While the importance of being on page one for your business has not changed, social media has shaken up how you get there. As social networking has increased, search engines are forced to pay attention to tweets, (public) facebook updates, forum discussions, Youtube videos etc. The list goes on.

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In Today’s web, Social media matters to the search engines,  which makes optimizing your businesses’ social media presence a top priority. Recently, Brian Solis wrote a fascinating article about optimizing your social media presence in order to improve your search engine positioning.

25% of search results, for the world’s top 20 brands link to user generated content (Socialnomics July, 2009).  This number is bound to get higher as social network interaction increases.

Facebook has just surpassed Google as the number one traffic driver on the web.

From these statistics it would be easy to paint a portrait of a world where Facebook could eat the entire web, and SERP is completely determined by social content. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves — Posting items about your business to Facebook and Twitter everyday is not enough to rank well on search engines, or communicate your message to your target audience.

Good content that encourages interaction and sharing is now more important that ever to your search engine ranking position.  Spending time crafting resourceful content that is engaging and shareable, combined with patience, hard work, and clean coding will get you to the top of the search engines.

Curating content, both your own, and content that offers value to your target audience syndicated expertly on social media channels is a necessary addition to any SEO campaign.

How is your business or SEO company integrating social media  to improve your search enginge rankings?

With the emergence and mass-adoption of social media, marketing buzz words are now on steroids. So, here at the Ocean Agency, we thought we would help out business owners by translating marketing buzz words and break down how they can improve your business, minus the marketing speak.

1) Augmented Reality

Definition: Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery – creating a mixed reality.” (Wikipedia)

Our Definition: Mixing technology into physical real-world experiences

Example:

Does augmented reality make sense for you business? Possibly.

Here is one example:

If you’re a restaurant, you could have the food items on the menu reveal themselves in all 3-D glory.

Obviously, augmented reality is expensive to produce, but the future lies in digital experiences mixed in with consumers physical spaces that tell a compelling story, or, more importantly, offer some kind of value.

Biggest take away for your businesses: Incorporate technologies that improve the experience of your customers.

2) Geo-Location

Definition:” Geo-location is the identification of the real-world geographic location of an Internet-connected computer, mobile device, website visitor or other.” (Wikipedia)

Our Definition: Identifying and targeting  customers based on their location.

Examples: Foursquare location targeted specials and advertisements:

Does geo-location make sense for your business? Probably.

This one is definitely living up to the hype thus far. With the expansion of social networking on mobile devices, people are sharing their location data at an increasing rate. Businesses can create relevant ads on these platforms that aren’t intrusive.

With this data businesses can help consumers make decisions, save money, and build brand loyalty. A win-win for both brands and consumers.

Something to keep in mind:

Recently, Foursquare has partnered with a variety of major media outlets like BravoTV and the New York Times. The only incentive for users from these partnerships?

A Bravo TV or New York Times Olympic Badge.

These are great incentives for Foursquare addicted PR, communication and markerting types, but in order to encourage mainstream adoption the incentives will have to increase.

Biggest take-away for your business: Make your place of businesses a true destination. People share their location to gain incentives and because it says something about them. Ask yourself this question: Would people want to tell the world that they are at your place of business? Why? Why not?

3) Brand Utility:

Definition: “The brand utility method is concerned less with feature sets and more with functionality. How can your products make the lives of consumers better? That is the question that a brand utility advertising campaign seeks to answer.”  (Printing and Advertising)

Our Definition: Improving the lives of your customers to inspire loyalty in your customer base.

Example:

ING Direct.

If ING Direct is a bank, why does it have cafes in major cities in the US?

Brand Utility.

The ING Direct cafe offers free wifi, $1 coffee/tea and $1 pastries, in addition to employees who know all about ING Direct products.

They improve the lives of their customers by offering discounted coffee and food and even give those with an ING direct account free coffe or tea on Fridays. The ING direct cafe concept is a perfect example of brand utility, and it makes incentives offered by other banks look lame/miniscule in comparison.

Biggest take away for your business: If you improve the lives of your customers, they will thank you publicly and keep coming back.

What can you do to improve the lives of your customers in a way that fits with your overall brand message?

