GeekBeat.TV Interview: Optimizing the Customer to Content Connection

At BlogWorld New Media Expo in New York, John P. and Cali Lewis had me on their GeekBeat.tv show where we talked about a mix of digital marketing topics including “walk the talk” marketing consulting, the power of word of mouth, the value of influence, common marketing challenges for companies, ROI vs. the promise of ROI, budget limitations vs. culture, the “must do” of getting started with social media.

Those companies that take the time to understand who their audiences and influencers are can dig into optimal means of information discovery, what target audience preferences are for media type and format, and how to inspire action whether it’s a referral or a sale. �With that insight, marketers can work to develop a plan to continuously optimize the brand’s effectivenss at connecting content with customers all across the lifecycle: awareness, interest, consideration, purchase, retention, advocacy.

The result is more word of mouth, shorter sales cycles and more efficient customer acquisition. It also means more intentional efforts at being useful to customers after the sale through easily discovered and shared content.��The deep dive on this approach to online marketing is of course easily found within Optimize.

I don’t usually post video interviews that I do here, but because of the impressive interviewing skills John and Cali have, it’s one of the better interviews I’ve done and does a good job of describing an optimized state of mind for Marketing, PR, HR and Customer Service.

 

A Closer Look At The Google Buzz Privacy Settlement

On December 20th, a federal judge in the Bay Area will be asked to approve an $8.5 million settlement between Google and several Gmail users who sued earlier this year over the way Google Buzz was launched in February. If it’s approved, the case will become a class action, Gmail users in the U.S. will join the lawsuit by default and will immediately be part of the settlement. (There will be ways for Gmail users to remove themselves from the suit if they wish.)

But the settlement offers little benefit for Gmail users outside of the original group of users who sued Google. Why? Because, according to the settlement documentation, attorneys for the plaintiffs “could identify no class members who allege that they suffered out-of-pocket damages.”

Instead, the initial set of plaintiffs stands to receive $2,500 settlement payments each, the attorneys involved would recover their fees and expenses (they’re asking for more than $2 million of the settlement fund), and the rest of the money would be distributed to “existing organizations focused on Internet privacy policy or privacy education.”

All of this came together fairly quickly; court documents mention only two face-to-face meetings between the two sides. Here’s a closer look at the Google Buzz privacy settlement.

Background: In Re: Google Buzz User Privacy Litigation

On February 17, just eight days after Buzz launched, Eva Hibnick filed the initial class action suit on behalf of all U.S. Gmail users who had Buzz added to their accounts. Other Gmail users filed additional suits on March 3, April 5, May 27, and June 7 of this year. On June 30, all cases were consolidated at Hibnick’s request. The consolidated case against Google is called “In Re: Google Buzz User Privacy Litigation.”

All of the original, separate cases focused on similar issues. Namely, that the way Google launched Buzz was a violation of Gmail users’ privacy. Among other concerns, the potential public display of “follower/following” lists “appeared to divulge a Gmail user’s most frequent email contacts without sufficient consent,” they said.

All along, Google has denied any wrongdoing and, according to the settlement, “contends that plaintiffs have mischaracterized and misunderstood how Google Buzz operates.” Google says it “responded quickly to improve Google Buzz and to address concerns that had been raised about it.” (see our story, Google Apologizes, Continues To Tweak Buzz)

Settlement Negotiations Begin

In the midst of this string of lawsuits, negotiating had already begun. Google reached out to the plaintiffs’ attorneys and met with them on April 21st at Google’s attorneys’ offices in San Francisco. In addition to explaining how Buzz works and listening to the plaintiffs’ arguments, court documents show that Google revealed some details of its plans to file a motion for dismissal. Both sides began discussing the possibility of a settlement, and this meeting culminated with an agreement to enter formal mediation.

On June 2nd, the two sides met again in San Francisco for a formal mediation session in front of retired Federal District Court Judge Fern Smith. After a 14-hour discussion of the facts and legal issues, both parties agreed to the foundation of the current settlement.

Those are the only two face-to-face meetings discussed in the settlement documentation.

Determining Damages & Settlement Conditions

As part of the agreement, Google agreed to give the plaintiffs’ attorneys “all consumer feedback that it had received about the Buzz program from Buzz users throughout the world,” along with other factual materials such as sworn statements from Google staff about how Buzz was launched and how it functions.

After reviewing thousands of pages of documents, including about 2,000 emails from Gmail users who provided Google with feedback, the plaintiffs’ attorneys “could identify no class members who allege that they suffered out-of-pocket damages.” The settlement document reiterates this point no fewer than five times, and uses it as a basis for arguing why further individual lawsuits are doubtful:

Here, few if any Class Members suffered out-of-pockets damages and Class Members are therefore are unlikely to pursue litigation against Google on their own.

The settlement calls for Google to establish an $8.5 million fund. Here’s how that will be disbursed if the settlement is approved as presented:

The original group of seven plaintiffs who filed suit against Google will each get up to $2,500. The document says this sum represents a payment for their time and for leading the Class action against Google. The attorneys who’ve been involved in the original cases and the current consolidated case are asking for 25% of the settlement fund to cover their legal fees and expenses.The remaining $6+ million will be for organizations that are focused on internet privacy policy and education.

Other Aspects of the Settlement

A number of non-financial things will happen if the settlement is approved in December:

Google will be required to “undertake wider public education about the privacy aspects of Buzz.” The details of this part of the settlement are still being developed.Gmail/Buzz users who remain part of the class action will be unable to pursue any future actions against Google related to this litigation.Both sides will create a settlement website to provide information about the settlement. The settlement document lists that web site as buzzclass.com, which is currently a parked domain with private registration.Google will notify all affected Gmail users it can identify about the settlement via email, with a link to the settlement website.

The full text of the settlement is available on Scribd.com. We’ve embedded it below. Thanks to Gary P. at ResourceShelf for assistance.

goog_doc

Google Promoting AdWords Express In Google+ As Way “To Get More Followers”

This weekend, DejanSEO�noted Google may have stepped up its promotion of its simplified SEM offering for small businesses, AdWords Express, in Google+ as a way to “get more followers.” AdWords Express has now been around officially since July 2011. However, it has seen a number of changes and refinements.

Google initially rolled out this particular pitch in December, as we covered on our sister site Marketing Land:Is Google Using AdWords Express Budgets To Promote Google+?

But now, small ads or promotions are appearing in Google+ pages:

Google is apparently trying to cross-promote AdWords Express and Google+. The company is suggesting Local Google+ pages as AdWords Express landing-page substitutes for SMB websites.

Mike Blumenthal captures some of the improvements in a blog post�this morning. He said they include a new targeting radius�(up to 40 miles), better self-service UI, better explanation around where ads will appear and the ability to preview those ads in context.

In poking around to see if any of the changes were documented, I found this interesting chart comparing the differences and features of AdWords Express, AdWords and Google+ Local Pages:

Google hasn’t released any official numbers on how widely adopted AdWords Express is among SMBs. The company has been struggling for years to get more SMBs directly involved in paid-search through a self-service platform. Many local agencies and small-scale search marketers, however, have complained about the product’s cost and keyword targeting capabilities as more expensive and cruder than traditional AdWords.

AdWords Express isn’t available to businesses without a physical location.

Arguably, the best value in AdWords Express offered is mobile click-to-call/pay-per-call. However, the product doesn’t allow for the separation of PC and mobile campaigns.

Related StoriesIs Google Using AdWords Express Budgets To Promote Google+?Google Seeks New AdWords Express Customers With Promised “Free Month” In DecemberGoogle Adds Call Reporting To AdWords Express

2013 Digital Strategy Best Practices for Your Business

Investment in digital continues to soar! When the IAB released the IAB Internet Advertising Report for the full-year 2011, it demonstrated impressive 22 percent year-over-year growth for digital marketing and offered further excitement for digital marketers operating in just about every marketing channel out there.

According to the IAB report, investments increased across the board:

Investments in mobile, the fastest growing of all categories, increased 149 percentDigital video grew 29 percent, up to $1.8 billion in 2011 revenueSearch revenues increased 27 percent to $14.8 billion in 2011Display retargeting grew 15 percent

The problem with these soaring investments is that they hint at a potentially huge problem in the marketing departments of brands across the globe. While spend grows fast within channels, most brands still fail to take a holistic approach to managing digital marketing, and that causes gaping inefficiencies.

According to “Integrate to Accelerate Digital Marketing Effectiveness,” a study released May 29, 2012 by the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council, just 9 percent of the global marketers surveyed say they have a highly evolved digital marketing model with a proven and clear path of evolution. Simultaneously, 36 percent report a random embrace of marketing point solutions that aren't well integrated or unified.

Marketers focus a great deal of importance on scalability. When they select a bid management technology for their paid search efforts, for example, most marketers understand that solution will likely need to manage larger campaigns next year than it will be managing right out of the gate. What marketers often overlook is a technology’s ability to adapt.

Making Information Available

It’s what we all do. We make sure people can find the data and information they need wherever they seek it.

We use paid search ads to make data available about the products and services we offer. We leverage search engine optimization and local tactics to ensure consumers near our locations can find our stores, offices and businesses. We deliver local deals and promotions to the palms of nearby consumers’ hands via mobile.

The examples are endless, but they all accomplish the same basic task of connecting consumers with the information, data, products, directions or other resources they seek.

All sorts of problems arise, however, when each marketing channel manages data in its own silo. Duplicate information about store locations, products and countless other types of critical business information turns into misinformation. Maintaining data accuracy and integrity takes four times as long when four different channels manage information independently.

Unifying a Single Data Source

Eventually, marketers will want every piece of data housed in a single location. They’ll keep that data clean, versatile and accurate, and it will fuel everything from local search to display to voice search to paid search to SEO. Someday it may even power digital billboard advertising, neurological advertising or any other futuristic marketing application you can dream up. We’re not there yet, but marketers shouldn’t wait for the holy grail.

