Racist YouTube Video Epicenter of Bizarre Advertising Contract Dispute

It's an advertising campaign with all the subtlety and finesse of an intoxicated streaker at a football game. A commercial for law firm McCutcheon & Hamner, P.C. is going viral for all the wrong reasons, even as the creators and their client, the law firm, duke it out over the concept.

The video features a white man named Mr. Wong Fong Shu in closed-eye costume glasses and a bamboo hat yelling in an Asian voice; check it out:

It's no wonder they would want to dissociate their law firm from the video Time Magazine is calling "the most racist 'not racist' ad for a law firm."

McCutcheon & Hamner claim they never approved the video; in fact, they posted a statement on their Facebook Page that said their YouTube channel was hacked. 

Not so, says Jim DeBerry, executive with video production company Definitive Television, who claims his company was contracted "through an intermediary" to produce the video. The script, he says, was written and submitted by the law firm.

The video in question was removed from the law firm's YouTube channel, but remains live on Definitive Television's channel, where it has over a quarter of a million views.

DeBerry tweeted Tuesday that he was considering removing the video, with conditions:

However, ten hours later, the video's description on YouTube was updated and reads, in part:

"WE ARE UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO TAKE DOWN THE VIDEO, AFTER CONSIDERING THE PUBLIC VIEWING INTEREST WE WILL KEEP IT UP.

A COUPLE OF FACTS TO KNOW
McCutcheon & Hamner, P.C. have never called us saying we didn't create this video and wanted it down, because they know they did. in our opinion they had hope it would just go away and be brushed under the rug.

They are attempting to do damage control. I have provided proof they ordered the video from us, Which they know I have. That is the likely reason why they haven't filed a frivolous lawsuit, they have never filed a cease and desist. We obliviously would have them for libel and as attorneys they know this. When I telephoned them and asked them why they had been lying about us, i explained to them i wouldn't back down from any legal threats and not afraid because all parties now the facts and i will release them if i feel necessary. We had previously attempt to play nice with the former client prior to them becoming disgruntled and placing us at fault."

McCutcheon & Hamner's Joel Hamner told ABA Journal he's received death threats over the video. He also told Above the Law magazine that the firm has completed an internal financial review and did not contract Definitive Television to produce the video, either directly or through an approved agent.

For his part, Definitive Television's DeBerry admits documentation was a "loose" procedure. Translation: he can't quite back up his claim.

DeBerry underscored his lack of remorse and failure to comprehend the inappropriate nature of his video when he tweeted the standard "I'm not racist" defense:

It's unclear whether DeBerry considers Mr. Wong Fong Shu among his minority employees.

For now, the video is live, as McCutcheon & Hamner "investigate their legal options."

In this case, all publicity is not good publicity, especially for a company asking clients to trust their judgment in representing the brand in front of potentially millions of online viewers.

Editor's note: This article has been updated to reflect that McCutcheon & Hamner's Facebook Page is still active.

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Surprise! Google Updates PageRank Just in Time for Christmas

Christmas has come early for webmasters eagerly waiting to see if PageRank would ever update again. Twitter is abuzz with webmasters who noticed PageRank was updated early this morning, for the first time since February 2013. It’s surprising to many, since Matt Cutts had said there were no plans for another 2013 PageRank update due to technical issues.

At Pubcon Las Vegas in October, Cutts said we hadn’t seen a recent PageRank update because the pipeline that pushes PageRank data from the internal Google servers to the toolbar broke. There were no plans to fix it, he said, at least not for the remainder of the year. However, it appears that they decided getting this information out to the public was useful enough that they fixed the problem.

It seems the majority of sites that are new since the February update are starting out with PR1 or PR2. However, sites that have already had PageRank in the neighborhood of PR4-PR6 didn’t see much in the way of PR improvement this time.

“We looked at hundreds of sites and 90 percent dropped,” says Dave Naylor of Bronco. “We’ve not seen many gain PageRank in big leaps this time. We saw PR6s drop to PR1s, but not many PR1s rise to a PR6.”

There is also a lot of speculation that this data is not that fresh, and that the data seems to be several months old. Since Google gets daily updates to their internal PageRank tool, it seems a bit mysterious that Google would push out stale data -- unless there is a reason for it.

“My gut feeling is that the PageRank is from when the Google PageRank system broke, so it’s not new PageRank; it’s second hand PageRank from September-ish,” says Naylor.

Having a Google Page Rank update done in the few weeks leading up to Christmas (especially as it’s their first update since February) is also a bit unusual. With updated PageRank during a busy shopping season, it will definitely have an impact on those who have purchased links from high PR sites if those sites have seen a drop in PR.

It is also very important to remember that Google sees their PageRank update internally on a daily basis, and that is what impacts the algorithm, not the PageRank that is publicly seen by users through the Google toolbar or another similar tool. However, the perception of site quality, particularly when it comes to buying links or advertisements, still gets a lot of its weight from the current site’s PageRank in determining its value, even when that data is months old.

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Google Ad Rank Study: How The New Formula Is Impacting AdWords Performance

In October, Google changed its Ad Rank formula which determines the position order of AdWords paid search ads. The revised formula now factors in the expected impact of ad extensions and ad formats, in addition to the bid and quality score. The Search Agency has released its latest findings on the impact of this significant change.

The Search Agency looked at roughly 3,500 campaigns across a large client set and isolated preexisting ads that included one of the following ad extensions: location extensions, call extensions, review extensions, offer extensions, app extensions, or sitelinks, to compare them with the overall ad performance of those advertisers.

The team looked at the performance of the two data sets for the two weeks before Google implemented the Ad Rank change and two weeks after the implementation

“Points to ads with extensions possibly being served more often.”

What The Search Agency found is that, on the whole, impressions and clicks for ads with extensions improved significantly after the Ad Rank change: up 6 percent and 5 percent respectively. Overall, when looking at the performance of all the ads, impressions actually fell 6 percent and clicks were off slightly by 1 percent.

While the click-through rate (CTR) for ads with ad extensions fell 1 percent after the Ad Rank changes went into effect, the CTR remained much higher for ads with extensions. Overall the CTR for ads with extensions was 4.07 percent, compared to 1.82 percent for the control group of all ads.

“It�s important to note that our study is not drawing a causation between revisions in Google�s AdRank formula and changes in click-through rate. The decrease in CTR across periods was relatively small�only about 1%. What we found more significant was the large jump in impressions and clicks, which points to ads with extensions possibly being served more often,” said Matt Grebow, director, search media at The Search Agency.Ads with location extensions, in particular, saw dramatic improvements after the Ad Rank changes went into effect. Impressions for ads with location extensions rose 50 percent, clicks jumped 95 percent, CTR rose 40 percent and the CPC fell by 32 percent at the end of the post-change period.

“Overall, ads that include ad extensions garner a significantly higher CTR than ads without. That said, advertisers need to consider which types of extensions make sense for their brand. We always encourage our clients to test, but we also advise them only to opt into search products that are compatible with their marketing objectives,” says Grebow.

IAB Tackles Native Advertising Standards as FTC Investigates

As the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) starts to look into the ecosystem of native ads in an attempt to better understand and serve consumers' interests, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) - whose members are likely to be the most affected by any FTC decision - is throwing its weight in with a “Native Advertising Playbook” to try to set industry standards.

The Issue

At stake is the unclear limits between editorial content and advertorials. This is the border between two symbiotic territories, that the consumer often at times cannot distinguish, hence the propensity of advertisers, publishers and brands to use such channels to lure buyers in. The FTC's workshop on the topic yesterday was called "Blurred Lines: Advertising or Content?"

Timing is of the Essence

Understandably so, the IAB’s move comes in a timely manner to try to find common ground, in anticipation to any FTC decision to step into the game. The release of the Playbook can even be seen as an industry suggestion (or wish?) list ahead of the holidays, traditionally a time for heightened ads around the clock. 

Playbook

The proposed framework invites advertisers/marketers to look in two directions:

1. Categories: it’s the “identity” of the ads or “units” - in-feed units, paid search units, recommendation widgets, promoted listings, standard ads with “native” element units and, last but not least, “custom.” We’ll get back to that later.

2. Context: what to take into consideration when designing such native advertising units. Citing their own language here:

Form – How does the ad fit with the overall page design? Is it in the viewer’s activity stream or not in-stream?Function – Does the ad function like the other elements on the page in which it is placed? Integration – How well do the ad unit’s behaviors match those of the surrounding content?Buying & targeting – Is the ad placement guaranteed on a specific page, section, or site, or will it be delivered across a network of sites? What type of targeting is available?Measurement – metrics (e.g., views, likes, shares, time spent or sale, download, data capture, register, etc.)Disclosure – How is this ad product identified as such?

