SEO Content Strategy: The Importance of Personas

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There are many components of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), from keyword selection to technical optimization to the way you approach content as a whole. While it was once sufficient to simply stuff a bunch of keywords onto a page and show up well-ranked for those terms, those days are long gone.

Quality and Relevance Are Even More Important than Ever

The Panda / Farmer update introduced quality as a key metric, and it is measured through a rather complicated algorithm. This algorithm reviews the word count, the style, the grammatical correctness, and the type of website it is. Then, it factors in how it ranks sites that it deems “similar”, and assigns a ranking factor there as well. There are no “tricks” to get around this one. Just write good content with correct spelling and grammar, in natural language that a real reader would understand.

Relevance also influences this algorithm, albeit indirectly. Panda incorporates metrics that indicate how readers respond to the content (bounce rate, time on page/site, pageviews / visit, etc. – all readily available via Google Analytics or any leading commercial analytics package). This is a GREAT development for those of us who practice white hat SEO exclusively. Write for your audience, keep them engaged, include keywords that your readers will relate to, and the rankings will come over time.

How to Manage Relevance

The first requirement is clearly to understand  your space. Keep up with the latest trends, jargon, technologies, events, thought leaders, and social “buzz” to start. If you have been in the same industry for several years, you likely already have this covered.

The second, and most commonly overlooked, requirement is to develop good user personas. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept, here is my definition of the term as it relates to web content:

A persona is a fictional character that describes your target audience or a segment of your target audience, whichever is most practical for making rational splits in content, tone, and approach.

So basically, a persona is “Joe Customer” or “Jane Prospect”. It is outlined in prose format, often reading like a brief biography of the fictional person. Many companies go so far as to give the persona a name, age, job title, and even a photo. The idea is to get buy-in across your leadership team as to exactly who you are writing for. To know them, their story, what motivates them, what their hobbies are, whatever it is about them that you think you should message to.

Check out some sample personas on the following websites for reference:

Some marketing and IT  types (personas are also useful for Software Interface Design and Usability) are skeptical about this idea. They claim to already know their audience. Some call this a silly exercise. And really, it may not be necessary to document each individual persona…in one situation: where you already know the persona intimately, and you ( and ONLY you) will be involved in generating content for that audience. If you write content for a business with more than five employees, there is a place for user personas.

How to Apply Personas to Content

The first step to moving the needle with personas is to get buy in from the most important decision makers in your organization. We’ve seen far too many persona efforts scrapped mid-way because leadership was not included early enough. It is crucial that those decision makers start to really envision the fictional character to whom you will be messaging. Once you are all on the same page, you will get a lot less pushback later once you turn persona into messaging and finished content.

Next, review your customer lifecycle in more detail. Do you already have content for all the key pre-sales stages in the life cycle? Specifically, you should have:

  1. Thought leadership materials that educate (not pitch) the customer on important trending topics in your space? Complete with calls-to-action that drive them to your website for potential conversion
  2. More in-depth content about the technology, technique, service, or product type you sell, and even deeper content about your own products or services
  3. Very focused differentiation and validation materials, such as why you are best, case studies, third party reports, and testimonials
  4. A very clear path to purchasing once they are ready to do so

Now you are ready to take action. Look at each persona and start listing the types of materials they might like to see at each of these points in the life cycle. Look for where there are overlaps and differences, because overlaps are opportunities to write content once, and use it for multiple audiences. Then prioritize based on two factors:

  1. Relative importance to your business or cause for each persona
  2. Areas where you can provide relevant content to multiple personas with the same information or very similar content

Once you complete this exercise, you should have a reasonable start on the content plan to improve your analytics and relevance in tandem.

Summary

User personas are a key component of any content strategy that places relevance at the top of the priority list. With Google Panda now measuring relevance, you really have no choice but to pay attention to this topic. Take time now to be sure you know who your target audience is personally, and enjoy the SEO and increased traffic it will offer to you under the new ranking algorithm.

Have you ever been involved in user persona creation? What worked and didn’t work? Do you have any samples that would help our readers better understand this?

Please share your experiences, successes, failures, and samples in the comments section below!

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Google Search vs. Display – Pros and Cons

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This week, PPC expert Matt Kelly shares his guidance about when to use Google AdWords and when to focus on the content / display network.

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Search vs. Display: What Are They?

In Google Adwords, there are two primary “venues” on which you can display ads, the first being Google Search, the second being the Google Display Network (GDN).

Google Search and their search partners, such as search.aol.com, allow the display of text  ads along with organic results (unpaid) that are triggered by keywords. You type in a keyword or phrase, Google displays the most relevant ads.  When you click on the ad, the advertiser is charged based on an auction price and you are re-directed to the advertiser’s website.

