This is a guest post from Matt Cheuvront and is part of the Guest Blog Grand Tour over at Life Without Pants. Want to learn more about Matt Cheuvront & see how far the rabbit hole goes? Subscribe to the Life Without Pants RSS feed & follow him on Twitter to keep in touch!

Ok, you caught me. Busted. I’m kind of a Star Wars nerd. There’s something about the lightsabers and intergalactic battles that is just so damn cool. And in a world full of analogies these days, why don’t we tie the connection of being “one” with the force as being “one” with your consumers and community audience.

Here are seven things you NEED to be doing with your blog and Social Media “force” in your epic struggle against the “noise” and “clutter” from the Dark Side.

Target a specific audience

If you don’t know who your audience is, how are you ever going to know if you’re hitting the right notes? Part of the marketing process, and probably the most important, is RESEARCH. You MUST define your demographic (you know, the people who actually give a damn about whatever you’re selling/writing/etc). Once you’ve defined them, you can customize your style and approach. What’s equally important is that you don’t exclude everyone else. Why? Because they may not know they’re interested until they become interested. It’s your job to lead them in and get them on your bandwagon. But never forget the horse(s) who brought you to the race.

Be a thought leader

What is a “thought leader” anyway? To quote David Meerman Scott’s New Rules of Marketing & PR:

“A thought leader, instead of selling something directly, tells the world that you are smart, that you understand the market very well, and that you might be a person or organization that would be valuable to do business with.”

A thought leader is selfless – not promoting themselves, but rather, what they can do for you – by being engaged and involved in your community, a thought leader knows what you want WHEN you want it. Timing is everything.

Be authentic and transparent

The most important thing…Hands down. The minute you become someone or something you’re not – you’ll expose yourself as a total fraud. It might work for a while, you might be able to hide behind your mask, but eventually you’re going to have to tell Luke that you’re his father. Eventually the truth will come out and odds are, it won’t be pretty when it does. Know your identity and own it – be authentic, genuine, and transparent in every single thing that you do.

Create lots of links

Link to your own site – link to others – in short, link like a maniac. People love links – they love to explore and find new things – whether it is digging through the archives of your own blog/website (interlinking is a prime SEO practice) or discovering something new – incorporate links early and often in everything you do and leave breadcrumbs for your community to explore new paths on their own.

Participate. Engage. Listen

Listening is priority number one. Above all else, you have to know when to shut up and listen to your community, listen to your competition, and pay attention to what others are saying about you. By listening, you’ll know exactly when the right time is to engage – the right time to say “hello” – the right time to close a sale. Listen first, participate second, then follow it up with the engagement.

Make it easy to find you (everywhere)

A blog or website is a platform created by in individual. I may not know about you – but when I discover a great new website, I want to know who’s behind it. I want to follow them on Twitter, subscribe to their RSS, send them an affectionate “you are awesome” email…you get the picture. People want to know YOU – Make this EASY to do with OBVIOUS calls to action and ENCOURAGE people to do it.

Experiment. Screw up. Learn. Experiment again.

There’s a time in every young Padawan’s life when he knows nothing of the force – his Mitchlorians may be off the scale, but they have no idea they can push stuff around with their mind, shoot lighting out of their hands, and all kinds of other cool stuff.

The same goes for you – you don’t know if something will work until you try. The only time you fail is when you DON’T try. Blogging and Social Media is great because it allows you to try new things. If it isn’t working, great, tweak it and try something else – or abandon the effort and try something new. THERE ARE NO EXPERTS in Social Media – its one great big learning experience for EVERYONE (even the Brogan and GaryVee’s) at the party.

Don’t dwindle down the path of the Dark Side, no matter how tempting or easy it may seem to sell yourself out – side the those of the light and do things the right way. Be genuine, use the tools at your disposal for good, and never be afraid to challenge yourself to trying new things.

There is no try, only do.

The last session of SES Chicago Day 3 proved to be one helluva entertaining discussion on black hat, white hat SEO.  However while listening to the panel, I couldn’t help thinking about the 5:30 PM Chicago traffic and the 4-5 inches of snow that was expected (and had started!).

My recaps will include some useful tidbits that I picked up during day 2 of SES Chicago.  Tweets were made from @marketwire as well as my personal handle @shinng using the hashtag #seschi and #rt2eat.  So what is the meaning of the latter hashtag?  Well, the creative marketing team @marketwire wanted to give back for the holiday season so we decided to take advantage of the Marketwire presence.  For every ReTweet of our tweets that include the hashtags #seschi #rt2eat, Marketwire will be donating $1.00 per RT for a max contribution of $500 to benefit the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

SES Chicago Session – Black Hat, White Hat: Does it Really Matter Anymore?

Moderator:  Frank Watson (Kangamurra Media)
Speakers:  Rand Fishkin (SEOmoz.org), David Naylor (Bronco), Matthew Bailey (SES Advisory Board, Site Logic Marketing), Todd Friesen (Position Technologies), Bruce Clay (Bruce Clay, Inc)

This session was truly a roundtable.  It wasn’t as organized as the other sessions where one person presented with a powerpoint followed by another.   This session was more like the every-man-for-himself mentality, but considering it was the last session, that was a good thing.

