Make Money Online

Unless they are prefaced by dollar signs, numbers are not sexy, which is why social media experts have spent years avoiding them. Like the cool kids, they often seem more interested in being invited to the party than delving into what the party is for. The argument is often that numbers and metrics only serve as distractions to engagement and dialogue.

As a model matures in order for it to maintain a business role, make no mistake social media is about business, its impact needs to be quantifiable. Forrester Research estimates that social media will make up 3% of overall interactive marketing spend in the US in 2010 with the highest delta of growth in any channel over the next four years. As social media’s channel grows so will the pressure to quantify.

Brian Solis, author and principal of the FurtureWorks agency, recently posted a well written piece about the Maturation of Social Media ROI on Mashable. In it he tackles the main crux behind the issue that many CMOs are spending against social media without being able to quantify a return on those efforts. Brian believes this is:

“A direct result of not tying activity to an end game, the ability to know what it is we want to measure before we engage. Doing so, allows us to define a strategy and a tactical plan to support activity that helps us reach our goals and objectives.”

Warm and Fuzzy Metrics

It used to be that simply being invited to or crashing the social media party was enough. Companies hired interns to catalog content and rushed to create Facebook Fan Pages and Twitter accounts, often because everyone else was doing it.

Then came what I like to call “warm and fuzzy metrics”. Words like engagement, participation, and involvement became key terms for defining online interactions with consumers. Similar to views in CPM, these terms are measured in volume of followers or retweets. Influencers sprouted from this tactic as a way to amplify that volume; after all you wanted to have the best DJ at your party.

Then came terms like trust and affinity; these were less fuzzy in nature and involved a brand’s core group of followers.

Of the warm and fuzzy metrics of social media ROI, only customer service is tangible. Both in terms of the increased ability for people to rate and review products, as well as the opportunity for customer service teams to engage and provide proactive response.

If your company is just participating in social media than maybe the fuzzy metrics are enough. If your company is running social media campaigns and considers social media a marketing channel than fuzzy metrics are a great way to get your budget slashed. It is no coincidence that, according to MarketingSherpa, inability to measure ROI, lack of budget funding, and management resistance are barriers to companies implementing social media campaigns:

For those who insist that “marketing is not sales”, I invite you to use that exact statement with your CMO and see how quickly your budget is diverted elsewhere. As David Vellante, co-founder of ITCentrix, Barometrix, and The Wikibon Project, cautions:

“I’ve seen multimillion-dollar print and television advertising initiatives get the green light because CMOs understood the media — and I’ve seen $10,000 social-media efforts scratched because execs didn’t get it.”

The Key is Return on Ad Spend

ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is what many CMOs will look at when considering budget allocation against a marketing channel. By definition it has a tighter set of parameters than ROI because it doesn’t consider less fuzzy elements like branding or engagement. This metric for success is specifically looking for a direct dollar value generated as compared to the actual budget being spent.

If, as a study by Bazaarvoice indicates, 80% of CMOs expect upwards of 5% of their revenue to come through the social media channel then the spend against generating revenue better be tracked.

According to Fast Company, Dell made over $3 million in revenue through the Dell Outlet account on Twitter.  But, considering much of what happens in Dell’s Twitter account is coupon or offer driven, what was the true ROAS of hitting that $3 million? Never mind the additional cost of coordinating social media tactics and messaging within a company as big as Dell which, as Lionel Menchaca, Chief Blogger for Dell Inc says is challenging, “Executing against all those [social media] strategies will take a lot more effort and collaboration between many departments within the company.”

More telling is a recent report by Omniture on the impact of a social media campaign for National Geographic. While the campaign was seen as a success, in the report the Omniture analyst states that traffic from social media is 20x less likely to purchase than average visitor.

Laying the Foundation

What rings true for Dell is true for both large and small business interested in participating in social media.  Collaboration between all stakeholders is necessary in order for a campaign to reach its potential.  Here are the steps you need to take to lay a proper foundation for launch.

1. Know Your End Game: As Brian Solis said defining your end game is necessary in order to be able to quantify results.  Know what are you trying to accomplish and how you want to try keep track of it all.
2. Define Your Metrics: What metrics do you need to track to quantify results: Leads, Registration, Sales?
3. Check Your Tracking: I can’t tell you how often a new client doesn’t have the right pixel/cookie set on the right confirmation page. If your success metric is sales make sure you’re not just tracking leads. This requires testing.
4. Set Expectations: Benchmarking is great way for you and your CMO to have realistic expectations from a campaign. Fireclick and Coremetrics are two tools that can provide benchmarks based on industry averages related to conversion rates, cart abandonment, and other valuable data. They also allow you to pull data from a specific vertical.

Intelligence Gathering

This is where you gather the numbers that will let you know how your campaign is doing and where the dollars are. There are a lot of tools out there that will provide pretty dashboards but few that provide useful data. Here are some of the tools I recommend:

1. Google Analytics: Google Analytics is the defacto analytics system in most companies. You can track visits, page views, bounce rates, etc. Be sure, if sales are a key metric, that the ecommerce portion is activated.
2. Hitwise: Owned by Experian, Hitwise relies on ISP data of approximately 10 million users in the United States alone. Although an expensive solution, their Clickstream data provides some of the best intelligence on upstream and downstream traffic to your website.
3. Coremetrics: Along with their benchmarking services Coremetrics offers an analytics suite whose main differentiator rests in what they call their LIVE (Lifetime Individual Visitor Experience) Profiles. This is essentially an analytics expansion on the concept of customer types.
4. Fireclick: Owned by Digital River, is a streamlined version of many of the tools available for free through Google Analytics but in an easier to customize interface. The main advantage here is their Advanced Marketing Suite which ties you into other vendors and components in the Digital River portfolio.
5. Radian6: Radian6 is a buzz monitoring software that allows you to monitor certain keyword sets and capture data round them. The data includes such things sentiment, engagement, reach, and inbound links. It also allows you to port that data to your CRM.
6. HubSpot: In some ways HubSpot is more of a site optimization tool than an analytics tool. It does compile interesting sets of data around competitors and around reach as well as lead identification tools.
7. Omniture: I have a love/hate relationship with Omniture. Used correctly, with sufficient internal technical resources as well as buy-off from the marketing team on consistent use of campaign hierarchy, SiteCatalyst along with the other Omniture, is an amazing if overly complicated resource. It is however a very expensive one and there is a reason that Omniture holds yearly conferences on how to use their product.  They have a great Facebook app measuring toolset.

