Is Pinterest the New Darling of Retail Search?

For more than the past year, there has been a lot of discussion on the war for retail searchers that has broken out between Google and Amazon. Performance marketers have flocked to Google's new Product Listing Ads (PLA) channel to drive cost-effective sales and reduce their dependency on Amazon.

However, a major competitor has perhaps been overlooked in this battle for shopper attention: Pinterest. With a combination of product visuals, social curation, and a wealthier, more aspirational shopper, Pinterest seems ready to throw its hat in the ring. This article will examine the rapid rise of Pinterest as a user engagement platform and an emerging marketing platform for retailers.

User Engagement

Pinterest has now surpassed e-mail and is the third most popular way to share content online, behind only Twitter and Facebook. With that much content being shared by users, Pinterest is a treasure trove of data around design ideas, the newest hairstyles, travel destinations, and most importantly, what to wear right now.

It's only a matter of time before search behavior starts shifting aggressively to follow this content. Case in point – the difference is pretty stark when doing a search for [summer dress for wedding] on Google vs. Pinterest.

While Google has now incorporated PLAs at the top of the page, the listings are small and truncated, followed by the ubiquitous series of blue links.

On the Pinterest side there are big, bold images, social commentary, as well as the option to share with friends and family.

Google actually will play catch up here to make its pages more social and engaging. While comScore has yet to track overall search activity on Pinterest, in its core categories of fashion, design, and food, Pinterest is generating some serious volume. If only marketers could get more of their offerings front and center on this emerging platform.

Enter Rich Pins and Promoted Pins, two new offerings in Pinterest's ultimate monetization strategy.

Marketer Opportunity

With Rich Pins, any retailer with a product feed can now attach real-time pricing, inventory availability, location, and a "buy this" link to all of their product pins. The feature also creates new pins for all of those products that don't already live on the site, ensuring participants in this program a degree of search-ability on the site.

The feed format required by Pinterest is actually quite simple and allows for performance tracking within your own analytics system so that marketers can start to understand the importance of this channel to their bottom line. Some early adopter brands include Nordstrom, Disney, Tresemme, and Four Seasons.

Recently, Pinterest began testing their Promoted Pins offering, which should be a popular channel for PPC advertisers. By integrating sponsor products into search results and category pages, Pinterest is seeking to create an ad channel that is both akin to popular channels such as Facebook and Google from an ad buyer's standpoint, as well as one that is perfectly native to shopper. While the program is only in early beta, retailers should be pressing to get on board as early as possible.

Predictions for 2014

Given the huge user growth and investment in site experience and monetization, 2014 is fixing to be a huge year for Pinterest. Both online shoppers and retail advertisers would be remiss to ignore it this year.

The company is already valued at $4 billion but due to the sheer volume of retail sales the site is driving at an astronomical AOV, this is a property that could be a crown jewel for one of the leading search engines, social networks, or ecommerce properties. They are going to have to pay up, though.

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Online Marketing News: Pinterest Rules, Facebook Hacks, Google Tracker, Twitter Plummets, Yahoo! Yelps

30 Reasons Pinterest Will Rule in 2014 [Infographic] � As much as we would like to think Facebook is the most powerful social media tool, Omnicore has�made a good argument that Pinterest has really picked up the pace and is here to rule over all the other social media tools. See why here. Sociable Blog

10 Ingenious Hacks That Helped Facebook Take Over the Internet � Behind the scenes, inside the massive data centers that power this worldwide social network, you�ll find all sorts of other technologies that have changed our world in very different ways. Learn about Zuckerberg�s �Hacker Way� on an epic scale. Wired

The 2014 Google Tracker � This post is a collection of all the hints, announcements, and acquisitions �from Google lately, such as plans for Android, gaming, smart homes, healthcare, robots, and much, much more along with some speculation. Arstechnica

Shares in Twitter Plummet After User Growth Slows � Twitter was valued at $18 Billion when it floated on the New York Stock Exchange in November, but the blogging platform shares fell by 24% after it reported slower growth in user numbers. Twitter averaged 241 million monthly users in the last quarter of the year, up just 3.8% on the previous quarter. BBC News

Twitter Turns to Flipboard to Acquire Users for Vine � Growth is a top-of-mind concern for Twitter (see above) and it appears app install ads are part of the strategy. In this case, a beautiful, magazine-like placement running in Flipboard this week for its six-second looping video app Vine. The current full-screen ad is aimed at user acquisition and prompts users to install Vine. AdAge

Google Showing Large Video Embeds in Some Search Results � Now, if you search Google for video related content, Google may return a large playable video directly at the top of the search results. Search Engine Land

Google Warns Local Businesses: You Have 3 Weeks to Save Your Places Listing � If you have your business set up on Google local pages, there are a couple changes that you should be aware of when it comes to verifying and updating your Google+ business listing. If you received an �Action Required� email from Google, don’t worry. You simply need to login to Places for Business, review your business information, update it if necessary, and click Submit. Search Engine Watch

Pinterest Launches New Mobile Website for its Growing Base of Mobile Users � While Pinterest�s blog post claimed the mobile redesign is the result of the site continuing to grow internationally, TechCrunch reports the primary driver of the redesign is Pinterest�s influx of mobile traffic, claiming 75 percent of all daily Pinterest traffic comes from �native mobile applications.� Their new mobile site includes an updated board page, sign-up flow, as well as now displaying recent boards in the board picker. Marketing Land

London Tube Strike: 10 Brands Marketing in the Moment � Here�s how brands have used Twitter, Vine or email to market in the moment and try to make the most out of the London Underground strike action. Great use of humor (or should I say, humour;-) eConsultancy

Yahoo Turns to Yelp to Beef Up Local Search � Yahoo has recently started to introduce�a new, more elaborate presentation of local business content into its search results. It�s very likely that we�ll see Yelp reviews, photos and other content integrated into Yahoo search in a way very similar to Bing. However, Yahoo will probably go further if it considers Yelp�s content a potential differentiator. Search Engine Land

Klout Evolves Into a Content Creation Platform as it Seeks to Help You Become More Influential � The emphasis is no longer on your score, but about how you can create and share informative and relevant content in order to keep your audience engaged and influenced. Klout�s Chief Product Officer says that the redesign includes four tags that will be displayed to highlight fresh content, along with those stories that are starting to trend online: on the rise, crowd pleaser, hidden gem and hot off the presses. The Next Web

Study: 73% of U.S. Teens are on Facebook � As the hoopla surrounding Facebook�s 10th birthday this month dies down, you may have missed this recent study from Pew Research Center. They released a treasure trove of facts about the social network, including one that debunks the theory that Facebook has a teen problem: 73 percent of U.S. Internet users between the ages of 12 and 17 are on the social network. Media Bistro

Google Adds 1,000+ New Categories to Places Dashboard � Google is making some new changes to Google Places for Business in order to make it easier for users to find businesses in international countries by adding more than 1,000 categories globally into the Places dashboard. Search Engine Watch

Mozilla to Sell Ads in Firefox Web Browser � The ads will appear within the tiles of Firefox’s new tabs page, which will also begin to suggest pre-packaged content for first-time users. Mozilla is calling the new initiative “Directory Tiles.” Despite their previous stance on blocking third-party ad technologies by default, they assured an IAB audience recently that they actually want to work with them, rather than lock down its ecosystem. AdAge

Friendlier Twitter Photo Sharing is Here � Now you can crop your photos by selecting an aspect, such as square or wide. You can rotate an image before you share it to make sure it fits nicely in your Tweet. And when you upload a photo of people, you�ll see a reminder to @ mention your friends so they can see your photo too. Available now on Android and coming soon for iPhone. Twitter Blog

Report: Mobile Drove More Than $200 Billion in 2013 Retail Sales � Mobile ad network, xAd, released data and findings in a new report stating that its geo- and audience-targeted display campaigns saw performance metrics �nearly 15 percent above the industry average� and search ad response rates that were �37 percent higher than current CTR benchmarks.� Marketing Land

Study: Marketers Begin Aligning Content With the Buyer Journey � Recent research has brought to light the importance of customizing content to the buyer�s journey stage, something that few B2B content marketers feel adept at doing. A new study from Oracle Eloqua and LookBookHQ, conducted among the Oracle Eloqua community, suggests that content marketers are trying to get better on this front. Marketing Charts

Google�s New �Rich Snippets� Penalty � Here�s an actionable checklist to make sure your rich snippets are in order � the easiest ways to validate your structured data markup and the main points to consider. Link Assistant

Google Brings Search Funnels Attribution Modeling Tool to AdWords � Wanting to help marketers better understand how AdWords campaigns are part of the sales funnel, advertisers can look at five different attribution models in AdWords and compare up to three attribution models simultaneously to analyze keywords, ad groups and campaigns that are contributing to the funnel, but aren�t represented in last click conversions. Search Engine Land

Facebook Now Lets You Edit Your �Look Back� Movie � After numerous user complaints, Facebook implemented an �edit� button. The editor might not be quite as feature-rich as some might have hoped; you can�t choose any Facebook photo to replace those that you don�t like � you can just select from a wider array of pre-picked photos/status updates. TechCrunch

Pandora Simplifies Open Music Submission as It Launches Ad-Powered Growth � Pandora’s personalized stations are designed as much to introduce users to new music as they are to let them have what they are already familiar with. The simplified submission process is designed to give another big push to the discovery experience. ClickZ

From the Online Marketing Community:

On 9 Tools to Discover Influencers in Your Industry, Joan Stewart said, Thanks, Lee, for a fabulous list of tools that help people really drill down and target influencers. One of the best things about knowing the big dogs in your industry is that you can not only connect with them, but learn from them.

