Influential Marketing Blog

OSG: The Secret Metric For Measurement Every Marketer Wants

Just over a week ago during lunch at the New Communication Forum, I had a great conversation with Tim Tozer from Radian6 (a social media monitoring service) about the real metrics that marketers are looking for and the increasingly common difficulty of finding metrics that are actually useful and offer actionable insights. Many people who have to contend with web analytics tools today will tell you that it is no longer an issue of having the technology available to measure things online, but rather the analytical ability to hone in on the metrics that really matter. Tradition, when it comes to metrics, is the paralyzing factor because it forces many brands to think about metrics in the same way they always have ... with impressions or clicks and little else. Of course, with social media it becomes much more complicated to decide what to measure as activities may not have a direct relationship with "conversion." The one thing that has remained consistent, though, is the thing that all marketers are really looking for, but many are afraid to admit it. It is something I summed up in the title with a short acronym: OSG.

OSG stands for One Sexy Graphic. OSG means two simple things:

1. Metrics that are easy to analyze and act on
2. Metrics I can show to my boss to explain what I'm doing

If you think about it, smarter metrics comes down to understanding what to measure, but it also requires that we find a smarter way of visualizing data so that it looks appealing and intuitive. During the Web2.0 Expo, there was an interesting exhibit at a party from an artist named Aaron Koblin who has created several of these data visualizations. These were presented as art, but it struck me that his pieces were really what marketers have been longing for. A highly visual representation of complex data in a way that allows you to infer lots of learnings and insights. Perhaps the real need here is something that OSG minimizes through humor ... but the not so revolutionary idea is that we need to rethink the way that we visualize data to focus on true insights rather than what we have traditionally always measured. If a picture is worth a thousand words, OSG can be the difference between proving the effectiveness of a social media effort in a way that people understand, or having lots of numbers in a complex report destined to be ignored by all those who almost read it.

The Top 10 Most Underappreciated Metrics To Track in 2008 - Part II

This post is the continuation of a topic I started yesterday all about the right metrics to focus on and how many marketing teams may be using the wrong ones without realizing it.  In Part I, I shared 10 meaningless metrics that brands should consider moving away from.  Most of those metrics are either based on precedent (what brands have always measured) or ignorance (a lack of knowledge about other metrics to track).  As a whole, the single word that defines the old view of metrics is to focus on impressions.  A more sophisticated model measures engagement or interaction (ie - a more active consumption of content).  Eyeballs are not enough.  So, to help you start thinking outside your typical metrics, here are some of the underappreciated metrics that I believe more brands should focus on in 2008:

1. Inbound Links (from influential sources) - Most marketers right now are already paying attention to inbound links, but the problem with most is that there is no qualitative assessment.  What this means, for example, is that getting included on the blogroll of a spam blog is the equivalent of getting mentioned in a post on a high influence blog.  They are not equal, which is why the Technorati Authority rating made it onto my list of most meaningless metrics yesterday.  Getting smarter about measuring inbound links, however, will be crucial - and this means paying more attention to where that link comes from.
2. Direct URL Access - Do you record how many people get to your site by directly typing in the URL?  This may be the most important ignored metric of all.  The reason is that it tells you volumes about your brand and your marketing if you can find a way to get better at measuring it.  When someone directly types your URL into their browser, it indicates familiarity with your brand, recall of a particular message that made your URL stick in their heads, qualified traffic and a likeliness that they are seeking some piece of information specifically.
3. RSS Subscribers - Most bloggers have already started to pay more attention to how many RSS subscribers they have and even use it as a badge of honor when describing the traffic to their blog.  Aside from being more accurate than inbound links as a measure of influence simply because it is much tougher to accidentally count spam as traffic, this allows you to measure a level of engagement as well.  If someone has chosen to subscribe to your content, that indicates a depth of engagement that a simple page view does not. 
4. Email Link Referrals - We all know that people cut and paste links and forward content to one another, but few marketers pay enough attention to tracking this.  The reason is fairly obvious ... when you get a link coming through from a forwarded email, it is typically impossible to follow.  As a result, it is rarely counted in referring links and ignored as a source of traffic.  Yet, once again, if someone sends a link to your content to someone else, it is likely to indicate a level of engagement that is far higher.
5. Time Spent (engagement) - In my post yesterday, I noted that time spent can be a misleading metric because it can also unintentionally give you credit for having a confusing user interface that takes a long time for a user to navigate (thus inflating your time spent).  This doesn't, however, mean that I think you should ignore the time spent metric altogether.  It still provides a valuable data point, assuming you are confident that you are measuring actual engagement rather than time wasted.
6. Organic Keyword Referrals - Most large brands are getting far more sophisticated with search terms, targeting the popular ones and measuring their response.  Alongside all this paid search marketing, however, users are typing in their own search queries, and arriving at your site organically.  What many brands surprisingly forget to do is fully track and index all the keywords that people are using through organic search to reach their site.  This gives you clues not only to help you focus a search campaign, but also to improve your content.
7. Email Longevity and Multiple Opens - As I shared yesterday, email opens are a useless metric because many emails are opened by accident.  An interesting measure that is underappreciated by many email marketers is how long people keep an email in their inbox and how many times they open it.  If you think about it, the most useful emails that you have gotten are ones that you are likely to keep on file and open at least a few times.  Aside from forwarding an email, which pretty much everyone already measures, keeping track of multiple opens (and particularly the time between opens) can lend interesting insight into how evergreen your emails are.
8. Abandonment - One of the most useful areas to focus on gathering as many metrics as you can is around the idea of abandonment, or the moment when a user leaves your site for any reason.  The types of metrics that could be useful here are time spent before leaving (which may indicate that they arrived at your site by accident if it is only a few seconds), last page viewed (which tells you whether there is a "dead spot" that tends to lose users), or shopping cart behaviour (obviously key to know why people don't complete purchases).
9. Clickstream - The clickstream can mean many things to people depending on how they term their metrics.  what I mean by it are the sites visited directly before and after someone visits your site.  This can tell you volumes if you learn how to read between the lines to what the data is actually telling you.  For example, if people go straight to Google after your site, chances are they are still seeking something they didn't find on your site.  Visiting a competitor site also gives you clues of what other products or services your customers consider.  Finally, when someone is visiting an unrelated site, this may give you a clue about what they thought they might find on your site and perhaps why they left.
10. Microsharing - Of course, regular readers of this blog probably know that I couldn't get through a post like this without making up a new term ... so let's talk about "microsharing."  This is the idea that people are sharing bits of knowledge in lots of ways that don't show up on traditional marketing metrics.  They post a link on Twitter, they bookmark something on del.icio.us, or they add something to Digg.  Each is a social method of sharing information, but brands typically don't track any of these effectively because few feel they have the means to do it.  Unfortunately, there is no magic solution to help brands measure this today. There are conversation tracking tools, and manual analysis is always an option ... but in 2008, this will be something that most smart marketers will be paying a lot more attention to - and more vendors will likely be coming up with easier solutions to help track.

