a must have resource for any search engine marketing professional. It combines both a respectable search term database with tools that make mining the information easy.
Google AdWords: Once you have an account, you have access to key information about keywords, the cost of keywords, related keywords and more…
Google Trends: understanding trends and predicting user behavior is more than half the battle when it comes to creating compelling content that gets picked up.

10 Useful Sites for SEOs of All Levels

Search Engine Land: Search Engine Land is the industry’s leading online publication for the latest search news, research and anaylsis, commentary and expert advice. Led by search authorities Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman, an experienced editorial staff and wide range of contributors produce the most comprehensive coverage in the industry.
SEOMoz: SEOmoz serves as a hub for search marketers worldwide, providing education, tools, resources and paid services to help every SEO to be the best they can be.
Alltop's SEO Page: Alltop aggregates RSS headlines from all of the top search engine optimization news and headlines from across the web.
Matt Cutts (Google Engineer) Blog: Matt is the head of Google Webspam and provides an inside view on Google's search engine. This is his personal page, and isn't primarily focused on SEO, but if you dig a bit you'll get some good info.
Google's YouTube Videos for Webmasters: This is the official YouTube channel for Google Webmaster Central, your one-stop shop for webmaster resources that will help you with your crawling and indexing questions, introduce you to offerings that can enhance and increase traffic to your site, and connect you with your visitors.
SEOChat: Search Engine Optimization, Google Optimization - SEO Chat
SEOBook: SEO Book.com is a leading SEO blog by Aaron Wall covering the search space. It offers marketing tips, search analysis, and whatever random rants come to mind.
Sphinn: Sphinn is a social site for search and interactive marketers. It's designed to allow you to share and discover news stories, read and take part in discussions, discover events of interest and network with others.
Brent Csutoras
10e20: 10e20, LLC is THE Global Internet Marketing & Web Solutions Company® dedicated to helping small and mid-size companies meet and exceed their Internet marketing goals. Each day we strive to deliver a strong return on your investment.

Q&A from SMCLA Crowd

Question: “I have a client with 300 company acquisitions (each has a website in a relatively similar and relevant field)…should their sites link to each other?

Sean: There is an extreme power in having a network of sites. Be careful going overboard on it and use “no follow” with some moderation to keep the quality of cross-pollination high. For highly advanced users, people use different IP blocks, data centers, load blanceers, etc… to really randomize the source of authority building links. The more random the source, the less likely it is that Google will nerf them.

Are there any strategies that apply to image galleries?

Jeffrey: You definitely want to use filenames that are “human readable”. A picture with a filename of “best-golf-clubs.jpg” is a LOT better than “1234.jpg”.
Sean: ALT tags are important too. Since search engine bots can't see your picture, make sure that the picture has machine readable tags to describe what the picture depicts.
Sean: I once saw a massive spike from a post I did with a picture of Megan Fox. It was a perfect confluence of filename, alt tag, page title, etc…coupled with an extremely popular female celebrity.
Tony: That brings up a great point: “universal search” (searching across images, videos, text, and other media) does have a vast reach. Be sure to populate your content across sites like Flickr and YouTube to take advantage of those search sites as well.

What about measuring the success and results of your SEO efforts? Tools?

Jeffrey: To measure success, you must have good baseline stats and well defined goals for what you want to achieve. This could be anything from just traffic stats to very specific conversion goals like opt-in email list joins, ad banner clicks, or filling out a survey. Define your goals, and have a strategy for what your site is supposed to do and then use the tools to measure your conversion rates. Use Google Webmaster Tools, Website Analytics, Rank Checker, Excel
Sean: Tons of ranking tools are available. Google has a bunch of “ranking tools”. I use custom Excel sheets in-house to track these things (example: weekly Google positioning for specific keywords). I track growth based on ranking on certain terms and # of pages indexed as a metric. Google Webmaster Tools has “diagnostics” for your site that provide most of these metrics.
Barbara: Look at analytics - 90% bounce rate is bad. Do your research on the topic and find competitors who rank higher. See if you can make changes to switch up your bounce rate so your site is stickier.

