Stanford's iPhone Application Programming Course Online

1 Million iPhone Application Course Downloads…

It was announced yesterday that Stanford’s iPhone Application Programming courses have been downloaded over 1 million times on Apple’s iTunes University. Stanford University’s move to allow anyone with access to iTunes to download a high-quality video of their iPhone Application Programming course was obviously not a move to convince people to apply to Stanford. It is part of a university’s value to provide greater value to the world at large. However, it was also very successful branding campaign to associate Stanford with the cutting edge and sexiness that is the iPhone.

…That’s 1 Million Brand Engagements

As a marketer, I consider each iPhone course download a branding engagement event. Those one million people are not only aware of Stanford’s iPhone courses, they are actively engaging the Stanford plan by downloading the videos. How much would you pay for 1 million people to actively interact with your brand (in this case a +300mb video file)?

And at least $1 Million Dollars of Branding Engagement

If you just put a value of $1 per brand engagement, you’re already saying that Stanford gained at least one million dollars worth of brand engagement by leveraging a very cheap form of social media (recording classes to post online). Of course, this is not counting the millions who are aware about Stanford’s iPhone courses online, but did not download it.

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Verizon Customer Service: Viral Video of the Day (February 5th)

Today, the FAIL Blog website posted a humorous recording between a Verizon customer and a customer service representatives over a billing issue. As of the the time of this writing (only 8:39 PM of the day of the post), there are over 1,000 comments on the FAIL Blog post, 469k views of the video on YouTube and over 3,900 mentions on other blogs and other websites. And oh, if you type “verizon customer service” on Google, the top 10 search results have two webpages pointing to the video.

The Video is Actually Over Two Years Old

The viral video on Verizon’s customer service has been spreading on the Internet, but rarely is it mentioned when this recording occurred. Indeed, if you see multiple blogs citing this Verizon video you would think the customer service recording was very recent.

George Vaccaro, the man on the Verizon customer service call, actually recorded the call in December 2006!

Lesson for PR, Customer Service and Community Managers: Not only does bad news spread fast, it can have a second or third life spreading around the Internet.

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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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Last week, I presented at the Social Media: The Marketing Summit panel on Reputation Management. The SMMS is a sister conference of Online Market World, which is held in San Francisco. Speakers at SMMS included everyone from Best Buy, Nokia and Wells Fargo (real companies!) to the vanguard of Social Media, such as Brian Solis, Charlene Li, and Tara Hunt.

Above is the presentation I gave at the panel. You can find my other presentations at:
http://www.slideshare.net/EmergenceMedia

And as always, any feedback, questions and comments are welcome and encouraged.

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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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Conversations image from b_d_solis

Survey after survey have shown how word-of-mouth is a powerful force in helping people form decisions on what to buy or what to think of brands and products. Fresh Chat has list of some of the latest data on word-of-mouth:

• “Recommendations from family and friends trump all other consumer touchpoints when it comes to influencing purchase” (AdAge, April, 2008)
• Consumers trust friends above experts when it comes to product recommendations (65% trust friends, 27% trust experts, 8% trust celebrities). (Yankelovich)

Such trust among friends and connections only has been the basis of the allure of social media and why it is one of the pivotal forces in shaping a brand. But why? Why are anecdotal evidence – like user reviews – so convincing? It’s apparently hardwired into our brains.

Recently, an article in the Scientific American declared that “These anecdotal associations are so powerful that they cause people to ignore contrary evidence”.

The article goes in further to describe brains as more geared towards “belief engines” rather than scientifically-centric:

The reason for this cognitive disconnect is that we have evolved brains that pay attention to anecdotes because false positives (believing there is a connection between A and B when there is not) are usually harmless, whereas false negatives (believing there is no connection between A and B when there is) may take you out of the gene pool. Our brains are belief engines that employ association learning to seek and find patterns. Superstition and belief in magic are millions of years old, whereas science, with its methods of controlling for intervening variables to circumvent false positives, is only a few hundred years old. So it is that any medical huckster promising that A will cure B has only to advertise a handful of successful anecdotes in the form of testimonials.

The article goes on describe beliefs that continue to prove popularity despite like solid scientific evidence: from concerns about vaccines and autism to health benefits of wheatgrass.

