Influential Marketing Blog

Influential Marketing Blog Featured in Wall Street Journal

Many of you may have already caught this yesterday, but this blog was cited in the Recommended Reading  section of the Wall Street Journal yesterday in an article by Keith Huang.  As Jay Berkowitz from Ten Golden Rules shares on his team blog, my blog was one of 60 resources that they recommended to the journalist as part of their reading list and was selected from that list as a recommended resource for companies looking to "optimize their online presence."  Here's the writeup:

Influential Marketing Blog, rohitbhargava.typepad.com
Rohit Bhargava's blog is intellectual and educational. In a recent post, he discusses the art of stamp collection and how, even today, many smaller countries use stamps as a key marketing tool. He writes, 'Next time you pass a post office in any country, pay attention to how they are using their philately to promote the country, cater to tourists, or commemorate moments of significance.'

It is a great media hit and to be selected from a list of what I am guessing were 60 stellar resources is flattering.  I'm in awe at being included among the other bloggers and authors mentioned in the article - including Seth Godin, Steve Rubel, Matt Cutts, John Battelle, Chris Anderson, Joseph Jaffe, and Danny Sullivan. Thanks to Jay for including me in this great list, and to Keith for selecting to include my blog!

Hell Hath No Fury ... Like A Pissed Search Engine Marketer

There are only two guiding principles for engaging in social media and blogging.  You don't need to memorize a book or have years of experience.  All you need is to never forget the following two things:

1. Never pretend to be someone you are not
2. Never piss off a Search Engine Marketer

Most people know the first, but not so many know the second. Earlier this week, Robert Scoble unfortunately countered the second and posted a video which he soon admitted contained several inaccuracies and was ill-advised.  A part of the video carried on a bit of dialogue that Jason Calacanis once notoriously started with his post back in February of this year calling SEO and SMO "bullshit."  Calacanis' post sparked a flurry of angry conversation in the search marketing industry, which is now coming back up again due to Scoble's video about Mahalo (Jason Calacanis' new venture) and dismissal of SEO.  Scoble's most significant criticism came from Danny Sullivan (a legend in the search marketing industry) and Rand Fishkin (another very influential search marketer) - as well as from Adario Strange on the Wired magazine blog.

I am not a search marketer, though I did get deep into this world through my ideas and writing about social media optimization and have attended and spoken at several search marketing events like SES in the past.  I know that the power of the search marketers mirrors the power of Google.  If you are going to say something against them, you better know what you're doing (and have a defensible position) - because when they go against you, it's a high profile smackdown.  Combine that with the public nature of being an "A-list" blogger and the challenge of producing good and accurate content quickly and you have the recipe for the storm Scoble finds himself in now.  We can't all be right all the time.  But trust me on those guiding principles.

Why Everyone Hates To Love Technorati (But Does Anyway)

For all of the criticism about Technorati's inconsistent ranking figures or recent team changes, the one thing the site has intuitively understood from the beginning is the inherent desire for bloggers to be ranked.  Though there are lots of industry based lists (such as the Power150, Viral Garden Top25, and Peter Kim's newly launched M20) for marketing and advertising bloggers, Technorati still holds a unique place as the main blog directory for the worldwide blogosphere in every category.  They now index over 100 million blogs, and even if you believe that 99% of these are abandoned blogs or spam blogs, that still leaves more than 1 million blogs that are being authored by people passionate about something and actively creating content about their passion.  For those people, the Technorati Authority ranking is likely something that they watch on a consistent basis.  It's a guilty pleasure for most bloggers - who know that there are other things that probably matter more, but watching that Authority figure grow day by day is irresistible.  The only problem is when you reach the hump.

The hump is the moment when you have had a number of good posts that were highly popular and resulted in lots of Technorati links, that are now getting to the end of their 6 month window - after which, Technorati no longer counts them as part of their overall authority ranking.  As a result, there are some days, where you might drop 40 or 50 points in Technorati rankings (and even more for higher ranking blogs with more links).  Watch the Technorati rankings of high traffic blogs like PostSecret or Gawker and you will see this phenomenon in effect.  This is the hump, where you have great content ranked, but expiring according to the way Technorati indexes and are faced with the challenge of continuing to create linkworthy content so you can keep your Technorati number up. 

There are really two ways to deal with the hump.  The first is to worry about it, get frustrated about Technorati's shortcomings and performance problems (not to mention their instant dismissal of all your content older than 6 months), and do everything you can to pump your numbers up again by getting links from everywhere and anywhere you can.  The other is to think beyond links as a currency for how to rank your blog and think more in terms of engagement.  RSS subscribers, email subscribers, people bookmarking your posts or commenting on them ... all are more valid measures of engagement than just links.  If only someone would find a way of putting that into a satisfying little single ranking like Technorati.  Until that happens, hump or not ... Technorati will continue to be irresistable for most bloggers.

