For those of you who’ve gotten to the social media portion of our final projects, you may, like me, be thinking about how your company can benefit from using Quora. I personally signed up for Quora a while back because it was the new trendy site, without any thought that the questions would be relevant to me, or that I would trust the answers of anyone on the site.
The other day, the New York Times announced that three New York Times journalists will use the site to engage readers, holding a sort of “office hours” during which they’d take users’ questions. Times Associate Managing Editor Jim Schachter wrote that this is just a test, and they’d have to see how it goes before considering embedding Quora on NewYorkTimes.com. The announcement is one of the coolest things I’ve hear come out of both the New York Times and Quora. Everybody benefits. Users benefit by having the opportunity to talk to tried and true experts, the New York Times benefits by giving people a timely reason to reach out and listen to their journalists, and Quora benefits by being known for hosting such interesting content exchanges.
Interestingly, when considering bias and the Internet, this model allows for a new kind of journalistic accountability, at least from those asking the questions. Each questioner’s entire social and online identity is tied to the question. So not only does it confirm the person’s identity but it gives an (at least basic level) summary of the questioner, through his or her social profile. A great idea and new direction… tt will be interesting to see how this “test” plays out.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
AmEx Wins!
In professor Pham's Marketing class, we were lucky enough to have the CMO of American Express meet with us, and during that discourse he asked us for Digital Marketing ideas. Specifically, he asked us to for potential engagement strategies for customers. Now, we skip ahead 3 months to Introduction to venturing with Murray low, where we are evaluating several technology companies. When we arrive at the group presenting GroupOn, the inevitable question about competitive insulation arises. Specifically, why doesn't AmEx make daily deals, leveraging the natural advantage they already have with our credit data and existing shops. The answer was "because they are a large company, and large companies suck at innovating." Today, we eat those words, because AmEx has released a new deals platform alongside Facebook.
Initial launch partners include big brands like H&M, Sports Authority, Dunkin' Donuts, Sheraton, Westin, Travelocity and Celebrity Cruises. This is a massive rollout, and I think it's brilliant for AmEx to engage customers on the web, a previous weakness of theirs, and for Facebook to gather even more data about its users. The deal requires that you link your Facebook account to your AmEx, which will naturally be the big questionable privacy point, but if you volunteer this data, the rest is easy sailing. The major problem with many of the daily deal sites is the outreach and training required to use the coupons, but because AmEx has an existing relationship with these shops, they can apply the discount without any additional actions from the shops.
This is the natural outcome of the daily deals fad, it is primarily a marketing tool with questionable financials, but now AmEx can fully own that it is a relationship building tool, rather than a bottom line item. I fully anticipate AmEx becoming the dominant force in online daily deals very soon, and the other credit cards should be following suit before the end of the year.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Captain America Converts for Dunkin Donuts
Because I need two promotions to get me to act on anything, Dunkin Donuts (DND) was recently able to complete a promotion I participated in at a Mets game a few months ago with the help of their promotion for the new Captain America movie.
The Mets had given me a discount coupon and I had noticed that Dunkin had a pretty flashy promotion going for the new superhero film, with red, white and blue Coolatas and theme cups for other drinks. I have been waiting 35 years for the Captain America movie, but a cup alone was not enough to get me into the store.
Once I used my Met discount card to obtain a latte, I then used the text code on the cup to enter the online contest Dunkin was running for the movie, and see the exciting content online.
The movie alone was not enough to get me to convert, but with my cheap latte, I was able to see a few of the Captain America promotions' possible conversion goals:
1. Entering personal info to sign up for the contest.
2. Entering personal info to sign up for Dunkin Donuts rewards program.
3. Returning to the site to see more previews and trailers.
4. Downloading wallpaper and other media.
5. Purchasing movie tickets.
Because the trigger for the contest was a text message, Dunkin and Marvel have the opportunity to locate where the promotion worked the best, especially when combining a few of the metrics above. Movie theater tickets are a highly local purchase as well, so this contest creates numerous data points for marketers to analyze.
Superhero movies are unique in that they appeal to a wide range of age groups compared to other action/big-budget films. By associating with a very mainstream product, albeit one with a focus in the northeast, Captain America's marketers seem to be focusing on adults age 35+, and this makes sense as it would be a valuable audience for Dunkin Donuts too. Captain America is mostly from the 60s and 70s, so the content matches the conversion goals as well.