Alright, now it’s your turn. Business owners:

Would you use these tools in your marketing plan? Why or why not?

Until this week, our department had been using Yahoo! Messenger, which incorporates a lot of features that we didn’t really need (stock ticker, news, Y! Voice) and was invasive to our PCs and workflow.  Our manager Timothy suggested the switch to Yammer, which our department promptly adopted. And… pardon the creative spelling here… we loooooooove it.

For those unfamiliar with Yammer, it functions similarly to Twitter: you update your own status, and it is shared in a feed. But you must have a company email address to join, and only people from your company are included in your network and can see your updates. Your company’s feed is private. Yammer also has a desktop application, so you can keep it open in a window and view your coworkers’ updates. For us as a company, this is incredibly useful for two major reasons:

1. Ease and immediacy of communication and sharing
2. Specificity of networks within that group communication

Ease of Use in Yammer

The communal nature and immediate communication of Yammer is essential for our company, where teamwork is important to our quality of work. For instance, in my Yammer feed, I can share a link to an informative article to everyone in the company at once, instead of emailing it out or messaging it to multiple coworkers. Or, if I need help thinking of a topic for some content, I can ask everyone for their ideas by updating my status.

In fact, I just did:

Useful, eh?

The interactions are instant and open, enhancing our abilities to work as a team and bettering our work overall.

Specificity of Networks in Yammer

Meanwhile, you can also share your updates with only specific groups that you create. If I have a great idea for my fellow content developers, I can update my status and share that update just with our group. Your Yammer feed quickly fills with information that is relevant and helpful to you, and you don’t find yourself sorting through noise.

So, what lessons can we take from this as content developers?

If you look at your website’s content as a communication tool for a group (which it is), you can apply what we learned from Yammer and use it to create better content.

Ease of Use In Online Content

Yammer gave us instantaneous and easy communication with a select group. Well, the people reading your website’s content are already a self-selecting group — so how are you making communication with them easy? Here’s how you should be doing it:
1. Write organized and optimized content. Understand how people read on the web, and write your content so it will actually be read by the people you are sharing it with. If your content isn’t presented properly, you’re likely to lose some readers.
2. Share things with your group/audience that are relevant and necessary. On Yammer, no one wants to read updates on what you ate for breakfast or how you are feeling. Therefore, you share content in your updates that is useful for your team. Likewise, you shouldn’t flood your website or blog with content that isn’t useful for your readers. A blog post filled with marketing messages will alienate readers who are on your site looking for content that is useful to them.
3. Require user action. To gather information on Yammer, you sometimes have to pose questions to your coworkers. Fostering interaction with your users through the content on your website is a great way to make that content useful for you and them. Don’t be afraid of asking questions in your content to communicate with your group of readers. Invite your readers to participate instead of lurk; use calls-to-action.

Specificity of Networks in Online Content

On Yammer, you know who your audience is and who you are directing certain communications to. You are, at the same time, a part of that group yourself. Writing content on your website for specific groups, but also as a part of that group, makes that content more effective. You should:
1. Write for specific groups. Obviously, your content should be of interest to your customers or people who might visit your website looking for information. But don’t be afraid to write to specific groups within that larger audience. Make it easy for them recognize who the content is relevant for in the title of the post or page — you don’t want your users to read two paragraphs of something they aren’t interested in and then bounce.
2. Write as a part of the group. Web users are becoming incredibly wary of marketing or sales copy. When you are writing for your customers, write as a part of that group — not as a marketer writing to an audience or a business owner writing to customers. Whatever the interest is that unites your group, identify it and participate in it. Create content that you would find useful as a part of that group, and your users will find that content valuable, too.

In the workplace, finding a communication tool that enhances your company’s efficiency and teamwork is incredibly helpful. In our case, that tool was Yammer. In content development, treating your content as a communication tool, and trying to make it the best tool it can be, helps you create the quality content for your users. Apply our Yammer-based lessons and start creating content that brings readers to your site and keeps them coming back.