Clearly, this is a strong encouragement for advertisers to pay attention to the elements above but in no way are those firm rules, at least thus far. And even so, it looks like the IAB Native Advertising Task Force has left plenty of room for manoeuver with avenues such as the undefined, freeform  “custom” unit, as well as the open disclosure question, which could have been a more decisive "yes" or "no."

The FTC will no doubt be eyeing this proposed framework but it is likely to request firmer measures to protect consumers, including, precisely, identifying clearly the content as brand content/native advertising or editorial content/information. Any major rule setting is likely to send shockwaves as the practice of native advertising has proved to be a high ROI model, as evidenced by the flourishing ecosystem around it.

Words Matter

And just for the fun of it... 

The FTC's workshop used "Blurred Lines" in its title: were they not the FTC, someone could have said they are doing brand content for Robin Thicke's album... And as for the IAB's use of "Playbook", let's just say it's not quite as good a choice as the FTC's, as Playbook is Blackberry's doomed tablet... so again, it could have been brand content right there but... 

This article was originally published on ClickZ.

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Facebook Admits: Expect Organic Reach for Pages to Continue Declining

 

Companies using Facebook pages have found it increasingly difficult to reach their audience through unpaid, organic promotion. Even those with thousands of fans see only a tiny fraction of their posts actually being viewed in newsfeeds. Many have suspected for some time that Facebook is pushing businesses to use Sponsored Posts, just to get them seen by people who already Like the brand.

Facebook now admits that businesses will need to pay in order to get their companies posts and information in user newsfeeds.

In a sales deck sent out to partners last month and obtained by Ad Age, Facebook plainly states:

"We expect organic distribution of an individual page's posts to gradually decline over time as we continually work to make sure people have a meaningful experience on the site."

When businesses first complained of the issue last year, Facebook argued they were weeding out unengaging or spammy content, but that the overall reach for businesses was not reduced at all. This was increasing the success of the newsfeeds, they said; people were seeing content they were interested in, not marketing from pages they have liked.

The reality is, if Facebook can display business posts in the newsfeed, they would far rather get paid for it then do it for free.

Their position shouldn’t surprise brands, many of whom have seen the writing on the wall for some time. Facebook has shareholders to keep happy – one of the things that make shareholders most happy is an increased revenue stream. Businesses that rely on Facebook for promotion are going to have to pay if they want greater than 1-2 percent “seen” rates on their posts.

It’s also become clear that simply getting people to like a business page doesn’t mean the business will have any shot at engaging them in the future, even with great content. With Facebook admitting they will be delivering fewer and fewer organic liked pages in user newsfeeds, each Like becomes less and less valuable.

This change is also not welcome to companies that have invested time and money into building a fan base on Facebook, with the understanding the expense of gaining the fan (through an investment of time, resources) would pay off with all the future exposure in news feed. Now, those fans earned are looking pretty expensive, considering the limited exposure to brand content going forward.

The future of businesses on Facebook looks grim for those who don’t want to pay to play. As more businesses are forced to turn to paid promotion, the cost of promoting posts on Facebook is set to skyrocket. The way businesses do business on Facebook is changing, and it’s going to be expensive.

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Expanding from Local to National SEO with Google Trends

It's no secret that Google Trends is an important research tool in search engine optimization marketing campaigns. The question is, how many people are using it to its fullest potential? The value of Google Trends goes way beyond its initial use for tracking keyword popularity and can actually take your SEO campaign to the next level.

Many have already mastered their local SEO strategy and have no idea where to go from there to effectively rank in search engines on a national level. Instead of uselessly beating your head against a wall of competitors time and time again, take advantage of the regional information that Google Trends is giving you and begin working on multiple local campaigns that will serve to bump you into the desired national rankings you've been vying for.

Interest Over Time

Head over to Google Trends and enter a search phrase you'd like to rank for. Adjust the location to United States and select a suitable time frame for your industry.

In this example, I've used “responsive web design” as my search phrase. The graph above shows the interest over time and represents how the phrase is trending. If the interest of your search phrase is declining, you should consider alternative phrases to target.

Regional Interest

Toggle to the City view to drill down to the local levels. This will show you the areas where your targeted search phrase has the most interest.

Related Searches

At the bottom of the page, Google Trends will show you top related searches and phrases with a rising interest. Should your targeted phrase show a decline in interest, this is a great place to get alternative suggestions.

How to Utilize This Data for SEO Campaigns

Most companies will target their surrounding areas. With this tool and data, you can target the areas with the highest interest to get the most out of your SEO efforts. Building out landing pages that target these areas and localizing your link building efforts will give you a better chance at achieving results.

Applying Google Trends to your internet marketing campaign provides you the opportunity to broaden your SEO goals and become a nationwide contender in your industry. Obtaining a national online presence is no easy feat, but utilizing the regional information gathered from Google Trends and focusing on those locations should allow you to strengthen your SEO marketing campaign in no time and acquire those national rankings that recently seemed out of reach.

For a broader, more in-depth, review of Google Trends, take a look at Chuck Price's article How to Use Google Trends for SEO.

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Google Ad Rank Study: How The New Formula Is Impacting AdWords Performance

In October, Google changed its Ad Rank formula which determines the position order of AdWords paid search ads. The revised formula now factors in the expected impact of ad extensions and ad formats, in addition to the bid and quality score. The Search Agency has released its latest findings on the impact of this significant change.

The Search Agency looked at roughly 3,500 campaigns across a large client set and isolated preexisting ads that included one of the following ad extensions: location extensions, call extensions, review extensions, offer extensions, app extensions, or sitelinks, to compare them with the overall ad performance of those advertisers.

The team looked at the performance of the two data sets for the two weeks before Google implemented the Ad Rank change and two weeks after the implementation

“Points to ads with extensions possibly being served more often.”

What The Search Agency found is that, on the whole, impressions and clicks for ads with extensions improved significantly after the Ad Rank change: up 6 percent and 5 percent respectively. Overall, when looking at the performance of all the ads, impressions actually fell 6 percent and clicks were off slightly by 1 percent.

While the click-through rate (CTR) for ads with ad extensions fell 1 percent after the Ad Rank changes went into effect, the CTR remained much higher for ads with extensions. Overall the CTR for ads with extensions was 4.07 percent, compared to 1.82 percent for the control group of all ads.

“It�s important to note that our study is not drawing a causation between revisions in Google�s AdRank formula and changes in click-through rate. The decrease in CTR across periods was relatively small�only about 1%. What we found more significant was the large jump in impressions and clicks, which points to ads with extensions possibly being served more often,” said Matt Grebow, director, search media at The Search Agency.Ads with location extensions, in particular, saw dramatic improvements after the Ad Rank changes went into effect. Impressions for ads with location extensions rose 50 percent, clicks jumped 95 percent, CTR rose 40 percent and the CPC fell by 32 percent at the end of the post-change period.

“Overall, ads that include ad extensions garner a significantly higher CTR than ads without. That said, advertisers need to consider which types of extensions make sense for their brand. We always encourage our clients to test, but we also advise them only to opt into search products that are compatible with their marketing objectives,” says Grebow.

Expanding from Local to National SEO with Google Trends

It's no secret that Google Trends is an important research tool in search engine optimization marketing campaigns. The question is, how many people are using it to its fullest potential? The value of Google Trends goes way beyond its initial use for tracking keyword popularity and can actually take your SEO campaign to the next level.

Many have already mastered their local SEO strategy and have no idea where to go from there to effectively rank in search engines on a national level. Instead of uselessly beating your head against a wall of competitors time and time again, take advantage of the regional information that Google Trends is giving you and begin working on multiple local campaigns that will serve to bump you into the desired national rankings you've been vying for.

Interest Over Time

Head over to Google Trends and enter a search phrase you'd like to rank for. Adjust the location to United States and select a suitable time frame for your industry.

In this example, I've used “responsive web design” as my search phrase. The graph above shows the interest over time and represents how the phrase is trending. If the interest of your search phrase is declining, you should consider alternative phrases to target.

Regional Interest

Toggle to the City view to drill down to the local levels. This will show you the areas where your targeted search phrase has the most interest.

Related Searches

At the bottom of the page, Google Trends will show you top related searches and phrases with a rising interest. Should your targeted phrase show a decline in interest, this is a great place to get alternative suggestions.

How to Utilize This Data for SEO Campaigns

Most companies will target their surrounding areas. With this tool and data, you can target the areas with the highest interest to get the most out of your SEO efforts. Building out landing pages that target these areas and localizing your link building efforts will give you a better chance at achieving results.

Applying Google Trends to your internet marketing campaign provides you the opportunity to broaden your SEO goals and become a nationwide contender in your industry. Obtaining a national online presence is no easy feat, but utilizing the regional information gathered from Google Trends and focusing on those locations should allow you to strengthen your SEO marketing campaign in no time and acquire those national rankings that recently seemed out of reach.

