Last Sunday after brunch, I happened upon a sign in Noe Valley in San Francisco which said “Fuck Mormons” in bright pink (fuchsia?) colors that was a response to the recent Prop 8 Gay Marriage ban that was passed in California.

Click to See URL Referrals for photo (24-36 Hours)

I uploaded the photo to Flickr on Monday. That photo made it to SFist.com (a local website covering San Francisco) and quickly sparked an intense discussion of over 100 comments. In a mere 2-3 hours, it made it to Reddit, Facebook, Stumbleupon and other social media websites quickly generating over 800 visits (as of now, over 1,800 people have viewed the photo).

Click to Google Search Results. Achieved in 3-4 Hours.

What’s also interesting is that SFist became ranked within the top 10 Google search results for “Fuck Mormons” within 3-4 hours of the posting going live. But yet as of today, SFist has fallen off the top ten ranking, with SFCitizen and Reddit’s coverage of the sign in the ten instead.

And by Tuesday, the photo caused enough of a stir that the home owner was interviewed by a local news team from CBS 5, which asked him: “You’ve been following the discussion on SFist. While some comments support you, others are saying, ‘this isn’t going to help.’”

And apparently, some people thought it was photoshopped: “CBS 5 walked the neighborhood in search of the home. There have been concerns the photo might have been photo-shopped, but it does not appear to be the case.”

Yes, I’m kinda Internet famous now, but more important this event does have some interesting social media lessons….

Social Media Lesson

• Social Media travels fast. From a Flickr upload on Monday to a news reporter on Tuesday.
• Context is Everything: SFist editor Brock Keeling took a simple photo and turned it into a political question by posting the photo and asking if the sign was an appropriate response to prop 8. If it was uploaded to Flickr without any such questions, I’m sure news wouldn’t spread as fast (or far).
• Don’t underestimate traffic from “second tier” websites like Reddit, which brought more traffic than all other channels.
• Surprisingly, Facebook didn’t carry as that many visits to the photo as I thought it would, considering the size of Facebook.
• Google ranks news pages very fast, putting SFist within #10 for the “fuck mormon” keyword in 3-4 hours of the blog post going live. Yet at the same time, they got quickly outranked by Reddit and other local blogs covering the event.

Personal Feelings about the Photo

I wasn’t trying to be a citizen journalist or even trying to make a political statement. Additionally, I don’t want to make a political statement on this blog and would like to ask any commenter here to not do so either.

I took the photo because I found it humorous at the time and I’m surprised by the intensity of the discussion stirred by this photo. I hope everyone involved – from the home owners to their neighbors – are doing okay and I hope that photo generated positive discussions on political expression.

In any case, I feel that the photo is not really “mine” per se. Someone, somewhere would have taken the photo eventually and it is likely the same thing that happened to my photo would happen to anyone else’s. Obviously, the “F*ck Mormon” sign was exactly that – a sign – which by definition is made to be noticed by the public. And get noticed by the public it did.

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Google Analytics: Tracking Online and Offline Worlds

For some time now, Google Analytics have offered the ability to track both website visits and television commercial impressions (views), if the commercial was bought via Google.

The graph has always shown a peak of what multi-channel analytics can look like: a single dashboard to see everything from TV commercials to mailed newsletters influences your website traffic and online sales. But TV Impressions v. Website Visits graph also begs the question:

What’s the correlation between TV Commercials and Website Views?

Understanding correlation and causation -essentially, understanding your media mix – is the holy grail and end goal of Multi-Channel Analytics. It’s one thing to track something and say “Gee golly, I can see my radio audience reach and PPC campaign on one sheet!” and it’s another to solve Wanamaker’s question: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.”

Solving “How does this offline channel affect my website?”

For very easy graphs like the Google Analytics graphs, the equation is easy for any statistician to derive (yes, marketers need to re-read their college stat books):

• Total Website Visits = ~1.90 * TV Impression + 340,566.1 website visits

And here’s equation applied against my version of the Google Analytics graph:

Not bad, huh? Unfortunately, the real world is different with a lot more variables: multiple marketing channels, geographic differences, seasonality, public relations efforts, multiple cross-channel campaigns and more introduce a host of variables that effect a websites traffic and online sales.

Huge companies like Proctor & Gamble have entire teams dedicated to media mix modeling with some even using something called “agent based modeling” (used by the military) to determine how their massive multi-million dollar and cross-channel marketing campaigns effect sales.

So the question is: how will analytics companies like Omniture and CoreMetrics be able to extend multi-channel marketing tools into solutions that can solve the question:

“What types of marketing campaigns mixes generate the most sales?”

.

NOTES

Where did I get the data?
I carefully recreated the television data based on the 4,444,444 impressions over 30 days and created website data that would fit the Google Analytics graph. See below:

What analysis did I do to get the graph?
A simple linear regression analysis that any Microsoft Excel or TI-83 calculator can do.

How accurate is your analysis?
In real world applications? Probably not very. The equation works if we assume the relationship between the television commercial impressions and website visits is overly simplified: if you get X many commercials impressions, you’ll get Y amount of website visits.

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So who in 2005 ever thought that SAP, a gigantic enterprise software company, would be on a service called “Twitter” asking people what they think of a “Chumby“? Not me.

See the second Twitter post below.

SAP on Twitter talking about the Chumby

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“Let’s face it, the news is more about entertainment and ad revenue than it is about reporting facts and accuracy. Just because it happened online doesn’t make it real.”

Unfortunately, he’s incorrect. If enough people believe in something it can be as good as real. Like I blogged about yesterday, anecdotal stories are powerful forces effecting products, brands and company images. And it is part of how our brains are generally wired.

People believing the Internet is why PR and and Social Media matters. Your brand is not under your control, it is beholden by the same people – that’s everyday people like you and me – who may believe an email forward, word-of-mouth story via an Amazon.com review or a powerful brand-bruising blog like the Consumerist.

Take a look at one of the top articles on Consumerist today “Delta Makes Woman With Muscular Dystrophy Crawl Off Plane“.

” Julianna, who has muscular dystrophy, missed the connecting flight because nobody came with a wheelchair until 8:05—the same time the connecting flight took off. To make matters worse, the plane crew told Julianna she might make the flight anyway if she stopped waiting for help and got off the plane right now, so she crawled down the stairs on her own.

While I have no reason to not believe what Julianna says, what if the Consumerist or any similar site not “double-checked the source” like Jeremy Toeman asks for? That doesn’t matter. Despite 4-5 pages of commenters denouncing Delta, no Delta community manager has responded to the article. Does Delta have a tool like Radian6 to monitor their brand online? Or a community manager to address issues?