Any other favourite metrics that you would add to this list that you feel marketers have been ignoring and need to focus on in the new year?

The Top 10 Most Overused Metrics of 2007 - Part I

We all know marketers love metrics.  Flashy award winning campaigns are great and celebrity spokespersons are always appealing, but most of the time we try to base judging the success of a campaign on hard and fast metrics.  The only problem is, many times the metrics that marketers use to gauge success are wrong, inaccurate, incomplete or just plain useless.  There are two main reasons this happens ... precedent and ignorance.  Precedent means using the metrics you have always used and is always tempting.  Particularly so when you are encouraged to fill out the same spreadsheets year after year comparing one year's effort to the last.  Effectively, you are locked into a cycle of using crap metrics.  Ignorance is a growing reason, usually as a result of having better tools to measure results, but not taking advantage of them.  Where this leaves us at the end of 2007 is with lots of marketing teams focusing on the wrong metrics and without a plan in sight for changing this in the new year.

When it comes to metrics, the big shift in 2008 for smart marketers will be moving from measuring simple eyeballs or obvious things such as clicks to engagement.  Many have already started.  This post is the first in a two part series meant to highlight some key overused metrics in 2007, and to offer some ideas for better metrics you may want to consider moving into 2008 (tomorrow's post).  These cross the spectrum of metrics on websites to metrics around online advertising, keyword marketing or social media.

Of course, metrics are not a singular thing that can be blindly applied to any campaign.  They depend on the objectives of your marketing and your overall strategy.  Still, hopefully these two posts can give you some thoughts to consider, starting with a few metrics you may want to reconsider focusing on: 