Tapping Dayparting For More Than Online Ads

Last week I took the Metro at 7am to get to work for an early meeting.  Looking around at the crowd on the train at a time more than an hour earlier than I usually get on - two things were apparent.  First, the people looked sleepier.  And second, the crowd was clearly older on average than those who took the train at my usual hour of about 8:30.  The experience got me thinking about the role that dayparting could have in the future of targeted marketing.  For those unfamiliar with the term, dayparting essentially refers to a method which I believe was first pioneered by search marketers began with broadcast television and radio to describe their practice of changing the rotation of ads depending on the time of day that they ran.  So in the morning, you might get served a different ad than if you are browsing at lunchtime.

For search marketing, this is easily possible because it's a self service way of placing ads.  Most other online advertising is purchased based on site demographics, however what many fewer online networks and websites seem to be accounting for is how site demographics might change depending on the time of day.  When you think about other forms of advertising like outdoor billboards, you can't realistically change most billboards to suit whomever is driving by.  But you could change them by time of day (for the right price).  Dayparting is possible offline as well as online - for the right publisher to come along and offer it to advertisers. 

What If Consumers Could Generate Ads They Want To See?

Last week I sent myself an email to generate a Google text ad.  As any Gmail user knows, Google serves ads based on the text content of your email.  So corresponding back and forth with a good friend of mine whose wedding I will be attending in Peru next month results in several offers for Peru travel advisors.  Those ads are relevant, so I am likely to click on them.  Of course, the saavier among you is probably reading this thinking it's not so different from text ads on any search engine.  After all, if I typed in "lima, peru" into any search engine, I would get lots of ads.  The problem is intent.  When I am just learning about Lima, all I want is background information.  At the point when I am ready to purchase, I want to see offers.  Keyword advertisers are getting smarter about targeting intent, but it sometimes seems like banner ads are getting left behind. 

Often they are still purchased based on the demographics of a site overall and simply served in random order.  Most would agree this doesn't work.  But think about how a printed copy of the yellow pages works.  These are essentially filled with banner ads and organized by category.  What if there was a site where banner ads were organized the same way?  As a consumer I could enter by region, category or even individual product.  Going to the site would give me a list of banners with the current promotional offer that the vendor has on right now for whatever I am seeking.  The ads, in effect, could be generated by page based on a user's search terms.  This is consumer generated advertising - but where they are calling up the ads that they want to see rather than creating ads themselves.  Thinking even more broadly - what if you could also call up television ads from an archive to watch based on what you were interested in buying?  Would someone in the market for laundry detergent watch three ads back to back from three different companies before making a decision?  Maybe not.  But if I'm looking for a hotel in Lima, or a new car, or a digital camera, or a new kitchen appliance ... you bet I would.

How To Find Sites Faster Online Without Using Google

Google is great when you are searching for a single webpage or source of information.  Many of my searches still fit that category - so I'm a big Google user.  The problem is, more and more often I find myself searching not for a single page, but for a web site.  A lot of times that may be a new website or a popular website that many people have found useful.  When it comes to a search like this, Google is not so helpful.  Here are a few reasons Google doesn't work so well in these situations:

• Newer websites seldom appear highly because they have not been out long enough to get ranked and assessed in Google's algorithm
• The most useful content is sometimes not optimized and therefore appears too low in results to ever be found
• Crawler brings back any page, and not just the homepage of sites, not useful if you want to find a site instead of a page
• There is no popularity index to see what sites or pages people recently found useful (pagerank is based on links and clicks)
• Using keywords and algorithms is sometimes not as powerful as using tags and keywords other people have assigned to content online

Instead, I use del.icio.us. Rather than using an algorithm, you can use del.icio.us to "search" using the tags that people have assigned to links.  Each link has a rating based on the number of others who have also saved that link. The difference is, you are finding sites instead of individual web pages.  For an example of the difference, here's an experience I recently had when seeking new online food communities to check out:

Google search for "online food community web2.0"
(Useful sites returned in first page: Tablefinder - if only I could read Swedish)

del.icio.us tag search for "food+community+web2.0"
(Useful sites returned in first page: foodio54, OpenBottles, Cork'd, Tastefora, GroupRecipies, OpenSourceFood, Imcooked, Chowhounds, TheDailyPlate)

Just this week I have already used del.icio.us to find usage statistics for women online, popular new online food and cooking communities (example above), and a list of green blogs.  Each search was much faster on del.icio.us and yielded useful results much more easily.  This is the power of using tagging and social bookmarking to find information online.  It is also the reason why the next time you seek information online you might want to start on a site like del.icio.us instead of with Google.