For a broader, more in-depth, review of Google Trends, take a look at Chuck Price's article How to Use Google Trends for SEO.

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Surprise! Google Updates PageRank Just in Time for Christmas

Christmas has come early for webmasters eagerly waiting to see if PageRank would ever update again. Twitter is abuzz with webmasters who noticed PageRank was updated early this morning, for the first time since February 2013. It’s surprising to many, since Matt Cutts had said there were no plans for another 2013 PageRank update due to technical issues.

At Pubcon Las Vegas in October, Cutts said we hadn’t seen a recent PageRank update because the pipeline that pushes PageRank data from the internal Google servers to the toolbar broke. There were no plans to fix it, he said, at least not for the remainder of the year. However, it appears that they decided getting this information out to the public was useful enough that they fixed the problem.

It seems the majority of sites that are new since the February update are starting out with PR1 or PR2. However, sites that have already had PageRank in the neighborhood of PR4-PR6 didn’t see much in the way of PR improvement this time.

“We looked at hundreds of sites and 90 percent dropped,” says Dave Naylor of Bronco. “We’ve not seen many gain PageRank in big leaps this time. We saw PR6s drop to PR1s, but not many PR1s rise to a PR6.”

There is also a lot of speculation that this data is not that fresh, and that the data seems to be several months old. Since Google gets daily updates to their internal PageRank tool, it seems a bit mysterious that Google would push out stale data -- unless there is a reason for it.

“My gut feeling is that the PageRank is from when the Google PageRank system broke, so it’s not new PageRank; it’s second hand PageRank from September-ish,” says Naylor.

Having a Google Page Rank update done in the few weeks leading up to Christmas (especially as it’s their first update since February) is also a bit unusual. With updated PageRank during a busy shopping season, it will definitely have an impact on those who have purchased links from high PR sites if those sites have seen a drop in PR.

It is also very important to remember that Google sees their PageRank update internally on a daily basis, and that is what impacts the algorithm, not the PageRank that is publicly seen by users through the Google toolbar or another similar tool. However, the perception of site quality, particularly when it comes to buying links or advertisements, still gets a lot of its weight from the current site’s PageRank in determining its value, even when that data is months old.

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Google Search App Now Answers Your Questions In French, German Or Japanese

Google announced an international upgrade to the Google Search App, which enables the voice response answers that work currently in English to also work in French, German or Japanese.

So not only can you ask your question in English, French, German or Japanese or other languages via voice search — Google will respond to that question in English, French, German or Japanese.

All you need to do is install the latest version of the Google Search App and speak your question in French, German or Japanese.

The examples Google has given include:

If you need some coffee in Munich, just say �Wo bekomme ich Kaffee in M�nchen?� to get a list of local options. Wondering what the height of the Eiffel tower is? Get a quick answer by asking, �Quelle est la hauteur de la Tour Eiffel?�. Maybe you need to know who invented the transistor? Try asking in Japanese for �????????????????�

Here is how it works in English:

Google promises more conversational language support to come in the future.

Related ArticlesiOS Users To Get Enhanced Google Search App Ahead Of Most Android UsersStill Stuck Behind Apple�s Doors: The New Google Search AppGoogle Introduces Redesigned Mobile Search Experience, �Google Now� And Siri-Like AssistantGoogle Maps Mobile Gets Street View, Aimed At Helping iOS UsersGoogle Maps For Mobile: An iPhone User�s Guide“Google Now” Gains More Content Categories & Info CardsHow Google�s New Search App For The iPhone Might Steal Searchers Away From SiriWhat�s The Best Smartphone? Google�s New iOS Search App Says Decide For Yourself

Integrated Marketing Simplified: Be the Best Answer

Most marketers “get” that services like Facebook, Google and media are where customers can be attracted and engaged. They use email marketing and advertising to promote offers to convert and life is good.

At least that’s how it used to be.

The reality is that customers are becoming more complex, requiring more points of contact and information as they move through the sales cycle. Companies offering up single, direct channel promotions are finding it increasingly difficult to compete.

This is why I’m such a big advocate of taking a customer-centric view and then integrating tactics so brands can become the most logical solution when and where it matters most to buyers.

One of the most important things about having been involved in the search marketing world for a long time is the idea of identifying what’s in demand and being that thing at the moment of customer need (ZMOT). �When a customer needs to solve a problem, they search Google or Bing and there you are; leading the pack in the search results – just waiting to be clicked so you can deliver your offer to a qualified customer.

Search isn’t the singular home run channel it used to be

My SEO background is where the idea of “being the best answer” comes from. But today, search isn’t the singular home run channel it used to be. �Customers have other prominent influences and means for discovering information and numerous device types to consume and interact with media. Considering all those factors, planning for the best answer strategy can seem a bit tricky.

The answer is an integrated marketing approach. One of the slides I used on this topic at a recent social media workshop earned a bit more attention than the others. Maybe it was because the slide is so awesome it captured their focused attention? Or maybe it was because the slide is overloaded with text and arrows and the audience was simply perplexed?

I’m inclined to lean toward the latter, so to provide an example of how a marketer might connect the dots between goals and conversions with an integrated approach, I’ll use this post to explain my Frankengraphic:

The Scenario� – We have done our homework to understand a specific customer segment. We know their common demographic, psychographic and behavioral characteristics. Or at least simple data points like reasons for buying, preferred information discovery channels, content consumption preferences (media type, device, topic) and the kinds of offers and CTAs that work.

Through understanding our target customer goals, pain points and preferences, we can develop an integrated content marketing plan that is optimized for findability, engagement and action.

Business Goals – Marketing is accountable for creating demand for increasing revenue and many other variations that add to the business bottom line. Some of those are increased brand awareness, increase in sales volume, frequency and a decrease in duration of sales cycle, lowered marketing costs.

In the graphic above, we’re focused on selling more of a premium product to a target audience that represents a higher end buyer characterized as “Jane”.

Customer Insights – To be meaningful with a premium product or service offer to Jane, we need to understand her situation as a buyer on the high end of the spectrum. What causes her to need this kind of product? What situations often exist around the purchase? What factual and emotional triggers are involved with Jane’s buying experience? What questions does Jane have through the sales cycle?

Collecting buyer information from existing customers, web analytics, social media monitoring and your front line staff (Customer Service, Sales) that interact with customers on a daily basis can help inform which of your customers are “Jane”. �From that data we can create a buyer persona that will inform our marketing approach, tactics and measurement.

In this highly abbreviated example, Jane cares most (buying triggers) about saving time and great service. She uses a regional social network, Twitter and she also blogs. Our task is to become “the best answer” where it matters and on topics that are most relevant to Jane’s reason for buying premium “widgets”.

Marketing, PR, Customer Service Strategy – The way companies are structured, (and agencies too), marketing operates in a silo with few interactions across other departments. Convergence is happening, but it’s going to take some time.

In the case of Jane, our integrated approach would be designed to create a brand narrative across channels that support the interests of premium customers with particular focus on topics around saving time and providing stellar service. Being present in a meaningful way on multiple media: owned, earned, paid and shared provides a congruent experience across channels.

Tactical Mix and Implementation – Our tactical mix might start by drawing on existing customer surveys and data as well as�drawing insights from Customer Service to identify those key topics and concerns premium customers like the Janes have. We’d make sure we create information in the places where Jane discovers, consumes and acts on information online.

Along with posting to our own blog, and social network channels, our content plan would call for working with Public Relations to secure media placements in industry publications and blogs with the kind of information that will connect Jane to our offer. Awareness, Interest, Consideration and ultimately, Purchase.

Coordination with social media channels like Twitter and other relevant social networks in support of media coverage, blogging and ads provide a congruent set of messages about how our premium widgets save time like no other and come with first class service – the things Jane cares about most.

Key Performance Indicators – Our integrated strategy calls for themed content published across owned, earned, paid and shared media, so KPIs that track our content’s reach and engagement would be the focus. Any measurement effort needs to start with benchmarks of course. Social network size, current engagement on the target topics, search visibility, owned media content consumption of target topics – essentially both on and off site indications.

If we want to be known as a premium brand that saves time and provides first class service, then we’d need to establish the current share of voice and search for our brand and those topics. Then continue to monitor our marketing efforts to increase positive mentions and affinity of our brand in connection with how we want to be known to the Jane customer segment.

Web analytics, SEO tracking and social media monitoring services will provide KPI reporting. Brought into a dashboard, these KPIs will be the pulse of our progress towards reaching and engaging with Jane.

Business Outcomes – By increasing the number of credible mentions of our brand as “the best answer” in the context of a premium solution across multiple channels and media types, our hypothesis is that the Jane customer segment will discover, consume and act our information, pulling themselves through most of the sales cycle.

Growth in overall premium brand affinity on social and industry media as well as leads, sales, revenue and customer acquisition through premium widget sales would all be viable business outcomes as a result of a successful “best answer” marketing program.

