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News & analysis on digital marketing & analytics
Social Octogenarians – Pickens Plan and Social Networks
One of yesterday’s bigger national stories was that of oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens, Jr. and his new energy plan. The Pickens Plan aims to reduce American dependence on foreign oil by exploiting the country’s “wind corridor” from the Canadian border to West Texas. The overall goal is to produce 20 percent of the country’s electricity.
On the surface, it sounds good, and the plan may or may not work. But I what most impressed me was that the site was built entirely with social media in mind.
One of the mantras we use, (and by “we” I mean me and my fellow social media nerds) is that if you have something worthwhile, share it. And Pickens allows users to do this in spades with a full array of social bookmarking tools and profiles from Facebook Groups to Twitter accounts. On top of that, if you venture into the Push section of the site, you can join the plan’s own social network for those who share similar concerns.
While the initiative is great, I hope that Pickens’ people have thought this strategy through. While I can only guess how much time will be spent monitoring these networks – and for how long – I am most curious how his people will handle the inevitable: disagreement and dissent.
It’s only a matter of time before some people’s interactions become overly political or even mean spirited. Will they shut down the profiles? Erase comments? My hope is that his social media advisers will let it go. Why? Because that’s part of the deal when you open that social media door. Companies and individuals must take the good with the bad and learn to address the community without blackballing disagreement.
In another tidbit that may only interest me, when the site was unveiled yesterday, the press contact’s email was from a PR firm email address. Today, however, the same contact’s email address has been changed to one on the Pickensplan.com domain. While there may be a plausible explanation for this, in the era of transparency and being upfront with your audience, I wonder if someone felt a Manhattan PR firm email address may change visitors’ perception of the organization?
At any rate, I’ll be monitoring the site on a regular basis as this could be a fascinating case study down the road. I just hope Mr. Pickens and his advisers can keep up.
Category: Social Media
Praise for Facebook’s Grammatical Awakening
As recently reported in Yahoo News, Facebook has taken steps to improve its grammatical accuracy. Sentences generated by the social networking website about people in the third person will use he or she in place of their when referring to the individual.
Facebook will also prompt users to select a sex if they have not already. I got my notice within the last week, and, yes, I have finally selected my sex. I am now declared a male to my legions of friends on Facebook, and they will be spared the misfortune of seeing:
Paul has changed their profile picture.
Elementary school teachers of English everywhere should rejoice. Now if only something could be done about loose vs. lose and its vs. it’s.
If you are interested in other topics central to online writing, see a just-published video of me interviewing Fathom’s content manager, Daiv Whaley, about writing & SEO. Daiv says,
It definitely comes across as amateur and poor when you see a website that’s got a misspelling or bad grammar. It just really brings the quality of a website down.
Here’s to Facebook–and websites everywhere–improving their quality.
Online Video: 11 Billion Views and No Signs of Slowing
On June 17th, comScore (Nasdaq: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, released its data from the Video Metrix service, which measures monthly video views online. The numbers were massive. According to the service, U.S. Internet users viewed 11 billion online videos throughout April, with more than 4 billion of those videos, almost 38%, being viewed on YouTube. MySpace (part of Fox Interactive Media) and Yahoo! Video sites trailed far behind with 5.1% and 3.2% respectively.
| Top U.S. Online Video Properties* by Videos Viewed
April 2008 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore Video Metrix |
||
| Property |
Videos (000) |
Share (%) of Videos |
| Total Internet |
10,999,597 |
100.0 |
| Google Sites |
4,159,850 |
37.9 |
| Fox Interactive Media |
557,663 |
5.1 |
| Yahoo! Sites |
352,359 |
3.2 |
| Microsoft Sites |
268,033 |
2.4 |
| Viacom Digital |
199,968 |
1.8 |
| Time Warner – Excl. AOL |
138,771 |
1.3 |
| ABC.COM |
103,421 |
0.9 |
| Disney Online |
98,740 |
0.9 |
| AOL LLC |
95,288 |
0.9 |
| ESPN |
83,424 |
0.8 |
*Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks. Online video includes both streaming and progressive download video.
These numbers should come as no surprise, as YouTube has long dominated the online video market, but these metrics convey other facts that are far more interesting. In addition to the amount of videos viewed, the data showed that 71% of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online videos, and that the average viewer watched approximately 228 minutes of video throughout the month. This information more than confirms the potency of online video in today’s Internet, but what does it mean for you?
If there was ever any doubt that online video is here to stay, these numbers should blow that doubt out of the water. The sheer volume of users taking time to watch online video makes that clear. More interesting about this data, however, is that it was only pulled from video content sites similar to YouTube and MySpace. This means that only the major players were used for the data, leaving out thousands of sites hosting their own video channels, such as Fathom TV’s Channel Guide. Furthermore, there are countless business sites featuring video that also went uncounted. The lack of inclusion of these sites strongly underlines the fact that the numbers shown in this data are actually short of the true results, despite their already impressive size.
If you take nothing else from these numbers, you should leave with this: Online video is a helpful, powerful, and most importantly, visible way to enhance the content on your site. With the numbers growing every month, everybody is going to be looking for their slice of that viewership to promote their product or service, and you definitely don’t want to be left behind.