On Print Newsletters as Content Marketing Tactic: Pros, Cons, Examples and Best Practices, Sarah Bauer said, I like the idea of creating value in the print newsletter as something to hold on to in the home or workplace, due to its usefulness or sheer aesthetic appeal (or both!) That might be a good result to strive for when approaching this tactic.

On Does It Still Make Sense For Companies to Blog?, Tom Collins said, Great stuff, Lee. It seems to me that a company blog remains the hub around which all the other social media/networking platforms should revolve — if nothing else to collect your content in a platform you actually own and control. I wrote a post back in 2009, attempting to list the “flavors” of ROI for businesses from engaging in social media and made it to 16. You’ve ticked several of them above. The more things change …

Brandon Chestnut said, Congrats on delivering such great content for so many years. Looking back, it’s hard to believe how far we’ve come since 2003.

While the lens through which we have viewed blogs has changed with the rise (and fall) of many social networks and communities, I still feel strongly that blogs serve as the “center of the universe” for most online marketing or content programs. I remember when Chris Brogan began talking up the idea of brands leveraging home bases and outposts. In my mind, that approach still holds true today. While, there are more mediums and methods for telling stories and delivering content in 2014, there still is a need for a central location where all efforts are tied together. More often than not, blogs can serve as that hub.

What were the top online and digital marketing news stories for you this week?

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Online Marketing News: Pinterest Rules, Facebook Hacks, Google Tracker, Twitter Plummets, Yahoo! Yelps

30 Reasons Pinterest Will Rule in 2014 [Infographic] � As much as we would like to think Facebook is the most powerful social media tool, Omnicore has�made a good argument that Pinterest has really picked up the pace and is here to rule over all the other social media tools. See why here. Sociable Blog

10 Ingenious Hacks That Helped Facebook Take Over the Internet � Behind the scenes, inside the massive data centers that power this worldwide social network, you�ll find all sorts of other technologies that have changed our world in very different ways. Learn about Zuckerberg�s �Hacker Way� on an epic scale. Wired

The 2014 Google Tracker � This post is a collection of all the hints, announcements, and acquisitions �from Google lately, such as plans for Android, gaming, smart homes, healthcare, robots, and much, much more along with some speculation. Arstechnica

Shares in Twitter Plummet After User Growth Slows � Twitter was valued at $18 Billion when it floated on the New York Stock Exchange in November, but the blogging platform shares fell by 24% after it reported slower growth in user numbers. Twitter averaged 241 million monthly users in the last quarter of the year, up just 3.8% on the previous quarter. BBC News

Twitter Turns to Flipboard to Acquire Users for Vine � Growth is a top-of-mind concern for Twitter (see above) and it appears app install ads are part of the strategy. In this case, a beautiful, magazine-like placement running in Flipboard this week for its six-second looping video app Vine. The current full-screen ad is aimed at user acquisition and prompts users to install Vine. AdAge

Google Showing Large Video Embeds in Some Search Results � Now, if you search Google for video related content, Google may return a large playable video directly at the top of the search results. Search Engine Land

Google Warns Local Businesses: You Have 3 Weeks to Save Your Places Listing � If you have your business set up on Google local pages, there are a couple changes that you should be aware of when it comes to verifying and updating your Google+ business listing. If you received an �Action Required� email from Google, don’t worry. You simply need to login to Places for Business, review your business information, update it if necessary, and click Submit. Search Engine Watch

Pinterest Launches New Mobile Website for its Growing Base of Mobile Users � While Pinterest�s blog post claimed the mobile redesign is the result of the site continuing to grow internationally, TechCrunch reports the primary driver of the redesign is Pinterest�s influx of mobile traffic, claiming 75 percent of all daily Pinterest traffic comes from �native mobile applications.� Their new mobile site includes an updated board page, sign-up flow, as well as now displaying recent boards in the board picker. Marketing Land

London Tube Strike: 10 Brands Marketing in the Moment � Here�s how brands have used Twitter, Vine or email to market in the moment and try to make the most out of the London Underground strike action. Great use of humor (or should I say, humour;-) eConsultancy

Yahoo Turns to Yelp to Beef Up Local Search � Yahoo has recently started to introduce�a new, more elaborate presentation of local business content into its search results. It�s very likely that we�ll see Yelp reviews, photos and other content integrated into Yahoo search in a way very similar to Bing. However, Yahoo will probably go further if it considers Yelp�s content a potential differentiator. Search Engine Land

Klout Evolves Into a Content Creation Platform as it Seeks to Help You Become More Influential � The emphasis is no longer on your score, but about how you can create and share informative and relevant content in order to keep your audience engaged and influenced. Klout�s Chief Product Officer says that the redesign includes four tags that will be displayed to highlight fresh content, along with those stories that are starting to trend online: on the rise, crowd pleaser, hidden gem and hot off the presses. The Next Web

Study: 73% of U.S. Teens are on Facebook � As the hoopla surrounding Facebook�s 10th birthday this month dies down, you may have missed this recent study from Pew Research Center. They released a treasure trove of facts about the social network, including one that debunks the theory that Facebook has a teen problem: 73 percent of U.S. Internet users between the ages of 12 and 17 are on the social network. Media Bistro

Google Adds 1,000+ New Categories to Places Dashboard � Google is making some new changes to Google Places for Business in order to make it easier for users to find businesses in international countries by adding more than 1,000 categories globally into the Places dashboard. Search Engine Watch

Mozilla to Sell Ads in Firefox Web Browser � The ads will appear within the tiles of Firefox’s new tabs page, which will also begin to suggest pre-packaged content for first-time users. Mozilla is calling the new initiative “Directory Tiles.” Despite their previous stance on blocking third-party ad technologies by default, they assured an IAB audience recently that they actually want to work with them, rather than lock down its ecosystem. AdAge

Friendlier Twitter Photo Sharing is Here � Now you can crop your photos by selecting an aspect, such as square or wide. You can rotate an image before you share it to make sure it fits nicely in your Tweet. And when you upload a photo of people, you�ll see a reminder to @ mention your friends so they can see your photo too. Available now on Android and coming soon for iPhone. Twitter Blog

Report: Mobile Drove More Than $200 Billion in 2013 Retail Sales � Mobile ad network, xAd, released data and findings in a new report stating that its geo- and audience-targeted display campaigns saw performance metrics �nearly 15 percent above the industry average� and search ad response rates that were �37 percent higher than current CTR benchmarks.� Marketing Land

Study: Marketers Begin Aligning Content With the Buyer Journey � Recent research has brought to light the importance of customizing content to the buyer�s journey stage, something that few B2B content marketers feel adept at doing. A new study from Oracle Eloqua and LookBookHQ, conducted among the Oracle Eloqua community, suggests that content marketers are trying to get better on this front. Marketing Charts

Google�s New �Rich Snippets� Penalty � Here�s an actionable checklist to make sure your rich snippets are in order � the easiest ways to validate your structured data markup and the main points to consider. Link Assistant

Google Brings Search Funnels Attribution Modeling Tool to AdWords � Wanting to help marketers better understand how AdWords campaigns are part of the sales funnel, advertisers can look at five different attribution models in AdWords and compare up to three attribution models simultaneously to analyze keywords, ad groups and campaigns that are contributing to the funnel, but aren�t represented in last click conversions. Search Engine Land

Facebook Now Lets You Edit Your �Look Back� Movie � After numerous user complaints, Facebook implemented an �edit� button. The editor might not be quite as feature-rich as some might have hoped; you can�t choose any Facebook photo to replace those that you don�t like � you can just select from a wider array of pre-picked photos/status updates. TechCrunch

Pandora Simplifies Open Music Submission as It Launches Ad-Powered Growth � Pandora’s personalized stations are designed as much to introduce users to new music as they are to let them have what they are already familiar with. The simplified submission process is designed to give another big push to the discovery experience. ClickZ

From the Online Marketing Community:

On 9 Tools to Discover Influencers in Your Industry, Joan Stewart said, Thanks, Lee, for a fabulous list of tools that help people really drill down and target influencers. One of the best things about knowing the big dogs in your industry is that you can not only connect with them, but learn from them.

On Print Newsletters as Content Marketing Tactic: Pros, Cons, Examples and Best Practices, Sarah Bauer said, I like the idea of creating value in the print newsletter as something to hold on to in the home or workplace, due to its usefulness or sheer aesthetic appeal (or both!) That might be a good result to strive for when approaching this tactic.

On Does It Still Make Sense For Companies to Blog?, Tom Collins said, Great stuff, Lee. It seems to me that a company blog remains the hub around which all the other social media/networking platforms should revolve — if nothing else to collect your content in a platform you actually own and control. I wrote a post back in 2009, attempting to list the “flavors” of ROI for businesses from engaging in social media and made it to 16. You’ve ticked several of them above. The more things change …

Brandon Chestnut said, Congrats on delivering such great content for so many years. Looking back, it’s hard to believe how far we’ve come since 2003.