1. Impressions - I have posted before about how impressions are just about the most meaningless metric that brands continue to focus on.  Why?  Because they rarely indicate any kind of action, or even any amount of attention.  Impressions are empty.
2. Technorati Authority - As tempting as it is to use that neat little number beside every blog as the ultimate ranking for a blog, doing so can give you a false idea of the prominence of a blog and unjustly tip the scale against blogs that deserve a higher ranking.
3. Comments - Another element that many people are starting to look at on blogs and online videos is number of comments.  The problem with this is that it fails to qualitatively look at comments.  If you get 5 spam comments, 3 comments calling you an idiot, and another three that are nothing more than linkbait ... that's not 11 comments, that's 0 useful comments.
4. Trackbacks - Trackbacks are like communism, a decent idea in theory that will never work because real people and human nature inconveniently get in the way.  In order for trackbacks to be an accurate measure of links to a piece of content, everyone who links to you would need to send one.  We all know people don't, which makes trackbacks incomplete and useless.
5. Time Spent (searching) - Time spent on a site is a metric that marketers love to use, but it is only partially useful.  Often, the time spent on your site is not an indication of engagement, but rather a result of a poor or confusing user interface.  When a user has to spend 5 minutes trying to figure out your navigation, that's not good news or something to consider a success.
6. Keyword Conversion Rate - When running search marketing, keyword conversion rates are great metrics to point to ... particularly when the percentage conversion is high (10% or more).  The problem is, these rates are usually on low volume niche search terms.  It is a misleading metric that some marketers love to employ to inflate the success of a keyword marketing program.
7. Number of Pages - Another common site measure is number of pages accessed by a user.  Again, looking at this number does not indicate the real interest level or engagement - but rather how many pages a user had to access to find what they were looking for.  More pages is not necessarily a good thing.
8. Email Open Rate - Chances are, if you have conducted any email marketing program, you are measuring open rate and using it as a benchmark value.  The only problem is, many email clients (and the newly redesigned Yahoo Mail client) essentially cause users to automatically open emails simply by hovering over the subject.  This means that accidental opens can be extremely high, even coming from users who are only clicking on the subject line in order to delete your email right away.
9. Popover Click Rate - One of the most common mistakes, this is decreasing in prevalence, but many marketers are still using it as a key metric.  The problem with many popover (rollover) ads is that users struggling to find a close button may inadvertently click your ad.
10. Page Views - No list of useless metrics would be complete without mentioning an old favourite for the online world ... page views.  This is another metric that most forward thinking marketers are getting rid of (or have already) and are replacing it with something like unique views to avoid capturing multiple views from the same person and double counting them.

Check back tomorrow for Part II of this post ... 10 more meaningful metrics to focus on for 2008.

The Great Recycling Myth and Your Marketing Data

With all of the attention on global warming and what each of us could do, there is an interesting paradox that you may not realize which is happening right under your nose at work.  I was reminded of it again as I came across a Dilbert comic that sums up the issue in three short panels as only Scott Adams can do:

The short story is that what you think is recycling at work is very often a myth.  You may be diligently separating your garbage from your paper recyling, but at the end of the night when the cleaners come through your office, they just have one big trash can and it all goes into the same place.  A cousin of mine who lives in Austin had the same situation and it bothered her so much, she agreed to take the paper recycling out herself every week and now people pile it outside of her office.  Am I bringing this up to tell you to launch your own internal paper recycling army like she did?  Not really (unless that's what you want to do, of course).

If you think about it, the relationship between recycling and trash is exactly how you need to treat your marketing data online, by separating the useful from the not useful, instead of throwing it into the same database all together.  The irony is, in many cases your customers are separating this data for you (like the hapless cubicle workers) ... it's just up to you to keep it separate when you record it.  Less useful demographics in this model would be all the things you are used to capturing (gender, age, location, HHI, etc.).  Instead, you would focus on three different things:

1. Behaviour - What are they doing on your site and how are they searching or browsing?  What is the progression of pages or areas they viewed?  Where did they go before and after visiting your site?  How often did they return?  How long did they spend on your site?  What type of marketing do they respond to?
   
2. Conversation - What have they asked you about online or through email?  Did they call in and what did they ask about?  Have they written about you on a forum or a blog and what did they say?
   
3. History - What have they purchased from you before?  How often do they come back to purchase or browse your site?  What sort of items do they buy and who do they buy them for (if not for themselves)?

On a very basic level, these are the three elements of your marketing data worth recycling.  You probably noticed that most have nothing to do with what gender someone is or where they live.  What would happen if you just focused on these and tossed the rest of the data you are used to focusing on?

Related Post: Thinking Outside the Demographic

Thinking Outside the Demographic - Why Customer Passion Matters More

If you have been in marketing for any amount of time, you know how omniprescent demographics are.  The first question most marketing teams will focus on is "what's our target demographic?"  Demographics are what media is bought by and what media properties define themselves by.  Ask any online community about their core audience, and they will typically respond with a demographic like "teen girls 12-18" or "young men 18-25."  TV shows and movies do the same.  Brands take this information, match it with their research or intuitive belief in who their audience is, and decide what promotions to run and what ads to buy.  The problem with this system is that it asks the wrong question.  The question we should be asking is "what does our audience care about?"  There are a number of reasons why we need to think outside the demographic:

1. Creates a common interest. The classic problem with demographics is that you usually end up with more than one that is the target.  Usually, this means a brand will use language like their primary and secondary demographic.  But how do you link them together?  If they were already bonded by a common interest, it makes it much easier to determine how to reach them.
2. Focuses on real relevance.  The other issue with demographics is that they assume because someone is of a certain gender or age, that they will care about a message.  I know demographics get much more sophisticated than that, but they are still based on an assumption that may be flawed.  Focusing on what your audience cares about instead allows you to think more strategically about what messages would be relevant for them.
3. Avoids wastage based on assumptions. Perhaps the greatest benefit of this approach is that it helps you to avoid wasting much of your marketing dollars on trying to reach people who are in your demographic but may not necessarily care about your products or be in the market for them.