*All data courtesy of comScore via http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2268
Hate “.com”? How About a New, Totally Branded Domain?
Tired of .com, .org, and .net? .biz or .mobi not doing it for you?
“Let a thousand domains flower …”
For 6 figures apiece.
As reported in today’s NY Times, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) announced yesterday in Paris that it would soon allow companies, organizations, or countries to use new suffixes in their top-level domains. It will also allow non-Roman language scripts like Chinese.
The Most Interesting Points of the Article
- Commerical Brouhaha: Competing groups will vie for city names while spammers will try to get product names for phishing scams.
- Companies are going to have “first priority” to protect their brand names … at a 6-figure cost.
- Internet activists: “consumers are going to be confused.”
- Auctions, independent reviews, and 3rd-party challenges will be used to settle conflicts.
Search Engine Marketing Questions
Will .bud automatically be seen as the right of Anheuser-Busch, or can a marijauna advocacy group lay claim to it?
How will Google choose to rank the new suffixes, knowing that they are costly purchases? Will there be a new class of sponsored listings, or will they go in the traditional organic results?
Is is really worth it to pay that much for more branding in your domain? If you’re a large corporation, maybe it’s a no-brainer. But for small- and medium-sized businesses, that could be a significant expenditure with perhaps little return, especially if you’re already doing well in Google rankings.
As the editor of Domain Journal stated in the article, it also might be harder for users to remember new suffixes, especially if everything is up for grabs. Even if browser bookmarking technology continues to grow more sophisticated, there may be a certain number of people you lose who can’t remember your .city or .state or .book or .travel suffix.
It is good that the Icann board will be hearing public opinion before the next major meeting in November. If enough people voice concern about what could be a robber baron era for Internet domains, maybe this flight of fancy will never leave the ground.
Photo courtesy of basykes via Flickr
Category: Google
Getting Bloggers To Link to Your Site
Yes, Mr. Marketer, I will link to your site/whitepaper/calculator/article/podcast or video (or I’ll recommend that our client, who you happen to be pitching, links to it). Why? Well:
- You spelled my name right. And “Balderaz” isn’t an easy one.
- You also got my first name right. I know you probably just copied and pasted much of my pitch email from the pitch you’re making to 20 other bloggers, but you didn’t call me “Phyllis” because you forgot to change the greeting.
- You read one or more of my posts! You know I like 80s hair music. Maybe you even said something clever like “Bill, you rock like Whitesnake” or signed your email “Fallen Angel.” Cool, you are so getting a link for that.
- The blog’s readers care about what you are pitching. It’s about online marketing, or medical carts, or jobs for working moms. If I publish the content the readers will be happy, and you’ve saved me or our client some time and work looking for good content.
- You said nice things about me, or offered me a book, or sneak peek at a new product.
- You aren’t pretending. It’s obvious when the people making a pitch has no idea about the industry. They misuse acronyms and jargon. They drop the wrong names. They don’t understand the subtleties of the industry. When pitching bloggers, if you don’t know the industry, don’t pretend that you do. If you can speak the language, than do it! There is a reason why Motley Crue doesn’t perform a song called “She Has the Looks that Kill.”
Where Facebook Meets Philanthropy
What’s your status?
When I think of social networking websites, I often think of people keeping tabs on what their friends and acquaintances are doing:
- Johnny is grilling buffalo burgers with his friends.
- Denise is looking forward to 3 days of debauchery in Las Vegas.
Or social network applications as platforms for broadcasting your status to the world:
- Paul is typing a blog post right now.
However, online social networking can be more than just a tool for idle chattering, comparative shopping, or advice-seeking. Social networks can also be vehicles for charity. If you’ve used Facebook even as little as I have, you’ve probably already recognized some famous charities with groups: Oxfam, Medecins Sans Frontiers, Habitat for Humanity, et al.
There are also individual applications–Causes, Razoo SpeedGranting, Changing the Present, Change.org–that allow users to make direct donations to a wide variety of causes via Facebook.
And still there are other charities like Malaria Engage that are independent websites built around social networking. Malaria Engage’s goal is to eradicate malaria, specifically targeting Tanzania with 7 research programs to which donors can give. It uses a social networking web platform (provided by Zazengo.com) to encourage donors to interact with researchers based on their individual interests. Its founder, Tom Hadfield, has this to say in an April Reuters UK article:
“Our dream is tens of thousands of people will use social networking tools to build a movement that eradicates malaria.”
Just as companies salivate over the prospects of finding customers through the word-of-mouth of trusted friends on social networks, charities and altruistic individuals also hope to appeal to your philanthropic side. The fact that certain charities have capitalized on these avenues to raise awareness and cash reflects that old marketing adage to go where the people are.
Are you a friend of charity?
Photo courtesy of Martin Kingsley via Flickr
Category: Social Media, Web Design
NEW: Communities on Mixx
The social bookmarking site, Mixx, has launched a new feature called Communities. The Mixx Communities are similar to the Mixx groups but offer a lot more bells and whistles.
