Brand Digital

Digital Marketing Coach, Consultant, Co-Pilot

brand digital home - Social Media - Page 2

Notes from Authority Not Links Session at SMX in Seattle

by Leave a Comment

I attended the SMX Advanced show in Seattle in early June. This is a great event for search/social professionals and a good audience for Optify.  We sponsored this session on building authority not just links and had a booth. Below are my notes from the session which I thought was quite good with some helpful context and tips. Here is the link to the session info:

Thomas Schmitz – Schmitz Consulting

  • Search engines see themselves as protectors of people
  • Authority is evolving > bigger faster data center, crawl more info, process faster
  • How relevance and authority get measured has changed
  • Engines talk a lot about relevancy, but not about authority
  • Computers don’t understand things, they understand strings
  • Signals: Getting, bypassing budgeting authority
    • Website architecture > good top down plus cross linking
    • Canonical tags
    • Google + community brand pages > if in more circles, more likely to see G+ related results
    • Social signals > twitter and facebook create more content than google can crawl
    • Facebook Likes/Shares is a high correlation to high rankings
    • Platform and Intent: Mobile is about finding locations, Tablets are more about ready
    • Ratings: who are competitors getting ratings from?
    • Microformats
    • Brands – links, mentions and shares. Brands are a way to separate good from bad content
    • Technical Stuff  like increasing page speed
    • Bounce rate – google says not using, Bing says yes. Can effect authority if people block on return to SERP
    • Ratings on niche search engines – good ratings on a consistent daily/weekly basis

Philip Petrescu – Caphyon – Get Deck! Interesting graphs
– Desktop SEO software – Advanced WebRanking
– Blog ranks highly within 5 minutes without inbound links – social shares and signals only on top of good domain
○ Google loves fresh content
○ Good enough to share on Facebook, Twitter and Google + > influential people share
○ Getting influencers to talk about your post > social shares becoming more important than links
– Tips
○ Do keyword research prior to posting. What are people looking for?
○ Social signals are really important early in ranking process (links take longer to set)
○ Start to lose rankings after 1 plus week. If article is good, add the linking signals to page and keep rank up
○ Links: four categories – diversity, relevancy, quality, quantity
○ Brand signals can push ranking even though relevancy is low
– Conclusions
○ Relevancy is important, but too many exact match anchor text is not helpful
○ Brand signals are more important
○ Social Signals becoming more important ranking factors
○ Getting influencers to share is important

Eric Enge – Get Slides
– The magnifier of a campaign is the influencer
– The influencer may not always have the same audience, but a bigger and difference audience
– The influencer trust factor > people respond to what they have to say MORE > not just the volume of people but the impact on that audience
– Synergy that we’re trying to build
○ Create great article > share on social network > drive new followers/fans/friencs > drives links, traffic and shares back to site
○ Step 2 – influencers boost that cycle
– Where influencer marketing lives
○ PR – great place for this if they understand the goals are links, shares, go to resource, build your authority
○ Marketing – Yes – same as PR – need to get goal
○ Executives – only if you have a charismatic person
– Find them
○ Klout – look at your categories and find lists of people by Klout score
○ Twitter – search on keyword hashtag
○ Amazon book search – search on topic for authors
○ Conference agendas – speakers at your type of conferences
○ See who influencers are influenced BY
○ Who else writes for the same blog?
– Verify Influnce
○ Track T Followers, T Following, F Subscribers, G+ Follwers, G+ Following, RSS Subscribers, Klout score by Influencer
○ Track relevance – 1 to 10 score?
– Create links that don’t LOOK natural, they ARE natural
– “Looking Natural” links you won’t get
○ Article directories
○ Low Value directories
○ Blog and forum comments
○ Link networks
○ WordPress theme
– KISSmetrics
○ Influencer marketing
○ Featured in post/video by SEOmoz – top apps we love
○ Blog with quality content
○ Lots of guest posts on other sites (Geekwire, etc.) > high quality post on good site
○ Strong Twitter presence
○ Solid Facebook presence – active conversations
○ Post great content: 3 to 4 times per week, 2/3 of posts are from guest bloggers – they share too!
○ Guest post on other sites: 3-5 times per week
○ Always building relationships with influencers
○ Great content on Facebook & Twitter
○ Cross promote on Facebook & Twitter
○ Top anchor text is all brand name
§ Getting deep links to blog pages
○ The site gets 200,000+ visits per month