Instead we are left with comments after comments of these:

I’m utterly aghast and disgusted. My sister also suffers from MS and I, for one, was furious to read about your treatment. Delta Airlines will no longer be seeing any more of my travel money.

For these Consumerist readers, Delta’s brand has been killed and there is no one at Delta responding.

Is Julianna’s account accurate? As of now, we don’t know and it does not matter. Damage has been done to the Delta brand for everyone who has seen the article.

Who cares if you should believe everything on the Internet? If you know enough of your audience does, you should be there to protect your brand. What are consumers saying about your brand right now?

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The past five years have been marked with “social” and “viral” buzzwords about how to best do marketing and advertising. We’ve been hearing everything from “Tipping Point” and”Mavens” to lots of mentions of “influencer” and “A-List Bloggers”. Yet, the increasingly popularity of these terms also breeds confusion. That’s how I feel about Steve Rubel’s latest posting called “Trust in Peers Trumps the ‘A-List,” Study Finds’“.

In it Steve Rubel writes:

There’s an ongoing debate online and in marketing circles as well over who “matters”: the super node influencers or basically anyone that a particular peer group looks to for information, entertainment, inspiration and more.

This meme got kicked around in the ’sphere a few weeks back when Duncan Watts released some research that contradicts Malcolm Gladwell’s theory outlined in The Tipping Point. Today, however, there’s new data that to me may just reveal that Watts is right. The key factor, once again, all comes down to trust. (Emphasis is mine.)

His specific evidence?

Mediapost reports that a new study from Pollara found that people who engage in social networks and communities put far more trust in friends and family who are online than in popular bloggers, or strangers with 10,000 MySpace “friends.”

Unfortunately, Steve Rubel is conflating several separate issues on what is Word of Mouth, an influencer and an “A-Lister”.

What Do We Mean by Word of Mouth, A Listers and Influencers

Let us set-up our definitions (at least according to me):

• Word of Mouth is the Strength of Personal Trust
  Word of Mouth works because you generally trust someone you know more than a stranger. So yes, you’d probably trust your friend more than a blogger off the Internet.
• A-Listers *does not equal* Word-of-Mouth
  A popular media publisher (be it a blogger or CNN) does not correlate to a high-trust factor. Just because Mike Arrington is a popular blogger doesn’t mean I trust everything he says. Yes, he has immense influence in terms of audience reach, but just not necessarily trust.
• Influencer does not mean A-Lister: Remembering 150
  Malcom Gladwell talked about Connectors, Mavens and Salespersons – not “A-Listers” or “Popular Bloggers”.

  Indeed, Gladwell dedicated a chapter to “150″: the ceiling level of how many social relationships a person can have. A person with “10,000 MySpace Friends” does not count. You trust your actual personal friend, not the guy who is “friends” with 10,000 people on MySpace. The “10,000 People on MySpace” guy is able to pass information quickly, but not necessarily influence decisions directly.

In short, you probably need the mass audience of an A-Lister to connect with the influencer (connectors, mavens, salespersons), who tell their friends what to buy, etc. The A-Lister is the medium.

So rest assured, Malcom Gladwell’s “Tipping Point” is not wrong. Nor is the study that the MediaPost article cites forcing us to choose between the “Tipping Point” and Word-of-Mouth’s emphasis on the trust of friends and family.

And what about Steve Rubel mention that people said “Duncan Watts released some research that contradicts Malcolm Gladwell’s theory”?

Duncan Watt: Does he really say “No” to the Tipping Point?

Duncan Watt’s criticism of the “Tipping Point” has been overblown in proportion. Watt never said that there is no such thing as influencer. What Watt is reminding us that an endorsement by an influencer is no guarantee that a large trend will start:

Perhaps the problem with viral marketing is that the disease metaphor is misleading. Watts thinks trends are more like forest fires: There are thousands a year, but only a few become roaring monsters. That’s because in those rare situations, the landscape was ripe: sparse rain, dry woods, badly equipped fire departments. If these conditions exist, any old match will do. “And nobody,” Watts says wryly, “will go around talking about the exceptional properties of the spark that started the fire.”

Following the analogy above, Watt is not saying that you shouldnt worry about dry wood and sparse rain. He’s just saying that that only a few fires become large forrest fires each time.

If anything, all of this just affirms the 80/20 rule. Even with similar conditions, there’ll be lots of small fires but only a few major, raging firestorms. And not everything a trendy person will say will become trendy, but enough will for people to pay attention.

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Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion caused a stir in the SEO community last week by declaring that “SEO Shenanigans Pose a Clear and Present Danger to Social Media“, writing:

“I have recently witnessed a disturbing trend. Some respected experts are advocating launching social media marketing programs solely for the purpose of influencing search engines, rather than with the intent of fostering collaboration and genuine communication.

Having started this blog because I saw the increasingly link between SEO and Social Media, Steve and I are definitely on the opposite sides of the fence here. But, I think we can unite behind three central arguments:

1. We Marketers, Advertisers and PR People don’t make Social Media…
   What makes something viral or social is how involved the people get with the media. There are no such things as “Viral Vidoes” or “Social Networks” unless people use them. What we make has have to be interesting, authentic and worthy of being passed on to friends.
2. …But we can help encourage Social Media to happen easier.
   As PR, Marketers and SEO folks: our role is to only encourage “word of mouth” and social media participation, we cannot create it; that’s what “Social Media Optimization” is about. But to not to inform clients on the benefits of “Add to Del.icio.us links” or “Start a Blog to start a buzz” would be a failure of the part of the Agency. Of course, we must align tactics (Social Media) with goals (Building Community, Links) and the appropriateness (building real content people want to talk about) of the overall strategy.
3. Social Media and ROI: What do you tell the COO & CEO?
   In the end of the day, many clients ask “What’s the ROI on this?”. To say we’re going to use “Social Media to be part of the Community” will not cut it for many C-Level executives. Tell them that going long term on Social Media mans better SEO, Word of Mouth, Brand Awareness and Customer Service will make them listen.

Like Google Says: “The best way to create good links is to have good content”

A Google Ad: From Danny Sullivan’s Flickr Stream

As long as the SEO drive for “linkbait” (creating content to attract people to link back to the site) serves to create relevant and authentic Social Media content people will be interested in, the Community will benefit. The Community will quickly discern what’s worthy of being talked about, and what’s not. That’s the power of Word of Mouth and Social Media.

