Socialgraph Helps Search Engine Listings

When showing the value of an online community you are building, do not forget about checking the search box. Typical questions about expected outcomes from a community may still center around reach metrics. How many people am I reaching? How many eyeballs am I catching with my messages? The comprehensive answer includes reach (unique visitors, community members, etc.), engagement (i.e., conversations among fans and your brand) and search rankings. And your search listings are related to reach and engagement. 

The basic principle of affecting organic search results is strong and relevant content that gets repeated, cited and linked in online conversations. When you build a community page or a fan page, steer your editorial calendar to include bits of newsworthy information that can easily grab and pass along to their networks. When sharing news about a discount, expert tips or a new product launch, your audience expands your digital footprint, brings you more visitors/fans and generate links. The sum of these activities have a positive impact on Google search rankings and your content rises higher and higher as your community expands and chatter grows through tweets, discussions and blog posts. 

In fact, Web analyst Brandt Dainow's list of rules for beating Google at SEO includes the following audience behaviors, which help search rankings:

• Fans who like/follow you
• Impressions from social graph fans (i.e., they talk about your brand in social media, including your message points, brand name)
• Impressions from social graph fans with links (i.e., fans are citing your community page and referring traffic)
• Secondary fan connections (i.e., friends who tell friends who then become your fans and/or referrers)
• Other citations (i.e., links, references from people who are not your fans/followers)
• Number of visits, click-throughs

Online conversations increase the value of your community. A bustling online hub means higher visibility and accessibility. 

 

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Online News and Buzz Predict Stock Value

SENSEnews, a service brought to you by the people behind the semantic search engine hakia, is able to make sense of it all for investors. The system aggregates vast amounts of information such as facts, news events, financial interpretations, speculations, market factors, sentiments and reviews. Then, it plugs this knowledge into an intricate algorithm. The result is a computation of unrealized stock value. You know when your investments are overpriced or undervalued. You decide to sell, hold or buy more.

As the co-inventor of SENSEnews Dr. Riza Berkan, indicates, the average person cannot track and analyze such vast amounts of data. Whether we get our news from the media or through word of mouth, we are always a few steps behind in the information game. Therefore, SENSEnews offers an incredible advantage to traders and those who manage their own portfolio. 

While the relationship between news and stock value have been studied in depth, the addition of social media to the mix elevates the conversation about the value of online word of mouth to a new level. Services like SENSEnews also underscore the importance of financial information companies release online. Through the funnel of SENSEnews, what companies publish about themselves, what the media say about companies and what citizens publish online can affect perceived stock value (and performance.)  

 

 

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Email Still Has It

Long before myriad of apps took over itunes, there was talk of the sticky app. In Web 1.0 days, techies would wonder "What will be the one application that will have the 'it' factor?" Email would often come up. Then it would be quickly dismissed--many believed it had to be more complicated or futuristic than that. Fast forward to 2011, email is still going strong. In fact, according to a recent Technographics report from Forrester, consumers are now less likely to delete messages without reading. They are also less likely to opt out or wish they had opted out. 

Longitudinal data from the report shows a steady decline in what email marketers would consider bad behavior. In 2006, 73 percent of consumers deleted most email messages from advertisers without reading. This incidence dropped to 63 percent in 2008 and to 59 percent in 2010. While one-half (49 percent) of consumers wished it were easier to unregister from email offers in 2006, only 28 percent shared the sentiment in 2010. 

While these are good news for e-CRM planners, email could still use the power of organic word of mouth. Majority of consumers do not forward promotional emails. In 2006, some nine percent said they sometimes forwarded promotional emails to their friends. This incidence climbed merely to 12 percent in 2010. In the age of tell-a-friend systems such as AddThis, ShareThis and Gigya, the likelihood to forward an email could have been higher. 

Since the days Microsoft encouraged friends to tell friends to get hotmail accounts, email remains a strong and viable marketing channel. It is increasingly on target. Marketers still need work on delivering value and telling amazing stories to convince their audiences that emails are indeed worth passing along. 

 

 

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Groupon and Yelp: The Combo Works for Small Businesses

I am fascinated to watch the growth of a small business nearby our home: Dahn Yoga Center. They are masters of word of mouth, because they know how to create and share stories. They are also using new tools, such as Groupon and Yelp, to increase trials. 

Part of the ritual in classes is a tea ceremony at the end where happy members take a few minutes to sit down and share how they feel. Some talk about their aches, some talk about moments of enlightenment. Most of the time, the stories are positive, as the method increases and improves circulation, helps people stretch and coaches people to find that point of mental calm. Happy customers, happy business! The center has been getting a lot of new members through genuine, enthusiastic referrals. Friends bring other friends and family in, saying 'You must try this!'

Most recently, they participated in a Groupon deal, offering participants a significant discount on a 10-class card. As a result, the center in Brooklyn Heights got 17 sign ups, Manhattan locations saw 50 participants and Boston Cambridge area got more than 100 walk ins. Thinking about the college audience in Boston area who is hooked on social media and emerging platforms such as Groupon, the high level of participation in Cambridge makes sense. I was told the Boston area center is also doing really well on Yelp. So, people who saw the deal on Groupon were able to check out the real people stories and review the ratings on Yelp before making a final decision. 

The Brooklyn Heights center is going to rely on good service and honest stories to turn these trials into long-term members. I heard that one of the Groupon leads loves the classes so much that she is taking a cab from her far away home to the center for every class. That's dedication! And it is very promising. 

