SEM vs. SMO Part 3: The Social Metropolis

Social Media Optimization continues to grow at an exponential – and nearly incomprehensible – pace. In the agency world it is almost impossible to stay at the forefront of the SMO environment due to this rapid expansion. That being said, there are a few agencies that do an outstanding job of keeping abreast. In the third installment of the SEM vs. SMO series, I will focus on GoViral, the concept of The Social Metropolis, and the book by the same name.

To begin, let’s get up to speed on the concept. At the end of the article I will provide a link to download the full book free of charge from GoViral.

Jimmy Maymann, the founder and CEO of GoViral, presented his concept of The Social Metropolis this year in Cannes. The video of his presentation is below. Though lengthy, it provides a basic introduction to the concept of The Social Metropolis and what it means to enter this emerging space.

One of the key takeaways from Mr. Maymann’s presentation is the concept of democratization of information. As more people have free and unfettered access to the internet, we see a growing trend of consumer empowerment. The following excerpt from The Social Metropolis highlights the resulting disparity between consumer intelligence and the current state of the ad industry:

“The result is a genuine mismatch between a media and marketing experienced public, and a marketing/advertising industry that, generally speaking, have been delivering the same product since the 1970s. I magine if Ford or Sony did the same...? The old model is broken - a new one is only slowly taking shape. Over the past decades, companies have become used to defining their message, shaping their brand, and having complete control over the channels of communication. Now they are losing it” (The Social Metropolis – Page 11).

Though there is a bounty of new and exciting information in The Social Metropolis, ADMAVEN wants to highlight the bigger picture – respect SMO or be left in the dust.

Explaining exactly how you can take advantage of SMO to leverage your next big campaign is out of the scope of this article. This information, however, can be gleaned by reading GoViral’s The Social Metropolis. Visit GoViral and download the book here.

Happy reading!

Nicholas Kinports (follow him on Twitter @ADMAVEN) has worked in the interactive technology world for over 15 years. He is the Digital Strategy Lead and founder of Chicago-based digital marketing firm lonelybrand, where he directs the creation and execution of digital marketing programs that generate measurable signups, conversions and sales.

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Nicholas Kinports (follow him on Twitter @ADMAVEN) has worked in the interactive technology world for over 15 years. He is the Digital Strategy Lead and founder of Chicago-based digital marketing firm lonelybrand, where he directs the creation and execution of digital marketing programs that generate measurable signups, conversions and sales.

SEM vs. SMO Part 2

Social Media Optimization (SMO) seeks to drive traffic not from search engines, but from third party websites, applications, and social networking services. Adding SMO to a campaign can be the missing link between mediocre response number and an award winning response!

SMO can be added to an existing campaign – depending on the target market and product/service offering – or be the single method of generating publicity. The premise behind SMO involves connecting with the customer on a personal level without the use of a traditional click-through advertisement. Rohit Bhargava, SVP of Digital Strategy and Marketing at Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence, is credited with inventing the term Social Media Optimization. Mr. Bhargava outlines the basics in his article, “5 Rules of Social Media Optimization”:

1. Increase your linkability - This is the first and most important priority for websites. Many sites are "static" - meaning they are rarely updated and used simply for a storefront. To optimize a site for social media, we need to increase the linkability of the content. Adding a blog is a great step, however there are many other ways such as creating white papers and thought pieces, or even simply aggregating content that exists elsewhere into a useful format.
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy - Adding content features like quick buttons to "add to del.icio.us" are one way to make the process of tagging pages easier, but we go beyond this, making sure pages include a list of relevant tags, suggested notes for a link (which come up automatically when you go to tag a site), and making sure to tag our pages first on popular social bookmarking sites (including more than just the homepage).
3. Reward inbound links - Often used as a barometer for success of a blog (as well as a website), inbound links are paramount to rising in search results and overall rankings. To encourage more of them, we need to make it easy and provide clear rewards. From using Permalinks to recreating Similarly, listing recent linking blogs on your site provides the reward of visibility for those who link to you
4. Help your content travel - Unlike much of SEO, SMO is not just about making changes to a site. When you have content that can be portable (such as PDFs, video files and audio files), submitting them to relevant sites will help your content travel further, and ultimately drive links back to your site.
5. Encourage the mashup - In a world of co-creation, it pays to be more open about letting others use your content (within reason). YouTube's idea of providing code to cut and paste so you can imbed videos from their site has fueled their growth. Syndicating your content through RSS also makes it easy for others to create mashups that can drive traffic or augment your content.

