Happy Independence Day, My Fellow Americans!

I know I’ve neglected this blog for awhile, blame it on an Attention Economy Crash, but with this Independence Day…You’ll start to see this blog picking up speed and becoming insightful (I hope!) once again.

Cheers!

I’ve been busy at ad:tech San Francisco last week, covering sessions for AdTechBlog.com. A great, but slightly taxing experience to write for all of the assigned sessions. I look forward to having the opportunity to do it again next year.

Here’s some of my witting that has been published so far over at the ad:tech blog:

• Mobile Advertising: Does Adidas Show it’s Already Here?
  Showcasing case studies from Transformers, Verizon and a particularly great case study on Adidas’ “Basketball is a Brotherhood” campaign and how mobile helped Adidas’ NBA stars like T-Mac connect with people at a personal level. This was one of my favorite sessions.
• The Modern Agency: We’re Still Trying to Find One
  We’ve been debating the “Modern Agency” for some time. This session, with panelists from Carat to AKQA, shows we know we need a Modern Agency, but it is apparent we still have trouble understanding exactly what that is.
• A Socratic Dialog on Media and Entertainment
  Discussion with people from Martha Stewart Digital, Ogilvy West, CNet and a former Walmart exec on the fracturing of media - from Hulu to Video-on-Demand to podcasting - and how to formulate the right mix of media for your audience.

If anyone has feedback on the articles, please comment on the appropriate page above at AdTechBlog.com.

To everyone that has been twittering and commenting to my articles here at Emergence-Media, thank you for all of your feedback. I’ll be sure to respond to all of them this week. This week is Web 2.0 Expo week, but I’m still feeling exhausted from last week’s ad:tech madness.

Hi Everyone,

For the duration of the week, I’ll be mostly blogging over at AdTechBlog.com to cover ad:tech San Francisco with Steve Hall and six other fine bloggers journalist.

Catch up on all the ad:tech fun over at:

1. http://AdTechBlog.com/
2. http://twitter.com/danielriveong
3. http://flickr.com/photos/emergencemedia

And if there are any exclusive ad:tech parties, please send an invite my way!

On another note, my employer, e-Storm International, is throwing an ad:tech party in Otis Wednesday night at 6pm. RSVP details over at the e-Storm Blog.

Cheers!

Daniel

Twitter - the mobile-based microblogging service - has become the new darling among social media marketers and internet geeks since the SXSWi conference in 2007. Lacking any kind of monetization model, Twitter seems a trendy but not sustainable company, like PointCast in the 1990s.

Maybe Twitter wont be around to see 2010, yet many major brands have moved in to communicate with consumers and the world via Twitter: H&R Block (Finance), 10 Downing Street (The UK equivalent of US “White House”), Zappos (Online Retailer) and countless others like BBC News to Yahoo’s Marketing Team and Amazon.com to the New York LaGuardia airport. Is this wasted energy by the PR/Marketing offices of H&R Block or even US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s social media team?

The short answer is: no.

But to expand more, let’s discuss two subjects:

1. Two Quick Reasons to Consider Twittering for your Brand
2. Case Studies on the 3 different types of Twitters:
   Conversational, News Item and Reputation Monitoring Twitter Users

Two Reasons to Twitter

1. Understanding Social Media Better

Just by utilizing twitter, these brands through experimentation are learning and understanding more about social media and their customers. Twitter may not have a business model yet, but reaching out and getting to know customers is part of the business process these brands need to have to survive. Be it blogging, facebook-ing or twittering - the same core skills in understanding how to reach customers are similar. Learning how to do it on twitter is a skillset that can be applied to feature social media mediums.

2. Keeping Track of the “Linkerati” (Highly vocal and connected influencers)

Despite the buzz and activity of Twitter.com, their membership of just over 1 million users seem a paltry sum compared to MySpace, Facebook , Bebo and others.

However, Twitter is definitely on the bleeding edge of early adopters, specifically the “Linkerati” (as coined by Rand Fishkin). The Linkerati are the special type of early adopters who are very vocal on the Internet - be it twittering, blogging or doing a Yelp/Amazon review of your business or product. Current Twitter members, due to their Linkerati demographic, may have a higher than average say on influencing your brand.