Optimize Performance – Using KPI and business outcome data, we can refine our messaging, channel participation, media outreach and offers to continuously improve the performance of our program. Whether it’s to improve reach, engagement or conversions – optimization is the core of any ongoing marketing program, especially one that is integrated across multiple channels and media types.

When you look beyond the standard sales cycle of Awareness, Interest, Consideration and Purchase you can find that your content marketing, SEO and social media efforts will bear even more productive fruit in the form of referrals and brand advocacy. A big part of effective optimization is about making it easy for your target audience to do what you want them to do. �So make it easy for customers, prospects, the media and network influencers to find, consume and act on your content.

Be present where it matters. Be the best answer for whatever it is that your customers care about most, relevant to your brand’s solutions.

Hopefully this simplified view of an integrated effort across media types to “be the best answer” is helpful to you and will inspire you to create more meaningful customer experiences that increase revenue and grow your brand.

Are you implementing multichannel, integrated marketing programs? What obstacles or successes have you experienced?

Top image: Shutterstock

Google Search Now Discovers Content Within Android Apps

Google announced you can now search content within Android apps through their new App Indexing protocol they launched at the end of October.

Currently available on Android smartphones, when you search Google and there is an app that has content related to your Google search, you will see search results that open the app, directly to the piece of content in that app, that matches your query.

Google said, “Google can save you the digging for information in the dozens of apps you use every day, and get you right where you need to go in those apps with a single search.”

Here is an example of searching for a movie and Google returning content within the IMDB app. When you click open, it takes you directly to the movie details within the app:

Webmasters can learn more about how to get their app content to show up in these results by looking at our post named Google App Indexing: Google Can Index & Link To Content In Your Android App.

This currently works only with Apps in the Google Play Store and searches done on Android devices within the Google Search app or directly in Chrome and Android browsers.

Of course, this also works with showing you apps you can download to get the content. It will only open directly to the content within the app when you already have downloaded the app and if the app is participating in the App Indexing protocol.

US Mobile Search Revs To Hit Nearly $4 Billion This Year

A new report from Forrester Research projects US mobile paid search will be worth $3.8 billion by the end of 2013. Analyst forecasts are often aggressive, but this turns out to be a very reasonable estimate.

US mobile ad revenues were slightly below $3 billion according to the IAB for the first six months of 2013. That means, assuming higher mobile spending in the second half, mobile ad revenues should come in around $7 billion for the full year.

PC-based paid search was 43 percent of all digital ad revenue in 1H 2013. However paid search is a somewhat larger percentage of mobile ad revenue, up to between 50 and 60 percent (my estimate). Fifty five percent of $7 billion is $3.8 billion.

Forrester also projects that by the end of this year 72 percent of mobile subscribers will own smartphones. I suspect the number will actually be closer to 68 percent or 69 percent. Nielsen says that 64 percent of US mobile phone owners have smartphones today.

Source: Forrester Research (N = 61,167 in the US and N=5,800 in Canada; N = 22,027 in Europe)

Based on survey data Forrester found that 89 percent of US adults use mobile search engines at least weekly vs. 91 percent of tablet owners and 97 percent of PC users. Google has sponsored IPSOS research that shows even higher mobile search penetration. Yet those impressive “reach” or penetration numbers may conceal a more challenging “frequency problem” for Google and its rivals.

Earlier today I wrote on Marketing Land about survey data from financial industry research firm Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP). Those survey data showed Google’s search app was far less frequently used than a number of other apps, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Gmail and several others.

I don’t believe the CIRP numbers reflect usage of the search box in the mobile Safari browser on iOS. And they may not completely reflect Android search usage; people may not see “search” as a separate app on Android. But they do argue that while Google search has enormous reach it doesn’t (yet) have the frequency of PC-based search.

Data from our own recent Search Engine Land consumer survey (not yet published) reflect that a majority of people feel that mobile search is “harder” than on the PC. Still it is widely used. Perhaps if it were “easier” it would be more frequently utilized.

Google dominates mobile search in the US (89 percent) and globally (94 percent). Thus the overwhelming majority of the $3.8 billion in mobile paid search revenue Forrester projected will go into Mountain View’s pocket.

Source: StatCounter (12/13)

Others have estimated that mobile search revenues could reach 25 percent of all US paid search spending this year. That would put US mobile search revenues at more than $5 billion. That figure seems high given the current size of the overall mobile advertising market.

Google Trends Updates Accommodate Misspellings and Different Meanings

Google Trends is a great place for webmasters to spot trends and get some concrete marketing data. However, the data doesn’t take into account such things as misspellings or alternative meanings. Google has announced changes to the way they are displaying Google Trends data to alleviate some of these issues and make Google Trends more useful.

The first major change is help with trends where there can be multiple completely different user intents or meanings for a particular term. For example, if you search for a search interests for the term “rice,” you would have seen a mix of results for both rice (cereal) and Rice University.

Now, there are new topic predictions that allow you to select either Rice University or rice (cereal), so that your user intent is clear in their search intent reports. It gives more accurate comparisons when you are trying to compare interest in two different things, but where one can have multiple meanings.

The other big change is that now Google Trends is taking into account misspellings. Many people have seen the chart that shows the hundred or so misspellings for Britney Spears, so now Google trends will combine the accurate spelling of the search term along with all the common misspelling. Google also wants to take into account searches where they might not use the name of the person, but include terms where the search results would be the name of the actresses, such as “Lead actress in Iron Man” (Gwyneth Paltrow).

Google also announced a beta feature in Google Trends called topic reports. They currently have over 700,000 unique topics users can explore either worldwide or in a set of seven countries including Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, UK, and the US. They plan to make this available in the future to more regions, as well as adding new topics. Examples of this include Barack Obama, football (soccer) and Hayao Niyazaki.

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Integrated Marketing Simplified: Be the Best Answer

Most marketers “get” that services like Facebook, Google and media are where customers can be attracted and engaged. They use email marketing and advertising to promote offers to convert and life is good.

At least that’s how it used to be.

The reality is that customers are becoming more complex, requiring more points of contact and information as they move through the sales cycle. Companies offering up single, direct channel promotions are finding it increasingly difficult to compete.

This is why I’m such a big advocate of taking a customer-centric view and then integrating tactics so brands can become the most logical solution when and where it matters most to buyers.

One of the most important things about having been involved in the search marketing world for a long time is the idea of identifying what’s in demand and being that thing at the moment of customer need (ZMOT). �When a customer needs to solve a problem, they search Google or Bing and there you are; leading the pack in the search results – just waiting to be clicked so you can deliver your offer to a qualified customer.

Search isn’t the singular home run channel it used to be

My SEO background is where the idea of “being the best answer” comes from. But today, search isn’t the singular home run channel it used to be. �Customers have other prominent influences and means for discovering information and numerous device types to consume and interact with media. Considering all those factors, planning for the best answer strategy can seem a bit tricky.

The answer is an integrated marketing approach. One of the slides I used on this topic at a recent social media workshop earned a bit more attention than the others. Maybe it was because the slide is so awesome it captured their focused attention? Or maybe it was because the slide is overloaded with text and arrows and the audience was simply perplexed?

I’m inclined to lean toward the latter, so to provide an example of how a marketer might connect the dots between goals and conversions with an integrated approach, I’ll use this post to explain my Frankengraphic:

The Scenario� – We have done our homework to understand a specific customer segment. We know their common demographic, psychographic and behavioral characteristics. Or at least simple data points like reasons for buying, preferred information discovery channels, content consumption preferences (media type, device, topic) and the kinds of offers and CTAs that work.

Through understanding our target customer goals, pain points and preferences, we can develop an integrated content marketing plan that is optimized for findability, engagement and action.

Business Goals – Marketing is accountable for creating demand for increasing revenue and many other variations that add to the business bottom line. Some of those are increased brand awareness, increase in sales volume, frequency and a decrease in duration of sales cycle, lowered marketing costs.

In the graphic above, we’re focused on selling more of a premium product to a target audience that represents a higher end buyer characterized as “Jane”.

Customer Insights – To be meaningful with a premium product or service offer to Jane, we need to understand her situation as a buyer on the high end of the spectrum. What causes her to need this kind of product? What situations often exist around the purchase? What factual and emotional triggers are involved with Jane’s buying experience? What questions does Jane have through the sales cycle?

Collecting buyer information from existing customers, web analytics, social media monitoring and your front line staff (Customer Service, Sales) that interact with customers on a daily basis can help inform which of your customers are “Jane”. �From that data we can create a buyer persona that will inform our marketing approach, tactics and measurement.

In this highly abbreviated example, Jane cares most (buying triggers) about saving time and great service. She uses a regional social network, Twitter and she also blogs. Our task is to become “the best answer” where it matters and on topics that are most relevant to Jane’s reason for buying premium “widgets”.