Read more on other points where I take a differing view from Steve:

1. Social Media Spam: Just from SEO people?
2. The SEO Community has been in Social Media as long as PR has, even Google encourages linkbait and writes on being Diggable
3. Social Media as SEO: Social Media is the Ultimate Search Engine Algorithm

1. Social Media Spam: Just from SEO people?
Steve is worried about how every SEO person will join Del.icio.us, vote on StumbleUpon and start blogs and twitters in some vague hopes of getting more links and getting better SEO. SEO spam is a real danger, but Social Media already has it’s own problems.

Last year, TechCrunch featured an article entitled “The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos“, which basically walked through a process of how to game and spam YouTube for viral video marketing success:

“Every power user on YouTube has a number of different accounts. So do we. A great way to maximize the number of people who watch our videos is to create some sort of controversy in the comments section below the video.We get a few people in our office to log in throughout the day and post heated comments back and forth (you can definitely have a lot of fun with this)”

…Also, we aren’t afraid to delete comments – if someone is saying our video (or your startup) sucks, we just delete their comment.”

What this shows is that Social Media has always been targeted by shady Social Media Marketers and has always been under the fear of someone trying to “game” Social Media for publicity, branding, eyeballs on videos and links for SEO. Sony’s fake blog called “All I want for Xmas is a P2P” comes to mind.

I think it is unfair to point a figure directly at SEO alone. This is a Social Media problem.

2. The SEO Community has been in Social Media as long as PR has, even Google encourages linkbait and writes on being Diggable

Far from what Steve calls a “disturbing trend”, SEO’s love of Social Media has existed at least since 2005 (if not earlier). SEOMoz was one of the first companies talking about linkbait back in 2005: “Rand, How do I make Link-Worthy Content?“, “When Money Can’t Buy You Link Love”Even Google has gotten into the act with declaring in a UK ad that : “The more people you have linking to your site, the better. And the bet way to create good links is to have good content”

In the end of 2006, Stefanie at the Google Webmaster Blog, write in “Building Link Based Popularity“:

“Discounting non-earned links by search engines opened a new and wide field of tactics to build link-based popularity: Classically this involves optimizing your content so that thematically-related or trusted websites link to you by choice. A more recent method is link baiting, which typically takes advantage of Web 2.0 social content websites. One example of this new way of generating links is to submit a handcrafted article to a service such as http://digg.com.”

3. Social Media as SEO: Social Media is the Ultimate Search Engine Algorithm

As I’ve written about in the past, SEO is no longer SEO. It is Website Positioning Strategy. As noted in the Google Webmaster Blog and Google Guidelines, high rankings in Google comes from strong relevancy: building content people want to view and content people want to link to.

The more strategic goal of SEO is then the same as Social Media:

• Building an online presence (website to blog to ecommerce shop) with the Community in mind
• Building relevant content your audience wants
• Understanding how you can participate in that desired community
• Be present where ever your potential customers are: optimize for being on Yelp.com, Flickr.com – not just Google.com
• Making your website “optimized” for conversion: make it as easy as possible for visitors to buy, register etc
• Optimize your site to be portable, linkable, “mash-up able” with Social Media Optimization

Basically, the above asks “Can you build an online presence that is open, relevant and active in the community you want to be belong to”. If you can do the above, you will naturally be a strong leader in building an online brand, brand awareness, customer satisfaction and SEO.

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Case Study in Crisis Management via Blogging

A few weeks ago, ValleyWag and others brought a story about how some blogger found out that certain Adobe software seemed to secretly send data to Omniture via an obscure looking URL. Of course, anything about company spying took off in a frenzy.

Interestingly, John Nack, Senior PM for Adobe, has been responding to the negative Word-of-Mouth via his blog on the Adobe domain, which is not technically an official Adobe Blog (so the disclaimer says).

However, he’s been the main spokesperson to address the issues and notice how non-PR the titles of the blog post are, e.g. “What’s with Adobe & the shady server name?”

The response to his blog post vary, but are relatively positive and open. Questions: How much did the tone of his blog post helped influenced a more tame and positive response? Would a traditional PR spokesperson be able to help do the same? And how much of John Nack’s blog postings have to be cleared by PR, Marketing or Legal?

• “Adobe and Omniture: Further details“
• “What’s with Adobe & the shady server name?“
• “Adobe ate me baby!!“

PS: And yes, after a 2-3 month hiatus, I’m back on Emergence-Media blogging! Yay!

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Last week was a rough week for marketing and PR professionals in the blogosphere. Chris Anderson (Wire/Longtail), David Meerman and Marshall Kirkpatrick (Read/Write, TechCrunch) wrote critical posts to PR folks who are trying to reach out to bloggers. Chris even published a list of emails from PR people he’s blacklisting.

But what are the responsibilities and expectations of PR/Marketing Agencies and Blogggers?

While I am a marketer by profession, I am also a blogger. I’ve received plenty of horrible blog pitches, like the dreaded “Dear Website Owner” emails or even those completely misunderstanding who I am or who I work for. I’m right there beside with Chris, Marshall and others on this.

We bloggers embrace the long tail influence we have over traditional media, but we don’t like being on what looks like a “Press Release spam list”. Marketers and PR folks need to adapt to this. And as Bloggers, we’ll always be caught with horrible “Dear Site Owner” emails every once in while. It just shouldn’t be every blog pitch email.

As someone involved in e-Storm’s Social Media efforts, we spend time reading and targeting each blog we recommend our clients to contact. We build a list of bloggers along with a description of each, plus an “Approach & Messaging Recommendations” document for each blogger. Generally, these documents have to be approved both internally by e-Storm and externally by the client before any blogger outreach happens.

Bloggers: Help Educate us PR/Marketing on How to Do It Right

And to my fellow bloggers out there, instead of just being angry, write back and tell them what you’d prefer. Educate us marketers because in this ever changing Blogosphere, we’re all learning what it means to be a blogger, what is a blogger mindset and how can we reach out to bloggers relevantly.

Marketers and PR folks need to learn that the blogosphere is a community, not a place to send press releases to. Let’s show them by helping them join the community in a relevant and helpful way.

To those rightly annoyed bloggers, point us PR/Marketing flacks to the right direction:

• Emergence Media Blogger Relations Outreach Guidelines
• SHIFT Communications Blogging Guidelines
• Word of Mouth Marketing Association: 10 Principles for Ethical Contact by Marketers

I’ve also set-up a Wiki on Blogger Outreach, which is available here. Feel free to contribute as you wish and save bloggers from poorly targeted PR pitches and help PR/marketers from embarrassing themselves.

