Marketers Studio - David Berkowitz's Marketing Blog

The 4 Essential Elements of a Great Social Media Campaign: Now on the Online Marketing for Marketers Blog

Image of Aaron KahlowToday it's a pleasure to announce my first post at Online Marketing for Marketers, the blog founded by Aaron Kahlow of Online Marketing Summit fame.

It's a great roundup in their group of bloggers, including some experts and geniuses I've had the honor of interacting with in various ways such as Return Path's Stephanie Miller, Razorfish's Josh Palau, L&G Business Solutions' Lewis Green, and Renegade's Drew Neisser, plus many others who I now can peruse on the blog.

While I won't repost the entries here in full, I will summarize them when applicable to give you a taste. If you're so inclined, you can find my contribution page here (yes, it's rather sparse at the moment), and view today's article.

The question of the week is about good campaigns, and I discuss the four essential elements of a great social media campaign:

1. It achieves results.
2. It extends beyond its original borders.
3. It provides value to consumers on the platforms used.
4. It ties into broader programs.

Read the whole post, rate it if you're so inclined (no registration required), and comment here or there. It's meant to start conversation, not end it, as it was tough keeping the list brief.

Age of Conversation 2: Better Than Back to the Future 2, Even If not as Good as the 2nd Christian Bale Batman Movie

Image by Jordan Behan via FlickrI know you've been waiting for this one, ever since the book Age of Conversation 1 come out... this is just too good. There's now a SEQUEL! Yes, Age of Conversation 2, with contributions from 549,143.8 authors (okay, 237), is now here.

Buy it.

Please.

You can find lots of details at AgeofConversation.com.

More importantly, you can buy it at Lulu.com as hardcover, softcover, or slipcover. There are also e-book versions for those people who like saving trees but hate saving electricity.

And, dear reader, even though I slaved my butt off to be 1/237th of this book, I will not make a single dime off it. I don't even get a free book. All proceeds go to Variety - not the entertainment magazine (I mean, did you read their review of W.?) but the charity for children. AOC1 raised $15,000 for them. Let's see if we can make it $15 million this year. Or something really really big.

Get This Widget

Just The ‘Factz’ On Smarter ‘Surch Enginez’

Image via CrunchBase

What don’t the major search engines do well?

That’s a burning question these days from way too many parties. It comes up in John Battelle’s most recent post (one that reminds me how effective a writer he is), which culminates in a plea for teaching search literacy in schools, and then journalist Cyrus Farivar’s thoughtful commentary on it. It’s a hot topic on Alt Search Engines, where Charles Knight finds and promotes startups that beat the engines at their own game. And of course it’s the raison d’être for all those engines.

There are two ways to address the problem of engines’ shortcomings. One way is to make the engines smarter. The other is to make the users smarter. With any luck we’ll meet somewhere in the middle.

It’s interesting to see startups’ different approaches to making themselves smarter.

Powerset, for example, which was acquired by Microsoft, only parses Wikipedia pages so far, so it’s hard to gauge the real value of the technology. Powerset will summarize pages and also claims to show “factz” (ugh) and meaning. Many of the suggested searches under “meaning” also relate to facts, such as “What did Caravaggio paint” “What awards did ‘No Country for Old Men’ win” and “When did earthquakes hit Tokyo.” The results are clearly organized, but any real power still is hidden under the hood.

True Knowledge, still in beta, also prides itself on facts, but the kind spelled with an s. Company strategists wrote in an email update earlier this month, “We are really excited that our knowledge base has expanded to the point that it now boasts over 110 million facts, which has greatly increased the number of questions we can answer.” I wonder how many billions of facts are out there, and which are the ones people either currently use search engines for or would use search engines for if people trusted search engines had those answers. Some context would be useful to ground the big number.

The engines also continue to progress in answering facts, even if they don’t provide direct answers to 110 million questions. One True Knowledge example is “When is Easter Sunday 2009.” True Knowledge answers this perfectly with a big, bold answer, but it’s also in the description of the first result in Google.

