While you can regale your client hopefuls with statistics of SEO’s importance (like “42% of search users click the top-ranking link. 8% click the second-ranking link, and the click-through rate (CTR) continues to drop thereof” or “organic click-through generates 25% higher conversion rates than equivalent Pay-Per-Click (PP) click-through”), statistics can seem vast and vague to some. Luckily, there are stories.

This one is about indie rock band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Internet Buzz
It’s an old story, but it’s fitting.

As NPR put it, a “wave of Internet buzz … helped launch the group’s career.”

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are one of the first “Internet bands.” It did no promotion, other than self-promotion. It reportedly sold albums out of the guys’ apartment. It used the Internet to reach people, and reach people it did.

Wikipedia puts it bluntly: ” [Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is] notable for achieving [its] initial fame and commercial success via the Internet rather than through a record label.”

While CYHSY (a band well worth checking out, by the way) were not using search engine optimization, it was using the power of social media and the blogosphere. Nowadays, every start-up band attempts to do this, but no one does it quite as well as CYHSY did. By leveraging the power of certain blogs and finally ending up on Chicago’s own Pitchfork Media, the leading online music magazine for underground bands (the same magazine credited with launching the career of The Arcade Fire), the band ended up selling more than 200,000 copies of its debut album, according to Sound Unwound.

Strictly through the Internet, the band was able to come from a small apartment in NYC to playing the Late Show with David Letterman. Just take a look:

How This Band’s Story Relates to SEO Companies
And this is what you can do with your product. Indie music blogs are, to a degree, akin to search engine results for certain products, brands and services.

When a music lover looks for new music, he scans the blogs and reads whatever shows up quickly and easily. He goes to Pitchfork Media and other prominent blogs.

When a consumer searches the Internet for a product, he reads what pops up first on the search engines. He goes to Google, since that is the most trusted and prominent of the search engines.

And that is where you want to be. At the top of Google.

I’m not saying do what CYHSY did and forgo all other types of promotion, but the Internet holds great power. It is where people are and where people connect. It can help a band sell 200,000 records without a record label. And it can help your product be the new big story.

The power is there; you just need to capture it. And working with SEO companies makes that possible.

Hemingway, in one of his frequent moments of brilliance, once said “There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.”

But, he was mistaken. There is one rule on writing, and he actually is responsible for stating it in the most Hemingway-esque way possible (short, concise and communicative): “The first draft of anything is shit.”

Both are true and relate directly to search engine optimization writing. As Timothy wrote, it is important to write solid, readable content more than posting frequently. But while you may have great information, how do you make it readable?

When writing a blog post, it is important to remember the basics of writing itself, then worry about writing for the Web. And these Hemingway quotes are extremely pertinent to online writing.

“The First Draft of Anything is [... err... trash]“
I know from experience that writers, stereotypically, don’t like to believe this. I know I don’t. But it’s true. It’s always good to write something and, if time allots, take a day or two before rereading it. This is the best way to edit. For example, if you have 10 blog posts to do in a week, spend a day or two on research, spend a day or two knocking out the articles, then read them in the order you wrote them. This way, the one you wrote longest ago will be your first edit, and you can see the mistakes and wordiness and superfluous flair that seemed like a great idea at the time.

Writing is like having one drink too many: What seems like a great idea in the excitement of the moment will probably seem very different after a little time of reflection.

“Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.”
Another great Hemingway quote that perfectly describes the art and business of writing. Sometimes a blank screen or sheet of paper can look a little like a cliff face when you don’t have carabiners or crampons. If a particular subject has you stumped, come back to it later. This is the importance of spacing out all your topics and/or clients. Don’t focus on one before moving to another. Do a bit here and a bit there to keep yourself fresh, spry and producing the best writing possible.

And remember, good writing is simplistic. To quote Mr. Hemingway yet again, ““Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.”

The purpose of writing is to communicate. So do this in the most simplistic way possible. This isn’t 18th-century Russia: the days of long, winding passages of words stacked like broken steps are over. Here’s an example:

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.

1) Mobile Search

Google has recognized the growing power and widespread use of the mobile internet and is attempting to engage people on their mobile devices. Especially when it comes to searching for business listings, restaurants, or directions these are natural things to search for on mobile devices.

Each favorite place listing has a “QR” code attached that takes the mobile user directly to the businesses’ Google listing.

Great way to spur the use of mobile Google search.