Cassie – Grasshopper.com
– Small brand is capable of competing with big boys
– Small virtual phone system – toll free numbers – small budget and marketing team
– Need to target presence on big sites: WSJ, Inc, Fortune, TechCrunch
– Quality leads to quantity
– Target specific sites > how do we get into TechCrunch?
– How to make people care about re-branding to GrassHopper
○ Targeted 500 influencers with package of chocolate covered grasshopper with link to video
○ 200+ news stories
○ 900k YouTube views
○ Bad ass links
○ Ranked to #3 with a month and #1 within 3 months on GrassHopper
– Focus on targeting ego’s
○ Who to follow post, what to follow post
– Video > New Dork two years ago
○ How do we target the areas where entrepreneurs hangout?
○ We talk about them in the video
○ Got more links and acknowledged that the bait worked
– Where to begin
○ Do your research: who and what to target
○ Create something valuable: it’s got to be good or really bad
○ Tell them about it: you’ve created this great thing, don’t be annoying
– Other ego-centric ideas
○ Quote an influencer on your site or in your materials
○ Rejoiner interviewed elastic path and post on their site
○ Create lists – top SEO professionals in Seattle
– Be a little Controversial
○ Put a blog post
○ Bragged about it
○ Reached out to press
○ TiVO proof ad > picked up on ad gabber and gawker
– Create a controlled controversy
○ Target is entrepreneurs day > started a petition to create a national entrepreneur day
○ President proclaims National Entrepreneur Day – Nov 19th
– Put on Your PR Hat
○ Social, SEO, PR is merging
○ Journalists are on Twitter and source stories there
○ HARO – www.helpareporterout.com
○ Twitter – www.nytimes.com/twitter
○ Muckrack.com
○ Wefollow.com

Four Things I Like About the New Twitter

by Leave a Comment

The social media landscape is evolving at  a rapid rate. More types of content are being integrated – not unlike Universal Search of a few years ago – Twitter is being embedded in more networks (and blogs! see right column on this post 🙂 ), Google +/Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn are all adding or updating business pages – it’s crazy! and awesome!

New Twitter Interface

But, this post is about the new Twitter – there are four things I really like about the updated design and new functionality:

  1. The new bar at the top including @connect and #discover. The @connect shows everyone who has mentioned me in their tweets from latest to earliest. In reviewing this I realized that I neglected to respond to an email to Eric – sorry! The #discover tag gives you a quick view into the rapid happenings captured by Twitter. The immediacy of Twitter is still it’s biggest value.
  2. Integration of videos and images into the main stream of tweets. This makes sharing and consuming the non-text much easier. Use #discover for SOPA and see the search results page for a great example – https://twitter.com/#!/search/%23SOPA
  3. Embedded Tweets. You can now grab embed codes for your favorite tweets. This means that rather than taking screen shots of tweets and uploading images to blogs and websites, you can embed tweets so that users can interact directly from the site.
  4. Brand Pages. Twitter is jumping on the business support train – finally! All major networks are starting to give businesses the tools to interact with current and future customers instead of relying on personal networks. These pages allow brands to add a customized banner to their Twitter profile page. This customization increases brand awareness and gives brands the ability to promote a particular phrase, image, or promotion/event. In addition, brands are able to pin tweets to the top of their pages, drawing attention to content that the brand feels is most relevant to its audience. Check out the Jet Blue page – https://twitter.com/#!/JetBlue

Social is more than a channel – it is a new way of communicating and interacting. I think this internet thing has some legs…

Seattle Interactive Conference – SIC2011 – Day Two

by Leave a Comment

Day two of the #SIC2011 conference was well attended, with a slow start due to the party last night :-). I attended quite a few sessions, with mixed results in terms of quality. The Spring Creek panel on Social Media ROI was lame and I was hoping for some more specifics and action items out of the Yelp and Ubermind/Alaska Airlines sessions.

On the good side was Rand Fishkin – he and I are totally aligned on Content – Social – Search – Conversion working together for earned media, but I don’t think he went far enough. I’ll have a post on this in the near future. The session by Brian Fling on mobile development was great – he had one slide that showed a timeline of technologies: computing, network, internet, devices and web transitions and why we are at a major transition point (see below). The Digital Music panel and the So-Lo-Mo (Social, Local, Mobile) were both great.