Rebranding And Announcing A New Book Deal

This blog quietly turned two years old about two weeks ago - and though it was tempting to do a post just about that, there was a good reason for waiting.  Today I have two announcements - one relatively small and one relatively big.  The first small one, is that I have rebranded this blog to drop the "Interactive" from the title.  Over the course of two years I have realized that my passion is writing about marketing ideas in all forms, not just marketing that happens online or fits into a category people might consider "interactive."  Those of you who have seen my business cards or email signature already know that the promotional URL I started using for the blog is www.influentialmarketingblog.com anyway (though I am still using http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com as the primary link due to all the Technorati links that URL has now).  Rebranding to simplify also makes it a lot easier to include the blog in your blogroll without running over two lines - which I have had several complaints about!  If you are already linking to this blog and it's not too much effort, I would appreciate if you could change your link to read "Influential Marketing" or "Influential Marketing Blog."  No need to update the URL.

The second announcement is somewhat larger.  I am going to be writing a book focused on marketing authenticity and social media and am thrilled to announce that McGraw-Hill has acquired the book and Herb Schaffner (Publisher in the Business Group at McGraw-Hill Professional) will be editing.  Aside from the chance to take my writing to the next level with a more ambitious project, there are a number of other things that excite me about this partnership.  McGraw-Hill is well known and respected as the company behind publishing BusinessWeek magazine as well as a large number of books for education, business, and many other categories.  They have a huge global operation and have marketing and sales people on the ground in more than 30 countries around the world.  In short, they are the perfect publisher for this project with a large distribution network and plenty of ability to promote the book in the market. 

I plan to solicit plenty of feedback over the next few months and hope to count on many of you who read this blog consistently for candid opinions (positive and negative) to help improve the final product.  Of course, I'll be giving you full credit for any contributions you make (I believe blog karma extends to book karma).  Incidentally, if you are interested in the process behind getting a deal like this together, I would suggest checking out Tim Ferriss' post about it on Noah's blog.  Though I didn't follow exactly the same road as Tim, I certainly hope to duplicate his success and he was a great help to me in getting this project together (also, we are both with the same smart agent - Steve Hanselman).  Over the next few months, I will be rolling out several other online companion efforts around the book.  Stay tuned for more details to come ...

Newsflash for Ask.com: The Algorithm is Dying

In case you hadn't heard - Ask.com has a new advertising campaign through their new partnership with Crispin, Porter & Bogusky (CP+B) focused on making a hero out of the algorithm.  The idea behind the marketing strategy is described on their blog:

If you get great search results, you don’t care why or how you got them.  But for more than 80% of searches, there can be more than one right answer. And even when there is one right answer, there’s more than one way of getting you there, understanding those results, or getting ideas for alternative searches. For these searches, the editorial voice of your search engine matters. Search isn’t the commodity it may, at times, seem to be.

You might know CPB for their superfun and standout ad campaigns for Volkswagen and Burger King (including my favorite, the Subservient Chicken viral).We've been working with them to create a campaign that champions "The Algorithm" and how it brings good search to life--from plain old “ten blue links” to popular, algorithm-driven features such as Smart Answers and Zoom related search.  ... So ready or not world, here comes the Algorithm, soon to take its rightful place as a household word, once and for all.

Um, ok.  Obviously they are excited to be working with the "cool kids" at CP+B, which is great.  And the campaigns that are mentioned were wonderfully creative campaigns that defined a new positioning for each client and offered something new and viral.  Unfortunately, there are three pretty obvious flaws in this marketing strategy for Ask:

1. No one cares about the algorithm - This is a fact which they already note above, stating that consumers don't care how they get search results as long as they work.  Everyone in the tech industry is trying to be more "human" with their advertising - but Ask inexplicably decides to go the other way and focus on the algorithm.   
2. The algorithm is declining in importance - As anyone following the search industry knows, the rise of social networks and human filtered search mean the algorithm is not what is used to be.  Even Ask notes above that "the editorial voice of your search engine matters."  Seriously, does the editorial voice of Ask come from an algorithm?  Not so much.
3. The core brand value or positioning for Ask is not about the algorithm - This is perhaps the largest strategic issue of this campaign, that it misses the mark in focus.  Ask happens to be a search engine, but the core value proposition is not about the power of the algorithm.   For years the company focused on user friendliness and having Jeeves as a personal assistant to navigate results.  Quite simply, the algorithm is not what makes Ask unique.