Hakia, another contender, has loftier sights from the start. All of its sample queries on the homepage strive to address more than facts. These queries include “What is the most effective way to lose weight,” “What are benefits of a long-term care insurance,” “Is bottled water better than tap water,” and “Most common risk factors for stroke.” Even more surprising is that the first three queries don’t have clear, quantifiable answers. The weight loss query, rather than responding with “put down the Mallomars, turn off Hulu, and blow the dust off the Wii Fit already!,” brings up a bunch of results — including many from librarian-certified sites — with highlighted text that helps answer the query. The user then can make informed decisions. Hakia also has thousands of fact-filled pages in its galleries, but it’s focused on addressing higher-level queries.

Facts are important areas for search engines to cover. Anyone who’s old enough to remember the struggles of finding facts in reference books or libraries will appreciate how much time search engines save. It even proved useful at my family’s lunch celebration for my birthday this weekend. My dad tried to recall the name of the actor who played President George H.W. Bush in Oliver Stone’s movie “W.,” just noting it was an “old guy who plays mobsters,” which I instantly pegged as James Cromwell. My nephew checked IMDB.com from his mom’s iPhone and proved me right. It felt good.

Better indexing of facts will make engines more useful, but it won’t make them smarter. For that, they need to be more intelligent, and better at indexing meaning. It’s the difference between knowledge and wisdom.

No matter what, we’ll still require human search literacy. Even facts are subject to interpretation. With a simple phrase like “Joe the Plumber,” one can think it refers to a plumber named Joe, while another can assert that it’s someone named Sam who isn’t licensed as a plumber.

We can’t assume search engines will ever sort it out perfectly like the eponymous protagonist of the movie “WALL-E.” We can aim to make sure we’re smart enough to make the most of all the engines do for us.

Birthday Greetings by Channel: Facebook Surges Ahead in 2008

Image via Wikipedia

Last year, I took an analytical approach to my birthday - hardly surprising to those who know me. When I learned in first grade how to take surveys and make tally marks, I did a poll around school of preferences for Doritos, Fritos, or Cheetos (Doritos won handily).

This year, two birthday well-wishers mentioned they were eager to see how things would track for 2008 chart. Given the anticipation, and my own curiosity, I kept better track of the metrics. Nothing makes for birthday fun than opening up a spreadsheet whenever someone says happy birthday to you.

Here are a few observations about this year's birthday greetings:

• Facebook well surpassed in-person greetings this year. Even with birthday drinks with friends, celebrating the day in the office, and a family lunch on Sunday. Some other personal greetings came the night before my birthday, which was coincidentally the party for 360i's tenth birthday (see the MediaPost coverage and Kelly Samardak's Flickr photos).
• Facebook does so well feeding on itself. Someone wishes me happy birthday, it appears on my wall. That action may show up in their friends' news feeds. I'll then write on their walls to thank them (or I might do so via Facebook email), and then anyone who visits those walls will see the exchange. Of course, the biggest driver is the prominent space on the homepage Facebook provides to alert people of their friends' birthdays. Then there are apps like Birthday Calendar that provide other notifications.
• Dropping off the list from last year: MySpace and Friendster. My network has fully migrated.  Also, no Skype this time, but I don't keep it open as much.
• New to the list: Twitter, with four mentions (first one, thanks @andrewnevelos, and then a quick burst of a few, @danperry, @worleygirl, and @gregory - thanks all around there too). Also, I received my first note on geneaology service Geni (thanks Aunt Aida).
• Not yet on the list: LinkedIn wasn't used for birthday greetings at all, nor was FriendFeed.
• I kept a few new tallies - including greetings from:
  • People I kind of know: 4
  • People I can't remember how I know: 7
  • People I know but am kind of embarrassed to be friends with or don't like very much: 3
• Time zones also played a fun role:
  • Ryan Govindan in India was the first to wish me happy birthday on my actual birthday; it was only 2:30pm in New York but my birthday was underway then.
  • My brother emailed me happy birthday while on business in China. Yet at the time, it was his birthday (I'm eight years, 364 days his junior). 
• Marketers to send birthday greetings this year included Michael C. Fina (like last year, with a 15% coupon for the month), Borders (with a 15% coupon for the day), Facebook (just on the site), Eons (wow, I must be getting old), and this themed cruise outfit in Atlanta called Sixthman that I hadn't heard of before.