More Tools: SEO Goal Conversion & Ranking Measurement

Web Position: WebPosition® 4 offers all of the tools necessary to improve your web site's search engine rankings and increase revenue. WebPosition 4 now includes a summary dashboard, trend graphs, essential off-site metrics (link popularity and search engine saturation reporting) and 200+ new search engines.
Rank Checker by SEOBook (Firefox):Want to know where your website ranks in the search results? Our Firefox Rank Checker extension allows you to easily check your website rankings in Google (US and international), Yahoo, and Microsoft Live search.
Web CEO: Complete SEO Toolkit offering a whole suite of features and services all centered around optimizing your site for search.
SEO Tools on SEO Moz: The SEOmoz toolset includes over twenty SEO tools designed to help with every aspect of search engine optimization, including on-page targeting, site crawlability, competitive analysis, rank checking and keyword difficulty.
Google Analytics Goal Tracking & Funnels: Google Analytics offers a number of conversion measurement tools to help you define and assess whether or not you're accomplishing your goals with your website.

Ways to optimize your content to rank within the social networks.

Sean: Include the social network badges to encourage social sharing. I recommend that you don't go overboard with the badges because people develop a blind spot to a noisy area of logos/icons. Choose the ones you want to target (ex: Digg, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter). I especially like TweetMeme buttons to encourage Re-tweeting of content.
Jeffrey: WordPress is your friend here. There are so many plugins you can use to faciliate the optimization around your content. I use All in One SEO and Google XML Sitemap Generator to name a few.
Barbara: Get on those Instant Messaging channels and get your network of friends to boost you up. Ask for favors saying, “can you Digg this?” or Ccan you please tweet about this or post it into your Facebook wall?”. That groundswell of popularity and passed link sharing is worth its weight in gold.

This was such a great panel and we'd like to thank everyone who assisted with the event. Special thanks goes out to Jackie Peters for her year of service to the club as a founder and a director. We'd also like to thank our sponsors: Rubicon Project and EasyTweets for making it all possible. Congrats to our 4 winners on their fully licensed copies of EasyTweets!

Go get you some.

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How to join the Social Media Clubs Question of the Week discussion: Our goal with the Question of the Week initiative is to create a truly collaborative conversation within and around the most up-to-the-minute issues affecting Social Media. Each week, the Social Media Club editorial board looks at trends, topics and news affecting social media during a Blogtalk Radio broadcast. During the call, the editorial board forms the question. This is where YOU come in: we’d love for you to post your thoughts on your blog, via Twitter or by commenting on the Social Media Club site. Please tag your blogs and posts with a hash tag, ‘#’, so we can track the conversation. For example, if you wrote a response to Social Media Club Question of the Week 13, please tag your post ‘#SMCQ13’ and we’ll be able to find it, track back, and link the post to the original post. Your answers will all be included in the weekly Conversation post & Blogtalk Radio broadcast review of the answers we received. We also invite you to call in to the shows to share your viewpoint. Instructions about how to call in will be given on this site by the end of each week. Thanks for joining the club!

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typetext

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:21 GMT

Blogger will be unavailable Monday (6/15) at 12:00AM PDT for about 10 minutes for maintenance.

Feed Informer stability issue

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:28 GMT

Dear Feed Informer visitors,
As you're already aware, FI experiences stability problems for several days in a row. We have found the potential source of the problem and we need a few more days to monitor the site closely and fix the issue.
We know that you're aren't happy right now, that's understandable, but please let us find a permanent solution, we do not want to apply ASAP some kind of quick patch or workaround that will fail sooner or later.
Yours truly,
FI team

Conversation SCMQ13: Social or Socialism

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 07:51 GMT

“When masses of people who own the means of production work toward a common goal and share their products in common, when they contribute labor without wages and enjoy the fruits free of charge, it’s not unreasonable to call that socialism.” — “The New Socialism,” by Kevin Kelly, Wired.