The 3 Different Types of Twittering Brands

1. Conversational Twitters: H&R Block, Zappos, 10 Downing Street

H&R Block, Zappos and 10 Downing Street are incredibly innovate in that they truly embrace twitter as a conversational & microblogging platform.

H&R Block

H&R Block reaches out to Twitter members complaining about taxes and assist as customer service for those dissatisfied with their H&R Block experience. And yes, H&R Block - a financial services company - even does the occasional fart-related humor on twitter.

Zappos

Zappos‘ twitter is run by the Zappos CEO. He covers daily events and going-ons at Zappos to askings for feedback on their new beta website and throwing a free shoe prize here and there. His comments go from the serious and jovial. The Zappos CEO is twittering as someone who just happens to work for Zappos (Steve from Zappos) instead of sounding like a press release channel for Zappos.

10 Downing Street

10 Downing Street, while a highly public and political office, attempts to humanize itself with mentions of everything from how a visit from George Clooney caused “quite the stir” with the 10 Downing Street staff to answering questions from fellow twitter members.

2. News Item Twitters: Amazon.com, New York Times

Both Amazon.com and New York Times utilize Twitter as another distribution platform to send their audience updates. For Amazon.com, this means pushing out news about their news sales (Gold Box), while the New York Times publishes their latest headlines. For them twitter is based used as a one way microblogging platform.

This is definitely not very *social* media, but it allows yet another route by which to reach their audience in a relatively low cost (same mechanism as an RSS feed) method. They are embracing the idea that they benefit from being present wherever and how ever people view and digest information, specifically their information.

3. Reputation Monitoring Twitters: Radian6 & GeekSquad

Finally, there companies like Radian6 and the GeekSquad, which while not necessarily on Twitter, they do monitor, track and respond to Twitter comments. Of course, tracking and responding to Twitter messages are more important than being on Twitter itself.

GeekSquad is fairly well known American at-home computer servicing company. Recently, a fellow blogger friend, Michael Brito, twittered about a poor experience he received from Geek Squad on Twitter:

Only a few hours after twitter, Michael learns:

A few hours later, I get an email from Robert Stephens, the Founder and Chief Inspector of the Geek Squad. He asked me what my issues were and that he would look into it. Let’s see if he lives up to his promise of personally resolving the complaints of those who read the The Consumerist(lol, not really a consumerist reader though).

Nonetheless, this is a great illustration of how a company can use social media to track conversations and (hopefully) take action. We will soon find out if the Geek Squad is going to create a loyal customer, with lots and lots of friends, family and acquaintances. ; )

Radian6 is a social media monitoring company, so no surprise here. Recently, a representative from Radian6 reached out to me and mentioned he saw my twitter on social media and wanted to know if I needed a demo.

They say what you say online is there forever. But how trackable is it?

The ultimate allure of online marketing is accountability. You cannot count how many people saw a billboard on the 280 freeway, but you can count how many saw a banner ad on CNN. And even, if that click became a sale.

But just as tracking clicks online have limitation, so does tracking conversations, influence and word of mouth. How do you track conversations that occurs between different social media websites?

From Todd Defren:

You write a blog post. You tweet about it. It gets posted to your FriendFeed profile. You share it via Facebook. You save it to del.icio.us.

…

Or, they comment directly via your FriendFeed profile. Or they comment on your Facebook post.

Social Media’s Broken Conversations & Broken Tools

Such “broken conversations” can have potential implications for the social media monitoring, as Todd Defren smartly points out:

Social Media Monitoring vendors like Radian6, Buzzmetrics, etc. who may judge a bloggers’ level of importance & engagement by evaluating the comment threads that follow each post. If those comment streams are happening in Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, etc., I doubt it’s being captured and evaluated by the measurement gurus – thus undervaluing many bloggers’ influence (and certainly discounting their level of “engagement”).

So, is it time to panic? Not quite.

Limitations for Online Analytics: From Visitors to Marketing Influence

Let’s go back to “clicking on banners and tracking to a sale” point earlier. While it is definitely trackable compared to a billboard in a highway, it is not absolutely trackable. That is - things happen: cookie blockers, problems with defining a “user” or a “visitor”, and more. WebTrends, Omniture, and Google Analytics will all track the same events differently, sometimes differing by as much as 20%.