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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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Along with the tidal wave of Social Media buzzwords hitting marketing and PR departments, “blogger outreach campaigns” is a big one. Blogger Outreach Campaigns are seen as the new “word of mouth” campaign, which is being looked at as a way to virally increase brand awareness and even help drive sales, all at a lower cost than other channels.

Moving Beyond a One-Time Blog Outreach Campaign

As David Wilson pointed out, Social Media Marketing is not a one-time event. David was using a Digg Article submission for an example, but the same applies for Blogger Community Outreach .

Don’t contact bloggers just when you have something to promote. Bloggers will catch to this very quickly. Just as your PR team keeps a steady relationship with reporters, keep a steady relationship with A-List, B-List and Upcoming bloggers and community beyond promotional emails: asking for feedback on your product/service, invite them for small get-togethers dinners, etc.

But companies will say: “But that takes too much resources to maintain blogger relationships, let’s do a one-time campaign”. Sure but keep in mind the following:

1. Blogs are apart of the your Brand’s Ecosystem
   For the brand Spirit Airlines, a blog post with the title “Do Not Fly Spirit Airlines” ranks 3 on Google and below it is a blog post on a very damning alleged leak from the Spirit Airlines CEO
2. Restoring a Brand is Difficulty and Lengthy
   According to BtoB, nearly 1 of 5 brands takes 2 years to recover from a crisis affect their brand image, sales or profits.
3. Customers probably Trust Bloggers more than you
   According to Nielsen, 66% of North Americans find Consumer Generated Media, like blogs, as reliable source of news. What are those blogs saying about your brand?

Conclusion: Social Media is Bigger than a Single Campaign

Social Media has opened up a whole new world for marketers and PR folks, which requires a long-term strategy beyond a one-off campaign: Community Marketing & Relation needs to be part of a companies normal PR and Marketing function.

Blogger Outreach campaigns have their place, but they must take place within a larger strategy of maintaining communications with bloggers and reaching out to those discussing your brand on forums, blogs and elsewhere.

See below for more details on those three points

1. The Community is Part of your Brand Ecosystem

When I’m asked by companies, “Why should we talk to bloggers or listen to what they say?” I make it clear that they, their brand and even their CEOs, are already being talked about by bloggers. They can join and help shape the conversation or let it shape them.

A quick search for “Paypal” on Google will show “PayPalSucks.com” as #2 on Google. I believe it was Dave McClure that mentioned that while PayPal was reluctant to promote a forum for their users to talk to Paypal, users were going to the PayPalSucks forum instead.
Stephen Spencer of CNET noted how Bloggers were increasingly present brand search results:

a. For Zappos

In the top Google Search Results, a search for “Zappos” presented “I Heart Zappos” blog post and a blog post by Start-Up Review rank top 10.

First Page Google Result for “Zappos”:
A business blog on Zappos and posting called “I Heart Zappos”

b. For Spirit Airline

Zappos received stunning reviews by the two blogs in the brand search, but not so for Spirit Airlines. A search for “Spirit Airlines” in Google led us to a blog post called “Do Not Fly Spirit Airlines” and a blog that posted an alledged leaked memo from the CEO, stating “Let them tell the world how bad we are” in response to a customer complaint.

A search for Spirit Airlines reveals some severe customer/PR relations issues.

2. Does Your Customers Trust Bloggers More Than You?

Recently, Nielsen conducted a global survey on people’s attitudes towards different advertising channels. Unsurprisingly, Word Of Mouth is king and online banner is second to the bottom.

qasd

3. Your Reputation is at Stake

Dave Wilson recently wrote on a BtoB report that reveal that 57% of marketing executives say they do not have a crisis plan in place in case of any crisis that can lead to negative coverage, declining sales, or reduced profitability. And 53% have experienced such crises.

More telling is how long it took to recover from such crises

• 23% of respondents said it took three months to a year for their brand to fully recover from a crisis
• 13.3% said it took more than two years to recover
• 17.7% said they have yet to recover after two years.

As part of crisis plan, it helps to have the ear to the ground – understanding what bloggers, reviewers on Amazon and forum members are saying – to look out for potential crises and know how to handle bloggers and others when it happens. You need to keep your ear to the community.

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Move over SEO, Social Media Marketing has the Cash Now?

