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The closing keynote on Wednesday at ad:tech New York was presented byChristian Oestlien the Head of Social Advertising Products atGoogle.  The opening of Oestlien’s presentation featured an example ofGoogle+’s new Hangout feature shot live at a Black Eyed Peas Concert. Fans were given an opportunity to interact with the music sensations inreal time.  Black Eyed Pea’s frontman will.i.am is noted as saying “Thisisn’t behind the music, this will become the music.”

Since launching in June, Google+ has already acquired over 40million active users.  Users have also uploaded over 3.5 billion photos inthose short months.  According to Oestlien the goal of Google+ for enablemarketers to interact with their fan base in a way that they never have before. When developing Google+ the team set out to see how they could influenceand impact as well as improve that way that marketers are utilizing OnlineMarketing today.

Google identified 5 key problems that marketers are commonly facedwith including:

Fragmented Marketing Recommendations Lack Staying Power Comments, NotConversations Impersonal Messages Limited Insights

Determining Problems Is Only the First Step

Current Problem: Fragmented Marketing More oftenthan not what marketers are doing socially is vastly different than how theirmarketing plans are executed. Google is aiming to change the way that youmarket both online and offline. Oestlien also notes that Google is not tryingto bring something completely new to the market. They are simply trying totransform the way that your information is shared.

Google Solution: Google+ Page, Direct ConnectGoogle has never had a specific place for users to connect and communicate withbrands directly. Now with Google+ Pages you can easily interact with yourfavorite brands. Direct Connect is also a new feature that has recently beenintroduced. With Direct Connect you simply type the + symbol and then the nameof the brand to be sent immediately to their page without having to siftthrough search results.

Current Problem: Recommendations Lack StayingPower We’ve all experienced a moment where we have tried to thinkof a recommendation that was given to us by a friend or colleague and no matterhow hard we’ve tried, we just can’t remember the exact details.

Google Solution: Google +1 Button Google pluspages allows brands to connect +1′s around their brand and anchor them to yourbrand at Google. This enables Google to take recommendations that the brand hasreceived and disperse them through the internet, enabling marketers to extendtheir brand and get in front of users in everything that they are doing online.For end users Google has discovered that if a brand, product, location, orevent has been recommended by someone they personally know (in their circle)they are much more likely to trust that recommendation.

Current Problem: Comments, Not Conversations Ithas been difficult for many marketers to find a way of engaging withprospective customers.  Strategies are often centered around pushinginformation out onto social networks vs. engaging prospects on socialnetworks.

Google Solution: Google+ Hangouts Google+ Hangoutswhich was mentioned at the very beginning of the keynote has many practical B2Bapplications for business owners.  Imagine the ability to interact livewith your customers, record live testimonials, facilitate customer servicequestions, gather a group of industry thought leaders, the list goes on andon.

Current Problem: Impersonal Messages In daily lifeyou have the ability to change or tweak your message depending on who you aretalking to.  Unfortunately, that has not been the case with socialnetworks.  Marketers have been able to cast a wide net and attempt topersonalize the message slightly to included all members of the audience.

Google Solution: Google+ Circles Circles is by farone of my favorite Google+ features.  This solution consistsof intuitive groups which will allow marketers to directly targetindividual segments of their prospect or customer base.  It also solves aquestion many marketers ask regarding managing a professional and personalsocial networking platform.

Current Problem: Limited Insights It is extremelyimportant to understand and gather insight into how people are interacting withyour content.  Why is this important?  According to Oestlien “over77% of content around brands is being shared by the users not the brand.”

Google Solution: Google+ Ripples Ripples creates atimeline of how posts are shared and interacted with.  Not only can yousee who shared what information with who but you can also replay thisinformation via a timeline to see what led to the success even if it is weeksor months down the road by the time you have discovered it.

I for one, found the keynote to be very helpful and practical for businessapplications.  If you haven’t already signed up your company for a Google+Page, check itout here.  The team at TopRank Online Marketing will be sure to update you asfrequently as we can on the changes that are sure to follow from Google+ and ofcourse you can visit our Google+ Page for OnlineMarketing Blog.

