Tweeting in the Financial World

September 2nd, 2010

Disclaimer:  Please do not try this at home.  We’d rather you learned from our test than actually make your brand go through this.

I wanted to share with you a little test that we did with a financial client of ours on Twitter.  As financial clients are typically pretty tight lipped, they asked that I not share their name in this post – but they did give me the ok to share my learnings.  I think a lot of you in the social space will enjoy this…

About a year ago, we set up a Twitter account for one of our clients – and the goal was really nothing more than extending their brand reach to consumers that might be getting into the social space.  There was no major sales initiative, and the basis of the content was simply tweeting out the contents & titles of their blogs whenever they posted it.  We outreached to active investors that were on the twitter universe already, and once we reached 1,000 followers, we essentially let it run itself.  Within no time, we had surpassed 1,500 followers and were being retweeted a number of times a day.  The client still had doubts as to what the value of this extend reach was – so we ran a little test for them.  We shut down their content and completely ignored their twitter account for months (don’t worry current clients – this was an approved plan – we won’t do this to you!).  When the client was satisfied that their twitter account was forgotten by the industry, we turned it back on…   Here is what happened after the first 2 weeks of going live with social media again (and keep in mind, there was no increase in external variables such as paid ads – so this is All Twitter):

• Traffic to their site from Twitter grew 443.75%.
• Overall Google Organic traffic  has grown 11.54%
• Overall Google Organic traffic from our clients brand name has grown 98.18%
• Overall Organic search traffic only grew 3.24% – amazingly enough – Bing dropped 66.25%!  All other search engines increased.
• Their “direct” traffic increased 7.74%
• Overall visits, pageviews, pages/visited, average time on site and bounce rate all improved.

The numbers so far have been staggering, and we’re going to keep this test going for a while longer so that it encompasses the same amount of time that they were inactive to the time it resumed…   But if it makes sense to you that their traffic to their site from Twitter would improve by over 400% – why in people’s right minds would they start a social media campaign and then not do anything with it…  Especially when you see the brand lift and all-in-all overall improvement on their analytics.

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Media Two Job Opening: Interactive Designer

August 10th, 2010

If You’re Creative, Throw Your Resume Away Rather Than the Opportunity!

So we frequently get resumes, and I understand that it’s an age-old-tradition, and they’re great to quick snapshot all of your capabilities – but they tell me nothing!  They all look the same, and none of them show me your passion, your personality, your creativity…  I want to know what makes you, you.  So with that – we are showing you the dull and boring job description, but with it, I’d love to hear from the talented group in our industry in a unique way, why we should consider hiring you.  You can respond at employment@mediatwo.net, or reach out to us socially, or use the good old-fashioned USPS – you decide – we’re game!  Below is the write up from our Creative Department of what we’re after:

Media Two Interactive is looking for a ridiculously creative interactive designer to join our award-winning eclectic team. This fun-loving character will be instrumental in designing and producing websites and innovative ad units for major brands as well as create traditional collateral material. This person must have a nice mix of Artistic Sensibility (knowledge about design elements, such as color and composition) and strong web dev Technical Skills (use design software programs such as in Adobe Creative Suites).

Objective

The Interactive Designer conceptualizes and creates graphic and user interface solutions for websites under the direction of the Creative Director.  Graphics are created using a combination of mainstream graphics, animation packages and html editors. The Interactive Designer works in liaison with the Media and Design teams; collaboratively delivering quality client solutions.

Key Responsibilities

• Follow a design brief and brand identity standards
• Work and report to a project plan/timeline
• Create designs, concepts, and sample layouts based on knowledge of layout principles and esthetic design concepts
• Prepare and optimize graphics
• Manage integrating static and animating graphics into project construction
• Develop concepts and layouts for traditional design collateral, company logos
• Contribute to the navigational and instructional design of websites
• Organize and manage content flow
• Carry out production utilizing mainstream graphics, animation packages
• HTML editing

Experience/Qualifications

• Preferable design degree or diploma with 2 years industry experience as a hands-on designer of rich media
• An appreciation of design and user interface fundamentals
• Desire to learn and excel in a fast-pace environment
• Expert knowledge of creative media tools such as Adobe Creative Suite
• Knowledge of Flash 8/9, ActionScript 2.0/3.0 and timeline animation
• HTML/JavaScript, CSS, Flash or other relevant technology skills
• Knowledge of video editing tools, like AfterEffects or Final Cut Pro would be a plus~!
• Excellent online portfolio
• Written comprehension skills
• Understanding of design for content management systems, usability and accessibility practice and customer focus are essential
• The ability to communicate and effectively present ideas—both verbally and visually
• Be organized in order to meet deadlines and stay within a budget
• Experience working with ad agencies or corporate marketing department in an interactive design role preferred
• US citizenship or permanent resident

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Online Advertising: Consumers Have A Choice

July 15th, 2010

Privacy has long been a hot topic of conversation, but I’m wondering how many consumers even noticed they have a choice?  What am I talking about?  In a great internal conversation this morning about the value of the Lexus ad being placed on the home page of Yahoo – it was almost completely overlooked that there is now a very small link called “AdChoices” that appears above the ad.

When you click on the ad, you are taken to a new section in Yahoo (located at http://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/relevantads.html) that then talks about the security of the ad, whether it was actually placed by them, etc.

When you click on the manage link in the middle of the page, it takes you to this page – http://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/opt_out/targeting/details.html – where you can clearly see what, if anything Yahoo is tracking on you.  You then have the option of changing how they serve ads to you.  Keep in mind, this is still in Beta – but this is the way the internet is evolving, and to me, this is because of things like social media and free speech that we keep advancing this medium.  Being able to hear the consumers and provide options is something that has never been available to us, and I think this is going to really push agencies and clients alike to keep getting better!