Talking with clients and those in the marketing industry, there appears to be an increasing interest in Social Media/Word-of-Mouth at the cost of SEO. Search Engine Optimization has been hot from 2004-2006, but we’re now seeing budgets being shifted to Social Media/Word of Mouth.

Is this true over your at agency or marketing/PR team? Leave a comment and let me know.

Some general observations…

Changes in the SEO Industry Landscape

• SEO and PPC resources are being shifted to in-house for corporations, with agencies working more as Search Marketing trainers and consultants
• SEO trends have become increasingly more reliant on Social Media; hence, terms like the “linkerati” coming out from the SEO world
• SES San Jose 2007 was an excellent example on the growing emphasis on WoM/Social Media/PR. SES had a whole track dedicated to Social Media.

Social Media Marketing & the Widget Economy

• Facebook and Widgets have hit the marketing mainstream with the O’Reilly report on Facebook making it officially the year of Facebook and widgets.
• San Francisco Bay Area hosted at least 4 conferences on Facebook and Widgets in the past 3 weeks alone: SNAP, Widget Summit, Graphing Social Patterns, CommunityNext Platform.

How will SEO adapt? Will it finally turn more into a philosophy of website design and positioning rather than a specific marketing discipline?

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Following up with my last post on the San Francisco Symphony’s Bloggers Night, I’d like to discuss the PR/marketing perspective of the event. I’ll review 1) Quick thoughts on the Bloggers Night; and 2) What I suggest they do different in the next round.
I’ve done a few blog outreach campaigns, but “Bloggers Night” events are an interesting mix of old fashioned PR and social media.

Another Blogger’s Night: By Monster Cable

Indeed, I actually went to another “Bloggers Night” this week held by Monster Cable in the hip dot-com area of San Francisco, known as SoMa near the Adobe and Nokia offices. But more on that, some other time. Pictures of the event, here.

A Marketer’s take of the SF Symphony Blog Outreach

The Bloggers: SocialMedia.biz to MetroBlogging SF

There were approximately 10-15 of us, from Nick Douglas (of ValleyWag fame), Eddie Codel (GE TV), JD Lasica of SocialMedia.biz and some true local events only bloggers from Metroblogging SF and Civic Center.

While this may seem like a strange mix, I think it was the right mix though I wish I knew the “who” and “from where” of the Bloggers Night guestlist. Blogs that cover local events, Metroblogging and Civic Center, are the obvious “first tier” choices. But as the Symphony is looking to extend its current audience, it is worth going long and expanding from local news coverage in print to online blogs

Blog Outreach: Losing Control or Gaining Exposure

I spoke to several of the Symphony PR people, specifically Oliver Theil and Gary Ginstling. I asked them why they decided to do blog outreach.

1.All of them were very knowledge about what is going on in social media, citing blogs to Yelp.com as an alternative means by which a good portion of people (especially in the Bay Area) get their information.
2.Social Media will not replace the Symphony’s needs for coverage in the local newspaper, it will supplement it. People gather news in different ways. Some via Yelp others from the local Sunday paper.

“Tag” the Event, So You Can Track the Conversations

Something that all the bloggers asked Kevin Smokler, one of the key organizers, was “what’s the Technorati and Flickr tag for this event”. It sounds like an obvious issue, but the Monster Cable event had no such tags. No tags means it’ll be just a little harder to track conversations generated from the event.

Building a Better Bloggers Night Experience

1. Foster a Sense of “Community”

The word “community” is a tired word, but it is still an appropriate term. All of us bloggers were brought to the “Green Room” at the Symphony without introduction and honestly, I think some of us felt like an awkward random bunch.

A quick informal round of introduction would be appropriate, where all the bloggers could introduce themselves to each other and to the Symphony press team.

2. Build a Retention Program: Follow-Up, Feedback, Discounts

It would be interesting for the Symphony folks to do a simply follow-up with the bloggers. Not just a simple question, but also links to photos of the performance, online program materials – stuff would further make it easier for bloggers to post something up.

Also, I’m not sure if anyone who has blog posted on the Symphony has been followed-up or contacted by the Symphony folks. It would be nice for them to offer comments/feedback on our commentary on the Symphony experience.

Perhaps even offer discounts for bloggers who decide to go to the Symphony on their own?