And now, this year's chart. The one channel I included was in-person, which was much harder to track; again, Facebook still would have come out on top.

TypePad SEO to the Rescue: It's About Freakin' Time

I've been a TypePad blogger since November 2005. One of my biggest gripes with it has been the inability to create your own file names, or use an entire post's title as a filename. Having the full title in there can be a huge help for SEO.

Now, finally, TypeP addressed this with their new editor, which is being rolled out to users. You can read about the overview. Here's what they have to say about titles, though there's more to it than that.

Title

Enter a title for your post. The title you enter here will determine the URL for the post's Permalink. For example, a post with the title of "This is a new post" will have a Permalink like:

http://example.typepad.com/blog/this-is-a-new-post.html

 

Convergence 2008: The Roundtables (Partner Plug)

Here's the latest in the Business Development Institute events that this blog has been supporting:

Convergence   2008: The Roundtables
 
  For additional information and registration, please visit www.bdionline.com/convergence2008. Use promo code MSCOM for discounted rate   of $145.

 

 

 

The   Problem with Traditional Conferences   Traditional   conferences with keynotes, panels, breakouts and presentations lack   interactivity.  The conversation is one directional.  The value of   networking is minimized.

 

 

The   Roundtable Format is Interactive By Design   The roundtable format allows attendees to both contribute and take away   knowledge and ideas.  So everyone learns not only from the moderators, who   are recognized thought leaders, but also from each other.  Each   roundtable session will have no more than 9 professionals which is the right   size to have a lively, interactive discussion on the latest trends,   opportunities and issues facing communications, marketing and media.

 

 

The   Roundtable Format Produces Better Networking Results   The   roundtable format also provides a strong foundation for valuable networking   between professionals.  Everyone selects their roundtables beforehand so   you can be certain that your fellow attendees share the same interests.   This results in an effective networking experience that produces solid new   relationships and tangible new business opportunities.

 

 

Event   Details:   Date: Wednesday, November 12,   2008   Time: 8:30 AM - 12:00 PM   Location: The Graduate Center/CUNY:   365 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016   Registration   Fee:   $195   Website: http://www.bdionline.com/convergence2008

 

 

Why   Convergence as a General Topic?   Advertising,   marketing, pr, and media are converging, involving the interlocking of   computing and information technology companies, telecommunications networks,   content providers, and agencies. Across the industry the lines between fields   are blurred.  PR, advertising, marketing and media departments are   working together on cross functional teams and are no longer individual   silos.  This conference will gather the best and brightest minds to   explore how the communications industry is converging.

 

 

Roundtable   Moderators:   Kimberly   Bayer, Vice President, Alternative Investments Services, J.P. Morgan   Dan Burstein, Managing Partner, Millennium   Technology Ventures   David D. Burstein, Founder and Executive Director, I'm 18 in 08   Robin Carey, CEO and Cofounder, Social   Media Today   Sawsato Das, Director, Global Media Relationship, SAP   Matt DeLoca, SVP, Sales & Marketing, The FeedRoom   Jeremy Dickstein, Director of Business Development Communications, Citi Smith Barney   Andrew Fox, Senior Manager, Global Communications, AMD   Adrienne Garland, VP Marketing, PR   Newswire   John Greenberg, President, Goodmind   Todd Grossman, VP, MultiVu   Melissa Keklak, PR Manager, Casio   America   Russ Mann, CEO, Covario,   Inc.   Kris Oser, Director of Strategic Communications, eMarketer   Kirsten Paragona, Director External Communications, HCL America   Linda Recupero, EVP, Public Affairs, HSBC Bank   Steve Rubel, Author, Micropersuasion Blog and Senior Vice President, Director   of Insights, Edelman   Digital   Lisa Witter, COO, Fenton   Communications

 

 