The most memorable quotes are outlined below.

What is black hat SEO?

• Black hat is what’s prohibited by guidelines.
• When it comes to black hat, the only tactic left is buying links.
• Amateur SEO is keyword stuffing.
• Black hat SEO is the risk and fear of risk model.
• Black hat is aggressive link building.

Regarding spam…

• Spam and black hat aren’t one and the same.  When you’re playing cards, there are professional card players and there are card cheats.
• The definition of spam is, “What would Matt Cutts think?”  If you’re on your laptop and Matt Cutts walks behind you and you immediately close your laptop, you’re a spammer.
• Google should be thanking the black hats for finding all their holes and closing it up.
• The fundamental problem is that people don’t know when stuff is wrong.  Google hasn’t defined all the things that are wrong.
• Example: search for “flights to Chicago” on Google.  The first couple map listings are black hat SEO tactics.  (Notice the web address and redirection)

Is Google assessing intent?

• They can’t!

Do you think the Google public DNS is going to have an affect on the web?

• It gives Google a lot more access to data traffic, but I’m not sure what it does for them.  Not sure if it will impact SEO.

Is it black hat to do stuff that will push Ripoff Report to the 2nd page?

• Although both Yahoo! and Bing banned Ripoff Report, the consensus was that it is not a black hat tactic.

Does Google AdWords spend affect your ranking?

• AdWords and rankings barely know each other even exists.  They don’t collaborate well between projects.
• It’s intentional that they don’t collaborate well.  It’s their culture.

This SES Chicago recap will cover the last two sessions of Day 2.  This recap includes “Igniting Viral Campaigns” and a sponsored session named “Social Media Strategy”.

My recaps will include some useful tidbits that I picked up during day 2 of SES Chicago.  Tweets were made from @marketwire as well as my personal handle @shinng using the hashtag #seschi and #rt2eat.  So what is the meaning of the latter hashtag?  Well, the creative marketing team @marketwire wanted to give back for the holiday season so we decided to take advantage of the Marketwire presence.  For every ReTweet of our tweets that include the hashtags #seschi #rt2eat, Marketwire will be donating $1.00 per RT for a max contribution of $500 to benefit the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

SES Chicago Session – Igniting Viral Campaigns

Moderator:  Tessa Wegert (Enlighten)
Speakers:  Greg Finn (10e20), Denise Chudy (Google/YouTube), Jennifer Evans Laycock (SiteLogic)

This session was about how to leverage web 2.0 technologies (such as YouTube) to give companies the opportunity to stand out.

• Identifying and maximizing viral content
  • Humor
  • Educational resources
  • Comprehensive lists – not your typical top 10 lists, but full blown lists /Nick Shin – An actual example of a “comprehensive list” was not given, but my example would be the AdAge 150 list.
  • Breaking information – exclusives, leaks, etc.
  • Infographics
• What to do
  • Ensure proper formatting of your content
  • Make sure the content is easy to consume
  • Be sure the content is very visual
  • Look for a social tone, i.e., be human
• Viral mediums – utilize popular destinations such as FunnyorDie, Break, Ebaum’s World, YouTube, Flickr
• Social news and networking
  • Largest source for igniting viral campaigns
  • Be as non corporate as possible
  • Corporate and brand promotion is not the only angle
  • Helping the community is better than helping yourself.  You want to make sure you are part of the community before participating.
  • Digg – not just for video games and gadgets
  • StumbleUpon – a possibility for all viral content; user proper/niche categories
  • Reddit – use subreddits for best relevancy
  • Facebook – don’t only send your users to your “wall”. Make new tabs, add new apps.
    • Example: Overstock.com, Best Buy, and Radio Shack”s default facebook landing page is a holiday promotion, not their “wall”
    • Make sure you have approval on promotions
    • Make content easy to share
    • Spend money on facebook by sending traffic to your page using Facebook ads and Facebook events
  • Twitter
    • Make it easy to tweet your content
    • Allow for easy RTs
    • Promote during peak hours
  • Entice others to ignite your campaigns using the “original social media” through blogger outreach and forums
  • Fanning the viral fire
    • Stagger approaches for optimum visibility
    • Provide alternative ways to share on social networks.  A good one is to use buttons (tweetmeme, digg, Facebook share) because people are lazy.
    • Cross promote to maximize exposure
  • Leverage viral mentions to continue momentum
  • Repeat underperforming campaigns with fresh “coverage content” by pointing to other people’s coverage.
    • The “Google Chrome OS” example: initial coverage of the Google Chrome OS YouTube video was weak.  It only received 4 diggs.  However, after bloggers began covering the new OS, they began submitting their own links to digg with the embedded YouTube video.  That article ended up receiving over 400 diggs and caused the video to receive over 1 million views.
    • 

• When doing viral campaigns, know your goal.
• Viral goals include: building the brand, driving sales, driving traffic/links
• Rosen Velocity Scale (V1 to V10): V1=extreme brand/emotion and V10=extreme direct/SHAM WOW!
• 

• V1: extreme brand represents brand awareness and is not about the offer.  Example: Dove Evolution

• • Between V3 and V4: Medium brand awareness + offer example is the OfficeMax’ “Back to School for Pennies” campaign

• • V6: Brand awareness + emotion + sales= Innocent drinks’  The Big Knit campaign.  Buying a “knitted” Innocent drink smoothie donates money and the knitting sparks interest.
  • V8: Uniqueness + sales message = Blendtec’s Will it Blend campaign.  If you have never seen or heard of “Will it Blend”, please come out from under that rock.
  • V10: Pure purchase driven immediacy.  Buy now = Shoebuy.com. When finishing the checkout process, they give you an option to give a $10 coupon to friends via different methods including social media.
• Viral is as simple as enabling the share of your message.
• 

• Building the brand leads to slower sales.  The break even occurs later with a lower velocity.
• Building the sale leads to slow brand.  Raising the velocity brings profit much sooner.