3. Educating the Bloggers on the Product (Or in this case, the Music)

While I love Bach’s violin sonatas, I don’t know classical music as much as I should. I think a quick 5 minute education by Symphony folks would be much appreciated – nothing complicated, but a simple context as to the concert program (e.g. “why is this song famous?”) and its history.

This would help set the blogger’s expectations and understanding; hopefully, a positive enough effect to help further encourage enjoying and blogging about the event. Plus, we’ll get to sound smart when we write about it. :)

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SEO is Dead! Well, maybe your Google SEO

Why is SEO important? Because the majority of people search on the Internet to find things…reviews, contact numbers, shopping etc. But what is Search? Google? Yahoo?

If you’re search engine optimization campaign is targeting Google, then what are you doing about the “searches” on Del.icio.us, Technorati, StumbleUpon, Yelp, Wikipedia, Oodle and even Digg? Maybe those searches are not for the mainstream (yet), but it maybe where the Linkerati, the savvy “Influencers”, go?

Is your SEO really just “Google Search Optimization”? Have you brainstormed with your marketing team to see if your company, product and/or service needs to do more?

The Linkerati: Where Are They?

Rand Fishkin has made much about how SEO folks need to make sure their linkbait (and ditto for Viral/WoM campaigns) needs to cater to the Linkerati audience, the savvy online influencers who create and forward content.

But moving beyond finding what appeals to the Linkerati, is the need to find out where are they online, We need to diversify our thinking on 1) how where/how they create content; and 2) how they find content.

Recently, ValleyWag noted that while the number of active blogs tracked by Technorati has stagnated “personal publishing is still growing, but the fastest growth is occurring on social media properties”, such as MySpace, Digg, Yelp, and Twitter. Indeed, a recent study suggests that “40% of all social networkers said they use social networking sites to learn more about brands or products that they like”.

Questions to Ask:

1. Where are my customers? Who are the influencers within those circles?
2. Where do they search?
   (Do they search on Yelp, Technorati, Digg or Del.icio.us?)
3. Have I distributed my content there?
   (E.g. Placement of Yelp, Blog on Technorati, Content on Digg, Bookmarked on Del.icio.us)
4. Is it searchable? Or, simply, Findable? Is it “optimized”?

Counter Point: Who needs the Linkerati? Web-2-What and Big Seed Marketing.

There is the question of how important the Linkerati crowd is in shear physical numbers and how important the Linkerati and influencers are in general.

In May’s Harvard Business review, Duncan Watts and Jonah Pertti proposed the idea of “big-seed marketing” as opposed to “Influencer”-based viral marketing, which:

combines viral-marketing tools with old-fashioned mass media in a way that yields far more predictable results than “purely” viral approaches like word-of-mouth marketing.
…
big-seed marketing harnesses the power of large numbers of ordinary people, its success does not depend on influentials or on any other special individuals; thus, managers can dispense with the probably fruitless exercise of predicting how, or through whom, contagious ideas will spread.

The Tiny Linkerati

According to a Pew Internet May 6 study, 49% of the US audience are those that have “few “tech assets” and limited use of technology”. The survey goes on to show how little of the US audience are among the Web 2.0 Internet savvy. They are so little of them. Is it worth the effort on being on Yelp, Twitter, Digg, MySpace etc to appeal to them?

Of Course, It Depends

It is important to understand that you can create online marketing success without getting caught in the buzz about about “influencers” or the Linkerati. It depends what market your client and your customers are in. Of course, innovation carries risk – but this is not to forsake the long-hanging fruit for risk taking and vice-versa. You need both.

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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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Recently my co-worker, Kevin Reyes, and I had discussions on the differences between SEO Linkbaiting and Online Word-of-Mouth Campaigns. Credit goes to Kevin Reyes for bringing this up as a blog post.

So what is the difference between SEO Linkbait and an Online WoM Campaign? True, they are not mutually exclusive to each other. But, how do we explain the differences that define WoM and Linkbait to a client?

Let’s start with definition and examples with SEOMoz’s “Web 2.0 Awards” versus  Microsoft’s Clearification campaign.

• Linkbait: SEOMoz’s “Web 2.0 Awards“

Definition of Link Bait
Online activities, usually placed on a single website, used to “bait” its viewers to generate buzz and links from other websites. The main goal is generate a large number of links to the website to increase organic rankings.