As a real example of this, imagine you are promoting a campaign where a brand is trying to raise money for breast cancer, the old demographic mold of thinking would be to target women 29-44.  Contrast that approach to one that focuses instead on everyone who has a personal belief in the issue and is vocal about it.  This could include women 29-44, but is just as likely to include a 15 year old boy who's mother is dealing with the disease.  The implication is obvious.  In terms of buying media, the shift required is creating more contextual marketing messages that touch on points and topics that a particular audience is likely to care about.  The whole point is that targeting by customer passion rather than demographics can make your marketing messages more relevant.  And at the end of the day that's what we all want.

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!

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.

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.

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The ROI of Blogging: Share Your Top 5 Stories

Two months ago, Charlene Li of Forrester produced a report on the ROI of blogging by comparing the relative spend on blogs to the spend required for focus group based research.  While some people immediately pointed out flaws in this reasoning, it was a great first step towards trying to define a model for measuring the true return on investment for blogging at a corporate level.  For individuals dedicated to creating their own microbrands and blogging to network with others in the industry, better connect with customers or simply participate in the conversation ... the ROI is not likely to be tied to focus group research.  Rather, the ROI in these cases comes from the opportunities that become possible through having a blog that wouldn't have happened otherwise.  These are thought leadership and brand/microbrand benefits, but they are ROI nonetheless. 

Taking this idea further, it would be interesting to see blogger's responses to what I think may be the ultimate question in helping to understand ROI of blogging on an individual basis:

Since you have been blogging, what would you consider your top five most effective blog posts and why?

To get the conversation going, here is my list of top five:

#5 - The Human Side of Search
The human side of search (everything that happens outside the almighty algorithm to organize information online) is an idea that I had been thinking about for some time and finally explored in a small presentation I gave at the Search Insider Summit event last year.  Since then, the concept has really evolved in the search industry and beyond.  It remains a topic I am passionate about following and continuing to do more with.

#4 - Brands I am Passionate About
I shared five brands that I truly love, and was contacted by one of them after seeing my blog post.  Briggs & Riley's team saw my post and asked me to try out a range of bags from their new line and offer feedback.  It was the most significant of a few product related pitches I have received, and one that I was most excited about due to my professed passion for their brand.

#3 - Tips on Pitching Bloggers
Originally published as a thought piece on the Ogilvy PR website, this 2 page PDF has been one of the most linked on my blog and also downloaded frequently from the Ogilvy site.  It has also been a great tool for our internal teams as well as a useful piece to give to clients.

#2 - Top 7 Marketing Trends of 2007
When I first published this, I figured it would be one of many trend related posts coming into 2007.  There were several links, but the amazing thing is that the post continues to draw significant traffic and clicks.  The image above is from the cover of Marketing China magazine, which was my most significant media hit to date in the traditional media - where our office in China helped to translate the piece to be included in this cover feature story in Marketing China.

#1 - Social Media Optimization
This will probably come as no surprise that it makes #1 on my list of most effective blog posts.  Since the original article in August of last year, the SMO phenomenon has gone through a very interesting cycle of global awareness, adoption, refinement, and even a backlash within certain circles.  It's amazing to watch how far and how fast the idea has taken off.

From a thought leadership and visibility point of view, blogging clearly has huge potential for individuals and for corporations as well.  To keep the conversation thread going, I am going to tag Hugh, Paul, Anastacia, Steve, and my colleagues in the Social Media Collaborative (including Charlene) to blog about their thoughts on this topic and how the ROI of blogging for most blogs might be far more about the stories and experiences made possible by blogging than by the dollar value of the traditional marketing efforts it is beginning to replace.

Suggested tag for all posts on this topic:  BlogROIStories

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How to Create a Microbrand Like GapingVoid

It might sometimes seem like everything is going micro.  With microlending, loans are getting smaller.  With online video, entertainment is getting shorter.  Technology devices are, of course, getting smaller. Micro is hot.  So it should come as no surprise that the next big thing coming fast into the marketing world is actually a little thing: microbrands.  This idea of a microbrand was explored in a panel I attended yesterday where two of the participants - Hugh McLeod from GapingVoid and Kathy Sierra from Creating Passionate Users are bloggers that I have read often.  In the panel, several thoughts emerged about how best to create a microbrand and what up and coming bloggers should do to build microbrands (and more traffic, by the way) to their own sites.  Here are a few key thoughts they shared:

