Social Community Conversion Optimization
June 9, 2008 | 1 Comment
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I just got back from SMX Advanced and my mind is rolling. A lot of the sessions were based off of traditional SEM practices, however every once in a while you heard the inklings of social media influence and the semantic web. A sign of things to come in my opinion, and shows you how the two practices are rolling into one holistic approach to marketing on the web.
One of the panels I sat in on was “Conversion Optimization: Winning after they arrive”. It was some atypical talk about conversions, multivariate testing, and so forth. However while sitting through it I got to thinking. When discussing conversions, the typical stance has been related to increasing some sort of lead generation. However, since the social web is amongst us, it will only continue to grow it will be ever increasingly important to optimize interaction.
When I say interaction, I mean interaction and sharing of data inside a network, community or website. I think we will see new tools, tactics, and best practices come out of this new subset of conversion optimization.
If I were going to optimize a social network I would start with the following 5 metrics:
- Average # of Comments per user
- Average # of Internal Emails per user
- Average # of Friends per user
- Average # of Profile views per user
- Rate at which users return back to the website
Certainly there are other metrics that you would want to keep an eye on when optimizing, however most of the functions above are found in most networks.
The major problem in doing all this is the fact many of these things cannot be compiled without integrating a custom analytics solution. Most of the major analytics packages do not offer a way to analyze this data (with exception to a couple of the metrics).
Can you think of other integral metrics to monitor when optimizing your community?
When Social Media and Public Relations Work Together
November 8, 2007 | 3 Comments
I’m speaking tonight at a panel put on by Business Wire. If you want to come, please do so, and be sure to say hello. The topic is on social media generally, but more specifically looking at using social media for enhancing your news value.
Two points come to mind:
1) There is no question in my mind that social media can, and should enhance your news value. And I had a great example of that yesterday. But….
2) There is also no question in my mind that most PR folks are looking at social media as if it’s a press release distribution outlet. So they are doing it wrong and not getting enough out of it (mostly because they haven’t put enough into it.)
I spent last week working with the Associated Press on an exclusive for my client, Gilbarco Veeder-Root. They are the world’s largest maker of gas pumps. Did you see yesterday’s story that you can get Google maps on the Gilbarco pumps? Thanks to AP, it was everywhere. From MSNBC and CNN to Yahoo, Engadget and TechCrunch. The Engadget article as of this writing has 649 Diggs, and made the home page of Digg. It’s now everywhere.
When I was looking at who to give the exclusive to, I briefly thought about going blogs first. But AP still has lots of power, and clearly the smart blogs are watching the wires still. (The story crossed the AP wire at 12:01 a.m. Engadget had it up, with a nice picture, at 7:52 a.m. Impressive.)
So, for all the TV coverage and other hits, I was personally most excited about the Engadget/TechCrunch hits, because I know how influential they are in spreading news like this over a wide, wide area. This is just one small, tiny example of social media helping PR.
But… And this is a big but… Social media tools and sites clearly helped spread the news for me yesterday. But a PR firm that thinks a hit on Engadget/Digg means you maximized social media is kidding themselves. I had big news. Interesting stuff that these folks like to write about. It spread quickly. Good for me. Great for my client, who deserves ALL the praise for this great idea. They put me in the rare and wonderful position of not having to light up the social media sites on my own, sort of bottom up, because AP did it top down.
A better example of really utilizing social media to spread news is what Joseph Jaffe did selling his book. If you’re a PR person trying to understand this space, read that post. Too many PR firms think that social media is about press releases on PRweb.com and pitches to key bloggers that they’ve barely read. I hear that a lot.
Progressive PR folks realize that social media is not an outlet. It’s a fundamentally different way of speaking. More natural, yet completely foreign initially. Like any foreign language, the best way to learn it is immersion. Try it. There’s a whole other world out there.
~Jim
13 Rules of Ethical Blog Pitching
October 2, 2007 | Leave a Comment
People are still wrapping their arms around what a social media agency can do for them, so one of the questions I get asked a lot is, “Can’t you go out to the bloggers and pitch them to write about us?”
The answer, I suppose, is yes, even if that’s 1/1000ths of what a social media agency can do, and not really the idea behind true social media marketing.
Nevertheless, the popularity is causing the A-list bloggers to bristle at being pitched all the time, so Ogilvy PR has come up with a good code of ethics to use when you reach out to bloggers. I’ve summarized it briefly here, but it’s worth a read:
- Reach out to bloggers you respect, who write about what your client wants to talk about;
- Every social media campaign doesn’t need blogger outreach, use it appropriately;
- Admit who you work for and what you want, right from the beginning;
- Check the blogs “About” and similar pages to make sure they haven’t requested no contact;
- Contact bloggers the way they ask to be contacted;
- Don’t pretend you’ve read a blog you haven’t;
- Say in the email why what you’re saying is of particular interest to this blog;
- Be sure you can be contacted if the blogger is interested;
- Encourage bloggers to acknowledge they were contacted to do a post;
- The blogger can say whatever they think about the product, even if it’s really unflattering;
- Ogilvy promises to keep a “do not call” list of those who’ve asked not to be disturbed;
- If an interested blogger doesn’t reply, follow-up only once;
- The first outreach will include a link to the blog outreach code of ethics.