They say it best:
Mixx Communities offer an easier way to focus on the topics and issues that you're most passionate about, whether that's wildlife activism, social media, political reform or the NY Giants. Once you start a Mixx Community, it will reside within Mixx but you can give it your own stamp by importing an image header and/or logo, choosing a custom color scheme, and determining specific topics and categories to include. For instance, if your Community is dedicated to environmental preservation, you might want to have as your topics "News," "Science," "Politics" and "Education."
The community pages will have:
- Featured space for editorial and promotional content
- A personalized sub-domain on Mixx.com
- Ability to import existing favorites tags so your new Community will immediately have new content
- The ability to embed video from YouTube and MetaCafé
- Option to participate in a revenue sharing program through Google AdSense API.
Community members also have some cool new features:
- A more unique experience on your customized community page
- More visible message boards
- Ability to participate in polls related to the group's message
- Earn karma points within the community that will be added to their general Mixx karma pool
- Better comment following that allows reader to follow comments on a particular story across all groups, both public and private, that they are a member of.
Some communities I have noticed so far are Obama 08, Apple, Photography Lovers, Anti War, Tech Stories and Social Blend.
What is your niche?
Website Usability and SEO: A Must-Have Combination
When optimizing websites for search engines, the most critical components include keyword dense content with proper page headers coupled with effective use of image alt and page title tags. Content may be king, but adding website usability to SEO tactics is a must have combination for higher conversions and sales.
Usability Defined
Usability measures the quality of a user’s experience when interacting with a product or system – whether a website, software application, mobile technology, or any user-operated device.
Usability is defined by five quality components (as described by Usability Expert Jakob Nielsen):
- Learnability: Can users easily accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
- Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
- Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
- Errors: How many errors will users make (including the severity of these errors) and how easily can they recover from them?
- Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?
How Usability and SEO Go Hand In Hand
When SEO is implemented correctly, it should make your website rank higher on search engines and drive more traffic.
However, even with targeted traffic from search engines and the proper calls to action, your website may not convert as desired. A visitor may leave if the website is difficult to use. Obstacles may include a poor navigation structure, a homepage that fails to clearly state what a company offers, uncertainty about what can be accomplished on the website, and information that is hard to read or doesn’t answer the users’ key questions.
In the Internet Age, people want to quickly gather information. As a result, they won’t take the time to stumble around your site or read through a user’s manual to get what they need.
Improving Usability
Like SEO, usability is an iterative process. However, it is more important during the initial development stage of a website. Improving a website’s usability involves taking the time to think about how someone will interact with the website before making it viewable to the world. An essential goal involves minimizing the number of clicks needed to locate information.
Once you have put some thought into the website, some form of usability testing should be completed (it does not need to be expensive or require a sophisticated usability lab). In addition to having multiple people view the website and provide feedback on its design and ease of use, I recommend using the “10-second usability test” devised by web designer and author Dan Cederholm of Simple Bits.
The “10-second usability test” includes turning off the design and asking the following questions. Is the website still understandable? Does the structure make sense? “Turning off the design” involves disabling CSS stylesheets by commenting out the stylesheet include line or via a plug-in like the Web Developer plug-in for Firefox. When you turn off the CSS stylesheets, you can see the content and navigation the same way a search engine spider will experience the site. Although this method is unscientific, it is an easy form of usability testing.
Usability is crucial because it can make or break the website experience – whether that’s a human being or a search engine trying to get from one page to the next. Messy websites rank lower on search engines, attract less traffic and end up with fewer conversions.
If you think through SEO and usability together, you will be in a better position to convert more visitors and beat out competitors fighting in the same market.
How To Avoid SEO Errors
In a new Visibility magazine story, I outline 10 key ways to avoid search engine optimization mistakes that can surface with just about any project. “10 Critical Errors to Avoid With Your SEO Campaign” looks at keyword selection, page titles, holistic thinking, ranking analysis, timelines and more.
Category: SEO
Google Trends for Websites: Where is Blogspot?
Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land posted about a new development at Google Trends. It has now become a super revved up competitive intelligence tool as well as a keyword trending tool. A search by a domain name will now bring up information about traffic to the site, about sites also visited by those visitors and terms also searched.
I took this tip and played with several domains. Only two domains I searched for had no results. One was a super small potato site I own. The other search was blogspot.com – the host for tons and tons of free blogs, and owned by Google.
I thought perhaps the nature of this domain was the issue. It has lots of subdomains, wide variety of content, etc. So I checked out wordpress.org.
Lots of interesting information about WordPress. So it isn’t the nature of the domain which causes blogspot to not appear. I looked to Google for Help.
10. Are all websites included?
No. Not all websites are included in Trends for Websites. The following types of websites may not appear in the tool:
Websites with low traffic volume below our threshold
Websites that don’t wish to be indexed by Google and have indicated their preference through a robots.txt exclusion file
Websites that don’t adhere to our Quality Guidelines
Other websites for miscellaneous reasons
Unless there is a problem with a Google property following the Quality Guidelines, it must be due to miscellaneous reason. Could that reason be that Google doesn’t want to share competitive information about its own properties? Just a question.
Category: Google