Marketing automation tools already help brands maintain unified, clean sets of data that can be shared through many marketing channels. Huge strides have been made in recent years, particularly in the areas of SEO and local search.

Some of the world’s top brands are adopting marketing automation technologies that leverage one clean, unified data set to accomplish amazing things with simple and drastically reduced workloads. Take location information, for example. CMOs are tapping marketing automation technology to empower hundreds or thousands of local dealers, agents, franchises and retail stores to simply and effectively run promotions and keep their location and contact information visible and accurate.

The systems house data in one spot for simple and effective updates to be made, and they turn these updates over to website location pages, mobile pages, Google+ Local pages, Facebook pages, Bing Local pages, directories, ratings and review sites, and more.

A unified data source can go a long way to ensure consistent branded experiences for consumers across all digital touch points. With the right automation technology, organizations can leverage adaptive models to enable quick testing and adoption of new marketing channels as they emerge. As new applications for data emerge, some of these tools will evolve right along with the industry, plugging marketers in quickly and effectively. The benefits are both numerous and substantial.

Advocating for Change

Maybe this all sounds well and good but seems like it might be someone else’s problem to solve. After all, what’s a search marketer supposed to do about all these holistic technology and data management issues?

For starters, care about making a difference and start in your own silo. You can play an active role in tearing down some of those walls. If you work in paid search, for example, start collaborating more with SEO and vice versa.

After you’ve torn down some of your own silo walls, consider going further by encouraging:

Investment in technologies that evolve with consumer behavior and cater to emerging technologies, gadgets and resourcesMoving ever closer to a single source of unified location, inventory, product and other critical dataAdoption of content management and distribution systems that save time while boosting accuracy and visibilityCross-channel optimization and analysis to improve effectiveness and accountabilityRemembering Tomorrow as You Plan for Today

Clearly, we all need resources that help us accomplish this year’s goals most effectively, but today’s great performance and tomorrow’s growing success don’t have to be mutually exclusive. The more we can unify efforts and technologies across marketing channels the more effective we can all become and the more success we can help our brands achieve.

Harnessing the $9+ Billion Social and Mobile Ad Potential
In partnership with Moontoast, ClickZ presents the "Ultimate Guide to Social Rich Media Advertising". Social rich media advertising offers a one-of-a-kind opportunity for brands and agencies to target consumers with interests that match the virtues and values of their products. Download your free guide today!

Facebook Dominates Web With More Home Page Integration Than Google+, Twitter Combined

Of the top 10,000 websites on the Internet, 24.3 percent have official Facebook integration on their home pages. If you include all other links to Facebook, almost half of these top home pages link to Facebook, with 7.3 percent using the official Like button, according to research from Pingdom.

Facebook integration is huge among the world’s biggest and most heavily trafficked websites. But how does it fare against other social networks? Facebook dominates both in official integration and links from the home page back to the social network, though looking at these two different metrics paints a different picture for Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.

Official Widgets and Plugins on the Home Page

Google+ is actually beating Twitter out for integration on top sites. Ten percent of sites had official Twitter widgets on the home page, while 13.3 percent displayed the Google+ +1 button or Share widget. It’s a far cry from Facebook’s 24.3 percent, but all are solidly killing LinkedIn; the more professional social site is officially integrated with just 0.6 percent of home pages.

To put these figures in context, it's important to understand Pingdom’s methodology, accept Alexa as a reliable authority on site traffic, and consider that the largest and most successful sites aren't always an accurate reflection of what others are doing. While not an exact science, Pingdom’s research offers a broad look at social integration trends. They explain how they performed their research:

“We examined the HTML code of the home pages of the top 10,000 sites in the world according to Alexa. To determine Facebook integration, we looked for the official ways of integrating Facebook on sites, with paths such as facebook.com/plugins, connect.facebook.net and graph.facebook.com. We did similar things for the other social networks, based on their developer documents and available plugin documentation. It’s a bit of a jungle. To check any links, we simply looked for anything linking to or referencing facebook.com/ or facebook.net/, linkedin.com/, twitter.com/ and so on.”

All Links from Top 10,000 Home Pages to Social Networks

Aside from official widgets, companies can use a variety of other types of links and buttons to direct people back to their social presence or encourage content sharing. These figures bode much better for Twitter. All links to social networks (home pages only):

Facebook – 49.3 percentTwitter – 41.7 percentGoogle+ – 21.5 percentLinkedIn – 3.9 percent

In their blog post revealing their findings, Pingdom purports that Twitter follow links are the reason for the vast difference between their official integration and links figures.

They also suggest, “Google+ may be a young social network compared to the other three in this survey, but with the might of Google behind it, it has still managed to secure an impressive presence in a relatively short period of time.”

Have you noticed this or other trends in social integration on websites? Let us know what you think in the comments!

Harnessing the $9+ Billion Social and Mobile Ad Potential
In partnership with Moontoast, ClickZ presents the "Ultimate Guide to Social Rich Media Advertising". Social rich media advertising offers a one-of-a-kind opportunity for brands and agencies to target consumers with interests that match the virtues and values of their products. Download your free guide today!

Inside #NASASocial: How Real-World Events Build Social Media Advocates

Astronauts Tom Marshburn, Kevin Ford and Chris Hadfield chat live from the International Space Station with #NASASocial participants.

February 20th, NASA hosted a special event at their Washington headquarters in which a group of their social fans attended a day of tours, expert talks and even a livechat with astronauts on the International Space Station. My son and I are fortunate to have participated and on top of the insider look we had at NASA research, we learned a great deal about the power of social media advocacy, as well.

So what happens when an organization puts 150 of their loyal social media fans in one room for a fantastic, exclusive experience? Brand building and social reach magic, judging by the results of yesterday’s #NASASocial.

Preparing for a Real-World Social Event

Participants and social fans were asked to tweet on the hashtag #NASASocial; the NASA Social Team also have a Twitter account at @NASASocial. We were encouraged to tweet the @ISS_Research (International Space Station) account, as well. Each of the astronauts and researchers featured in in-person presentations or live chats also have Twitter accounts. Some, like Canadian Space Agency’s Commander Chris Hadfield, are already wildly popular; at last count, Hadfield had well over 400,000 Twitter followers. We received all of the information we needed to promote the event across Twitter, Facebook and Google+ in a series of emails prior to the event.

150 social fans awaiting the start of #NASASocial at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Even before that, each applicant was asked to supply their social media profile URLs in their application. Once the 150 participants were selected, NASA added participant Twitter handles to a list they had created for this event.

During registration, each participant received a lanyard with their name and Twitter handle, as well as @ISS_Research and #NASASocial printed on the front. Overall, we were well prepared to come armed with our devices and socialize with NASA, our networks, and each other throughout the event.

Takeaways for preparing for successful real-world social events:

Know your participants. Connect with them in advance and make sure they are connected with one another. This is a huge help on the day of the event, as they can chat through their social profiles and retweet one another.Establish a hashtag and notify participants as early as possible to encourage social promotion in advance of the event.Invite your loyal social followers. From conception, this idea was a brilliant one from the NASA Social Team. They guaranteed a socially successful event by including followers they already knew to be socially active and tech-savvy.Offer participants an experience. Give fans a behind-the-scenes look at how your company or organization operates. Make key people in your organization accessible to fans.

150 Social Fans = Over 172,000 Accounts Reached in Minutes

Incredibly, the chart below shows activity from only the latest 50 tweets at the time it was retrieved, just after lunch the day of the event. Though just 150 people were able to physically attend, their tweets (and those of their followers) reached over 172,000 Twitter users in the span of 50 tweets.

Graph from TweetReach

To add more context, at the height of the event, participants and social followers were sending nearly 4,000 tweets per hour on the #NASASocial hashtag.

Graph from Hashtags.org

This social activity was also incredibly effective at driving traffic back to NASA web properties, as illustrated below. Participants and their networks tweeted links to at least six different NASA sites or subsections of their main site in the 1500 tweet selection from which this chart drew data.

Graph from Tweet Archive

At every turn, we were encouraged to participate in the social activity happening online around the event.

Takeaways for making your real-world events more social:

Encourage attendees to tweet, Facebook, or update their other profiles throughout the event. Incredibly, I’ve attended a tech/marketing event and been asked to turn off my phone and not publish anything the speaker said. Don’t do that.Remind users of hashtags, URLs and handles throughout the event. After each speaker, NASA shared a slide with this information as a subtle reminder to participants to get social.Allow photos and video. It would be well within NASA’s rights to restrict photography or videography at their events; they had their own team there to document the event. However, social users love sharing videos and images. Let us snap pics and we’ll share them, giving your brand exposure, all day long.

Creating an Experience That Converts Fans to Advocates

You may not think your product or service is quite as exciting as the opportunity to chat live with astronauts. Yet there are people in your social sphere who think you are absolutely fascinating… do you know who they are?

Astronaut Don Pettit (@astro_Pettit) explains the water recycling systems in space to #NASASocial participants.

Actively listen to your fans, especially those vocal and influential in your space. Brand advocates can sway public perception about your brand, quickly spread the news of a new launch or update, and defend your brand from detractors. These are incredibly valuable people to have on your side in social channels.

Offering fans an experience outside of the usual consumer/company or organization/spectator relationship can help convert them from loyal fans to staunch advocates. Physical events offer so much opportunity to “wow” your fans, by way of behind-the-scenes access, face-to-face chats, networking with other fans and more. Add to that the photo opportunities and the power of social media and real-world events are a real winner for your social presence.