Sessions I attended:

  •  Rand Fishkin – Inbound Marketing is All Connected – Presentation @ http://bit.ly/inboundconnected
  • Brian Fling – Pinch/Zoom – Mobile Design – Get Slides! @fling, book: mobiledesign.org
  • Yelp – Darnel Holloway – Local for Business
  • Digital Music Panel – Ross Reynolds (KUOW), Aaron Starkey (KEXP), Nick Harmer (DCFC), Sir-Mix-A-Lot, Tim Bierman (Pearl Jam Ten)
  • Social Media Panel – Measuring ROI – Kevin O’Reilly (Spring Creek), Ben Straley (Meteor), Neil Beam (Conversean), Julie Storer (HTC)
  • Mobile Experience – Alaska Airlines (Curtis Kopf) and Ubermind (Shehryar Khan)
  • SoLoMo – Social Local Mobile Panel – Scott Macklin (UW MCOM), Bryan Trussel (Glympse), Daniel Cowen (Echoer), Jason Wilson (MapQuest), Monica Guzman (Geekwire)

Rand Fishkin – Inbound Marketing is All Connected – Presentation @ http://bit.ly/inboundconnected
– Why did we become a marketer? To push? Interrupt?
– You can’t buy my business, you have to earn my business
– Inbound Marketing – any tactic that relies on earning people’s attention instead of buying it
– Additional decks: social media marketing + seo
– Content > Search > Social > Conversion
– Search is still a big deal and growing – Google – 3 Billion searches per DAY
– Social is Discovery Prior to Interest = awareness?
– A front page post of Reddit will drive 50k – 100k referrals to a site. A top post with some longevity will drive 250k+
○ Kimpton: thanks for visiting, anything we can do? > I want bathtub full of reeces pieces and a bed full of kittens > We’ll see what we can do > arrives to a note card with a bathtub and bag of reeces pieces + photo of kittens on bed > takes picture, submits to Reddit – 100,000’s of visits > BIG ROI
– Top three positions covered by SEOmoz – third position was a video – more clicks on 3rd position than first two
– Conversion: listen/survey > why did you buy, why didn’t you buy? What do you like/not like? What is confusing/clear?
– What you say > how you say it
– Trust happens “out there” not just on Landing Page
– Tips/Steps
○ #1: Data as Content Marketing
○ #2: Video Content + SERP Visuals – SEOmoz uses http://wistia.com to host and measure videos to embed on site – link points back to SEOmoz NOT YouTube and send and submit videoXML site map for you
○ #3: Thought Leadership + Rel=Author – Author markup, connected to Google+ (see social media kpis)
○ #4: Social Networks for Personalized Rankings – using social to personalize results
○ #5: Link Building w/ Your Social Followers – use export.ly by Simply Measured > Klout Score > Good people who are following me who have good sites who are not linking to me. LinkedIN, email lists, other connected sources.
○ #6: Long Tail SEO via Gamification – Quora uses a point system, 80% complete
○ #7: PR through Social Outreach > followerwonk – search by profile description “bend journalist”
○ #8: Viral-Worthy Content via Q+A Research > what do people care about in your niche? Google discussions, Quora, what are people asking for?
○ #9: Influence Search Suggest through Branding > Google – not logged in > generic term brand > “travel blog everywhereist” example
○ #10: Leverage Thought Leaders to Build Content > survey people in your biz, ask an important question (how much do you charge for a website), collate and present data, survey responders and others will link to it

Brian Fling – Pinch/Zoom – Mobile Design – Get Slides! @fling, book: mobiledesign.org
– We are in the third major stage of mobile
– Mobile experiences are NOT made in Photoshop or Basecamp
– “We could build the best mobile app in the world, but if the client doesn’t understand it – it could be the worst app in the world”
– Mobile is REALLY hard
– Business Goals + Technical Goals + User Goals > sweet spot is in the middle of equilateral triangle
○ Ex: technical – dispense soda, business – improve productivity, user – satisfy thirst quickly
– Apple Strategy against innovators curve
○ Refresh product lines before they become tired > OK with just 50% of market
○ A bold vision empowers people to cross the chasm together
– Social media is not a thing – it is pervasive across everything
– I love the slide that overlays time lines with computing, network, internet, devices and web transitions – get slides?