I suggest reading Mr. Bhargava’s article if you want to get the basics of how SMO has grown from a relatively undefined (yet practiced) advertising technique to a clearly defined, methodical operation to supplement or found your next big campaign.

In my next article I will suggest some specific techniques I use to leverage the power of SMO for any type of campaign.

Nicholas Kinports (follow him on Twitter @ADMAVEN) has worked in the interactive technology world for over 15 years. He is the Digital Strategy Lead and founder of Chicago-based digital marketing firm lonelybrand, where he directs the creation and execution of digital marketing programs that generate measurable signups, conversions and sales.

SEM vs. SMO Part 1

Today marks the beginning of a two part series that outlines how Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Social Media Optimization (SMO) practices can help produce a well rounded campaign that generates great response numbers and leaves a lasting impression in search engine indexes. Let’s dive right in with a brief conversation about Search Engine Marketing.

SEM: Bang for the Buck!

Search Engine Marketing is one of the best ways a company or campaign can raise its profile on a tight budget. As with most things advertising, you can find ways to spend every dime of that precious budget, but few things are as measurable and actionable as a good paid placement plan. Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft offer their respective paid placement products, but most experts (and the stock market) agree that Google provides the best offering through AdWords and related products.

Andrew McMains of AdWeek offers a poignant reminder of how underutilized paid placement can be. The kicker – he is talking about interactive agencies! Why an interactive agency would not engage in a paid placement campaign is beyond me. I suggest you read Mr. McMains’ entire article and learn more about some of the fundamentals of getting your name (or the name of your client) to the right audience.

The paid options aside, my favorite topic when speaking about SEM practices is SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. SEO gets into the gray area of advertising on the internet. The major search engines guard their search algorithms from the public eye to keep SEO experts from “cracking the code” and circumventing the hundreds of data points a search engine uses to calculate the ranking of a page or site. When am asked about SEO strategies and the best ways to increase page ranking I always recommend using the natural tendencies of search engine spiders to generate a successful result. What do I mean by, “natural tendencies”? Generate relevant content!

Page titles and Meta Tags are the most basic – but also often overlooked – aspects of SEO. Make sure your titles and tags are relevant to your audience on every page and update them as your campaign evolves.

Frequent updates are important to search engines. Old content that has gone stale will be replaced by newer indexing. The best way to keep things fresh and on the top of everyone’s list is to update your page content weekly with relevant information. This may mean a blog or a news/press release section. How many times do you go to a company’s website and find their last press release is two years old? Shameful! If the contract is a one time revenue stream, build a simple method into your project that allows your client to update the page on their own without you (or your agency) helping.

Linking between sites is critical to generating great search results! Make sure your client has active links to their new project on all their websites. Conversely, make sure you link to your client’s new project on all your agency sites. Research professional and industry associations that may be interested in your client’s campaign or project and solicit links from those organizations. Ask your client what companies or relationships they maintain with vendors, business partners, etc… and network to build a solid base of links.

FLASH! The new player in the SEO world. As ADMAVEN covered in a previous post text within Flash SWF files is now available for indexing on the major search engines (Microsoft excluded). Place relevant words and text in your Flash projects to ensure proper indexing. Remember – indexing of Flash files does not apply to ActionScript text, Library names, or any convention not readily viewable by the end user.

Keep reading for the next article in the SEM vs. SEO series, when I delve into more detailed information on SEM as well as graze the virgin territory of SMO!

Nicholas Kinports (follow him on Twitter @ADMAVEN) has worked in the interactive technology world for over 15 years. He is the Digital Strategy Lead and founder of Chicago-based digital marketing firm lonelybrand, where he directs the creation and execution of digital marketing programs that generate measurable signups, conversions and sales.

Spam King Adam Vitale Gets 30 Months

Reuters has reported Adam Vitale, the Spam King of Brooklyn, has been sentenced to 30 months in prison for sending over one million unsolicited emails to AOL users in 2005. Government informants posing as a legitimate company hired Vitale to send the spam advertising computer security software in exchange for half of the products profits. Vitale’s network of servers routed the outgoing mail in such a way that AOL’s spam filtering software was rendered useless.

Convictions for sending spam are rare in the United States and practically nonexistent in the rest of the world. In my opinion this is a good step in ensuring interactive advertising is taken seriously. No one wants to receive spam; it cheapens the interactive advertising industry as a whole and blocks out advertisements that customers may actually want to get.

Nicholas Kinports (follow him on Twitter @ADMAVEN) has worked in the interactive technology world for over 15 years. He is the Digital Strategy Lead and founder of Chicago-based digital marketing firm lonelybrand, where he directs the creation and execution of complete digital communications solutions with a proven ROI for a variety of industries.