Marketing, PR, Customer Service Strategy – The way companies are structured, (and agencies too), marketing operates in a silo with few interactions across other departments. Convergence is happening, but it’s going to take some time.

In the case of Jane, our integrated approach would be designed to create a brand narrative across channels that support the interests of premium customers with particular focus on topics around saving time and providing stellar service. Being present in a meaningful way on multiple media: owned, earned, paid and shared provides a congruent experience across channels.

Tactical Mix and Implementation – Our tactical mix might start by drawing on existing customer surveys and data as well as�drawing insights from Customer Service to identify those key topics and concerns premium customers like the Janes have. We’d make sure we create information in the places where Jane discovers, consumes and acts on information online.

Along with posting to our own blog, and social network channels, our content plan would call for working with Public Relations to secure media placements in industry publications and blogs with the kind of information that will connect Jane to our offer. Awareness, Interest, Consideration and ultimately, Purchase.

Coordination with social media channels like Twitter and other relevant social networks in support of media coverage, blogging and ads provide a congruent set of messages about how our premium widgets save time like no other and come with first class service – the things Jane cares about most.

Key Performance Indicators – Our integrated strategy calls for themed content published across owned, earned, paid and shared media, so KPIs that track our content’s reach and engagement would be the focus. Any measurement effort needs to start with benchmarks of course. Social network size, current engagement on the target topics, search visibility, owned media content consumption of target topics – essentially both on and off site indications.

If we want to be known as a premium brand that saves time and provides first class service, then we’d need to establish the current share of voice and search for our brand and those topics. Then continue to monitor our marketing efforts to increase positive mentions and affinity of our brand in connection with how we want to be known to the Jane customer segment.

Web analytics, SEO tracking and social media monitoring services will provide KPI reporting. Brought into a dashboard, these KPIs will be the pulse of our progress towards reaching and engaging with Jane.

Business Outcomes – By increasing the number of credible mentions of our brand as “the best answer” in the context of a premium solution across multiple channels and media types, our hypothesis is that the Jane customer segment will discover, consume and act our information, pulling themselves through most of the sales cycle.

Growth in overall premium brand affinity on social and industry media as well as leads, sales, revenue and customer acquisition through premium widget sales would all be viable business outcomes as a result of a successful “best answer” marketing program.

Optimize Performance – Using KPI and business outcome data, we can refine our messaging, channel participation, media outreach and offers to continuously improve the performance of our program. Whether it’s to improve reach, engagement or conversions – optimization is the core of any ongoing marketing program, especially one that is integrated across multiple channels and media types.

When you look beyond the standard sales cycle of Awareness, Interest, Consideration and Purchase you can find that your content marketing, SEO and social media efforts will bear even more productive fruit in the form of referrals and brand advocacy. A big part of effective optimization is about making it easy for your target audience to do what you want them to do. �So make it easy for customers, prospects, the media and network influencers to find, consume and act on your content.

Be present where it matters. Be the best answer for whatever it is that your customers care about most, relevant to your brand’s solutions.

Hopefully this simplified view of an integrated effort across media types to “be the best answer” is helpful to you and will inspire you to create more meaningful customer experiences that increase revenue and grow your brand.

Are you implementing multichannel, integrated marketing programs? What obstacles or successes have you experienced?

Top image: Shutterstock

Twitter Launches Tailored Audiences Retargeting Product

Twitter has just announced the launch of Tailored Audiences, their retargeting advertising product. The social network will work alongside partner companies to offer advertisers access to targeting data from sources external to Twitter.

Marketers will be able to target Twitter users based on more than just their location, gender, or other information available through the Twitter platform; they'll have insights from search engines, site visits, CRM data and more.

In the announcement, Twitter said, "After testing this for several months, today we are announcing the global availability of tailored audiences-a new way for advertisers to define your own groups of existing and potential customers, and connect with them on Twitter with relevant messages."

Retargeting on Social Networks

Retargeting allows advertisers deeper insight into consumers' behavior, enabling more specific targeting and messaging. It's a way for advertisers to get back in front of people who have expressed some interest in the brand or a related topic.

Advertisers have had access to retargeting through Google's DoubleClick, Facebook and other networks. However, Twitter's social offering is interesting, given the seamless placement of Promoted Tweets in the tweet stream.

In addition, most activity on Twitter happens in the stream, whereas Facebook has struggled to get users on the newsfeed to view in-line ads. Frequency can be an issue in newsfeed ads, where users may spend just 5 percent of their Facebook time.

The key is in understanding the level and type of intent of the user, a task made far easier with the data available through external sources.

Twitter Began Testing Retargeting in July

The move is not completely unexpected, as Twitter announced they would begin experimenting with retargeting in July 2013. At that time, senior director of product – revenue Kevin Weil wrote, “Users won't see more ads on Twitter, but they may see better ones.”

He explained how it would work: “To get the special offer to those people who are also on Twitter, the shop may share with us a scrambled, unreadable email address (a hash) or browser-related information (a browser cookie ID). We can then match that information to accounts in order to show them a Promoted Tweet with the Valentine's Day deal.”

Tailored Audiences takes Twitter beyond scrambled, browser-related information to the type of targeting used by Facebook Ad Exchange. However, they have a lot of catching up to do, especially given Facebook's in with Google's DoubleClick.

Twitter shared early results in the blog post announcement:

"We have seen impressive results from those advertisers in our beta test using the tailored audiences program over several months' time. Inbound marketing software platform HubSpot was an early beta tester of tailored audiences. By reaching recent visitors to their web properties with Promoted Tweets, Hubspot saw a lift in engagement rates of 45 percent with tailored audience campaigns over their historical averages. Krossover, a technology company that analyzes game video for sports coaches, used tailored audiences to drive a 74 percent decrease in cost per customer acquisition (CPA)."

Advertising Partners Key to Retargeting Data

Twitter was in talks with both Google and Microsoft in 2009 about data sharing, though the microblogging site's relationship with Google has grown far more contentious since. Back in 2010, the two were friends with benefits, but lately it hasn't been so. By late 2011, they'd a falling out and Twitter CEO Dick Costolo gave the first hint that their deal with Google was in peril (remember, this was after Google+ -- a social competitor – launched). Not long after, the agreement that gave Google access to the Twitter firehose ended.

Even then, there was speculation that Twitter blocked the deal in order to keep searches on their site, to maximize their advertising opportunities. Fast forward to today and Twitter clearly sees the value in working with partners, who already have access to more data than they could ever gather on their own site, rather than relying solely on internal user data.

Chango is one of Twitter's Tailored Audience partners; the firm has been involved in FBX since early days, as well. CRO and co-founder Dax Hamman explains to SEW the benefit for advertisers: "Tailored audiences is suitable for retargeting your existing site visitors with something richer than a display ad, and for finding new individuals based on their intent."

As to how Twitter's Tailored Audiences differ from FBX -- and why marketers would consider one or both offerings as part of their marketing plan -- Hamman tells us, "Facebook exchange and tailored audiences are similar in that they are both a way to talk to individuals in those channels using the marketer's own data. FBX is viewed typically more passively by consumers, whereas a Promoted Tweet is more proactive engagement."

Other partners are: Adara, AdRoll, BlueKai, DataXu, Dstillery, Lotame, Quantcast, ValueClick, and [x+1].

"We are excited to be selected as one of Twitter's launch partners, and thrilled to be working with them to help shape the future of their ad platform," Dstillery CEO Tom Phillips said in a prepared statement. "Combining Twitter's reach and Dstillery's sophisticated targeting technology produces astounding results for advertisers' campaigns."

Twitter has moved fast to build and prove revenue since their IPO, most recently adding both custom timelines and enhanced mobile targeting in November.

Image credit: Christopher Penler/Shutterstock.com

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Facebook News Feed Now Favors High-Quality Articles

As part of an ongoing effort to keep Facebook users up-to-date, Facebook announced recent algorithm changes that give high-quality articles shared on the social network favorable position in the News Feed. 

From Facebook’s announcement:

We've noticed that people enjoy seeing articles on Facebook, and so we're now paying closer attention to what makes for high quality content, and how often articles are clicked on from News Feed on mobile. What this means is that you may start to notice links to articles a little more often (particularly on mobile).

Facebook said the move is in response to feedback showing users prefer links leading to quality content versus seeing the latest meme that’s making the rounds. This is a great step for brands that use Facebook as a publishing platform for their unique website content. 

It’s no surprise Facebook is going after the mobile content consumer. Earlier this year, Facebook reported mobile users were up 54 percent from the year prior. 

Building on the quality content update, additional changes to the News Feed announced this week include an “additional articles” feature that can show several other links related to the original article shared on Facebook.

“Soon, after you click on a link to an article, you may see up to three related articles directly below the News Feed post to help you discover more content you may find interesting,” Facebook said.