Making Sense of it All

Having the tools to capture the data you need is great but numbers are of little value if they are not actionable.  Here are some guidelines to avoid drowning in the data:

1. What to Do When the Numbers Don’t Match: First of all get the notion of the numbers matching out of your head. The numbers between two analytics systems will rarely, if ever, produce an exact match. The objective is to look for trends in the data and ignore anomalies that are not statistically relevant. If the data matches within 10% or less variable then consider the data to be inline. If the variant is 11%-49% then it might be worth doing some due diligence. For instance are all the pages that should be tagged, tagged correctly? If the variant is greater than 50% then something is wrong with the setup itself or with one of the systems you are using.
2. Spotting Trends is Vital: One of the most common mistakes I see is when business get excited about high sales numbers while completely ignoring the fact they overspent to get those numbers. Sales matter little if ROAS is in the negative. Trends are a great way to spot deltas which often provide indicators of the health of campaign. Sample key trends are:
   1. number of new to file customers
   2. number of transactions
   3. changes in repeat customers
   4. number of customer referrals
   5. uplift in other marketing channels
3. 3) Looks for Wildcards and Outliers: Sometimes you are so focused on the campaign data that you become blind to important clues. My favorite personal example of this was during the measurement of a campaign that Jones Soda ran with I Can Has Cheezburger in 2008. If you looked just at the number of sales that directly came from the I Can Has Cheezburger website the campaign numbers barely broke even.  However, when we looked closer at the analytics data we saw 12,000 additional posts created because of the campaign. When attributable sales from those posts were factored in sales showed 172% month-over-month growth and 42% year-over-year growth!With the amount of distribution sources available in social media always take time to see if elements of your campaign have been distributed beyond the initial sites you targeted. It will allow you to spot new opportunities to expand your campaigns.
4. Cross-channel Cannibalization and the Last Cookie in Debate: Most advertisers use cookies to know which ad network to pay and which marketing channel to credit for sales. Shannon Paul, community manager for PEAK6 Online and OptionsNewsNetwork, had a great post on this debate here. Cross-channel cannibalization is when the marketing costs/efforts of one marketing channel are not considered because a different marketing channel is being given credit for them. This impacts both budget allocation and proper allocation of costs. Since social media buzz often serves to uplift other marketing efforts they are most impacted by improper allocation.For example, a social media click originating from a Twitter focused campaign refers a customer to the site but a coupon affiliate closes the sale by providing a coupon to the customer. In a “last cookie in” system only the affiliate in this example would get credit for the sale. In an ideal world both the first and last referrer of a customer would be cookied so that you would know which channel is referring new customers and which is closing them, thus properly giving credit to both channels and minimizing cannibalization. Awareness of the complexities of tracking multi-channel efforts is key in order to properly coordinate award of credit to all involved channels.

Final Thoughts

If you are managing a social media campaign or are a business eager to launch into social media, remember to embrace the numbers. Numbers are sexy -they help spot costs and inefficiencies you could avoid; help identify opportunities you could be missing; and often determine which budgets will be renewed.   The dollar signs are there, you just have to know where to look.

Read the original here:
Sexy Numbers: Measuring ROI in Social Media Campaigns

The return-on-investment question always dogs proponents of social media marketing. Businesses want to, no, need to know the ROI of campaigns.  Will time spent on social networks mean more customers through the door and more money in the bank?

Researchers at Rice University feel the answer is yes. At least when it comes to Facebook fanpages.

According to the Harvard Business Review, a study by Rice University finds that social media marketing using fanpages on Facebook has a positive impact on customer loyalty and purchases.

Researchers Utpal Dholakia and Emily Durham followed the change in customer activity for one business, Dessert Gallery of Houston, Texas, as it went from no Facebook presence to an active one.

The study based its findings on surveys of more than 1,700 respondents over a three-month period. Dessert Gallery customers who become Facebook fans turned out to be the store’s best customers and increased their purchases after engaging with the store online

Speaking directly to ROI those who were Facebook fans spent 33 percent more than non-fans. Also Facebook fans had 41 percent greater psychological loyalty toward Dessert Gallery, which underlies the promise social media that connections are lasting ones that will continue to benefit the business long after the account has been set up.

But there are questions that this study leaves lingering.

First, whether the results are applicable to larger companies. Since small stores already have a more people-focused, flesh-and-blood relationship, they usually have some customer loyalty to build from. Large “faceless” corporations may have tougher times building loyalty and also face customer service problems often exacerbated by their own redtape (see Lois Whitman debacle or the recent Kevin Smith vs Southwest saga as shining examples).

Secondly, will this small business be able to keep up and sustain the social media interaction it had at launch which enticed the customers to begin with. According to the article, the Facebook page was updated several times a week with photos, promotions and contests. Is that manageable for the internal staff over the long haul?

“We must be cautious in interpreting the study’s results,” Dholakia said. “The fact that only about 5 percent of the store’s 13,000 customers became Facebook fans within three months indicates that Facebook fan pages may work best as niche marketing programs targeted to customers who regularly use Facebook. Social-media marketing must be employed judiciously with other types of marketing programs.”

The promise of social media marketing has always been that conversations with engaged customers would have some real-world reward – let alone a reputation, by amplifying the impact of word-of-mouth. Now, in at least one case, that has proven to be true.

Read the original here:
Rice Study Gives Facebook Fanpages a Passing Grade

Maybe you were one of the 100 million who watched the underdog New Orleans Saints win the Super Bowl, but here’s something you didn’t see: an ad from Pepsi, noticeably absent among Super Bowl advertisers for the first time in 23 years. Ironically, unlike Google, the soft drink giant decided to bow out of the big game and put $20 million into digital media instead, relying on its own website and Facebook to tout its brand. Go to Pepsi.com and you’ll see just how digitally sophisticated Pepsi has become.

Don’t underestimate the importance of Pepsi’s promotional strategy. It is representative of what other advertisers are considering this year. Previously, I reported that Procter & Gamble is ramping up its Facebook presence.

It has taken the big guys a while to catch on to social media, but it looks like the floodgates have finally opened. PepsiCo North America’s Marketing VP, Ralph Santana, sounded like a social media convert when he told Financial Times, “We’re living in a new age with consumers. They are looking for more of a two-way dialogue, story-telling and word of mouth. Mediums like the digital space are much more conducive towards that.”

Facebook clearly recognizes that it is on the leading edge of the digital advertising revolution. The company is working with media researcher Nielsen, renowned for television’s Nielsen Ratings, to measure Facebook’s advertising effectiveness.

According to Financial Times, ad agencies are excited about Facebook’s promotional potential, too. Rich Gagnon, chief media officer at Draft FCB, sees Facebook as an important media outlet with the ability to reach more than 350 million people in one place. Even better, Gagnon says, Facebook can provide targeting capabilities based on demographics and interests.

The most exciting potential for advertisers using Facebook, however, may actually be Facebook Connect, which was introduced in late 2008. At last report, Facebook Connect was available on more than 15,000 websites. This set of APIs lets users “bring their identity and connections everywhere,” says Facebook.

Facebook Connect can do things like enable its users to share an advertiser’s website content with their friends, who then click back to the advertiser’s site. Tools like Facebook Connect represent a way social media can be seamlessly integrated with everything from websites to mobile devices.

Jesse Pickard, a social media specialist at digital agency Razorfish, blogged about Facebook Connect a year ago. What he had to say then has a lot of relevance to advertisers today:

“With a one-click login to Facebook Connect, websites have access to an unprecedented amount of user data. Using this data, sites now have the ability to redefine the way they display user generated content.”

“Although Facebook Connect isn’t an advertising buy, it can accomplish the same goals as one (and in an unintrusive manner).  Brands can get their content into Facebook’s viral channels by letting visitors post news feed stories, status messages, photos, events, and more without leaving the website.”

Of course, advertisers have a variety of social media options available to them in addition to Facebook. Similar tools to Facebook Connect also exist, such as Google’s Friend Connect and MySpaceID.

All of this bodes well for online marketing. Big advertisers are legitimizing social media by finally including Facebook in their strategic marketing plans. They are realizing that the opportunities to make use of sophisticated social media have never been better.

Maybe for his haircut to have been truly prohetic Tracy Porter should have added Facebook.

View original post here:
Who Dat? Not Pepsi

I’ve always believed the real winners in marketing play a game of basics PLUS. Those who survive are the ones who master basic strategies and skills, but those who excel are the ones who go beyond the basics – that’s basics PLUS.