1. Don't be afraid to get flamed. Mostly about avoiding self censorship, this is about the growth stage that most bloggers face when their writing is popular enough to attract passionate detractors.  These are the folks that come onto your previously peaceful little blog and start to blast holes in your arguments, add their own interpretations and expose any slightly weak or overstated argument.  As a reaction, the wrong thing to do is self censor and avoid writing about polarizing topics.  If some people really hate your stuff, you're probably doing something right.
2. Let go of the Technorati obsession. With so much attention these days on "linkbaiting" and other dodgy methods that bloggers are using to amplify their ratings and rankings on Technorati, this piece of advice is particularly important.  Yes, getting linked on Slashdot or having a popular article on Digg or Techmeme is great.  But focusing on your content and not on winning the high school popularlity contest that can be the blogosphere is a much wiser decision.  As Gabe Rivera from Techmeme shared on the panel, you might actually find your rankings will improve once you stop obsessing about them.  (By the way, I finally learned that "meme" is pronounced "meem" - in case you were like me and had only read it 1 million times but sounded like an idiot saying it aloud).
3. Avoid adding to the "echo chamber." This is another great soundbite from Hugh out of the conference, and offers a valuable piece of advice and an argument for being unique and offering more than just a celebration of the "wonder of me" as John Bell likes to call that type of writing.  Gaping Void is unique.  Putting out a blog that is an echo chamber doesn't stand out, and it isn't unique. 
4. Be grateful and respect your readers.  The first part of this is about thanking your readers and giving them incentives to keep up the dialogue with you.  The second part is about knowing what your readers care about.  My readers care about ideas in marketing.  I had the chance to see a great an interesting independent film at SxSW today called "A Lawyer Walks into a bar ..." and thought about writing about it.  The only problem is, I didn't have a specific thought relating to the marketing and the movie, so instead of dedicating a post to the film, I'm just sneaking a plug in here and recommending that you check it out. 

In retrospect after looking at my notes - these points don't really offer guidance on creating a global microbrand, as I originally thought they did.  They do, however, offer valuable insight into how to grow your blog traffic and become more successful, which will lead to growing your microbrand.  To this list, I would add two more thoughts about actually building your successful blog into a microbrand:

1. Create a brand, not a title.  This is obvious, right?  Well, think about it - your blog probably has a title, but this is not necessarily a brand.  Sometimes a brand can be your name - but sometimes it needs to be something topical to what you write about.  Seth Godin's brand is his name.  Heather Armstrong's brand is Dooce.  Figure out what works best for you and use that.
2. Have an identity and be consistent.  So much of branding is consistency.  Using your brand in the same way everywhere and signing every piece of communications and dialogue with the same tag.  Microbrands are the same way, and consistency can help to build awareness and recognition.

One of my favourite examples of a microbrand (aside from GapingVoid) that is not only simple, but also sexy, is PSFK and their range of sites (iF!, Marktd, etc.).  Attending their conference a few weeks ago was a study in smart branding - from the look of the event overall to the little blogger cards that each of us got in our personalized welcome folders.  If great brands are iconic then microbrands need to at least have great icons.  PSFK has one of the best.  Any other lessons from microbrands you admire?

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A Friday Question: Do We Need Platformism?

This idea is sure to rile some people up.  We are all familiar with the concepts of other "isms" where we are judged based solely on looks, race, physical appearance or some other subjective measure.  Sexism, Racism, Elitism ... these are things no one likes, and most educated people know these are wrong.  The issue many people have with blog measurement tools at the moment is that they apply the same unilateral notion of equality to all blogs and URLs.  Blogs done on Typepad are searched the same as those done on LiveJournal.  Dotcom URLs are weighted the same as DotInfo URLs.  what if this weren't so equal?  What if having a dotcom URL actually meant your site would be taken more seriously?  What if standard searches for corporate brand mentions excluded sites on more personal platforms such as Livejournal, Vox or Blogger?  Judging blogs without understanding their content is what algorithms are made to do - yet the problem with most is that they simply take terms that are mentioned and offer back jumbled results.  Just go to Blogpulse and type in any brand name you can think of, look at the search results and you will see what I mean.  In a world where URLs and platforms mattered more, a choice of platform to use would be based on reputation more than price or any other factor.  Would it be good or bad to live in a world like that?  What do you think?

Product (RED): Smart Social Marketing or Meaningless Celebrity?

In a great post over at PSFK - Piers publishes the content of a conversation he had with Julie Cordua, the VP of Marketing for the often talked about Product (RED) social marketing campaign.  In case you're among the few people that hasn't seen the campaign, it created waves last year by introducing a for-profit model where companies could sign on to create products that they would sell for profit that became part of a line of items furthering the Red brand and donate a portion of profits to The Global Fund.  According to Cordua, campaign partners include Gap, Motorola, Converse, Emporio Armani, Apple and American Express (in the UK Only).  The most iconic of partner marketing to date in the US has probably been The Gap, which has featured print ads of T-shirts with such catchy phrases as "Empowe(RED)" and "Admi(Red)" and my personal favourite: Desi(RED) ... which will certainly become the T-shirt of choice for all those Desis out there.