The Mets had given me a discount coupon and I had noticed that Dunkin had a pretty flashy promotion going for the new superhero film, with red, white and blue Coolatas and theme cups for other drinks. I have been waiting 35 years for the Captain America movie, but a cup alone was not enough to get me into the store.
Once I used my Met discount card to obtain a latte, I then used the text code on the cup to enter the online contest Dunkin was running for the movie, and see the exciting content online.
The movie alone was not enough to get me to convert, but with my cheap latte, I was able to see a few of the Captain America promotions' possible conversion goals:
1. Entering personal info to sign up for the contest.
2. Entering personal info to sign up for Dunkin Donuts rewards program.
3. Returning to the site to see more previews and trailers.
4. Downloading wallpaper and other media.
5. Purchasing movie tickets.
Because the trigger for the contest was a text message, Dunkin and Marvel have the opportunity to locate where the promotion worked the best, especially when combining a few of the metrics above. Movie theater tickets are a highly local purchase as well, so this contest creates numerous data points for marketers to analyze.
Superhero movies are unique in that they appeal to a wide range of age groups compared to other action/big-budget films. By associating with a very mainstream product, albeit one with a focus in the northeast, Captain America's marketers seem to be focusing on adults age 35+, and this makes sense as it would be a valuable audience for Dunkin Donuts too. Captain America is mostly from the 60s and 70s, so the content matches the conversion goals as well.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Digital marketing, much more than an advertising tool
When we talk about digital marketing, the common sense is to think about a tool companies use to advertise their business. However in some industries digital marketing has been able not only to influence the advertising strategy of the companies but also to change the structure of their main business model.
During my consulting experience I had the chance to work for an international pharmaceutical company to optimize their marketing strategy. Because of the recent economic crisis, my client had to cut costs by reorganizing its sales force and making it more effective. Sales representatives are part of the core business of a pharmaceutical company. Their job is quite difficult, as they have to sell drugs to very busy doctors that do not want to meet them. In 2010, one every four American doctors claimed he/she was not willing to meet sales representatives because of the “bad reputation” that pharmaceutical companies have. Facing this current situation, many companies started to use digital marketing to improve their sales techniques and cut costs. Digital sales became the opportunity to sell drugs without the intrusion of an office visit. AstraZeneca, for example, created a digital marketing tool called “AZ Touchpoints”, a website where doctors can ask questions, order free samples, ask about insurance coverage and learn about all the products. The site contains also brochures that the doctor can print out and use with his/her patients and is supported by a call center to answer whatever question a doctor might have. These new digital marketing instruments are not seen yet as replacement, but as a good supplementing instrument to sales representatives. The advantages of these new tools are that they give the possibility to decrease marketing costs by reducing the number of sales representatives, have a better utilization of reps allocating them to new products or to the most complex drugs and they also give the doctors the option to avoid meeting the sales force. Moreover by tracking doctors’ behaviors on the website, the pharmaceutical company can understand better their interests and target accordingly the new products offers. The negative side of this marketing strategy is that the sale becomes much more “pull” than “push”, in the sense that doctors have to decide by themselves to go to the website and look for the product instead of being pushed by the sales representative. Still overall the new strategy seems to work pretty well. Proof of that is given by the constantly increasing number of new medical applications and websites, such as Coags Uncomplicated, which offers tools to help doctors diagnose bleeding disorders and many other apps offered by Sanofi-Aventis, Merck, Pfizer Inc., GlaxoSmithKline PLC and Novartis AG.
Spotify... changing an entire industry?
So after months of speculation that this amazing music service was going to arrive to the US... finally the time has come and this week Spotify launched its service into the american market... The media and the business world are very excited cretting huge expectations... is it going to be the same success than in Europe...? Does this notion of renting music for 10$ a month will be translated into other industries ? What happened with the idea of buying music...? How does this affect Intellectual Property rights...? Itunes already revolutionized the music store concept globally... so I'm sure than Apple will give it a big fight back... so why it hasn't launched a similar concept of service yet with their available music rights.... Do they think it won't work and maybe European purchasing habits are different than americans...? Let's see what happens but if there's a clear sign from this launching is that the way content is been sold might change in the near future if Spotify is a big success.
E-mail Newsletters: Is the Market Saturated?