Example: SEOMoz’s Web 2.0 Awards
Starting last year, SEOMoz has conducted a best of web 2.0 awards, judging a dozens (100s?) of web 2.0 sites in various categories from web 2.0 bookmarks to games.

SEOMoz’s “Web 2.0 Awards” has helped propel SEOMoz to the top #5 ranking for “Web 2.0″ in Google. It has over 1,300 links to it at http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0.

• Online Word of Mouth: Microsoft’s “Clearification.com“

Definition of Online Word of Mouth
Activities used to generate personal online recommendations and/or referrals regarding a company’s brand, products and/or services.

Example: Micorsoft’s “Clearficiation”
Leading up to the launch of Microsoft Vista, Microsoft’s ad agency, McCann Erickson, along with Mekanism worked with the comedian Demetri Martin to create Clearification, a website that offers a series of webisodes featuring Demetri Martin.

Clearification is interesting in that there is no direct pitch or branding of Microsoft on the website and it entirely focused on Demetri Martin’s hipster (for the lack of a better term) sense of humor. News of Clearification filtered through blogs

So what’s the difference between Web 2.0 Awards and Clearification.com

• Difference on the Strategic Level:
  Linkbait’s main goal is to use buzz to generate links to a website that one wants to rank well, where as, online Word of Mouth is more about generally generating online buzz about the company and its products and/or services. Linkbait finds success when it lands on Digg’s frontpage, but word-of-mouth needs more than that. 

  Commentary:
  Sure both strategies, done properly, generate links. But there is an important difference of degree: linkbaiting can be as simple as offering a free tool, informative article etc whereas “Word of Mouth campaign” usually implies a far larger production, involving mini-sites, savvy creative…the works.

• Difference on the Tactical Level:
  Website Location:
  Microsoft’s Clearification is located on Clearification.com, not Microsoft.com. So any links generated due to buzz will mostly point to Clearification, not Microsoft.   

  Does this mean if Clearification could be linkbait if it was hosted at http://Microsoft.com/Clearification, not http://clearification.com/?

  Relevancy of the Link Building:
  Propelled by links to its “Web 2.0 Awards” webpage, SEOMoz’s “Web 2.0 Awards” campaign has helped search engines associate “Web 2.0″ with SEOMoz.org. Indeed, the term “Web 2.0″ places SEOMoz in the #5 in Google. What benefit would Microsoft be if Microsoft.com showed up as #5 for a search for Clearification?

  Microsoft is happy with any buzz and links to Clearification. They are probably more interested in traffic numbers than what ranks how well for what.

Conclusion
All in all, the differences seem subtle, especially at the strategic level. At the strategic level there is a large difference in perception (right or wrong) on what it takes to get a word-of-mouth campaign going versus linkbaiting. Additionally, these strategic differences are more visibly shapened when followed through on to the tactical level.

However, this is not to say that Linkbaiting and Word-of-Mouth campaign are mutually exclusive. Indeed, a properly executed and well-positioned WoM campaign can easily fulfill the requirements of a linkbait campaign.

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From WOMMA’s Word of Mouth Research Symposium
WOMMA/Research – Mom Power Thrives in Digital Domain

After doing an extensive amount of research on blogs, B&M began to look closer at female/mom bloggers. This was triggered by seeing that one of the Technorati Top 100 bloggers was a mommy-blogger. The term they’ve come up with is ‘mom-fluentials’.
…
Mom-fliuentials are a subset of E-fluentials. Their research has shown that moms are approached for advice and often give purchasing opinions. They find that when a mom-fluential does give advice it is followed. Mom-fluentials will give an average of 13 positive recommendations per week.

Social Networkers Ask Peers for Recommendations

Social networkers are moving away from traditional media and are increasingly consulting peers for information and recommendations, according to a recent Compete Inc. study. The study shows that, when it comes to purchase decisions, online “socialites” are influenced more by peers and colleagues than any other source.

Grey Wolf on Tag Spam on Technorati
See: http://www.wolf-howl.com/blogs/tag-spam/

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The focus of Emergence Media is to discuss new ways of thinking about online marketing – from Social Media Optimization to new takes on SEO-PR. Under such an ambitious goal, its important to not be distracted and imbibe too much of the “Cluetrain Manifesto” kool-aid. In that spirit, I’ll point you to two recent postings on the blogosphere:

“Top 5 Stupid Trends of Marketing 2.0” by Noah Kagan.