While the lens through which we have viewed blogs has changed with the rise (and fall) of many social networks and communities, I still feel strongly that blogs serve as the “center of the universe” for most online marketing or content programs. I remember when Chris Brogan began talking up the idea of brands leveraging home bases and outposts. In my mind, that approach still holds true today. While, there are more mediums and methods for telling stories and delivering content in 2014, there still is a need for a central location where all efforts are tied together. More often than not, blogs can serve as that hub.

What were the top online and digital marketing news stories for you this week?

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

For Robocop, Bing Imagines The Future Of Search In 2028

What will search look like in 2028?

That’s a question that the folks at Bing were tasked with answering for the new movie, Robocop. (Well, “new” as in a remake of the 1987 original that just hit theaters this week.)

In a blog post this week, the Bing search folks shared a few screenshots showing a 3D, three-panel search display that they come up with for search circa 2028:

(Note: Bing’s original images were pretty dark, so I brightened them a bit in Photoshop for sharing here.)

Here’s how Bing describes the vision:

Building off the voice recognition work we have released for Bing on Xbox and Windows Phone, in this vision of search, a character can speak in natural language and instantly receive accurate and relevant results. We also needed to convey millions of results without overwhelming the display with a barrage of links. The solution was to have elements continuously scrolling in and search results updating in a living animated way. We also envisioned a 3D display with the most important things in the foreground. As we know that digital data is going to continue to explode at an exponential rate, we called for the search results tally to be constantly updating as new information arrives.

I haven’t seen the new Robocop, so I have no idea how much screen time “Future Bing” gets. These screenshots only show the Bing logo — not the name — and I suspect most movie-goers would struggle to ID Bing’s new logo without also seeing the name. So, who knows whether this will end up being good product placement for Bing or not.

Speaking of which, it seems safe to assume that this is a case of paid product placement, but Bing’s blog post is a bit coy on that. It only says this: “…it was a natural fit when Sony Pictures asked us to come up with a concept for search in the not-too-distant future to showcase in the upcoming Robocop film.”

We Love Google, We Love Google Not: 6 SEO-Inspired Valentine's Day Quotes

It's Valentine's week. Love the Hallmark Holiday or hate it, at the very least it's one of the top five times of year to stock up on chocolate candy.

This is also a good time of year to search for quotes about love and romance, whether you want to write a valentine or you're looking to rewrite a few classics to apply to our perpetually dysfunctional relationship with Google. Clearly, I'm going for the latter.

It's funny how when you change a few words in some quotations about love, you get a whole new meaning as it applies to SEO.

Love means never having to say you're sorry. – Erich Segal

We're all learning the hard way what it means to be in a fight with Google.

A guy who called a woman by his ex's name has it easy compared to a site that bought links and spun article content. Ask anybody going in for a fifth reconsideration request whether they'd be willing to shell out for a dozen roses and a new Pandora charm.

Using misguided link building practices does actually mean having to say "I'm sorry," often several times over. It also comes with acts of penitence that are the relationship equivalent of anywhere from 6 months to years of sleeping on the couch. Likely, it's a very uncomfortable couch. But that's the price of getting back into Google's good graces. Sometimes even once you get back in the master bedroom, you still have a long time of playing nice ahead to get things back to normal.

Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye. - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

The reasons Google may have a problem with a link may be more than you can eyeball at a glance.

There are other patterns related to on- and off-site factors that can be mitigating. Anything from an IP address, a C-class, a map of cross linking, or a repeating series of words, can send negative signals to Google about a whole series of links, sending up a red flag. There may also be symptoms related to the ratios and proportions that comprise a site's back links that could be tripping a filter.

Sometimes what's setting off alarms is beyond what you can see looking only at a page or a link alone. It's the entire context of the link, including influences you may not be able to see that easily that is affecting how it is read.

Consider everything when you're reviewing your links and prepare to make some hard choices. Even something that looks harmless may have to go.

'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

Even if getting back to the best rankings you've ever had may not be in the future, that doesn't mean it's game over. Yes, it's hard to think about the way things were without tearing up, but stop listening to Adele, and snap out of it.

More than two or three keywords matter now. There are a lot more opportunities out there. They may not be as rich or sexy as the one that got away but they are smart, reliable and obtainable.

No one will tell you to settle for a spouse, but when it comes to keywords and traffic sources, get ready to lower your standards and broaden the sea you're fishing in.

Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you.' -Erich Fromm

Dependency isn't typically a pillar of any solid relationship. But over dependency on organic traffic from a limited source can lead to a dangerous depression if it goes away. It's the kind of downward spiral that involves enough raw cookie dough to cause ecoli.

Don't get stuck. Focus on capturing traffic from a wider spectrum of keywords and content.

Spend more time thinking about referrals from links than the keywords on them. Spend time engaging people you do care about as followers on Facebook instead of buying followers that don't matter.

Look at branded traffic from people that are searching specifically for you; think about how to draw in visitors from more obscure searches into your conversion funnel. It may not be the glory days of the past, but it's a lot healthier and it's got a shot to last.

To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. - Oscar Wilde

Loving what you're doing, regardless of how anyone else feels about it, is a huge part of happiness. So know what you have to offer and whether it deserves to be the best.

If what you provide is really worth being presented as the top choice to users, fight for it. Find your voice, tell your story.

You can lead and innovate in big and small ways. Real connections, positive experiences, and genuine insights don't have to be loud and flashy.

New ideas, events, and "big things" can come from anywhere. If your ultimate goal is to be great instead of just achieving great rankings, the hard work involved can pay off in ways you'll never have to apologize for.

Any involvement with Google is going to be a tempestuous affair; it's rocky, imbalanced, the communication is terrible and you'll always feel they don't love you as much as you love them. But when it's good, it's so worth it.

In my search, I found this quote that, even though it came from a blonde bombshell from the past, it seems appropriate for one of the greatest heartbreakers of our generation:

Early Bird Rates Expire Soon!
ClickZ Live (Mar 31-Apr 3) is a brand new global conference series kicking off in New York City. Over 3 days of sessions, keynotes, training workshops and networking you'll gain invaluable digital marketing and advertising take-aways.
Register now and save up to $400 ››
*Early Bird Rates expire Feb 21.

Yelp Gets a Facelift, Puts Visual Content Front and Center

If you've been over at Yelp this week, you may have noticed a few changes. A new redesign puts photos front and center, and gives users more chances to get the info that's important to them quickly.

Looking at the new design, it seems that Yelp has finally capitalized on to the visual content trend to make images a main feature in a business listing. Take this listing for the SLS hotel in Los Angeles; you can now see a scrolling carousel of community images:

Yelp has also revamped its review highlights. "Because review highlights are so useful, we've given them a huge upgrade, mining our review data to call out the best menu items, prices and important information like whether a bar is beer and wine only," Yelp said in its announcement.

You can find common threads here, like how many reviews mention cotton candy, as in the SLS listing:

Plus, reviews are now given more space to share images as well, as you can see below:

From Yelp:

Yelpers have contributed more than 53 million reviews to date, so of course we couldn't leave this important section untouched. Since Yelp's rich content is so valuable in helping people make spending decisions, we adjusted the column width and font size for optimal readability, while adding large photos in-line to give further context to a Yelper's experience.

The new facelift is a slight distraction from the controversy surrounding Yelp lately; with legal battles centering on anonymous and fake reviews, and even a sting operation by Yelp to crack down on them, Yelp's review system has been under fire.

Yelp said it hopes the redesign will make it easier for its 120 million unique visitors monthly to connect with local businesses.

Early Bird Rates Expire Soon!
ClickZ Live (Mar 31-Apr 3) is a brand new global conference series kicking off in New York City. Over 3 days of sessions, keynotes, training workshops and networking you'll gain invaluable digital marketing and advertising take-aways.
Register now and save up to $400 ››
*Early Bird Rates expire Feb 21.

Yelp Supersizes Its Local Profiles, Makes Them Less Busy

Yelp has redesigned parts of its web UI to make them more visual and to surface more information. In particular business profile pages have been changed to emphasize images, featured user reviews and key pieces of local content, all of which are now more prominent.

The changes are not yet live for me, which is a happy event. I was able to capture a “before” image of�San Francisco sushi restaurant Tataki South. The “after” view of the profile below is supplied by Yelp.

The screenshot below is the same business profile. Information like business hours is easier to see. Review highlights have been moved “above the fold.” And menu highlights (rather than just a link to the menu) are also now present under business hours.

Overall the page is less busy. User actions (review, add photo, share, bookmark) have also been moved to a more prominent place in the upper right. Everything is calculated to make the page more engaging and readable at a glance.

It appears that the ratings distribution and trend charts have been removed, which is too bad. Those provided a nice alternative way to see where reviews were concentrated (like Amazon product reviews). There was also a 30-day trend graph, to see whether things were moving up or down. I suspect not many people opened that chart however; I may have been the only one.

Earlier this week we unofficially learned that Yahoo and Yelp had inked a content deal to provide Yelp reviews and other business information to Yahoo. Yelp shares were up�today, partly because of a good earnings report last week, but also because of the rumored Yahoo distribution deal. Yelp has similar relationships with Bing and Apple.

Yelp said in its earnings release that it now has�53 million total reviews (30 percent of new reviews come from mobile). It also reports 120 million monthly uniques and�53 million mobile uniques. And it says it has 67,000 active local business accounts.

As a reflection of the changes in consumer behavior, roughly 59 percent of Yelp’s search volume now comes from mobile devices.