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Pucca's Diary: Authentic Authenticity!

During my latest trip to Istanbul, I had the pleasure of coming across the latest web phenomenon that every other Turkish girl is talking about: Pucca's Diary. It's raw. It's from the heart - more so, written off the top of a young woman's head. Pucca writes about her angst to find love. Nothing new you might think, but her tone and her writing voice is so strong, it makes everyone stop on their tracks. If you can't read Turkish, let me paint the picture for you: Think a young girl who's thinking and talking a mile a minute with slang, SMS shorthand and observations that every woman makes but no one dares to utter. Her chase for the neighbor's son, her competition with an Angeline Jolie-esque colleague to get the only decent looking boy in the office, her bitter break up with her less than handsome and intelligent boyfriend. It's all stories where readers can find a piece of themselves, giggle and tell their friends to check out. 

In fact, that's why the blog has been so successful as a series of authentic drama. Pucca has more than 55,000 followers on Twitter. Her blog has been published as a book in June 2010. By December, it was in its 11th (!!!) print. And it's priced at 20 TL/ $13. For your information, that's very close to the cost of foreign classics whose price tag include import tax. It's not so cheap considering the Turkish book market or what the local publishers coin as 'laptop books.' Go girl!

Authenticity is a much frequently used buzz word in social media circles. While we craft ePR messages, maybe we should first jot down what we really mean and want to say and then dare to publish it. Edits, reviews, 'multiple cooks in the kitchen' sometimes boil tweets and blog posts down to, well, water. If you know your audience, if you know what they want to hear and how they talk, you should write in freestyle like Pucca. 

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What Will Happen By 2015?

We know what will happen in 2011. Marketing plans are ready. Teams are staffing up for research, ideation, and launches. There will be news of acquisitions, hostile takeovers, and inventions. We will need to be nimble enough to respond to these ad-hoc changes. Yet we truly need to plan for the future, not just for today and tomorrow. We need to start thinking about how content, distribution technologies and audience behavior will change by 2015. The following are predictions on the landscape shifts that will become increasingly defined within the next five years.

Content:

1- Short entertainment will be standard on phones: Audiences prefer short excerpts to long exposes. Most people do not like to read. Many of us need to or would like to stay in the know. With the advent of tablets and mobile broadband, we will read 300-500 word stories on our smart phones. Since online video will be near ubiquitous, content providers will produce more infotainment clips and rely on visual communications to tell stories in creative, succinct ways. 

2- We will arrange the features on your favorite Web sites: We will see click and drag web sites. The content management systems will move to the front end from backend. Brands and news portals will have a better understanding of their users’ preferences and have the chance to improve on their services.

Audience:

3- CSR audiences will be more demanding: Generation G (giving) will scrutinize philanthropy and CSR efforts more closely.  Donating two to 10 percent of proceeds to a cause will not be enough. They will expect more creative approaches from brands that produce tangible results and offer meaningful engagement. 

4- Information filters and organizers will regain popularity: People will use filters to organize their ever-growing list of contacts and prioritize among them. Instead of switching to 50-people networks, such as Path.com, online audiences will defer to new group and folder features on their Facebook pages.

Distribution:

5- Facebook will turn people info into business (and it won’t be just advertising): Facebook will fight with Amazon and smaller players like Yelp to be a word of mouth search engine. The vast amount of personal information it collects will continue to help marketers map out consumer preferences based on social connections and profile details. Privacy battles and issues will continue. Users will search for experience-based recommendations and listings within their extended networks. 

6- Google will become a content distributor: Google will expand its e-stores to include music, movies and clips, creating a vast indie market online. Audience ratings on these pieces of content will be added to Google algorithms.

7- Word of mouth marketing will become more precise: Marketers will successfully target beyond the inner/immediate circle of influencers. Our understanding of second and third cycles of word of mouth will improve. There will be more sophisticated program offerings to mobilize crowds and offer innovative products/services to a wider range of influencers.

 

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Study Shows Social Media Has More Impact Than Paid Media on Car and Technology Sales

S. Radoff Associates, a NY-based research company, just released a report about the impact of word of mouth on large-ticket item purchases. The results remove any shadow of doubt on word of mouth’s impact on tangible business results. And we understand that social media drives sales for considerable investments in cars and technology, not just CPG products.

The study delves into large purchases made in the past year and the information sources that shaped brand choices. The results show that one-half of consumers say word of mouth was a key influencer for car (50 percent), technology and electronics (49 percent) product choices they made in the past year.

We know from Keller Fay Group that much of word of mouth actually takes place offline. Interestingly, these two categories are pretty balanced in terms of their source of buzz. In fact, online and offline word of mouth were just as likely (29 percent, respectively) to influence technology and consumer electronics purchases.

Online reviews are at the source of online buzz. Consumers say online reviews influenced nearly one-quarter of technology and electronics purchases (24 percent) and 17 percent of car purchases made last year.

The most counterintuitive factoid from the study is that consumers are four times more likely to be influenced by social media than paid media for their car purchases made in the past year (21 percent vs. 5 percent). Social media has been more influential than paid media for technology purchases as well (26 percent vs. 7 percent).

Considering the typical budget spending on advertising vs. social media, these numbers signal the need to seek efficiencies in our integrated marketing plans for 2011 and beyond. Marketers planning for automotive and consumer electronics/ technology brands can shift dollars from traditional advertising budgets to social media and focus on elevating consumer opinions and customer experience. 

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