It is important to note that NASA did not pay for participants airfare, accommodations, or meals. Yet when we met attendees at the event, they had come from all over the country at their own expense to participate. Converting fans to advocates does not mean you are buying their love. Instead, you have built such a mutually beneficial relationship that they will go to bat for you online just as much as drive across the state for an opportunity to connect with you.

Thank you so much to NASA and their partners at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum for a once in a lifetime opportunity at #NASASocial. Kudos to Jason Townsend, John Yembrick and the rest of the NASA social team for organizing this fantastic event!

 

PPC & Mobile Marketing Tips from Q1 2012 Industry Analysts

Each quarter, Search Engine Watch receives a number of reports from analysts in the online advertising space. Typically, the actual numbers vary, though looking at the figures as a whole helps marketers identify trends that can be helpful in strategizing for the coming quarter.

Covario just released their Q1 Global Paid Search Spend Analysis report, hot on the heels of the Adobe Systems Global Digital Advertising Q1 2012 Update and IgnitionOne Global Online Advertising Report, both of which we covered last week. Both Marin Software and the Rimm-Kaufman Group (RKG) just published their Q1 reports, the U.S. Online Advertising Report (Marin) and the Digital Marketing Report for Q1 2012 (RKG).

Covario’s analysis, which focuses on activity in the high-tech and consumer electronics sectors, showed a 15 percent YoY increase in PPC ad spend in the Americas, in line with the general trend shown by other analysts. In addition, they reported an 88 percent YoY increase in spend in the Asia-Pacific region, with a 2 percent decline in Europe (attributed to ongoing macroeconomic pressures).

In their report, RKG found that total paid search spend grew at 30 percent YoY in Q1 2012. Mobile comprised 12 percent of all organic search visits in Q1 and 13 percent of all paid search clicks. They also report that the tablet share of PPC nearly quadrupled from Q1 2011, and the iPad alone accounted for nearly 7 percent of all clicks.

Marin Software also found that increased click volume (46 percent higher YoY) more than made up for lower CPCs, with resultant robust growth in Google ad budgets leading to higher spend. This is in line with other reports. They point to algorithm changes, advanced match types, site links and mobile devices as potential reasons for the CPC decline.

So what sense can paid search marketers make of these trends? Analysts from each reporting company offered some tips for Search Engine Watch readers.

Take Advantage of Google Product Listing Ads’ Lower CPCs

RKG data shows Google's Product Listing Ads format exhibiting huge traffic growth. In their report, they note, “...traffic to Google’s Product Listing Ads format continued its own surge, representing 11% of Google clicks, but PLAs commanded 18% lower CPCs than standard text ads.”

“While the revenue per click of PLAs is on par with standard text ads, our advertisers are paying significantly lower CPCs,” said Senior Research Analyst Mark Ballard. “This suggests competition for PLAs remains relatively low, making them a great opportunity to pick up incremental traffic at a good value.”

Attribute Conversions Across Channels & Devices to Maximize ROI

In their quarterly report, Adobe reported a 93 percent YoY increase in Facebook ad spend; they noted that this one channel now represents between 3 to 5 percent of total search spend. Social media, they said, continues to be a strong digital advertising channel.

Dr. Siddharth Shah, Director of Analytics with Adobe Digital Marketing Business, told us, “With the growing impact of social as a marketing channel as well as the rapid increase in mobile device/tablet usage, the average consumer touches more devices and channels than ever before.” He recommends, “It is imperative for advertisers to measure the consumer path across the entire sales funnel and apply the right attribution to determine the correct media mix.”

Segment Out Mobile Traffic; Develop Mobile & Tablet Search Strategies

IgnitionOne reported an overall increase in mobile search spend of 221.1 percent over the same quarter last year, while clicks on mobile ads increased 246.1 percent YoY.

RKG’s Ballard notes there are good reasons why mobile CPCs run lower than their desktop counterparts.

“One of the biggest is that the measurable ROI is simply far worse for smartphones, particularly for online pure plays,” he said. Ballard advises marketers, “If you are not already segmenting out mobile traffic and bidding it accordingly, now is the time to do so. Also, advertisers should not make the mistake of lumping tablets and smartphones together under one mobile umbrella as performance can differ dramatically between the two.”

Roger Barnette, president of IgnitionOne, believes mobile search is a highly valuable and underutilized channel.

“Queries on mobiles and tablets are growing quickly and CPCs are typically lower, making mobile search a great investment,” he said. Barnette advises marketers, especially in retail and travel, “...should invest in developing mobile and tablet search strategies that include sufficient testing so they can learn how to best utilize these growing channels to reach their campaign goals.”

Increase Conversion Rates with Multivariate Landing Page Testing

Charles Gaylord, Research Strategist at Covario, said that advertisers have a lot to be excited about, given rising click volumes and declining keyword pricing.

“We have found that the most successful paid search campaigns have woven an element of multivariate landing page testing into the mix to fine-tune the messaging and content that most effectively motivates consumers to take action,” Gaylord said. “Not only have these efforts led to higher conversion rates, but the search engines have rewarded these campaigns with higher rankings at a lower cost.”

Refine Match Types for Greater Efficiency

Marin's Q1 analysis shows that gains in efficiency over the past year have been a result, in part, of advertiser efforts to refine match types.

Marin VP of Marketing Matt Lawson advises marketers, “Refining match types from Broad to Phrase or Exact, increases relevance and click-through rates for keywords, thus improving quality scores and lowering costs.” As further evidence of how this tactic can improve campaign performance, he shared, “In the past year, search marketers have increased their use of Exact Match, growing their click-share by 4% while increasing share of ad spend by 1%.”

Apply Negatives for Brand Terms on Bing/Yahoo as These CPCs are Rising

RKG’s Ballard shared insight on client CPCs for branded vs. non-branded terms. “The CPCs of our clients' brand terms on Bing have risen far faster than CPCs on non-branded terms as the adCenter team has made moves to broaden the competition in this space,” he said. “Advertisers should watch their bids and apply appropriate negatives to ensure that they are not paying more than they need to in this easily overlooked segment.”

Harnessing the $9+ Billion Social and Mobile Ad Potential
In partnership with Moontoast, ClickZ presents the "Ultimate Guide to Social Rich Media Advertising". Social rich media advertising offers a one-of-a-kind opportunity for brands and agencies to target consumers with interests that match the virtues and values of their products. Download your free guide today!

Online Marketing News: Facebook Graph Search, Myspace Launch Is A Dud, LinkedIn For Business

2012 Social Media Report Cards

This recent infographic from Pardot features the social media platform winners and losers in 2012. �You’ll find scoring based on growth, number of users, ROI as well as insight into which platforms are best for mobile, visual, or connecting.

Up Close With Facebook Graph Search
First off, what is Graph Search? �Facebook has amped up its search capabilities by rolling out this new feature. �Danny Sullivan’s article provides a step by step deep dive into using Facebook’s new Graph Search. � Via Search Engine Land.

The New Myspace: What A Mess
The recent launch of Myspace’s new design has left many users wanting more, or is it less. �The interface is confusing to navigate and includes a lot of scrolling that you might not have anticipated. �Also, might of the site appears to be one giant ad for Justin Timberlake. �Via CNN.

6 Ways To Use The New LinkedIn Features to Get More Business
This article shares tips on using LinkedIn to make better connections, engage and create more business. �In a recent up date LinkedIn released the new user interface to its entire membership. Via Social Media Examiner

20 Content Ideas Readers Love
One of the biggest challenges for marketers using social media is finding enough interesting and unique content to share with their followers. �This post provides 20 different content ideas to better attract and engage your online audience. �Via ragan

TopRank Team News

Jolina Pettice: Over 85% of Marketers Plan to Raise Their Mobile Budgets
Over 85 percent of marketers are reporting that they plan to increase their mobile advertising budgets, according to a new study. �Find out what is motivating marketers to go mobile and what common concerns are in trying to reach this massive, on-the-go market. �Via ClickZ

Rob Bayne: MySpace Facelift Goes Public
Will partnering with the online advertising company Specific Media and superstar Justin Timberlake be enough to revive the once social network behemoth Myspace from a long slumber? The facelifted version of Myspace is now available to the general public, have you signed up yet? �Via Telegraph.

Mike Odden: The Evolving Online Finance Ecosystem
As part of �of a�weekly�three month long series on how the internet has transformed finance. �Richard MacManus, founder of ReadWriteWeb interviews Rod Dury CEO of Xero, who identified four types of markets in online finance- Personal Finance, Small Business Accounting, Cloud ERP. ERP. �Via ReadWriteWeb

Evan Prokop: Google CEO Says Facebook Is Doing A “Really Bad Job” With Its Products
In a recent interview, Google�s CEO Larry Page expressed some harsh criticism of Facebook, saying the company was admittedly strong in the social space, but was lacking in the way they handle their products. �Via Mashable

Brian Larson: LinkedIn Eclipses 200 Million Users – Poised For More Growth
A new year and a new milestone. This month LinkedIn � the social network originally thought of as nothing more than a place to list your resume � eclipsed 200 million users worldwide. While there�s no doubt LinkedIn continues to be a powerful platform to recruit new talent, it�s the advancements they have made in increasing engagement within the channel that is starting to get attention. Learn about what LinkedIn�s growth means for marketers (and everyone else) in this post from Search Engine Watch.

Mike Yanke: Bing Sidebars Growing Larger
As Facebook made headlines this week with the launch of its Graph Search, Bing quietly launched its own update by enhancing its Social Sidebar feature.� Read this story in Search Engine Land to learn more about the engine�s plans to expand its social sidebar with five times more content. �Via Search Engine Land

Time to Weigh In: �Which social media channels had the largest impact on your business in 2012? �How do you think Facebook’s new Graph Search will affect the way that businesses use the social platform?