Here's What Our Past Attendees Say About The Roundtable Format   BDI   produced our first large scale roundtable format event during the   September 9, 2008 Innovations   & Communications: The Roundtables.  Over 200   professionals attended and feedback was extremely positive.  Here are a   few sample comments from our 9/9 attendees:   "Excellent        event! I really enjoyed the interactiveness of it all instead of hearing        a person lecture for an hour!! it was GREAT!!" "This        is my first BDI roundtable event and I liked the format and content a        lot. Easy to introduce yourself to likeminded professionals, great        moderators, and fun people." "I loved        the roundtable format. It was lively, interactive (dare i say!) and very        engaging. People were respectful of the no sales pitch atmosphere. The        credentials of the moderators and attendees were impressive all the way        around" "It        was a great event but given I was travelling to attend it in NYC, I wish        it was a little longer - maybe 35 -40 mins. I felt the selection of        speakers was incredible" "It        was an excellent event, I walked away with many great leads. I will        definitely attend future events"

 

 

Sponsors:   PR Newswire; LinkedIn; Covario; The FeedRoom, Guest Pass International; Hispanic Trending; LatinVision; Manhattan Chamber of Commerce; MarketersStudio.com; New York Enterprise Report; NY:MIEG; New York University; PR News; SEMPO Institute; Small Business Technology; Social Media Today; Taproot Foundation; WOMMA

 

   

We have a very limited amount of sponsorship opportunities   available.  For more information please contact Steve Etzler at setzler@bdionline.com or   212-765-8045.
 
  For additional information and registration, please visit www.bdionline.com/convergence2008. Use promo code MSCOM for a discounted rate   of $145.

More Stars than the Big Dipper: Solutions Stars Video Conference Next Wednesday

Image by toprankonlinemarketing via FlickrOne of the fun things I got to do at Blog World Expo was meet up with Network Solutions superconnector Shashi Bellamkonda and Now is Gone best-selling author Geoff Livingston (that's Geoff and me to the right, and Geoff was working it right here - good going!).

Geoff was at the Network Solutions booth filming a series of video interviews, and I basically crashed it. They were kind enough to humor me and have me sit for a video interview. I haven't seen the finished product yet, but I'll get to see it the same time you do: Wednesday, October 29 at 1pm EST.

That's right, it's the Network Solutions Solutions Stars Video Conference (and no, I don't get paid every time I mention Network Solutions, but Shashi, we can try to work something out). They've got this lineup of 31 of the smartest people I know (okay, I don't know all of them - some of them benefit from the halo effect), plus one guy who snuck in.

I'll be participating for as much of the event as I can, following my session at Digital Hollywood in Santa Monica that morning. Below's the pertinent info from the site. Be sure to head back to the site next Wednesday at 1pm EST to take part. The full list of interviewees is in the extended entry.

Pertinent info:

On October, 29, 2008 from 1 p.m. until approximately 3:30 p.m. EST. , Network Solutions proudly presents the "Solutions Stars Video Conference," a series of videos and live discussions featuring 32 of the world's leading business and marketing experts. The live video conference will coach small business owners and entrepreneurs on how the Internet can benefit their business. Nine content areas featuring vignettes of the Solutions Stars will run during the conference:

• Building Web Presence
• The Social Opportunity
• Start with Listening
• Strategy Drives Outreach
• You Need Social Networks
• To Blog or Not to Blog
• Visibility Through Search
• Rising Above the Noise
• Time Demands

Attendees will be able to watch individual videos based on their content area preference or view the conference in its entirety. While the videos are streaming, viewers will be able to chat online with the Network Solutions team (Social Media Swami Shashi Bellamkonda and Now Is Gone Author Geoff Livingston), or participate in a live public chat. Select video participants will also be in the chat.

Teaming with ooVoo, a popular online video chat and conference network, Network Solutions will run the "Solutions Stars Video Conference" on October 29.

Please visit the "Solutions Stars Video Conference" event pages on Facebook and Upcoming:

• www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=33854706886
• upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1200021

Will Search Advertisers Make MyAds TheirAds?

Here's today's column, originally published in MediaPost.

Last week, Google and MySpace both announced major new advertising offerings that will be especially useful for small businesses. Though neither are search-related, both cater to search marketers in different ways.

First, MySpace came out with  MyAds, its self-service display advertising platform. For a few days, it was the only major self-service display offering by a publisher (then Google ruined the fun). MySpace has about 30 templates to choose from, and almost all are designed for artists or bands to promote tours or album releases. MyAds works entirely on a cost-per-click basis, and I'd be surprised if many artists — especially those without major record labels promoting them — would know how much a click to their site is worth.