In 2010, the marketers who embrace “plus” opportunities will weather the economic storm and enjoy lasting success. Here are some of the primary “plus” areas to consider this year.

Is social media part of your plan?
What’s the best way to make use of it for your business? You need to evaluate which social media tools to use, what strategy to employ, and how best to measure the effectiveness of your efforts.  Ask yourself a lot of tough questions about social media.  Do “fans” translate into sales? Is the time you spend with social media paying off? Are your tweets helping to boost awareness and response?

Are you positioned to take advantage of the new, more sophisticated world of real-time search?
Both Bing and Google now have relationships with Facebook and Twitter, and Google recently struck a deal with MySpace. It’s all designed to provide immediacy and relevancy to search. Search results pages will be increasingly dynamic and information will stream into the pages as it becomes available in real-time. How does that affect your business? Getting more of your information out there via blogs and social media will be more important than ever – and using relevant keywords will be crucial.

Where are you on the video spectrum?
The online video market has exploded and will continue to grow this year. Amateur videos populate news websites. Celebrity videos can destroy or launch careers – Susan Boyle became an Internet sensation and sold close to 3 million albums as a result. Using video to publicize, promote, and advertise an online business will become a standard practice, and you can’t afford to be left behind in this key area.

Have you discovered mobile advertising?
According to eMarketer, mobile ad spending will grow from $416 million in 2009 to $593 million in 2010, reaching over $1 billion by 2012. Mobile and social media are quickly converging. The youth market lives, breathes and eats holding onto their cell phones. The rapid development of apps for smartphones creates a prime business opportunity, even for small businesses.

Are you stuck in an old ad model?
Combine the influence of social media with real-time search, then add in video and mobile advertising, and you see a very different advertising model emerging. Chances are paid content and advertainment will become more effective than standard banner and text ads. You’ll need to be ready to provide high-value, relevant information in a smartly packaged format if you want to one-up your competitors.

Yes, this will indeed be an exciting year. Are you ready for it?

View post:
What You Should Be Doing This Year

Social media, by its very nature, is fluid. Constant changes in industry tactics and developments in technology happen at such a lightning pace that it’s hard to predict what will happen next week let alone what will happen in the next 12 months. But there are some trends that look to be cresting in 2010.

• The two key words for 2010 will be mobile and integration. With Google releasing the Nexus One and the iPhone continuing to become more and more mainstream, smartphones are going to become the rule rather than the exception in 2010 and while you are using your smart phones you are going to want to easily access all of your social media networks. That’s where the integration comes in. Applications that help you manage your Facebook or Twitter accounts are going to have to allow you to manage your complete online presence (plus LinkedIn, YouTube and whatever the next thing to come along is).

Sites like Ping.fm are already moving forward with a one-stop access point for social media and others, like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite, are following suit. Someone is going to become the clear leader, with the easiest interface,  in this space. Winner of that prize will be a household word by year’s end. But it may be a site we already know about (Facebook, anyone?) that decides to flex its muscles and become the headquarters for everyone’s social media.

• Businesses will ratchet up their use of iPhone apps and location-based information. I’ve written before about the growth of Gowalla and GPS-based services online, which allow users to check in from locations around the city. I think businesses will get wise about these type of services and offer premiums, either in partnership with Gowalla or independently, that reward patrons who use these services and promote, through influential word-of-mouth, their businesses. Discounts, virtual goodies or VIP access could be the reward waiting for savvy mobile users.

Gowalla’s emphasis in virtual tokens for every check-in has given it an edge on Foursquare, especially in the markets that Foursquare is just getting established in. But it also has some currency to leverage with the businesses, which want to see some ROI in using this tech to relate with customers.

• The use of social media during sports,  and any other shared experiences,  will increase in 2010. Look for more and more teams to develop not only their own mobile applications, but also allow fans to interact with each other and some members of the organization during the games themselves. Live Twitter feeds on some part of the scoreboard, live chats with the announcers during the events and the ability to get audio and video anywhere.

Teams outside the U.S. – like members of Britain’s Premier soccer league – are doing all they can to squeeze mobile money out of its die-hard fans. College teams have the highest ceiling in this area in the U.S., so look for more specialized info from them (for a price).

• Baby Boomer domination on Facebook. What once started out as a college site will totally turn itself over to the Baby Boomer generation in 2010, since they will now have access, motivation and the spending power to supercharge Facebook’s bottom line. The shift in demographics may mean younger users search out the next big thing, since they won’t want to be excessive sharing (or answering questions) with mom and dad. That could shake up the landscape or revive a brand that’s sitting dormant.

That’s a broad look at what could happen in 2010, beyond the continued mainstream adoption of sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Of course, there may be a site that springs up out of nowhere and into the forefront of the space. That’s the fluid nature of the Web and what makes it so exciting to be a part of.

See more here:
Key Trends in Social Media for 2010

With the launch of extensions for Google’s Chrome browser one of the most interesting and potentially troubling pieces of the Web has popped back into the picture: Google’s Sidewiki.

What is Sidewiki? It’s a creation by Google that allows comments by anyone on any Web site. Sounds innocuous enough, but in the hands of any lurker on the Web with a vendetta against a company or a competitor, it may send Web messaging into a tailspin.

Picture this: Someone running Sidewiki goes to your site looking to buy your product and on your homepage, in the Sidewiki window, is a comment by a rival on your high prices – with a link to their site. If you are a more controversial company or blogger, a systematic campaign could be build against you of Sidewiki commenters.

“Just like Google bombing, in an attempt to influence the top Google result for a specific search term, I suspect people will quickly master the art of Sidewiki bombing as they attempt to get their comment at the top of the Sidewiki comments on key pages,” wrote Adam Turner of ITWire.com.

When it was first launched earlier this year, Sidewiki caused a scare and a bit of unease, but failed to have gain much traction. The addition of it to the extensions of Google Chrome, which make for a one-click addition to your browser rather than the clunkier add-on to the Google Toolbar that it was, could see it grow in popularity.

Furthermore, Google has some rules built in to make sure that people play fair – in theory. According to its’ terms of service:

If you believe that someone is violating these policies, use the “Report Abuse” button within Sidewiki. We’ll review your report and take action if appropriate. Just because you disagree with certain material or find it to be inappropriate doesn’t mean we’ll remove it. We understand that our users have many different points of view, and we take this into consideration when reviewing reports of abuse. Although not all reports will result in removal, we do rely on our users to tell us about materials that may be violating our policies.

That’s tricky language to navigate: “We understand that our users have many different points of view, and we take this into consideration…”

Initial impact I think will be limited because, while Google dominates the world of search, its footprint with both Chrome and its apps are small, though influential. It would take a significant shift in user habits for Sidewiki to hit the mainstream. In essence it comes with the baggage that savvy Web users are going to be both aware of it and able to manipulate it. Ultimately Google might find limiting the manipulation of such an app in the wild, more trouble than it’s worth.

If you are a site owner, you need to be prepared for the baggage Google Sidewiki will bring and be prepared to spend additional time monitoring your brand on the web. Policing Sidewiki could become a daily routine for those who are sensitive about their brand’s image. The bottom line is that Google, not you, has ultimate control over what appears there and it, not you, will determine which comments to boot.

View post:
Has Sidewiki Trouble Been Reignited?

One of the most interesting social media battles gearing up online is not between Twitter and Facebook, but between all of the applications competing to help you manage your networking lives. This is because Twitter has spawned an ecosystem of highly innovative application developers.