The Correlation Between SEO Success, Budget & Your Executives' Attitude [Data]

If we wanted to determine how an organization achieves SEO success, what would we analyze? We might examine the technical breadth of knowledge of their lead SEO, the volumes of content they create, or even more abstract indicators such as their org structure. To be sure, there are any number of ways of examining the success of an organization that consistently succeeds in search.

We started with the hypothesis that the extent to which an organization has executive buy-in correlates closely with their success in the search listings. We'll test that hypothesis and then trace what downstream factors ultimately lead to success.

Testing the Link between Evangelism and Budget

To test the hypothesis, we surveyed 380 search marketers, asking them about a wide breadth of behaviors, tactics and strategies related to how they practice SEO. I'm going to zoom on the survey questions related to executive buy-in and explore the organizational characteristics that lead to this optimal state.

We'll start by segmenting those respondents who say they have most or all of the budget they need for SEO and test for the degree to which they evangelize (market SEO internally).

In this segment, 55 percent of those who evangelize often have most or all of the budget they need compared to just 25 percent of those who never or rarely evangelize. We don't want to conflate correlation with causation, but it seems reasonable to conclude (and fairly intuitively logical) that evangelism is correlated with increased buy-in. (And, the 55 percent is likely underreported because, honestly, who wants to admit they have all the budget they need?)

Do High Conversion Rates Correspond to Executive Buy-in?

To "follow the thread" and see what leads to success, next we looked to see if there was a correlation between executive buy-in and natural search success. We segmented those who grew their search conversions at rates far greater than that of their colleagues and looked to see their proportion of 'high' versus 'low' executive buy-in.

The data showed that the group of highly successful SEO professionals were more than twice as likely to have 'high' executive buy-in rates than 'low'.

The conclusion seems clear: Evangelism – the concerted effort to get executive buy-in – is critical to natural search success because it leads to budget, headcount, and technology investment, which ultimately is a critical catalyst to natural search success.

You Know SEO Evangelism Is Significant, but What's Next?

If you're on board with the conclusions we have drawn from the data, evangelism seems pretty darn important to search success. So how do you do it and do it successfully?

There are many valid approaches out there in the public domain for how to best handle an activity as critical as evangelism, but the following three approaches are particularly effective:

1. Speak the Language of Your Executive

If you aren't speaking the same language as your executive, you won't get much past the very first slide in your executive support pitch deck. Start by asking yourself "What metrics does my executive care about?"

The answer may vary widely depending on your company type, industry, and even from one organization to another in the same industry. Ask others in the organization what their perspective on your executives' targets are.

Use the successes of your direct competitors of a baseline for metrics. Certainly, address ROI; IBM recently came out with a study on CMOs which is another helpful resource.

Whatever you do, be sure you are entering any discussion with them talking about the metrics that are top of mind for them.

2. There Is no 'Talk'; There Is Only 'Do'

Traditional search market opportunity assessments are typically presented to budget holders as an assessment of what could be achieved with proper budget allocation. While well intentioned, search opportunities can be perceived as little more than a promise, and these are often met with "I'll believe it when I see it" skepticism (whether explicitly expressed or not).

Instead, in the first face-to-face meeting with executives, provide conservative estimates of the growth you think you can achieve in a specific period (e.g., 90 days), and then go out and do whatever it takes to achieve that. In a follow-up meeting, present the success you achieved in the 90 days to management with growth estimates you think you can achieve given the proper executive support.

It isn't without risk to put growth estimates out there, but it's arguably at least as risky to make a pitch for executive support with 'theoreticals' rather than 'concretes'. For more on how to execute the specifics of this plan check out A 3 Part Plan to Overcoming Management's "Show Me Success Before I'll Invest in SEO" Catch-22.

3. Find Your Internal Champion

Our (informal) analysis of successful SEO professionals over the years has shown that a not insubstantial percentage discovered internal champions in unlikely places in their organization. A common place to find them is in finance: successfully demonstrate the return on investment in search to a budget-controlling CFO who speaks the language of numbers and you may be well on your way to getting the budget and executive support you need.

Evaluate Your SEO Evangelism Efforts

Although our analysis is not exhaustive, we know from a variety of factors (including this data, common sense, and our clients' experience as well as our own) that vocal evangelism leads to executive buy-in, which leads to the organizational and budgetary support needed to succeed in search.

Given the connection between evangelism and search success, consider if the techniques above can assist you in gaining the support and budget you need to succeed. At minimum, resolve to take a step back from the day to day to consider if your evangelism efforts need leveling up. Whatever you decide, good luck in your quest for the ever-critical executive support in search.

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Google Refreshes Page Layout Algorithm

If you noticed a change in your organic search traffic or rankings last week, and have a high ratio of ads to content at the top of your web pages, chances are you could be affected by a refresh of the Google page layout algorithm.

Google's Matt Cutts announced on Twitter that a refresh of the algorithm occurred on February 6, although he didn’t go into any detail on how much of an impact this might have.

Google added the page layout algorithm in January 2012, and updated it in October 2012.

Google's page layout algorithm targets sites that are light on content and heavy on ads "above the fold" (the part of the page visible to a user before scrolling).

At Pubcon in October, Cutts specifically mentioned in his keynote that they were working on the next generation of the page layout algorithm, and specifically targeting sites that have large ads above the fold. He suggested that webmasters should make changes before the new algorithm impacted their sites.

"If you look at the top part of your page and the very first thing you see front and center, top above the fold is ads right there, then you might want to ask yourself, 'do I have the best user experience?' Because we are working on an algorithm in the next iteration of that algorithm to try and catch some of that," Cutts said in October.

He added this would have a bigger impact other languages (e.g., Russian or Arabic) more than it will English.

As for what the page layout algorithm was specifically targeting, a lot of people are speculating that it might be affecting websites that seem to utilize the endless scrolling technique, and often with a lot of white space and larger than normal font size. It’s becoming more common in news websites, but the trend has been moving to regular sites.

To find out whether you may have been impacted by the algorithmic refresh, check your analytics data to see if there’s any change occurring on or after February 6. But again, it's likely that the biggest impact will primarily be for webmasters with sites that aren't in English.

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5 Times Google Penalized Itself For Breaking Its Own SEO Rules

Make no mistake. Plenty of sites — big brands included — willingly do things in an attempt to rank better on Google that go past SEO tactics that Google itself considers acceptable. However, there’s also no better poster child for how complicated and confusing Google’s rules can be than the fact that Google has had to punish itself with penalties over and over again.

Below, a look back on times when Google took action against itself. FYI, this is a companion piece to our related story on Marketing Land today:�10 Big Brands That Were Penalized By Google. Be sure to also check that out.

And now the list, counting backwards chronologically….

5)�Chrome & Paid Links

One of Google’s big sins is when people buy links in hopes they’ll generate better Google rankings. However,�Google found itself buying links as part of a campaign to promote its Chrome browser. The links were obtained as part of a video campaign that was run involving two different promotion companies.

The companies and Google�made apologies�all around, saying the links were more accidental than intentionally sought. No matter: Google decided however it happened, it was a violation that required the�Google page for Chrome to be penalized. It was knocked out of the top rankings for searches on “Google Chrome”�for two months.

When:�January 2012Violation:�Paid linksPenalty:�Single page, the Google Chrome home page, had rankings loweredPenalty Period:�2 months4) Beat That Quote & Acquiring A Problem

When Google acquired financial comparison service Beat That Quote, it also acquired a problem. SEOs and places�like SEO Book�were quickly buzzing that Beat That Quote had been buying links and doing other tactics against Google’s guidelines.

Google responded by penalizing Beat That Quote to the degree it no longer ranked for its own name. Two weeks later,�the Beat That Quote penalty was lifted. Then the next day,�it was applied again. How long it remained in place after that, at this point, seems undocumented.

When:�March 2011Violation:�Paid linksPenalty:�Rankings degraded; no longer made first page for own namePenalty Period:�2 weeks, at first, then uncertain extension after that3) Google AdWords & Cloaking

Google found itself violating its own rules against “cloaking” — showing its web crawlers something different than a human would see — for help pages relating to AdWords.�When this was noticed,�Google penalized the AdWords help pages�so they no longer ranked well for searches on topics like “adwords help.”

Google didn’t, however,�similarly penalize other Google help pages�that were doing the same thing. How long the AdWords pages were penalized is unclear. I can’t find that anyone reported when they were back again.

When:�July 2010Violation:�CloakingPenalty:�Rankings degradedPenalty Period:�Unknown2) Google Japan & Paid Links

Google got in trouble with itself when Google Japan admitted to buying links to help promote a Google widget. When the news emerged,�Google’s search spam team reduced the PageRank score for Google Japan�from PR9 to PR5.

PageRank�is a value of importance that Google assigns to pages and�one of many factors that influences if a page ranks well. But in this case, it really had little impact.�People seeking Google Japan could still find it. After 11 months, the PageRank score rose to PR8, indicating the�penalty seemed to be lifted.

When:�February 2009Violation:�Paid linksPenalty:�PageRank dropped from PR9 to PR5Penalty Period:�11 months1) Google AdWords & Cloaking (The Original)

Remember above, how Google penalized itself because of cloaking involving its AdWords help pages? That was actually the second time the AdWords support pages had been involved with cloaking. The first time was also the first time Google ever took action against itself.