There are a ton of "lifestyle" e-mail newsletters out there that cater to more of a young, hip, urban audience. Thrillist, Daily Candy, Urban Daddy are just a few that we discussed in class. Expanding upon just the editorialized, article-based newsletters are the e-commerce-based newsletters. The big player there is Gilt Groupe. Another segment of sites that is e-mail heavy are the coupon sites like Groupon or Living Social.
I get so many of these types of emails that if the subject line doesn't jump at me, they just get filtered or deleted away. Another concern I have with these newsletters is that the content just seems forced. Either it is obvious that a bar, designer or store paid for the space or the copy is very trite ("soak up craft suds with gourmet, organic gastropub grub").
What I think is needed in this space is unique and differentiated content. A lot of what I see on these sites seems like rehashed versions of previous content. One way around this is to add even more customization to what users receive.
I get so many of these types of emails that if the subject line doesn't jump at me, they just get filtered or deleted away. Another concern I have with these newsletters is that the content just seems forced. Either it is obvious that a bar, designer or store paid for the space or the copy is very trite ("soak up craft suds with gourmet, organic gastropub grub").
What I think is needed in this space is unique and differentiated content. A lot of what I see on these sites seems like rehashed versions of previous content. One way around this is to add even more customization to what users receive.
Is portal dead?
Portal.. means gate. I mean it used to be a 'gateway' to all source of information, such as search, news, e-mail, personal blog, internet community and so many other stuff..
Yes, this was the period when yahoo ruled the world.
However, now what do we have? Google and facebook... Google took the function of Search and e-mail, and facebook took the function of blog and community.. I believe that if Google buys Facebook, they will once again become total package, that is, portal.
So here is my question.. if a portal can provide everything in one stop service, what is the reason that they are sharply declining in US market?
Unlike US, actually in Asia (China, Japan, Korea.. and others) portal remains strong and google is doing awful.. What is the factor that makes american walk away from portal?
Lack of Privacy
We talked a lot about privacy being compromised in social media websites which thrive on UGC. But think about the privacy infringement in traditional media - case in point, News of the World.
When reporters went to unethical lengths to obtain news tidbits on the royal family and a variety of celebrities in the UK, an elaborate legal proceeding ensued. Finally, this terminated in the newspaper being closed down along with the resignation of top government officers. The point to be noted is that with traditional media, accountability is much higher. Media outlets are limited and subject to stringent scrutiny.
But social media, being as ubiquitous as it is, is very difficult to censure. This is compounded by the fact that news spreads instantaneously online, making damage control much harder. It will be interesting to track the evolution of online watchdogs and the roles they take on going forward.
When reporters went to unethical lengths to obtain news tidbits on the royal family and a variety of celebrities in the UK, an elaborate legal proceeding ensued. Finally, this terminated in the newspaper being closed down along with the resignation of top government officers. The point to be noted is that with traditional media, accountability is much higher. Media outlets are limited and subject to stringent scrutiny.
But social media, being as ubiquitous as it is, is very difficult to censure. This is compounded by the fact that news spreads instantaneously online, making damage control much harder. It will be interesting to track the evolution of online watchdogs and the roles they take on going forward.
Epic Mealtime & Youtube
Youtube created many online wonder - one that is worthy of noting is this channel named "Epic Mealtime". It all started when a group of college students (or unemployed college grads) got together and made videos of themselves making gigantic, record-breaking, sized meal. Their most notable video is one that was released in Nov 2010, in which they made a video about stuffing a turkey with five different types of birds (duck, chicken, garnish hen, quail, etc), and putting this massive turkey in a roasted baby pig. Throughout this video, there is a calorie counter that showed how much calories they can consumer (75,000 calories for this thing). They are also famous because they like to cook and consumer and inexorable amount of bacon strips.
These videos had gone viral and the channel garnered millions of subscribers. In fact, it has so many visitors that it became the 3rd most viewed online video channel in all of Canada. These kids became semi-celebrities overnight and it is a huge social phenomenal now. Since their videos get so many views, marketer and big corporations took notice. In their recent videos, they now have sponsored segment by Netflix, EB-Games, and other big companies that want a piece of the air time.
Talk about revolution in advertisement.
Internet companies’ valuations –back to the future?
With the recent talk of high profile IPO plans and multi-billion valuations of internet companies I wonder if we are experiencing a second round of the tech bubble. Theory tells us that a company’s worth is equal to the present value of its future cash flows. In practice it is very difficult to forecast cash flows, even for brick and mortar companies with fairly stable revenues. In the on-line realm, forecasting cash flows is only an illusion of due diligence. Amazon lost money in the 90s and now is worth around $85 billion. Some analysts said it would never make money, and certainly it wouldn’t if it had remained selling books on-line. But who did effectively forecast that Amazon would become an e-commerce platform, and even if someone did, how to value that?