The list is already long and growing, with Seesmic Desktop, Echofon and Twitterberry all jockeying for position on home screens. The recent revamps to Tweetdeck, the new release of Tweetie 2’s iPhone app and the impending addition of Hootsuite to the iPhone lineup mean there are a number of quality choices in an ever more competitive landscape.

The biggest benefit for users is innovation in powering integration. While Twitter is just now getting around to opening up the retweet function, which as recently as Wednesday night mysteriously vanished from Twitter.com, the ability to share and comment on someone else’s message is just a single click away through a variety web, desktop or iPhone applications. Syncing up your social networking outposts was happening through client applications before it was officially endorsed by Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, et al.

Last week, during a press conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone hinted his company may be looking to strengthen its value proposition to end users by possibly acquiring certain third party developers.

“As our attention is grabbed by some of these developers, we will take a hard look at them,” Stone said

I believe these apps would be best left to their own brainstorming and should remain independent of Twitter itself. Twitter is better off taking care of its core product (and focusing on, say, eliminating the Fail Whale), while the rest of the apps take care of adding the embellishments and breakthroughs.

In the meantime, this will benefit the customers, who will then be able to find the best way to interact with Twitter. The bottom line for users typically comes down to their main access point for Twitter. While Twitter.com can be an effective home base, if you have more than one account, as professionals more and more often do, you will quickly seek out something in your browser, like Hootsuite or on your desktop, like Tweetdeck. And when it comes to mobile access, Twitter has allowed the other developers to lead the way on smartphones.

So, as Twitter looks to grow in 2010, look for it (and its users) to also benefit as for the war between the client management apps to continue to heat up.

The rest is here:
Apps Compete and Innovate for Twitter

Books are a wonderful thing. With the variety of media available to us it is often easy to become oversaturated and forget to pick up a book. So to get your entrepreneurial spirit inspired and get you reading for the holidays, ReveNews is having our first annual book Giveaway.

From November 30th until December 19th, 2009 we will be giving away two books a day via the @ReveNews Twitter account.

Our picks for this holiday giveaway are:

Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith (interview by ReveNews’ own CT Moore)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods by Shel Israel

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod

Click here to view the embedded video.

Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media Is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR by Brian Solis

Click here to view the embedded video.

Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk

Click here to view the embedded video.

Be the first to DM us on Twitter with the right answer to our trivia question, which will be about one of the authors, win the book of your choice from our five holiday picks.

See the rest here:
Get Inspired: ReveNews Book Giveaway

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is regulating the use of blogs and other consumer-generated new media content in marketing. Revised advertising rules issued by the agency broadly extend the concept of endorsements and testimonials to include as sponsored advertising all sorts of loose new media relationships that are increasingly used in place of traditional radio and television advertising and paid endorsements.  These rules fundamentally change the legal and regulatory landscape for Web 2.0 marketing and should be studied carefully by bloggers, marketers and online advertising agencies, all of whom will now have to contend with new compliance obligations.

On October 5, the FTC issued its final revised Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, the first rewrite of the Guides since 1980.  Under the revised rules, which go into effect on December 1, companies that make payments or give free products to bloggers and other online commentators in order to generate positive buzz or favorable reviews for their products will now have to monitor closely the statements and claims made about the products and ensure that these relationships, if material, are clearly and conspicuously disclosed.  Otherwise, they will face liability for unfair or deceptive advertising practices under Section 5 of the FTC Act, even if they do not control what the bloggers say (or, indeed, whether they say anything).  The bloggers themselves will face similar liability for false or misleading statements and non-disclosure of material connections.  Marketers are also responsible for advising bloggers of their responsibilities.

While not actually binding law, the Guides serve as administrative interpretations of the law, issued to provide guidance on what the FTC considers to be deceptive behavior.  However, this does not mean compliance is optional.  Violations are punishable by civil penalties of up to $11,000 per violation. In addition to the regulation of Web 2.0 marketing which is the focus of this article, the Guides also include other significant changes, such as a new requirement that testimonials which do not describe typical consumer experiences must include clear and conspicuous disclosures of the results consumers can generally expect to achieve by using an advertised product.

By its very nature Web 2.0 marketing encompasses a variety of informal and fuzzy relationships which fall within the purview of the FTC’s new rules even though they are qualitatively different from traditional uses of endorsements in advertising.  For example, a marketer may provide unsolicited samples of its products to members of a blogger network who sign up for the network so that they can review the products on their sites.  Or a marketer may supply a product, such as a video game, to one particularly well-read blogger known as an expert or authority in his area in the hope of gaining a positive review.  Or the marketer may institute a word-of-mouth or viral marketing scheme where participants receive something of value (such as a payment or an entry in a sweepstakes) to e-mail their friends or send out tweets about the marketer’s product.  All of these relationships may now be characterized by the FTC as endorser-advertiser relationships, wherein both the “endorser” (i.e., the person generating the content about the product) and the “advertiser” (the marketer) must ensure the absence of false or misleading statements and the “clear and conspicuous” disclosure of connections that are not reasonably expected by the target audience and are likely to influence purchasers’ assessment of the credibility of the statements.

When is a Favorable Post an “Endorsement”?

The Guides define an “endorsement” as an advertising message that consumers will likely believe reflects the opinions, beliefs, findings or experience of a party other than the sponsoring advertiser, whether the endorser’s statements are the same as or different from the sponsoring advertiser’s.  Knowing the level of incentive that turns blogger commentary into a compensated “endorsement,” thereby rendering both the blogger and the advertiser potentially liable for failure to disclose material connections and for deceptive statements, is critical.  The FTC notes on page 10:

“[A] blogger could receive merchandise from a marketer with a request to review it, but with no compensation paid other than the value of the product itself. In this situation, whether or not any positive statement the blogger posts would be deemed an “endorsement” within the meaning of the Guides would depend on, among other things, the value of that product, and on whether the blogger routinely receives such requests. If that blogger frequently receives products from manufacturers because he or she is known to have wide readership within a particular demographic group that is the manufacturers’ target market, the blogger’s statements are likely to be deemed to be “endorsements,” as are postings by participants in network marketing programs. Similarly, consumers who join word of mouth marketing programs that periodically provide them products to review publicly (as opposed to simply giving feedback to the advertiser) will also likely be viewed as giving sponsored messages.”

The Guides cite as an example a consumer who purchases a new brand of dog food and reviews its favorably on her personal blog.  If she purchases the dog food with her own money or gets it for free because the store routinely tracks her purchases and generates a coupon for a free trial bag of the new dog food, there is no endorsement.  However, if the consumer gets the dog food as a result of joining a network marketing program under which she periodically receives various products about which she can write reviews if she wants to, her positive review will be considered an endorsement.  As another example, a college student who has earned a reputation as a video game expert receives (as he has in the past) a copy of a newly released video gaming system along with a request from the manufacturer to write about it on his blog.   He tests it out and gives it a favorable review.  This is also an endorsement, and the FTC comments that because the review is disseminated via a form of consumer-generated media in which his relationship to the advertiser is not inherently obvious, and given the value of the gaming system, the blogger should clearly and conspicuously disclose that he received it free of charge.  Furthermore, “[t]he manufacturer should advise him at the time it provides the gaming system that this connection should be disclosed, and it should have procedures in place to try to monitor his postings for compliance.”  (Here the blogger would also have to comply with the FTC’s rules on the use of expert statements in advertising.)

In one of the Guides’ most controversial examples, a skin care product manufacturer participates in a blog advertising service that matches up advertisers with reviewers.  The marketer requests that the blogger try out its new body lotion and write a review.  The blogger, totally on her own initiative and without any direction from the manufacturer, makes an unsubstantiated recommendation that the product cures eczema.  Both the manufacturer and the blogger will be liable for the unsubstantiated claim and any failure to disclose that the blogger is being paid.