Lively by Google Seeks to Break New Ground

Eerily similar to Second Life, Google Labs has produced a virtual world in which avatars interact with user created content in three dimensions. Did I mention it is free to download and use? Lively by Google utilizes in browser software to allow webgoers to dive head first into virtual reality and interact with other avatars and their environment.

Google, in typical press release fashion, states they will not place ads of any kind in Lively. I have to wonder how long this will last – especially with marked success from similar products like Second Life, in which advertising is rampant. Implications for interactive adspace are huge. Take corporate self-promotion for example. I had a quick look at the popular rooms page on the Google Lively website and found the interactive agency Proximity Worldwide’s room.

Looks like a typical agency setting to me. Note the YouTube videos rolling on the wall and the Proximity logo covering the floor. Conversation in Lively comes easily: simply type your message into the box and hit enter to generate an easy to read chat bubble. Now if only I had someone else in the room who would answer me.

Other frustrations came quickly. The initial load time for the room is about 30 seconds – not a death sentence by any means – and subsequent lag ensues after the space is generated. My laptop is not wimpy by any means, but Lively seems to eat all my resources and then some.

Lively also provides simple ways to integrate your personal space with a MySpace, Facebook, or other social networking page. I am a fan of improved interactivity and “bringing the customer into your house”, but Lively needs to solve a few key problems regarding slow loading and jerky movement before this tool will be truly useful to the interactive advertising community.

My verdict: keep a close eye on Lively in the months to come, but don’t scramble to set up your own complex virtual labyrinth only to realize you are the only one populating it.

Key implications: look to Lively for enhanced customer service apps, live order taking, and embedded YouTube viral marketing in the near future. There may come a day when interactive agencies sell a Lively environment as part of the standard online presence package.

Nicholas Kinports (follow him on Twitter @ADMAVEN) has worked in the interactive technology world for over 15 years. He is the Digital Strategy Lead and founder of Chicago-based digital marketing firm lonelybrand, where he directs the creation and execution of complete digital communications solutions for a variety of industries.

United Airlines Distributes PR Letter to MP Customers

If you are like me you fly often, and are probably a member of more than one frequent flier program. These programs are integral to the airline business and were some of the first large companies to successfully tap the power of interactive marketing campaigns by capturing user data through websites and transmitting it to outside vendors.

I seldom see anything in my inbox other than e-fares every Tuesday and mileage summaries every month, so I was very surprised to see this:

Click the link for a lar

Nicholas Kinports (follow him on Twitter @ADMAVEN) has worked in the interactive technology world for over 15 years. He is the Digital Strategy Lead and founder of Chicago-based digital marketing firm lonelybrand, where he directs the creation and execution of complete digital communications solutions for a variety of industries.

Google Indexes SWF - Yahoo! Follows Suit

Five days ago the Associated Press (among others) reported that Google will begin indexing Flash content on a text level. For those of us who work with Flash and SEO on a daily basis the news came as a pleasant surprise. Let's examine the key points of the announcement:

1) Flash content (.swf files) will be indexed according to text rendered within the movie or application. This includes hyperlinks, but does not include library names, variables, and other ActionScript items that are not visible in the web browser.

2) Adobe has announced that Yahoo! will soon follow suit, indexing .swf files. Presumably the algorithms will be different than those used by Google, but the results will be similar: visible text and links only.

3) Microsoft has not made an announcement regarding their choice to collaborate with Adobe to make Flash content indexable through the various Microsoft channels. Microsoft's reaction will reveal their position on seriously competing with Adobe, as Silverlight is now beta-testing version 2.0.

Capitalizing off search engine indexing is critical to an interactive campaign. Flash as a technology is certainly more “sexy” than HTML, but until now has been inappropriate for sites and campaigns looking to capitalize off traffic from search engines.

It should be interesting to see how this affects design elements as well as campaign pitches. Will we start seeing more Flash integration? One would think so, but time will tell.

Nicholas Kinports (follow him on Twitter @ADMAVEN) has worked in the interactive technology world for over 15 years. He is the Digital Strategy Lead and founder of Chicago-based digital marketing firm lonelybrand, where he directs the creation and execution of complete digital communications solutions for a variety of industries.

Welcome!

Readers,

Welcome to ADMAVEN! This blog specializes in all things Advertising with a focus on the digital realm. My goal is to highlight new technologies, research, and industry practices that have a practical impact on the traditional and interactive Advertising world!

I sincerely hope you enjoy reading this blog as much as I enjoy writing it!