Green Online Marketing: 5 Ways to Repurpose Content

With the importance of content in online marketing, many businesses are hard pressed to come up with original articles, blog posts, videos, images, presentations, etc on a regular basis. �There’s a myth that once you publish something, that all who matter will see it. That’s simply not true.

Does less than 100% or even 50% market reach for marketing content mean a blog or web site should republish exact duplicates at every opportunity? Of course not. Repurposing content probably isn’t substantially “green” either, but as marketing messages are made unique for distinct audiences, content can be repurposed or customized from one format to another or be updated to deliver value to a different distribution channel. �Here are 5 of many ways companies can repurpose content for marketing purposes in ways that are efficient and meet the needs of target audiences.

1. Turn Powerpoint decks into articles/blog posts and vice versa. �Companies that leverage public speaking involving PowerPoint presentations can leverage the research and content created for the presentation as a compliment or inspiration for supporting materials.

For example, a single PowerPoint presentation can literally be leveraged as content for a series of blog posts promoting the event for which the PowerPoint presentation was created. Alternatively, a series of blog posts or articles can serve as the structure for a presentation. �Such inspiration doesn’t need to be limited to blog content and can be extended to contributed articles, microblogging and other media such as video and graphical diagrams. �

2. Aggregate email interviews (answers you’ve given” into a blog post/article). �If there are people at your organization that give interviews often either because of being pitched in a media relations effort or simply because they have a good profile and are respected in the industry, the responses given in those interviews can be aggregated into blog and/or article content.�

Many times, journalists are looking for something fairly specific and will only end up using part of your responses. Or, the editor of the piece may chop parts of your contribution out. Unused portions of your interviews can be used in your own blogging or article writing. This assumes you are responding in text or are recording audio from phone/in person interviews.

Note, do NOT post content from an interview before the journalist or blogger interviewing you has published their piece first. �They may pull your contribution entirely feeling you’ve stolen the story.

3. Break up a long article you’ve had published in a notable publication into a series of blog posts. Add unique introductions and summaries to each. Depending on the arrangement you have with publications that you submit articles to, there is ample opportunity to take key concepts from a long article and turn them into several blog posts. If the article is modular, then it can easily be customized for a different industry with new examples, but the same core message.

4. Repurpose press releases and rewrite conversationally as a blog post or article, linking out to relevant resources. �It’s an interesting exercise to take a formal announcement and imagine how the same news would be explained conversationally, without marketing hype or PR speak. Do that and write it as a blog post including links to supporting articles, blog posts and resources within the post or at the end as recommended reading.

5. Revise old blog posts, updating titles, recent news references, examples and links to updated external resources. �Blogging has been around long enough that there’s a substantial amount of content that continues to offer value, but is lost in the sheer volume of blog posts. �The social web has a short attention span and if there have been substantial changes to a topic, it makes sense to revisit it and update with current supporting references.�

Repurposing content for marketing will only work if the new articles, blog posts, videos, diagrams, presentations or other media offer value and are sufficiently different so as to not be categorized as duplicate content. �There’s no question that in order to compete on today’s search marketing world, content plays a tremendous part.

Whether companies repurpose offline content for online use (ex: tradeshow videos converted to a series on YouTube) or mine their sales and customer service conversations to develop online resources (ex: FAQ blog post series based on top prospective customer questions), there’s plenty of room for creativity in order to become more efficient with content marketing.�

As a percentage of online marketing content creation as a whole, repurposed content should probably never exceend 5% or 10% and it certainly needs to serve corporate messaging and marketing objectives. Over time, the kinds of repurposed content that yield the best results can be tracked and made part of the overall online content development and marketing process.

What creative ways have you found to repurpose content for online marketing that provides as much or more value than the original? Is there really any way to make your online marketing efforts “green”?

Google Trends Now Shows YouTube Searches

Google announced on Google+ that they have expanded Google Trends to add YouTube search support.

Now you can use Google Trends to see what searches are trending and spiking across the world from within YouTube search. The trend data for YouTube goes back to 2008.

To use this, go to Google Trends and search for something. Then on the left-hand panel under “Limit to,” choose “YouTube” to restrict the data to just YouTube searches.

Here is a picture:

For more details, see the YouTube Blog.

5 Tips for Writing Fresh and Unique Copy for the Web

A novelist can ride the tails of that one great book for years. And a print journalist who�s broken the story of the century might be able to play off that success for several months. But for writers producing copy for the web, creating that one great blog post or article is just that: one great blog post or article.

The challenge when writing copy for the web is to consistently create content that is unique, relevant and entertaining�all at the same time. But it�s not easy to feel inspired and creative day after day.

The next time you find yourself in a rut, test out these 5 tips for creating fresh and unique copy for the web:

1. Have some fun with your writing. Write down 20 words or phrases on separate pieces of paper and place them in a container: �purple elephant,� �Chihuahua,� �cold beer� or �glass houses,� for example. The sky�s the limit�or dictionary, rather�and the more creative, the better.

The next time you�re stuck with regards to your writing, randomly select one slip of paper and include that word or phrase in your blog post or article. You may find that the word or phrase simply doesn�t fit with your concept or targeted keywords, and in the end, you eliminate it. But regardless of whether you keep or delete the word or phrase, this exercise is an effective way to get the creative juices flowing again.

2. Turn a typical idea on its head. Instead of writing the usual tips or checklist post or article, reverse the concept. For example, if you�re considering writing a story on �The 10 Best Ways to Eliminate Debt,� try writing �The 10 Quickest Ways to Ruin Your Credit.� Instead of �How to Improve the ROI of Your Email Marketing Campaign,� think �The Worst Email Marketing Campaigns of the Year.�

Essentially, both story versions include the same takeaways: how to keep good credit, and the dos and don�ts of email marketing. The two versions are simply positioned differently. Not only will this reverse concept help you write more creatively, it�s also an excellent way to attract more readers and links to your story.

3. Tell someone else�s story. As a writer, you don�t have to always rely on your own brilliant thoughts. An easy way to create unique copy for the web when you�ve run out of ideas is to borrow someone else�s. Contact an influential or interesting figure in your industry, and base an article or post around him or her.

The post or article could take the form of a Q&A interview, a guest commentary or a case study. Regardless of format, your article or post will revolve around their life, their thoughts, their experiences. Your readers will appreciate the personal details and fresh perspective.

4. Go straight to the headline or title. When sitting down to create a post or article, most writers go for the meat first: the body of the story. Instead, first come up with the ideal headline or title that�s intriguing, creative and attention-grabbing. Turning your typical writing process around is an effective method for removing writer�s block.

Along those lines, write the end of your story first. Or, choose the image to accompany your story first. Whatever your process, shake it up every now and then to keep your writing fresh.

5. Get away from words. You don�t always have to think of a story in terms of words. Could a graphic or illustration communicate the point you�d like to make? Instead of writing down words, grab a pencil and paper and draw out your thoughts.

Sometimes, a useful and informative graphic can tell a story the way no words can. Offer your readers a visually interesting graphic or illustration, and they�ll likely thank you by sharing it and linking to it.

Think back to the last time you found yourself in a rut when trying to write an article or blog post. How did you get out of it? What techniques do you use to consistently write copy for the web that is relevant and creative?

“Trulia Suggests” Search Results Without Searching

One of the very interesting things going on in search is the phenomenon of “predictive search” or personalized recommendations based on a range of user data inputs (i.e., behavior, context, etc). Effectively, these are search results produced without entering a query into�a search box.

Much of what is happening in mobile and Google Now is perhaps the best-known example. But, there’s also the related concept of the personal virtual assistant, represented by Apple’s Siri.�Expect Labs and Grokr are both doing some version of these things, as are several others.

You can now add real estate site Trulia to that list, which this week introduced what it calls “Trulia Suggests.”

Trulia Suggests takes a range of data from users’ interactions with the site: their search criteria, home “Likes,” “Hides,” alerts and other inputs and offers personalized home recommendations that the�algorithm�believes you will like.

It’s not intended to be a replacement for search on Trulia. Instead, it’s a complementary function designed to surface houses that you might not find through explicit search (or browse) activity.

When users sign in, Trulia presents a grid of house images. You’re asked to select five houses (presumably that you would be capable of buying — I was drawn to houses I couldn’t afford) to “tune” the system, indicating your tastes. Trulia also prompts users throughout the site to Hide or Like homes providing further inputs, which are then combined with the other information to generate home “suggestions.”

With all the data Trulia�possesses, this functionality was a kind of natural development. However, the purpose of Trulia Suggests is three-fold: to enable users to discover more new properties and get outside their fixed and potentially rigid search criteria, to drive more engagement on Trulia, and of course, to differentiate from competitors such as Zillow.

Currently, Trulia Suggests exists only on the PC site; but, it will be integrated into the company’s mobile apps in the near future. It will also extend to rental properties eventually.

It’s a nice feature and certainly useful to home buyers. However, it’s most interesting to me as part of the larger trend to mash up lots of data and offer personalized search-recommendations�and results without requiring users to explicitly query the database.

Bing Ads Updates: New Sitelink And Ad Position Reporting

Bing Ads rolled out some new reporting features in their March release. Here’s a look at the two of the biggest changes.

Ad Extensions Details

Adding to its suite of ad extensions reports, Bing Ads included a new “Ad Extensions Details” report. This reporting view shows sitelink performance data by campaign (and ad group if selected). Ad extension reporting by keyword and by ad was already available.

Top vs. Other

The Keyword Performance Report got a new feature with the “Top vs. Other” column. This new column shows the performance of ads when they are in the mainline (top of the page above the organic results) and the right side bar. You’ll find Top vs. Other by scrolling to the bottom of the Available Columns section in the report builder.