The FTC has explained that the purpose of the new rules is to treat new media in the same manner as traditional journalistic and advertising outlets.  However, as a practical matter, many businesses treat these channels differently and will have to scramble to implement the necessary monitoring and enforcement mechanisms.  When a business buys a conference sponsorship, for example, in the hope of generating some positive online buzz, is anyone at the sponsor giving the conference organizer’s blog and Twitter emissions at compliance review?  Indeed, the whole point of marketing to bloggers and through social media is to support a spontaneous and unforced style of commentary that has greater authenticity for cynical, tech-savvy consumers.   Of course, in response to such comments the FTC has countered that its rules are designed precisely to protect consumers’ ability to rely on this quality of the blogosphere in making purchasing decisions.   Controlling what bloggers say is not relevant; what matters for liability purposes is whether “the advertiser initiated the process that led to [the] endorsements being made – e.g., by providing products to well-known bloggers or to endorsers enrolled in word of mouth marketing programs ….”

Playing the Compliance Game

Unfortunately, corporate legal departments will now have to extend the long arm of compliance over a whole host of Web 2.0 marketing activities that until now may have been loosely policed, if at all.   “In employing this means of marketing,” the FTC dryly observes, “the advertiser has assumed the risk that an endorser may fail to disclose a material connection or misrepresent a product, and the potential liability that accompanies that risk.”  However, it also states that in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion it will consider “the advertiser’s efforts to advise these endorsers of their responsibilities and to monitor their online behavior ….”

What this means for companies is that they will have to design a compliance and monitoring program.  What it means for online advertising agencies is that they can expect new restrictions and levels of review from clients over their Web 2.0 marketing activities and should also expect to assume a role in their clients’ compliance and monitoring programs.  Companies will want to get a handle on what their marketing departments are doing to curry favor with bloggers and create buzz through viral online marketing and will be especially anxious to herd advertising and PR agencies into the corral, since the companies are legally responsible for the actions of these third-party agents.

If compensation, free products or other valuable incentives (such as sponsorships) are being offered in the hope of stimulating positive reviews, then the company will need to institute and document a process of advising bloggers and other new media commenters about their duty to disclose material connections and the limits on the factual claims they can make about a products and its beneficial effects.   There should also be periodic monitoring of the resulting posts, with documented follow-up action if necessary, to make sure they comply with the FTC’s endorsement guidelines.
If blogger relationships are managed through an advertising or PR agency, then the agency will likely have to provide detailed information for each campaign about its contacts with bloggers and will have to share in the responsibility of conveying the advertiser’s guidelines to them and monitoring their compliance.   Companies should include a specific allocation of responsibilities with respect to these issues in written contracts with their agencies.  At the very least, a company should reserve the right to audit and pre-approve an agency’s solicitation of bloggers so that the company knows which bloggers the agency is dealing with and whether the relationships are of a type that could lead to advertiser-endorser liability and can monitor the bloggers’ posts about the company’s products.

If this compliance burden is too onerous for companies and their online advertising agencies, the alternative is to implement policies that prohibit the payment of compensation or giving away of valuable products in the hope of generating positive online buzz.   Favorable reviews are not “endorsements” within the meaning of the Guides unless they have been incentivized in some way.

Tips for Bloggers

As for bloggers and other online commenters, they should be sure to disclose any compensation or benefits they receive to comment on products and, if they do have such a connection to an advertiser, should be very careful to follow the guidelines furnished by the advertiser or its advertising agency (which the advertiser is required to provide) and not make general or sweeping factual claims about the product or any claim that can’t be easily substantiated.  If a blogger chafes at submitting to this degree of oversight and control, he always has the option of buying the product himself, for example, rather than receiving it as a freebie.  The FTC has indicated that advertisers and not bloggers will be its main enforcement target.  However, a blogger who runs a “substantial operation” that violates the rules and who receives a warning will still be at risk.  Moreover, the FTC can adopt a more aggressive enforcement stance at any time.

The FTC’s rulemaking will heavily influence the way marketers generate buzz on the Internet and warrants close scrutiny of participation in blogger and viral incentive programs by all parties involved.

Credit:
FTC Regulates Blogger, Viral Marketing Relationships

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is regulating the use of blogs and other consumer-generated new media content in marketing. Revised advertising rules issued by the agency broadly extend the concept of endorsements and testimonials to include as sponsored advertising all sorts of loose new media relationships that are increasingly used in place of traditional radio and television advertising and paid endorsements.  These rules fundamentally change the legal and regulatory landscape for Web 2.0 marketing and should be studied carefully by bloggers, marketers and online advertising agencies, all of whom will now have to contend with new compliance obligations.

On October 5, the FTC issued its final revised Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, the first rewrite of the Guides since 1980.  Under the revised rules, which go into effect on December 1, companies that make payments or give free products to bloggers and other online commentators in order to generate positive buzz or favorable reviews for their products will now have to monitor closely the statements and claims made about the products and ensure that these relationships, if material, are clearly and conspicuously disclosed.  Otherwise, they will face liability for unfair or deceptive advertising practices under Section 5 of the FTC Act, even if they do not control what the bloggers say (or, indeed, whether they say anything).  The bloggers themselves will face similar liability for false or misleading statements and non-disclosure of material connections.  Marketers are also responsible for advising bloggers of their responsibilities.

While not actually binding law, the Guides serve as administrative interpretations of the law, issued to provide guidance on what the FTC considers to be deceptive behavior.  However, this does not mean compliance is optional.  Violations are punishable by civil penalties of up to $11,000 per violation. In addition to the regulation of Web 2.0 marketing which is the focus of this article, the Guides also include other significant changes, such as a new requirement that testimonials which do not describe typical consumer experiences must include clear and conspicuous disclosures of the results consumers can generally expect to achieve by using an advertised product.

By its very nature Web 2.0 marketing encompasses a variety of informal and fuzzy relationships which fall within the purview of the FTC’s new rules even though they are qualitatively different from traditional uses of endorsements in advertising.  For example, a marketer may provide unsolicited samples of its products to members of a blogger network who sign up for the network so that they can review the products on their sites.  Or a marketer may supply a product, such as a video game, to one particularly well-read blogger known as an expert or authority in his area in the hope of gaining a positive review.  Or the marketer may institute a word-of-mouth or viral marketing scheme where participants receive something of value (such as a payment or an entry in a sweepstakes) to e-mail their friends or send out tweets about the marketer’s product.  All of these relationships may now be characterized by the FTC as endorser-advertiser relationships, wherein both the “endorser” (i.e., the person generating the content about the product) and the “advertiser” (the marketer) must ensure the absence of false or misleading statements and the “clear and conspicuous” disclosure of connections that are not reasonably expected by the target audience and are likely to influence purchasers’ assessment of the credibility of the statements.

When is a Favorable Post an “Endorsement”?