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I do not usually do speculative postings on companies on Emergence-Media, but this ad on Technorati (while I was doing research on Google Analytics filters) took me by surprise. The thought of Technorati running ads for an “adult” dating service does bode well as a sign of confidence, especially their ability to sell ad inventory at a premium.

I do know that sites like AdultFriendFinder have a gigantic media spend and can afford to buy choice real estate, but I’m more considering that the placement of these means that they cannot be too choosy of what ads they choose to run.

Please Note: To disclose, I know of some of the current and former folks at Technorati and I do hope Technorati does succeed and do well.

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Bloggers’ Night at the San Francisco Symphony

Last week, I was one of the few lucky bloggers who were invited by the San Francisco Symphony to their first Blogger’s Night for their “Classical Romance” program. See all the photos from the SF Symphony here.

I’ll post first about the music and follow-up with a review of how the SFS Public Relations team conducted their blog outreach later. So if wish to learn more about my experience as a audience member at the symphony read on, otherwise wait from my follow-up on the PR/marketing perspective.

Fellow Bloggers in the SFS’ Press Room

The Music: James Gaffigan, Gabriela Martinez and Rachmaninoff

First off, I was very surprised how different classical music sounded in an actual symphony hall compared to listening to HD-CD on a high-end stereo. Yes, I know it was going to be different – but not this different. The music was warm and textured with the audience members easily getting carried away with every note, the musical sway of the orchestra, and every turn of James Gaffigan’s (the conductor) baton.

The symphony began with Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo & Juliet” and Strauss’ “Don Juan”. Both two very recognizable classical numbers, which sadly has been long abused and overplayed in popular culture. While I enjoyed the aural experience of the music, I wasn’t too fond of the songs themselves because they were so overplayed.

Q&A Session with James Gaffigan (middle) and Gabriela Martinez (right)

Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with Gabriela Martinez

The Symphony finished with Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3, known for the demanding technical skill and endurance required on the pianist to perform.

Gabriela Martinez (yes a MySpace link), a 23-year pianist from Venezuela, took to the piano. She recently graduated from Juillard in May and rehearsed Rachmaninoff only once before. Martinez stage presence was incredible as her ability to play; indeed, Rachmaninoff’s concerto sounded like something that required a creature with 3-4 hands and the endurance of a train athlete to perform. During Q&A, Martinez mentioned she drank 4-5 Gatorades before in preparation of performing.

The chemistry between James Gaffigan, the young and spirited conductor, and Martinez was obvious and endearing. Gaffigan and Martinez has a readily apparent chemistry throughout the performance, with both of them casually making eye contact and smiling at each other.

Conclusion: Go check out the Symphony

While I got the tickets free this time around (hurray for blogging), I would love to come back to the Symphony again. Maybe for some Bach violin sonatas or Shostakovich. I don’t know what it’s like at your local symphony, but while I did have the initial apprehensive feeling of “oh no, I’m in a stuffy symphony” – the atmosphere was far more casual than I thought and had none of the Old World pretentiousness that I feared.

Disclosure

Yes, the fine folks at the San Francisco Symphony did give me two free tickets to the Symphony, and the same goes for other bloggers present that night. While blogging about the event was strongly encouraged, there was no demand for us to blog or to blog positively about the experience. Indeed, some bloggers that night gave a mixed review. Also, they gave us free milano cookies. ;)

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The past two weeks have been a busy week for me: Ad:Tech, Web 2.0 Expo, attending the Social Medic Club and helping a client ramp up their Blog Outreach program.

Speaking with folks from Ad:Tech and just surveying the marketing blogosphere lately, we are seeing three trends that are affecting the marketing landscape all the way from increasing importance of a CMO to the strategic changes required for SEO.

The Three Trends Affecting Marketing

• Longer Tail of Media Consumption
  Increasing variety of media (mobile, social networks, search blogs, Xbox 360) that people are consuming means more effort required for marketing/brand/PR integration and more requirements for a “grand strategy” vision.
• Marketing increased emphasis as a Revenue Driver
  Increasing Trend Towards Measurement and ROI means that marketing will take high prominence in the C-level space, helping shape product development, internal culture and budgeting
• Social Media as the Disruptor on the Web
  Social affecting all of Interactive Marketing Activities, diversifying the types of media being consumed and making marketers have greater engagement with the customer audience and moving from brand control to brand management.

Changes in the Evolving Marketing Landscape

• Raise of the CMOs (As Opposed to VP of Marketing)
  Elevating Marketing position as part of a revenue generating, rather than cost center; rebalancing the importance of the sales team vis-à-vis the marketing team.
• Evangelist becomes more integral to Marketing-PR
  Going beyond being a spokesperson, writing to the community (writing post, responding to comments) and generally engaging the community be it on Yelp, Amazon.com reviews or blogs or in-real-life (IRL)
• Executing the Social Media Program
  Need for Evangelists and Community Managers to execute Social Media Program to engage, manage and measure Social Media and Communities.
• SEM becomes Strategic Website Positioning
  How SEM (particularly SEO) is shifting from its early days of simple keyword analysis to integrating brand, PR, word-of-mouth, content strategy, usability etc. SEM or Strategic Website Positioning needs to coordinate under the CMO and with the Social Media Program.

1. Raise of the CMO (Not VP of Marketing)

It is common knowledge that when a business is adjusting to a difficult economy, R&D slows and marketing is chopped. Marketing is seen as an expenditure, rather than vehicle for sales. The increasing emphasis on measurement and ROI is changing that somewhat.

Marketing’s evolution to a more strategic role (from VP-level to C-level) is boosted by three trends:

• Marketing increased emphasis as a Revenue Driver
  Thanks to better metrics and ROI measurement, Marketing is getting more respect as a revenue generator.
• Longer Tail of Media Consumption:
  Diversifying media consumption means more difficult in marketing integration and greater need for strategic direction in managing multi-channel marketing.
• Social Media as the Disruptor on the Web
  Social Media is helping fuel the long tail of media consumption. It also has been pushing companies to integrate their PR/Word-of-Mouth/Marketing campaigns and change their internal corporate cultures.

Jon Miller writes most succinctly on the definition and greater responsibility of a CMO at the Futurelab Blog:

“To be successful, the CMO must play a role broader than just leading the marketing organization. The role must include driving revenue, leading innovation, and providing strategic vision. These growth champions must lead all four Ps – not just promotion but also product strategy, place (channel and distribution), and pricing.