If you are attending ad:tech New York, be sure to catch TopRank OnlineMarketing CEO Lee Odden and the Search MarketingMasters sessions with Intel, Volkswagen, REI, Salesforce, Bazaarvoice andMarin Software this morning at Room 13, Hall 1E, Level 1, in theJavits Center.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |Is it Time to Make Google+ Your Plus One? 5 Key Problems Solved by Google+Pages @adtech NY Keynote with Christian Oestlien |http://www.toprankblog.com

OnlineMarketing Blog

[Note from Lee: Our Wednesday Guest Post Series from digital marketingexperts has been very well received and today's post from my friend Heidi Cohen will notdisappoint. Heidi is a long time and very popular Columnist at ClickZ andContent Marketing Institute, Adjunct Professor at NYU, an active marketing blogger as well asPresident of  Riverside Marketing Strategies. When it comesto internet marketing Heidi's perspective resonates well with me and I appreciate her insight intothe intersection of direct marketing, digital, content and social media a greatdeal.]

Does your content jump off the page and grab readers by the collar to gettheir attention? While no one sets out to create content marketing that’s asnooze, sometimes it misses its intended objective. If this is the case, youhave to pump life into your content marketing to make it useful for your targetaudience.

5 Reasons your content marketing seems lifeless

How can you tell if your content marketing’s missing the mark? Here are fivesigns your content marketing needs help.

Your content isn’t targeted at your intended audience. If yourcontent’s written without a specific audience in mind, chances are it won’tappeal to your customers because it won’t necessarily hit their hot buttons. Inaddition, it may not use their language or show an understanding of theirproblems. Don’t get me wrong, you may present the information your audienceneeds but the way it’s presented keeps your target market from reading it. As aresult, it’s a waste of your marketing budget and your target market’s time.Your content doesn’t sound like it has any association with a realperson, living or dead. This is the problem of using sanitizedmarketing-speak, a problem particularly prevalent among B2B marketers. Byremoving any personality from your content marketing, it misses its intendedreadership since it’s a yawn. To work, your content marketing must be alive andlively. Underestimate the human aspect of your content at your own perilbecause your readers won’t be able to relate to it. Your content is arehash of information found elsewhere. To break through your contentneeds to be specific. Think about great literature. It’s always written fromthe point of view of specific characters whose specific actions representlarger human issues. The same is true of your content marketing. If you cansubstitute the name of another company in your content, there’s a problem.4.    Your content is boring.You can have the most useful information in the world but if it’s packaged inendless text with no photographs or engaging graphics, your prospectiveaudience isn’t giving it a second look. Sorry to be the one to inform you buthumans are visual creatures. Your content is an endless flow ofpromotions. Nothing will kill your content faster than the buy, buy,buy approach to content trash file. 5 Ways to give your content marketing newlife

To help your content reach out and engage your target market, here are fivesuggestions.

Respect your audience. Appreciate that readers are spendingtheir precious time with your content. They’re giving you their attention. Useit wisely and assume they’re intelligent. To this end, facilitate their abilityto consume your content. This requires a combination of editorial in terms ofbulleted, easy-to-scan information and graphics in terms of useful charts andphotographs to support your text. Exact Target’s ebooks (pdf) do a great job of distributing informationthat’s fun to read and useful. Instill your content marketing withpassion. Show the love behind your words and picture. To accomplishthis, find the energy in your story. Does it come from employees, customers orproducts? What gets your target audience excited about your content? Is it thephotographs, the language used, or the information provided? For example, manybakers use photographs to entice viewers to order from them. Getemployees, customers and fans to help create it. There’s no better wayto make your content marketing sound like a real person than to get the realpeople involved with your products to develop it. You need to provide supportin terms of making the input sound professional. This means transcribing orediting it. Additionally, for your employees, make it part of their jobs, notsomething they do when they have time. Create contentcustomers and the public need and keep returning to. The bottom lineis your content needs to be useful, both for your audience and your business.To this end, consider what your target audience needs to help them at everystep of the purchase process. Ask what type of resources are your prospectslooking for? It can be recipes such as Kraft Foods or patterns such as Berrocco that get readers enticed to buy your product andsupports them later when they use your product to make their own creation.Be relevant with what’s happening in the world. Bear in mindreaders consume your information in the context of what’s happening in theenvironment around them. This is attributable to concurrent device usage (thinktelevisions, computers, tablets and smartphones) and the speed of informationdissemination, especially across social media. As a result, your readers knowabout tsunamis in Japan and the ninety-nine percenters on Wall Street.Therefore show you understand these trends and the impact they have on youraudience.