When running a report using Top vs. Other, you’ll see keyword performance data on any or all of these options:

Bing and Yahoo! search – OtherBing and Yahoo! search – TopSyndicated search partners – OtherSyndicated search partners – TopUnknown – You’ll see this if you are looking at results prior to the feature release of 3/14

See the March release for the full list of updates.

These 4 Head-Smackingly Simple UX Changes Grew Sales 50%

Online commerce continues to growth in the double digits every quarter, and with more money being spent online, online vendors are constantly being presented with the opportunity to increase their online sales.

The idea of spilt testing and conversion rate optimization are certainly not new, but there is a lot of room for improvement in the approach.

Split testing is a critical path item for improving the conversion potential and performance of your website, but it's not a vacuum. There are other important considerations you need to consider before you start testing – like what to test.

Known Unknowns

The easiest path is to test the obvious items, those you are fairly certain will have an impact on your conversions.

The most obvious are elements like:

PriceHeadlinesSocial ProofLayoutsSales Copy

These pieces of your web page have become the standard starting points for conversion testing, but what about the elements on your site that are adversely affecting conversion that you are unaware of?

Unknown Unknowns

The old saying goes that the more you know, the more you don't know. So how do you gain insight into problems you don't know about?

Observation.

It is a simple concept that is not executed on as often as it should be. Take the time, and make the necessary arrangements, so that you can watch you users use your website.

UserTesting.com is wonderful for this. It has helped us find specific problems that were directly leading to lost revenue, that we had no idea even existed.

The trick here is creating a scenario where you can play Big Brother, because you will never get the full truth from asking.

You need to let your customers navigate your web pages and conversion funnels, and pay close attention to both their mouse movements and the specific language they use to describe their behavior.

Dollars and Sense

A few months back I wanted to test a full shopper loop, from query through checkout, to see where we were leaving money on the table.

We had been running a number of A/B tests and seeing good results but this didn't give any visibility into how visitors were experiencing our site; how they were thinking about it.

Here's what we learned:

1. Cluttered Category Pages

Our category pages were too cluttered with descriptions, and actually made it daunting for our visitors to read all of the crammed description copy we had written

Before:

After:

2. Missing Pricing Information

Visitors were getting to our products pages with prices and add to cart buttons, but because of the layout of our category templates, they were not seeing the prices - becoming frustrated, and leaving!

The solution in this case was so simple; all we did was add a small image in the header telling users they needed to scroll down for pricing!

Before:

After:

3. No 'Add to Cart' Button

The next issue is almost laughable in retrospect, but people were missing our "add to cart" button. Why? Because it didn't look like a button, it was simply a plain text link that said "add to cart".

Directly in line with Steve Krug's manifesto, the solution was to stop making our customer's think, and make the button look like a button!

The new button now looks like this:

4. Checkout Confusion

The final head smacking moment came while watching users go through the checkout process and submit test orders.

Between clicking the submit order button and the thank you screen there is a 2-3 second delay while the order processes, but the users don't know that! So while all of this heavy lifting of hitting the payment gateway, hitting the inventory server, etc. is all going on – the user is left staring at their screen wandering if anything happened.

This led to countless occurrences of people repeatedly clicking the submit button, clogging up the order processing functionality, and causing the shopping cart to stop dead in its tracks. It is nauseating to think about how many orders were lost due to this lack of attention to detail on our part. The fix, again, was so simple: just tell the user's what's going on – set an expectation, and here it is:

So. Freaking. Simple.

Closing The Feedback Loop

Again, in retrospect these are all head-smackingly simple changes, but we never would of thought about them had we not physically watched users go through the process.

It is amazing how much actionable information you can instantly glean from watching and listening to people use your website.

The slightest little thing that has never occurred to you, your boss, or anyone else on your team – may be the one small change that is costing your money.

After making the four simple changes above, daily online sales have increased by almost 50 percent! And this is only the beginning, the real lesson here is that you can't change what you don't know – so you need to be proactive and turn the unknown unknown's into known unknowns, so you can fix them.

What are some small changes that have led to big results on your websites?

Harnessing the $9+ Billion Social and Mobile Ad Potential
In partnership with Moontoast, ClickZ presents the "Ultimate Guide to Social Rich Media Advertising". Social rich media advertising offers a one-of-a-kind opportunity for brands and agencies to target consumers with interests that match the virtues and values of their products. Download your free guide today!

How to Increase Social Influence Scores on Klout & More

Klout, PeerIndex, Kred, and Percollate are today's social influence reporters. Like it or not, marketers, brands and individuals are getting scored, ranked and labeled as a specialist, a celebrity, a curator, or even a taste-maker.

Facebook is a Tastemaker and has a Klout score of 80. Mashable scores an 88 and Google is an 80, both tagged Celebrity.

Cathay Pacific is a Specialist with a 58 Klout score. American Express comes in with a 78 and is a thought leader. As for Search Engine Watch:

Klout, the San Francisco-based startup, measures social media users' "influence" in the online world and is one of a handful of companies offering personal and brand analytics on the topic of social influence. Though it started as a result of Twitter, today Klout pulls data from as many as 12 social media platforms, depending on the user’s preference. But take note – Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ have the most impact according to unofficial sources.

How Klout Works

The Klout Score measures influence based on your ability to drive action. Every time you create content or engage you influence others. The Klout Score uses data from social networks in order to measure:

True Reach: How many people you influenceAmplification: How much you influence themNetwork Impact: The influence of your network

Brian Solis defines influence as the ability to cause, affect, or change behavior. But what exactly does a good Klout score mean to a marketer, a brand or an individual? The power of social influence is getting serious and perky! The question is: does your brand embrace the power of online influence?

Ego Power or Brand Strategy?

Internet marketing experts say brands should pay attention to Klout and individuals should forget about it.

In the book "Return of Influence" by Mark W. Schaefer marketers gain insight into the rise of social influence, what it means to a brand, and how to play the game. Schaefer reminds readers social media popularity in terms of number of friends and followers doesn't equate to influence. It's more about having the ability to move content through an engaged network.

Whether it is Klout, Kred, PeerIndex, or the offline world, building a social network that delivers a strong ROI has some common foundational elements. In Chapter 10 of "Return of Influence", Schaefer outlines the necessary DNA to gaming the Klout system that resulted in increasing a Klout score by 30 points in 45 days.

How to Increase Your Klout Score - The BasicsBuild a relevant network.Have a compelling content strategy.Systematically engage influencers who can push your content virally.Klout Score InfluencersTwitter and Facebook carry the most weight.LinkedIn and Foursquare don't seem to pull much rank.Google+ matters.There is some correlation between number of +K's earned and high Klout scores.What Can You Do Right Now?Check your Klout Score.Make sure it accurately portrays your brand profile, persona, and influences.See how Klout can fit into your business model. If it makes sense, spend more time with a strategy, if it isn't a fit, don't waste time worrying about it.Not sure? Try it out for 30 days and see what happens.Don't obsess over it.Check your score in real time with iPhone app.How to Improve Your Klout ScoreStay active 5-7 days a week (reminder: social media is more than a full time job).Keep visibility on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ steady and flowing on a daily basis.Facebook seems to be the favored network.Interact with other influencers.Post engaging and electrifying photos with visual impact and messaging.Find more friends and followers = larger network of opportunity.Participate in Twitter chats to build reach.Stay on topic with content, content you want to be associated with.Optimize your Twitter schedules with tools like Buffer.Why do Marketers Think About Klout?

Brett Tabke, founder of PubCon and WebmasterWorld, said he used to closely follow Klout (several times a day) when it was entirely about Twitter, which was important to his marketing model. Then Klout started adding other social networks and the Klout scores became "watered down" and less relevant to his business, he said.

“It slowly became apparent late last year, that Klout was no longer a metric we felt held enough value for our clients,” Tabke said. “We dropped our Klout data feed earlier this year and no longer check Klout scores of speakers or attendees."

Alan K'necht, co-host of #SocialChat, said that on the surface marketers shouldn't care about an individual's Klout score in isolation, what they should focus on is what they intend to achieve with the individual.

“If planning a Klout Perk give away, look at topics the person is influential on and their score within the topic (not publicly available),” K’necht said. “If deciding whose complaints to respond to, never assume a low Klout score is indicator of ‘so what.’ It only takes that person with a Klout score of 5 to be best friends with a person with a Klout Score of 85 and you have a social marketing disaster on your hands. All customers must be treated equally regardless of their Klout score.”

Rand Fishkin, CEO and founder of SEOmoz, said marketers shouldn't necessarily care about their own Klout scores, but they should care about public and brand perception of Klout, PeerIndex, FollowerWonk or whatever other scores are being used and cited by the press or other institutions (including big brands).

“I don't regularly follow my Klout score personally, but I am constantly interested in how the marketing world, online and off, leverages data,” Fishkin said. “My hope is that someday, Klout more accurately correlates to some important metrics (such as traffic driven by shared links). Today, it's hard to find a use case apart from those that are ego-driven."

Michelle Marie, social media strategist, says she keeps an eye on her Klout score but doesn’t put a lot of weight in it other than being a perk-filled competitive game not much different than gaining a multitude of mayorships on Foursquare.

“Most people seem to take Klout much too seriously. Improving your score can be a bit tricky especially if your score is already on the higher end,” Marie said. “Staying very active is essential, two or three days of low activity can really impact your score and drop you down rather quickly but being hyperactive won’t necessarily have the opposite effect either. Getting people to engage with your posts via reshares, retweets, and mentions will give you a good boost but you have to maintain that same level of engagement or your score will go back down."

Marie offers these tips to improve social scores of influence:

Start conversations on Twitter.find great content to post on Google+.Routinely get people to follow you if you want to see your score increase.

Raising your score isn’t hard, it’s just time consuming since you have to be persistent.