Denise Chudy from YouTube was the last presenter and I’m particularly glad that she presented some nice stats along with the presentation.  The numbers certainly made it more interesting.

• Successful viral videos are: captivating, interesting, intriguing clever, exciting, creative, though provoking, compelling
• 20 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute
• By the end of the panel, 1500 hours or 62.5 full days of video content will have been uploaded to YouTube
• Get good videos discovered
  • Making them findable – YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine with 3.6B searches/month; use SEO techniques for organic results
  • Use offline to seed
  • Leverage existing networks
  • Leverage recognizable people – original placements account for only 40% of total engagement on YouTube.   Example: Kobe jumping over Aston Martin.  Original video= 5MM vews, 8MM views including copies, and 14MM views including derivatives
  • Use advertising; market your video – homepage exposure generates a 4.7x lift in action
  • 

SES Chicago Sponsored Session – Social Media Strategy

Serengeti Communications Speakers:  Nathan Linnell, Nan Dawkins, Liana Evans

The Serengeti group provided some useful information.  Did I learn anything new?  No, but it was a great refresher.

Social Media Strategy

• Applying marketing tactics in the absence of strategy is like doing nothing at all.
• Start thinking about engagement, ways to make friends, and how to serve.  People create the content and the community.
• There are no “cookie cutter solutions” when jumping into social media.  Understand the why and how and what your end goal is.  Do your research first and understand where your audience is, who your audience is, and what your target audience is doing.
• 

• What you do is just as important as where you do it.
  1. Start by finding the conversations
  2. Understand the conversations
  3. Use your monitoring data to understand who you want to reach and engage

Social Media Measurement

• Impact can be observed internally via corporate website, company blogs, sponsored communities, external online via social media, and external offline.
• Sources of data: internal web analytics – what to measure
  • Direct traffic
  • Brand searches
  • Visits referred by key social media sites
  • Social media referred visits attributed to company social media efforts
  • Conversions (not necessarily a sale) generated from social media sites
  • Engagement metrics
  • Blogs and communities – subscribers (views/clicks), comments/posts, incoming links, ReTweets of posts (via Twitter), unique visitors, members

• Sources of data: external online – social sites
  • Facebook – fans/active fans, media consumption, total interactions (likes, comments, wall posts)
  • Twitter – followers (unique/quality followers), retweets, mentions, brand mentions
  • YouTube – channel (page views, subscribers, friends, comments), videos (views, ratings, comments, favorites, video responses)

• Sources of data: external online – monitoring tools
  • Aggravated view of buzz across the web – volume of mentions (brand, competitor, topic, share of voice), share by social media type, top sources/locations, sentiment, influencers

• Sources of data: external offline – research
  • Surveys and focus groups – brand awareness, purchase intent
  • Viral video campaign example
    • Target=caregivers, campaign site with coupon, goals=branding and sales
    • Measurement of video views, video mentions (buzz), video submissions, engagement (votes, comments), coupon redemption, buzz volume/brand, share of voice/brand
    • Sources of data include social media monitoring, web analytics, YouTube, and sales data
• Building a measurement framework – implement what you can measure
  • Financial impact = revenue generated, cost savings, cost avoidance
  • Non financial impact = brand awareness, purchase intent, willing to recommend
  • Define what constitutes success – branding goals? direct sales or lead generation? both?
  • Think through the buying process
  • Map metrics to goals – quality not quantity
  • Do I have the right tools?
  • 

Day 2 of SES Chicago proved to be a much slower day, but I think many of the attendees needed the “break”.  The biggest session by far was Tim Ash’s “Landing Page Optimization”.

This SES Chicago recap will cover my favorite session of Day 2, Tim Ash’s presentation on “Landing Page Optimization: The 7 Deadly Sins”.  My primary reason for attending this session was to listen to Tim Ash speak.  I was told that Ash was an engaging speaker and he did not disappoint.

My recaps will include some useful tidbits that I picked up during day 2 of SES Chicago.  Tweets were made from @marketwire as well as my personal handle @shinng using the hashtag #seschi and #rt2eat.  So what is the meaning of the latter hashtag?  Well, the creative marketing team @marketwire wanted to give back for the holiday season so we decided to take advantage of the Marketwire presence.  For every ReTweet of our tweets that include the hashtags #seschi #rt2eat, Marketwire will be donating $1.00 per RT for a max contribution of $500 to benefit the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

SES Chicago Session – Landing Page Optimization: The 7 Deadly Sins

Moderator:  Sage Lewis (SageRock)
Speakers:  Tim Ash (SiteTuners)

The effect of the miserable morning commute to downtown Chicago was quickly forgotten thanks to Tim Ash.  He immediately set the tone by asking which of the audience members had children.  A few dozen raised their hand.  Of those that had children, who thought their baby was ugly.  Of course, everyone immediately put their hands down.   Ash pointed out that everyone has seen an ugly baby.  So get to the point right?  Ash’s point: your baby is ugly.  Don’t be “ignorant and blind”.  As it relates to landing page optimization, if you ignore your landing page, you will make less money.