Don’t lose heart if your content marketing appears lifeless! Understandstrong content, whether it’s text, photographs, presentations or videos, oftenhas to go through multiple iterations before it strikes a cord with your targetaudience.

Do you have any other suggestions for making your content marketing come tolife?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |5 Ways toGive Your Content Marketing New Life | http://www.toprankblog.com

OnlineMarketing Blog

As part of my November cross country efforts to share search, social mediaand content marketing insights, I’ve switched from BlogWorld Los Angeles last week to ad:tech New Yorkthis week. I’m really looking forward to a great group of Search Marketingsessions at one of the the largest Interactive Marketing conferences in theworld. In the past year I’ve been to London, San Francisco, Barcelona and manyother great cities (even Cleveland!) but New York is by far one of my favoriteplaces for a conference.

Earlier this year the amazing Melanie Mitchell, SVP of Search at Digitas, was serving asa conference Marketing Master for the Search Engine Marketing track and sheasked me to speak at my first ad:tech in San Francisco.  When I was askedto perform those same SEM track programming duties for the ad:tech New York show, I hadto say yes!

ad:tech New York features some very impressive keynote presentationsincluding: Christian Oestlien, Head of Social Advertising Products atGoogle; David Fischer,VP Advertising & Global Operations atFacebook; Wendy Clark, Sr. VP of Integrated MarketingCommunications &Capabilities at The Coca-Cola Company and many others.  Our roundup of payper click and search engine optimization expertise is also impressive. You cancheck out two of the planned sessions below that I’ll be introducing andmoderating:

Search Marketing: Integrating Search with the Rest of YourMarketing Thursday, Nov 10 at 10:15 AM

LaurenVaccarello – Director of Search, Display and Social Advertising,Salesforce.com Title: Better Event Marketing With IntegratedSearch & Social Media Presentation: Online marketing canbe used for more than driving online demand. See how you can use search andsocial media marketing in every phase of offline event marketing from pre eventregistration to post event follow up.

SaraDevine – Manager Digital Media Integration, VW Marketing,Volkswagen of America, Inc Title: Utilizing Search inIntegrated Product Launch Campaigns Presentation: As theannouncement to launch journey unfolds, search is instrumental in capturinghand raisers and prospects leading up to the actual product launch where searchmaximizes the reach of what is often a large advertiser presence.  Atthis point, search is not only utilized as the “catcher’s mitt” for the otheradvertising efforts, but also becomes a barometer of those efforts – measuringin real time consumer awareness and interest in the product.

Matt Lawson - VP Marketing, MarinSoftware Title: Taking Paid Search to the Next Level,Tips for Advanced Marketers Presentation: As paid searchadvertising becomes increasingly competitive and complex, search marketers areconstantly looking for the next trick to squeeze additional volume and ROI outof their campaigns.  In this informative session, Marin Software willreveal new professional tips to help sophisticated marketers improve thefinancial performance of their paid search programs.

After our first session that focuses on paid search, we’ll transition to asession that’s more focused on Search Engine Optimization:

Search Marketing: Cases and Best Practices for MaximizingSEO  Thursday, NOV 10 at 11:30 AM

CoreyCarrillo - Global Media Worldwide Search & OnlinePrograms, Intel Corporation Title: One is the LoneliestNumber: SEM, SEO, Social Integration and InsightsPresentation: The role of Search Engine Marketing at Intelwith specific examples, consumer and business about applied bestpractices/insights and programs for SEM campaigns/data to help bolster resultsin SEO, Social and PPC Social.