GDN on the other hand are “contextually” targeted ads based on content, interests, or topics. Publishers of content use Google Adsense as the vehicle for displaying ads. In addition, Google uses your demographic data and interests to display ads you might be interested in.

You can view your Ad Preferences at: http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/

So if, for example, you are reading an article about Tiger Woods skipping the US Open and see an ad for the new Nike 20XI golf ball, the ad is there.  Nike recognizes that, if you are reading an article on golfchannel.com, you probably have an interest in Golf. So you might buy golf balls.

On the other hand, if you are reading an article on nytimes.com, you might see the same Nike 20XI Golf ball ad.  Most likely, this ad was displayed because your Ad Preferences indicate “Golf” as an interest.

How to Find a Good Site Where You Can Advertise

There are a variety of ways to find relevant/high quality sites to target.  Generally speaking, I look for them in this order:

  1. Search Google using the most valuable keywords I am trying to target.  I prefer using Google Search initially to find sites to advertise on, since those that show up on the first page are presumably more relevant. From the organic search results, I look at the websites on page one to see if they are running ads from either Google or Double Click. I also check the depth and content of the site for quality. If you see display ads on the site, check the link of the ad by either hovering over it, or look for the “Ads by Google” logo. (Hint: If you are a publisher, invest in SEO so we can find your site. [Double Hint from editorial team: Return On Now can help you])
  2. Next step is to use the Google Adplanner.  Adplanner allows me to more specifically target websites running Adsense based on audience parameters such as geography, language, demographics, online activity, and interests.  Adplanner also provides filtering based on Google Ranking method, inventory, category, ad specific, and domain suffix.
  3. I’ll use the “Placement Tool” in Adwords, even though the results are typically comparable to those found in Adplanner.
  4. I look at the sites referring traffic in Google Analytics to find sites that are sending some traffic, but would be good prospect for sending more.

From the research above, I will add sites as “Managed Placements,” in addition to a list of standard sites I always target such as mail.google.com, ehow.com, about.com. and nytimes.com

Managed placements are my highest value group of websites, as opposed to automatic placements, which are those that Google is determining as relevant and then displaying my ads accordingly.

Think of the difference between Automatic and Managed placements as if they were baseball teams.  Managed placements are the players on the team that have made it to a Major League Team. I hand picked them, and if they don’t play well, I kick them off them team. In the past, they have performed well and are of above average quality.

Automatic placements are those that are still in the farm system working extremely hard to perform well enough to make it to the Major League. Automatic placements, like a Baseball Scout,  are also always on the lookout for new sites to target or new players to add to the team.

Search Pros

  1. Simple to set up and manage

Search Cons

  1. It’s the first thing everyone thinks of when launching a paid search campaign, so the competition for a keyword may be high resulting in poor ROI / Return-on-Investment.
  2. In order to have an effective search campaign, a large amount of emphasis needs to be on targeting high Quality Score keywords
  3. It is available as “Cost-Per-Click” Pricing Only (also referred to as PPC / Pay-per-click pricing)
  4. Text ads are the only format allowed

Display Pros

  1. Lower Cost per click and conversion. On average the CPC is 30% less for display than search.
  2. Remarketing – This is the practice of displaying an ads on GDN  to someone that visited a particular page on your web site
  3. Measuring “view-through-conversion”, which is a metric of the number of conversions that happened within 30 days of someone seeing the ad
  4. Casts a much wider net (better reach) across content that is related to your keywords
  5. Pricing flexibility: Cost per Click or Cost per thousand (CPM pricing)
  6. Better targeting to content-rich and relevant sites
  7. More visually appealing ad options rather than just text
  8. Behavioral, demographic, and geographic targeting capabilities

Display Cons

  1. Getting your boss or client to understand why such a low Click Through Rate (CTR) is a good thing can be challenging
  2. Initial set up is more complicated that search
  3. Initial cost to set up is higher than search as you may incur a cost for advertisement design
  4. Less control can mean lower quality traffic if you are using automatic placement. Automatic placements require increased maintenance to exclude sites that are of poor quality (i.e. one page websites running Adsense on what is essentially nothing more than a doorway page)

So how do you sell this to your metrics-driven Boss or Client?