2) Geo-location

Watch out. Google knows us early adopter folks are having fun with Foursquare, Gowalla and a few others. With Google’s favorite places mobile program they are setting the stage to create contests, coupons, and scavenger hunts with Google engineering behind it. This means amazing usability and simple design.

3) Augmented Reality

Imagine walking down the street and having a coupon code from Google pop up based on your mobile search for “ice cream” on Google Maps.

How about holding your phone up, and the places with Google business listings appear with a rating, user reviews, and daily deals?

While the Yelp Iphone app has tried to harness augmented reality technology, Google will definitely do it better.

4) Deals, Coupons, User Generated Content

Why do you follow a business on Twitter or Facebook? Generally, it’s to make yourself privy to special discounts, offers, and hear about brand happenings first.

So the Google favorite places program encourages businesses to create a profile where they can post coupons, deals, pictures and video. So for all us social media deal and contest hounds, will the Google favorite places program draw us away from following brands and businesses on social media profiles? Maybe.

5) Measurement

How do you measure mobile social media networking?

Well, while social media is amazingly important for branding, PR, and customer satisfaction, when it comes to pure social media marketing businesses want to see the bottom line. They want traffic, engagement, and sales.

With the favorite places business profiles, Google has made it easier than ever to track that “bottom line”.

It’s pretty easy to imagine a world where coupon codes, special offers and deals are integrated into your overall website analytics.

Imagine if you could tell a client: 240 people came to your store after finding your Monday special via Google maps on their  mobile phone.

While we can obviously track social media contests, coupons and interactions — a direct integration into Google Analytics could revolutionize the way we measure online marketing efforts.

These are just my initial thoughts after recieving the Google Favorite Places invite, how do you think it will impact online business marketing?

Transmedia, quite simply, is storytelling across multiple forms of media. The term is attributed to Henry Jenkins, a professor of cinematic arts at USC.

Transmedia is not that new of a concept, but the emergence of today’s social and mobile networking technologies, combined with the myriad of entry points to brand messaging, means that transmedia storytelling should be central to every marketing effort, online or otherwise.

Why Transmedia Storytelling is important for marketers:

Every American is subject to around 5,000 advertising messages a day.

Some would argue that the main goal of marketing today is to create powerful word of mouth, building up a network of brand ambassadors that sell your product for you. Build trust, build engagement, listen to your customers and the dollars will come.

Word of mouth is extremely powerful, and as research consistently shows, social networking sites have given us the technological platform to put word of mouth marketing on steroids. Eighty-three percent of online shoppers said they are interested in sharing information about their purchases with people they know, while 74 percent are influenced by the opinions of others in their decision to buy the product in the first place (Manage Smarter, September 2009).

But, as more and more businesses, large and small alike, realize the power of social media marketing, social networks are going to get extremely saturated with brand messaging. In fact, as any constant user of social networks will tell you, they already are. Some people are already being paid for their “opinions” and social media endorsements, and in a realm where building trust is paramount, I’m beginning to lose trust in those “influencers” who spend far too much time promoting themselves and products.

Just as we fast forward through commercials on our Tivo, we may begin to “unfollow” or tune out blatant product promoters on social networking sites.

I’m ready for better marketing. I want more than social endorsements; I want innovative branded entertainment with characters that I connect with, storylines that I want to share with my friends, and of course, access points to that story from everywhere that I consume media. Marketers, this is a call to action. Let’s Get Back to Telling Stories.

Okay. So I guess you want an example:

Brainstorm

This a hilarious and amazing web series from Altoids and Fox Mobile studios. It could legitimately be a major network sitcom. Everything is top notch, from the production to the product placement.

I will happily watch 8  three to four minute ads for Altoids, if it is placed in this entertaining of a package. What’s more, I can access this content from my mobile phone, follow the main character on Twitter, and become a fan of the show on Facebook.

What’s even more exciting? Even more could be done to tell this story.

How about a mobile app with funny sayings from the characters? what about personal facebook pages for some of the main characters?  How about a special 8 minute episode that airs after the office on Hulu?

The possibilities are really endless, and when you tell a great story, people will pay attention to your product.

Now transparency, trust, and engagement are still central to the success of the campaign, but it all begins with a story. A story that I can access from anywhere and that is interesting on all of the platforms I use in my daily life.

So tell us what you think.

Is transmedia storytelling the future of marketing?  Have marketers forgotten the importance of the story in their quest for online word of mouth?