The Perks of Klout

Last year Klout introduced Klout Perks, exclusive products or experiences individuals earn based on their score of influence. Brands can now recognize the impact of social media and virility, as well as the power of the individual voice on social media channels. Klout Perks allows brands to connect with social media influencers and spark conversations about the brand.

So what's Klout got to do with it? Everything…and nothing. If you fall into the category of those who "love to hate Klout" it might be hard to pass up this recent Klout perk launched this month: San Francisco International Airport (SFO) visitors using the Klout for iPhone app showing a Klout Score of 40 or higher get access to the Cathay Pacific First and Business Class Lounge. Not a bad perk.

If you're attending SES San Francisco,, this might be a Klout Perk worth downloading!

Harnessing the $9+ Billion Social and Mobile Ad Potential
In partnership with Moontoast, ClickZ presents the "Ultimate Guide to Social Rich Media Advertising". Social rich media advertising offers a one-of-a-kind opportunity for brands and agencies to target consumers with interests that match the virtues and values of their products. Download your free guide today!

Geolocation Changes Google Keyword Rankings 69% of Time [Report]

In 69 percent of cases where a company’s website ranks in the top 30 on Google for one location, it doesn't rank for that keyword across all other locations, according to a new report from Linkdex. Their study also included an examination of ranking variations across 10 different geolocations, in that case finding that ranking deviated by average of 11 positions.

Geo-Variance Research Explores Search Results Across 10 U.S. Cities & Towns

Linkdex tested 2,000 keywords across a mix of 10 major U.S. cities and smaller towns and found that at higher levels of variance, the majority of the results in Google’s top 10 changed completely, depending on the searcher’s location.

One particularly interesting section of the report demonstrates how select verticals including restaurants, furniture, used cars, flights, and credit cards behave.

Linkdex notes, “When we began our research, and when we selected the verticals to look at in greater detail, we expected to find a different level of variance across different verticals. We did encounter this, as shown above, but not all of the results were as anticipated – some selected verticals are less affected by geo-variability than expected, and some more.”

Ranking Variances May Not Be in Verticals or Niches You Expect

For a deeper, look, they broke down the ranking reports of each market, looking at the 15 websites per vertical with the best visibility on the first page of results (position 1 through 10). This approach favored sites with multiple locations, therefore decreasing variance.

However, they did notice that high variability sites, like listing site Menupages.com, may struggle to rank across geo-locations.

“Menupages recorded 14 top 3 positions in NYC, and none at all in San Francisco,” Linkdex found. “In positions 4 through 10, there are eight keywords ranking in New York City, but none in Chicago.”

Marketers still need to monitor geo-variance across all sectors, they caution, even though some verticals show less variance than others. There are niches within each sector that buck the trend.

We spoke with Linkdex VP of Product/Marketing Matt Roberts, who believes the research raises more questions than answers, for marketers. They’re important questions, though.

The local question is a troublesome one for many and understanding how visibility changes allows marketers to spot opportunities. Typically, he said, even when people could find the information, it’s been incredibly difficult to collect and manage it at any scale.

While the best data is always going to be your own, Linkdex offers a big picture view of the problem, thanks to their capability to capture these insights across different geos. To that end, they said, “We believe geo-ranking insights will give people the understanding of what markets and groups of keywords are affected by variations in geo-ranking. They will then be able to develop geo-optimization strategies that maximize the opportunity to grow traffic and revenues.”

Download the full report from Linkdex here.

Harnessing the $9+ Billion Social and Mobile Ad Potential
In partnership with Moontoast, ClickZ presents the "Ultimate Guide to Social Rich Media Advertising". Social rich media advertising offers a one-of-a-kind opportunity for brands and agencies to target consumers with interests that match the virtues and values of their products. Download your free guide today!

Google Buys Clever Sense: An Answer To Siri?

As is being widely reported�Google has bought startup�Clever Sense, which earlier this year launched the local-mobile recommendations app Alfred. Alfred is like “Pandora for the real world” and was dedicated to creating a comprehensive “interest graph.”�Clever Sense assigns or maps physical places to one another based on styles, characteristics and attributes in the same way that Pandora does for music. However this process is all done by “artificial intelligence.”

Here’s how Clever Sense itself described the functionality behind Alfred:

The Extraction Engine built into the Clever Sense Platform curates large amounts of unstructured crawled data by leveraging natural language processing, statistical machine learning, and data mining algorithms.

As it reads through the data, the Extraction Engine learns meaningful concepts that are descriptive of physical items in the real world. These concepts constitute the foundation of the Clever Sense Interest Graph. The engine further leverages social interactions like check-ins, likes, and ratings to enrich the Interest Graph. It calculates similarities via graph-based algorithms using these social interactions.

Before the launch of Alfred earlier this year I spoke at some length with�CEO Babak Pahlava. It’s not clear how much traction the app itself had prior to the acquisition. The local space is pretty noisy and �my guess is that Alfred was�struggling�to get attention; it had recently been redesigned.

The technology that Google is getting from Clever Sense (and the people) will greatly enhance its local recommendations capabilities, which are fairly�embryonic. Google clearly sees personalized local recommendations as an important part of its local product(s) going forward. Google+ may also figuring increasingly into this project as well.

There’s a way that Clever Sense may also become part of Google’s answer to Siri, which is a natural language understanding technology (rather than a pure voice search tool). This probably isn’t�the primary motivation but perhaps be one of the “top three.”

The video below describes Clever Sense more (the app was called Seymour then):

Our past story,�Clever Sense: A Mobile Search Engine That�s Like “Pandora For The Real World”, also covers it more.

Social Media Marketing World 2013 Wrap-Up #SMMW13

Audience for “Integrating Blogging with Content Marketing to Inspire Action”

This week was the start of a 6 speaking event extravaganza over the next 30 days or so and what a kickoff. The inaugural Social Media Marketing World in San Diego put on by Mike Stelzner and the team at Social Media Examiner was nothing less than impressive.

When Mike told me about the event last year, I had no hesitation about saying yes. What I didn’t know was what kind of experience it would be.

With a very California warm and fuzzy feel, the practical SMMW13 conference sessions were sandwiched with inspirational and engaging keynotes from:

Larry Benet “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”Sally Hogshead “How to Fascinate With Your Social Media Messages”�Dave Kerpen“The 4 most important words in business are, thank you and I’m sorry”

As they should, the keynotes hit people over the head with compelling insights, perspectives and had people laughing, crying and highly motivated.

The practical sessions at Social Media Marketing World covered the gamut of topics from many of the top experts on platforms, strategies and tactics. It was like a “A-Team” of social media pundits and practitioners gathered together for two days of social vulcan mind-melds. For example:

When you want to learn about Facebook, who better to learn from than Mari Smith, Brian Carter, Amy Porterfield and Andrea Vahl?

When you want to dig into LinkedIn, look no further than Viveka von Rosen.

For Twitter, there was Mark Schaefer and savvy brand practitioners Michael Bepko (Whole Foods), Liz Philips (TaylorMade), and Shelly Lucas (Dun & Bradstreet). I couldn’t get into this session at all, it was so packed.

To learn about building trust and relationships, Chris Brogan delivered.

For Google+, where can you find more enthusiastic advocates than Guy Kawasaki�and Jesse Stay?

And of course for Pinterest and Instagram there were brand marketers Callan Green (Sony Electronics) and Karen Worley (San Diego Zoo) as well as author Beth Hayden.

And when it comes to content marketing, I can’t think of anyone better to learn from than “the man” himself, Joe Pulizzi.

Many other practical topics were covered as well, including:

Social Business (Michael Brito from Edelman, Pam Didner from Intel, Munish Gupta from Dell)Podcasting (Cliff Ravenscraft)Video (Steve Spangler)Community Building (Susan Wassel from Sharpie, Ekaterina Walter from Intel and Kat Smith from Petco)Lead Generation (Jason Miller�from Marketo)Measurement ( Author�Nichole Kelly)Strategy (Author Mitch Joel)Design (Vanessa Cho from Walmart )Crisis Management (Author Douglas Karr)Social Networking (Author John Jantsch)Branding (Brian Ellefritz from SAP and LaSandra Brill from Cisco)

But wait, there’s more!

Blogging was well represented by the likes of brand smartiesJustin Levy (Citrix) and Waynette Tubbs (SAS), blogging savant Marcus Sheridan and conference organizer Michael Stelzner. Blogging was also the topic of my session, “How to Integrate Blogging With Content Marketing that Inspires Action”. Here’s a blog post preview.

@RachaelSilvers is now on her way to becoming Optimized!

I was floored by the great energy the audience gave during my session and really amazed at the response on Twitter, guided by the incentive to win a copy of Optimize, for the best tweets. Thanks to the monitoring of TopRank’s Miranda Miller, I learned there were about 275 tweets during the 40 minutes of presentation time.

Congratulations to Rachael Silvers for being the winner of best tweets during my session!

For my presentation, I covered the importance of setting goals, following a plan, measuring progress and optimizing performance of blogging efforts as part of a content marketing strategy.

It might seem like common sense to do this, but it’s simply not in effect. When I polled the audience about having specific goals for their blog, 35-40% raised their hands. When I asked about using a blog specific editorial plan, 20% responded. The follow up to that was about monitoring KPIs and optimizing performance which each resulted in about 10% of hands. I guess they were in the right session, because that’s exactly what I presented and the feedback was amazing.

The punch line to the presentation was an equation: Add passion of individual subject matter experts and what the brand stands for with an understanding of your customers’ needs and the result will be stories that can Attract, Engage & Convert.

Anne McColl actually created a hand drawn infographic on her ipad of my presentation. How clever is that?

Speaking of livetweeting, our friends at Traackr did a cool thing and ran a list of the top 50 microbloggers during the conference.