Ads don't need to be all about music though. Anyone can create an ad; I managed to do so, though it may be  one of the ugliest ads ever created (its 0.04% click-through rate means you can get five people to click anything). Many marketers will have more success than me — namely, marketers who know how much a click is worth and understand the messaging that works to drive clicks and conversions.

There are of course many differences between MyAds and Google AdWords. MyAds targets ads to 1,100 interests listed on profiles rather than billions of potential queries representing explicit needs. Creating great creative requires learning new skills for those who have only run hundred-character text ads. MySpace's audience differs from Google's. Yet MyAds, requiring only $25 per campaign, presents a way to run performance-based advertising  — pay only for the clicks you get — on another top-ten publisher, so the risk/reward works out in advertisers' favor. Marketers who already have creative can run that, and such marketers will already have familiarity with display advertising.

Search advertisers will also appreciate using MyAds to gain more intelligence about MySpace users, and then potentially making inferences about others. You can find out, for example, that 1.1 million MySpace users nationally like the TV show "Heroes," 190,000 are fans of the game "Guitar Hero," and 640,000 like movies in the "Comic Books & Superheroes" genre.

Unlike Facebook's platform, MyAds doesn't update the numbers on the fly when layering in demographics. For instance, on Facebook, you can find 192,000 U.S. users interested in shoes. Of those, 36,000 are male and 154,000 are female. On MySpace, you know that there are 612,000 shoe fans, but narrowing it by gender doesn't update the total. What does update is the recommended minimum bid; for men in this case, it's 42 cents to 96 cents, while for women it's 38 cents to 88 cents.

Google's  Display Ad Builder offers different value for marketers. The 28 templates available are almost entirely geared toward direct marketers. Ads are pre-designed for four industries: Entertainment & Media, Financial Services, Retail, and Travel. A few templates are better suited to branding, such as a photo gallery and slide show, but they're in the minority.

Here, search marketers will feel at home testing different headlines, copy, calls to action, and offers, even if, as with MyAds, there are many other new factors to consider. It's still the same AdWords platform, with the same bidding options across Google's content network.

All of this won't easily turn good or great search marketers into display marketing mavens. But it might be enough to entice large numbers of marketers who never attempted to run display ads. Some marketers will try it because it's easy to create direct response display ads on Google that run on their own campaign dashboards. Others will experiment with MySpace ads in what may be their first foray into social media advertising.

In either case, marketers experienced with search advertising will have certain advantages. If these marketers start achieving modest results with self-service display advertising, some will invest in it more heavily. That may not impact search marketing much, but it's very good for online advertising — and the days of viewing search in a bubble are long past.

Not ALL White Baby Routans Look Alike

At the invite of Oddcast's ever-diligent PR team, I tried out their Routan Babymaker3000 they built for Volkswagen. Check their example of what Sarah Palin and Barack Obama's baby would look like - that's one cute little bugger.

I took a stab at it myself, creating a Routan Baby with my wife:

I sent it to a friend Here's what happened when he tried it with his wife:

Either my friend and I and our wives are genetic clones, or something's off here. So, Routan, do all white people look alike?

A few days later I gave it one more go - this time with me as the dad, and Johnny Depp's Sweeney Todd as the mother. My gene pool does have the potential for some diversity after all:

Mobile Advertising for Newbies White Paper from Peggy Salz

Peggy Salz, a blogger friend who writes MSearch Groove, hands down the best blog about mobile search, just released a new white paper that's a great guide to mobile marketing.

It's called Mobile Advertising for Newbies, and while marketers new to the channel may gain the most out of it, I've been paying attention to mobile for a long time and focusing on it in a concentrated manner all year (running several campaigns for big brands along the way) and I learned a few things. You probably will too - just a hunch.

In the process, Peggy has also launched the Mobislim blog with additional resources.

Read about the white paper here, and or go directly to the download page at Bango.com.

And Peggy, I'll say this publicly so you can hold me to it - let's reconnect on that interview for the Search Insider.