1) Threadless — Threadless is a great T-Shirt company from Chicago that has built out an impressive fan page that really reflects its brand message. This recent Adage article claims that brand experiences are the new advertising– when you look at a facebook fan page like this you have to agree.

4) Addidas Originals — Fashion brands have always understood the importance of design and messaging. Addidas Originals have a really well designed and beautifully branded page. The experience you get in an Addidas Originals store really translates to the Facebook fan page. Also, with a focus on originality they have built out an innovative page where the focus is on “you”.

5) Red Bull– Red Bull, like Jimmy John’s has made Facebook their interactive hub. I really love how they integrate the Twitter profiles of the athletes the sponsor directly into the fan page. We all know that integration is key to SM, and the Red Bull fan page is a great example of how to do it.

6)Bud Light Golden Wheat — Miller Light has marketed itself as the domestic light beer with the most flavor. By introducing Bud Light Golden Wheat, Budweiser is fighting back, and has taken this message to its Facebook Fan Page. It has a neat interactive element where you can place gifts on your friends pages and participate in polls as well.

7) Carrot Creative — A social media marketing company from Brooklyn, Carrot has worked with some enormous brands and has really done a good job of connecting design and social media. My favorite part about the page? In order to learn more about them, you have to become a fan:

Screenshot 1:

And once you become a fan….

8 )  Buddy Media is an agency that has primarily focused on building facebook pages and applications for clients. Their page does a great job of incorporating their website directly to their Facebook page.

9) Snow Patrol , the alternative rock band with members hailing from Belfast, Glasgow and London, epitomized their love for music in this interactive Facebook “Pub Trivia” that pits fans against fans and friends against friends. The page both captures the bands passion for music and is aesthetically off the charts.

10) Southwest Airlines carries their “bags fly for free” message throughout its Facebook page, engaging its consumers by asking the question “What would you do for $100?” By asking its fans to submits video replies, Southwest fans are offered the chance to win a vacation AND help the airline create what’s bound to be interesting content.

11) Red bull sends fans on a scavenger hunt for the brand’s energy shots with the help of clues. This fan page does a great job of giving its fans a completely red bull experience. It’s all there: high energy clues, fast reaction time, intrigue, providing one winner to fan page fame and a trip to Red Bull BC One in New York.

12) Coors Light made its fan page the ultimate authority on the NFL, offering contests, fantasy football leagues and advice for fantasy football hopefuls. Coors Light also partners with ESPN’s Sportscenter to provide a rundown of the Cold Hard Facts. This page did a great job making itself the go-to.

13) Coca-Cola — Coke has done an amazing job of incorporating all of its social profiles into one place. It has created a beautifully designed page that really gets its messaging across. I can’t help but smile when I’m on the page, which I’m pretty sure means that it is a success.

14) Nike Sportswear –  I may be personally partial to this fan page because I love the Nike Sportswear line, but the integration of Ustream on the Fan Page, and ecommerce is really neat.

Their video page is also done very well:

So what can we learn from these fan pages? There is no excuse anymore for a stock fan page. Use these pages as inspiration!

But what about smaller companies? What about small and medium sized businesses that don’t have the brand awareness of a large corporation? Does it work for them?

I spend a lot of time convincing businesses that social media marketing is real and here to stay. But I’m pretty sure you all wouldn’t appreciate a sales pitch in a blog post, so instead I’m going to give 21 examples of small to medium sized Chicago businesses that are using social media effectively. In no particular order:

1) Half Acre Brewery : Beer and social media are a natural fit ( I worte about social media marketing for breweries a little earlier this year) . It is great to see a small craft brewery with an active Twitter account, Facebook fan page, and pretty high quality blog. It probably helps that the owner is a former ad man.

2) Chicago Architecture Foundation — Great at using social media to build a community around Chicago’s famed architecture tours and tourism industry.

3) Rockit Bar and Grill — Looking past the flash page of their website, they have successfully realized that people follow brands/ stores/ restaurants on Twitter for contests and specials. They offer a new one every Tuesday.

4) Imagination Publishing– A content marketing and custom publishing agency that really gets social media. Positioned at the confluence of online marketing and publishing.

5) Threadless — Threadless is a well known T-shirt company that makes some pretty hilarious shirts, and also knows how to leverage contest marketing. Want to see what a small business can do with a facebook page? Check out theirs, great mix of community building and marketing.