What makes this even more interesting is that 93% of teens are online:

These figures illustrate something really important about teenagers: They care about their friends and their actual physical network. Moreover, psychology has taught us that many teenagers) are terrible at planning ahead and thinking about the future. They live in the moment and with the consequences. The prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that is most involved in future planning and decision making, does not fully develop until your early 20s.

What does this have to do with “public” information sharing, like Twitter or blogging?

1) In order to blog or tweet, you inherently have to believe that you have something remotely valuable to say. This requires both a sense of personal identity and self-esteem, both of which are developing during the teen years.

2) Tweeting and blogging are linked to “personal branding” more than anything else. Personal branding requires foresight, introspection and networking with people who aren’t your “real” friends. If teens are deeply focused on physical friendship and developing a personal identity, the link between Twitter, blogs and personal branding might be seen as “lame” or inauthentic.

If teens don’t tweet or blog, how do you target teens with an interactive marketing campaign?

1) Target teens through their social graph, and create content that will give them social capital within their real life circle of friends:

A deal, discount or contest may not be enough. For teens to pay attention, creates something innovative that will make them look good within their group of friends.

2) SMS campaigns work:

We have seen SMS campaigns take off. Texting is something that is natural to teenagers, and because its ubiquitous and easy it’s accepted by teens everywhere.

So these tactics are working now, but what about the near future?

1) Video:

Check your social networks. Are you starting to see more Skype and Google video chats going on? Video-chatting is big among teens because it reinforces the bonds with their physical friend network, and it’s easier than a phone call or text if you really want to talk to someone. It’s the most rewarding virtual hang out.

Businesses and brands can do much more with video chatting. Whether it be in the customer service, branding or public relations realm.

2) Mobile application tie-ins

This year, the Dockers Super Bowl commercial will feature a tie in with “Shazzam,” one of the most popular smart phone applications out there. Shazzam tells you the artist and album of any song that is playing where you are — just hold up your phone. For the Dockers ad, if you utilize Shazzam during the commercial, it will take you to a site where you can download the jingle from the commercial.

It is innovative thoughts like these — taking services that teens already use and creating new uses — that have a big impact.

Businesses should aim to find tie-ins with well-known and well-used mobile applications.

3) Geo-location (that makes sense)

I’m not talking Foursquare. I’m talking geo-location tools that are relevant to teens — location tools that quickly and easily show them where there friends are. Think Facebook with check-ins that are broadcasted to who you want, when you want.

Alright youth-obsessed society, let’s talk about how to target teens with interactive marketing!

But what about the inside pages? As a content developer or business owner working on a site, do you still consider every word carefully? Do you monitor the consistency of tone and message closely? As views of a page decrease, does your attention to its content, too? It shouldn’t.

A complete website will have finely-tuned content on every page. Here’s why: SEO companies know that usable, optimized content drives an SEO campaign and that users, like Google, recognize quality content.

Embrace good content on your inside pages!

Great Content Enhances Loyalty

Quality content throughout your site’s inside pages builds customer and visitor loyalty. The people who venture to your inside pages are also the people who will come back to your site again and again for the information it provides. Upon seeing valuable information in perfectly executed copy, customers and visitors alike will return to your site.

As a web writer, you can present your client as an authority by providing polished and informative content. Authority builds the trust of users and encourages them to convert into customers. Through authority and trust, you can continue to bring customers back to the site again and again.

Repeat customers will:
- Use your site each time they need your good or service.
- Spread the word about your company by recommending you to their friends and social communities.
- Cite your content as expert info on their own blog and in their social communities, promoting your site further.

Users of the site, even if they aren’t paying for anything yet, will return if there is a freshly updated stream of well-presented content.

Repeat users will:
- Cite your content as expert info on their own blog and in their social communities, building your authority within your industry.
- Be likely to use your company over your competition when they DO decide to make a purchase.
- Recommend you to those who are searching for your services.

If your inside copy isn’t informative, readable and organized, great homepage copy can fail to convert your visitors into customers or keep those customers coming back for more.

Content With SEO Techniques Brings in New Users

Good content isn’t just well written, informative, and perfectly organized. It’s well-optimized for the search engines, too. Using SEO techniques in your titles, subtitles and organization makes the content more usable for your current readers and helps you draw in new users from the search engines. Since these SEO techniques benefit the user and further your business goals, you can and should apply them carefully to each inside page.