Like other C-level executives, these CMOs must be rigorous in their financial planning and metrics, making revenue forecasts and justifying their budgets like the investment in the future that marketing spending really is.”

See Jon Miller’s article at:

1. ”Are You a CMO or a VP of Marketing?”, April 30, 2007
   http://blog.futurelab.net/2007/04/are_you_a_cmo_or_a_vp_of_marke.html

2. Evangelist

While we can debate the number of blogs or if MySpace is here to stay, Social Media has changed the Internet landscape just as the Internet in the 90s changed the marketing and business landscape.

Evangelist have been around before Social Media took off as the latest buzzword, but the importance of their role is increasingly clear if corporations are to have plans to thoroughly engage their online audience and communities.

Jeremiah explains that: “An evangelists role is to go beyond understanding and get others to ‘believe’ in your product or service. This is beyond just communication and advertising and gets to the fundamental root of human communications, building trust. “

In Matt McGee’s “Meet Your New Employee: Writer, Marketer, Evangelist”, Matt’s focuses on how even an evangelist can apply to small businesses in:

• To Write: “You need a blog to communicate directly with customers, and good writers make the best bloggers….In this day and age, you need to become a mini-publisher and that demands someone who knows how to write.”
• To Network: “finding customers and joining their communities and conversations. Good “people skills” are imperative to market successfully.”
• Do Public Relations: “This should include traditional media; press releases are still the way to reach out to those folks. But it should also include online influencers: important bloggers and important online discussion forums that cover your industry.”

Read more at:

• “Meet Your New Employee: Writer, Marketer, Evangelist”, April 26, 2007
  http://searchengineland.com/070426-082409.php
• “Understanding the role of an Evangelist at a Web 2.0 Company”, October 07, 2006
  http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2006/10/07/understanding-the-role-of-an-evangelist-at-a-web-20-company/

3. Social Media Program

Jeremiah Owyang is on *the* thought leader when it comes to understanding how corporations need to respond to social media opportunities. If you’re not reading his blog, you should.

While he has written about the need for Evangelist and Community Managers, Jeremiah recently wrote on the technical needs of the Social Media Programs the Evangelist and Community Managers would execute, listing some important tactical level thinking:

Recognize the new influencers. Like Media, Press, and Analysts, consider Social Media yet an additional influencer group to reach.

Prepare for all scenarios. Create an internal process or at least discuss how to deal with crises. (such as exploding products, embarrassing situations). Draw from classic PR strategies, but realize that acting quickly in a human way, and not hiding is key.

…

Employees will blog, embrace. In addition to creating the corporate blog(s), be sure to recognize the natural employee bloggers that appear. You may find them in the product groups, support, and marketing departments. Have a discussion on how to include them in your strategy, even if it means to let them continue on their own. When it comes to trust, prospects and customers may trust employee bloggers that don’t have the corporate logo on their blog.

Measurement. You’ll need to measure to prove worth in this new arena, get more budget and even get a raise. I’ve discussed this extensively, see all posts tagged Social Media Measurement.

See more under:

• “Strategies for organizing your Corporate Social Media Program (Starting internally first)“, April 23, 2007
  http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/04/23/strategies-for-organizing-your-corporate-social-media-program/
• “10 Social Media Strategies for the Fortune 1000 Corporations”, December 12, 2006
  http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2006/12/18/10-social-media-strategies-for-the-corporations/
• “Understanding the Community/Evangelist Role, and profiles of a few of my Favorite Folks”, March 26, 2007
  http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/03/26/understanding-the-technology-evangelist-role-a-few-of-my-favorite-folks/

4. SEM becomes Strategic Website Positioning

SEO (and with it PPC) has been steadily evolving away from the traditional SEO methods, with a full embrace of Social Media to usability to content strategy, with changes occurring in:

1) the further integration of PR-ish tactics like “linkbaiting”; 2) the embrace of social media in social media marketing; 3) changing the metrics from rankings and to relevant traffic and conversion; and 4) thinking about usability and conversion optimization, not just search traffic generation.

All of these new changes will be unfamiliar to someone from the early days of SEO, which mostly concerned itself with placing important keyword on the webpages.

We are now at the point of needing to recast SEM (SEO and PPC) as Strategic Website Positioning:

The idea of Strategic Website Positioning is to think of search marketing (organic SEO and PPC), social media marketing and website development as an integrated approach, by asking questions centered around:

• How is your website’s content, structure and usability fit with the intent of your audience?
• How does your website “fit” in how people search (one-box searches on Google/Yahoo, Technorati, Oodle, vertical search engines)?
• How is your website positioned in Social Media Community? How do you want to participate?

See more at:
“SEO as Website Positioning Strategy? – Updated”, February 26, 2007
http://www.emergence-media.com/2007/02/seo-as-website-positioning-strategy/

Closing Thoughts: A Warning on Social Media Fatigue

I still very much remember the irrational exuberance of the Dot-Com (Web 1.0) and know that not every SharkyBuisnessIdeaHere.com will not raise up to become an Amazon.com or an Ebay.

The audience, the social media audience, will suffer from “Social Media Fatigue”. People can only support and pay attention to a limited amount of the ever increasing variety of social media websites, video networks, Pligg (digg) clones and Twitters twittering and Myspace commenting.

At the same time, the Internet was not a fad and has brought about the behemoth that is Google made websites like Wikipedia and YouTube possible.

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What happened to Word Of Mouth Marketing?

In the online marketing buzz, “Social Media Marketing” is akin to the Internet business frenzy about “Web 2.0″. It’s what everyone is talking about, even this blog.

Via Marketing Pilgrim, iProspect has released a report, Social Networking User Behavior Study, which confirms the power of social networking websites:

• 1 in 3 Internet users state that social networks have influenced their purchase decisions.
• 1 in 4 Internet users visit the most popular social networking sites at least once a month.
• About 20% of visitors to social networking sites don’t search once they’ve reached the site.

Interesting numbers, but it may seem unsurprising (if not low) to those who are acquainted with Word-Of-Mouth Marketing (WOMM), which usually see numbers showing that 80% of consumers consider WOM as the most trusted source of information. Those are numbers frequently mentioned by BzzAgent.

Indeed maybe it’s time for those who want to do some Social Media Marketing, to get a refresher on Word-of-Mouth Marketing and how it applies to SEO…

Word of Mouth Marketing

Word-of-Mouth marketing can be a pretty expansive term that encompasses offline and online activities.