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Triangle AMA Recap | Search Without Social is Just Wrong

June 18th, 2010

First of all, thank you Triangle AMA for inviting me to your Search Engine Marketing panel – I had a lot of fun, and really enjoyed the back-and-forth as well as the audience participation.  As I reviewed the SEM panel video last night, I of course saw plenty of places for improvement from the information I provided (we’re all our own worst critic I guess), so a follow up blog post seemed appropriate.

For starters, I know that Social Media is considered the “shiny new thing” people are chasing, but a great strategy, and seamless integration into your marketing plan makes it another effective marketing vehicle.  I tried to keep my mouth shut up there as I wasn’t invited to be the “champion for social media”, but as many of you could tell, it was difficult not to speak up.  Morgan Siem, our lead Social Media Strategist here at Media Two is going to follow up my blog post and handle the championing, but for this post, I really want to hit on some points I feel like I missed on stage. Here are some quick-and-easy strategies to help you succeed on the search engines by incorporating social media into your marketing mix.

First Page Ownership.  One of the great points made during the conversation was that Google limits the real estate allotment for each domain name, meaning that your website (domain name, URL) can’t be listed again and again. This clearly creates an opportunity to gain a space through paid search (now you have a paid listing and an organic listing to help you attract eyeballs).  The other thing you can do is create social media accounts (commonly referred to as creating a digital footprint for your brand).  Go ahead and google “Media Two” once.  In our particular case, there are many Media Two’s out there.  What you’ll see, though, is that the top organic listing is our official Media Two website, as well as a paid placement on the page.  But look further down the page, and you’ll see our old Blogger blog, some of our Twitter accounts (@mediatwo & @mediatwo_social), our newer WordPress blog - MediaTwoPointOh.com – and on page two you’ll see our Media Two LinkedIn account and our Media Two YouTube account, as well as more blog posts that have indexed individually well.  On any given day the order may change in appearance based on the freshness of the content, but the fact remains the same – social media is commanding a presence on search.  Algorithm’s are undoubtedly changing (see Google Caffeine announcement), but don’t make the mistake of ignoring today for what might happen tomorrow.

Social is Content. I will continue to say in every post possible that content is king.  If you provide something worth while on your site, people will respond favorably.  Search engines will notice that people are viewing, staying on the page, and referencing you via links on their site.  This is what search algorithm’s do for a living – they find relevant content!  They index as much as they can, and then they return queries to users based on what they’ve indexed.  I flubbed in my explanation on the panel. What I meant to say was: when you search on Google – you’re not searching the Web, you’re searching Google’s index.  Whether it’s a blog, a tweet, a video – it’s content, and content is king.

Social Helps PPC Search.  Most of the above are examples of how it helps organically, but let’s not forget the pay-per-click side of search.  One stat I loosely quoted yesterday was when organic results and paid results appear on the same page – there is a conversion lift that occurs (11.7% lift according to NYU Stern professors).  I’ve already stated that social media can gain you organic listings – so now connect the dots and match your paid campaign up to your social strategy!  Without beating a dead horse on this, I think it also warrants pointing out the recent study that said a person on Facebook that Fans/Likes a brand is 28% more likely to use that brand.  If you are in a highly competitive SEM marketplace – take banking for example…  If all things are held constant (you bid the same, your ads are the same, your offerings are all for free checking), you will head-to-head win out on the click/conversion if that person searching for free checking is already a fan or follower of yours!  When you start winning out in CTR (click-through-rate), Google starts making more revenue from you, and in turn rewards you with a higher relevance score.

Everything is not as black and white as this, which is why you need to develop a strategic media plan that is appropriate to your business.  Understanding and implementing Social Media is not the end all, but it absolutely is part of the marketing mix…  With that, I’ll let you know that Morgan will be posting shortly with more strategic insight to share!  Thank you again to the 100+ that turned out to participate yesterday!

If you’re interested in more:

• Video clips from the Triangle AMA Search Engine Marketing Panel on our YouTube page
• Karl Sakas’s thorough recap: “Increase your search marketing ROI with top SEM tips from the Triangle AMA“
• Triangle AMA’s blog post: “June 2010 Luncheon Recap: Search Engine Marketing Panel“

UPDATE: Morgan’s follow-up post: How Social Media Affects Search Engine Marketing

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Caffeine on the Brand

June 16th, 2010

For those of you that didn’t see, last week Google officially announced the much anticipated release of Caffeine:

Today, we’re announcing the completion of a new web indexing system called Caffeine. Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered. Whether it’s a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before.

Some background for those of you who don’t build search engines for a living like us: when you search Google, you’re not searching the live web. Instead you’re searching Google’s index of the web which, like the list in the back of a book, helps you pinpoint exactly the information you need. (Here’s a good explanation of how it all works.)

Caffeine has had SEO Guru’s in a tizzy for quite some time…  The fear of falling from their coveted positions to obscurity was more than daunting…  What I’m wondering is what has it done to Brand Marketers and their webmasters (are they still called webmasters?)?  We just received a Google Alert for one of our clients that was a “beneficiary” of this new indexing platform of Google’s, as an article they published in 2008 was not crawled and readily available!  Yes – 2008 – and we can assure you, the content is a little flat.

Please let this serve as a warning to all compliance people, brand marketers and webmasters in spirit – it’s time to doublecheck your archives and ensure that what is posted to your servers is truly meant for the public consumption, as Google is officially hyped on Caffeine!

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