Some let’s look at the limitations:

• Social Monitoring Tools are Limited
  From BuzzLogic to Cymphony: All of these vendors need to improve, but they will all have their limitations. Brand managers, marketers and PR people must be very aware of the limitations. These tools all all literally crawl millions of pages of the web, but there are billions upon billions of total conversations going on in the web.
• How common are Cross-Media Conversations?
  Todd’s example of cross-media conversations (people responding to a blog via twitter, someone responding to a forum posting on a blog) are probably (at least for now) in the minority of conversations in the web.
• Are we aiming for the “Forrest” or for the “Trees”
  Even if these individual conversations are not being tracked. How much of the picture is missing? Yes a conversation will be missed here and there, but if a blogger really is influential - wouldnt we expect some (if not most) of conversations still happening via comments, trackbacks and links back to the post?
• Customer Service Issue
  But if customer service is the chief objective, should we worry about the missed conversations? Isn’t this that what a community manager is for (to add to what social monitoring tools cannot do)? Or is this asking too much? Can we reasonably have good customer service, if we can only follow 80% of the conversation? How about 65%?

Todd Defren has definitely asked a particularly interesting question and indeed that’s gonna be a question I’ll ask the social media monitoring guys over at ad:tech San Francisco next week.

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.

Hello All,

We’re two weeks away from ad:tech San Francisco on April 15-17! I’ll be working with Steve Hall of Adrants and other cool bloggers to cover ad:tech for AdTechBlog.com. I can’t confirm what sessions I’ll be covering yet, but it will be fun.

If you’ll be at ad:tech San Francisco, feel free to drop a comment below, an email or call me at (415)-683-3656. I’ll be twittering the event at twitter.com/danielriveong. Let me know what happening parties will be around or just ping me to grab a drink and exchange war stories.

And thanks to Ariel Waldman of ShakeWellBeforeUse for the connection.

Cheers,

Daniel

When reading U.S. Senator Barack Obama’s speech on race this month, one particular line caught this marketer’s eye:

And I confess that if all that I knew of Reverend Wright were the snippets of those sermons that have run in an endless loop on the television and YouTube, or if Trinity United Church of Christ conformed to the caricatures being peddled by some commentators, there is no doubt that I would react in much the same way. (Emphasis mine)

In Obama’s pivotal election year speech to the American people, Obama not only mention YouTube but does it in the same breath as television. We’ve come along way from when YouTube was just a way for Americans to see clips of shows like Saturday Night Live.

While Social Media is not the end all be all of media, the influence is wide ranging - from the U.S. 2008 elections to the TSA Blog/YouTube Channel to helping organizing mass street protests against FARC in Columbia.

See below for a run down…

Contents:

1. TSA does Blogging and YouTube
2. Facebook helps organize millions of Columbians protests against FARC
3. Churches live stream their services on Ustream.TV

United States Transportation Security Authority

TSA Agent Bob explains why the MacBookAir can cause issues in airports

One of the biggest questions major brands have is “If we start a blog and someone comments something nasty about us, what do we do?” Our response always has been “there will always be someone being negative, but the best thing to do is to address it and be open”.

One major “brand” that has taken the step on sticking its own neck out is the US Transportation Security Authority (TSA), a name many travelers in the US has made synonymous with frustration. Starting last month, the TSA has started their very own blog called “Evolution in Security” in their attempt to address travelers concerns and frustrations.

And what happens when a bad comment arise? Surprisingly, for the most part, most of the comments are left uncensored and brutal. And they also respond to blog postings about the TSA:

1. “Rumor Alert: Conflict of Interest at TSA?”
   This blog post is a response to a blogger at PajamaMedia: “Blogger and pundit Annie Jacobsen published a piece titled, “Top TSA Officials in Cheating Scandal Also Ran Private Consulting Firm” on Saturday, March 15. This piece has been linked to from several blogs and other sites in the past day.”
2. MacBook Air YouTube Response
   There’s been a story circulated by a blogger on how he was missed his flight because his MacBook Air arouse suspicion from TSA agents who didnt believe the MacBook Air was a real computer. TSA did a YouTube response explaining the situation.