Yet as Piers and PSFK highlighted, among others - the model may not be effective in leveraging what is presumably a huge marketing spend (perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars) for companies like Apple, Motorola and Gap on their (Red) products.  As the counter argument says, wouldn't it have just been better for all these brands to donate funds directly to the Global Fund instead of launching the Red campaign?  I even got an email earlier this week from Ben over at WPIWeb pointing to a site they helped put together called BuyLessCrap.org which issues a challenge to folks to donate directly to The Global Fund (and other charities) rather than giving their money to companies who will pocket some profit and only hand over the difference.  These are admirable efforts and anything to spark a debate about the level of assistance the Western world is providing to stop the Aids epidemic is good news, in my opinion. 

At the end of the day, I think where you stand on this comes down to who you think the Product Red campaign is targeted at.  As anyone who has done significant social marketing will tell you, it's not that difficult to get civic minded people or issue advocates to care about a cause and act to donate or contribute to events.  These are the small group of people that do much good in the world.  The real challenge is getting the person who would never ordinarily think about donating to charity to think about it in a different way.  My view on Product Red is that this is who it targets.  Whether they manage to donate $11 million dollars or $100 million, I think what the brand represents could ultimately be a good thing.  Weaving social marketing and issues into the decidedly profit centered worlds of retail, consumer electronics, and fashion is a new idea and many people won't agree with the business model, rightly pointing out that we could do so much more good buy simply giving the money to charity directly.  The real issue is that there is a significant percentage of people in the world that just won't be part of something like this either because they don't know about it, or are not inclined to participate.  If Product Red can get some of those people involved and raise money in the process - I think it has to be considered a success. 

As a follow up, I'm tagging Nedra, Craig and Alison to talk about this - as I'd love to hear thoughts about it from the real experts ...

technorati tags: productred red psfk gap socialmarketing marketing advertising nonprofit globalfund
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Understanding The 12 Main Sources of Blog Traffic

Something odd happened about ten days ago, and it got me thinking about hidden blog traffic.  As many of you who read this content directly on my blog might have noticed, I publish my Feedburner RSS subscriber count on the right hand sidebar of my blog.  For those of you reading this on one of the sites that syndicates my writing or through an RSS reader, you might not have seen it but for months the count typically hovered between 700 and 900 readers.  Then all of a sudden, just over a week ago, the figures had more than doubled and at one point I was pushing close to 2000.  At first I thought it was a reporting error, but like many other bloggers I soon realized the spike was due to Googles recent move to publish RSS reader counts from the popular Google Reader.  After that launched on February 16th, almost immediately I had visibility of about 1000 more readers that I might not have known about or been measuring otherwise.  The experience got me thinking about the nature of blog traffic and how much more of mine might be hidden or not measured.

Unrelated to this RSS surge, at the end of January I subscribed to use Statcounter to record stats on my blog, aiming to give myself a more sophisticated understanding of my blog traffic beyond the very basic reporting Typepad provides.  Over the last month, I have learned a few things about my blog traffic that may be helpful to others - and in particular, how to understand where the hidden sources of blog traffic are.  Towards this end, in looking over my stats and referring links here are the top ten types of links that are currently driving traffic to my blog (in order from most traffic to least):