The timelime of web-mobile technolgoy
Pinch Zoom Web Technology Time Line

– Massive convergence of ubiquity + 4G + ipv6 + touch phones + HTML5
– Pinch/zoom – mobile bootcamp > get slides!
○ Get brands on mobile path quickly
○ Create shared vision of how mobile is meant to improve vision
– Challenges
○ Platform aesthetic
○ Many resolutions
○ Pixels per inch
○ Orientation
○ Design grids
○ Perspective
○ Dimensions
○ Interactions
○ Motion
○ Transitions
○ Color
○ Typography
○ Iconography
– Phones (currently) are about short, simple tasks (less than 5 minutes) and context sensitive
– Inverse Journalist pyramid is a good model: Most Noteworthy Info (who, what, when where, why, how) comes FIRST, then details. Can leave anytime.
– Tablets are about focus + consumption + portability
○ Swipe vs scroll

Yelp – Darnel Holloway – Local for Business
– Transactional interactions
– Younger audience – 18-34, but affluent – money to spend
– 80% of reviews are positive (3 stars or more)
– Restaurants are largest group, but shopping is close secon
– Quality control for reviews
○ Users can take down own reviews > restaurant had responded, reached out, fixed it > reviewers take it down or update
○ Set of reviewer guidelines > no hate speech, have to represent first hand experience, no conflicts of interest
○ Automated review filter > suspicious reviews and reviewers – fake profiles, fake reviews, cottage industry
– Biz.yelp.com > starting point for business owners
○ Respond to reviewers > join the conversation
○ Reviews are a form of market research > look at competitors as well
○ Respond privately or publicly (don’t freak out)
– Recommend others on your Yelp listing to get them to recommend you
– Post check-in offers in Yelp > similar to FoureSquare > check-in can post to Twitter and Facebook like 4Square
– Consumers are looking at overall trends not necessarily individual bad reviews
○ Engage the bad review in a polite, respectful way

Digital Music Panel – Ross Reynolds (KUOW), Aaron Starkey (KEXP), Nick Harmer (DCFC), Sir-Mix-A-Lot, Tim Bierman (Pearl Jam Ten)
– Napster and broadband changed everything
– Transactions happen all the time > monetary and musically and interpersonal communication
– Digital has benefited fans the most > lost the radio filter
○ Cream rising to top > walking talking brands
– Easier to spread word about music
○ Musicians are spending as much time thinking about how to connect and share vs practicing and writing
○ Content, video, conversations way more time thinking about generating content and connecting to events
○ A lot more work involved now
– Is radio less important now?
○ Independent radio is needed, Comcast type mega stations/format are dying
○ There is so much music that the stations have to listen to listeners more
○ The future is IP connectivity
– So many options I don’t know what to do – smaller, trusted radio stations help guide
○ Delivered via airways vs via Internet – the personal touch is important
○ More than just jumping in a van and going on-tour
○ Hire a social/marketing firm instead of a record company
– Two way communication and how people interact
○ Social networks have huge influence > reviews, recommendations, radio choices – replacing the record store guy
○ Spotify > what friends are listening to
○ Ambassadors – many more out there -who do you trust? Who do you spend your time listening to
– Crash and Burn Tactics
○ Trying to manufacture a viral event/piece of content/fake website
○ Underestimating the connection speed available and how to balance cost vs audience
○ Not ready to support a success event – special tickets, items, new sales, etc. Server crashing, slow, bad experience
○ Video about exotic cars > do not buy views on YouTube – bought 30,000 views to get rolling, but audience was looking for Ferarri’s not Mix A Lot
– Success Tactics
○ Last album, 1st video – live-one take video-happening live-recorded and shown all at once – streaming in HD while making it
○ Underestimating the success of videos – Florence and Machine – 100k plus views of in-house
○ Local photographer – Chase Jarvis – Shot album cover based on what the audience wants you to wear – kept going and going
– There is a glass ceiling on touring revenue
○ You can only do so many shows for so long in your life
○ At what point do you stop touring and continue to monitize your music
– Younger artists
○ Fame first > I had 2,000,000 downloads of our video! For free!
○ How do you start making money to support the music?
– Social tools for audience development
○ Maps, cell phones, Twitter
– I can define myself now vs going through the publicity department or DJs
○ Lady Gaga re-defines herself on a weekly basis
– How do you support the giant middle class of working musicians
○ Longer careers
○ Bigger middle class of musicians
– Recored labels have shifted the contract
○ Not a record deal, but a full package deal: concerts, images, likenesses, downloads, streams, t-shirts, everything
– Future of Music
○ Celestial Jukebox coming
○ Free music, everywhere – 4G (LTE) connection speeds
○ The way we make music > big divide in terms of production of music – higher quality, virtual collaboration
– Mix misses the “Mystique” of artists – transparency can work for a lot of folks, but not everyone
○ I don’t want to see Prince eating BBQ 🙂
– Contract process has to speed up
○ It should not take 3 weeks to license one song