First, focus on what the key metrics are as follows:

  • Impressions:  Depending on a number of factors, including your overall budget and how much of it is allocated to display, you can see 10-20 times as many impressions as you can in search
  • Cost per click: As a general rule of thumb, your cost per click on display should be 30% less than Search
  • Cost per conversion:  The metric I personally manage to for display conversions is 20% less than search

Search Engine Marketing: PPC vs. GDN Metrics

If you are a newbie to display advertising, here is where to start:

  • Have five non-animated banner ads designed. The sizes I recommend are 300×250, 160×600, 200×200, 468×60, and 728×90. You should be able to get a decent graphics designer to design these ads for less than $400. The GDN ad specs are located at: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en&topic=28431&guide=28427&page=guide.cs
  • Create a separate campaign for “Managed Placements.” This will allow you to control the budget separately from search campaigns.
  • Limit that campaign to one of your ad groups so that you are testing a small group of keywords and phrases.
  • Allocate a small amount of your search budget to managed placements. I’d start with 10%.
  • Only use a handful of managed placements, i.e. less than ten. Make sure mail.google.com is on that list.
  • Cap your CPC at 30% less than your search CPC.

The biggest advantage of display versus search is it’s reach and the ability to give a product context through the use of images. As they say, “A picture is worth a thousand words”. So maybe a text ad is worth only one hundred words?

Think beyond just Search.

An SEO Experiment Gone Awry (Mea Culpa)

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Today I am writing the most difficult blog post I’ve ever authored. Why so difficult? Because something I did has made some people very unhappy. So here I will state my case and lay myself before the mercy of the jury. I do not know if it will help, but at least the information will be available for any and all to read.

For those of you who know me personally, you can attest to the fact that everything I do is on the “up and up”. I’ve been called honest to a fault on numerous occasions. I value my reputation like I value those I love and cherish. In the spirit of honesty and transparency, I present the following.

Google Panda and an SEO Experiment

Several months ago, I first learned that Google was working on a algorithm update that was meant to penalize low quality and duplicate content online (now known as “Panda“). Needless to say, I was intrigued. As an SEO and online marketing practitioner professionally, I had witnessed sites like eHow manage to leap to the top of the rankings for nearly any search term you might enter into Google. On the other hand, I had syndicated blog posts from friends and colleagues here on Return On Now… content that would now be considered “duplicate” by Google. I was worried my SEO would take a negative impact, so I kicked off an experiment to test just how hard the update would affect me.

Structuring the Experiment

To perform an SEO experiment, you need content. In this case, I needed duplicate content. But I wanted to see just how aggressively Panda would penalize it. So I decided to design two test sites, one with essentially all duplicate content, and another with a handful of original pages plus some duplicate content as well. Since this was to be a short term trial, I built two WordPress sites using freely available standard templates and found a plugin that let’s you create posts from RSS feeds. Bingo! My experiment was ready to go.

Then I started thinking about what topic areas might be rich with RSS feeds to run the experiment.

I had already purchased “supplymyhobby.com” for an etail business idea I kicked around in 2010, and it was sitting there unused, so I chose it for the first site. Obviously, hobby content is widely available on the web, so I decided to make it the “all duplicate” site.

I also selected a new domain focused on back pain, an ailment I’ve suffered from since a car accident in 1994. I figured, since I am in the demographic of who would want to read this sort of content, I could hack together several pages of original content to supplement the duplicate material. In this way, I could test whether Google Panda would “slap” a site harder based on how much of the content is duplicate.

On both sites, I wanted to be sure Google indexed them as real sites and not experiments, so I did add some more promotional content. One asked for what hobbies readers want to see on the site. The other had a few pages of product reviews for back relief remedies.

Populating the sites

I built both sites first, and then configured the autoposting plugin. At this point, I actually had second thoughts and nearly scrapped the whole idea, but I figured that this was a short-term trial. I could set it up, get the sites live, ensure they are indexed in Google, and then watch the traffic trends until a few weeks after the Panda rollout. Then I could draw conclusions, turn it off, and integrate the learnings into my ongoing SEO work. The key phrase here is “turn it off”, which is where it gets hairy.

Now, I understand the slippery slope of using content from other blogs, There have been many debates about what a copyright means online vs. in print, what rights authors have, and what attributions are required for copied/shared content. As you’ve seen here on RON many times, I frown heavily upon stealing content for personal gain or other financial reasons. I would never, ever steal someone else’s high quality content for the sole purpose of taking credit for it or making money in a shady fashion. This is an important point, and one I will come back to shortly.

To get the sites indexed in Google, I had to connect it to some RSS feeds. Since I needed to get the site live as fast as possible to build a little momentum pre-Panda, I hurried to connect some RSS feeds that were serving up quality on-topic content and turned the sites on. I also set the content autoposting plugin to append two things on each post, the official name of the source blog and a link to the original content. I figured, at least I’m establishing backlinks which wouldn’t have hurt the original sites in any way pre-Panda, and I’m being upfront about what sites actually created the content. I did this because I am no content thief, and I would never do such a thing otherwise.