1. Blog Post Link: This is by far my most common source of traffic and changes everyday depending on which site is linking to mine and where a post gets mentioned.  Not every post results in this type of traffic, but getting a post linked on a high visibility blog or talked about on a site elsewhere is still the top traffic driver for me.  This doesn't include any blogs where articles are consistently republished or any permanent links on other blogs, such as listings in a blogroll.
2. Search Engine Link: The fact that this is high on the list will come as no surprise to most bloggers. Google is by far the dominant engine in terms of driving traffic to my site, but I also get a fair bit from Yahoo.  Not as much from MSN or Ask at the moment, but that may change in the future.  The interesting thing about this is for my first year of blogging, it was by far my #1 driver of traffic.  Only recently have direct links taken over the top spot and dropped this to #2.
3. Social News Link: These are links that come from social news sites such as Digg, Icerocket, Netscape, Marktd, or New PR (those are my top five).  They are usually either from a post that someone has added to one of these sites, or from a link I have added myself to a particularly relevant post - which I do from time to time for content that I think may be of particular interest to users of any of those sites.
4. Tags or Social Bookmarking Link: These differ from social news sites as they are usually based on specific keyword tags versus user votes.  Links in this category come from sources like tags on Technorati or del.icio.us.  The interesting thing about these types of links is that they often drive readers to enter my blog through one of the category pages rather than a page for a particular post.  When this happens, they are far more likely to click around and read a few posts rather than just read one (which is what visitors from search engines often seem to do).
5. Republishing Link: As I stated earlier in this post, my content is republished in several other locations (9 Rules, Digital Media Wire and WebProNews being the main three) and consumed in different ways in each place.  Some drive content back to my blog, while others offer a post in it's entireity and don't tend to drive much traffic back to my site.  This is lower on the list as most of my republishing arrangements fall into the latter category where readers can get the entire text elsewhere.  I may reevaluate this in the future, but for the time being, I am happy for my content to travel further regardless of whether it brings someone back to my blog or not (particularly because I don't have advertising on my blog anyway). 
6. RSS Link: Slightly rarer than a link from a republished post is receiving traffic from the RSS feed for my blog.  I have elected to include my full articles in my RSS feed - mainly because I have experienced the frustration of being a reader of other blogs where I only get a short version and still need to visit a site to read the rest of an article.  To me, that defeats the purpose of RSS as a reader.  I want my feed to make consuming my content as easy as possible for readers that elect to subscribe to it.  If that means RSS links are not huge blog traffic drivers, so be it.
7. Email Forward Link: If there was one category of links I would wish to move higher on this list, this would be it.  These are the referral URLs that come through with very strange configurations, but take you back to a secure network or webmail service, meaning that a URL for a post or my blog was emailed from one person to another and they clicked directly on the link in the email to get to my blog.  This is the type of link I strive for - to be viral enough to have a reader send a post to another reader.  Obviously, it's not fool proof as many folks might cut and paste the URL instead of clicking directly ... but this is emblematic of the type of hidden blog traffic that only becomes clear once you delve into your stats.
8. Comment Link: These come from comments that I have left on other blog posts or news articles.  Obviously, this fluctuates based on how active I am with posting comments or participating.  For this reason, this is probably far lower on the list as it could be ... as regular workload and blogging leave little time to do more than keep up with the 100 or so blogs that I read and only allow me to post comments relatively infrequently.  One of my big new years resolutions is to try and comment online more consistently.  I'm working on it ...
9. Forum Link: On occasion, a post of mine will get mentioned for positive or negative reasons in an online community of enthusiasts about something in particular.  This happened with my post several weeks ago about the new Rembrandt ad, and it has driven a decent amount of traffic to my blog and hasn't slowed down in nearly 3 weeks.  It's certainly evidence of the importance of connecting posts about specific topics to enthusiasts in online communities most likely to care about it. 
10. Quote/Endorsement Link: There are several quotes or endorsements that I have provided for services and sites like Addthis.com or ScriptThis.com.  These have been used on their sites and in email communications and driven traffic to my blog in spurts, depending on activities they are undertaking or marketing they are conducting.  In particular, having a quote of mine included in an AddThis email newsletter drove a decent amount of traffic several months ago.
11. Directory Link: These are links from directory or wiki listings.  The top driver for me in this category is the Wikipedia entry on Social Media Optimization, which drives a consistent level of readers to my original post about the 5 Rules of SMO.  I am also listed in many other blog directories, but they drive a negligible amount of traffic so far. 
12. Blogroll Link: There was a time when this was probably higher on the list, but now getting a link from a Blogroll is fairly rare.  Probably due to the fact that blogrolls today are far longer than they used to be, the only times when this does manage to drive some traffic is when it is first added to a blog or when my blog happens to be at the top of a list due to alphabetic good luck or just by chance. 

This is a starting list of 12 - but I am sure there are other key sources of blog traffic that I might have missed.  My aim was to start the discussion, as it would be very interesting to see if services like Feedburner, Statcounter could develop a way to let bloggers categorize their traffic into categories like this.  The ability to measure the quality of inbound links is the next logical step for analytics that can already offer great detail on things like clickstreams and userpaths.  In the meantime, we will all need share data and insights so we can all help build a more complete picture of blog traffic.

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.

Quantcast Offers Free Audience Data on 20 Million+ Sites

Yesterday I had a chat with Konrad Feldman, one of the co-Founders of a company called Quantcast that quietly launched an online measurement tool about two months ago which is currently in beta mode.  The tool is one of the first free resources I have seen focused on offering a complete picture of audience composition for just about any site.  In the past, I have found Alexa.org (the main competitor for free data) to be notoriously unreliable, and other options such as Nielson Netratings and Comscore are wonderfully thorough - but often out of the price range for many smaller organizations and clients (and therefore not as widely used).  The beauty of Quantcast's solution is in the dashboard view (see screenshots below) that allows you to now compare sites large and small to one another.  In speaking with Konrad, a key challenge he noted for advertisers is finding large pockets of a particular audience on sites beyond the top tier media properties.  For smaller publishers, the corresponding challenge is that they cannot field a large sales force to promote their sites and therefore must rely on online channels.

Good media planning is an art - but when it comes to interactive many media planners are taking the easy way out ... simply skimming the surface, picking the largest sites in a particular category without much thought.  Aside from the inventory glut this is creating on the largest players, it is also leaving a large number of sites either ignored, or only approached by the saaviest of interactive media planners.  The mission of Quantcast, as Konrad described, was to even the playing field by allowing advertisers easier access to consistent data, and giving publishers more visibility from advertisers and the chance to be judged based on metrics and quantifiable data.  Taking Quantcast for a spin, it's obvious there is lots of potential in this tool.  As Quantcast gets more sites to become "quantified" by registering their site and adding a tracking GIF - this data will continue to improve.  In the meantime, the site is already a very useful tool for anyone looking to better understand audience figures across a range of sites and verify the inflated numbers some sites have put out to entice advertisers.  Keeping publishers honest and helping advertisers think outside of the box ... seems like a great combination to me.