Not all companies can replicate the success of Amazon. Take MySpace for example, which was bought in 2005 by NewsCorp for $580 million, it hit a top valuation of $12 billion in 2007, and in 2011 it was sold to Specific Network for $35 million. This illustrates that the perception of MySpace’s ability to generate cash in the future changed dramatically in a short period of time. The overvaluation of internet-enabled opportunities that in the end do not deliver the expected returns are common. The “new media” opportunity in the AOL-Time Warner merger comes to mind, $350 billion made it the largest merger in U.S. history, and a colossal failure.
More recently we have seen several internet companies that command incredibly high valuations in relation to their earnings. Linkedin with a market value of around $9.5 billion has revenue around $200 million. Pandora with a value of around $3.6 billion had revenues of $90 million for the first 3 quarters of fiscal 2011 but still reported a loss of $0.3 million, they don’t expect to report earnings until the end of fiscal 2012. Later this year we’ll see multi-billion IPOs for Groupon and Zynga. Groupon launched in the end of 2008, in two years it had revenues around $700 million, which generated an offer by Google for $6 billion (in the low range of the valuations in the news today). Zynga on the other hand is already very profitable, it generates $17 million of free cash flow each month giving it a valuation of $14.5 billion.
Certainly some of the multi-billion on-line companies will give shape to their respective market segments and be very profitable, others will “pivot” until they figure out a successful business model, and others –most of them– will perish in the attempt. Insofar as investors think these companies can effectively be as profitable as their valuations suggest I wouldn’t say we are experiencing a bubble. Nevertheless, I do believe some companies are overvalued by Venture Capital activity that is betting on selling these companies to the established players (e.g. Google, Facebook, MS, etc.) at much higher prices in the future. This phenomenon has been characteristic of the development of the business models enabled by the internet. Whenever there is an opportunity of something becoming the next big thing a lot of capital flows in and valuations soar when competitors rush to get in first. In the end, some companies turn out to be worth their buzz, and many others don’t.
Not all companies can replicate the success of Amazon. Take MySpace for example, which was bought in 2005 by NewsCorp for $580 million, it hit a top valuation of $12 billion in 2007, and in 2011 it was sold to Specific Network for $35 million. This illustrates that the perception of MySpace’s ability to generate cash in the future changed dramatically in a short period of time. The overvaluation of internet-enabled opportunities that in the end do not deliver the expected returns are common. The “new media” opportunity in the AOL-Time Warner merger comes to mind, $350 billion made it the largest merger in U.S. history, and a colossal failure.
More recently we have seen several internet companies that command incredibly high valuations in relation to their earnings. Linkedin with a market value of around $9.5 billion has revenue around $200 million. Pandora with a value of around $3.6 billion had revenues of $90 million for the first 3 quarters of fiscal 2011 but still reported a loss of $0.3 million, they don’t expect to report earnings until the end of fiscal 2012. Later this year we’ll see multi-billion IPOs for Groupon and Zynga. Groupon launched in the end of 2008, in two years it had revenues around $700 million, which generated an offer by Google for $6 billion (in the low range of the valuations in the news today). Zynga on the other hand is already very profitable, it generates $17 million of free cash flow each month giving it a valuation of $14.5 billion.
Certainly some of the multi-billion on-line companies will give shape to their respective market segments and be very profitable, others will “pivot” until they figure out a successful business model, and others –most of them– will perish in the attempt. Insofar as investors think these companies can effectively be as profitable as their valuations suggest I wouldn’t say we are experiencing a bubble. Nevertheless, I do believe some companies are overvalued by Venture Capital activity that is betting on selling these companies to the established players (e.g. Google, Facebook, MS, etc.) at much higher prices in the future. This phenomenon has been characteristic of the development of the business models enabled by the internet. Whenever there is an opportunity of something becoming the next big thing a lot of capital flows in and valuations soar when competitors rush to get in first. In the end, some companies turn out to be worth their buzz, and many others don’t.