• For every $83 spent on drive to a website and acquisition, $1 is spent on landing page.
• CPA (cost per acquisition)=CPC (cost per click) / CR (conversion rate)
• “The camel” analogy
  • Often times, there is a struggle about which department should design the website.  The analogy used by Ash was “the camel” as in, “a horse designed by committee”.  When multiple departments end up having input into the design, the end result is not a good one.
  • So the question was posed, who should design your website?  Answer choices:  agency, boss, webmaster, marketing, IT
  • Correct answer:  Your visitors should design your website which means you need to look at your landing page analytics.
• Optimizing a landing page is improving conversion.
• Landing page testing is not optional.  Fix your money pages.
• Never let the BPU (business prevention unit=IT) make the decisions
• Eliminate the HIPPO (highest paid person’s opinion)

Top 7 mistakes to avoid in optimizing your landing page

1. Unclear call to action
   • The visitor should not be asking, “what am I supposed to do?”
   • The landing page should answer the question, “what do you expect me to do”
   • The obvious standard: if the call to action on a landing page is not obvious, then it is costing you a lot of money.  In other words, if it’s not obvious, it’s not happening.
   • Get rid of splash and flash landing pages to avoid distraction
2. Too many choices
3. Asking for too much information
   • Example: if I’m downloading a white paper, why do I need to input my name?  All that’s required should be an email address.  /Nick Shin – I have to disagree.  All landing pages should include a name and email address field at a minimum.  In the white paper example, you are capturing the user’s information because they become a lead, which means you will want to contact them in the future. Right?
4. Too much text
   • The “Charlie Brown-wahwahwah” analogy – too much text is like Charlie Brown saying, “wahwahwah”
   • Strike out all adjectives and all unsubstantiated claims
5. Not keeping your promises
   • One of the worst things you can do is deceive and/or confuse your visitors.  Make it straightforward.
   • Example: The Consumer Reports “bait-and-switch” – In one of Consumer Reports’ PPC ads for reviews, the ad’s call to action is to click the button to read reviews.  When you click on the ad, the user is directed to a landing page that you must “join now”.  The user is expecting to read the review, but instead the user is asked to join in order to read the review.  Not good.
6. Visual distractions
   • Keep the content clean and don’t do entry popups.
   • Leave the creativity at home when creating landing pages.
   • If you emphasize everything, nothing will be important.
   • Example: take a look at newyorkbarbells.com.
7. Lack of trust
   • Move trust symbols up.
   • Example (unfortunately I don’t remember the company): On one company’s website, instead of having the widely accepted method of putting a company logo in the top left hand corner, this one company placed their “trust” logo and centered their company logo.  The “trust” logo was one of those SSL/secure logos that is widely recognizable.

At the end, Tim provided a list of websites that will help you optimize your landing page for improved conversions.

• AttentionWizard.com by Tim Ash’s SiteTuners – attention heatmap
• Crazy Egg – build heatmaps and track clicks
• ClickTale - web analytics
• Google Website Optimizer
• UserTesting.com – usability testing
• userfly – usability testing
• Litmus – compatibility testing
• FeedbackArmy – usability testing
• Cross Browser – compatibility testing

This SES Chicago recap will cover Bryan Eisenberg’s “21 Secrets of Top Converting Websites”.  Also included are 5 steps to great conversion rates next week.

My recaps will include some useful tidbits that I picked up during day 1 of SES Chicago.  Tweets were made from @marketwire as well as my personal handle @shinng using the hashtag #seschi and #rt2eat.  So what is the meaning of the latter hashtag?  Well, the creative marketing team @marketwire wanted to give back for the holiday season so we decided to take advantage of the Marketwire presence.  For every ReTweet of our tweets that include the hashtags #seschi #rt2eat, Marketwire will be donating $1.00 per RT for a max contribution of $500 to benefit the Greater Chicago Food Depository. 

SES Chicago Session – 21 Secrets of Top Converting Websites

Moderator: Anne Kennedy (SES Advisory Board, Joblr.com, Beyond Ink)
Speakers:  Bryan Eisenberg (SES Advisory Board, NYT best selling author)

This was my favorite session from Day 1 of SES Chicago 2009 because it was jam packed with information.  This was probably the reason why I was so exhausted afterwards.

Bryan Eisenberg was an engaging speaker and an even better presenter of providing information with real life examples.  Before listing the tips provided during session “information overload”, below are some other notable quotes.

• Optimization is more than a single page, it’s the whole journey.
• IT = BPU (Business Prevention Unit) /Nick Shin – having heard this the first time, this one will stick.  Best quote of SES Chicago 2009.
  