Social Media Panel – Measuring ROI – Kevin O’Reilly (Spring Creek), Ben Straley (Meteor), Neil Beam (Conversean), Julie Storer (HTC)
– Email – when new – experienced the same issues
– What is the business objectives?
– If you could track one metric, what would it be
– Direct measurement vs indirect measurement
– Long cycles, multiple touches, on-going conversations
– What are the transactions that you can and should measure > what was the financial impact
– Influencer Campaigns
○ Macro influencers (Justin Bieber), Micro Influencers (Matt Cutts at Google)
– Engagement as a metric
○ How to define

Mobile Experience – Alaska Airlines (Curtis Kopf) and Ubermind (Shehryar Khan)

– Work with leading companies
– Game changing, disruptive solutions > what is different, compelling
– Deep expertise in mobile and what it means
– Mobile is not a project > it is a long term channel and strategy
– Had to be designed for agility – iterate rapidly and often
– UberInsights
○ New to airline industry’s underlying complexity
○ Availability of backend services
○ Leaving “platform solution for truly custom app
○ Differentiated mobile strategy
○ Apply lessons learned from other industries
– Principles
○ Start with customes > not just an Alaska customer but what are they used to on mobile
○ Simple, intuitive experience
○ Be different
○ Seamlessly integrated teams
○ Be agile, learn and adapt
– Scenarios
○ User interface – the “flight jacket”
○ Mobile boarding pass
○ Responsive to customers changing needs
– What Helps
○ Committed product owner
○ Embrace agile development process
○ Tem chemistry
○ Constant feedback loop
○ Living, eating, breathing mobile

SoLoMo – Social Local Mobile Panel – Scott Macklin (UW MCOM), Bryan Trussel (Glympse), Daniel Cowen (Echoer), Jason Wilson (MapQuest), Monica Guzman (Geekwire)
– Where are you, where am I, what are we doing?
– Layer of utility and enhancing social relationships > connecting to places
– Help me make a decision about what is worth doing, what do my friends
– 350 million mobile Facebook apps, more smart phones purchased than not for the first time
– Where do you want to meet?
– I am here, come get me
– Find/attach one need
– Becomes more useful as more people are on it (the app)
– Phone has eyes (camera) it knows where it is (geo-location) > point the camera at something to get information – replaces the need for key input
– Read Snow Crash – merger of CIA with Library of Congress
– Sharing and generosity is at the core
– Privacy
○ They used to call it stalking, now they call it location based notification
○ Privacy means different things to different people
○ Share your location for a limited time frame, only you can send the Glympse > different for various situations
– Building the slo-lo-mo infrastructure
○ Like building a city > you didn’t start out saying how are we going to monetize this road
○ We will be surprised with what will come out of it
– Lots of Gadgets and how they are uses
○ Google maps, kindle, iphones, etc.

Seattle Interactive Conference – SIC 2011 – Day One

by 2 Comments

I attended the Seattle Interactive Conference today (#sic2011) and wanted to share my notes. There were lots of great sessions, but I could only attend four. Best session I attended was the first – Sean O’Driscoll from Ant’s Eye View and his stages of social media program – “the journey”. I really liked how he laid out the five steps of the journey to a fully engaged social media program.

Conference thoughts: The place was packed with people but the space is not laid out very well – especially the registration. Before 9am there was an hour long wait for passes – the ops team blew that piece. I was there a bit early so missed the mass lines, but many folks missed the opening sessions.