In this process, I did overlook one important thing on the WP template – I didn’t change it at all. That was an outright mistake, because they came with verbiage claiming that all material on the site was copyrighted by the site itself. Shame on me for the oversight, because I knew full well that some or all of the content would be written by others on their own sites. It has been suggested that I should have simply asked for permission, and I can’t argue that point. In my haste to make the experiment happen, thinking no one would even notice, I did not do so. Again, shame on me.

Once the sites were live, I did not promote them aggressively. Upon launch, I did link to them from another website or two, ping Google directly, and bookmark a handful of pages and posts. Basically, just enough to get them indexed. My goal was not to build traffic, grow the sites, or create some sort of business. It was purely academic, and once indexed, only organic search traffic needed be measured to draw any conclusions.

Drawing Conclusions

Let’s keep this part short. What did I learn about Google Panda in this experiment?

  1. As we saw across a variety of sites, the penalty for duplicate content was swift and severe. Traffic essentially fell off a cliff back in February when it went live.
  2. There was a marked difference in negative impact between the two sites. The faucet was nearly turned off completely on the hobby site, while it merely took a downturn of >50% on the other site.

The second observation was especially enlightening, because it showed that Google weights its rankings according to amount of duplicate content, not an across-the-board slap for having any of it. This is exactly what I was hoping to see, because now I don’t have to worry about my organic traffic completely drying up on Return On Now.

Great, experiment over. Back to business….Not so fast buddy.

Finish What You Start

I made a crucial mistake at that time. I neglected to turn off the sites as planned.

I could spew a littany of excuses including adding a new client for my SEO business, rolling out a major new website for a local tech company, and having to deal with some personal stuff that distracted me elsewhere.

But bottom line: the sites lived on.

Earlier this week, a Google Alert came to my In-Box that really caught my attention. One of the bloggers whose content I used in the experiment (In Stitches) had seen SupplyMyHobby and was rightfully upset. I knew immediately that leaving up the site had backfired, and that I now had created a mess for myself. The old adage “finish what you started” came to mind, and I realized I had completely dropped the ball.

You see, In Stitches is a GREAT blog. They have a good quorum of regular participants on the blog, and the author (Pam MacKenzie) has built a wonderful online presence within the knitting community. I respect her work with the highest regard, which is part of the reason I used the content in the first place. I feel the same way about every one of the blogs that populated SMH during this experiment.

Immediate Remediation

This Google Alert pushed me to immediate action. After reading her scathing blog posts directly, seeing words such as “plagiarize” and “stealing”, I immediately opened my hosting FTP account and deleted the two sites completely. Of course, this was over 2 months too late, but I removed them from the web without delay and also deleted the Google Analytics accounts I used to track the experiment. I wanted no semblance of these websites to remain live online for any reason.

As I mentioned earlier, I am 100% dedicated to honesty, transparency, and taking responsibility for my own actions. The next step I took was to send an email directly to Pam with a full apology and an attempt to explain what I was doing. But you can only say so much in an email, which is why I am posting this live on my REAL blog for the whole world to see. Nothing to hide here.

Picking Up the Pieces

Ms. MacKenzie continues to think I am a scammer.

While I can understand why she might think so, I implore you to take this into account – if I were actually stealing content and taking credit for it, why in the world would I have attached it to a hosting account that lists my real name? Just search for me online and you’ll get a whole page of links to my various blogs and social media profiles. I bare myself to the world in full color, without editing or filtering. I am who you see online, in person, and in writing.

It’s known that scammers make up fake IDs, names, and contact information so that you can never actually trace their footprints. Do the math for yourself, and you’ll see that this is a severe misunderstanding that blew up in my face in the worst way possible.

I screwed up, and I apologize from the bottom of my heart to every one of the bloggers whose work I used in my experiment without asking for advanced permission. It was wrong, and I’m done fielding isolated SEO experiments altogether. It’s far too risky to touch again.

Lesson learned. I hope you can understand. Namaste.

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SEO: Why You Need A Content Strategy

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Search Engine Optimization is an ongoing need for any business that is serious about establishing and maintaining good positions on Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. Many businesses depend on Google alone for more than 50% of their overall traffic.

Achieving that sort of success with SEO takes more than the basics (on-page, backlinks). It requires that your website take another step to plan out a site that is:

  1. Easy to navigate
  2. Structured with broad keywords at the higher levels, and more specific keywords deeper in the nav
  3. Generating quality new content on a regular and ongoing basis

While it is rather easy to dive in and start tweaking the on-page elements that are used by search engines (page title, meta description, H1 / H2 / H3, etc.), the opportunistic online marketing mind will ask the question, “Is this the right content in the first place?”.