It was nice to see a strong Minnesota contingent present including Christina Milanowski from Maccabee Group plus Sarah Kuglin and her partner in crime Colleen Olson Marcus soaking up social knowledge everywhere I looked. Sarah is working on a very special project for us and I can’t wait to share when it’s done.

Overall it was a great event and I was very happy to finally meet quite a few people in person for the first time that I’ve known online for years, like Ric Dragon, Liz Phillips, Waynette Tubbs, Dave Kerpen, Sally Hogshead, Viveka von Rosen and many more.

Thank you Mike Stelzner, Phil Mershon, Cindy King, Jaci Feinstein, Irene O’Leary and the entire Social Media Examiner staff for putting on a fantastic first conference. Along with everyone else that attended this week, I’m looking forward to the next one.

If you attended Social Media Marketing World in San Diego this week, what was your favorite part?

Google Fights Human Trafficking Using Big Data

Google has donated $3 million to three firms that are using big data to aide in the fight against human trafficking.

The search giant announced the launch of the Google Global Human Trafficking Hotline Network at event in Washington, D.C. Google's project will bring together a variety of human trafficking hotlines to create a consolidated base of data that will be able to identify trafficking hotspots around the world.

Google will fund the project with three advocacy groups. The Polaris Project, Liberty Asia, and La Strada International will begin to work together by sharing data from their human trafficking hotlines.

The collective will share data with the aim of creating stronger prevention strategies and work to identify which countries are currently witnessing the largest cases of abductions.

"Together, these partners will not only be able to help more trafficking survivors, but will also move the global conversation forward by dramatically increasing the amount of useful data being shared," wrote director of Google Ideas Jared Cohen and director of Google Giving Jacquelline Fuller in a blog post.

"Appropriate data can tell the anti-trafficking community which campaigns are most effective at reducing slavery, what sectors are undergoing global spikes in slavery, or if the reduction of slavery in one country coincides with an increase right across the border."

The Polaris Project has collected over 72,000 hotline calls in the U.S. alone. Polaris Hotline's data has aided local and global authorities in creating better strategies to combat human trafficking.

Polaris has already begun to work with tech firms like Salesforce to expand its infrastructure. Salesforce recently helped Polaris scale its hotline operations globally.

Google reports that human trafficking leads to over 21 million people being enslaved each year. Traffickers are reported to earn as much as $32 billion a year through their illicit practices.

The search giant, which last year came under fire for human trafficking ads, has been fighting against human trafficking for the past three years. Following its $3 million donation to the hotline network, Google will have invested over $14 million in efforts to end the human trafficking trade.

This article was originally published on V3.

Harnessing the $9+ Billion Social and Mobile Ad Potential
In partnership with Moontoast, ClickZ presents the "Ultimate Guide to Social Rich Media Advertising". Social rich media advertising offers a one-of-a-kind opportunity for brands and agencies to target consumers with interests that match the virtues and values of their products. Download your free guide today!

Social Media Marketing World 2013 Wrap-Up #SMMW13

Audience for “Integrating Blogging with Content Marketing to Inspire Action”

This week was the start of a 6 speaking event extravaganza over the next 30 days or so and what a kickoff. The inaugural Social Media Marketing World in San Diego put on by Mike Stelzner and the team at Social Media Examiner was nothing less than impressive.

When Mike told me about the event last year, I had no hesitation about saying yes. What I didn’t know was what kind of experience it would be.

With a very California warm and fuzzy feel, the practical SMMW13 conference sessions were sandwiched with inspirational and engaging keynotes from:

Larry Benet “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”Sally Hogshead “How to Fascinate With Your Social Media Messages”�Dave Kerpen“The 4 most important words in business are, thank you and I’m sorry”

As they should, the keynotes hit people over the head with compelling insights, perspectives and had people laughing, crying and highly motivated.

The practical sessions at Social Media Marketing World covered the gamut of topics from many of the top experts on platforms, strategies and tactics. It was like a “A-Team” of social media pundits and practitioners gathered together for two days of social vulcan mind-melds. For example:

When you want to learn about Facebook, who better to learn from than Mari Smith, Brian Carter, Amy Porterfield and Andrea Vahl?

When you want to dig into LinkedIn, look no further than Viveka von Rosen.

For Twitter, there was Mark Schaefer and savvy brand practitioners Michael Bepko (Whole Foods), Liz Philips (TaylorMade), and Shelly Lucas (Dun & Bradstreet). I couldn’t get into this session at all, it was so packed.

To learn about building trust and relationships, Chris Brogan delivered.

For Google+, where can you find more enthusiastic advocates than Guy Kawasaki�and Jesse Stay?

And of course for Pinterest and Instagram there were brand marketers Callan Green (Sony Electronics) and Karen Worley (San Diego Zoo) as well as author Beth Hayden.

And when it comes to content marketing, I can’t think of anyone better to learn from than “the man” himself, Joe Pulizzi.

Many other practical topics were covered as well, including:

Social Business (Michael Brito from Edelman, Pam Didner from Intel, Munish Gupta from Dell)Podcasting (Cliff Ravenscraft)Video (Steve Spangler)Community Building (Susan Wassel from Sharpie, Ekaterina Walter from Intel and Kat Smith from Petco)Lead Generation (Jason Miller�from Marketo)Measurement ( Author�Nichole Kelly)Strategy (Author Mitch Joel)Design (Vanessa Cho from Walmart )Crisis Management (Author Douglas Karr)Social Networking (Author John Jantsch)Branding (Brian Ellefritz from SAP and LaSandra Brill from Cisco)

But wait, there’s more!

Blogging was well represented by the likes of brand smartiesJustin Levy (Citrix) and Waynette Tubbs (SAS), blogging savant Marcus Sheridan and conference organizer Michael Stelzner. Blogging was also the topic of my session, “How to Integrate Blogging With Content Marketing that Inspires Action”. Here’s a blog post preview.

@RachaelSilvers is now on her way to becoming Optimized!

I was floored by the great energy the audience gave during my session and really amazed at the response on Twitter, guided by the incentive to win a copy of Optimize, for the best tweets. Thanks to the monitoring of TopRank’s Miranda Miller, I learned there were about 275 tweets during the 40 minutes of presentation time.

Congratulations to Rachael Silvers for being the winner of best tweets during my session!

For my presentation, I covered the importance of setting goals, following a plan, measuring progress and optimizing performance of blogging efforts as part of a content marketing strategy.

It might seem like common sense to do this, but it’s simply not in effect. When I polled the audience about having specific goals for their blog, 35-40% raised their hands. When I asked about using a blog specific editorial plan, 20% responded. The follow up to that was about monitoring KPIs and optimizing performance which each resulted in about 10% of hands. I guess they were in the right session, because that’s exactly what I presented and the feedback was amazing.

The punch line to the presentation was an equation: Add passion of individual subject matter experts and what the brand stands for with an understanding of your customers’ needs and the result will be stories that can Attract, Engage & Convert.

Anne McColl actually created a hand drawn infographic on her ipad of my presentation. How clever is that?

Speaking of livetweeting, our friends at Traackr did a cool thing and ran a list of the top 50 microbloggers during the conference.

It was nice to see a strong Minnesota contingent present including Christina Milanowski from Maccabee Group plus Sarah Kuglin and her partner in crime Colleen Olson Marcus soaking up social knowledge everywhere I looked. Sarah is working on a very special project for us and I can’t wait to share when it’s done.

Overall it was a great event and I was very happy to finally meet quite a few people in person for the first time that I’ve known online for years, like Ric Dragon, Liz Phillips, Waynette Tubbs, Dave Kerpen, Sally Hogshead, Viveka von Rosen and many more.

Thank you Mike Stelzner, Phil Mershon, Cindy King, Jaci Feinstein, Irene O’Leary and the entire Social Media Examiner staff for putting on a fantastic first conference. Along with everyone else that attended this week, I’m looking forward to the next one.

If you attended Social Media Marketing World in San Diego this week, what was your favorite part?

International SEO Core Considerations

Developing an SEO strategy to tackle different demographics is difficult. When those demographics are scattered across different regions, the situation gets even harder as you're no longer just looking at user behavior, but also at different ranking signals that need to be sent.

Let's explore some of the core considerations that every SEO professional and business owner needs to make when looking to gain traction internationally.

One area this post won't get into is conversion optimization and conversion tracking, as that's its own discipline. What we're going to look at are the nuts-and-bolts of some of the core factors that have a significant impact on a site's ability to rank internationally.

Understand the Environment

Before we head into discussing some of the areas that need to be addressed to rank internationally, let's take a moment to consider what you're up against.

Let's say you're a U.S.-based company selling blue widgets. You've built a good business base in the US and now you're looking to expand your reach into, for example, Canada.

You're going to be up against Canadian firms with established businesses in the country and have sites already geared to rank there. Essentially, you'll be looking to extend your reach into an area where there are companies focused on just this one country.

I liken this to running in "Amazing Race". When the racers hit a country no one has been to, everyone is even. However, when they're running and one team has a better understanding of the language, culture, and how to get around, they tend to break away from the pack more easily. It's not that they can't be beaten, they simply have a significant advantage. That's where you'll find yourself when entering a new market.

Be prepared to be up against websites with inherent advantages. Generally it will take more effort for you to take a position that it will take them to keep it. The reasons for this will become clear as we go through some of the key areas you need to consider in your efforts.

Domain Considerations

One of the first areas you'll need to consider is what domain(s) you are using and where they are hosted. Domain hosting location is a factor.

Essentially, if you're hosting in Germany, you get a stronger association with Germany. Add to that a .de domain name and you've further reinforced your association with the country.