I really enjoyed the range of topics: SEO, Social (lots), Mobile, Design, UX, Cloud – very cool

Sessions I attended with notes below:

  • Sean O’Driscoll – Ant’s Eye View – Practitioner’s Guide to the Social Engagement Journey
  • Vanessa Fox – Getting Out of the SEO Silo
  • Dan Gerber – Pop – Camping Out – Setting the Foundation for Interactive Design
  • Panel – Beyond the Hype: Social Media and Business 101 > social features to the enterprise
  • Ben Elowitz – Wet Paint –  The Social Operating System

Sean O’Driscoll – Ant’s Eye View – Practitioner’s Guide to the Social Engagement Journey

  • Educate large brands on how to integrate conversations into their workflow > how to be nice to your customers
  • Where should you post your status graph – find
  • Business strategy vs a twitter strategy or social media strategy or facebook strategy
    • It’s not about being “on” or “off” the social web
    • Are you a “fully engaged” enterprise > it is a journey defined by stages of operational maturity
  • Five stages of the journey
    • Traditional – listening to what people are saying, not engaged, conversation passing you by
    • Experimental “the arrival of the mavericks” – someone reaches out to do something, entrepreneurial ins spirit
    • Operational – someone is given budget and authority to create strategy, materials, hire > more in an influence role as a lot of contacts happen outside of the “marketing” group. Frustration about metrics starts to bubble up, what does an engagement metric look like? What does it look like?
    • Measurable – start to track business impact, broken through functional silo’s, defined success/influencers identification/engagement strategy and approach. Strong orchestration.
    • Fully Engaged – Everybody has the opportunity to take action in a clear way, with process and clear roles
  • Pathways to the Engaged Enterprise
    • People and Process – what is the strategy? Is it written down? Clear business objectives? Measurable goals against timeline, set initiatives, tactics – costs, timeline (one page – plan on page)
    • Education – policy and guidelines are necessary, but not sufficient. Need to know and share the “how” and not just the “what”. Use a series of playbooks “how to do a Facebook contest” At Dell > only one way to do a Facebook contest and here are the two vendors –  prescriptive guidance is important as you pass education through the organization.
    • Channels & Technology – balance the needs of the business, resourcing realities, and platform independencies. Do your tools just take a pulse (listening and monitoring) or are you effectively distributing the use and competency across the organization. Do you want more data or more insight. Insight > connect information to outcomes and routing to people that can do something about it.
    • Insights and Analytics – How are your metrics comparative? I’ve got 200 likes – is that good? Contextualize your outputs based on your business, size, industry and competitors
    • Activation and  Execution –  Start with an  insight, not an idea. Businesses that win build relationships Begin with advocates. Using the Agile Marketing Approach process to identify customer stories, tech/activities to solve, sprints to get there.  Working across teams in scrums.
  • Tips from Sean
    • Start with a customer need
    • Executive buy-in is key
    • Real results lie “between the seams” – between operational and organizational functions
    • Look for early wins, set expectations
    • Measure for impact
    • Kotter: look for a case for urgency + create a coalition of resources that can support and execute
    • Google+ is like a third sock. It may be a great sock, but I only have two legs. Kick ass on the legs you have.

Vanessa Fox – Getting Out of the SEO Silo

  • Showed an example of Hasbah Tamadot website is all images > basic SEO tactics
  • Getting the basics right important for big brands
  • Search terms and researching happens from a lot of different angles and stages
  • Who is your audience?
    • What audiences search for
    • What audiences talk about
    • Market research, email open rates, on-site behavior, etc.
  • How do you solve their problems?
    • What information/content type will satisfy the general need
  • The Personal Lifecyle – book for usability
  • Business Objectives
    • What is project goal?  What does success look like?
    • What is brand objective? What lasting impression?
    • What is value proposition? What makes you different?
    • What are conversion events and engagement events? What makes you money?
    • Who are key audiences?
    • What motivates them?
  • How do we solve peoples problems?
    • Google correlate > correlated terms
    • Discussion link > what are people talking about?
  • Pick an event or audience > what are their key questions?
    • What time does the SuperBowl site? Key audience in local market. Should be important text in the TV website
  • Client impact ideas
    • Review title tags, meta descriptions and destination pages for alignment of copy to expectations to website
    • Persona’s – how can we grow this element of our services