The Guides define an “endorsement” as an advertising message that consumers will likely believe reflects the opinions, beliefs, findings or experience of a party other than the sponsoring advertiser, whether the endorser’s statements are the same as or different from the sponsoring advertiser’s.  Knowing the level of incentive that turns blogger commentary into a compensated “endorsement,” thereby rendering both the blogger and the advertiser potentially liable for failure to disclose material connections and for deceptive statements, is critical.  The FTC notes on page 10:

“[A] blogger could receive merchandise from a marketer with a request to review it, but with no compensation paid other than the value of the product itself. In this situation, whether or not any positive statement the blogger posts would be deemed an “endorsement” within the meaning of the Guides would depend on, among other things, the value of that product, and on whether the blogger routinely receives such requests. If that blogger frequently receives products from manufacturers because he or she is known to have wide readership within a particular demographic group that is the manufacturers’ target market, the blogger’s statements are likely to be deemed to be “endorsements,” as are postings by participants in network marketing programs. Similarly, consumers who join word of mouth marketing programs that periodically provide them products to review publicly (as opposed to simply giving feedback to the advertiser) will also likely be viewed as giving sponsored messages.”

The Guides cite as an example a consumer who purchases a new brand of dog food and reviews its favorably on her personal blog.  If she purchases the dog food with her own money or gets it for free because the store routinely tracks her purchases and generates a coupon for a free trial bag of the new dog food, there is no endorsement.  However, if the consumer gets the dog food as a result of joining a network marketing program under which she periodically receives various products about which she can write reviews if she wants to, her positive review will be considered an endorsement.  As another example, a college student who has earned a reputation as a video game expert receives (as he has in the past) a copy of a newly released video gaming system along with a request from the manufacturer to write about it on his blog.   He tests it out and gives it a favorable review.  This is also an endorsement, and the FTC comments that because the review is disseminated via a form of consumer-generated media in which his relationship to the advertiser is not inherently obvious, and given the value of the gaming system, the blogger should clearly and conspicuously disclose that he received it free of charge.  Furthermore, “[t]he manufacturer should advise him at the time it provides the gaming system that this connection should be disclosed, and it should have procedures in place to try to monitor his postings for compliance.”  (Here the blogger would also have to comply with the FTC’s rules on the use of expert statements in advertising.)

In one of the Guides’ most controversial examples, a skin care product manufacturer participates in a blog advertising service that matches up advertisers with reviewers.  The marketer requests that the blogger try out its new body lotion and write a review.  The blogger, totally on her own initiative and without any direction from the manufacturer, makes an unsubstantiated recommendation that the product cures eczema.  Both the manufacturer and the blogger will be liable for the unsubstantiated claim and any failure to disclose that the blogger is being paid.

The FTC has explained that the purpose of the new rules is to treat new media in the same manner as traditional journalistic and advertising outlets.  However, as a practical matter, many businesses treat these channels differently and will have to scramble to implement the necessary monitoring and enforcement mechanisms.  When a business buys a conference sponsorship, for example, in the hope of generating some positive online buzz, is anyone at the sponsor giving the conference organizer’s blog and Twitter emissions at compliance review?  Indeed, the whole point of marketing to bloggers and through social media is to support a spontaneous and unforced style of commentary that has greater authenticity for cynical, tech-savvy consumers.   Of course, in response to such comments the FTC has countered that its rules are designed precisely to protect consumers’ ability to rely on this quality of the blogosphere in making purchasing decisions.   Controlling what bloggers say is not relevant; what matters for liability purposes is whether “the advertiser initiated the process that led to [the] endorsements being made – e.g., by providing products to well-known bloggers or to endorsers enrolled in word of mouth marketing programs ….”

Playing the Compliance Game

Unfortunately, corporate legal departments will now have to extend the long arm of compliance over a whole host of Web 2.0 marketing activities that until now may have been loosely policed, if at all.   “In employing this means of marketing,” the FTC dryly observes, “the advertiser has assumed the risk that an endorser may fail to disclose a material connection or misrepresent a product, and the potential liability that accompanies that risk.”  However, it also states that in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion it will consider “the advertiser’s efforts to advise these endorsers of their responsibilities and to monitor their online behavior ….”

What this means for companies is that they will have to design a compliance and monitoring program.  What it means for online advertising agencies is that they can expect new restrictions and levels of review from clients over their Web 2.0 marketing activities and should also expect to assume a role in their clients’ compliance and monitoring programs.  Companies will want to get a handle on what their marketing departments are doing to curry favor with bloggers and create buzz through viral online marketing and will be especially anxious to herd advertising and PR agencies into the corral, since the companies are legally responsible for the actions of these third-party agents.

If compensation, free products or other valuable incentives (such as sponsorships) are being offered in the hope of stimulating positive reviews, then the company will need to institute and document a process of advising bloggers and other new media commenters about their duty to disclose material connections and the limits on the factual claims they can make about a products and its beneficial effects.   There should also be periodic monitoring of the resulting posts, with documented follow-up action if necessary, to make sure they comply with the FTC’s endorsement guidelines.
If blogger relationships are managed through an advertising or PR agency, then the agency will likely have to provide detailed information for each campaign about its contacts with bloggers and will have to share in the responsibility of conveying the advertiser’s guidelines to them and monitoring their compliance.   Companies should include a specific allocation of responsibilities with respect to these issues in written contracts with their agencies.  At the very least, a company should reserve the right to audit and pre-approve an agency’s solicitation of bloggers so that the company knows which bloggers the agency is dealing with and whether the relationships are of a type that could lead to advertiser-endorser liability and can monitor the bloggers’ posts about the company’s products.

If this compliance burden is too onerous for companies and their online advertising agencies, the alternative is to implement policies that prohibit the payment of compensation or giving away of valuable products in the hope of generating positive online buzz.   Favorable reviews are not “endorsements” within the meaning of the Guides unless they have been incentivized in some way.

Tips for Bloggers

As for bloggers and other online commenters, they should be sure to disclose any compensation or benefits they receive to comment on products and, if they do have such a connection to an advertiser, should be very careful to follow the guidelines furnished by the advertiser or its advertising agency (which the advertiser is required to provide) and not make general or sweeping factual claims about the product or any claim that can’t be easily substantiated.  If a blogger chafes at submitting to this degree of oversight and control, he always has the option of buying the product himself, for example, rather than receiving it as a freebie.  The FTC has indicated that advertisers and not bloggers will be its main enforcement target.  However, a blogger who runs a “substantial operation” that violates the rules and who receives a warning will still be at risk.  Moreover, the FTC can adopt a more aggressive enforcement stance at any time.

The FTC’s rulemaking will heavily influence the way marketers generate buzz on the Internet and warrants close scrutiny of participation in blogger and viral incentive programs by all parties involved.

Credit:
FTC Regulates Blogger, Viral Marketing Relationships: Analysis and compliance tips

The latest global survey from consulting firm McKinsey & Company confirms what those of us who follow the advancement of the Web already know: there are significant measurable business benefits of Web 2.0.

This year’s survey, based on responses from about 1,700 business executives worldwide, specifically addressed the value of Web 2.0 in three areas. The survey addressed the following areas: within an organization, in relations with customers, and in dealings with partners and suppliers. Nearly 70 percent of respondents said they could measure the business impact of Web 2.0 in such areas as more effective marketing, lowering the cost of doing business, and higher revenues.

The broad strokes behind the numbers suggest that Web 2.0 is paying off in the three areas of primary concern in any business: knowledge, time, and money. Companies generally report that using Web 2.0 technologies offers them “greater ability to share ideas; improved access to knowledge experts; and reduced costs of communications, travel, and operations.” Respondents also say Web 2.0 tools “have decreased the time to market for products.”

Impact outside the company is significant as well. Using Web 2.0, “companies and customers jointly shape and cocreate products,” and businesses can “gain access to expertise outside company walls more quickly.”

Some interesting trends emerge when we look at what the respondents view as the most important technologies and tools over the three years of the survey’s existence. This year, blogs and social networking were rated as the top two, as they were in 2008. But in 2007, “peer-to-peer” was the overwhelming top choice.

