I don’t always need a TwitFace to get an emotional response

I don’t like American football, I don’t even know who won the SuperBowl this year. But I have seen some of the advertising. Because it is a cultural phenomenon that stretches beyond the 110 million fervent Americans watching in their dens and into a global audience.

I have also seen a lot of the post SuperBowl bitching that this year was supposed to be the SocialBowl. Because y’know social is the new world order innit? And Pepsi shipped their SuperBowl budget into the Refresh social cause project last year. And because Old Spice guy did some personalised video responses to Twitter people. Which was, of course, brilliant. So this year we should all be exploiting the FaceSpace in a go big kick ass way. Whoop!

But SuperBowl has 110 million fervent fans watching. Live. Which is a prime opportunity to build your brand and be entertaining in an entertainment medium in the ultimate (if you’re American) sports entertainment date.

Which is what telly does brilliantly.

But still we whine that they missed an opportunity to be social. We even helpfully provide “they could have done this”. Well, some did use social…

Audi – they used a hashtag. So you could “participate”.

VW – they used social media to seed the Vader/Passat ad before the event to raise awareness and ohmygod create BUZZ.

Chrysler – they just did an amazeballs brilliant ad that left you with goosebumps. Oh and most Americans know it’s Chrsyler.com which has the campaign front and centre. It also has a social hub. And it’s as prominent as on facebook.com/Chrysler.

So they did do social after all – they just didn’t shout about it. Because it’s so second nature that we’ll find it if we want more.

If advertising is designed to elicit an emotional response and plant that brand front and centre in your brain then some of the Superbowl ads did it in spades.

Some of them didn’t. But still we yakked about it afterwards.

If advertising is just meant to be a vehicle to send people to Facebook then a brand ad on SuperBowl Sunday won’t be the answer. Brand awareness and emotional response doesn’t always have to have a social element.

The ads above delivered emotional response in spades and also had a lot of talkability/buzz factor we crave in marketing.

That’s why we need integrated approaches. Different parts of the communications mix do different jobs. You don’t need to tick every single box every single campaign.

Nicholas Gill

http://bluurb.wordpress.com/

DIGITAL STRATGEY: 3 THINGS TO FOCUS ON AS A BRAND OR COMPANY

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photo by PlanToo46's  http://www.flickr.com/photos/55260169@N07

I am amazed all too often when I hear people through organizations talking about digital and digital strategies. There is an obsession with “doing stuff” and people keep asking for “a website”, a “Facebook page” and search optimization. These seem to be seen as strategies.

In a talk I did a while ago on Digital Fundamentals, I spoke about how to approach the whole digital space. To review those 10 tips and ideas you can watch it on SlideShare via the blog (click here) or download a PDF (click here)

But to make it even simpler, there are for me 3 key considerations for any brand or company as they think about digital and its role in their mix:

1.       Ensure any consumer/ customer/ KOL looking for your brand/ company online will find it - and get what they are looking for. If they seek they should find what they want!

1.       This means that you need to gout and find out what it is that they want and ensure you have it online, most likely via a website. It may be very simple: all they want is your contact details, or maybe to get a sample. Make sure you understand what they want, as you may find a one page site is all you need. Avoid copying what your competition does, as they may be doing what they think people want, not what they want.

2.       Ensure that your brand/ company is present where your core target consumers/ customers/ KOLs are and are interacting online. Fish where the fish are!

1.       In many ways, this is probably the key one. You need to be where people are. You need to “fish where there are fish”. Too many people focus on building destinations, rather than having content or ads where people are. The same as when you do a TV ad to communicate, you place it in the right place where your target is – you do not build a TV station and  invest on getting people to come to the channel…

3.       Increasing the amount people spend with you or on you by finding the ones who really like you, and use CRM to get them to buy more, come more often and stay loyal and cross purchase to make the investment worthwhile. You can find the best prospects and keep them on-board.

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THE DEATH OF USER GENERATED CONTENT IS COMING?

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Photo by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrjoro/


All good things must come to an end. So goes the saying. And is the end of user generated content heading that way?