Someone at Google had hidden content on the pages in a way meant to help those using Google’s own internal search tool. However, because those changes were seen by Google’s main search engine, that meant they were in violation of guidelines. After this was�spotted�and�discussed,�Google had the pages�removed�from its index. For how long, as this point, I can’t locate.

When:�March 2005Violation:�CloakingPenalty:�Pages removed from GooglePenalty Period:�Unknown

Again, be sure to see our companion story on Marketing Land:

10 Big Brands That Were Penalized By Google(Stock image via Shutterstock.com. Used under license.)

The Correlation Between SEO Success, Budget & Your Executives' Attitude [Data]

If we wanted to determine how an organization achieves SEO success, what would we analyze? We might examine the technical breadth of knowledge of their lead SEO, the volumes of content they create, or even more abstract indicators such as their org structure. To be sure, there are any number of ways of examining the success of an organization that consistently succeeds in search.

We started with the hypothesis that the extent to which an organization has executive buy-in correlates closely with their success in the search listings. We'll test that hypothesis and then trace what downstream factors ultimately lead to success.

Testing the Link between Evangelism and Budget

To test the hypothesis, we surveyed 380 search marketers, asking them about a wide breadth of behaviors, tactics and strategies related to how they practice SEO. I'm going to zoom on the survey questions related to executive buy-in and explore the organizational characteristics that lead to this optimal state.

We'll start by segmenting those respondents who say they have most or all of the budget they need for SEO and test for the degree to which they evangelize (market SEO internally).

In this segment, 55 percent of those who evangelize often have most or all of the budget they need compared to just 25 percent of those who never or rarely evangelize. We don't want to conflate correlation with causation, but it seems reasonable to conclude (and fairly intuitively logical) that evangelism is correlated with increased buy-in. (And, the 55 percent is likely underreported because, honestly, who wants to admit they have all the budget they need?)

Do High Conversion Rates Correspond to Executive Buy-in?

To "follow the thread" and see what leads to success, next we looked to see if there was a correlation between executive buy-in and natural search success. We segmented those who grew their search conversions at rates far greater than that of their colleagues and looked to see their proportion of 'high' versus 'low' executive buy-in.

The data showed that the group of highly successful SEO professionals were more than twice as likely to have 'high' executive buy-in rates than 'low'.

The conclusion seems clear: Evangelism – the concerted effort to get executive buy-in – is critical to natural search success because it leads to budget, headcount, and technology investment, which ultimately is a critical catalyst to natural search success.

You Know SEO Evangelism Is Significant, but What's Next?

If you're on board with the conclusions we have drawn from the data, evangelism seems pretty darn important to search success. So how do you do it and do it successfully?

There are many valid approaches out there in the public domain for how to best handle an activity as critical as evangelism, but the following three approaches are particularly effective:

1. Speak the Language of Your Executive

If you aren't speaking the same language as your executive, you won't get much past the very first slide in your executive support pitch deck. Start by asking yourself "What metrics does my executive care about?"

The answer may vary widely depending on your company type, industry, and even from one organization to another in the same industry. Ask others in the organization what their perspective on your executives' targets are.

Use the successes of your direct competitors of a baseline for metrics. Certainly, address ROI; IBM recently came out with a study on CMOs which is another helpful resource.

Whatever you do, be sure you are entering any discussion with them talking about the metrics that are top of mind for them.

2. There Is no 'Talk'; There Is Only 'Do'

Traditional search market opportunity assessments are typically presented to budget holders as an assessment of what could be achieved with proper budget allocation. While well intentioned, search opportunities can be perceived as little more than a promise, and these are often met with "I'll believe it when I see it" skepticism (whether explicitly expressed or not).

Instead, in the first face-to-face meeting with executives, provide conservative estimates of the growth you think you can achieve in a specific period (e.g., 90 days), and then go out and do whatever it takes to achieve that. In a follow-up meeting, present the success you achieved in the 90 days to management with growth estimates you think you can achieve given the proper executive support.

It isn't without risk to put growth estimates out there, but it's arguably at least as risky to make a pitch for executive support with 'theoreticals' rather than 'concretes'. For more on how to execute the specifics of this plan check out A 3 Part Plan to Overcoming Management's "Show Me Success Before I'll Invest in SEO" Catch-22.

3. Find Your Internal Champion

Our (informal) analysis of successful SEO professionals over the years has shown that a not insubstantial percentage discovered internal champions in unlikely places in their organization. A common place to find them is in finance: successfully demonstrate the return on investment in search to a budget-controlling CFO who speaks the language of numbers and you may be well on your way to getting the budget and executive support you need.

Evaluate Your SEO Evangelism Efforts

Although our analysis is not exhaustive, we know from a variety of factors (including this data, common sense, and our clients' experience as well as our own) that vocal evangelism leads to executive buy-in, which leads to the organizational and budgetary support needed to succeed in search.

Given the connection between evangelism and search success, consider if the techniques above can assist you in gaining the support and budget you need to succeed. At minimum, resolve to take a step back from the day to day to consider if your evangelism efforts need leveling up. Whatever you decide, good luck in your quest for the ever-critical executive support in search.

Early Bird Rates Expire Soon!
ClickZ Live (Mar 31-Apr 3) is a brand new global conference series kicking off in New York City. Over 3 days of sessions, keynotes, training workshops and networking you'll gain invaluable digital marketing and advertising take-aways.
Register now and save up to $400 ››
*Early Bird Rates expire Feb 21.

A Paid Search First? Olympic Sponsor Visa Opts To Advertise Its Tumblr On Google, Bing and Yahoo

YouTube and Facebook have long been the favored social accounts promoted by brands in paid search ads. Visa is cracking the mold. In what may be a first for a major brand, the Olympic sponsor is using paid search to drive visitors to its Tumblr account. The ads are appearing on both Google and the Yahoo Bing Network.

Visa also appears to be the only major Olympic sponsor to have made Tumblr its Olympic content hub. From its Tumblr account, Visa links to all of its other social channels and features video and other content assets that are distributed across the other networks, including Facebook where it has over 12 million fans. Search monitoring firm BrandVerity said it has tracked Visa advertising across a number of Olympics-related keywords such as “Olympics games,” “Sochi winter olympics” and “sochi 2014.”

While it may not be the very first, Visa’s move could be a sign that Yahoo’s billion dollar acquisition is becoming important enough to brands that they’re willing to pay to drive traffic to their Tumblr accounts. However, it’s likely to be a slow move. In SERPS related to “Olympics ads,” Visa is taking the more traditional approach of driving users to its YouTube channel.

Kellogg�s, AT&T and McDonalds are among the other major Olympics sponsors buying ads on the search engines to promote their Olympics participation, television commercials and content.

Future of Content Marketing: Business & Scaling Beyond the Noise

Content marketing growth is about evolution, not revolution.

There has been no revolution in the content marketing space. People have been publishing content since the days of cavemen carving on cave walls. The rapid fusion of search and social digital technologies combined with a rapid desire from consumers and audiences to engage in new and creative ways has put content marketing as the hotspot on the search marketing ‘heat map'.

There is no doubt that growth and interest has evolved over time and has been heavily influenced by Google's algorithmic changes (Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird).

Every individual is now a content marketer and every organization is a publisher right?

Wrong.

Beyond Content 101: Strategy to Scale vs. Tactical Noise

The Internet is awash with content ideation and best practice for creating and distributing content. In just under 0.28 seconds, the mighty Google served me with over 1,070,000,000 results. Many are fantastic, but many more crowd the market with noise and confusion.

Clearly, organizations are now becoming more content savvy and consuming media at maximum capacity. However, the key question, challenge, and opportunity for your business doesn't lie within a tactical, 101, best practice document.

The answer lies within the heart of a business, its culture, and how it scales its operation and produces quality and relevant content efficiently.

The Real Issue: Scaling and Measuring Quality Content

To address the real issue of scale, quality, and measurement, businesses must focus on how to target, structure, and build sustainable strategies and frameworks.

A clear strategy and process leads to far more effective implementation of tactics. Unfortunately many businesses focus on too may tactics (for example, B2C tactics in a B2B market) and in-between all the confusion and mayhem objectives and aims are lost.

Solutions lie "embedded" within culture and the subsequent strategy and process that follow.

A 2014 B2B survey from Joe Pulizzi and the Content Marketing Institute highlighted statistics showing the challenges of content production:

The real business challenge with content marketing lies within production and scale. It begins with a streamlined strategy that gives you scope, process, and bandwidth to execute on new and innovative content marketing tactics without the mayhem.

If you don't do this, then your business faces many issues across resource, quality, and RAM (Random Acts of Marketing and Social Media).

As Pam Moore puts it in her excellent article, "These usually end up smack in the middle of projects."

Teams get sidetracked by RAM, which eats into business time, ROI, budget, and free time; a key source of frustration that many true content marketers can relate to.

Sustainability and success rely not just on content creation best practice, but best practice around internal protocol, asset management, and talent management.

A Content Marketing Business Solution – Built For Scale

If you want to make the most of the content marketing evolution, expand upon tactical execution across content, search, and social, and scale to become a "publisher," it's essential to build a framework that works.

In a recent ClickZ article, Aaron Kahlow set down a blueprint for content marketing success by stating, "You really need a blueprint - a guide - to help you get and stay on track."

To scale quality and relevant content, your culture needs to become the key driver of the following model.

The best type of content always starts with the user in mind. The user, buyer, and audience decides how good your content is – if it is worth sharing, downloading, and relevant to their need and/or business issue. Your content culture must be based around the user/buyer and optimizing for them first – your business comes second.