The Word of Mouth Marketing Associations (WOMMA) describes WOMM as:

“Giving people a reason to talk about your products and services [DR: sounds like Linkbaiting], and making it easier for that conversation to take place [DR: sounds like Social Media Optimization].”

Sounds familiar to “Social Media Marketers”, non?

See what the WOMMA describes as covered under Word-of-Mouth:

• Buzz Marketing: Using high-profile entertainment or news to get people to talk about your brand.
• Viral Marketing: Creating entertaining or informative messages that are designed to be passed along in an exponential fashion, often electronically or by email.
• Community Marketing: Forming or supporting niche communities that are likely to share interests about the brand (such as user groups, fan clubs, and discussion forums); providing tools, content, and information to support those communities.
• Grassroots Marketing: Organizing and motivating volunteers to engage in personal or local outreach.
• Evangelist Marketing: Cultivating evangelists, advocates, or volunteers who are encouraged to take a leadership role in actively spreading the word on your behalf.
• Product Seeding: Placing the right product into the right hands at the right time, providing information or samples to influential individuals.
• Influencer Marketing: Identifying key communities and opinion leaders who are likely to talk about products and have the ability to influence the opinions of others.
• Cause Marketing: Supporting social causes to earn respect and support from people who feel strongly about the cause.
• Conversation Creation: Interesting or fun advertising, emails, catch phrases, entertainment, or promotions designed to start word of mouth activity.
• Brand Blogging: Creating blogs and participating in the blogosphere, in the spirit of open, transparent communications; sharing information of value that the blog community may talk about.
• Referral Programs: Creating tools that enable satisfied customers to refer their friends.

Again, a very expansive list but also nicely overlaps with many things that Online PR folks and Social Media Marketing folks do, from blog outreach to linkbait.

Social Media Marketing as a Bigger Picture, Not an SEO Tool
So why does this matter? David Wilson said that at he felt SES and of the SEO World:

“The SEO field needs to stop thinking of social media optimization as a short-term tactic that they can use to game the search engines. Not everything needs to center around a company’s URL.”

I think if SEO folks and even the newly emerging Social Media Marketers take a lesson from the more established world of Word of Mouth marketing, they would have a greater sense of appreciation of understand SMM/SMO is part of a greater marketing/pr activity that “can be used to help their business improve customer satisfaction and gain market share.”

I highly recommend that all Search/Social Media Marketers read WOMMA’s Word of Mouth 101.

Note: My employer, e-Storm International, is a member of WOMMA.

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So let’s get to the Q&A Session!

“Question 1) Because blogs score high in Google Search results, how does this impact corporations who spend resources on SEO campaigns for their websites?”

Good Blogs are effective because they 1) generate good, timely and updated content; 2) encourage bloggers to link to them and vice versa; 3) have a clean technical format that is easy for search engines to crawl.

Corporations can either choose to create their on blog (which takes resouces and cultural shifts) or choose to emulate why blogs do well: timely and good quality content with good linking from other sites.

“Question 2) If Social Media is an effective way to gain in SEO (as well as engage an audience), should we increase Social Media Program budgets and reduce SEO budgets?”

Cutting edge SEO is already incorporating website usability, widget creation, RSS feeds and linkbait (PR tactic to try to get people to link to your website) as part of the “SEO Tactics Toolbox”. Indeed, I’d say SEO people are one of the leaders pushing Social Media Marketing.

SEO will not compete with Social Media, but will eventually merge with it. SEO will be about Website Positioning Strategy. As I’ve mentioned in my post “SEO as Website Positioning Strategy“:

The idea of Strategic Website Positioning is to think of search marketing (organic SEO and PPC), social media marketing and website development as an integrated approach, by asking questions centered around:

• How is your website’s content, structure and usability fit with the intent of your audience?
• How does your website “fit” in how people search (one-box searches on Google/Yahoo, Technorati, Oodle, vertical search engines) for what you offer?
• How is your website positioned in Social Media Community? How do you want to participate?

“Question 3) The word of mouth network is becoming more and more efficient. Communities are forming and networks are formalizing, these networks allow users to share info about products and services without using search. (Twitter, blogs, myspace are good examples). update: If these word of mouth networks become so efficient and content is shared amongst a common group, will this reduce the need for searches?”

Short Answer: No.

Long Answer: Twitter, Blogs, Digg are places of communication and sharing and creating content. So people will still use search to find articles on Digg and use Technorati to find blogs.

Social Media sites like Digg, Twitter and YouTube are great on keeping abreast with the latest information, but its a real pain to actually use it to find something. You need search.

These new types of websites are opening new search frontiers: what do I need to do well on Technorati? How do you make sure your YouTube video gets found when someone searches YouTube? Blinx for example, just released guidelines on video search optimization.

“Question 4) I state that Web Marketing is not on Two (corporate and google) domains only. Some savvy companies are realizing the Web Marketing battle isn’t on the corporate domain only, as the word of mouth effect becomes more important, do companies really want visitors to come to their site? Or will the savvy company realize that the most effective web marketing is using advocate customers to turn cold and warm prospects. How does this impact the SEO industry?”

Web Marketing will (already is?) about where ever your company or its services are mentioned or should be mentioned: Google, Corporate, Social News Sites (Digg), Blogs etc. (Furthermore, there will be a blur between mobile, web and gaming/entertainment consoles but I’m saving that talk for this posting.)

This is why SEM (PPC/SEO), Reputation Management, Blog Marketing, Viral-Videos and Word-of-Mouth will begin to blur together and require a shared strategy in the coming years. People move easily from one website to another with a click – from Digg, to your corporate website, to a Google Search to MySpace Video – and that requires coordination to ensure that the same message and goals are implemented for each of those channels.

SEO needs to lose the SE (Search Engine) part and become agnostic – optimizing any kind of “organic” traffic”. As I’ve mentioned:

“I believe that eventually search engine optimization (SEO) will be succeeded by simply “Organic Traffic Optimization” – optimization that is agnostic to where the traffic comes from, but is limited to the organic (natural and unpaid) side of things.”

It is gonna be crazy fun to do this! At least for me ;)

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Stowe Boy gives a rough (and somewhat cynical) description of SMR and asks one of the common question critics ask about SMR:

For those who have missed the idea, a social media press release is supposed to be a webbish/bloggish version of old timey press releases. These will incorporate elements of the now commonplance blog motif: links, tags, comments, and trackbacks, for example.