This year, the most used Web 2.0 technologies and tools by companies are (in order of importance) blogs, social networks, wikis, and podcasts. In 2008, social networks barely edged out blogs, while wikis was a solid third and podcasts came in fourth, slightly ahead of RSS.

The use of video sharing is on the rise – its importance rose dramatically from 2007 to 2008, and again from 2008 to 2009.

McKinsey concludes from the report that the use of more Web 2.0 technologies results in greater benefits to a company, regardless of industry. More importantly, McKinsey predicts “a different type of company may be emerging – one that makes intensive use of interactive technologies.” McKinsey calls it “the networked company.” The current economic downturn has only increased the interest in Web 2.0, says McKinsey.

Apparently, it’s all good news for the growing importance of Web 2.0.

Credit:
Global Survey Shows Benefits of Web 2.0

Marketing Socially: Robyn Tippins from Converge SC on Vimeo.

FYI, the very first of my talk is cut off, but what you miss is my telling you that I started a diaper company in 1998, at age 22, and in month one, using forums to market it, we grossed ~$30k. The video picks up there.

See more here:
Robyn Tippins at ConvergeSC

You may be the preeminent web consultant in Phoenix, Arizona, but with a name like Steve Stevenson or John Jackson, it’s going to be difficult to be found when employers and prospective clients go a-Googling for you.

Even with Google’s regional results helping you along, chances are that numerous similarly named individuals will show up and steal your well-deserved traffic. Not only that, there’s another important perhaps more dangerous persona lurking about using your name: your former self. You know him or her –  the angsty teenager who wrote gothic poetry on LiveJournal, the over-passionate activist in college who got arrested for streaking for animal rights and the newbie on the forums asking no-brainer questions. Using the following steps, you can be sure that the number one Google hit for your name is the professional, up-to-date, uncontroversial you.

Step 1: Kick Your Former Self to the Curb

This one’s easy and, ideally, shouldn’t be a problem at all. If you had the proper foresight, you set all of your social networking profiles to private and were diligent in removing any objectionable content, like your party pictures and drunken rants.   If not, don’t worry: you can still protect yourself from your self.

Begin by Googling yourself (and Binging and Yahoo searching, just to be safe) and see what comes up. Really dig deep, so click through to the second and third results pages. What you’re looking for is any mention of your old screen names or e-mail addresses.

Why? A diligent background checker or employment screener will find these and then plug THOSE into search engines. That opens an entire other can of worms. For instance, if you post on the Cosplay forums as DarkKnightWolf72, of course, your posts and pictures won’t show up if someone Googles your given name. But once the screener learns to associate a screen name with you, the jig is up.

Luckily, services that use screen names, like forums, Xanga, MySpace, LiveJournal, mostly allow you to delete your entire account. Do so, if necessary. Google should clean up all the cached versions and links in time. If you’re in a hurry and you own the web space, you can submit a request to remove saved versions of pages through Google Webmaster Tools or Yahoo Site Explorer. On Facebook and MySpace, you can set your pictures and profile to private without deleting your account. This easily done from your privacy settings. On Facebook especially, be sure to set your “photos of you tagged by others” to private.

Step 2: Make Yourself Findable

This is an important step towards disambiguation. You can’t totally eliminate all the other Joe Johnsons in your city, but you can make it easy for screeners and clients to tell which is you.  There are a couple surefire ways to do this.

Get a lockdown on social networking. This is more about professional social networking sites and profiles than Facebook and Twitter, though both are integral tools for building relationships with client-bases r. Take time to setup a LinkedIn account and a Google Profile. These two profiles are some of the most visible available and may even pop up higher on the results list than your actual business website. Because of this, it is imperative you make both of these clearly linked to the professional landing page you want to direct people towards. You may also want to look into other such services like Hi, I’m and Naymz.

Aside from the established professional networking sites, you’ll also want to give your professional persona a comfortable and logical home. This means buying a domain name.  This will only cost you $10 a year; less if you find a coupon online, and will do wonders for managing your web presence. Make it specific and simple. Yourname.com or Yourname.net is best. You may also want to do lastnameconsulting.com or yourbusiness-yourcity.com if your domain name is taken.  There are tons of established good domain registrars available; you may also want to look into up-and-comers Nombray.com and Domai.nr.

Once you have your domain setup, you can either purchase some web space for hosting or simply point your domain to one of the name tag pages you set up above. At the very least though, you should include your name, location and profession and contact information. At the best, you should have a portfolio of your work, links to articles by you or about you and a blog. Speaking of which…

Step 3: Blog Smart

One of the best ways to project an impression of an active, involved professional with industry connections and coveted expertise is to maintain a blog. But be careful: a blog can be a double-edged sword. A well-written, regularly updated blog says you are organized and prolific. A sloppy, rant-filled blog that hasn’t been updated since December 2007 makes people think you’ve gone out of business.

Making your blog look pretty is relatively painless. Use Wordpress. There are lots of options, but by far, Wordpress is the easiest and has the best community. With hundreds of themes and plugins to choose from, you won’t need to know a single line of code to setup a high tech, slick looking blog. You can actually make your entire website from a Wordpress installation. Read some tutorials and fiddle around with it during your lunch break and you’ll learn everything you need to know.

Begin building some quality content but keep your posting regular. This could mean once a day or once a month, it doesn’t matter as long as the articles come at a consistent rate and are of consistent quality. Because you’ll likely be busy handling other business items, you may want to outsource your blog content. This is by no means disingenuous, especially if you are a business rather than an individual, and can usually be achieved at a surprisingly low rate.   But make sure you hire carefully to ensure excellent quality of content.  Another route is to post occasionally yourself while hiring a part-time blogger to provide filler content about industry wide movements or simply point to PR items about your company.

A blog can also be a powerful tool for boosting your website’s PageRank. Quality content leads to organic linkbacks and fresh content catches the eyes of search engine spiders. Getting linked by a prominent blog or social media network can cause huge spikes in your traffic.

Step 4: Be Proactive

Now that you have established yourself and disambiguated your name, it’s time to keep things that way. You don’t want someone to buy your name out from under you because you forgot to renew so be diligent in keeping your domain name registered and look for opportunities to expand your presence.  . This can mean buying an additional domain name, joining blogging or professional networks, commenting often on widely-read industry sites and blogs, and other measures.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the Internet is solely the domain of business. You can still use the web to discuss hobbies and interests. Just make sure you place a buffer of anonymity between you and your non-professional pursuits. Invent a new screen name for yourself and be extra careful to avoid publicly associating it with your true identity. You can let your close friends and family know where you keep your Futurama fan fiction and risqué poetry, but don’t leave any trace that it’s you. Also, use this screen name for posting on forums and commenting on non-business items. Of course, when you’re engaging in discussions on industry-relevant topics, use your professional name and provide a link to your blog or website. Be especially careful when discussing potentially controversial topics like music, politics, or religion. The sad fact of some Internet communities is that differences in opinion often devolve into personal attacks and if someone digs up something bad about you, it can be a PR mess. Even if it’s petty or unfounded, you will still have to answer for it and it still may affect a potential client’s opinion of you.

You will also want to diversify your presence as much as possible. Google groups together results that are under the same domain name or from the same site, so to fill out your results page, you’ll want to choose several different outlets to make your name stand out. Volunteer to do guest posts, join blogging communities and create spin-off or related sites.