JonathonColman – Internet Marketing Program Manager, REITitle: A Case Study in Conversion Optimization to Improve theUser/Crawler Experience Presentation:  A discussion ofthe “silver bullet” when it comes to SEO and user experience (UX): Site speedand performance. A faster site reduces the costs of both infrastructureand releases by 50% or more.  Efficient sites simply cost less to run andprovide for a better user experience. This presentation provides 4 sitespeed optimization steps and a case study on how REI saw a significant increasein site speed and overall conversions after optimization was implemented.

MichaelDeHave – Bazaarvoice Title:  Social SEO:Strategic Optimization of User Reviews Presentation: For manytop online retailers, user-generated review content comprises 80 to 90% theirsite’s total rich content.  Michael DeHaven of Bazaarvoice will outline aproven strategy to organize and leverage review content to drive substantialincreases in traffic from search.  This talk will open your eyes to avaluable, new segment of search traffic that often goes unnoticed whendeveloping a search optimization strategy.

As you can see, this is going to be a fantastic set of sessions and a greatgroup of speakers.  I’ll also be moderating an Exhibit Hall session ofseveral speakers from Local.com, ideaLaunch, Brafton and  a few othercompanies serving the search marketing industry. If you’re attending ad:techNew York, I hope you’ll stop by Room 13, Hall 1E, Level 1 at the JavitsCenter.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |ad:techNew York Search Marketing Masters | http://www.toprankblog.com

OnlineMarketing Blog

The agency (TopRank Online Marketing) that I started with SusanMisukanis celebrated it’s 10th Birthday this year and in all my time as anInternet Marketer, no other combination of marketing tactics has yieldedresults like Search Engine Optimization and Content. Over the past 5 yearsSocial Media has entered the mix as an even more powerful amplifier to theeffect of optimized content.

But there’s a key problem with how content marketing is implemented by manySEO-focused agencies and practitioners. Creation of “content” has escalated toamazing levels but there is a lot of that content fails to achieve the desiredobjective. In the midst of keywords, links, rankings and search algorithmsthere are several important pieces missing.

SEO tends to be viewed as very tactical when it’s actually not only animportant piece of a business internet marketing strategy, but it’s acompelling way to view online marketing overall. I’m talking about an “Optimized” state of mind thatfocuses on customers more than keywords and outcomes more than the trendiestonline platforms.

Part of solving this problem is for those who employ SEO and ContentCreation, Optimization and Promotion to think of optimization as a strategy.What can be searched can be optimized for better performance. That’s a holisticapproach beyond keywords in title tags, Page Rank and inbound links. Not onlyis there benefit to view any electronic file that an be published online as apotential marketing asset, but understanding how they can work together issomething that can elevate and scale a company’s content marketingeffectiveness.

So, what does this mean at the individual contenttactic creation and optimization level?  I recommend InternetMarketers ask a few key questions for every content object they create. Whetherit’s an email, blog post, press release or article for a publication, it’sessential to think about the answers to these questions:

What is this article’s key message and how does it relate to the brand? Wheredoes this content fit within the mix of brand content created on thesame/similar topic? What target search keywords is this content focused on?What are the compelling social sharing motivations for this content? What mediacan support this content (video, audio, images, interactive)? What is the firstlevel, second level audience? What need or pain point does this content solve?What’s the hook? (creative angle, metaphor, What’s the punchline (revelationand call to action)? How will this content inspire the reader to the next step,to action? How can this content be repurposed and/or reposted in the future?What promotion channels will be used to automate distribution? How will thecontent be promoted, pitched, shared at large and with relevant influencers?What are the target key performance indicators for this individual contentobject and for it’s category?

Answer those questions and think about the flow of the content. Does itidentify a need or opportunity? Does it empathize with an audience or aproblem?  Does it suggest a solution or conclusion? Is there acompelling call to action? Does it inspire the reader to do what you want themto do? (act, share, feel, experience). Does it have a purpose relevant tocustomers and the brand that stands alone outside of SEO and Social Media?