This all begs the question (which I raised early on in the evening): Why not just use blogs? Why do we need these so-called “social” press releases?

Brian Solis, a SMR supporter, goes further and reminds us of the qualitative goals of SMR:

The IDEA is to strip out all of the bullshit and hype from traditional mechanical, and useless press releases and rebuild it as a focused compilation of relevant facts, links, media and a subscription feed to help readers write, tell, and share a story their way (without having to sort through a sea of crap to find out what’s real, what’s canned, and what’s important.) This is what a good release should be anyway, regardless of trends and titles. Basically it’s the press release redux. It takes out what’s wrong with press releases and modernizes them into a usable format for journalists, bloggers, and individuals.

See an example of an Edelman Social Media Release in action here.

Todd Defren, principal at SHIFT Communications, was an early proponent (early/mid 2006) of the Social Media Release, followed quickly by Edelman in late 2006 with the release of StoryCrafter (a CMS for making SMRs). Chris Heuer, Brian Solis and others have been promoting a more open approach to Social Media Releases, including the use of the microformat hRelease.

Where’s the Metrics to Prove/Disprove SMR?
What I find curious about the whole debate over the merits of SMR is the lack of discussions regarding any data: Let’s Gather Some Engagement Metrics.

• How many people actually add a Social Media Release to Del.icio.us? Or Digg it?
• How many people clicked on the SMR Pictures or Media Section?
• How many people left comments on comment-enabled SMR?
• What does Technorati/Google tells us regarding track/backlinks for SMR? Are the numbers any different than the average “Old School” Press Release?

These are just the few metrics that should be readily available to any SMR ever released. Let’s see how much of the “social” aspects of SMR are being used by people.

As for qualitative aspect of SMR that Brian Solis has described, this is difficult to measure and indeed an aspect that can be applied to traditional Press Releases as well (as he has said himself). We can’t measure that, but if we find no one is using the new features of SMR (Del.icio.us, Media Links, Comments etc), this may cast some doubt over its effectiveness over traditional Press Releases.

Conclusion
Of course, the cynics will look at SMR as simply a Press Release with “Social Media Optimization” or simply “a bloggish Press Release”. But, I believe that SMR is a required evolution of the traditional Press Releases – for it to remain relevant and engaging to the public at large. And for that, Brian Solis, Chris Heuer, Todd Deffren and others are doing a great job in helping promote SMR and advance online PR.

I don’t believe in discounting SMR, but the question that Stowe Boyd asks “Why not just use blogs” is an important question to address. Maybe the answer depends on how the client wants to be positioned: fully open and cutting edge via blogs or partially open and more “traditional” via SMR?

But in any case, intelligent debate can only be done with evidence and data. Other wise, this debate is simply a mental/philosophical exercise. I’m a supporter of SMR, but if we want to debate SMR constructively let’s try to have some data to base our arguments.

So who is going to release the first report on the number of SMR Diggs, Del.icio.us and Trackbacks? Edelman? The SocialMediaRelease.org? Or maybe their critics like Strumpette?

Todd Defren has issued a “Quick Progress Report” on the early successes of SMR. Perhaps we need to follow-up with more data?

Links for Further Reading

• SHIFT Communications: “Social Media Press Release” Template
• Brian Solis: “Enough Already: Getting the Social Media Release All Wrong“
• PR Squared: “The Social Media News Release: A Quick Progress Report“
• Social Media Release
• Steve Edelman: “Edelman Debuts StoryCrafter Two-Way Press Release“
• Strumpette: “Mega PR Firm Releases “StoryMakerUpper 1.0“

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Quick Commentary

Steven Rubel recently proclaimed that there’s no such thing as Social Media because “in 2006 all media went social“. Throwing up RSS feeds and enabling comments – or SMOing articles in the Washington Post– does not make you newspaper a social media newspaper. That’s just retrofitting, like PDFing your brochure and placing it online and calling it a website. I’m siding with Karl Long on this one.

We have a long way to go before social media becomes a fundamental element of what it means to be on the web. One of the important factors in helping shaping “old media” to “social media”, will be in the new, evolving synergies between public relations and online marketing.

As PR agencies – even cutting edge ones like Edelman (See the Vista/Vista/Blog Issue) – struggle to come to terms with how to engage social media, PR must have a mindset of shift away from pushing material into engaging, learning and shaping the conversation more intimately. Remember, its less “Old School PR” or “Cluetrain Manifesto” but “How to Win Friends and Influence People“.

We must frame the shift from generally thinking of managing “Public Relations” (PR) to that of the more specific act of engaging in “Social Media Relationships.”

It is difference of degree, but not in kind. PR has always been about helping shape a positive image of a brand or product – but now the connections are more intimate and less amorphous than some vague “Public”.

Yes “Social Media Relations” is another yet another meme, but it serves an important cognitive shift. PR agencies need to revamp themselves as helping companies empower their own voice and orientation in the “Conversation” (again, excuse the meme). PR should not be contacting bloggers directly, PR agencies should educate their clients on how to do so as a normal marketing/pr procedure.

Attention! PR appears to be the first agency to use the term “Social Media Relations Agency” and surprisingly not many other have. Unlike other memes, I’m hoping we’re see this a little bit more as some PR agencies attempt to reinvent themselves in the Social Media area.

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This Monday it was announced that Jason Calacanis of Netscape.com (previously of Weblogs Inc) will be the keynote speaker for Search Engine Strategies (SES) Chicago 2006.

This is not Jason’s first appearance on SES, but as the keynote speaker this has tremendous symbolism.The conference maybe called “Search Engine Strategies” but Jason Calacanis belongs in the world of online publishing and social media (Particularly, his Digg.com-like service at Netscape.com).

This maybe indicative of the fact that in recent times SES has become less and less about search marketing than emerging forms of online marketing. The area of SEO and PPC was one of the emerging areas, but now many of the SEM/SEO firms have moved to include link baiting, online PR, Reputation Monitoring, Blog Marketing etc. And so with it, SES has evolved along similar lines a swell.

Moving Beyond the “Search Engine” in “Search Engine Optimization”
As I’ve mentioned before, while SEO and PPC will continue to have a close relationship, SEO is quickly expanding to include any kind of “organic optimization” making the leap beyond search engines (SEO) to social media (SMO).

While I’m not saying this is what Jason’s speech will be about, his presence as the keynote speaker is indicative of the greater overall shift in the SEM landscape towards social media.