Content Strategy Before On-Page

Before diving into the tactics, it makes the most sense to do a self-review of your business, cause, nonprofit, or whatever entity it is that drives you to generate quality content. Map out the categories (e.g. product lines or different audiences served) at the highest level and decide what keywords best match with those categories.

Then line up the most important topic areas in the next level beneath. These will also be keywords. Feel free to even build out more specific topics at the third level (we recommend only three levels for most types of site). Continue until you have a solid plan for what keyword-rich, highly relevant content you need.

From there, you can begin generating or reworking content to fit. As you generate the new material, take a couple of extra minutes to label the right keywords…highest level category, keyword for that level, any long-tail words that make sense….and insert those into the appropriate on-page locations. And be sure to pepper in some conversion pages to collect leads if it makes sense for your business.

Planning Ahead Works

There are multiple benefits to optimizing your website with this approach.

First, it gives you a chance to take a fresh look at your site from a macro perspective. It is so easy to get caught up in the daily minutiae, that we sometimes need to take a step back to evaluate where we are, how we got there, and where we want to be.

Second, the output will be very helpful at beginning your ascent up the rankings. By structuring your website in a way that the search engine crawlers will find logical, they will better be able to connect your website to the keywords you are targeting. The bonus is that, when you relaunch your website or launch a new website, Google will typically do a full crawl of the site quickly, assuming you have an XML sitemap file logged with them.

We Can Help

You can most likely manage the build out of a content strategy yourself. If not, SEO and Content Strategy are specialties of ours. If you need help, drop me a line at tommy (at) returnonnow (dot) com.

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Customer Intimacy: A Lesson In Worst Practices

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With all of the talk about social media, transparency, content relevance, and user-generated content, we most certainly have a grand vision in front of us. As marketers, we want to evolve with our customers, moving from a mindset of pushing our content out to large audiences to a mindset of collaboration and engagement.

What we truly want is the next iteration of Customer Intimacy, a term that originated over a decade ago, yet still applies well in today’s environment. The pinnacle of marketing and product success is to become not only a vendor, but a trusted partner. This can be delivered in a number of ways, from custom product delivery, to special support terms, to well-structured, data-driven marketing efforts that suggest the company truly cares about the customer.

To establish customer intimacy, we need to move past economies of scale and one-size-fits-all thinking. The qualities that matter most are flexibility, responsiveness, and engagement (sounds like social networking, doesn’t it?). And most of all, if you say you know me, you darn well better know me. Even if that’s just a mirage served up by advanced database marketing techniques.

Customer Intimacy: How to Do It Wrong

Earlier this week, I was sorting through a stack of junk mail when I came across an envelope from Domino’s Pizza. Even when sorting through junk, I take a moment to look at each piece for two reasons:

  1. To see if there are any deals of interest
  2. To review for any marketing takeaways or lessons I should take note of

Since I tend to eat more healthy, all-natural foods, I was not interested in whatever special coupon or deal the mailer included, but it caught my attention from a marketing perspective. Here is the mailer in question:

We Miss You Domino's Mailer

Okay, good start. I have in fact purchased Domino’s Pizza in the past. It’s just good database marketing to look at your customers to determine activity/inactivity over time, seasonal patterns, and other trends. It has been quite a while since we’ve ordered from them, so I naturally assumed they did their job and send a re-engagement plea.

Then I looked at how the envelope was addressed. See for yourself…

Addressed to Postal Customer

That’s right, they don’t even know my name (which I had to give to them when they took each and every order I’ve ever placed with them)! Even worse, I went ahead and opened the envelope to see if there were any other interesting gaffs, only to find a letter addressed to “Dear Domino’s Pizza Customer”.  Of course, they did explain that they noticed no activity on my part in 2011, but by the time I read that part, it was too late.

Small Errors, Big Impact

As you might guess, this mailer had exactly the opposite effect on me than they wanted. Should I get a craving for pizza, they’d be at the bottom of my wish list based on this campaign.

The lesson here is important – if you don’t have the data or the discipline to collect it, then don’t try to pretend you “know” me. Just send a generic message without all the hints that you did some analysis in it. If you can’t or won’t do it right, you simply can’t fake it. Not only will today’s consumers turn on you, but they could easily amplify their complaints online, perhaps via a blog or other outlet. Oh wait, that’s what I just did…

Got Any Examples Of Your Own?

I’d love to see any other amusing or simply awkward attempts at personalization and customer intimacy. If you have something good, share with us in the comments below!

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Why You Need A Website Part II [Toon]

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Thanks for all of your feedback to my previous commentary about how the Yellow Pages are about to be completely replaced by the Internet. I received both kudos and jeers for the post, the jeers mainly coming from those of you who are already wired and think the conclusion was a “so what”.

