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The UFC: Black Belts in Social Media Marketing

By Kal Fattah | April 24, 2012

According to Ultimate Fighting Championship President, Dana White “Twitter is the greatest Marketing tool in the history of the world”.

Dana White’s social media presence is most prominent on Twitter where the outspoken head honcho at the UFC regularly posts the latest fight announcements, UFC events, and fan contests to his nearly 2 million followers. White is notorious for his fan interaction on Twitter, and it’s common to see him engaged in heated Twitter beefs with MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) fans. Often responding to negative messages from folks with his own not so sweet tweets (see screen shot). White does what most company executives would avoid. However, it is in part his brashness and willingness to interact with fans that makes Dana White so popular among fans – and the UFC such a force in social media.

 

Tune into any UFC event and you’ll notice that when fighters are introduced their Twitter handle is prominently displayed on screen alongside their name.  Not only does the UFC promote several Twitter accounts for various marketing efforts, but the organization also encourages all of its fighters to have an active Twitter account. The current UFC roster contains over 300 fighters, so the idea is brilliant in that fans can interact with fighters after seeing them perform, and the UFC can expand its social media marketing efforts even wider through its employees (something all companies should consider doing).

While it’s obvious how much Dana White loves Twitter, the marketing gurus social media presence doesn’t stop there. Perhaps even more prominent is the UFC’s Facebook page. With over 8 million “Likes” the page is one of the most popular business pages on Facebook, and a large part of that success is due to what the UFC offers to fans of the page.

The UFC currently live streams free preliminary fights for fans of the page. If you’re not familiar with the UFC, “prelim fights” are not aired live on their Pay-Per-View, but as all MMA fans know these fights are often exciting with lesser known fighters giving it their all in hopes of breaking to thru to the main card.  The innovative idea constantly pulls in new fans and draws existing fans back to the page, giving the UFC yet another opportunity to promote their events online and drawn in additional PPV buys.

In addition to the UFC’s YouTube channel that promotes upcoming matches, Dana White also regularly posts a popular video blog that gives viewers a fascinating behind the scenes look at the UFC. The blog follows White in the days leading up to an event at press conferences, weigh-ins, cage side, and even backstage.  This allows fans to get an up close look at what happens before and after the fights.

Through all these efforts, it’s clear that the UFC understands the power of social media and engaging fans online. And just as UFC fighters use a mix of martial arts disciplines to succeed in the cage so does the organization mix social media marketing efforts to propel business.

The UFC’s immense social media success speaks to its overall non-stop barrage of marketing which has helped further expand the organization worldwide with events held in Brazil, Japan, Australia and Sweden this year alone. In addition to recent plans to broadcast UFC programming in India and the rest of the sub-continent, the organization recently landed a groundbreaking 7-year deal with FOX to further position MMA as the fastest growing sport in the world.

As an MMA fanatic and an online marketing geek I found the UFC to be a great example of effective social media marketing that not only got my attention, but one I think other companies could learn a few techniques from.

 

Lost Rankings? How To Recover from Google Penalties

By Stephanie Pflaum | April 19, 2012

There are two types of SEOs: those that chase Google’s algorithm using tactics that work now but won’t in the future, and then there are SEOs that take a more sustainable approach to optimization, avoiding tactics that have a limited life-span. Prior to 2012 algorithm chasers were able, for the most part, to achieve rankings success for clients with a few setbacks from Panda. The various algorithm changes that Google announced this year (and it’s only April) have really dealt a blow to the algorithm chasers and, unfortunately, many companies that employed them to manage their SEO.

Given the new landscape, it’s not uncommon for online marketing agencies to acquire accounts with websites that have been worked over by unscrupulous SEOs in the past. These websites face a mountain of obstacles to overcome, but they can be overcome. It just may take some time depending on the severity of bad SEO.

If you have a website or you are working with a website that Google no longer loves, you’re going to need to take a different approach. Quality content and a strong social presence will earn Google’s trust again in time, but here are some suggestions you can implement now to get you back on track.

Address over-optimization on-site

A good place to start is with scaling back keyword density and any abundance of optimized internal links on your website. If you use your browser’s “find” function to highlight a keyword on a page that used to rank and it looks like you are staring into the sun, that’s a good sign you need to remove excessive mentions of that keyword from your content (or break out a thesaurus). You should also look to adjust your internal linking strategy by either removing some links or linking from related long-tail phrases.

Balance over-optimization off-site with branded links

To diagnose over-optimized links, run your page through Open Site Explorer and click over to the “Anchor Text” tab. If you don’t see your brand name or domain name in the top 5 then it’s time to put your brand first and your keywords second. You might be able to score some quick wins by changing off-site links you can control, but ultimately you need to change your linking strategy. Some purists will tell you to forget anchor text entirely. Realistically, targeting a mix of branded links and longer-tail keyword links from other websites will probably yield better results, quicker.