This article prompted much conversation when it was published in May, which led the editorial board to this week's question. However, when we asked point-blank whether Social Media was indeed the new Socialism, most SMC readers noted more differences than true parallels:

“It isn’t the new socialism. If anything, it’s the new expression of liberty — commented Allen Taylor on our blog.

“I think that politics of the internet are - and have always been - closer to pure Anarchism than anything else. Socialism is mandatory, and based on coercion. Therefore, the analogy to the Net instantly falls apart.” —Alex

“Socialism’s hallmark is government control of industry and other aspects of society. Our government would have to be in control of our activities and dictate them to some extent. In fact, social media’s ability to connect people for collaboration outside of the reach of government’s tentacles makes social media anti-socialist,” —Shaine Mata

@keeling: true socialism has never existed (all of the communist states have had a ruling elite), so maybe it's the first

@matt_j_kendall: “With no allegiance to state or market, could it b a 3rd way? ”

And some posed that it perhaps wasn't completely relevant to even bring political labels into the conversation:

“If my research showed me anything, it’s that the word itself—no matter how accurate or inaccurate—is too charged to be of much use to us in this context.” — Kimberly Turner wrote on Regator. Kimberly also conducted a slew of research tagged on Delicious that you may want to read. We'll be fielding calls to further discuss Social-or-Socialism, this Saturday, June 13, 10am PST on BlogTalk Radio. We invite you to listen, and call in, and share your thoughts.

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Facebook's Namespace Land Grab? Or Maybe...It's Just Useful

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:38 GMT

Much buzz over the past few days about Facebook's plans to let folks (and, ahem, brands) claim their namespaces on Facebook. IE, Starting this weekend, I should be able to claim www.facebook.com/johnbattelle, just like I already "own" www.twitter.com/johnbattelle (sort of).

Anil Dash has a very funny send up of all this in a future forward timeline satire here. His point is - why is everyone falling all over themeselves to get their vanity URL on Facebook - or Twitter, or anywhere else for that matter - when the web is an open place and anyone can get their own URL, after all.

Well, yes and no. I've been complaining about Facebook's terrible link structure for a long time. We all spend time there, and create and share value there, but up till this weekend, it's been very difficult to point folks to places *inside* Facebook from places *outside* Facebook. The future of the web is ecosystemic - it's not about being in one place - this blog, that Twitter feed, or that Facebook page, it's about the ability to be anywhere, depending on the context and the moment. Sewing it all together is critical, and this move should make Facebook that much easier to incorporate into an ongoing, web wide conversation. I hope.

Social Media Club SFSV: Sonoma Bound on July 11, 2009!

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:10 GMT

Come join the Social Media Club for their FIRST ever wine adventure!

We know you've been slaving away all year, so isn't it time to kick back and relax a little? We thought so too, so we got together with Barbara Drady (@WineEvangelist) from Affairs of the Vine to put together a Social Media Club road trip to Sonoma wine country!

Here are the details:

July 11 - we'll meet up at the Presido Bowl Parking lot in the Presidio, San Francisco, board the bus and leave at 9:30 AM sharp.
First stop is Keller Estate Winery. We'll have a tour of the winery, a guided tasting and a light lunch provided by the winery.
Next is Baletto Vineyards for a guided tasting and also enjoy some cheese and snacks with Dutton-Goldfield's wines in their shared tasting room.
We'll wind up the tour at Owl Ridge, where we will taste more wonderful wines, learn about wine blending and blend our own bottle to take home.

After the blending party, it's back on the bus to San Francisco. We are expecting to be back in the city by approximately 5:30 PM.

The cost of this event is $65.00, and there are only 40 spots available. Tickets will be on sale until July 10 at 5 PM - assuming they don't sell out. Book your tickets today to avoid being left out! http://sfsvjul09.eventbrite.com

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