Facebook and Mass Protests in Columbia and the World

Source: Paul White/The Associated Press from IHT.com

As reported by IHT in February 2008:

Facebook has helped bring public protest to Colombia, a country with no real history of mass demonstrations.

A young Colombian engineer used the social networking site last week to organize a massive protest against the Revolutionary Armed Forces, known as FARC. On Feb. 4, millions of Colombians marched simultaneously in 27 cities throughout the country and 104 major cities around the world shouting “No more kidnappings! No more lies! No more deaths! No more FARC!”

The Churches are Steaming on the Internet

Beyond politics and government, Social Media is also possibly changing how many people worship. A quick look at the video streaming website Ustream shows over 150 churches using Ustream.TV delivering their Sunday services and sermons live on the Internet. Will the next Billy Graham, the famous TV evangelical preacher, come not from television but on some future version of YouTube? And yes, there is a service called GodTube.

Among the usual top Delicious articles about twitter and social networks were three adult websites. All seeded by the same account and all had tags added by same users. Going back to what I’ve been talking about the past 2-3 weeks, Social Media Spam is a real problem. Just don’t call it an SEO problem.

If you’re so inclined, I just wanted to publish my information on where you can reach me:

On Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/danielriveong

On Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/emergencemedia

On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Daniel_Riveong/11700085

By the way, on Facebook, unless I know you personally, I’ll add you under “Limited Profile” view. I’m attempting to separate my Personal and Public profiles on the web.

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.

I recently asked the “Twittersphere” on their thoughts on wikis (specifically, I was thinking for use with Emergence-Media). Should I use PBWik or try out WetPaint? I’ve used PBWiki for a long time and belong to over 10 PBwikis, but I was compelled by WetPaint’s refreshing interface. What I didn’t find so refreshing was PBWiki’s initial response to my Twitter:

Now, I’ve met PBWiki folks and they’re good people. But, their simple comment “I would go with PBWiki” completely turned me off. Why?

I had a really bad taste in my mouth for being so directly pitched to by what felt like was a one-to-one person medium. I was expecting not a “pitch” but “customer service”: “What are you looking for in a wiki? Would you like to try our free trial?”

Am I nitpicking? Maybe, and again I love the PBwiki guys so I hate to use them as an example (albeit small example). But, I fear how may other consumers out there could be so easily turned-off by something so small, yet so big.

The ability to deliver context and proper conversation right off the bat is everything and in this one small case, that didnt happen.

The lesson (as best done in humor of Hugh MacLeod):

This is how we’ll get down in all future client training meetings.

This Paid Search 101 Rap Video was found via Laura Lippay from Facebook. So kudos to her for the find!

During the February 5th US Elections (aka “Super Tuesday”), I noticed on Twitter that people were participating in the New York Times’ “Polling Place Photo Project” website, a place to share photos and experiences of voting in the US on election day.

This New York Times website serves two interesting thought pieces on Social Media and Newspapers:

1. Changes: Business and Website Strategy
2. Search Engine Optimization: Linkbait Opportunity

Changing Business, Changing Website Strategy

At the surface, the introduction of bloggers and websites like New York Times’ “Polling Place Photo Project” seem just as a value add to bring additional awareness to the newspapers. However, this appears part of general trend where newspapers are becoming news-focused websites that happen to have a printed paper-edition.

Indeed, New York Times and Wall Street Journal continue to new content - add bloggers (Freakonomics), exclusive online content, video essays, and website spinoffs (OpinionJournal.com for WSJ and Blogrunner.com for NY Times) - that are changing the very meaning of what a newspaper is.

Remember what NY Times was back in the 1990s? Merely a literal online version of the newspaper:

Polling Photos Project as Linkabit and Missed SEO Opportunity

The NY Times “Polling Place Photo Project” website also represents genuinely interesting content, beyond the “forward to a friend video” viral approach, with a fairly scalable user-generated structure.

The website has attracted over 2,000 links to the New York Times domain and has fairly descent positioning for keywords like “San Francisco Polling Place”. The website has not be search engine optimized, yet by its inherent relevancy and strength of the link popularity has attained fairly descent rankings (usually within the top 20-30). With a proper SEO campaign and increased emphasis as a resource for polling places in the US, New York Times could have a very strong website in time for the November 2008 elections. And really, why not?

Anyone from NY Times wanna give me a call? :)

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