Twitter – King of Publishers
Awe.sm co-founder Jonathan Strauss recently published an article 'Twitter drives 4 times as much traffic as you think' giving facts as to how publishers underestimate the volume of links shared / traffic driven by Twitter. Awe.sm's findings were as follows:
As mentioned above, only 25% of the traffic generated from tweets comes with a twitter.com referrer. This makes calculating the true amount of traffic attributable to twitter very complex. There are a number of reasons why links shared on Twitter don't get the referrer credit they deserve. Many users simply use Twitter clients that don't pass referrer information which means that this traffic will never get attributed to Twitter.
And increasingly, links shared find their way onto other sites which display tweets and feeds – traffic generated from these tweet will also won’t have Twitter as its referrer. The reason for this is that a lot of 3rd party websites syndicate tweets on their own sites, to add real-time content to compliment their service. As the tweet is now on a 3rd party site, it means that when the user clicks on a link, their browser will pass the referrer details of the site which was displaying the tweet, not Twitter.com. This issue of being unable to truly track the impact of tweets suggests that Twitter has a huge amount of advertising potential for publishers - and it is just getting started in this area.
Since last year when Twitter first launched its advertising platform and its two ad formats – ‘Promoted Tweets’ and ‘Promoted Trends’ it has been slowly experimenting and releasing more and more features for marketers. Early this March it launched geographical segmentation which allows marketers to do more localised and targeted advertisements e.g. showing different ads to different Twitter users across the world. It is also working on a strategy allowing marketers to target Promoted Accounts–its pay-per-follower feature–by country.
This was followed by their recent launch of “Quickbar” (their much hated feature) – a bar installed across the top of their app which “shows trends and other important stuff”.
Lenore in her post has already talked about the emerging trends of “Promoted Tweets To Followers” in the Twitter story. This would allow brands to send messages directly to users who already follow them by inserting advertising at the top of their timelines. These tweets would appear in the followers’ actual timelines. In the past a Twitter user would only see personalised tweets it he/she search for a specific term but this is no longer the case.
If the Quickbar uproar was any indication I am sure lots of devoted Twitter user will have something to say about all these new ad features of Twitter. Twitter might be trying to please its users by saying that Quickbar is an ‘alert system’ that will deliver ads and other information to the user but that is just sugar coating the truth. Quickbar is an ad delivery mechanism first and foremost. Regardless of what the Twitter users say, the truth of the matter is if Twitter cannot convert its inventory into money stream, we will eventually be tweeting its demise.
Other Sources: Quickbar, Personalised tweets
- Just under 25% of links shared on Twitter produced a twitter.com referrer.
- Nearly a third of links shared on Twitter contained no referrer information.
- 13% of Twitter links listed another referrer.
As mentioned above, only 25% of the traffic generated from tweets comes with a twitter.com referrer. This makes calculating the true amount of traffic attributable to twitter very complex. There are a number of reasons why links shared on Twitter don't get the referrer credit they deserve. Many users simply use Twitter clients that don't pass referrer information which means that this traffic will never get attributed to Twitter.
And increasingly, links shared find their way onto other sites which display tweets and feeds – traffic generated from these tweet will also won’t have Twitter as its referrer. The reason for this is that a lot of 3rd party websites syndicate tweets on their own sites, to add real-time content to compliment their service. As the tweet is now on a 3rd party site, it means that when the user clicks on a link, their browser will pass the referrer details of the site which was displaying the tweet, not Twitter.com. This issue of being unable to truly track the impact of tweets suggests that Twitter has a huge amount of advertising potential for publishers - and it is just getting started in this area.
Since last year when Twitter first launched its advertising platform and its two ad formats – ‘Promoted Tweets’ and ‘Promoted Trends’ it has been slowly experimenting and releasing more and more features for marketers. Early this March it launched geographical segmentation which allows marketers to do more localised and targeted advertisements e.g. showing different ads to different Twitter users across the world. It is also working on a strategy allowing marketers to target Promoted Accounts–its pay-per-follower feature–by country.
This was followed by their recent launch of “Quickbar” (their much hated feature) – a bar installed across the top of their app which “shows trends and other important stuff”.
Lenore in her post has already talked about the emerging trends of “Promoted Tweets To Followers” in the Twitter story. This would allow brands to send messages directly to users who already follow them by inserting advertising at the top of their timelines. These tweets would appear in the followers’ actual timelines. In the past a Twitter user would only see personalised tweets it he/she search for a specific term but this is no longer the case.