Understand audience demand – Utilize analytics, survey your audience, and invest in search, social, and market research. Start with the basics. It's economics 101 – demand and supply. As Lisa Barone puts it, "Without this step, you're creating content for a dark room and hoping there are people biting. With personae in hand, you not only get to see the people you're writing for, you become their best friend."Take time to identify and drill down into the different types of personas of people with whom you want to connect and understand. This extends beyond just economic buyer personas. You can go a level deeper and dive into individual personal personas (what is in it for them). Get psychological not just economical!

Essential Further Reading:

8 Tips To Building Your Internal Content Marketing Strategy – Lisa BaroneCustomer Centric Optimization – Lee Odden8 Ways To Optimize For Humans – Marty WientraubPersonas – The Art and Science And Science Of Understanding the Person – Mike King

Audience centric content culture starts with what the audience wants and can then be matched to what your company can offer them. This should be objectively driven.

We all have a multitude of reasons for producing content. This can range from subjective motives such as a personal desire to raise your brand profile, the simple want to share information and insight and, for some with no experience, to prove your worth as a content marketer and industry expert.

For businesses, content production has to be objectively driven with a clear aim and crystal message. Quality content must serve a purpose.

Ensure that before you start your content creation process, you agree on your aim. Is this to deliver timely insight and data, meet a set business objective or goal, support a marketing message, or match a product innovation to a market need?Once you've established your aim and gained buy-in from relevant stakeholders in your business across sales, client, product and marketing services you can then, and only then, begin to craft your message and think about assets.

This is a critical stage of the content process and it is where many companies can come unstuck. If you don't establish the aim and key message you will waste vital content time and resource. Bottlenecks are created as stakeholders go back and forth editing multiple versions of content and messaging.

This is something I like to call "Version 30" syndrome.

Essential Further Reading:

How to Deliver the Right Content Marketing, in a Scalable Way – Carla JohnsonAvoiding Disaster: How to Prevent the 3 Most Common Content Marketing #Fails – Moz

Ensuring that you set your objectives (aim, message and goals) – brand awareness, product marketing, demand generation, sales creation, customer marketing and thought leadership – allows you to then focus on how your business can efficiently build assets/content forms that engage with your audience and scale production within your business efficiently.

This is without doubt the biggest challenge that businesses face. Content can fall flat without a rigid process in place for content production, curation, and distribution.

We live in a world where everyone wants to be a content marketer. Everyone has a point to prove and wants to add value to the content chain.

For some, there is a genuine reason and genuine experience and value. For others it is subjectively driven, political focused, and actually devalues the quality of content.

Anyone can produce content. Put a pen to paper and there you have it! Note: It may be crap though!

Producing quality content (in line with 1 and 2 above) is a whole different ballgame where set playbooks don't apply. Creative process applies.

Ensure that you have a process in place that allows you to create compelling content using your brightest minds. Manage your content marketing talent.Differentiate between accountability and ownership. Have clear steps in place during the content production process to ensure one person has accountability and drives production of the content.Ownership is when multiple stakeholders need to become involved (product, design, and so forth). The person accountable for content creation transfers ownership of key areas and project manages accordingly.If you work with external parties (such as additional content creators, designers, social and PR partners) then make sure that they are part of this process and managed in line with the above three points. Your business should drive this process.Process is an area where strategy and tactics unite. Clear processes ensures that they sync together efficiently for scale.Ensure that you have the right people producing and leading content production. Have clear timescales and processes in place for design and asset building.Set clear processes in place for production and distribution that involves including the right people (skill and mindsets) at the right time. Your business and content team will include a number of left and right brain thinkers.

Essential Further Reading:

Content Marketing Masterclass – Koozai blogCreative Content: Winning Hearts, Minds and Wallets – Lee OddenCrap. The Content Marketing Deluge – Doug KesslerConquering Content Marketing: The Content (and Plot) Develops – Dan CristoThe 7 Steps of the Inbound Marketing Campaign Process – Chad PollittThe Rise Of The Content Distribution Space – Ryan Skinner

The content creation, curation, and distribution process is where strategists and master tacticians thrive. Creative rules in this environment. From co-created, crowds-sourced and co-branded through to visual, social and influence based search and strategies and tactics – now is the time to shine. In order to "shine," you need to measure.

Not everything you do around content can be numbers driven. However, everything you do around content, search and social should be built to measure. Search, social and content marketing are interlinked so it is important to measure different things as part of a bigger picture process.

Set measurement goals in line with your business objectives and goals.Map metrics to various stages of your user journey.Ensure that social media metrics lead/play a large role in your content performance evaluations.Utilize combinations of search, social, analytics and internal (CRM/CMS) tools to make a start on tracking your content performance from creation to revenue.Content, search and social – there is always a metric to measure so utilize various tools and platforms and build your own measurement system.

Essential Further Reading:

The 3Ps of Content Measurement – Jim Yu11 Must Measure KPIs for Content Marketing Success – Dave SnyderMeasuring The Value Of Content Marketing – Anna LewisContent Marketing Measurement Challenges – Jessica Meher4 Ways To Evaluate Your Content Marketing – Online Marketing InstituteConclusion

When people ask me "why does x produce so much more content than y" and "how does x create so much engagement and drive z amount of demand," I always highlight three things that effective content marketing businesses have:

A community culture of content across all its organization – creators, collaborators and authors – no content silos. It isn't just the role of marketing to produce content.A streamlined set of processes for the management of talent and production and distribution of content across multiple business functions.A systematic way of measuring content value at each stage of it's consumption, amplification, engagement and journey through the user journey and your internal business journey/targets.

Smart businesses build strong content cultures.

Strong cultures and clear processes make scaling quality content an achievable and enjoyable process for everyone involved. Without a culture of content businesses produce hectic, reactive, hub-and-spoke content that often falls short of the mark in terms of aims and objectives.

If you master the four steps above, then your content will scale organically and efficiently – the content halo.

Author's Note: Hat tip to Alex and Anna Moss at Firecask for helping me check this and keeping me sane whilst I wrote this.

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Register now and save up to $400 ››
*Early Bird Rates expire Feb 21.

A Paid Search First? Olympic Sponsor Visa Opts To Advertise Its Tumblr On Google, Bing and Yahoo

YouTube and Facebook have long been the favored social accounts promoted by brands in paid search ads. Visa is cracking the mold. In what may be a first for a major brand, the Olympic sponsor is using paid search to drive visitors to its Tumblr account. The ads are appearing on both Google and the Yahoo Bing Network.

Visa also appears to be the only major Olympic sponsor to have made Tumblr its Olympic content hub. From its Tumblr account, Visa links to all of its other social channels and features video and other content assets that are distributed across the other networks, including Facebook where it has over 12 million fans. Search monitoring firm BrandVerity said it has tracked Visa advertising across a number of Olympics-related keywords such as “Olympics games,” “Sochi winter olympics” and “sochi 2014.”

While it may not be the very first, Visa’s move could be a sign that Yahoo’s billion dollar acquisition is becoming important enough to brands that they’re willing to pay to drive traffic to their Tumblr accounts. However, it’s likely to be a slow move. In SERPS related to “Olympics ads,” Visa is taking the more traditional approach of driving users to its YouTube channel.

Kellogg�s, AT&T and McDonalds are among the other major Olympics sponsors buying ads on the search engines to promote their Olympics participation, television commercials and content.

Running In Real Time: Twitter on Bringing Campaigns to Life at SES London 2014

"Getting the right message to the right people at the right time can strongly augment your message."

That was the opening message from Bruce Daisley, UK Managing Director for Twitter. Citing Oreo's success story from last year's Super Bowl and Oreo's single tweet this year, Daisley says capturing a moment can be incredibly powerful. Finding the right moment doesn't have to be something you need to be intimidated by. You can even plan for it.

Daisley offered some impressive Twitter user statistics from UK:

80 percent use Twitter on a mobile device 70 percent use Twitter out and about (not at home) 25 percent purchased something directly as a result of a tweet. More than 50 percent say Twitter gives them the latest news, faster than other sources.

This means, said Daisley, "if an alien ever lands on earth, over half the Twitter user base says they'll see it on Twitter before hearing about it elsewhere." This makes Twitter content a platform for live content discovery, which is effective not only for relaying news, but also for brands to get out their messages.

Twitter increases the effectiveness of TV advertising. When added to TV ads, the net result was a 36 percent lower CPA when those TV advertisements were run concurrent with Twitter paid media. Which explains the extremely high percentage of Super Bowl ads that contained hashtags.

Other events are areas of high opportunity for brands to get their message out on Twitter, too. For example the Grammys saw over 15.2 million tweets on the hashtag #grammys, with #pharrellshat being the show stealer.

Daisley shows how the large hat Pharrell wore was another unplanned opportunity. This time Arby's won the day.

Comparing the size of Pharrell's hat to their logo, Arby's tweeted out asking him for their hat back. Pharrell replied asking if they were trying to "start some (roast] beef." Having a celebrity touching your brand is like gold. This was a huge win for Arby's.

Twitter Moments of Opportunity

There are several moments of opportunity on Twitter, both planned and unplanned. Arby's and Oreo are examples of unplanned moments.

Unpredictable moments are always good moments to take advantage of. Sometimes they are live, as with the Grammy's and Pharrell's hat tweets. Sometimes they can just after a news story breaks.