Regardless of the type, format or length of content, these are importantquestions to answer in order to produce relevant and compelling content thatdrives business as key components of a Search Engine and Social MediaOptimization strategy. In the context of contentmarketing, an “optimized” approach is holistic and adaptable at makingcontent easy to discover by the right audience, meaningful to consume andmotivating to engage and act on.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |Key SEOQuestions For Better Content Marketing | http://www.toprankblog.com

OnlineMarketing Blog

This Halloween do you think social media will bring you tricks or treats?For some marketers, every day is Halloween when it comes to social media marketing. These marketers expect the bogeyman to behiding behind every piece of consumer-generated content and assume theircustomers and the public only use Facebook and Twitter witchcraft to createbloodcurdling tricks. Yet the reality is that most of the social mediaconversation about your firm isn’t scary.

For your Halloween treat from TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog, here are thetop five tricks in my social media goodie bag you can easily integrate intoyour marketing efforts.

1. Shock Them with Killer Headlines

Grab the attention of your business’ witches and wizards to lure them intoyour social media content. Otherwise they’ll take off on their broomstick. Amagic headline casts a spell over your visitors and entices them to read on.According to Copyblogger’s Brian Clark only one out of five visitors will read yourcontent. It’s a pretty scary statistic considering most of your time isspent creating the body of your content, not the headline. Since qualitycounts, a strong headline can tempt more readers in. Additionally it’ll come asno shock that the more powerful your title, the more it encourages socialsharing.

2. Thrill Them with Spine-Chilling Content

Your content doesn’t stand a ghost of a chance if it doesn’t deliver valueto your readers. Even worse, it won’t support your sales process because peopledon’t like to troll through shadowy content. This means content that’s a rehashof other information or recycled marketing promotions.  Don’t befrightened but 60% of consumers research online before they buy.  So show somewizardry and create quality information your prospects desire and need. Want toenhance your content marketing’s magical powers? Make it mobile friendlysince 55% of smartphone owners use their device while shopping accordingto research by Chadwick Martin Bailey.  If nothing else it’ll giveyour competitors a fright since the shoppers may be checking your informationin their store!

3. Scare up Some Treats

Bewitch your customers and social media followers with a special deal.Forget the over-hyped Groupon and similar group coupon offers. These promotionscan be very scary for small business since Rice University found that one-third of these offers were unprofitable. Instead create atargeted offer to entice social media followers to engage with your firm. ExactTarget research found that roughly one out of fourrespondents followed a company (pdf) on Facebook to take advantage of aone-time offer. Beware– you need to keep these prospects engaged once you’velured them in or they’ll just disappear with their discount never to be heardfrom again.

4. Spook Them Into Doing What You Want

Incorporate a call-to-action into your social media. This old directmarketing trick is easy to overlook in social media yet it can reap significantreturns. The secret is to make it contextually relevant to what you want yoursocial media followers to do next and the specific environment or platform inwhich it appears. Remember persuading prospects to purchase isn’t magic. Thinkbaby steps that help move prospects towards your ultimate goal. Use appropriatecolors and graphics to make your call-to-action stand out. While you’recreating your call-to-action, don’t forget to develop a targeted promotion codeso you can track your results.

5. Offer Halloween Visitors Candy

Decorate your content with social media icons to encourage social sharing.It’s Halloween—who doesn’t want to share their haul so they don’t get sick? Butdon’t scare your visitors by making them think, or work too much or they’reoff. You want to cast a spell over your visitors so they’ll spread the wordabout you to their social media friends.

Even though it’s Halloween, don’t creep your customers and the public outwith a lot of me, me, me marketing-speak. Instead, pay-it-forward by offeringsome social media treats that yield real marketing benefits for yourorganization.

Do you have any special social media tricks to share?

 

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |Five Social Media Marketing Tricks for Halloween |http://www.toprankblog.com

OnlineMarketing Blog