The change is reminiscent of Twitter’s “related headlines” feature, which was released this past summer.

Facebook said the News Feed will now also apply “story bumping” to those updates that are receiving a lot of comments. That means, “people may start seeing a few more stories returning to their feed with new comments highlighted,” Facebook said. 

“Our testing has shown that doing this in moderation for just a small number of stories can lead to more conversations between people and their friends on all types of content.”

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New Google Maps Adds More Search Results To Info Window

The (relatively) new Google Maps is certainly visually richer than the old Maps UI. However it may be somewhat less functional. As one example, it eliminates one of my favorite and most-used features: “search nearby.” It’s now also somewhat harder to access multiple results on a category query, ironically.

Yesterday, Google Operating System spotted a change in the number of search results showing in the main info-window below the search box. Google is now showing three results per category query. The following is an example result for “San Diego Sushi.”

Below is the same search result in the old Google Maps UI. Although more visually pedestrian, it’s more useful in several respects.

The following is a drill down on a single search result in the new Google Maps. The expanded result opens when users click on any of the links in the window.

Below is the old Maps UI. When one clicked on an individual result, an info-window or bubble appeared on the map itself.

Comparing the two views of individual listings on the old and new Maps UIs, it’s clear the new UI provides more information “at a glance.” However, as mentioned, users don’t get the “search nearby” feature, which I used frequently. I often used it, for example, to find a destination (e.g., conference location) and then identify nearby hotels or restaurants within walking or a short driving distance. (Note to Google: feature request.)

Below is the “list view” from the new Maps UI. It’s available after a click on “Go to Top Results.” Users can also drill down from this screen into individual business listings. These screens are more attractive and less cluttered than the old Maps UI list view. However they’re buried behind a click (or two clicks).

What’s very interesting is that Google+ is now harder to get to. Previously, in the old UI, clicking “more info” on any individual business listing took users to the Google+ Local page for that business. In the new UI, you get to the Google+ page for the business by clicking “reviews.” That’s not intuitive and effectively buries Google+. However it’s not clear that the majority of users would be seeking the Google+ listing for a business anyway.

Google Maps are increasingly a mobile-first product. My understanding, based on comScore data, is that since last year, there have been more mobile than PC users of Google Maps. By the same token, my sense is that the mapping segment may be “opening up” a bit. On the iPhone, Apple Maps has eaten into Google’s traffic.

In addition, the success of Waze (acquired by Google) suggests that it’s once again possible to launch a mapping app with a novel feature or twist and build a following.

Google Search Results Now Include Apps for Android Users

Android users can now see apps in search results when searching on their mobile device -- and if they're logged in, they can see links to apps they already have.

"Starting today, Google can save you the digging for information in the dozens of apps you use every day, and get you right where you need to go in those apps with a single search. Google Search can make your life a little easier by fetching the answer you need for you - whether it's on the web, or buried in an app," Scott Huffman, VP of engineering, announced on Google's Inside Search blog. 

When the best answer to a query is an app, Google Search will now display the app and make it easy to download or access.

When a user already has the app on their phone, they just need to touch "Open in app" to go to the page in the app relevant to their search. 

Searches may include relevant results from the Google Play store, in which case they'll be grouped together in an apps section. In that case, clicking on the price will take them directly to the download page on Google Play.

The Open in App feature is currently limited to the following apps:

AllTrails, Allthecooks, Beautylish, Etsy, Expedia, Flixster, Healthtap, IMDb, Moviefone, Newegg, OpenTable, Trulia, and Wikipedia.

"This is just one step toward bringing apps and the web together, making it even easier to get the right information, regardless of where it's located," Huffman wrote.

The ability to find apps in search results is currently available only to English version users of Android 2.3 or higher in the United States.

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Branded Video Sharing Almost 50 Times Higher Than 5 Years Ago

According to The Unruly Viral Spiral, the sharing of video ads has increased almost 50 times over the last eight years. Unruly’s latest interactive infographic visualizes the explosive growth of video sharing since 2006, charting the extent to which many advertisers are using social video to amplify their brand.

The Unruly Viral Spiral has charted the three most shared ads across the social web every year since 2006 and also tracks their number of all-time shares since launch. Previous ads from brands such as Pepsi, Volkswagen and Nike are featured along with the latest social videos.

According to the data, the top three ads in 2013 have so far attracted 11.6 million shares -- 47.5 times more than the top three ads managed in 2006 (244,395 shares combined).

Dove's Real Beauty Sketches ranks first. 

GEICO's Hump Day ranks second.

And Evian's Baby & Me ranks third. 

Other key video sharing stats include:

During 2006, the 3rd biggest ad of the year was Dove's Dove “Evolution”, which achieved 60,954 shares during the year of its launch, compared to 4.24 million for Real Beauty Sketches;Sharing of the top 3 branded videos has grown seven-fold from 2010 -- the year of the game-changing Old Spice ad -- to 2013 (11.6 million vs. 1.6 million, +613.8 percent);40 percent (8/20) of the top 20 ads of all-time were released in 2013;The top 10 ads in 2013 generated 28.8 million shares between them -- a year-on-year increase of 52.1 percent from 2012* (19 million). It's a signal that consumers’ video consumption habits are continuing to evolve rapidly;The most shared ad of all time is still Volkwagen's Unruly Viral Video Chart is now tracking 500,000 shares of branded content every 24 hours;

The most shared ad of all time is still Volkswagen’s 2011 Super Bowl ad, The Force; in second place second is TNT Benelux’s 2012 hit Dramatic Surprise, while Dove's “Dramatic Surprise”, while Dove’s 2013 ad Real Beauty Sketches is third;The brand that has racked up the most shares since 2006 is DC Shoes, thanks to its hugely successful Gymkhana series, with 10.73 million shares across four videos. Volkswagen is second with 7.76 million shares, while Evian is third with 6.45 million shares;FMCG/CPG is the most shared product category, making up 23 percent of the most shared ads of all time. In second place is the Entertainment category, with 18 percent of shares;The average length of the top 3 videos has increased from 35 seconds in 2006 to one minute 36 seconds in 2013 - an increase of 177.88 percent. 

In a press release, Unruly COO and co-founder Sarah Wood said, "We've been tracking the most shared videos at Unruly -- UGC and branded -- since we launched the Unruly Viral Video Chart back in 2006. Over that time, we've seen an explosion in both the number of videos brands are making and the volume of videos people are sharing." 

She added, "From a marketing perspective, why are shares more meaningful than views? Because shares are a global currency and a gold standard in the social economy; a share is a genuine measure of deep engagement, an act of advocacy and a driver of significant earned media." 

Wood continued, "Over the last few years we are increasingly seeing a number of marketers challenging the value of a view and instead focusing on creating content and distribution strategies which drive deeper levels of engagement. What we choose to share is a barometer of how we're feeling, a barometer of what's moving us to talk around the global water-cooler." 

She concluded, "As well as demonstrating the exponential growth of the medium, The Unruly Viral Spiral aims to provide a micro history of the medium and a ‘greatest hits' for people to enjoy and share." 

In the spirit of 2013 -- the year of so-called "prankvertising" -- The Viral Spiral also stakes its claim as the Internet's first "infoprank," an infographic with surprises along the way. 

See The Unruly Viral Spiral infographic below. 

Unruly Viral Sharing Awards

Marketers can also join the inaugural Unruly Video Sharing Awards – the #VSAs -- a live Twitter event taking place on Dec. 10, 2013, at 11 a.m. EST/8 a.m. PST.

Powered by the Unruly Viral Video Chart, these data-driven awards will honor the most shared videos and brands of 2013. To view the finalists, click here.

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WSJ Report: Apple Buys Topsy, A Leading Twitter Search & Analytics Company

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple has purchased Topsy, one of the leading Twitter search and analytics companies, for more than $200 million.

The WSJ report says that Apple has confirmed the deal but wouldn’t comment more beyond this statement:

Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.

Topsy is about the only decent third-party Twitter search service to have survived, in recent years.

Google had a wonderful service for finding Twitter content called Google Realtime Search that died in 2011, when Google & Twitter failed to renew a deal.

Bing Social, which uses data from Twitter due to an on-going deal with Microsoft and Twitter, isn’t very robust. I’m not sure Bing even remembers the service is still running. Bing, instead, has focused on integrating social results into its main search results.

That’s left little Topsy as the lone survivor. Indeed, Topsy’s access to Twitter’s “firehose” of tweets and focus on providing search results and analytical tools make it even more robust than Twitter’s own Twitter Search, for some queries. In September, it expanded its index to cover every tweet since Twitter began, as our story covers below:

Topsy Becomes Definitive Twitter Search Engine

It’s unclear what happens to Topsy now. Will Apple allow it to continue as a standalone service? Will Apple, which recently baked Twitter Search into iOS 7, replace that with Topsy? Will Twitter want to continue giving Topsy what’s likely been a sweetheart deal for firehose access to its data, now that it’s owned by Apple?