6) Douglas Allergy Relief — Full disclosure, they are a client, but it is a lot of fun to see a family owned store compete with some of the big boys in the allergy relief industry. We are helping them get started with social media, look out for them in the future.

7) Foiled cupcakes — Many of you may have read the extensive coverage of Sprinkles cupcakes in LA, and their social marketing efforts. Foiled rivals them in terms of their customer engagement and overall social presence. Everyone loves cupcakes!

8 ) Green City Market — Know your farmer. Know your food. Green City Market is your parent’s farmers market evolved. They network with local chefs (mostly through social media) and turn the farmers market into an event that is larger than a shopping trip and make it a destination for all Chicago foodies.

9) The Local Beet — Great advice and resources for those who are passionate about the local and slow food movements.

10) Berry Chill — They have capitalized on the trendiness of frozen yogurt and have really taken it to the next level with great branding and community building around their product. Part of the reason why people go to Berry Chill is to feel cool. This translates to their website and social presence very well.

11) Homemade Pizza Co. – Homemade Pizza Co. is using their Twitter to announce and promote new locations. That’s one great way for a small, local business to expand into a nationwide chain! They also serve their fans and employees better with Facebook groups for each.

12) “NUTS ON CLARK” – This Chicago icon and favorite airport terminal destination has taken itself online and is providing Chicagoans with interesting facts about our city and the seasons via Twitter. They offer useful and interesting information, making their social media presence more robust!

13) Total Attorneys – Total Attorneys helps lawyers become interactive online, primarily by being interactive themselves. They do everyone a favor by promoting their charitable endeavors through social media, too!

14) Tru – This “temple of haute cuisine” is using just about every review site online and leveraging the comments of its fans to attract new diners. What better way to promote a restaurant and its delicious menu? Check out the massive amounts of 5-stars on their Yelp page.

15)  Homescout Realty – This Chicago realty agency networks with the social media heavy hitters on Twitter, giving us a peek into Chicago news and events, their office life, their properties and charitable efforts.

16) Grub Hub – Grub Hub’s social presence features their vendors, benefiting their restaurant clientele and themselves! And with their successful multi-city expansion, we think they’re doing something right.

17) Cheeky Chicago – Proving that targeting a smaller demographic can be highly successful through social media, Cheeky provides deals, reviews and a community to “fun, fabulous and fierce…chic, intelligent and in-the-know” ladies in Chicago.

18) NCSA – The National Collegiate Scouting Association pledges to make college recruiting simple, and it’s connecting with young athletes in the way that is most familiar to them– social media. With over 1,000 Twitter followers, we’d say they’re simply creating a success.

19) IEG – IEG  is on the cutting edge of social media and is nearly flawless in their execution and integration. Right on the homepage of their website, they invite you to join the conversation with the extensive IEG social media presence, but they also have Twitter accounts to foster interaction around their marketing efforts and the conference the company hosts. Plus, they spotlight their individuals with IEG-branded Twitter profiles and provide employees with their own IEG blogs to sound off. We’d say they’ve got a strong handle on social media.

20) Featherproof Books – A Chicago indie press taking literature to the masses through highly-integrated social media, mobile apps, and online networking with other Chicago companies. You can connect with them on Facebook, Goodreads, Twitter or “even Friendster, because somewhere in the universe, it’s still 2001.” A un-stuffy publishing company, with social media and a sense of humor? Going places.

21) Free Spirit Yacht Cruises – Free Spirit combines face-to-face networking with their excellent social media presence, connecting with various demographics. They’re also taking full advantage of the functionality of Facebook, blogging through the Notes feature and posting pictures and links.

These are a just a few examples of how small to medium sized businesses in Chicago are utilizing social media. We would love to hear your thoughts on the list. Are there any companies we left out?

Do you see opportunites for small businesses in industries not mentioned on this list to get involved with social media marketing?

You probably read some of these blogs already, and there may be some others that you haven’t heard of. They all get the Ocean Agency seal of approval however. We realize that there are thousands of great and worthy blogs out there to be on this list, these are just the ones that we pay special attention to. This is by no means a complete list, but we think it’s a pretty good one.

(one of our designers, Nick, reading away)

Social Media
Mashable
Social Media Today
Groundswell blog
Outspoken Media
Social Media Explorer
10e20
The Social Path

Online Marketing
Top Rank
Real Time Marketer
emarketer
adamsherk
marketing pilgrim
Church of the Customer
Influential Marketing
Seth Godin
Copyblogger

SEO
search engine land
SEOmoz
Seogroup

Advertising/branding
Advertsing Age–Digital Next
Springwise
NYT media and advertising
Make the logo bigger!