The 21 secrets to top converting sites:

1. They communicate UVPs (unique value proposition) and UCPs (unique campaign proposition).
   • Examples of websites that do this well: Vitacost, Mailchimp, Gotomeeting
2. Makes persuasive and relevant offers
   • But make sure the offer doesn’t disappear at checkout.  The offer should appear throughout the entire buying process.
3. Reinforces offers
4. Maintains scent
   • Example: Victoria’s Secret – In their banner ads and subsequent landing pages, they maintain the same branding and idential images and colors
     
5. Makes strong first impressions
6. Appeals to multiple personas/segments
   • Example: Mint.com
   • Personas build predictive models – simple and robust
7. They don’t do slice and dice optimization.
   • 4 types of web visitors – spontaneous, humanistics, methodical, competitive
   • Test for impact not variations
     
8. They leverage social commerce – user generated content drives natural search
9. They use it for navigation.
   • Example – Golfsmith’s “sort by” function
   • By adding the “sort by” option, Golfsmith’s conversion went up by 160%
10. They use it for promotions – user generated content drives promotion
    
11. They use it for credibility.
12. They use it for feedback and research.
13. They use persuasion principles by using the following:
    • Scarcity
    • Authenticity
    • Consistency
    • Consensus
    • Liking
14. They even make forms interesting by putting images.
    • Average cart abandonment=72%
    • When a visitor is ready to check out after putting items in a cart and the website requires to create an account, be sure the coupon code is inserted appropriately to prevent visitor from leaving the page and eventually the website.
15. They provide a point of action assurance, i.e., response time matters.
    
    • Average lead loses 6 times the effectiveness every hour the lead is made to wait
16. They keep you in the process.
    • An example was shown of a popup where 2 buttons were present.   Make sure that the clickable buttons are not of equal weight.  You want to make an emphasis on the button that you want the visitor to click.
17. They consider email preview.
18. They budget for experience.
    • They focus on continuous improvement.
    • They align customers and business objectives.
    • Interesting fact:  At any given point, Amazon is conducting 200 tests.
19. They utilize a system for prioritizing.
20. They make data driven decisions.
    • To do web analytics and optimization correctly, you have to make a to-do list regularly.
    • Ask yourself: what marketing efforts or parts of your website have challenges?
21. They know how to execute rapidly.
    • Move past top 10 “to-do’s”
    • Focus on trends – what’s spiking up/down
    • Stop out-of-control keywords and save your budget
    • Capitalize on hot campaigns quickly to boost profits

5 steps to great conversation rates next week

1. Identify the problems, review analytics, check for high exit pages, check for high bounce rates for key landing pages
2. Create a to-do list of what you would like to improve
3. Document hypothesis for thinking on how to fix it
4. Prioritize your to-do list by resources and impact
5. Start testing

This SES Chicago recap will cover the Google sponsored lunch session along with two additional sessions that I attended from Day 1.  This recap includes “What’s New and Exciting with Google Analytics?”, “Online PR: Where to Next?”, and “What’s the Link Between Search and Social?”.

My recaps will include some useful tidbits that I picked up during day 1 of SES Chicago.  Tweets were made from @marketwire as well as my personal handle @shinng using the hashtag #seschi and #rt2eat.  So what is the meaning of the latter hashtag?  Well, the creative marketing team @marketwire wanted to give back for the holiday season so we decided to take advantage of the Marketwire presence.  For every ReTweet of our tweets that include the hashtags #seschi #rt2eat, Marketwire will be donating $1.00 per RT for a max contribution of $500 to benefit the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

SES Chicago Lunch Sponsored Session – What’s New and Exciting with Google Analytics

Speakers: Phil Mui (Google Analytics)

I was able to catch the major announcements made by Mui through all the chatter and utensils hitting plates.   I’m sure 75% of those at this session were too focused on the surprisingly delicious conference food.

The emphasis of this session was on segmentation.  “Context is the queen of analytics; segmentation is the king.”

So what is exactly was “new and exciting with Google Analytics”?

• Segmentable custom variables – segmenting your website traffic can now be accomplished using advanced segmentation.  Ahhh, the beauty of utilizing feedback to offer convenience.
• Ability to add notes to data and share with other account users – you can make these notes public or private and you can also favorite notes.
• New tracking code wizard to allow for easier, accurate, and customizable tracking
• Enhanced API including the support for advanced segments among others.  More details to be announced.

SES Chicago Session – Online PR: Where to Next?

Moderator: Sally Falkow (PRESSfeed)
Speakers:  Beth Harte (MarketingProfs), Duncan Alney (Firebelly Marketing), Marty Weintraub (aim Clear), Andy Beal (Trackur)

The Online PR session was a great refresher, but I wish I had attended another session during this time slot.

• What is public relations? – 2 way mutually beneficial relationship between company and public
  • Media relations
  • Advertising
  • Press agentry
  • Public affairs (government)
  • Public affairs (community)
  • Issues management
  • Lobbying
  • Investor relations
• Why should you care about PR? (key points)
  • The past
  • Listening works
  • Being found works
  • Communicating works
  • Partnering
  • Telling your story works
  • People talking works
• Social media tools will change.  People being social won’t change.
• Online video: used more than all major network stations
• Video is not democratic – the best content doesn’t always win.
• Video=power
  • Video can be found easily via blogs, text, tags, links, tweets
  • Good video pulls journalists
  • Video is shared
• Predictions
  • Video – ability to capture and upload from any device
  • Integration will matter most (video+search+social+PR)
  • Strategy and execution is hyper critical
  • Experience will be the differentiation
  • Tools – allows one to stay in the flow, remain relevant and access info

Andy Beal of Trackur went into press releases to end the session.  Lots of good tips.