If answers to these or other questions and details on the deal emerge, we’ll update.

Related ArticlesGoogle Realtime Search & The Aftermath Of The Google-Twitter SplitBing�s Page Zero Offers Deep Links & Shortcuts To Relevant Information Straight From The Search BoxBing Relaunches, Features New Social Sidebar, SnapshotsBing, Twitter Renew Deal To Include Tweets In Search ResultsTwitter Search Lets You Once Again Find Old TweetsTwitter Launches Its Version Of Universal Search ResultsTopsy Becomes Definitive Twitter Search EngineWith iOS 7, Siri Drops Google For Bing, Also Gains Twitter Search

WSJ Report: Apple Buys Topsy, A Leading Twitter Search & Analytics Company

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple has purchased Topsy, one of the leading Twitter search and analytics companies, for more than $200 million.

The WSJ report says that Apple has confirmed the deal but wouldn’t comment more beyond this statement:

Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.

Topsy is about the only decent third-party Twitter search service to have survived, in recent years.

Google had a wonderful service for finding Twitter content called Google Realtime Search that died in 2011, when Google & Twitter failed to renew a deal.

Bing Social, which uses data from Twitter due to an on-going deal with Microsoft and Twitter, isn’t very robust. I’m not sure Bing even remembers the service is still running. Bing, instead, has focused on integrating social results into its main search results.

That’s left little Topsy as the lone survivor. Indeed, Topsy’s access to Twitter’s “firehose” of tweets and focus on providing search results and analytical tools make it even more robust than Twitter’s own Twitter Search, for some queries. In September, it expanded its index to cover every tweet since Twitter began, as our story covers below:

Topsy Becomes Definitive Twitter Search Engine

It’s unclear what happens to Topsy now. Will Apple allow it to continue as a standalone service? Will Apple, which recently baked Twitter Search into iOS 7, replace that with Topsy? Will Twitter want to continue giving Topsy what’s likely been a sweetheart deal for firehose access to its data, now that it’s owned by Apple?

If answers to these or other questions and details on the deal emerge, we’ll update.

Related ArticlesGoogle Realtime Search & The Aftermath Of The Google-Twitter SplitBing�s Page Zero Offers Deep Links & Shortcuts To Relevant Information Straight From The Search BoxBing Relaunches, Features New Social Sidebar, SnapshotsBing, Twitter Renew Deal To Include Tweets In Search ResultsTwitter Search Lets You Once Again Find Old TweetsTwitter Launches Its Version Of Universal Search ResultsTopsy Becomes Definitive Twitter Search EngineWith iOS 7, Siri Drops Google For Bing, Also Gains Twitter Search

What Do You Get With A Social Media Audit?

In Optimize, I include guidelines for doing a number of different audits to establish a basis for determining the gap between a company’s current situation and where they need to be in order to succeed.

One of those audits is a type that has gained a tremendous amount of popularity given the dramatic increase in attention and budget towards the area. Of course I’m talking about a Social Media Audit.

Why do an audit? If you don’t know where you’re starting from, a lot of time and resources can be wasted improving things that don’t need it and neglecting things that really need your attention.

Who should do an audit? Companies that are new to social media marketing, companies that have been unorganized and uncoordinated in their social media marketing, companies that have used an outside agency and are pulling social media inside (or vice versa), or companies that have matured in their social media marketing and need to jump ahead a few steps.

To start your own social media audit, here are some of the key things to consider:

Social Media Audit Process & Considerations:

Inventory all social digital assetsWhere is the brand currently leveraging social?Who (staff: official and �cowboys�)What is current performance? Good and bad.What are competitors doing? Opportunities?Listening: brand, customers, prospects, employees, executives, competitors

Social Media Content & Activities to Audit:

Content creation, curation, frequency, qualitySocial media policy – global, regional, departmentalTechnical (microformats, code, responsive)Inventory social profilesNetworks participating, tombstone accountsConversations and engagementSentiment, brand, frequency, topicsAdvocates & dissenters (internal and external)Integration between departments – Marketing, PR, HR, Customer Service, Legal, ProductInternal and operational social media/platform use

Of course, once you’ve collected and organized the data, it’s essential to create benchmarks for the key performance areas that you’ll be focusing on. �Those areas of focus will depend on your goals. Most companies focus on social media for brand awareness, so goals tend to be marketing and PR oriented. But of course, that’s not the only reason for a brand to “be social” and measure social performance.

Ultimately, the results of a social media marketing audit should reconcile the difference between the current situation and where the brand social media efforts need to be. Just like the other online marketing audits companies will perform, a social media audit is not a “one and done” situation. They should be repeated periodically as part of being accountable for the social media investment.

Have you run a social media audit for your own company? What kinds of information and activities are you benchmarking? I’m curious if the kinds of things we’re focusing on are similar to our readers.

Marketing & Sales Alignment: 5 Practical Tips

Traditionally, sales and marketing teams do not get along. In most companies, the marketing and sales teams have little to no collaboration and countless misunderstandings.

This has to change.

In the age of integrated marketing strategies and ever increasing competition, we need to make the most of every possible opportunity. Your digital strategy has to be informed by activity and insight at every level of your organization. From a digital marketer’s perspective, your company’s sales team is probably the most important group for you to coordinate with.

The sales team provides a ‘front line’ link with your customers that can reveal incredibly valuable and effective content-based opportunities.

So, how do you do it? How do you tap into the experiences of the sales team in a way that allows for the agile adaptation of your content strategy? There’s a great deal of information on how sales and marketing teams can align their activities, but very little on how it can be accomplished from a digital perspective.

To help you on your way towards greater SMI, let’s take a look at 5 ways you can facilitate the process.

Define and Redesign the Relationship

If you’re like most organizations, the sales and marketing teams remain mostly detached. Overcoming this is the single biggest obstacle to creating alignment. It’s something very few organizations ever make it past.

There are literally entire books written on this, but let’s try to simplify things.

The first step is to conduct a weekly meeting with your sales team. If you’re a larger company, you probably already have marketing and sales meetings. Even if this is the case, it will be worth arranging a separate breakout session with a small portion of the sales team that focuses on digital collaboration. These digitally focused meetings can be incredibly useful, both for building relationships between the marketing and sales teams and facilitating information exchange.

During these meetings, make sure you focus on positives. Showcase some of the actual leads that were generated and identify where they came from. Get the team’s feedback, find out how these results can be replicated and give credit to those who were responsible.

Secondly, brainstorm the topics that seem to be the most important to prospects. What are people asking the sales teams? What do prospects want to know? These questions could provide you with extremely important marketing insights. They should inform your marketing strategy for the coming months and help you provide the sales team with more targeted leads that are much further down the sales funnel.

Build Your Content Calendar

As mentioned above, the regular meetings can be a staging ground for content ideas - but don’t stop there. Don’t just allow the sales team to add topics into the content creation process and content calendar, make it an obligation. Create a process that makes it easy for members of your sales team to add topics to your content calendar.

You could even try rotating the responsibility for coming up with new topics, allocating a different member of your sales team each month. Do whatever it takes to get them involved. In most cases you’ll find that this isn’t a chore for them. If you give them the right tools, your sales team will probably jump at the chance to get involved and help make their lives easier.

Get Connected!

It’s surprising how often companies are not socially connected. It’s even more surprising how often sales teams are not socially connected to the organization. Social networking is all about relationships, right? And sales, that’s about relationships too, right? So doesn’t it follow that your sales team should at least attempt to connect to the organization on LinkedIn?

There are so many benefits to having a socially ‘connected’ sales team. By connecting with other members of your organization they will greatly expand their potential network, expand their own personal visibility and profile and make themselves more visible to potential prospects. This helps generate more leads and close more deals.

As a Digital Marketer, take the initiative to explain to the sales team the value of social tools like LinkedIn and show them how these tools can be utilized.

Training

If you haven’t heard, the top of the traditional sales process has all but been eliminated. Customers now use the internet to find answers to their initial questions. They will research your product fully before they reach out. They might have even looked at online reviews and compared you with your competitors. Consumers now come to us with far more knowledge than ever before. As a result, the knowledge of the sales teams must also increase. They need to be prepared to deal with highly informed customers. This is one area where marketers can ‘give back’, and help the sales team improve the way they work.

Digital marketers need to encourage and, if possible, mandate sales teams to attend webinars, read whitepapers, participate in social media and learn about the products you sell. Doing this will increase attendance at events, encourage the promotion of marketing efforts and increase social participation across the board. By giving your sales team the content they need to prepare, their conversion rates will inevitably increase.