Copyblogger offers great tips of how to create cornerstone content that search engines love and how to use SEO techniques that readers love. Lure those readers in from the search engines and keep them coming back with your quality content — that should be the goal of web writers for their sites. While your homepage copy catches a user’s eye and conveys your principle message, your careful attention to the content on the FAQ or About page could ultimately be what converts that user.

Well-optimized content brings new users in from the search engines. Informative content brings people back. Perfect content converts users to paying customers. Why would you pay less attention to inside copy when it has the power to do all that?

According to HubSpot’s “Top Twitter Cities” Chicago is number 3 in the world, behind London and Los Angeles.

Now, this Hubspot grade is not about the number of Twitter users, but based on the the number of “elite” Twitter users in an area.

What does this mean for your Chicago business? Connecting with those in the Chicago social media world is a great way to generate word of mouth about your business or product. Investing time in social networking is more and more important as social networking activity continues to grow. It has recently overtaken porn as the 1 activity for people on the web.

When you look at the top 50 Chicago Twitter users you see that they are not just marketers, PR people, or advertisers. They are the folks that are innovators,  journalists, publications, and brands that truly have a pulse on the City.

No longer is social media some new or experimental format, it is the media.

As business in Chicago, social media presents itself as a giant opportunity to expand your business. With an accurate plan and measurable objectives the time to act is now.

]]> http://www.theoceanagency.com/blog/20100125/in-chicago-social-media-is-now-the-media/feed/ 1 http://www.theoceanagency.com/blog/20100114/3-newish-tools-to-improve-internal-business-communication-and-creativity/ http://www.theoceanagency.com/blog/20100114/3-newish-tools-to-improve-internal-business-communication-and-creativity/#comments Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:01:49 +0000 Daniel Prager http://www.theoceanagency.com/blog/?p=778 As a small to medium sized interactive marketing agency in Chicago,we have an advantage over larger firms: Our internal communication.

Interns can talk directly with the principals, a link building specialist can work directly with a coder. As someone who focuses on social media, I can work directly with our design team to make sure that social applications are built into the initial design.

We are always looking to improve our internal as well as external communication, and here some new(ish) social media tools that will help:

1) Evernote

Evernote is a great way to keep track of inspiration, everywhere you go. At work, we are constantly interrupted and lose our train of thought easily, never forget that website you meant to blog about or that snipet of code ever again.

2) Group Posterous/Tumblr

People respond to humor and creativity. Setting up group Posterous and Tumblr accounts are great ways to encourage creative interaction among employees, and  show some personality. Showing  personality is one of the first steps to building online engagement with potential customers.

3) Teambox

Like Google Wave, Teambox has set out to improve the way we collaborate. Unlike Google Wave it isn’t creepy. Teambox is great for assigning tasks, organizing information, and for group collaboration without any of the clutter. Also, all of your information is stored securely in the “cloud” so you don’t have to worry about jump drives etc.

What online tools do you use to improve your internal communcation?

Today, Cisco has released findings from its latest study about how business use social media to colloberate and interact with customers.

What is so special about this study?

1) The process:

The study utilized qualitative and not just quantitative methods. By using in depth interviews by graduate students and professors from universities all over the world, the data is espcially robust and reliable.

2) The findings:

Companies need to integrate their new media efforts with internal IT professionals, and that internal social media use needs to be more effectively organized and regulated.

IT professionals? Regulation of social media efforts? What does this mean for your business?

1) You need to integrate social media into all aspects of your business.

No longer is social media merely a marketing, communications, or public relations tool it is an essential element in the structure and design of your business.

IT pepole, or at the very least, an employee who is comfortable with all the technological aspects of your business needs to put these social technologies in place.

Just as your IT person may have set up your wireless network, printer, or microsoft outlook, they need to install and regulate social media applications into your technological infrastructure.

2) You need social media guidelines and policies for you business:

Having a social strategy is more than having a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube or micro-blogging sites. It’s about having a vision and the infrastructure to encourage employee collaboration both internally and externally on social channels. Take time to craft a social business manifesto, that includes an overall strategy, but also includes social media guidelines for employees and management.