While I also think it’s a no-brainer that this is happening before our eyes, there are many, many of us who still think the old way works! As suprising as that might be, it’s a reality, hence the post.

Today I came across the following comic / toon on the Hubspot site and simply had to share. Good stuff Hubspot, keep up the great work.

Internet vs. Phone Book

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A Note on Authenticity and Social Media

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Last week at the #BASHH (Big Ass Social Happy Hour) event that helped kick off South By Southwest Interactive 2011, I had an interesting conversation with Wesley Faulkner about authenticity.

I’ve read Wesley’s blog for a while now, and he covers some rather interesting topics on there. He has done everything from commenting on new mobile technologies, to interviewing the leadership at Klout, to commenting on his personal interactions with folks he meets online.

One refreshing thing about Wesley is that he aspires to be authentic at all times, through all mediums including in-person. We chatted briefly about this very topic, and both agreed that authenticity is the most important thing you can do to establish and sustain trust online. You have to be yourself at all costs.

Unfortunately, not everyone you encounter online is truly who you would expect once you meet them IRL.

Zappos – Authentic or Not?

Give a read to his blog post that documents his experience at a Zappos event in October. Zappos CEO Tony Hseih himself was presenting, so Wesley was excited to get a chance to hear him first hand. What followed was disappointment.

Most apparently, Mr. Hseih was nowhere near the energetic enthusiast he appeared to be online. Of course, a book tour can take a lot out of you. So Wesley introduced himself and commented about a Twitter conversation he had had recently with Tony. He then met Tony’s “stand-in”, Mimi, and began to question the authenticity of the whole operation.

Tony Hseih of Zappo's

Why Authenticity Is So Critical

Wesley’s blog post is important, but not because it calls out Zappos or Tony Hseih.

This is important because it turns the equation around completely. It gives us the view from the other side – showing how it feels to meet someone who is nowhere near what you expect of them after seeing them online.

For a thought leader whose message relies on the concepts of pursuing happiness and engaging with customers, it is crucial to “walk the walk”. Be who you say you are, right? But it gets worse…especially when you learn that they don’t even manage their own Twitter account.

A Lesson in Authenticity

The problem with all of this jockeying is that is compromises the most important variable in the whole equation – trust.
It’s not just about whether we like you; it’s about whether we can count on you to be the same person when we read your book, follow your tweets, hire you to do a keynote speech, and come up to you in public to shake your hand.

How disappointing would it be to learn that one of your all time favorite books by one of your all time favorite thought leaders was actually written by a college intern or a freelance graduate student? That’s what it is like when you hire a ghost tweeter to “be authentic” for you, so you can focus on more important things.

Be who you are. All the time. You can’t hide behind a keyboard for the rest of your life, so get over yourself and be real.

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Who else has run into this problem? Let’s make this a group post! Add your own horror stories to the comments below. Feel free to sanitize the names and faces if you prefer, but share away!

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Privacy and Social Media: Something is Amiss

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Privacy has been a sizzling hot topic for social media users over the past couple of years. The various services and websites have all taken unique approaches to privacy, some catering more to the users, and others taking liberties to leave doors open for future business and revenue opportunities.

This week, two separate topics came to my attention, both related to privacy, and I absolutely felt it necessary to share and comment here on Return On Now.

Careful Who You “Friend”

Breaking news from Raw Story this week reported that the federal government has had “persona” software commissioned. This software is to be used for “classified social media activities.” Essentially, this software can allow a user / company / government to create small (or large) armies of “virtual personas”. To top it off, these virtual personas are not only generated, but built out with additional information like life/work/education history, and even faux geo-location information such as physical check-ins on location based services.

Now, I’m not one to throw stones before understanding the full story, but doesn’t this sound a bit concerning to you? Specific issues I have with this:

  1. This is an outright violation of privacy when used to collect information about social media users.
  2. Since social media is heavily influenced by activity, buzz, viral sharing, etc., this opens a door to manipulation of public opinion and even the very messages to which we are exposed.
  3. It’s just plain deceptive! [Y'know, the kind of stuff that would've resulted in detention in our school days.]

As concerning as this may be, we really have no way to respond except for using common sense. Don’t say anything on social media that you wouldn’t announce publicly. Exhibit control when reacting to emotional topics. And most importantly of all, only accept friend requests from people you actually know.

Facebook Friend Request from Barley Jang

Just this week, I got a friend request on Facebook from someone named Barley Jang. I’ve never heard of the name, they have no photo to show me who they are, and we have no friends in common…not a single one! In fact, after seeing the above article and receiving this request, Ms. Jang (or faux person extraordinaire, perhaps?) served as inspiration for this blog post. So at least there’s that.