• What to look for when analyzing your press release effectiveness
  • Where’s your press release landing
  • Which countries (unless, of course, you use a service like Marketwire and can pick and choose so you know exactly where your press release is going)?
  • Which search terms?
  • Compare press release headlines
• Find the experts to send your pitch
  • Identify the influencers
  • Check google rankings
  • Check blog links
  • Who gets quoted?
  • Compete.com data
• Advanced technology helps your monitoring
  • Industry trends
  • Competitors’ keywords
  • Track reach
  • Identify allies
  • Google alerts
• Take a closer look at your analytics
  • What keywords bring ROI?
  • Look for single source increases
  • Are there changes in the top entry pages?
• URL sharing
  • Make it easy to share links
  • Track clicks, shares, RTs (on Twitter)
  • Bit.ly (url shortener)
  • Build your own with awe.sm
• Don’t hold on too tight with your content / This was one of my favorite parts of Beal’s presentation because there are too many companies that are too close minded.
  • RSS
  • Videos on YouTube
  • Images on Flickr
  • Delicious link page
  • Presentations on slideshare

• The future – Andy Beal talked about his “want list” of press releases in the future
  • Dynamic press release – ability to test different headlines, ability to change keywords in links, automatically fix typos, automatically update content
  • Link tracking across platforms
  • Performance based press release writing/distribution as opposed to the flat fee – example: Beal stated that he would rather pay $1000 for getting ‘x’ coverage than pay $200 for press release distribution and hope to get that ‘x’ coverage

SES Chicago Session – What’s the Link Between Search and Social?

Moderator: Aaron Goldman (Connectual)
Speakers:  Marshall Clark (Organic, Inc.), Tobias Peggs (OneRiot), Brian Boland (Facebook), Bryan Simkins (FedEx)

Unfortunately by the last session, I was too exhausted to listen attentively.  However, I managed to jot down a handful of notes and capture a few screenshots.  The content and images were provided by Tobias Peggs (OneRiot)

• The core of Facebook is identity, connections, and sharing
• Facebook becomes powerful because of the trusted source of information
• In regards to Google’s clickstream, Facebook is #1 for clicks in both upstream and downstream click analysis
• Social sharing replaces SEO in the realtime web
  • Optimize your pages for indexing –> Create compelling content
  • Solicit inbound links to your content –> Make it easy for people to share your content
  • Get to the top of the search results page –> Get to the to of the search results page
• SEM needs to work in realtime on the realtime web
  • Buy positions that deliver predictable traffic flow –> Hot topics are bursty, interest moves on quickly
  • Show your company next to brand-sensitive content –> Buzzy content is frequently not brand-sensitive
  • Know with certainty where content is being viewed –> Users engage with various modes of consumption
• 

Day 1 of SES Chicago 2009 was all about search, analytics, and conversion.  I posted a recap of the Jeff Jarvis keynote.

This SES Chicago recap will cover 2 of the 5 sessions from Day 1.  The 1st two sessions include “Search Analytics” and “Search: Where to Next?”.

My recaps will include some useful tidbits that I picked up during day 1 of SES Chicago.  Tweets were made from @marketwire as well as my personal handle @shinng using the hashtag #seschi and #rt2eat.  So what is the meaning of the latter hashtag?  Well, the creative marketing team @marketwire wanted to give back for the holiday season so we decided to take advantage of the Marketwire presence.  For every ReTweet of our tweets that include the hashtags #seschi #rt2eat, Marketwire will be donating $1.00 per RT for a max contribution of $500 to benefit the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

SES Chicago Session – Search Analytics

Moderator: Richard Zwicky (Enquisite)
Speakers: Jim Sterne (Web Analytics Association), Matthew Bailey (SES Advisory Board, Site Logic Marketing), Dennis Mortensen (Yahoo!)

The panel started off the session with a simple question, but it set the tone for the rest of the session.

Question: When it comes to analytics, what should you use?
Answer: Behavior

• The goal is to optimize process.  Focus on single process and optimize it.
• 4 Big Optimization Metrics – presentation, content, and images provided by Jim Sterne (Chairman, Web Analytics Association)
  • Behavior – what do they do
    
  • Attitude – how do they feel
    
  • Competition – how do you compare
    
  • Outcomes – what are the results
  • 
    
• How to prioritize analytics
  • Revenue is at risk
  • Boss asks for it
  • Does not overwhelm
  • Requires an analyst rather than being self serving
• Not all visitors are the same.  The key is segmentation – what did the user want and expect.
• 7 segments for search success – Presentation, images, and content provided by Matt Bailey (SES Advisory Board, SiteLogic)
  
  • Keyword buckets – “segments”; Sub-buckets – brand name, other terms
  • Segment acquisition
  • 
    
  • Segment bounce rates
  • Segment behavior
  • 
    
  • Segment content into persuasive pages, entry pages, time on page, and search
  • 
    
  • Segment entry points
  • Action – do something
• Keep analysis in context.  User behavior is different depending on the page they came from.