As a business owner, how do you control what employees post on social networks? Well, you can’t. However, you can have clear guidelines that dictate what is effective, what is acceptable, and what is unacceptable.

While the importance of these concepts have absolutely been written about before, the qualitative design, validity, and caliber of the Cisco study illustrates the importance of social business in a profound way.

Here is another great write up of the study.

It’s time. Social media is no longer an add on, it is an integral part of your future business design.

How have you integrated social into your business infrastructure?

While social media experts and consultants may tell you to “crush it” , become a “trust agent” or harness the power of the “groundswell” they generally underestimate  the time, investment, and strategy that goes into effective social media marketing, PR, and branding.

With an ample time investment, a targeted strategy, and fresh and relevant content, your chance at social media ROI is great.

However, If your company is not winning with social media, I want you to ask yourself one question: Has everyone in your company bought into the idea of being open, transparent, honest and– wait for it, social?

Unless you  are already a household name, the best way to get something out of social media is to invest in it. Put in the time, put in the effort, and, eventually, the return will come. So go ahead, be a social company. Your patience, time, and energy will pay off, I promise.

Here are examples for you skeptics.

I’ll break this post down into three sections: What I’ve learned about individual Twitter use, What I’ve learned about using Twitter for small business, and what I’ve learned about using Twitter for larger corporations and well known brands.

What I’ve learned About Individual Twitter Use :

I started using Twitter because I heard about it from countless blogs and press outlets. By no means was I the first person to use Twitter. Unlike many Twitter users I was only mildly interested in the celebrity stalking aspect. I’ll admit, my initial Twitter use was driven by selfish motives. I wanted to keep tabs on the online marketing industry, so I could have a chance at getting a job out of college in a terrible recession.

While this wish did come true (Thanks), the power of Twitter lay in the accessibility and transparency of industry “thought leaders” . Sitting on Twitter was like sitting in a room of intelligent conversations that I would have never been privy to otherwise. I was/am like a sponge, listening and reading all of the articles and blogs these thought leaders shared, until I felt confident enough in my own intellect to add the conversation.

From there, it’s been a story of constant learning, engagement, and even the forming of real life friendships and offline networking.

A couple of thought leaders who have really influenced me (among many):

Sarah Evans

Lauren Fernandez

Ian Schafer

David Armano

As an individual, Twitter gives you the power to identify the smartest and most influential people in the arenas you care about, engage with them, and then craft your own personal voice.

By no means is this an attack on anyone who uses Twitter to stay abreast of the latest celebrity scandal or sports score. Those are viable uses for Twitter as well.

Personally, I feel that your Twitter stream is a reflection of your personal goals, and perhaps more accurately, the value you place on the role of social media in the future.

What I’ve Learned About Using Twitter For Small Businesses:

Contests, giveaways and special promotions are the best ways to “generate buzz”. Twitter is also especially effective for customer service, and creating an accessible and transparent image. When it comes to brands on Twitter, 44% of people follow a brand for exclusive deals and promotions.

Listen to your customers (if they are talking about you on Twitter already), offer deals and promotions, and target publications, blogs, and individuals to get your deals, promotions, or special offers some traction.

Some small businesses who have done great things with Twitter:

Foiled Cupcakes, Green City Market, Free Spirit Yacht Cruises

What I’ve Learned About Using Twitter for Well Known Brands/ Individuals:

People are already talking about your product or activities on Twitter. If you’re feeling ambitious you can respond to every comment, but you may want to pick and choose your responses based on the Twitter influence. Tools like Klout and Listorous are great for identifying influence.

Thus, for very visible and talked about brands and individuals Twitter is really best utilized, first and foremost, as a PR and customer service tool.

While there are thousands of celebrities and huge brands on Twitter, here are some of my favorites:

Azziz Ansari, Southwest Air, Jim Gaffigan, ESPN , OchoCinco

This is a very basic run down about what I’ve learned about Twitter in the little over a year that I’ve been using it. I can’t wait to learn more in the coming year.

Have you learned some of the same lessons? Looking forward to hearing about it. Do you disagree with any of my generalizations?