Staying relevant to pop culture and news stories is key. From the Royal Baby to sporting events, pop culture and news dominated Twitter moments in 2013 and that trend continues to grow with the first two big events in 2014.

The upcoming World Cup in Brazil is a potential planned moment, as are the Sochi Olympics. Of course for events this large, there will be unplanned moments. Having your team in place and at the ready is key to capturing such a moment.

However, as marketers, you can still plan for opportunities to reach people during the breaks in action. Much the same way sports teams purchase "champions" hats before a big match, so they can wear them as soon as they win, your can plan your message for likely outcomes and be ready as those outcomes happen. Granted sometimes your plan may not come to fruition because of an outcome. But plan for it, regardless.

There are also moments that happen "everyday." Showing Twitter search statistics for the term [run], Daisley showed how Nike takes advantage of that data.

People are most often discussing and searching for tweets related to running In the beginning of the week (Monday and Tuesday, especially). Nike sends tweets more often during those moments.

By taking advantage of the times during the week where related terms are more commonly used and searched for, Nike is insuring their message has a better chance of being noticed.

Weather and sunshine are two more terms that are great examples "everyday moments." Plan for these everyday moments when timing your messages for your social media campaigns.

Twitter is Still Good for Brands

Daisley finished with more statistics showing that Twitter is working for brands:

94 percent of tweeters shop on their mobile phones. Twitter users engage. Specifically: 70 percent of them research on Twitter.17 percent use store locators.7 percent actually purchase.56 percent of Twitter mobile users say they are influenced by content on Twitter when buying. 37 percent use Twitter before and/or after shopping on mobile. 1 in 3 users say that Twitter has a direct influence on their purchase decision.

How can brands take advantage? Since last year when Oreo won the Super Bowl, Twitter has changed a lot.

The classic Twitter experience is 140 characters, but with Twitter cards, you can subscribe to mailing lists, view videos or product information, and so much more. Through lead generation cards and other innovations, Twitter is removing friction where possible.

By helping people through the funnel faster with less touch points, marketers have less chance of leakage out of the funnel through each step. Using Twitter Cards, marketers have one-click calls-to-action for users to join a mailing list or represent their product.

The bottom line: real-time marketing isn't about being the most witty. It's about being the smartest by planning for your moments.

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Join the leaders of today's digital marketing & advertising industry at SES London (10-13 Feb), featuring keynotes by Twitter's UK MD, Bruce Daisley, and MediaCom's Head of Social, Nick Burcher, as well as 3 days of sessions and networking!
Find out more ››

Understanding Search Analytics: Making Better, Data-Driven Decisions

Do you feel like your analytics is working for you? Like really working? If you don’t, you’re not alone. In fact, a survey by Covario revealed only 20 percent felt their current analytics setup gave them insight to help make better business decisions. 

The cure? Do a better job of leveraging data. Sounds simple enough, but in today’s multiscreen world, sifting through mounds of data and working through proper attribution can be a full-time job. 

The good news is that we have more data now than ever before (or is that the bad news?); today, it’s just a matter of getting a handle on what that means to our business and our marketing programs. 

These concepts and more served as the foundation for a discussion on “Understanding Search Analytics” at Covario’s INFLECTIONPoint 2014 event, just last week. 

Bird’s Eye View of Device Usage and Tracking

The devices we optimize for and track are changing. And that’s no secret. But as marketers, we always need to be one step ahead. For example, the devices that matter today, that our target audience uses, will increase or decrease in importance over time. So where will you continue to focus your tracking efforts? 

Covario’s Steve Beatty shared the results of an eMarketer/Nielsen survey that illustrated the importance marketers place on certain devices today, and which devices they felt would be important a couple years from now:

This data segued nicely into a presentation by Google’s Michael Burke, who spoke about optimizing the experience for a multiscreen world. And it’s not about the device, he said. 

Take off your marketer hat for a moment, and put yourself in the shopper’s shoes to get an empathetic view of device usage, and how to make that experience great for that user at that moment (referencing Google’s ZMOTphilosophy).  

Burke walked us through a scenario that went something like this:

A guy is thinking about getting a new shaving kit. He decides to search for it on his mobile phone as he sits in the dentist’s office.He sees something interesting in the results, clicks through and then abandons the process. Later, he decides to continue the research at home on his tablet, and he finds a store nearby that carries the product.A couple days later, he goes to check it out. While there, he does a price check on his mobile phone to see if he can get it cheaper elsewhere (aka “showrooming”). He sees he can get a discount online.  Finally, a few days later, he makes the purchase on his laptop at home.

If you can tailor the experience to the needs of the user when they are performing search or engaging on your site on a particular device, you’re beginning to think in line with ZMOT’s philosophy of sending the right message at the right time. 

And it’s not just devices that matter. The intent behind the action is worth understanding to become even more relevant to your audience. For example, Burke said, someone searching for “best mobile phone” on a Wednesday night on a laptop has a completely different intent than that same search coming from a mobile phone on a Sunday afternoon. 

So when you’re optimizing for devices, optimize for the experience. 

And with this, comes the need to attribute not only how devices impact the experience and the bottom line, but also how each action (no matter how small), can lead to something bigger. As Burke pointed out, ecommerce transactions are not the only value-driven action. In fact, he said, there are lots of untracked events that have serious positive consequences. 

But there’s still a ways to go when it comes to measuring the value of certain actions. In-store purchases are one conversion point that Burke said Google is working hard towards finding ways to attribute which actions drove that purchase, and, he said, they’ve started experimenting with Web history and geolocation to begin to get an understanding of that.

OK, So How Do You Attribute?

All this talk about attribution sounds great, but not everyone has a handle on how to do it. As Covario’s Anthony Stagg pointed out next, attribution is still an emerging discipline, but a lack of standardization plus challenges with online data access, collection and quality can be an issue. 

Especially as we face a “cookieless” world, as illustrated by the following graphic:

There are implications, Stagg said. Consider the following:

Every cookie generates its own user profile leading to multiple and often conflicting profiles of user behavior. Cookies don’t work with smartphones and tablets.Google, Microsoft and Facebook have begun development on their own browser-based individual identifiers.These individual identifiers would allow them to collect behavioral data across all content, campaigns, and devices—smartphone, tablet, PC and laptop—and attribute them to a single unique user profile.This increases the threat of Internet giants monopolizing online user behavioral data and selling it to advertisers and agencies.   

Today, when companies do practice attribution, the majority of it is pretty straightforward. In a study published by Forrester Research, companies most used channels like paid search and SEO in their attribution calculations:

And even though marketers are working towards more sophisticated attribution modeling, the last click, said Stagg, is still the default for many.

His recommendation? Explore the technology that’s out there now, looking out for the many new features and functionality attribution technology vendors have to offer. 

Drowning in Data? Investigate the Numbers

Half the battle is getting the data; the other half is interpreting it. Covario’s Nick Morrelli pointed out the pitfalls of analyzing data next. One such pitfall is treating the data you collect site-wide in the same manner. 

For example, it’s common to treat your website users differently based on where they engage on the site, but Morrelli argued it’s time to start analyzing the data for those pages differently as well. 

One scenario is the bounce rate. The bounce rate for users in your sales segment should be looked at differently than the bounce rate for your users in your technical support section, he said. In those cases, the bounce has different implications.

If you’re drowning in data or your numbers just feel lackluster, there’s a remedy: dig deeper. One of the best things you can do when analyzing data is to always ask yourself, What is the next step? What other questions can I answer?

And to avoid becoming too comfortable with face-value analytics; Morrelli reminded the audience to always look for evidence to prove or disprove your assumptions.

As Beatty took the stage again for closing remarks, he left us with a quote from the fictional detective character, Sherlock Holmes: “The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession.” 

As marketers, it’s easy to become overwhelmed with data, and do nothing to resolve tracking what matters. But the investment up front in doing so can pay dividends to making better data-driven business decisions through search analytics.

Bringing Together Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Join the leaders of today's digital marketing & advertising industry at SES London (10-13 Feb), featuring keynotes by Twitter's UK MD, Bruce Daisley, and MediaCom's Head of Social, Nick Burcher, as well as 3 days of sessions and networking!
Find out more ››

Does It Still Make Sense For Companies to Blog?

Over the past 10 years I�ve had more than enough opportunities to consider whether the investment in time and resources to blog has been worth it.

Blogging for business is a question I think many companies ask themselves as they look at current trends towards time more spent on social networks and changing consumer consumption trends, especially with mobile.

This question came to light recently via Stephen Waddington,�Digital and Social Media Director at �Ketchum Europe who pinged me for an opinion on the future of global blogging for a blog post he was researching. And that got me thinking:

Does it still make sense for companies to blog?

One way to answer that question is to take a look at how many blogs there are and whether the number is increasing:

When I started blogging in late 2003, there were about 1.5 million blogs (Technorati).

It�s actually hard to say how many blogs there are currently, but WordPress.com alone hosts 75.3 million blogs in over 120 different languages world-wide with 100,000 new blogs being created every day. WordPress.com blogs publish 40.5 million posts and attract 50 million comments per month. Over 400 million people view 14.4 billion pages per month.

If you look at Tumblr as a blog platform, there are over 170 million blogs and nearly 76 billion posts published.

This exercise could be continued with other blog hosting platforms like Google�s Blogger and others to raise the number of blogs even higher. Of course, I�m not even counting the millions of blogs hosted on their own domains like this one and most of the business blogs that are online.