Strategically, the campaign misses the mark pretty widely - and the only explanation for how it launched that I can think of is a marketing team getting blinded to strategy by a creative concept that they fall in love with (probably because of a great sales job from the CP+B team).  Unlike most of CP+B's work, this is definitely not a winning idea.  As Techcrunch recently shared, the execution doesn't seem too much smarter with their Unabomber billboards and incomprehensible microsite.  Even Valleywag was confused.  Am I missing something?  This doesn't inspire too much confidence in Ask.

Finding Social Search at SES NY 07

I had the opportunity to participate in a panel discussion yesterday at the Search Engine Strategies show in NY all about Social Media Optimization.  It was interesting to see how the idea has progressed and search pros are implementing tactics and techniques for social media marketing.  Though I didn't agree with all of the views shared by my fellow panelists about the best practices (or who you are likely to influence by using SMO), the thing that I found interesting was how SEO centric most of the views were.  I think Social Media Marketing is about much more than SEO or search engine results.  Done right, it can foster brand evangelists, engage customers in dialogue and support other marketing efforts.  A wider trend that I have noted from several other interactive shows such as CommunityNext and even some sessions at SxSW, however, was the evolving role of social search tools broader than Google or search engines and the rise of communities as tools to help people find information.  Social search is redefining the way people find, rate, share and consume information online.  Have a quick look at the recent headlines from one of any blogs that focus on new sites and technologies such as TechCrunch or Mashable (among others), and you will get a clear picture of how true this is. 

Thinking about this and walking through the Expo, the one thing that struck me most about the exhibitors was the lack of what I would consider Web2.0 companies or ideas.  For the most part, the Expo seemed identical to what it was in 2006.  Same venue, same three floor format, and mostly the same exhibitors.  In a nutshell, it was companies selling search campaign management software, new search engines with vertical focuses, or search marketing agencies.  In a world where new startups are springing up every day and the world of search has innovations from visual search to mobile and video search tools - the Expo seemed very Web 1.0 to me.  Perhaps I missed the real innovative tools, but aside from a few standouts like Hakia (which also has a great campaign inspired by Cisco's Human Network) or ZoomInfo, I left disappointed by the chance to see real innovation in search at the Expo. 

In terms of social search and social media optimization, the one thing that came out of our panel which I was a bit bothered by was that attendees could easily have left with the impression that many of the SMO tactics employed by the panelists were only suitable for small businesses or capable of reaching teenagers with time on their hands.  I read a good summary of our panel by Kate Zimmerman over at SearchViews which shared a similar conclusion.  Search and the rise of social search has big implications for large brands and requires a shift in thinking.  It's a viewpoint I bring to my clients every day as I talk to them about their search efforts and how consumers are hearing about (and talking about) their brands.  Adding a social search track to the third day of SES this year was a great step.  Looking forward to the future, I think we'll see a larger part of the event (and the exhibitors) dedicated to this area.  Based on where other interactive shows are, I thought I might have found more of it this year at SES NY.

technorati tags: ses sesny sesny07 smo marketing searchmarketing seo searchenginestrategies rohitbhargava
del.icio.us tags: ses sesny sesny07 smo marketing searchmarketing seo searchenginestrategies rohitbhargava

Yahoo! Pipes Offers The Next Evolution of Marketing with RSS

RSS is one of those technologies that has a relatively enigmatic name for a very simple concept.  The idea that you can provide a feed of content that others can subscribe to is the ultimate simplicity.  Yet so far, RSS has been used primarily to push content that is offered by one group to many subscribers.  The power of RSS is mainly in the fact that I can pull multiple feeds from very different content providers into a single location.  My RSS aggregator has news from MarketingVox, the NY Times, my upcoming Netflix movies, and tips from Lifehacker (among lots of others) all on a single page.  That's powerful stuff.  But what if I want to have an even more customized view?  There are plenty of services like Squidoo and Rollyo that have pursued an idea that in the past I have termed "human filtered search."  Whatever you call it, this is the growing trend of people filtering content for other people.  It's the idea behind those sites, as well as the basic concept behind social news sites like Digg or iceRocket. 

Yahoo's recently launched Yahoo! Pipes service offers what may be the missing piece to help RSS evolve into an even more useful tool.  Mashups, already hugely popular for music, involve taking unique bits of content and putting them together to create something new.  Until now, mashups with RSS have been limited mainly to people using extended tools like OPML to create single RSS feeds out of multiple feeds.  What if you could go even further and filter RSS feeds to include parts of content from multiple feeds, and present this all together in a single interface?  You could aggregate data to help customers with product searches, mashup online reviews into a single feed, offer ongoing updates on product buzz and help your brand ambassadors share their affinity for your brand through multiple sources of content.  Yahoo Pipes is a great concept that could just redefine the way that RSS can be used for content aggregation, as well as for marketing.