A choice excerpt on what is not a marketing plan (by itself):

3- You need a blog. Why? Do you really? Do people really care what your company has to say?

4- Digg will save us. You get 10,000 visitors one day of horny nerdy computer kids and the next day nothing. I always say relevance is key. Talked with Adam of Renkoo today and he agrees about quality always over quantity.

5- Oh don’t worry, we have a MySpace Badge. It appears the new and ultimate trend in marketing is a badge / widget that people can put everywhere. This is okay but not as effective as people think.

“Seven Deadly Sins of Advertising Via Viral Video” via WillVideoForFood.com

Excerpt:

1. Make a white and brown cow. Seth Godin has a term called “Purple Cow,” which refers to marketing that is “remarkable” and worth paying attention to and talking about. Your viral video better be Technicolor Purple if you actually expect it to break through an increasingly crowded space.
…

2. Pretend you’re not advertising. Nothing quite irrates a consumer like being secretly persuaded.
…
3. Spend a fortune on production.
…
4. Tell consumers instead of engage them. Don’t think of your viral video as an adaptation of a 60-second spot. Obviously it’s got to be irreverent, weird, funny and different. But more importantly, the web has the ability to make the viral event a dialogue.
…
5. Do a video contest because everyone else is. This online-video “contest fad” will continue, and it will become more difficult to activate consumers to promote your product.
…
6. Set unrealstic conversion metrics. After someone watches your video, what do you think they’ll do? Will 30% come to your site? Will 10% buy your brand in two months? Give me a break.
…
7. Throw in the towel and decide to just advertise around viral videos. Please don’t give up and decide that it’s easier to simply advertise around videos. There are certainly products and services that can do well through this, but it’s the lazy way to approach online video.
…

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Quick Summary
Raking in +$15m opening weekend (#2 spot), “Snakes on Plane” – a movie soley carried and even re-shot because of the blogosphere – is defining the power of blogs as it pertains to the movie studios. But SoaP is also a unique product, so the organic support via the blogosphere cannot be easily replicated by just any movie.

But at the same time, SoaP shows “Social Media Optimization” and highlights the need to embrace it. Instead of sending crease-and-desist letters for people making their own trailers and ads for SoaP, New Line Cinema embraced them, engaged them, invited them to screenings and talked to them.

Introduction: 5 Lessons Learned from SoaP
Jackie Huba over at the Church of the Customer, puts out a great post listing the 5 Lessons of the Snakes on the Plane (SoaP) blogosphere phenomenon. Read the whole post, but here’s an excerpt:

1. Memes have never been more important.
2. When fans embrace your meme, embrace your fans.
3. The culture of participation is here.
4. Embracing citizen marketers reduces risk.
5. The experience is the difference between profit and failure.

The Results of SoaP and Blogs
Considering that Snakes on the Plane is a b-movie with a modest marketing budget, the opening weekend of SoaP is impressive, as reported by Viral Garden:

The production budget for SoaP has been set at anywhere from 30-36 million, depending on what source you go by. The marketing budget is another 2-10 million, again depending on what source you go by. That gets us to a cost of 32-46 million, with an opening gate of 15.3 million.

So that means that SoaP covered 33-48% of its cost on opening weekend.

In conrtast, a PG-13 rated movie called “Pacific Air Flight 121″ (the original rating and title) would probably have not faired so well. Without the blogosphere, there would be “No “Snakes on the Plane”, no gratuitous cartoony violence, no Samuel L. Jackson screaming “I’ve had it with these mother fucking snakes on this mother fucking plane!”. What kind of movie is that?

SoaP: A Unique Phenomenon
While the Church of the Customer is spot on on what lessons movie studios and marketers in general can learn, marketers should also remember that “Snakes on the Plane” is a unique product.

There are still ways of just throwing enough money at a bad movie to get a descent opening sales, but those days are waning. The blog-supported SoaP is not an alternative route to that. SoaP was embraced by the community because it was a wonderfully campy movie with a ridiculous plot. Indeed, the movie was concieved as a bet on purposely making a bad movie pitch.