But I’m still clicking “Not Now” on that one just to be safe. [Barley, if you are a real person, please reach out to me directly and I will happily eat my words.]

Petition to Google and Facebook

You may or may not be familiar with a group called Demand Progress, but you should most certainly be aware of their current hot button. Basically, Demand Progress runs online campaigns to raise awareness of what is going on in the “back room” of Congress, and helps the public get a voice in such activities.

Their current campaign is aimed at Google and Facebook. According to the website, both companies hand over personal data to the federal government for any legal request, but without ever even notifying the user of the request in the first place!

If you recall, Twitter stood firm about not revealing user information when the WikiLeaks fiasco came to a head. What did they do? After receiving the request, Twitter first contacted the users to notify them of it. Regardless of how the situation turns out, Julian Assange and the whole team at WikiLeaks had a fair chance to challenge the request before the data was handed over.

Don’t you want the same thing for your own personal data? It’s not about guilty or innocent, it’s about personal rights.

If you want to have your voice heard, sign the petition on the Demand Progress website today.

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Read more posts from Return On Now about Social Media.

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Bid Management vs. Budget-Based SEM Platforms

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This week we bring to you another quality guest post, courtesy of my friend and colleague Gary Walker of Topside Media. I’ve already outlined my thoughts about Gary in a previous post, so I’ll leave it at that.

The following is actually an excerpt from a post he authored back in November. This hits on the high points of the original post. Thanks again to Gary for sharing his excellent work with Return On Now.

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In today’s post, I’m going to briefly compare and contrast two types of automated platforms: bid management platforms and budget based platforms. We’re going to stick to how they work and what they do (and don’t do), and [we will] avoid using company names [in the process].

What a bid management platform does

At the most basic level, a bid management platform helps automate bidding and some routine optimization and reporting tasks across multiple pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platforms. Think of these as tools that can help a person who already knows how search engine advertising works do it faster and save time on creating reports. While they can save time on routine tasks and reporting, however, bid management platforms do not perform the most complicated, but essential tasks: design robust campaigns and ad groups that align user intent with your company offering, write multiple versions of text ads, analyze and help fix conversion issues with your website, etc.

Further, some of these platforms will take a sizable bite out your budget, and require up to 5% of total spend every month just for using their online tool.

What a budget-based platform is all about

In contrast, on a budget-based platform, you tell the sales rep for the platform (or the many companies that use a private-label platform) how much money/budget you have to spend. This number is then plugged into your business category in their automated platform, and it combines traffic from multiple sources. At the end of the reporting period, you look back to see how many clicks, “web events”, phone calls, or other metrics you got in return for your money. From our point of view, a lot gets sacrificed so that this can be automated. Just one example of features lost: many of the custom geo-targeting features from Google AdWords.

Transparency, or lack of it

In bid management platforms, the cost to the search engine and the cost to the provider of the bid management tool is usually transparent.

In budget-based platforms, you are unlikely to know what percentage of your budget is spent on traffic and how much goes to commission or fees. Generally, though, the bite is a major one. Further, it may not be easy or even possible to determine how much traffic was search traffic, vs. how much was contextual or other types of traffic.

Some would argue that the results, i.e. how many calls or conversions and the associated cost, matter the most. To some extent, we agree with that point, as long as the numbers are the right ones, and they are in fact real. For example, it is also important to know how many clicks, calls, and emails come from the use of your company name as a keyword. Another key metric that is not easy to get is quality of incoming phone calls: how to filter out repeat calls, how many lasted more than one minute, etc.

(Note: if the two examples make it seem like we are splitting hairs, take a deeper look — results from your company name, duplicate calls, and short calls can each be 20% or more of the total.)

Use Automation Wisely

In reading this, you might assume that I am against automation. Far from it. I’m all for automation, so long as it [reduces] work or cost and does not compromise much quality of the process or results. For example, at TopSide, we recently automated two processes that, when done manually, take too much time and do not deliver added value to clients:

  1. Rather than manually testing the websites we advertise (to make sure pages load quickly), we now automatically “ping” these sites at more frequent intervals.
  2. We now have a reporting dashboard that automatically summarizes click, conversion, and other data from the search engines with data from our phone call tracking system.

Although these tools initially cost quite a bit to build, using them helps our clients, and it helps us too.

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If you would like to contact Gary directly to learn more about this topic or inquire about his services, contact Topside Media directly at 512-469-9935, or toll-free at 866-516-2301.