Expanding to “Second Life Optimization”
So how long before we start talking about Second Life Organic Optimization? Too late, MediaPost has the article (by David Berkowitz) here: “Second Life Optimization“. Here’s an excerpt:

Title Tags: The title of the virtual location should include a few important keywords, just like title tags for Web sites. Reebok, for instance, could choose the name “Reebok custom sneakers.”
Descriptions: Adding keywords to the description can help virtual stores come up for relevant searches, similar to how descriptions and meta tags work for Web sites….
Link Optimization: … In Second Life, if marketers own multiple properties, they can include billboards for visitors to teleport around to each one….
Advertising: …An advertising network for Second Life, MetaAdverse, allows property owners to post billboards, and marketers can advertise on them and track the visitors. As with link optimization, this won’t help the Second Life search visibility right now, but this will help the marketer’s general visibility there.

Multiple Engines: In Second Life, there is one dominant search engine, accessible for every user from a search box that resides at the bottom of the screen. There are also outside efforts to improve the Second Life search experience. For instance, Second411 allows Second Life store owners to list all their items for sale, and then invites consumers to access its search application….

Indeed, to say that online marketing has been rapidly evolving in the past few years seems like an understatement at this point.

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Speaking with a friend during a show the other night, we bounced around some ideas on the changing trends of Internet culture and behavior on both how Internet users find information and how they relate as a community online.
Finding Information

On the early days of the Web, word-of-mouth was practically the only way of the getting around. Everyone with a website had their cool links section; I remember doing this back in 92-93, showing off the websites I proudly knew of and visited.

The founders of Yahoo brought the next logical step and created a massive, online directory, which was originally called “Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web”. Yahoo’s directory approach came to be replaced by search engines like AltaVista, which continue to dominate as the prime method of finding information on the Web.
And today, while we all “Google”, the phenonemon of word-of-mouth, buzz and referrals are back – but this time through Social Media – from Blogs to YouTube to Myspace. Search became king when editor-based directories proved clumsy and unscalable. Now, search is being suppliemented by Social Media, as changes in technology and the medium itself has allowed for more scable human collaboration of information (from Wikipedia, Yahoo! Answers to YouTube).
Community

Back in the day before the Web there was BBS (Bullintin Board System). Folks would dial-in through a regular phone line to access bullentin boards, download files, play games. Since it was phone line based (you would have to literally call the BBS), BBS can also be characterized as a local phenomenon.

Since then the Web has replaced BSS (and other older internet channels like Gopher) and there was a large push for “Global” communities where anyone in the world can connect with anyone else in the world via the Internet

Oddly enough, the recent years have shown that the “anyone can connect with anyone”, while true, does not a community make. Tribe.net, Consumating, Judy’s Book, FaceBook, and Yelp demonstrate that at least localized community websites have a stronger sense of community than larger sites like Friendster, which attempts to cater to everyone.

While there’s no black/white model to follow between more narrowly-defined community sites against more “global” (or rather general ones), it does demonstrate that while the Internet can connect a person with the entire world, sometimes you just want to hang out on your neighborhood online.
What’s Next?

So what other formerly “outdated” approach to the Internet and Web is now coming back? That’s going to be my weekend speculation…stay tuned.

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There’s plenty of mentions on Google’s Image Labeler. Here’s Steve Rubel’s description:

“what it does is allow individuals to label random images to help improve the quality of Google’s image search results. Participants are paired with partners who are also online and using the feature. Users earn points based on their input. Points are not redeemable for prizes.”

While there’s plenty of mention linking this to “Wisdom of the Crowds” meme, I think its more appropriate to mention how Google has borrowed a page from Amazon’s Mechnical Turk service, which is based on “HITS” and actual cash:

HIT stands for Human Intelligence Task. These are tasks that people are willing to pay you to complete. For example a HIT might ask: “Is there a pizza parlour in this photograph?” Typically these tasks are extraordinarily difficult for computers, but simple for humans to answer.

Hmmm…does this sound familiar to anyone?

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Introduction

Paul Boutin, of the Log File analysis company (?) Splunk, uses Splunk to parse the AOL search data and boils down searches to 7 different types: Pornhound, Manhunter, Shopper, Obsessive, Omnivore, Newbie, and the Basket Case. You can perform your own queries here.

Commentary (as this posting is off-tangent to the purpose of this blog)

While people always say tracking a person’s every search is an online marketer dream, I think the AOL search data proves not only the high amount of “noise”, but its just plain creepy. ValleyWag covers some very creepy and tragic searches done by who otherwise probably pass as “normal” people.

Boutin’s article (while not a serious research) does much to humanizes the notion of search term analysis. Looking at the “Basket Case” searches, one realizes that people use search not just to find information or products, but at times like a modern “He (She) Loves Me, He (She) Loves Me Not” game or a modern magic 8-ball.

Excerpt of the Seven Search Types (Original Source)

The Pornhound. Big surprise, there are millions of searches for mind-bendingly kinky stuff. User No. 927 is already an Internet legend—click here if you’re not faint of heart (and not at the office)….The Manhunter. The person who searches for other people. Again, I used Splunk’s “Show Events by Time” function to plot name searches by date and time. Surprisingly, I didn’t uncover many long-term stalkers. Most of the data showed bursts of searches for a specific name only once, all within an hour or a day, and then never again…

The Shopper. The user who hits “treo 700″ 37 times in three days. Here, the data didn’t confirm my biases. I’d expected to find window shoppers who searched for Porsche Cayman pages every weekend. But AOL’s logs reveal that searches for “coupons” are a lot more common….

The Obsessive. The guy who searches for the same thing over and over and over. Looking at the search words themselves can obfuscate a more general long-term pattern—A, A, A, A, B, A, A, C, A, D, A…

The Omnivore. Many users aren’t obsessive—they’re just online a lot. My taxonomy fails them, because their search terms, while frequent, show little repetition or regularity…
The Newbie. They just figured out how to turn on the computer. User No. 12792510 is one of many who confuses AOL’s search box with its browser address window—he keeps seaching for “www.google.”…

The Basket Case. In college I had to write a version of the classic ELIZA program, a pretend therapist who only responds to your problems (”I am sad”) with more questions (”Why do you say you are sad?”). AOL Search, it seems, serves the same purpose for a lot of users. I stumbled across queries like “i hate my job” and “why am i so ugly.” For me, one log entry stands above the rest: “i hurt when i think too much i love roadtrips i hate my weight i fear being alone for the rest of my life.” Me too, 3696023. Me too.

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