Combat bad links with high-quality content strategies

Bad links may be the most difficult thing to tackle on a site that has lost Google’s trust. If it is possible to easily remove bad, low-quality links, do it. In most cases, however, your time will be better spent creating quality content that can get you quality links. Either way, it’s going to take time (more time than it took to acquire the bad links). Many websites will be able to implement quality link outreach campaigns right away through public relations or sweepstakes-oriented promotions. Infographic creation and distribution can also get you some good links in a relatively short amount of time. Long-term, your strategy needs to lay the groundwork that will allow you to scale content distribution and quality link building efforts in the future. To do this you will need to do the following:

• Construct an authoritative blog with engaging content people want to link to –authorship is important so make sure there are people and faces connected to blog posts
• Create a social media strategy that builds followers who interact with your business
• Develop and promote people at your company who are experts in the industry
• Aim to build relationships, not links

The goal for any SEO or website today should be to create a sustainable optimization strategy both on-site and off-site. Many businesses learn the hard way that it takes much longer to regain rankings that are lost when Google updates its search signals. Whether or not your site has been penalized –consider implementing sustainable optimization strategies sooner rather than later.

Evaluating Display for Brand Marketing

By Courtney Demko | April 18, 2012

Google rolled out “Brand Activate” today at Ad Age’s Digital Conference. Current standardized metrics such as clicks, user interaction and conversions only depict a piece of the pie for brand advertisers. Google’s new initiative addresses the challenge of measuring brand favorability. Google is attempting to chip away at the billions of dollars spent on television advertising and increase revenue by offering Brand Activate.

Here are the first two Brand Activate solutions, which will be available to users in coming weeks:

1.)    Active View:  Measures whether an ad was at least 50% viewable on the screen for at least 1 second. This tool will be available on the Google Display Network Reserve first and eventually DoubleClick. Google says advertisers will then be able to pay only for viewed impressions.

2.)    Active GRP (Gross Profit Rating): Builds upon the standard measure used in television buying. GRP captures reach multiplied by frequency, and is expressed as a percentage. This tool will be built into Google’s ad-serving tools, allowing users to make campaign adjustments while ads are in progress.

Coming soon to Brand Activate:

• Brand Impact Survey Pilot
• Brand Lift Measurement Product
• Other Cross-Media measurement capabilities

Fathom Remembers the 100th Anniversary of The Titanic

By Steve Kozak | April 18, 2012

“This Day in SEO History” pays tribute to the 100th Anniversary of the tragic sinking of the Titanic, built in Belfast, Ireland, and designed by naval architect Thomas Andrews – a man with two first names!

The Titanic sank on its maiden voyage from England to New York City when it struck an iceberg that punctured its watertight compartments. In less then three hours it sank to the bottom of the icy ocean and hundreds of lives were lost.

Websites can be like the Titanic, too. They can be unwieldy with too much content and unnecessary pages and features. Visitors get stuck in the lower decks of the site, or get lost in the fog bank of bad branding – and want to abandon ship (or website)!

Watch the fifth volume of “This Day in SEO History,” starring our very own Amanda “Rose” Jerele, and learn how SEO and Design & Usability are like life rafts that can fix a sinking ship (or website).
Visit us today to learn more about the vast depths of online marketing tools that can help save your website from sinking!
And be sure to stay tuned for a SPECIAL SURPRISE FEATURE at the end!

Fun with Google Search: Profane Political Documentary Edition

By Paul Richlovsky | April 16, 2012

Longtime readers of this blog might remember (OK, probably not) 4 years ago when I wrote about the power of a popular video to show up in Google’s organic search results based on a random string of characters in the URL (“1-f”). The result in question then was the music video (on YouTube) for George Michael’s “Careless Whispers,” which, naturally, had no logical relevance to the search for “1-f.” Today, it’s an hourlong Adam Curtis BBC political documentary with a profane title … that has nothing to do with “1-f.”

That’s right, you read that correctly. See the screenshot below:

Unfortunately, this result cannot be replicated in real time because a new irrelevant video—”kitten vs TWO scary things”—has supplanted The Trap, the result I first saw a few weeks ago. As for the Curtis BBC documentary, its YouTube title (“The Trap – 1 – F*k You Buddy”) does not suggest any semantic connection to pink noise, asteroids or other potential meanings of “1-f.” Any human with 4th-grade literacy could probably interpret that the “1″ in the title (pictured above) refers to the edition of that particular film and that the “F” is nothing other than the first letter in the phrase “F*k You Buddy,” which happens to follow the 1 after a hyphen, which has space on each side of it, clearly separating the “1″ from the letter f. (The editor in me would also tell you that technically, there should be 2 asterisks there, one for each missing letter, but that’s a bonus observation.)