SES Chicago Session – Search: Where to Next?

Moderator: Simon Heseltine (AOL)
Speakers:  Eli Goodman (comScore), Justin Merickel (Efficient Frontier), Ronald Burr (WebVisible), Douglas McMillen (Microsoft Advertising)

• The session started off talking about the changing SERPs (search engine results page).  The point?  Advertisers need to think about the new multimedia SERP that displays products because information is adding more depth into the search page.
• The “bottled water” example
  • Image results dominate the search results
  • Concern raised regarding the user experience put out by Google, but it also shows how important it is to leverage the multimedia search results page
• Look at local business, product extensions, and comparisons.  The benefits:
  • Creating long tail automation
  • Enabling creatives to be more specific
  • Automates significant manual efforts
  • End result: greater coverage in search results
• The Zappos “Asics running shoes” example specifically regarding above-the-fold in Google
  
  • #2 in paid search results and 6 individual images from Zappos above the fold in Google
    
  • The Google user experience is questioned because who wants to see image results from the same company repeatedly?  On the flip side, it goes to show that leveraging this changing SERP is important.

• Creative management is:
  • Developing feeds
  • Mapping feeds to creative template
  • Generating ad variations from creative template
  • Assigning/matching to ad groups based on feed data
  • Pushing to search engines via API
• Is display now search like?  There are 2 big trends driving display towards search like performance
  1. Rapid expansion of auction based access to inventory
  2. Access to targeting data decoupled from media
• When exposed to both PPC and display ads, consumers were found to be 2 times more likely to complete a transaction.
• To get search like content, you have to retarget and use 3rd party data to do it effectively.
  

The speaker I was most looking forward to hear speak, Eli Goodman from comScore, ended the session.  His 3 talking points: Branding, In-Text Search, and Social Search

• Branding - you always want to be on the short list for the consumer
  
  • Stat: $118 billion for branding vs $68 billion for direct response
  • As organic searches become richer, sponsored results must keep up.  Expect innovations.
  • Don’t just think about the obvious terms, but related concepts and terms, i.e. “assistive terms”
    
  • Think of search as the traffic driver to the brand mechanism.
  • The GE “ecoimagination” and “clean energy” example – none of their pages rank highly for the latter term in the SERPs.  Very few people actually search for the term “ecoimagination”.
    
  • The point: Focus on what people are searching and related terms.  GE can focus on “clean energy”, “energy saving”, “energy saving tips”
• In-Text Search – search results that show up when you mouse-over content.  When hovering over a link, a pop over appears with a relevant link.
  
  • This mixes content consumption with search possibilities.
  • Value of in-text offers a way to be informative, useful,  and entertaining.
  • The most useful content increases user engagement.
  • As functionality increases, so does CTR (click through rate).
  • The Hellman’s Recipes example – when hovering over related key terms, a pop over appears with recipe ideas and ingredient lists.
• Social Search
  • Alternative search properties such as Facebook show strong year-over-year search growth from September 2008.  The exception is MySpace.
  • Social search is the next frontier, thus social search results need to be more relevant.
  • Food for thought: think about how you trust your friends for one thing, while you trust other friends for different things.
  • Optimize content for social networks.  This presents a tremendous opportunity for marketers.
• The guy from Microsoft Advertising specifically Bing, was too sales-y so I went in-and-out mentally.  The few tidbits that I did jot down include:
  
  • Bing’s upcoming mobile search will be similar to the online search user experience.
  • Stat: Mobile broadband users will reach 30% penetration in 2010
  • Now is the time to start testing and learning because mobile inventory is much cheaper for broad terms and mobile search is seeing 2-3 times higher click-through-rates.
    
  • Stat: In 2008, 5.2 million mobile search users, by 2013, the number will jump to 56.2 million
    

December 1, 2009 is World AIDS Day and Twitter has temporarily changed its branding to the trademark (RED).  World AIDS Day is observed the 1st of December every year to raise awareness of AIDS.  The 2009 theme is Universal Access and Human Rights.

I applaud Twitter for jumping on board the (RED) campaign and changing their branding temporarily.

Online Marketing is serious business.  People are talking social media statistics and providing links to serious news about social media, SEO, blah blah blah.  Well, it’s Friday and time to laugh off the stress.

These are some of the funniest Facebook mistakes that I’ve enjoyed courtesy of the sources listed at the end of this post.  It never ceases to amaze me how idiotic some people are.  For more, go to Lamebook, a site that posts the funniest and lamest on Facebook.  Sure you’ve seen most of these, but it never gets old.   Have one you want to submit? Contact me.  Enjoy these golden nuggets…

Sources: College Humor, eBaum’s World, Gawker

Every Friday, I plan on posting the most useful online marketing stories of the week.  The majority of you have probably seen the top marketing news via Twitter, but it’s also a way for me to archive for my own benefit and learnings.  Selfish and helpful at the same time right?