I think it probably is exactly where user generated content is heading. I believe that as social media, blogging, twitter and review sites have become more and more mainstream, it has is becoming less and less powerful, insightful and helpful. This is because instead of a few really passionate people with deep understanding and knowledge of a topic or area carefully crafting and writing about a topic, there has been and is a growing trend for people to either "gush" or "vent". This makes for less powerful and less helpful advice and comment to guide and to get help from.


Some friends who run a Guest House in Cape Town, who are usually the #1 or #2 rated in hotels in that city, are finding (for example) that TripAdvisor.com is becoming less helpful and powerful for them. This is because the reviews now tend to be just as I described above: a few words gushing about how lovely it is or a few lines on what they hated. The reviews lack substance and lack depth of content. Unlike years ago where more geeky and passionate people would invest time in their commentary, reviews and try and be more helpful and informative.


I have found when trying to research a problem - or find out about an area I need some help with -be it how to chose the right Apple Mac or solve a problem that you have to wade through piles of "stuff". There is a lot of noise that has to be waded through, and much of it is not very helpful (or accurate) ideas and suggestions. Increasingly you need to find experts with history and time of doing things.


I have found that my various blogs and even my videos of travel and hotel rooms on YouTube are growing in traffic and usage. I have been running them since 2005 and so there is history and so people (I suspect) are coming as they know there is depth there.


I think that the huge explosion in social media and everyone posting and commenting is the new SPAM! Just like it ruined email, it is ruining user generated content. Increasingly it is clogging up the system, and opening ways to a new way to emerge. More likely more validated and expert screening, and emeregence of more monitored and expert content.


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Search engine marketing and social media: conversion is a matter of relevance

In order for your website or other online properties to be found online (inbound marketing), you still need a good search engine optimization strategy.

Defining relevant keywords for your business and, more than ever, for your target groups. Relevance is increasingly becoming important in search. What people find in search engine result pages must lead to online destinations that are relevant for their search queries.

Search engines already take this into account but in the end they remain quite ‘dumb’ and all too often well ranked search engine results still lead to irrelevant web pages and thus content.

You can easily optimize the SEO of your pages with search engine optimized content, the right link building strategies and applying all the rules of professional search engine marketing.

But what’s the use of ranking high in results if the value you provide on your website is low from a visitor viewpoint? Conversion starts with being found online but it happens after the click.

When the relevance is not there, there is no conversion and probably even a negative perception about your brand.

Search engine optimized content requires the help of a professional. SEO copywriters are not always cheap, but they can correctly optimize all your content so it's search engine friendly.

However, that is not enough anymore.

If you want your content to be shared via social media, bookmarked and result in optimal conversion, you need a partner that understands more than keywords and SEO.

He or she needs to be able to write with the needs of the readers in mind, knows how to write a call-to-action, understand what determines if your content will be shared on social media or bookmarked on social bookmarking sites and understands that content is part of a broader exercise where your web site, blog, emails, social media presences and whatever you do, are part of another conversion process.

Not that from content to click and online conversion. But that from lead to loyal customer by offering content as a way of lead nurturing. Content in the context of the customer buying journey.

SEM is part of a broader marketing strategy and that’s why many agencies are extending their offering with social media optimization, conversion strategies, web analytics, online copywriting and sometimes even marketing automation and lead management.

Where social media optimization fits in

The same goes for the skills of an online copywriter: he or she must acquire new skills. This type of online copywriting is something that, according to me, cannot be done in house but must be outsourced to a highly specialized expert, a conversion agency, an SEO firm that has an integrated approach or a communication agency that has that same integrated approach but also a customer-centric look on interactive marketing.

In the end, all that matters in marketing is the bottom-line and the value that is created for the business and the customer. And content is key in every micro-conversion, acquisition effort, lead nurturing step and word-of-mouth conversation. That's also where social media optimization fits in: not search is social but relevance.

Originally posted here: Search engine marketing and social: why SEO and search engine optimized content are not enough