Some useful resources to read more:

• O'Reilley Radar - In depth coverage of creating pipes and potential for uses
• Yahoo Discussion Forum - See the conversation about Pipes (and user suggestions)
• Technorati WTF - Blog buzz about Yahoo Pipes
• Robin Good - Great in depth coverage about Pipes with lots of resource links

technorati tags: yahoo pipes yahoopipes marketing rss opml mashup socialmedia rohitbhargava

del.icio.us tags: yahoo pipes yahoopipes marketing rss opml mashup socialmedia rohitbhargava
icerocket tags: yahoo pipes yahoopipes marketing rss opml mashup socialmedia rohitbhargava

Top 7 Marketing Trends for 2007

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As the year comes to a close, it's time to look forwards to next year and what are shaping up to be some key trends for marketers to track through the year.  To add to the already vibrant discussion of trends to pay attention to, here is my stab at a few top marketing trends that I will be watching in the new year (in no particular order):

1. Sharing a Corporate Personality - For too many years, large organizations have focused much of their marketing and communications on becoming "faceless" - yet the danger of facelessness is now becoming better understood.  In short, companies cannot connect with customers in a meaningful and emotional way without having a personality.  As more organizations realize this fact, we will continue to see more "corporate bloggers" and more touch points for customers to interact with the true personality of a brand.  Look for social media to play a bigger part in overall marketing strategy as a result.
2. Widget Marketing - A trend I have been following since earlier in the year, widgets have made significant strides as an accepted marketing technique in recent months.  Many new blog oriented services are launching Widgets in Typepad's gallery, startups offer their own widgets as a quick way of introducing their service, and new products like Chumby (a compact clock-radio-like product that has a wireless connection) are bringing widgets out of the online world and into the real one.  For marketers looking to offer a quick introduction to their service, or those seeking to create an online connection with customers - widgets will find more users in 2007. 
3. Social Media Optimization - Originally introduced just a few months ago, SMO has rapidly blossomed into a movement in the online marketing industry worldwide.  Primarily being driven at the moment by those in the search marketing industry, in 2007 I suspect SMO will continue to get broader use from marketers interested in building traffic and buzz online, moving far beyond linking strategy and smart SEO into the marketing mainstream.  Hooks to allow site visitors to easily share and bookmark content may become more commonplace than those ubiquitous "email a friend" links.
4. AutoTagging and AutoSorting - I have written often about the trend for visual search and how companies like Riya are leading the way for photo recognition technology that allows imagery on the web to be more effectively tagged and organized.  In 2007, we will see more solutions like this that offer autotagging, autosorting and the next extension of this technology ... auto recommendations, where new content of any format can be recommended and people can find new content more easily.  This will continue to create waves in how users watch video online, find music, and browse the web.
5. Human Filtered Search - One of the effects of the personal media revolution is an exponential increase in the amount of content online.  This will continue to lead online users to search beyond the algorithm for new ways of finding information.  A key method for this is human filtered search, where people are sorting content on the web, creating their own groupings and sharing that with others.  Just as Jerry Yang initially built Yahoo as a directory to help him and friends sort through the exploding amount of content online, now sites like Squidoo and Rollyo are offering alternative ways of finding information online.  The human side of search looks set to become a force in 2007.
6. Contentcasting - Putting content online, and then trying to spread the word about it is so 2006.  Contentcasting is set to be the new standard, enabled by RSS and a growing number of online users that are finding the only way to keep up with all the news and information they care about is to subscribe to feeds and access it that way.  Contentcasting will relate to videoblogs, audio podcasts, and frequently updated content in any area of the site - from a blog to a newsroom.  Got content that you want to spread around?  Don't just market it -- broadcast it and let your users/customers pick up the feeds.
7. Online Identity Shifting - If you add the success of Facebook, Myspace, Vox, Second Life, LinkedIn and Flickr together - you would come to a single conclusion: that having and sharing your identity online is hot right now.  This is not about blogging or about uploading your photos online, this is a phenomenon of having an extension of your personality online to share with friends, family and colleagues.  With the number of assets we can now create - from photos and videos to full podcast programs about our lives, the appeal of sharing this with those you care about will continue to represent a force in driving more people towards social media.  Within these online representations of self, brands and products will continue to play a large role.  People will talk about products they like and don't like - they will share brand experiences, and they will even become brand ambassadors for products and services that they care about.  In this world where individual lives are shared online, there will be huge opportunities for marketers in 2007.

technorati tags: marketing advertising trends trend 2007 pr publicrelations rohit bhargava smo socialmedia socialmediaoptimization contentcasting widget widgetmarketing autotagging humansearch

del.icio.us tags: marketing advertising trends trend 2007 pr publicrelations rohit bhargava smo socialmedia socialmediaoptimization contentcasting widget widgetmarketing autotagging humansearch
icerocket tags: marketing advertising trends trend 2007 pr publicrelations rohit bhargava smo socialmedia socialmediaoptimization contentcasting widget widgetmarketing autotagging humansearch