Social Media Optimization Applied
Revisiting Rohit Bhargava’s “Social Media Optimization“, we see how SMO is in action for “Snakes on the Plane”. Here’s a some things I’ve noticed, but its not comprehensive:

• Rule:
  #4 Help your content travel
  …Applied in:
  “Get a Call from Samuel L. Jackson” Mobile Phone Viral
  “Snakes Kit” Downloadable Audio, Movie Clips, etc for distribution
• Rules:
  #7 Reward helpful and valuable users
  #3 Reward inbound links
  #5 Encourage the mashup:
  …Applied in:
  “Fan Site the Week” Feature (though could be improved)
  “Contest” – Vote for Biggest Fan
  Inviting bloggers in premiers with free Treos for live blogging
• Rules:
  #12 Don’t forget your roots, be humble
  …Applied in:
  Via MMM: “SoaP director Dave Ellis stopped by Snakes on a Blog to personally thank all the fans for making the movie a phenomenon.”

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Between Closed Content Creation and CGM
Traditional link building is broken down to 1) link request; 2) reciprocal link building; and 3) link buying. While still important, this type of link building is essentially pre-CGM, which I’ll call “Closed Content Creation” (CCC). With the advent of CGM, the amount of content and links available have driven upwards astronomically.

How has CGM changed the Internet and Search Landscape (Collected at SES-SJ2006)?

• 44% of Internet users are “content creators” (Pew)
• 12% of top SERPs for Business Week 100 is CGM (Converseon Research)
• Then consider that “56% of Consumers say best source of information on products and services is other consumers” (McKinsey).

In this sort of situation, soliciting bloggers – every consumer content creators – to link to your website is neither a practical nor a scalable effort.

Enter the need of PR, WoM and Virals…

FareCast – PR Success for Link Building
FareCast, a travel site that predicts when its best to buy airfare, launched recently in public beta launch in June 26. FareCast is an example of a website that has greatly harnassed the power of online PR, climbing up tremendously in brand awareness, traffic and search engine presence

Appearing on heavy hitting blogs like TechCrunch.com and BattelleMedia.com has resulted in:

• First two weeks of public beta launch > 40% of traffic are from Blogs
• Traffic led by TechCrunch, BattelleMedia.com, Koktte.org, Del.icio.us, Consumerist and others
• 200 Blogs Post on FareCast in 3 weeks
• Has had seen their inbound links increase from ~368 to 1160 (June 06 to June 3), 1925 in July 25 and ~2600 today.
• del.icio.us links increase from ~600 to 1141 in 10 days (June 27 to July 05). This has slowed down to ~1500 today
• Google ranking between 18-22 for “cheap airline tickets”

(Source: Data gathered internally and from Farecast Blog)

From Blogs to the New York Times to Time Magazine
From the major influencers (TechCrunch and BattelleMedia), FareCast has built momentum to myriad of blogs and eventually to New York Times and most recently the Time Magazine’s top 50 websites. FareCast has credited the blogs for driving coverage in the New York Times.

Conclusion
With no emarketing or PPC campaign I am aware of, Farecast’s PR efforts has create a link building that is helping drive their awareness, traffic and search engine visibility. Traditionaly link building would not have resulted in 200 blog post (and one can assume links) in 3 weeks as easily as a well placed review on TechCrunch or Digg could.

However, it should also be mentioned that Farecast has a very interesting and unique service offering, something that not every travel website can say. Indeed, CGM and WoM efforts only succeed if the value proposition to the consumers is there. You can’t try to force the product or service like you can by buying-up all the TV commercial runnings you want.

Traditional link building will always be the baseline level of effort needed. But, if you are confident that your service/product is great enough that it will make you audience evangelizers (talk, link, blog about it), then pushing online PR efforts will produce great results.

Other Links

• SEOBook – “101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006” (August 15)
• SEOMOz – “SEO Strategies: Combining non-search optimization with search optimization” (August 15)

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Combtail concludes the post on what kind of focus, approach and culture it’ll take to be success in this area:

“Success will come from integrating agility throughout an organisation rather than bolting on the odd social media campaign. But, this will require organisation and cultural changes within core focussed firms.

Social media marketing can become a value creation activity if adopted integrally and this really shouldn’t be ignored for long.”

Read the rest here.

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