While many of the personal blogs are about everything from cats to fashion to recipes to long forgotten ramblings from years gone by, blogging is not simply a domain for self expression.

Business blogging is alive and well.�

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth annual study of corporate blogs in 2013 recently reported the largest year over year increase of Fortune 500 corporate blogs (34%) since they started tracking them in 2008.

From telecommunications to specialty food retailers, companies have found blogging to be an essential hub for their social media, content marketing, SEO and online public relations efforts.

In fact, blogging is even more ideal now that content and brand publishing has become the price of entry for even the most basic of digital marketing efforts.

What about content shock? Is the economy of content marketing too imbalanced for business blogging to be practical? �Mark Schaefer made some interesting arguments about issues around the scalability and sustainability of companies creating more and more quality content. If the only reason a company creates a blog is for content marketing, then I’d have to agree. But here’s the thing:

Marketing is not the only reason companies can get value from blogging.�

I started blogging to explore the platform and soon discovered an incredibly useful tool for communicating directly with prospects, the media, potential employees, current clients and our own staff. �Any reason a company has to communicate can be supported by a blogging platform.

Being committed to blogging as a means for bringing offline experience online and vice versa in combination with speaking at events, has paid off in numerous ways. For our digital marketing agency, I don�t see that changing any time soon.

The proof is in the pudding.

We are a boutique agency and yet we are known all over the world because of our blog. We receive thousands of new visitors every day from search that have never heard of TopRank before. Imagine what we would have to pay in advertising to reach new audiences, day in and day out. Actually, many companies know exactly what that costs because they don�t blog or because they blog and don�t integrate it very well with social networks and community for amplification.

So far, we�ve spent very little, if any budget on advertising to market our company and have never had a sales person or employed a public relations firm. What we have invested, in is over 1 million words about topics our target audiences care about. The payoff is virtually no cost of sale and bringing multiple Fortune 500 companies on as clients and attracting media coverage from the likes of The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes, Fortune and The Economist.

The current and future benefits of blogging are literally too numerous to list here, (maybe Stephen Waddington will write an eBook about this) but suffice it to say, in all my years as a marketing and PR professional, business blogging is by far the highest yield investment I�ve ever made for: marketing, public relations, and recruiting.

What�s the Future of Blogging for Business?

With the importance of content in search, social media and PR, blogging continues to be a viable asset for businesses to produce conversational content outside of the transaction oriented online stores and corporate websites.

Rather than blogs being replaced by social networks, media and apps on mobile devices, successful companies will incorporate blogging into their digital marketing mix. Blog content can be consumed with any device and for companies that want a destination on the web to curate their own Vines, Instagram images, and other types of mobile-created content, blogs are a great fit.

Blogs that are supported by a solid, customer-focused strategy and that are integrated with social media efforts still have every opportunity to help a brand become and stay “the best answer” for topics that matter most to their customers. Of course competition continues to grow and customer preferences for information discovery, consumption and action will change. But that’s why companies keep their fingers on the pulse of the industry and their customers, continually optimizing the quality and performance of their communications.

As a hub for brand publishing for virtually any kind of content, I can think of no better fit than a business blog in 2014 and in the future.

What do you think? Does it still make sense for companies to blog?

YP Wants To Compete Directly With Google And Yelp In Local

When one looks across the local digital landscape there are many companies and apps but few consumer �brands.� In specific verticals, like travel or automotive, there are companies such as TripAdvisor or Cars.com. But �horizontally� on a national level there are very few top-of-mind, major players.

That list starts with Google and Yelp and could include Apple (re maps) and maybe Foursquare and Groupon. Mapquest has faded and Facebook�s local efforts are still what we might call embryonic.

The various yellow pages and directory publishers, once dominant in local, have had great difficulty building consumer brands in the digital sphere. They’re struggling with whether to focus equally on consumers and advertisers or to shift to a mainly agency like advertiser focus.

YP (formerly yellowpages.com) is a company that has continued to evolve its brand and invest in consumer marketing. The company�s new campaign is �the new way to do” and it’s spending real money in multiple markets to generate brand awareness (see embedded video below). The utilitarian notion is about getting things accomplished — as opposed to simply accessing information.

Newly appointed YP CMO Allison Checchi�thinks that YP can and ultimately will be directly competitive with Google and Yelp.�Checchi is a Harvard B-School grad, who was with consulting firm Bain & Co before she entered YP as “SVP of Transformation Initiatives.” Immediately before becoming CMO Checchi was�SVP of Business Development.

Now her job is to elevate the YP brand and make it part of the consideration set when consumers think about local search or discovery. She’s also responsible for B-to-B marketing initiatives. On that side of the fence, the company (jointly owned by Cerberus Capital and AT&T) has 4,000 “media consultants” (sales and account reps) to support and retain nearly 575,000 advertisers.

With its�recent acquisition of Sense Networks�the company will gain additional mobile technology and capabilities (e.g., advanced targeting and tracking). It will also be better positioned to go after large national accounts. Still the company is already doing well in mobile, with $350 million in mobile ad revenue in 2012 (out of $1 billion in total digital revenue). YP points out that it�has “roughly 5x the digital revenue Yelp reports.”

Today between 40 and 50 percent of�search on YP�s network is from mobile. The company also says that it reaches “more than 90 percent of monthly internet users” through its YP Local Ad Network. And the company says it has 70 million monthly uniques overall.

All these stats are formidable for an underdog. Yet�YP will need to�build out richer and deeper content as well as differentiating features on its site and in mobile to truly be competitive and transform�consumer perceptions of digital “yellow pages.”

Part one was the brand change from “yellow pages” to “YP.” Part two will be a range of improvements and enhancements to the user experience.

CMO�Checchi�plans to focus on personalization, more content depth and multi-platform experiences. Personalization (and multi-platform) will revolve to some degree around YP’s MyBook, today a favorites list that will be expanded and greatly enhanced in the coming year, according to the CMO.

Checchi sees MyBook as a tool that can help more deeply connect consumers and local businesses. She’s also interested in building out transactional and CRM tools for business owners.

I was impressed by�Checchi and her solid assessment of YP’s strengths and weaknesses. I do think that if YP can execute on its vision it does have the potential to be a top-tier local search brand along with Google and Yelp. But today it’s still an uphill climb.

YP Wants To Compete Directly With Google And Yelp In Local

When one looks across the local digital landscape there are many companies and apps but few consumer �brands.� In specific verticals, like travel or automotive, there are companies such as TripAdvisor or Cars.com. But �horizontally� on a national level there are very few top-of-mind, major players.

That list starts with Google and Yelp and could include Apple (re maps) and maybe Foursquare and Groupon. Mapquest has faded and Facebook�s local efforts are still what we might call embryonic.

The various yellow pages and directory publishers, once dominant in local, have had great difficulty building consumer brands in the digital sphere. They’re struggling with whether to focus equally on consumers and advertisers or to shift to a mainly agency like advertiser focus.

YP (formerly yellowpages.com) is a company that has continued to evolve its brand and invest in consumer marketing. The company�s new campaign is �the new way to do” and it’s spending real money in multiple markets to generate brand awareness (see embedded video below). The utilitarian notion is about getting things accomplished — as opposed to simply accessing information.

Newly appointed YP CMO Allison Checchi�thinks that YP can and ultimately will be directly competitive with Google and Yelp.�Checchi is a Harvard B-School grad, who was with consulting firm Bain & Co before she entered YP as “SVP of Transformation Initiatives.” Immediately before becoming CMO Checchi was�SVP of Business Development.

Now her job is to elevate the YP brand and make it part of the consideration set when consumers think about local search or discovery. She’s also responsible for B-to-B marketing initiatives. On that side of the fence, the company (jointly owned by Cerberus Capital and AT&T) has 4,000 “media consultants” (sales and account reps) to support and retain nearly 575,000 advertisers.

With its�recent acquisition of Sense Networks�the company will gain additional mobile technology and capabilities (e.g., advanced targeting and tracking). It will also be better positioned to go after large national accounts. Still the company is already doing well in mobile, with $350 million in mobile ad revenue in 2012 (out of $1 billion in total digital revenue). YP points out that it�has “roughly 5x the digital revenue Yelp reports.”

Today between 40 and 50 percent of�search on YP�s network is from mobile. The company also says that it reaches “more than 90 percent of monthly internet users” through its YP Local Ad Network. And the company says it has 70 million monthly uniques overall.

All these stats are formidable for an underdog. Yet�YP will need to�build out richer and deeper content as well as differentiating features on its site and in mobile to truly be competitive and transform�consumer perceptions of digital “yellow pages.”

Part one was the brand change from “yellow pages” to “YP.” Part two will be a range of improvements and enhancements to the user experience.

CMO�Checchi�plans to focus on personalization, more content depth and multi-platform experiences. Personalization (and multi-platform) will revolve to some degree around YP’s MyBook, today a favorites list that will be expanded and greatly enhanced in the coming year, according to the CMO.

Checchi sees MyBook as a tool that can help more deeply connect consumers and local businesses. She’s also interested in building out transactional and CRM tools for business owners.

I was impressed by�Checchi and her solid assessment of YP’s strengths and weaknesses. I do think that if YP can execute on its vision it does have the potential to be a top-tier local search brand along with Google and Yelp. But today it’s still an uphill climb.