If the Quickbar uproar was any indication I am sure lots of devoted Twitter user will have something to say about all these new ad features of Twitter. Twitter might be trying to please its users by saying that Quickbar is an ‘alert system’ that will deliver ads and other information to the user but that is just sugar coating the truth. Quickbar is an ad delivery mechanism first and foremost. Regardless of what the Twitter users say, the truth of the matter is if Twitter cannot convert its inventory into money stream, we will eventually be tweeting its demise.
Other Sources: Quickbar, Personalised tweets
how do the Chinese online video players differentiate themselves
The online video players in the US market have different positions and may target at different users. For example, Youtube is very interactive and the customers involve a lot in contributing to the contents, while Hulu itself is the content provider, acting as a distribution channel for these programs. But things are different in China. In the China market, there are around 10+ online video players and their operation models are very similar. Youku, the company recently went IPO in New York Stock exchange, is the leader in China market. While it find itself hard to differentiate from other similar online video companies. New entrants supported by established internet companies, such as Qiyi by Baidu.com (BIDU, NR), QQ video by Tencent (700-HK, NR), Sohu video by Sohu.com (SOHU, NR), are rapidly gaining users and possibly market share. These online video sites as well as Tudou.com (IPO pending) and PPStream (private) all likely have achieved over 100M monthly visitors during 1Q11, some closely following YOKU’s 231M in 1Q11. Almost all major competitors are willing to invest large amount of capital on professionally-produced content purchase. How to differentiate yourself is a difficult question to answer for these companies.
Consumer = authority for B&M, but what about Online Stores?
I don't need to belabor the point that has been covered in recent lectures supporting the new found authority consumers hold in a Web 2.0 world, but something struck me as very odd as I was doing social media research for our Digital Media Project for Thrillist. Suddenly I stumbled upon the realization that there is no real equivalent of Yelp, for example, for online stores. It's true, I don't make any purchases anymore without checking user ratings, be it through a dedicated service such as Yelp or a feature through an e-commerce site like Amazon...but where can I find a substantial volume of user ratings for a purely online service like Thrillist? I think that there is a huge opportunity here.
Sites like Yelp have made brand equity more important than ever before. Especially in a phase where discount deals and flash sales are exponentially increasing, wouldn't Thrillist want to be on a UGC site and rated, ideally, higher, than it's competitors like GiltCity? I did some research and there are site that have dabbled in this, such as StellaService, which has Amazon listed with no ratings, and Thrillist does not even show up. Clearly such a B2C offering needs to gain some traction, but I don't buy that this stuff is useful only for brick and mortar establishments.
Sure, there is no in-store experience, but Thrillist Rewards has plenty of other stuff if could be rated on, like service, deal quality, and most importantly, frequency with which the deal was really "deal". In a time where I get 10 flash sale emails a day, such service would greatly aid me in managing my emails, cutting out the dead weight and refocusing on the sales that are "best".
Sites like Yelp have made brand equity more important than ever before. Especially in a phase where discount deals and flash sales are exponentially increasing, wouldn't Thrillist want to be on a UGC site and rated, ideally, higher, than it's competitors like GiltCity? I did some research and there are site that have dabbled in this, such as StellaService, which has Amazon listed with no ratings, and Thrillist does not even show up. Clearly such a B2C offering needs to gain some traction, but I don't buy that this stuff is useful only for brick and mortar establishments.
Sure, there is no in-store experience, but Thrillist Rewards has plenty of other stuff if could be rated on, like service, deal quality, and most importantly, frequency with which the deal was really "deal". In a time where I get 10 flash sale emails a day, such service would greatly aid me in managing my emails, cutting out the dead weight and refocusing on the sales that are "best".
PPC for keywords your website is already visible organically
The question "Should I spend money on CPC/PPC Ads for keywords I am already ranked higher through search engine optimization (SEO)?" Well the article I read today has the same answer.i.e. "It depends". I am confused and therefore sharing here to see if someone have a better idea or experience.
Let me rephrase my question by using Amazon example I just ran on my brohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifwser. Look at the highlighted sections, Ads verses Organic results.
Now that you see this visually, I would like to know why Amazon invested in PPC for keywords like "Camera", "Best Camera" when they are organically listed on Google first page at #7/8.
It looks clear to me that they have a set budget for PPC that they need to spend in any case. Also it does look like that it is working for them quite well. So should I assume that SEO+SEM should go parallel to cover each other and there is no hard and fast rule where the searchers will clicking.
This article might be interesting for some of you looking for answers.