A Recap of 2006 on Influential Interactive Marketing

Let's start with a warning ... this is the "clip show" post where I recycle a lot of old material so if that causes you extreme pain, please close this window now and come back tomorrow.  For all the rest of you, it's the holidays and a quick glance around the marketing blogosphere will show that these clip show posts are in right now.  With nearly 400 post on this blog already, there is lots of content to choose from ... allowing me the luxury to conveniently ignore those posts from the past year that are outdated or that I just don't like anymore.  Here is a sampling of the rest:

Concepts & Ideas:
This is a collection of concepts and ideas that were introduced or discussed on this blog and then travelled virally to other blogs and were discussed elsewhere in media.  A good collection of ideas, many of which I still hope to implement on a client campaign (but haven't yet).

• Soundbombs
• Virtual Hugs
• Placecasting
• Widget Marketing
• Text Messaging Customer Service
• Tagging with Domain Names
• Social Media Optimization
• Automated Blog Translation
• Photopedia
• Human Search Filters

Rules & Guides:
These are a group of "Guy Kawasaki style" posts written in list format as guides to various topics from SMO to viral marketing.  It's a format I have always liked and you will probably see many more posts in this format going into 2007.

• Avoiding the Dark Side of Social Media
• 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization
• Signs Your Viral Marketing May Flop
• 7 Tips on Pitching Bloggers
• Golden Rules of Blog Etiquette

Presentations & Published Work:
Links to presentations given at industry events as well as guest contributions to other blogs.  There is some good powerpoint link bait in here, useful for those who are interested in any of these topics but couldn't make it to the events referenced.

• 7 Rules for Getting into Search (Search Engine Strategies Conference)
• 7 Tips on Pitching Bloggers (White Paper)
• The Human Side of Search (Search Insider Summit)
• Guide to Blog Marketing (SixApart Seminar) 
• Finding your Personality in Personal Media (Guest Column on Strumpette)

That's it.  Look out tomorrow for an all new post about what I think the top ten marketing ideas to watch will be in 2007.

Riya Launches a New Visual Search for Online Retail: Like.com

When I first wrote about visual search more than a year ago, it was all about a new type of search interface that would allow you to see results contextually through a more visual interface rather than a simple text listing of results.  Visual search, at that point, was all about improving the interface to allow for more sophisticated search, results sorting, and grouping.  Today, Riya just launched Like.com, which they are describing as the "first true visual search engine, where the contents of photos are used to search and retrieve similar items."  Playing around with the tool, it's hard not to get excited about the potential of this new techology to significantly change how ecommerce sites operate today.  Imagine being able to take any image, zoom in on an object within it to see a product, learn more about it and conduct a search for similar items.  In a sentence, this is the premise behind Like.com.  In using the beta version for a few searches and going through the demo, it is hard to tell just how much of the tool is automated and would work on new images it is never indexed, however the promise of being able to search in this way through a vast archive of products could respresent the next evolution in online retail.

Coupled with this month's cover story in Fast Company about Gordon Bell's dedicated efforts to catalogue his entire life experience, second by second - this technology could also offer the key to image and memory retrieval as more and more of us build our own digital archives of our lives through video and digital images.  Munjal Shah, the founder of Riya, shares on his blog that part of the reason behind pursuing visual search technology was his growing archive of more than 38,000 images and an inability to find the photos he wanted easily.  It is a challenge that will become more and more common in the next few years as capacity for digital images and hard drive space are no longer constraints for digital photography and video.  With unlimited storage comes unlimited content.  All of this bodes well for services such as Riya for enabling the next generation of visual image search, and for the newly launched Like.com to help online shoppers quickly find that perfect handbag, and much more.

(Via MarketingVox)

technorati tags: like.com riya like visualsearch searchmarketing online web marketing ecommerce fastcompany gordonbell mylifebits
del.icio.us tags: like.com riya like visualsearch searchmarketing online web marketing ecommerce fastcompany gordonbell mylifebits
icerocket tags: like.com riya like visualsearch searchmarketing online web marketing ecommerce fastcompany gordonbell mylifebits

The Life of Social Media Optimization

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As of Monday, August 21st, 2006 ... Social Media Optimization (SMO) is now a term in Wikipedia.  From it's humble beginning as a blog post less than two weeks ago, it has been tough to keep up with all the activity from many smart folks that have added to the original 5 rules and taken the dialogue about SMO into the real world in panel discussions and industry events.  Along the way, it was perhaps inevitable that the spread of SMO would become a case study of the power of social media to take an idea and give it a life of its own.  For example, in the time that I have been tracking this idea, here are a few of the interesting signs of its life in social media:

1. 53 337 tags on del.icio.us (to the original post)
   
2. 8 13 diggs on Digg.com (plus more for other posts on the subject)
3. 37 2,876 linked blog posts according to Technorati (to the original post)
4. 139 165 promotions on New PR (to the original post)
5. 18 25 votes on Netscape (to 16 Rules post on toprank)
6. 6 marks on Marktd (to 16 Rules post on toprank)
7. New page added to The New PR Wiki
8. New Wikipedia article on "Social Media Optimization"
9. Corresponding update to Wikipedia page on "SMO"

These results show a strong life for the idea of SMO, but how good are these numbers?  For anyone marketing with social media, optimization alone can set you up to become more visible - but the next challenge is bound to be how to measure it.  If this were a marketing campaign, how would I judge success?  Is something like a Social Media Score even possible?  Just as SEO or SEM have evolved their success metrics and sophistication, SMO will need to have a separate criteria to help marketer's claim success.  This is the next frontier I hope to see some dialogue about on the New PR Wiki page.  Getting SMO into Wikipedia is a great first step.  Now SMO is living and breathing.  As personal media continues to rise in relevance and influence - the need for SMO and related services will only become more apparent.  In time I believe we will see SMO find its place in the overall marketing mix as a core expertise.

Figures updated (03/15/07)

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5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO)

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For years now, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for websites has been honed into a fine art with entire companies devoting considerable effort to defining best practices and touting the value of SEO for raising a site's performance on organic search listings.  While I believe in the power of SEO, there is a new offering we have started providing to clients which we call Social Media Optimization (SMO).  The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.  Here are 5 rules we use to help guide our thinking with conducting an SMO for a client's website:

1. Increase your linkability - This is the first and most important priority for websites.  Many sites are "static" - meaning they are rarely updated and used simply for a storefront.  To optimize a site for social media, we need to increase the linkability of the content.  Adding a blog is a great step, however there are many other ways such as creating white papers and thought pieces, or even simply aggregating content that exists elsewhere into a useful format.
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy - Adding content features like quick buttons to "add to del.icio.us" are one way to make the process of tagging pages easier, but we go beyond this, making sure pages include a list of relevant tags, suggested notes for a link (which come up automatically when you go to tag a site), and making sure to tag our pages first on popular social bookmarking sites (including more than just the homepage).
3. Reward inbound links - Often used as a barometer for success of a blog (as well as a website), inbound links are paramount to rising in search results and overall rankings.  To encourage more of them, we need to make it easy and provide clear rewards.  From using Permalinks to recreating Similarly, listing recent linking blogs on your site provides the reward of visibility for those who link to you
4. Help your content travel - Unlike much of SEO, SMO is not just about making changes to a site.  When you have content that can be portable (such as PDFs, video files and audio files), submitting them to relevant sites will help your content travel further, and ultimately drive links back to your site.   
5. Encourage the mashup - In a world of co-creation, it pays to be more open about letting others use your content (within reason).  YouTube's idea of providing code to cut and paste so you can imbed videos from their site has fueled their growth.  Syndicating your content through RSS also makes it easy for others to create mashups that can drive traffic or augment your content.

There are many other "rules" and techniques that we are starting to uncover as this idea gets more sophisticated.  In the meantime we are always on the lookout for new ideas in Social Media Optimization to encourage even better thinking.  Perhaps we may even see the rise of entire groups or agencies devoted to SMO in the future ...

Update (8/13/06): Jeremiah Owyang has added Rules 6 and 7

Update (08/15/06): Cameron Olthuis has added Rules 8, 9, 10, and 11

Update (08/16/06): Loren Baker has added Rules 12 and 13

Update (08/17/06): Lee Odden has added Rules 14, 15 and 16

Update (08/22/06): Jean-Marie Le Ray has translated all 16 rules into French

Update (08/22/06): Marko Derkson has translated the 16 rules into Dutch

Update (08/29/06): Marco Faré has partially translated the 16 rules into Italian

Update (08/30/06): For those interested in helping spread the word about SMO or adding rules, read my follow up post - "Adding the 17th Rule of Social Media Optimization."