Design
Smashing Magazine
Web Designer Wall

Internet Industry News
Econsultancy
TechCrunch
Read Write Web

Digital PR/Personal Branding
PR Sarah Evans
PR breakfast club
Lauren Fernandez

Books
Cluetrain
Groundswell
Youtube for Business
Open Brand
Trust Agents

Personally, I am fascinated by social media measurement. Now, that may be the nerdiest thing I’ve ever written on paper, but it’s true. Social Media measurement is essential to ensure that our campaigns are meeting their objectives and that our clients are happy. Measurement allows us to troubleshoot, tweak, and drastically improve campaigns.

I was lucky enough to be placed on the social media measurement panel ( seriously, I was quite excited) and it was moderated by an extremely knowledgeable industry veteran: Tery Spataro. Tery has been involved in the social media space long before it was called social media, and has directed campaigns for Volvo and Hormel among others.

Tery had some great ideas, and I’ll run through them quickly:

1) Measurement starts with objectives. You need to keep those objectives simple and straightforward, set tactics to help you reach those objectives, and then define your metrics.

Defining metrics before determining an objective hurts any campaign. A client may tell an agency that they want 1,000 facebook fans, but is that actually an objective, or is it a metric? Isn’t the real objective to build engagement around your brand?

2) Benchmarks are important, and anything social takes time.

If you’re a business, you constantly hear the success stories of big brands with social media. While these stories are great, the reality is that social campaigns, like any WOM campaign, take time. It takes time to build relationships in real life, and, in a world where online networking reflects offline networking more and more, relationship building takes both time and effort.

3) Hard data does exist in the social media space!

Beyond soft metrics like engagement, you can redirect traffic from social sites to separate landing pages on your website with analytics installed. This allows you to see exactly how many visitors you are getting from a variety of sites. For those who are really interested in translating social media into dollars and cents, there is also the cost per acquisition model.

The cost per acquisition model refers to how much money you have spent to build up a certain number of followers, engagements, or friends. Think about it this way, if you spent $100,000 to build out a blog and aren’t getting traffic or readers, your CPA isn’t very good. However, if you put $100 into Twitter, and you have 100,000 followers, you CPA is something you should be pretty proud of.

My personal opinion:

Social media monitoring and measurement is increasingly important, but the measurement tools haven’t quite caught up to the soical networking technologies–yet. There are plenty of tools out there, blog monitoring software, Twitter monitoring software, and social conversation trackers. This data combined with traditional web analytics can give us a fairly complete picture of an online presence, but it still leaves something to be desired.

Think about the possibility for behavioral tracking with all of these social networks. The possibilities for data collection and measurement are endless, we just need to better understand how to collect and analyze data.

What do you see as the future of social media measurement? What tools are you utilizing now that are especially powerful?

First, these two apps turn your computer and headphones into your own beat lab. Satisfy your inner music producer with iNudge and this drum kit.

Need some ambient noise to drown our your weekend-ready coworkers? Start any of these YouTube videos at any time, play them together, alone or in any order, and you get a harmonious mix that won’t distract you.

Every wonder if  Raclette, Duddleswell or Pressato were names of fonts or names of cheeses? Well… okay, you may not have wondered about that. But when you start playing Cheese or Font? you’ll realize how little you know about cheese… and fonts.

A little Chicago spotlight–  The Oprah Show took the flash mob phenomenon, inspired by this viral video, and of course, Oprah-fied it and took it up a notch. They taught the whole audience of 21,000 a dance to the Black Eyed Peas’ performance of “I Gotta Feelin’” at the first episode of her 24th season. Just check it out. It’s happy.

We love what this interactive agency is doing to sell their t-shirts. Adds a little something to the usual online shopping experience.

Ever think that maybe the research you’re doing on the web might be more fun if everything was written LIKE KANYE WEST TYPED IT?!?!?!!!! Well, now’s your chance to find out.

All of these apps share something that makes them viral–  they strike a communal chord. Whether it’s humor, joy, or curiosity, something integral in all of these appeals to a shared experience. You almost like it  more when you pass it on and that person feels the same emotion. Keep that in mind when constructing your own attempts at viral fame. And  if those don’t keep you busy for the rest of the day, we don’t know what will.