Most popular post on Marketing Shindig – How to Optimize Your Twitter Page

My Personal Favorites for the Top Online Marketing Posts of the Week

1. 50 Blogging Lessons To Know If You’re Starting Today by Adam Singer of The Future Buzz
   • Okay so we all know the benefits in blogging.  Still not sure?  Then be sure to read Technorati’s 2009 State of the Blogosphere.  There are numerous benefits to blogging, blah blah blah, yada yada yada.
   • Why I liked Adam’s post so much – Everyone likes lists, but everyone loves lists that are beneficial in helping one succeed.  I agree that the lessons will help those starting a blog, but it will certainly benefit those who have been blogging for years.  Don’t let the title fool you, it is NOT just for those starting a blog.
   • Out of the 50, below are just some of my favorites:
     • If you wouldn’t do it for free, don’t do it at all.  In other words:  do it for passion and for yourself and you can’t lose.
     • It’s not going to be easy – nothing rewarding is.  /Nick – this applies to life in general, but when it comes to blogging, it takes commitment; no joke.  Many of my sites have fell by the wayside because I just didn’t have the time.
     • …and get involved in conversations with smart, interesting people.
     • The best blogs are products of success from pull, not push.
     • Realize that promotion is secondary to content.
2. HubSpot Interview with Gary Vaynerchuk by HubSpot
   • Why I liked the interview with Gary V so much – Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) is one of the more influential social media users and success stories today.   The “Social Media Sommelier” has used social media to successfully grow his family’s wine business.  HubSpot does a great job interviewing internet celebrities and asking insightful questions.
   • My favorite quotes from the interview:
     • “I don’t feel like a rockstar, I feel ridiculously lucky…” /Nick – love the humble attitude.
     • “Passion gives you the drive it takes to make a product awesome and convince people that it’s awesome…” /Nick – awesome.
     • “…realize that I wasn’t going to own the New York Jets if I didn’t make a change…It took 6 months before anybody really took notice of what I was doing.” /Nick – so incredibly inspirational. This portion of the interview was by far my favorite.  Getting the background of success stories.
     • “You can’t be a fake brand.”
3. 3 Realities of Social Media by guest author Michael Brito on PR 2.0
   • Why I liked Michael’s post so much – The 3 realities that Michael points out in his post hit the nail on the head.   It’s concise and straight to the point, but also very true.
   • What are the 3 realities?  Consumers already get it, brands still trying to figure it out, Brands should focus on people first, No such thing as a social media expert yet.
4. 5 Must-Read Social Media Marketing Studies compiled by Social Media Examiner
   • Why I liked this compilation of studies so much – I personally love stats, but only from relevant and respected sources.  Yes, there are about 5,365 social media “studies” out there, but only a handful of those studies are from reputable sources.  Just a good, take-it-with-a-grain-of-salt-but-still-interesting read.
   • The numbers discussed: 26 million (1 in 7) adults will use Twitter monthly, Americans spend 17% of online time on social media sites, over half of marketers will be using social media, blogs are considered most useful tool by over half of businesses, 3/4 of marketers plan to increase social media use in 2010.
5. Future of Deliverability: The Role of User Interaction by Mark Brownlow of Email Marketing Reports
   • With all the talk about social media and how those 5,365 (made up number FYI) studies are saying the usage of social media is increasing in popularity, email marketing is still an essential part of one’s business.  The ROI is tremendous so I was pleasantly surprised to read such insightful posts by Mark on email marketing especially this post.
   • Why I liked Mark’s post so much – Mark talks about the engagement aspect of email marketing by discussing user interaction and reputation.  I liked the fact that he was able to get feedback from several deliverability experts.
6. Google Analytics Now More Powerful, Flexible and Intelligent by Google Analytics Blog
   • Why I liked this post so much – More power to google analytics is always a good thing.
   • The major takeaways on the enhancements: define up to 20 goals per profile, ability to track mobile websites/apps, advanced table filtering, multiple custom variables, “Analytics Intelligence” which will provide automatic alerts of significant changes to your data, among others.  Videos are available.
7. Want More Clicks?  Tweet Less by Dan Zarrella
   • Why I liked Dan’s post so much – I personally like Dan’s analytical approach.  Perhaps it was the pretty graphs and all the neat colors used in the graphs, but let me tell you that you will get at least one takeaway reading Dan’s post.
   • What does he go over: CTR (click through rate) by links per hour, Average CTR by links per hour, CTR by links per day, Average CTR by links per day.
   • What is the main takeaways besides reading the title of the post?
     • “The more frequently you tweet links, the fewer clicks you’ll get”
     • “If you want your tweet to get noticed and RT’ed, slow down your posting rate”

The Marketing Videos I Enjoyed Most This Week

• I never get tired of the always interesting, extremely fascinated, where-did-they-get-the-numbers-from-please-show-me-the-sources video titled “Social Media Revolution” that answers the question, “Is Social Media a Fad?”.  The answer is obvious -NO-, but the stats in this video are quite amazing.

• Notice how quickly the buzz around Google Wave died down.  I was pumped when I received a Google Wave invite, but after approximately 1 min 52 sec, I logged off.  However, this user has made Google Wave very entertaining by utilizing one of the most memorable scenes of Pulp Fiction.

See you next Friday for more top online marketing posts of the week.