So that leads to the question, "Why wouldn't I just build a site for every country?" To answer this is easiest with another question, "To get ranking in your native country, did you just throw up a site and suddenly you were ranking in the top 10?" The answer is undoubtedly a "No" and so you need to consider the effort that's going to be required to rank each site on its own merits and the work required to provide quality content and trustable links to each.

Essentially it comes down to this: will it be more work to rank a different domain from scratch and keep it maintained, or to overcome the limitations in not being able to take advantage of hosting and domain perks but have the strength of a linked-to and populated site to hit the ground running. This will depend on the resources and deployment you plan on putting in. Here is an example of scenarios where I would recommend each of the different options:

Scenario 1

You have staff on the ground and an office in each country you want to focus on. Providing a steady stream of content relevant to that demographic is doable and desirable and the market is large enough to warrant such. Essentially, you're considering a scenario where the full user experience would be tailored to a specific region and its needs (google.de for example).

In this environment, you should create a site around the country-specific domain and hosting that site in the target nation (as you probably guessed). It's going to be a lot of work, but having people on the ground you'll have access to regular copy as well as link and social opportunities.

Scenario 2

You're selling blue widgets in your home country successfully and want to sell abroad. You don't have a sales or support team in different locations as your orders come online. You've got a limited budget and need to make the most of it.

Almost always in this instance, you should build a single site. Focus your energies and take advantage of the non-domain factors as much as possible. The work required to build, rank, and maintain multiple websites outweighs any advantage the domain factors may lend. There are exceptions to this, but they are the minority.

Decisions Decisions

Each scenario is unique and there isn't a global rule as to whether to use country-based TLDs or a single site. Hopefully you know what your resources are and where your own individual strength and limitations are. If not, however, you're welcome to list your scenario in the comments below for additional advice. SEW readers and writers tend to be a pretty helpful group and I'll be monitoring them as well.

Google Properties

Letting Google know that you're geographically tied to a region isn't necessary, but it's definitely helpful. If you have a physical location in the country you're expanding into, be sure to list it on Google Places and connect it to either your website (if you have one specific to that region) or to a page within that site dedicated to the region.

To further the cause, you'll want to tie other aspects of your Google profile to your location (and fortunately tying your site your Google profile is pretty much always a good thing) and so you'll want to do the following:

If you have folks on the ground in the target region, having them write blog posts as well as articles or guest posts for third-party sites and tying those, using the author attribute, to the author's Google profile (which in turn is tied to the website) is always a good idea.Verify your subfolders in Google Webmaster Tools and assign the appropriate regions to those folders. To do this you simple have to add the subfolder as a site (for example, www.mybluewidgets.com/de/) and associate it with the country it targets.Links

Google gathers additional signals on a website's regional relevancy by the location of the links to it. This happens in a similar fashion to the association given by hosting location and TLD, except by association as opposed to direct. In short, if your website's Japanese page has a link from a .jp domain hosted in Japan, Google derives from this that the site is relevant in Japan.

What this functionally means is that to your region-based domain/sub-domain/sub-folder should have links developed to it from the target region. Tools such as Majestic SEO allow for the filtering of site backlinks by location and/or TLD. These can be very helpful in getting a start, though it's obviously beneficial to simply develop marketing strategies targeting these countries that will, in turn, result in citations and links from domains in the region.

Should you select to host the multiple regional sections on the same domain, one of the benefits you'll gain here is that the links will pass weight that then cascades throughout the site.

Language and Definitions

Clearly one of the major purposes of hosting different sites/sections is to provide information to different countries/languages. Nothing will irritate a consumer more than poorly translated copy (or why wouldn't they just be using a translation tool). You'll need to have a copywriter who speaks the target language intimately to capture the nuances.

Further, you'll need to redo your keyword research. Just because someone may search "blue widgets online" in the U.S., doesn't mean that those in other countries search the same way. A simple straight-across translation may not capture the keyword focus being used in different countries. This should be done prior to the translation obviously.

And of course, it's always wise to define the language using the meta tag. A definition for German would appear as:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="de">

This simply sends one more signal that the pages of content on your site are designed for German speakers further adding intent and relevancy.

English To English

There's also the problem of English to English. What if you're simply a U.S. company wanting to expand the market into Canada or the UK where English is the dominant language?

A full translation of the site would seem an unnecessary task. While some could argue for regional subtleties (color vs. colour for example) overall, you'd end up with a massive amount of duplicated content unless you wanted to rewrite the entire site. Even then, it would be hard to justify under manual review (and it's always wise to avoid strategies that wouldn't stand up to such a review.

In these events, and they're common, it's smart to rely on the factors that can be controlled and focus energies on tying regional signals via links and social considerations as well as including specific regional conveniences (and signal reinforcers) such as currency alternatives.

Conclusion

While expanding one's market is generally a good thing, what people often forget is that you still have to maintain what you have, so make sure you have the resources. Many wars have been lost simply by trying to fight them on too many fronts.

If you have just enough resources to dedicate to a successful SEO strategy in your own country, it doesn't make sense to expand in that you'll be drawing resources away from the strategy that's keeping the lights on. You need to make sure it's the right decision for your business and if it is, make sure that you're picking the right strategies to maximize your odds of success in the shortest period of time.

For those of you in this process presently, good luck. And to those of you who've been there and done that – feel free to share your tales below.

Harnessing the $9+ Billion Social and Mobile Ad Potential
In partnership with Moontoast, ClickZ presents the "Ultimate Guide to Social Rich Media Advertising". Social rich media advertising offers a one-of-a-kind opportunity for brands and agencies to target consumers with interests that match the virtues and values of their products. Download your free guide today!

Google & Apple Extend Search Deal, Emerge As “Frenemies” Not “Froes”

WPP Group�s CEO Sir Martin Sorrell was the one who coined the term “froe” to describe Google. He said in 2008 that Google had gone from being a “frenemy” to a “froe” of the agency holding company. Presumably “froe” is a more direct competitor than a “frenemy”– at least that’s the implication.

Google and Apple started out as genuine friends, with overlapping board seats, and then seemed to gradually turn into sniping “froes.” But it now appears that they’re more like “frenemies” after all.

The two companies have apparently renewed their search deal regarding the iPhone, which was assumed to be in doubt as the “froe-mentum” built over the last year.

It kind of “crested” and broke when Apple announced that iPhone 4 would have Bing as a search option but not that Bing would be the “default” provider on the iPhone, as some had anticipated.

In a new Charlie Rose interview of Google CEO Eric Schmidt, appearing in BusinessWeek, Schmidt casually mentions that Google and Apple have “extended their deal”:

Apple is a company we both partner and compete with. We do a search deal with them, recently extended, and we’re doing all sorts of things in maps and things like that. So the sum of all this is that two large corporations, both of which are important, both of which I care a lot about, will [remain] pretty close.Emphasis added.

Separately there’s a Wall Street Journal video interview with Eric Schmidt in which he says that neither Apple nor Facebook are competitors. “Our competitor is Bing,” explains Schmidt. Frenemies, indeed.

For related news, see Techmeme.

Facebook Ad Analytics Will Track More Than Clicks & Likes

Facebook's new analytics are designed to make paid advertisers – retailers more than others, perhaps – feel better about their spends. In the coming weeks, the social network's Ads Manager dashboard will no longer simply be about how many click-throughs or "likes" a paid promotion creates.

Marketers soon will be able to track "any action that can be taken on Facebook downstream from an ad," David Baser, product manager for the digital giant, told ClickZ. It's any action a developer can plant in Facebook's API, Baser explained.

"The marketers will specify what actions they are interested in," he said. "So you choose the goals for your ad campaign, and then we'll measure that. That's everything involved with the 'People Talking About This' [data]."

The stat Baser refers to includes number of Likes, number of Facebook user comments involving the brand, RVSPs, "@mentions" of a brand, Facebook Places check-ins, and photo-tags. Those data-points have been included in the company's page posts insights product, but they now can also reflect the engagement driven by ads.

Among other items, Facebook upgrading its Ads Manager product could represent it taking a major stride toward something akin to a conversion rate, which is the Holy Grail of direct marketing metrics. If retailers include a "purchase" button on their page, they'll be able to see how many clicks from the ad were placed on the button. Facebook developers have been able to create action verbs - such as purchase, want, own, listening, etc. - for brands since January, opening up more possibilities for users of the social site to engage with brands.

Greg Links, VP of business development for social commerce technology firm Want, said Facebook's new analytics could help retailers get a better glimpse of purchase intent and other reasons "why consumers are on the site."

"To get down to that granular level," Links said, "is certainly something we haven't seen before in social commerce. That's pretty exciting."

Offers Analytics Also Improved

And as Facebook continues to roll out its Offers deals platform globally, big and small brands running coupons or specials now would appear more encouraged to buy paid advertising to support such an effort. They'll be able to see how many people "claim" offers, among other stats, due to an ad. Without an ad buy, Offers will only momentarily appear in users' news feeds like regular brand posts do.

Baser from Facebook suggested the new analytics could make paid Facebook ads more attractive to local marketers.

"This is definitely something that we think, because of the Offers product, will have a big impact to the local space," he said. "It will help the local marketer understand the paid campaign helped them. Although I think, in general, the product applies to most marketers on Facebook.

"I think everyone ranging from the biggest brands to the smallest marketer will benefit from getting a lot more clarity into what kinds of things are able to drive their ad campaigns," he said. "They will be able to take optimization to the next level."

This story originally appeared on ClickZ:Christopher Heine wrote What Facebook's New Ad Analytics Mean to Retailers

This article was originally published on ClickZ.

Harnessing the $9+ Billion Social and Mobile Ad Potential
In partnership with Moontoast, ClickZ presents the "Ultimate Guide to Social Rich Media Advertising". Social rich media advertising offers a one-of-a-kind opportunity for brands and agencies to target consumers with interests that match the virtues and values of their products. Download your free guide today!