Let me rephrase my question by using Amazon example I just ran on my brohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifwser. Look at the highlighted sections, Ads verses Organic results.
Now that you see this visually, I would like to know why Amazon invested in PPC for keywords like "Camera", "Best Camera" when they are organically listed on Google first page at #7/8.
It looks clear to me that they have a set budget for PPC that they need to spend in any case. Also it does look like that it is working for them quite well. So should I assume that SEO+SEM should go parallel to cover each other and there is no hard and fast rule where the searchers will clicking.
This article might be interesting for some of you looking for answers.
Specialization in Social Media Monitoring
As social media sites are being used as an integral part of firm's digital marketing campaigns, monitoring and tracking tools are gaining momentum as well. Marketers interested in measuring the success of their campaigns will be relying more on such tools to extract values for the metrics they are monitoring.
Tools were once specialized by their focus on social media sites: you had the twitter tools, the facebook tools. However, a new breed of tools have emerged that focus on a specialty topic, like wine for example (read below article).
But is a vertical specialization sustainable? In theory, the idea looks appealing. Each specialization has certain lingo that people use so the tools to measure it will take that into consideration and thus provide a tailored service to that vertical. However, trends in the net have always favored scale.
Eventually, i believe monitoring tools will converge towards a mega platform across sites that provides a customization interface that will allow for keying in certain keywords specific to the vertical you want to monitor. This approach has roots in both worlds and benefits from scale and customization based on industry knowledge.
How much is Facebook really worth to a company?
We all know that every company out there should have a Facebook page- it increases brand visibility, it allows customers to interact with the company more, and hopefully builds loyalty to the brand. But one of the biggest problems with this type of social networking is what metrics to use… Is Facebook really helping your brand? Does it really make a difference to your bottom line?
While browsing through some of the material on EConsultancy, I was interested in a figure that at least partially addresses this. Rather than focusing on the issue of retention and customer loyalty, a recent study went to examine how much traffic does a Facebook page drive TO a company’s webpage. According to their study on leading retailers, each new Facebook fan acquired by a company results in an extra 20 page views of that company’s website.
The study focused on the share of all clicks each retailer received versus the share of all clicks after a visit to the company’s Facebook page. I think it is particularly interesting how they are measuring the number of people being driven to the company website from the Facebook page and not vice versa. As the article points out, however, there still remains no real way to determine what amount of these visits ends up resulting in sales.
Excluding Users to Attract Users
Just like most of us in the class, I've been following the buzz on Google+ and trying to figure out whether it has staying power versus Facebook. I'm not convinced, although it was kind of exciting to get my invitation and see which friends of mine were already on it. This ties into an article posted in the NY Times today about start-ups (and Google+) using exclusivity to attract users. It talks about Google+, which apparently has over 10 million accounts now, as well as a start-up called SocialCam which also rolled out their new app little by little. There is more than one advantage to this strategy - in addition to getting people to want what they can't have, the developers get to smooth out any possible problems with the app or site. Some analysts have said that this approach is counterintuitive - don't you want the most people signing up as fast as they can - but especially for a company with brand recognition like Google, I think it's anything but. Google+ had buzz from the beginning, and those of us who were interested in these things were reading articles about it from the bloggers and journalists who got the first invites to try to see what it was all about, and how it was different. This approach won't work for everyone; apps and sites with little name recognition probably do need to sign up as many users as possible, especially an app like "Color" which had a ton of buzz but is now failing because it requires a tipping point of users to make it actually fun. But for sites with cache like Google or an app with a completely unique and new idea that early adopters would want to use first and spread the word about, it's definitely a winning strategy.
Wait for me! says Microsoft
According to industry experts, Microsoft has "unintentionally" leaked information on their own social networking site in the works. A picture showing the homepage of Tulalip (also the name of a Native American tribe near Microsoft HQ), on the site socl.com, which is allegedly owned by Microsoft. The picture has since been pulled down and replaced with the statement, “Thanks for stopping by. Socl.com is an internal design project from a team in Microsoft Research which was mistakenly published to the web. We didn’t mean to, honest.”
Based on what we could see on the page, it seems like Tulalip will try to "socialize" the search process, and make it more interactive between communities. As the leaked page showed both FB and Twitter links, Tulalip will most likely leverage existing social networks rather than try to compete directly. Do we have room in our lives for yet another social networking function online? And will Microsoft, not known as an innovation powerhouse when compared to google and facebook, be able to successfully market to the social network users? And what's to stop google from easily incorporating a "social search" element into google+?