Note: For a more PR centric view of the potential uses for Quantcast, check out my post on the Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence blog.

Screenshot of Audience Data for www.dooce.com:

Screenshot of Comparison Data for ESPN, Paypal, MTV, Macys and Target:

Screenshot of Audience Data for YouTube.com:

technorati tags: quantcast marketing advertising webanalytics measurement metrics youtube dooce rohitbhargava interactivemarketing

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Umbria Provides Marketers with Blogger Lists for Sale

On Monday, Umbria announced a new service that helps marketers to answer what is becoming a more and more common question - which bloggers are most influential for my brand or industry?  While there are many tools and methods that can be used to uncover these bloggers, the Umbria Connect service promises to provide marketers with "a monthly list of bloggers (URLs) based on your selects for age and gender that spoke either positively or negatively about your topic of interest."  Similar in scope to what email list providers have been doing for many years now, it seems to be positioned as a quick and easy solution for organizations to skip the time consuming research phase of identifying key bloggers and focus their efforts on engagement.  To ensure quality results, Umbria describes a methodology of "cleansing the data using a 3-step process that includes using machine learning algorithms and human review to remove spam, false positives, and other data that aren’t pertinent to the clients defined topics."

As a tool, I see a lot of promise in this new service - assuming it is coupled with a smart social media marketing strategy.  Just as with email lists, you need to understand what you are purchasing and what the rules of engagement are.  Blindly reaching out to any list of bloggers provided in a report by anyone is unlikely to work - and more likely to result in backlash.  Umbria Connect offers a great way to save time, but not at the expense of ignoring the first principle of pitching bloggers ... reading their blogs.  Regardless, it will be interesting to see if bloggers in particular industries start to see an increase in attention from marketers and advertisers as a result of tools like Umbria's.  Assuming it leads to more ad dollars and better pitches, that could be a good thing.  Let's see if it turns out that way.

(Via MarketingVox and BtoB)
 

The Fourth Estate and the Indian Blogosphere: Marketing in India, Part III

I recently had the opportunity to travel through India and spend some time with our colleagues in the Mumbai office of Ogilvy PR.  We had a great discussion about digital influence and more broadly about the role of online tactics in supporting traditional public relations activities.  As I was discussing the role of blogs with a colleague visiting from our Bangalore office, we also discussed the new blogging report on India that MSN recently released.  The report, titled "Blogging India: A Windows Live Report" shares many interesting findings, including:

1. The countrys blogosphere is largely driven by youth with a large majority of online users reading blogs to stay on top of world events and subjects like Technology and Education.
2. Many blogs are driven by a passion for self improvement and entertainment - with nearly 50% of all blogs being written for entertainment purposes.
3. Of the respondents, bloggers were heavily male (76%) and 86% were under 34 years old (32% under 25 years old).
4. Though only 14 percent of the country's online population is involved in active blogging, 39 percent were aware of blogging.
5. Business leaders and politicians are leading the way, with half the country's online population preferring to read blogs written by these groups.

A main finding of the survey says that blogging could become a new "fourth estate" - with nearly half the respondents putting as much faith in blog content as much as traditional media.  Though the results of this survey should not be taken as exhaustive (see the press release about the survey, conducted across Asia, for more details), the most interesting conclusion to this is the growing influence of blogs in the media landscape in India.  A quick look at India's leading blog portal - Blogstreet, has a useful collection of some of these blogs, as does the Indian Blogger Directory Wiki sponsored by DesiPundit (a site I have shared content with in the past).  In an effort to help catalog this growing "fourth estate" of media, we will be collaborating with our colleagues from India to launch an all new Blogfeed of Indian marketing and PR blogs we are reading in the region.

Note: This post was originally published on the Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence blog and has been republished as the third and final part of the Marketing in India series published on the Influential Interactive Marketing Blog.  The other two posts are linked below:

1. The Plight of the Puppetmaster
2. Word of Mouth and the Churi Wala

Find Your Organization's Social Media Score

John Bell, founder of our 360 Digital Influence group here at Ogilvy has a great post on his blog about helping organizations understand how to approach social media as part of their overall marketing communications efforts.  This is a question we are often asked by clients who see all the movement around them, but also worry about the risk, effort required, and whether the knowledge they have is enough to tackle social media.  Yet as we have seen in most of our successful client situations, a company that "gets it" is usually driven by one or two passionate individuals who have decided to lead the charge on social media.  It is the inertia to start that is often the biggest barrier.   How can you best get over that barrier?  Check out John's list