Lead Recognition

As your sales team closes deals and makes announcements of new clients, ask them to provide recognition for lead sources. Recognizing where the leads came from, especially if they are digital leads, is encouraging to the marketing team and will inspire them (you) to ‘keep up the good work’. This recognition will help drive everyone to further collaboration and succeed.

Summary

Integrated digital marketing campaigns are essential to success. They harness the unfulfilled marketing potential of every department in your organization. However, very few departments will be as integral to your company’s marketing success as the sales team. Utilizing the experience of the sales team is probably the biggest single step any organization can take towards a successfully integrated digital campaign.

Are you doing enough to make it happen?

Title image courtesy of Shutterstock

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Bing Posts Its Most Popular Searches For 2013, Naming Beyonce The Most Searched Person Of The Year

Bing has released its most popular searches for 2013, including more than 20 “Most Searched” lists, from most searched persons, sports stars and teams, to most searched TV shows and movies, social sites, entertainment electronics and apps.

Beyonce topped two lists, winning the No. 1 spot for most searched person of 2013 and most searched musician. Bing notes the Top 10 Most searched persons included eight women, with the top five all female: Beyonce, Kim Kardashian, Rihanna, Taylor Swift and Madonna.

Bing posted its top ten list of most searched persons in 2013 alongside a list of the most searched persons for 2012, comparing who was more popular from one year to the next.

Beyonce, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Madonna, Justin Bieber, Nicki Minaj, Miley Cyrus all made the Top Ten Most Searched Musicians as well, followed by Britney Spears, Katy Perry and Selena Gomez. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ song “Thrift Shop” ranked No. 1 for most searched song, followed by Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” and Rihanna’s “Stay”.

The most searched streaming sites included Netflix in the No. 1 spot, followed by Hulu, iTunes, YouTube and Project Free TV. The top three most searched apps were Candy Crush, Angry Birds, and Bad Piggies. Pinterest made an impressive debut in the most searched social media sites, ranking No. 2.

Bing’s top ten most searched social media sites:FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedinInstagramTumblrRedditVimeoVineGoogle+Bing’s most searched entertainment electronics:XboxiPhoneAndroidiPadWindows PhoneSurfacePlaystationNintendoBlackberryKindle Fire

In entertainment searches, Bing Bang Theory was the most searched TV show in 2013, followed by American Idol, The Walking Dead, Downton Abbey and Game of Thrones. Ironman 3 won for most searched movie of 2013, beating Fast and Furious 6, Despicable Me 2, The Conjuring and The Wolverine.

Other top ten most searched entertainment lists by Bing included most searched reality stars with Kim Kardashian taking the No. 1 spot and most searched TV talk shows with Ellen in the No. 1 spot. The Today Show led for most searched morning shows.

“Royal Baby Born” topped the list for most searched news stories.

Bing’s top ten list of most searched news stories:Royal Baby BornBoston Marathon BombingCleveland KidnappingGeorge Zimmerman TrialGun RightsTeslaSyriaAnthony WeinerOil PricesFiscal Cliff

Bing didn’t stop with entertainment and news, the search engine identified other top ten search lists for 2013 including most searched foods, memes and destinations.

Think First, Link Later: Creativity in SEO

Increasingly, the only type of links worth going after are top quality links. However, these are difficult to get; your content and pitch must be top notch. To produce top notch work, you need to get creative, but there is a world of difference between using a creative technique and being truly creative.

How do you get creative? Say you were writing an article on the subject ‘Creativity in SEO’ and you wanted to help people be more creative in their work. As a single writer, you might expect to jot down ten ideas on the subject in as many minutes.

Pull in a colleague to brainstorm and you’d likely reach twenty pretty easily, while with a team, you’d get to 50-100 with little effort. It would then not be a big deal to write an article on ‘57 ways to stimulate creativity in SEO’.

So you’d have an article and a big list, but would you have been creative?

Probably not.

The psychology of such list articles is interesting:

They’re easy to scan and read.A number in the title makes it hard to ignore - especially a big one like 57.People who don’t know the topic will be open to learning something.People who do know the subject will be tempted to open just to see if writer knows as much as they do, or if there is genuinely new and interesting information within.Some readers might add them to their own ‘to-do-soon’ lists.

We’ve all done such articles many times, but the article format itself is not particularly creative and is unlikely to inspire real creativity. A list of ‘ways to be creative’ is unlikely to have the necessary impact to inspire others to be really creative.

So has the writing exercise then been a waste of time? Again, probably not. If we’ve done a reasonable job of writing, we may well attract a lot of readers, tweets and shares, and maybe even a bunch of decent quality links.

However, we’re unlikely to reach our objective of helping readers really get creative.

A more creative approach might be to hone in one particular idea, like ‘think first, link later’. In this approach, you put the bulk of the effort into creating the idea or the content.

One great creative example hit the headlines as I started to this article. Nick Usborne sent me a link to a breaking news story about Amazon's new ‘Prime Air' service - a new delivery service that delivered the purchased goods by drone. The promise was to that have your order in your hands within 30 minutes hitting the ‘Buy' button.

Here is the video announcement:

There are a lot of great things about this promotion and it demonstrates that a lot of thinking went into it before Amazon launched. Here are five great lessons:

The effort went into the creation of the idea and accompanying video. The end result was so good that media coverage, social shares and links will almost look after themselves.Released on Cyber Monday, the story is strongly seasonal but it doesn’t mention Cyber Monday by name - it gives a story that is relevant to it.The story did indeed attract major media coverage as is broke together with many social shares - many blog posts will surely follow. From a link building point of view it was a work of genius.The story highlights what will become a core service from the Amazon brand - Prime Air delivery - and even though it hasn't launched yet, the promotion was timed to coincide with a holiday shopping need on everyone's mind: shipping.Finally - and possibly one of the most important lessons - the video itself did not appear to be a big-budget production. It is of a good standard - but one that most of us could reach with a little practice.

It clearly demonstrates the value of ‘think first, link later’. Furthermore, you can better understand the story’s impact by doing a link analysis over the next few weeks and months.

You can learn a lot about creativity by dissecting ideas like this. They won’t give you 57 ways to do anything. But by carefully dissecting the story and watching how it spreads, you’ll be able to get deep creative insights and inspiration.

Editor's Note: Updated article to reflect that Amazon Prime Air still requires FAA approval.

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Special Delivery from Amazon's Doorstep Drones

In what could be either tremendously exciting or terrifying news, Amazon announced the newest members of its delivery fleet: Drones that drop Amazon.com purchases in 30 minutes or less. Its upcoming Amazon Prime Air service, is right around the corner, the retail giant says.

TheVerge.com cited CEO Jeff Bezos in saying the futuristic delivery system is about four or five years away, depending on when regulations would allow it

“The FAA is actively working on rules and an approach for unmanned aerial vehicles that will prioritize public safety. Safety will be our top priority, and our vehicles will be built with multiple redundancies and designed to commercial aviation standards,” Amazon said on an informational page announcing the service.

Here’s a video of the little guys in action:

“We hope the FAA's rules will be in place as early as sometime in 2015. We will be ready at that time,” Amazon said in its FAQs. But critics say the delivery service coming to fruition may be ambitious.

Technology aside, there’s a lot to consider in making something like this a reality. NBC asked some burning questions that Amazon might not be ready for, like what if it hits something and damages property? Do humans even want this? And will it deliver tacos?

(Image: Parody Twitter Account for Amazon Drones)

Not all packages will be eligible for drone delivery – at least not at first. TheVerge.com reported the packages need to be 5 pounds or less and the destination within 10 miles from an Amazon fulfillment center; however, 86 percent of Amazon's packages fall into this category, Bezos said.

Will you be calling on the drones to deliver your Amazon goods?

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Apple Buys Social Search & Analytics Firm Topsy for $200m

Software developer Apple acquired its second company in as many weeks on Monday by picking up Twitter analytics specialists Topsy.

Following its acquisition of Primesense, the company behind Microsoft's Xbox 360 Kinect sensor last week, Apple confirmed on Monday that it bought Topsy, a company that specialises in analysing Twitter data.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple coughed up a cool $200m for the social media firm, but Apple has not confirmed the amount. Instead, an Apple spokesperson said vaguely, "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."

It's still unclear why Apple decided to acquire Topsy, and it seems like an out of character acquisition for the firm, with the iPhone and iPad maker yet to enter the world of social media.

According to Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi, Apple might have acquired the company to serve better app recommendations to its customers.

"From an usage perspective, they can use it for the app store and iTunes," Milanesi said. "With apps, it is really difficult to find good recommendations. It's much harder to see what people use and why."

There's also talk that Apple might be looking to improve the advertisements that it shows in its services such as iTunes Radio, and tune its digitial voice assistant Siri, which started quoting Twitter information following the rollout of iOS 7.

Topsy has yet to comment on the acquisition. 

This article was originally published on the Inquirer.

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