Based on what we could see on the page, it seems like Tulalip will try to "socialize" the search process, and make it more interactive between communities. As the leaked page showed both FB and Twitter links, Tulalip will most likely leverage existing social networks rather than try to compete directly. Do we have room in our lives for yet another social networking function online? And will Microsoft, not known as an innovation powerhouse when compared to google and facebook, be able to successfully market to the social network users? And what's to stop google from easily incorporating a "social search" element into google+?
Chris Brogan on 10 things CMOs should know about Google+
I've already logged my blog for this week :-), but this post from Chris Brogan about Google+ caught my eye. It's worth a read if you're trying to figure out whether it's worth your time to develop a presence. Google+ is tempting to downplay or ignore -- because who needs another social network? But Brogan talks about why it's likely to be an important player.
http://blogs.forbes.com/onmarketing/2011/07/18/10-things-cmos-need-to-know-about-google/
http://blogs.forbes.com/onmarketing/2011/07/18/10-things-cmos-need-to-know-about-google/
Sunday, July 17, 2011
From E-Commerce to Social Commerce
E-commerce has been around for eons now and most of us can piece together a fairly good definition of it. I’ve been looking into several companies who offer fully integrated ‘ecommerce’ solutions and as I adventured through various glamorous websites I started realizing that e-commerce is ‘so 2010’ and everyone is now raving about Social Commerce. So what is it?
My trusted fountain of knowledge Wikipedia defines it as ‘a subset of electronic commerce that involves using social media, online media that supports social interaction and user contributions, to assist in the online buying and selling of products and services’. Apparently Yahoo introduced the term some time ago to describe a set of online collaborative shopping tools such as user ratings and other user-generated content-sharing of online product information and advice. Given Professor Kagan’s emphasis on the fact we trust our peers recommendations more than companies – social commerce is fast becoming the only way to shop for customers and to shift stock faster for companies.
In the first 3 months of this year alone, $1.93 billion in funding was provided to social commerce start ups. Within this space, group buy businesses(such as Groupon ) and shopping clubs (e.g. Ideeli, KupiVIP) dominate but there are rising stars within social plugins for the ecommerce space and a new class of social reward platforms (social media powered referral programs e.g. MyLikes).
One good example of a social commerce company is Stylitics.com. A friend of mine started the company a year ago and it recently won the Wharton Business Plan Competition. It is a fashion insights company that provides a better way for brands to understand and connect with consumers. Stylitics use social media, games, rewards, and virtual closet features to give hand-picked consumers an easy way to share their styles and opinions with their favorite apparel brands and provide companies with valuable market insights compared to traditionally expensive consumer research methods.
Real time accurate insights in the fashion industry or indeed any industry are hard to come by. There is a lot of ‘social crap’ out there and if these guys find a way to filter it in a meaningful way by attracting insightful, fashion conscious and influential customers – the potential is massive.
My trusted fountain of knowledge Wikipedia defines it as ‘a subset of electronic commerce that involves using social media, online media that supports social interaction and user contributions, to assist in the online buying and selling of products and services’. Apparently Yahoo introduced the term some time ago to describe a set of online collaborative shopping tools such as user ratings and other user-generated content-sharing of online product information and advice. Given Professor Kagan’s emphasis on the fact we trust our peers recommendations more than companies – social commerce is fast becoming the only way to shop for customers and to shift stock faster for companies.
In the first 3 months of this year alone, $1.93 billion in funding was provided to social commerce start ups. Within this space, group buy businesses(such as Groupon ) and shopping clubs (e.g. Ideeli, KupiVIP) dominate but there are rising stars within social plugins for the ecommerce space and a new class of social reward platforms (social media powered referral programs e.g. MyLikes).
One good example of a social commerce company is Stylitics.com. A friend of mine started the company a year ago and it recently won the Wharton Business Plan Competition. It is a fashion insights company that provides a better way for brands to understand and connect with consumers. Stylitics use social media, games, rewards, and virtual closet features to give hand-picked consumers an easy way to share their styles and opinions with their favorite apparel brands and provide companies with valuable market insights compared to traditionally expensive consumer research methods.
Real time accurate insights in the fashion industry or indeed any industry are hard to come by. There is a lot of ‘social crap’ out there and if these guys find a way to filter it in a meaningful way by attracting insightful, fashion conscious and influential customers – the potential is massive.
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