This is a great start. Blogging has been the wild west, but like the wild west, we’ll need some sheriff’s and some laws. Ogilvy’s post is a good start down that path.
What do you think. What’s missing?
Listening is Social Media’s Step One
August 3, 2007 | 4 Comments
Yesterday, on my general marketing blog, I did a pretty basic post about the
new ad campaign for the VW Touareg 2 and the Bourne Ultimatum. By last night, I’d seen an interesting spike in traffic coming from Miami and Littleton, Colorado. It took me a minute to make the connection: I’d mentioned Crispin Porter, the ad agency that did the campaign in the post. I knew they were in Miami, but then I remembered an Adweek article from several months ago about what they went through to open their Colorado office.
This means that someone from Crispin found my post this morning, sent the link out to the whole company, and 65 folks in Miami and 61 in Colorado cared enough about blog chatter about them to read it.
That’s great. No wonder this firm is hot. They seem to get it, and to look outwards. Ask yourself, if someone wrote a post about your firm today, would you know it? How many people in your company would care?
Apparently, the World Bank has taken this to an art form. Their communications guy, Pierre-Guillaume Wielezynski, has built a tool that captures all the Internet traffic mentioning the World Bank in one place, so he can quickly scan it, react and comment about it. This was likely on overload during the Wolfowitz scandal.
People are talking about you. Are you listening? Will your company even know?
And how long will it take someone at Crispin to leave me a comment that they found this? How long will it take Wielezynski? The race is on… I’ve tagged you both and sent pings out to all the blog search engines.
UPDATE: Just hung up with Steve from Crispin Porter, who simply asked “Did we beat the World Bank?” Yes, Steve, you did. Pierre, where are you? I bragged about you, but the Crispin people beat you, even with your time zone advantage… I’m waiting. Is Buzz Monitor working?
Thanks for the call Steve. Our whole team is cracking up…
UPDATE #2: Just hung up with Pierre, who simply asked, “How long ago did the Crispin guy call?” Just a 30-minute gap. Not bad, not bad… Gotta stop going to meetings Pierre, but 2 bonus points for you for leaving a comment.
Thanks for the fun guys…
Why Participation is Vital in Social Media Optimization
July 26, 2007 | Leave a Comment
One of the most compelling features I wrote about yesterday for Sezwho was the site’s ability to provide a user reputation - with a critical part of this score being a user’s interaction.
This brings up an important point - that interaction and participation in social media is a vital part of Social Media Optimization. Yes, to give is (almost) better than to receive in your quest gain readership and interaction.
Why?
1. Participation builds readership. How? The more that you participate the more visible you are in the community. Every comment you make on a blog that relates to your area of expertise or topic can become another chance to reach new and interested audiences. Avoid spamming, but don’t be afraid to use this as an opportunity to link back to your own blog if it relates.
2. Participation connects you with experts. Participation allows you the opportunity to interact with experts. Find blogs or writers that relate to your subject area. Reaching out to these experts can grow your knowledge base, and potentially allow you to add meaningful content and credibility to your blog.
3. Participation guides your efforts. There is no other way to learn social media and know your audience better than being emerged in it. By becoming a consumer of it, you can understand what others are doing, what works and what doesn’t work, and use this information to redirect your social media efforts.
Finally, I’d like to add that interaction is synonymous with what social media is. Because of this, it should naturally be an element of every social media effort.
Define Web Events for Social Media Optimization
July 19, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Yesterday, Lisa posted on the 3 baby steps to Social Media Optimization, including step 2, “Setting SMO goals”. Expounding on that thought, I found a good article by MarketingSherpa.com that noted that, while success on the web is typically measured by page views and click-throughs, it is equally (if not more) important to measure a site’s “Web Events”.
Web Events are interactions users have with features of Web 2.0. Interactions can be anything from comments made on a blog post, RSS Feed subscriptions, video views, image/file downloads, or wiki updates.
As you set your SMO goals - analyze the Web 2.0 features currently on your site and categorize the outcomes that are of most importance to you. What interactions could drive a ROI or generate positive results for your company? Would a video interaction yield a better outcome for you than a user posting a comment?
Ask yourself these questions and then set out to measure each through your analytics. Ultimately by establishing and measuring these Web Event goals you can really know the effect social media tools have on your website and even on your business. And perhaps more importantly, you can engineer more relevant content to your readers.