Dan Gerber – Pop – Camping Out – Setting the Foundation for Interactive Design

  • Camping is group and individual
  • Camping is a process: packing, getting there, setup – camping = fun – take down, blue tarp for rain,
  • Interactive designers – strive to create meaningful relationships between users and design
    • More than wire frames
  • IxD shoud be:
    • Data-driven
    • User-driven
    • Goal-driven
    • Idea-driven
  • Step One – Embrace Discovery
    • More than: order taking, check-box checking, creative brief (need more, need to dig in deep)
    • Should explore: User motivations, behaviors + context, user empathy
    • Is best with: success goals, experience KPIs, strategic concept + direction
  • Step Two – Expand the Role
    • Own the problem: build on data, tackle business goals with user goals, define success on and off the device > drill in to true user research and understanding
    • Experience strategy: user research, behaviors + motivations + emotions +  propensities, UX discovery tools (analysis,  personas, journeys)
  • Step Three – Own the Concept
    • Strategy + Design: UX at core of the concept, concepting before + beyond the visual, strategy big + small
  • Even some of our industry best practices ASSUME too much
    • Different approaches are great, but need to dial in to project
  • Example – Defining a mobile app concept – Seattle Sounders
    • Challenge – design a club app, not a league app for mobile
    • The team is important, but so is the experience at the game and what it means to be a sounders fan vs a specific player fan
  • So how do we get to a concept?
  • Concept Setup
    • Adaptable research: internal brainstorming, 300 fan comments on facebook, fan survey, flickr audit, literary review, stadium shadowing, global app review, group audience interviews
  • How do you know when you have enough to design something great?
    • Driven by time/schedule?
  • Sounders  PULSE – maintain pulse of fans throughout the engagement
    • Fans wanted an app to drive engagement between the games
      • Fans can follow the emotional state of the match and team – authentically
      • “scarves up vs scarves down” poll result
      • Contant, quick social connections to community + team
      • Balance between club app v. fan app
      • Use cases that play to fan contexts
      • Streaming audio – stream games if not there – connect with those who can’t be there – 40 countries using streaming app
      • Red card/yellow card – easter eggs, take advantage of emotion – shake app to make screen go yellow > swipe to go red
  • When UX is involved in concepting, UX can guard the strategy throughout execution and delivery
  • Challenges
    • Multiple concept owners: some tension good/some is not, creating idea advocates – not consensus
    • Keeps IxD’s away from prototyping: Builds other strengths, increases user empathy, tracks business goals
    • New skills: stretches thinking from tactics to strategy, beyond comfort zone
  • You comfort zone (happy place), where magic happens (outside of comfort zone)
    • “setting up camp” can keep you away from wireframes but the results will be worth it!

Panel – Beyond the Hype: Social Media and Business 101 > social features to the enterprise

  • Myth #1 – Build it and they will come
    • If not solving a problem – won’t be adopted
    • If not part of normal workflow – big effort to change behavior > facebook, email, search, webpages are current workflows
    • Apply game theory to activities > I get the Outlook badge when certified on something > creates centers of expertise and is aspirational
  • Myth #2 – Social Media is Facebook for the Enterprise
    • You can’t just turn on a community and expect it to work
    • TheLoop > slowly and selectively build communities
    • Internal corporate social networks are much different than public networks like Facebook
    • Colleagues vs friends > connect, collaborate, communicate
    • Allow for profile creation, pictures, expertise
  • Myth #3 – User Experience Does Matter
    • If you have to do extensive communication on what this thing is and how to use it > it’s not useful
    • SharePoint  > documents go there to die. Training for two years on how to use SharePoint, IT Learning Center at Eli Lilly is adopted much more quickly
  • Myth #4 – Social Business is more efficient
    • How can it be more efficient than email
    • Can be more efficient under the right circumstances
  • Myth #5 – Social business moves info faster
    • The coming assault of activities feeds – Salesforce Chatter
    • Must be relevant and not stashed into a folder
  • Myth #6 – It’s all about the cloud
    • Control via governance > what kind of information can be outside of firewall
    • Permissions are critical > high, medium and low business impact > each level has it’s own governance impact