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Interview with Russ Somers of Invodo

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Russ Somers of InvodoHeading into 2011, I decided to shake things up a little bit here on Return On Now. Most of my topics have been national or global in nature. However, living in Austin, I’ve been rather active among the social media and marketing communities. So I decided to highlight some of the more interesting companies and people in town for others to get a little insight into what makes us “weirdos” tick.

My first taker was Russ Somers, the Director of Marketing for local video commerce startup Invodo. First, to familiarize you with the value proposition that Invodo offers, here is an excerpt from their What We Do page:

Invodo helps businesses sell more online through the power of video. We improve the way online retailers sell, brands communicate product value, and consumers shop.

This excerpt is very much in line with how Russ described the company to me (guess who managed website messaging?). During our discussion, however, Russ elaborated, “Our goal is to bring the visuals and the experience of a live retail environment to you via eCommerce. Since visuals are an an important component of that experience, video is the natural answer.”

Based on those two statements alone, you can start to imagine the possibilities of how the company’s services and technologies can really impact online sales. If you can’t see the product firsthand, how about a 3-D treatment that allows you to view from any angle? Or maybe a quick overview of the benefits and key features of the product? What if the speaker on the video just so happens to be part of the target demographic? I guess you can tell I think they are onto something here.

With a clear understanding of the offering, I was interested in hearing why Russ enjoys working at Invodo so much.

Cultural Intangibles

Russ outlined the company’s cultural mantras, and I must say, they were great! The leadership team is focused on creating careers for the employees, evangelizing the idea that this not merely a “stop” on your path to greatness. Specifically, he shared several key operating principles that the company stands for (paraphrased in my own words):

  • Customers First
  • Our Team Rocks
  • Humans Not Resources
  • Build an Amazing Company

My initial thought was, “What a company!” Of course, every great company finds a way to keep the customers happy. If that’s not part of the mission, the risk of failure is much higher, right? The rest of the concepts, though, are excellent. “Our Team Rocks” is about establishing pride and camaraderie among the employees. Some companies use the family analogy, but Invodo cuts straight to the point. Russ shared some nice stories about the whole team pitching in on all sorts of things in the early days (e.g. moving several large appliances over a weekend, where nearly everyone showed up to help).

I must say, though, “Humans, not resources” really piqued my interest. You see, I’ve always taken issue with the phrase “Human Resources”. The term is rather dehumanizing, grouping you and me together with things like computers, machinery, and materials used for manufacturing products. Invodo got it right…we’re all people who deserve equal respect regardless of position, experience, etc.

Cover of "Good to Great: Why Some Compani...

Cover via Amazon

Building a Great Company is something that all leadership teams want, but not all are able to sell properly to the entire company. The above mantras surely help set them

up for success with this objective, as does the fact that they encourage their employees to read the classic business book Good to Great. If you haven’t read it yourself, I strongly encourage you to do so.

Finally, Russ made it clear that the whole company embraces Austin as a city. “Quirky” was a word he used for something they consider a part of the company as well as the city. I must say, I’m in complete agreement!

After a nice walk through of Invodo, we delved into some other topics of interest.

Online vs. Offline vs. Mobile

I have very strong opinions about where I think the various mediums should interplay. When I asked Russ about his take, we generally agreed. Online will continue to be online, albeit with improvements such as the Invodo offering to help improve the experience. On the other hand, offline and mobile are due to merge in the future, at least partially if not completely. Geo-based social media services have opened a lot of doors that we are only beginning to peek through, and with the growing popularity of QR codes, you can now integrate all three touchpoints in new and different ways.

Social Media: Where Is It Heading?

In digging into one of my favorite topics, social media, I learned that Russ is truly “old school”. He was getting social on usenet groups before many of today’s adults were even exposed to the Internet! Heck, I’ve been online for years and he even beat me to it. Impressive, to say the least.

We both agreed that we are already in a period focused on content. The phrase “content economy” came up at least a couple of times. What does that mean? Ask Demand Media if you’re unsure of what to think. They’ve just lined up 151M reasons to believe in the content economy.

We discussed newcomer Quora briefly, and both agreed that it really needs some structure introduced into the experience. While it is great to get answers to questions from heavy hitters like Evan Williams of Twitter, finding it can be a challenge. I asked Russ if he thought a service like Quora might threaten blogging, and he didn’t buy it. His great analogy was that a blog is like your “home base”, while all the other social sites are great ways to extend the conversation. I must say, we were in complete agreement.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed the visit with Russ Somers. He had great insights and is a generally interesting guy. I wish both Russ and Invodo the best of luck in their ongoing endeavors.

Now a question for you – Who in Austin do you think would make a good interviewee for Return On Now? I already have quite a few folks in mind, but I want to hear from my readers directly. Thanks for reading!

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