Update (09/01/06): Oscar Ugaz has translated the rules into Spanish

Update (09/04/06): Marcus Puchmayer has partially translated the rules into German

Update (09/05/06): Makitani Yasuki has translated the rules into Japanese

Update (09/26/06): Alexander Lingris has translated the rules into Greek

Update (11/09/06): Luís Augusto Okamoto has translated the rules into Portuguese

Update (12/28/06): Ilia Rabchenok has translated the rules into Russian

Update (1/2/07): See below for several more articles about SMO on this blog, including my thoughts on not being the "gatekeeper" for a 17th rule to the list (for all those who have emailed me their ideas):

• The Life of Social Media Optimization
• Adding the 17th Rule of Social Media Optimization
• SMO and the Art of "Tweaking"
• The Dark Side of Social Media and How to Avoid It
• SMO Presentation at SixApart (A Guide to Blog Marketing) [PDF File]
• 3 Reasons SMO is Taking Off

Update (01/09/07): Eyal Harofe has translated the rules into Hebrew

Update (11/27/07): Due to an increasing amount of spam comments on this post, comments have now been closed (old spam comments have also been removed).

Have more rules to add or a translated version of the rules?  Send me a link to your post at rohitaustralia [at] gmail [dot] com and I'll add it here.  Also, I am tagging you can view all posts that reference the idea of SMO with the tag "socialmediaoptimization" on del.icio.us.

Eons.com Offers a New Online Community for Boomers 50+

Several weeks ago, I had the chance to speak with Jeff Taylor (founder of Monster.com) about Eons.com, his latest venture launching today.  The site is targeted to the increasingly influential group of boomers aged 50+ who are now either contemplating retirement or engaged in "active retirement."  Aside from the new advertising opportunities the site offers, there are many choices from an interface point of view that just strike me as smart and unique from other sites in the market.  Jeff has a keen understanding for his target market, and though he joked in our meeting at BuzzAgent about finally being one of the younger guys) in his team, this understanding of his target market shines through in the design and content on Eons.com. 

Here are a few key reasons why Eons.com stands out from other sites targeted to the boomer audience:

1. Smart and inviting design - The main problem with most portal sites is that they are too cluttered, or unfocused on content features.  Eons.com features a clean and simple homepage with minimal text, plenty of open space, and inviting features.  The site has an easy to find button to make the text larger, and more importantly - other pages within the site carry through the uncluttered design by using plenty of white space, ignoring the temptation to make the homepage simple but lose that simplicity throughout the site.
2. An "Age Relevant Search Engine" - As anyone who has been forced to deal with the millions of search results returned for nearly every term by Google, complicated results and too many text ads reduce the simplicity of using search.  Yet when people are searching for broad terms, they are most frequently looking for the same content.  So Eons.com features "cRANKy," an age relevant search engine which ranks search results and filters through to only return the most commonly clicked results and omits the rest.  Keyword ads are still displayed, but are clearly indicated as sponsored links and limited.
3. Content that doesn't focus solely on health and retirement - This is the major mistake made by many other sites focusing on this audience, and Eons.com avoids it in a novel way by choosing to focus the site instead on "life goals" and asking users to create top ten lists for their life.  The site launched with more than 50,000 life goals and there is a ranking of the top goals most often cited.
4. The world's largest obituary database - Perhaps the biggest taboo is to focus morbidly on death, so many sites targeted to boomers avoid the topic altogether.  Not Eons.com ... which features "the world's largest obituary database," tools to make the process of sending condolences easier, let's you create "tributes" to departed loved ones, and even offers an irresistable feature called "Way to Go" which highlights obscure deaths in the news around the world.  The philosophy goes, death is something that will eventually come to us all ... we may as well have fun with it.
5. Coolness and a Hip Factor - This element might seem out of place on a site like Eons, but it is actually a key element in the overall experience of the site.  Features like the LifeMap and Longevity Calculator allow users to have a more interactive experience and not limit themselves to only reading content or browsing photos.  Through smart sharing tools on the site, you can open up your lifemap (and your top ten lists) to the community to get feedback and make new connections.  Not to mention, sharing your lifemap with your family is a very visible symbol of the hip factor - and a great way to chronicle your life.

On the advertising side, the site has already signed up several large advertisers including Hyatt, Verizon and Harrah’s Entertainment - and has an experienced head in Jeff Taylor (which has brought in significant VC funds to help him get Eons.com off the ground.  Jane Seymour is on the board, adding credibility and a recognizable face - and the site has all the signals of making a big splash in the market of sites targeted to the boomer demographic.  Unfortunately, I don't fit the demographic for the site quite yet - but some features, such as the cRANKy search engine, are resources worth mentioning for web users of any age.

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del.ico.us tags: boomer boomers eons eons.com jeff taylor realage thirdage lifemap cRANKy agemarketing jane seymour marketing obituary obit advertising rohit bhargava
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How a TagWiki Could Make del.icio.us More Useful Than Google

In my del.icio.us account I have a tag for "public relations," one for "public_relations" and another one for "pr."  The problem is, I mean all of these to be the same tag - but right now they are separate.  Now extend this phe