Ben Elowitz – Wet Paint –  The Social Operating System

  • FatRain (1st startup), BlueNile (2nd startup), Wetpaint (3rd startup)
  • Wetpaint – all media is becoming social – wiki service gets ~600million visitors per month (really?)
  • Wetpaint  Entertainment – Fully Social
    • 1.1 million fans > they see them on avg 30 times per month
  • The consumer has changed
    • 20% increase in media consumption
    • The technology is with us all of the time
    • We have changed in terms of how we
    • 69% growth in time on Facebook in last year
    • Rest of websites – down by 9% in last year
    • Google is transactional, Facebook is long term relationship with your fans
  • The big benefits of the social operating system (Social OS)/Social Networks
    • For Consumers – Bring all of my data to me
      • Relevance
      • Personalization
      • Accessibility
      • Now
    • For Publishers
      • Audience data
      • Virality
      • Relationships
      • Ongoing
  • How to Win on the Social OS – 5 Steps to Know and Serve Your Audience
    • Determine what it takes to win > what do WE get out of it
      • Just having a bunch of facebook fans in and of themselves doesn’t help > we make the most money when people  come to my site and we serve advertising againt that impression.
      • We get the most value when we get referrals (transfer now) and continuous relationships (transfer forever)
      • We know that a comments is worth 2x to us than a Like
    • Create a social laboratory
      • Keep tinkering, keep testing, keep trying new things
      • Co-founder lays out 100’s of ideas
      • 700 data points per week on what is working or not
    • Segment your audience
      • 1.1 million fans > each one thinks of themselves as the most important person
      • Wetpaint covers 25 different TV show channels > what content resonates with which segment the best
    • Create Great Content
      • Every post is part of a test: format, poll, statement, video, headlines, etc.
      • How do you measure what the audience think about that?
    • Test & Measure Everything
      • Through testing and measuring > seeing audiences 30 times per month – up from 10 per month
      • Add the wins to the playbook
  • Facebook page is less powerful than the Facebook news feed
  • Facebook traffic performs 1.9x better than traffic from Google
    • True for content and Wetpaint
  • Creation and Distribution of Content
    • Editors need a ton of data to create great content
    • Social media people need to be in charge of distributing it
    • Separate the two functions
  • Social TV
    • 75% of activity happens on the 6 days outside of the show day
    • Connecting to other people about the show, not to the show itself

 

 

 

Merging (combining) Pages on Facebook

by 8 Comments

Facebook Logo SmallFacebook is constantly changing and adding features as well as new page types. This has created a mess for people who adopted Facebook early as a business avenue as there are now several pages for many companies and brands.

The recent addition of pages for business (which is the best option for most businesses) created a situation in which you may have current pages – either a regular facebook page or a community page (one that Facebook created for your brand, but contains only data from Wikipedia) that has followers and likes that you want to transfer to the new business page.

Types of Pages on Facebook:

  • Personal – you  know, for you and your affinity for stuffed animals (we’re not judging here)
  • Local Business or Place – great for restaurants, cleaners, local businesses
  • Company, Organization or Institution – for bigger companies, schools, etc with a broader presence
  • Brand or Product – big brands or products that have a significant social effort behind
  • Artist, Band or Public Figure – Includes political figures
  • Entertainment – TV shows, movies and the like
  • Cause or Community – niche communities like Breast Cancer survivors and specific cause related campaigns
  • Community pages – created by Facebook because they found your brand on Wikipedia and wanted to have you on Facebook

Here are the steps to merging the old pages into your new Business Page with caveats:

  • While logged in to your new business page as the admin for that page > select edit page > select resources > select merge  pages. This only works if the pages are the same name currently.
  • Here is a form for requesting the merge as well: http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=page_migrations_external
  • We’ve had issues with the target merge page not being “authentic” > the best way we’ve found to solve this problem is to add a Facebook Badge, Like Button or Login Button on the domain.

Merging pages is not as simple as it should be but is worth the effort to consolidate likes and friends.

  • Contact Facebook with your issue – the more people contacting, the more they will try and fix: http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=220217228006012

I’ll keep looking for additional options on this as it is a topic growing in importance as Facebook becomes an extension of your personal and business brand. Please let me know if these tactics work for you!