This is a particularly prudent measure when you need to bury bad press. If you have a particularly difficult case to crack, you may want to enlist the help of a professional. Believe it or not, they exist. A good online reputation is a crucial to doing good business, which has given rise to such firms as ReputationDefender.

All in all, you should remember to always be on your best behavior while operating on the Internet: the world is watching you.

See more here:
Defeat the Doppelgangers: Important steps towards making your good name Google friendly

You know social media has come of age when sites like Facebook start talking about revenue. Facebook board member Marc Andreessen (fondly remembered for Mosaic and Netscape) recently told Reuters that the social media site could be a $500 million business by the end of 2009, predicting “billions” in revenue in the next five years.

The number of Facebook users, or “fans,” (as opposed to MySpace “friends”) is even more impressive than revenue at the moment. There are over 200 million users worldwide and 72 million in the U.S. More than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once daily.

That large of an audience has been attracting more corporate dollars. Dell targets small business owners via Facebook with a series of social media guides that can be downloaded by Dell fans. Starbucks is using Facebook to promote its RED loyalty card to 2.5 million fans (RED is the campaign created by Bono to fight AIDS in Africa. Numerous companies offer a RED-related product). WDFM reports that over 11,000 customers worldwide have purchased almost 91,000 RED cards so far.

“If they pushed the throttle forward on monetization they would be doing more than a billion this year,” said Andreessen in the interview in the Reuters. “There’s every reason to expect, in my view, that the thing can be doing billions in revenue five years from now.”

Along with with corporate adoption Facebook’s growth has led to a shift in its demographics.  The most interesting statistic may be this one: According to Facebook, the fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older.

The latest Facebook demographics from iStrategy Labs show users age 55 and older have grown at a rate that exceeds 500% in the last six months alone. The 18-24 age group now makes up just 25 percent of U.S. users, down from 41 percent at the beginning of 2009. Simply put, Facebook users are aging.

The trend to older Facebook users could turn the site into a new and important avenue for businesses to reach the moneyed boomer demographic. Not surprisingly, businesses targeted this demographic are adding Facebook to their media plans. Ben & Jerry’s, the ice cream company started by a couple of hippie boomers, currently has close to a million Facebook fans, according to Web Digest For Marketers (WDFM). The Ben & Jerry’s Facebook page offers fans a way to send a virtual gift of ice cream – an application that has over 23,000 monthly active users, says WDFM.

Facebook just unveiled the “fan box,” which allows companies to promote Facebook on their corporate sites, encouraging visitors to sign up as fans. Clearly, Facebook sees the value of its site in a business marketing context.

With the potential for billions in revenue, Facebook and its social media brethren represent more than just fun ways to interact with friends. These sites are becoming increasingly a critical part of the marketing strategy for those businesses interested in engaging and interacting with consumers – and building revenue-related relationships with them.

See the original post:
Advertising Key to Facebook Billions

You’ll recall part 1 of my interview with Gordon Magee of Drs. Foster Smith.  I’m back to continue learning of his strategic, long-term approach to using video to drive multi-channel sales — and answering your specfic cost questions. After reading part 1 a good number of you wrote to me privately expressing hunger for information on cost.  Gordon didn’t get into the specific cost numbers with me but I can share some of his early struggles and “production / cost migration path” with you.  I wasn’t planning on it so thanks for asking.  I need to know what YOU need to know so keep comments coming please.

I’ll return to the overall measurement and “user generated content”  (use of video supplied by customers) questions in a few days.

Let’s first start by understanding the company’s multi-channel approach to advertising…

Gordon Magee: “This past year we decided we would go into television in a larger way. The owners decided to work on a broader campaign strategy for advertising. We have always done print media and that kind of thing as well but we kind of bundled print media and radio advertising. We haven’t done a lot of radio, but television as well.

So we created a television program. Then about a year ago or so I put in a proposal for us to get video on our website and create our own video studio. That got approved and we started building the studio this fall.”

It may be helpful for you to compare this kind of environment to your own when considering approaching cost and budgeting for ecommerce-focused video.  Next, Gordon shared the evolution of his company’s approach to Web video — specific to how they decided to build (invest internally) rather than lease (outsource).  It’s interesting to note that they were already “in video” by creating TV ads.

Gordon Magee: “We outsource in the sense that we use the production company, one in Los Angeles, one in the Twin Cities when we made the last, more recent commercials. We have used a California production company in the past. But the internal decision to create the video studio was definitely Web related as opposed to TV commercial related.

So they really were separate entities in terms of the business case. I think with the advent of higher speed Internet connections for most people these days – there are a smaller and smaller number that are still on dial-up – and then the infrastructure capabilities that the Internet has that’s going to make video just very, very common, even more so than it is now.

It seemed to be that it was the right thing to do. Our company’s ethos, Jeff has always been to do things internally and develop the expertise internally so that we are not dependent on outside sourcing whenever that’s possible. Because we are a catalog company and have essentially a pretty huge creative department, doing our own photography and that kind of thing forever since the advent of the company, the idea to move into video wasn’t a hard decision.”

So as it turns out Gordon’s approach was driven by the company’s traditional, long-standing belief in “owning” the creative production process and a realization that the distribution channel (the Web) WAS going to explode opportunity.

Gordon Magee: “Script development of course was helped greatly by our creative department who wrote script and art direction terms and then we tweaked those. So we had the internal expertise to try it and not be afraid to do it. So we just decided that we were going to go ahead with that.

I think it (the decision to outsource versus build your own competency) really has to do with people’s expectations. As you know, being in the Internet business, expectations on the Internet continue to rise for the consumer. I think the average consumer probably doesn’t realize the effort that goes into making a website very easy for people to use and all of the other things that are on there, ancillary things like video and articles and so on.

But I think with those expectations arising, we know that video is going to be huge. And certainly with things like YouTube and other sites like that, people are going to those sites. We wanted to be part of that for the educational side of the company.”

Yet there’s more to the company’s history that plays into it’s decision to invest in a PUBLISHING company within their direct response/ecommerce selling infrastructure…

Gordon Magee: “When the company started 25 years ago – this is our 25th anniversary literally this year – when they started we were owned by two veterinarians, Dr. Ray Foster and Dr. Marty Smith. When the company started, one of the things they wanted to do was educate pet owners to be able to use products better and to care well for their pet. That came out of their veterinary background.

Certainly that’s a good marketing strategy as well. But the primary thing was let’s make sure pet owners know what they are doing. They can make better buying decisions and so on.

When they started their catalog they went to catalog conferences. They were new at all this. The catalog experts said, ‘You know you guys are devoting way too much space to education in your catalog. You can’t do that on a square inch analysis basis and have it come out in a cost-effective way.’

They decided very early on to ignore that advice. They dedicated I think 10 to 15% of every catalog to educational articles. That really became our niche for the customer. It also provided a good marketing tool in that people kept the catalogs because the articles were in them.

Over time, that trust relationship developed with the customer. So we probably have more articles on pet care and more veterinary articles online than anybody in the country. So to go into video and do the same thing was just a natural outgrowth of what we have been doing for 25 years really.”

Like many pioneers, the founders were told “don’t do THAT!” when it came to innovating.  Much like Buy.com cut against the grain with its approach (proven successful by now?!) to mixing “media company” with “lowest price e-commerce company.”

What say you, Revenews readers?  I hope this may help clear up questions regarding costs and how to approach them in strategic terms.  I’ll return shortly to wrap up with final thoughts on Gordon’s measurement approach and use of user generated video content.

View post:
Case Study: Video Publishing to Drive Sales (PART II)