On Wednesday and Thursday of this week, I attended the Inbound Marketing Summit conference put on by New Marketing Labs at the Gillette Stadium. Attending this conference was an interesting milestone for me, as it is where I really got my start in social media last year.  Day 1 of the conference last year I showed up without a computer and barely any knowledge of Twitter (I was registered but wasn’t using it, and didn’t “get it”) and much of social media.  Day 2, I showed up with my laptop, and started tweeting.  I haven’t stopped since, and have learned so much since that time about other forms of social media, and have put them into practice at work and through consulting projects.  A lot changed for me in that year.

Anyway, the conference was even more incredible than it was last year, so I thought I’d share some of my favorite quotes/learnings. (Not necessarily quoted word for word; and if you know who said some of the unknown quotes or if I made any errors, please let me know!)

Day 1

• How do you engage customers without pissing them off? Just need to listen. And then figure out WHEN in the conversation it’s right to jump in. ~Citrix (name?)
• SM needs to get out of the corporate communications group. It should be spread throughout the company ~Innovative marketing panel
• In terms if marketing, it’s not about the thickness if your wallet, it’s about the thickness of your mind. It’s a great time to be a poor marketer. ~Justin Rasmussen, Coffee House Ideas
• Who will own social media in the future? PR agencies, interactive agencies or ad agencies? Answer: The companies. ~Brian Halligan, Hubspot

• PR is dead. ~Brian Halligan, Hubspot (I couldn’t disagree more.  I do believe PR is changing, but it will never be dead.  The big difference I see is that rather than companies finding press, the press will be finding them.)

• People turn to social media traditionally to solve 3 problems: 1) sales 2) get the word out , 3) need to make a relationship better or change it.” ~Katie Delahaye Paine, KDPaine & Partners
• You need to look at your “share of suckiness” vs. your competitors. “We suck less” ~Katie Delahaye Paine, KDPaine & Partners (it’s important to look at what your detractors are saying, but also keep in mind industry norms for sentiment.)
• PR = helps groups communicate with one another and facilitate discussions. What is PR2.0? A new approach to PR (PR isn’t just media relations) — it’s about building long term relationships, and now we can do it directlly with the customer. ~Katie Delahaye Paine, KDPaine & Partners
• What is a social media press release? Integrating keywords, SEO, interactive content, links to SM sites, enabled for social media. ~”Getting the Word Out” panel
  
• Measure engagement (not impressions), which will then lead to sales. ~”Getting the Word Out” panel
• Marketing = getting people to know, like and trust you. ~Rich Ullman, Ripple6
• What do you say to the people that say they don’t have time to create good content? Tough! ~Valeria Maltoni, Conversation Agent
• If you’re doing SM, and not email, you’re insane. It has a $44 ROI per dollar spent, on an email campaign. ~Email panel
• Using purchased email lists is just spamming. The people didn’t sign up for the email. ~Email panel
• “Rented list” – means using another list to communicate your message (i.e Daily Candy). ~Email panel
• 20% of tweets mention brands (source http://bit.ly/MVSlV). Twitter users are twice as much likely to engage with brands than on other platforms. ~Jesse Engle, CoTweet
• For a company with multiple tweeters, it’s best to have logo as avatar, twitter background with faces/names of tweeters, and use cotags. ~Jesse Engle, CoTweet
• Kodak’s blog is not about the actual product, it’s about HOW we use our products. ~Jennifer Cisney, Kodak
• Cool free listening tool www.socialmention.com ~unknown
• How to get your video to go viral? Story, spectacle, emotion, conflict, questions. ~Tim Street, APE Digital

Day 2

• Listening helps you find ppl who are passionate about what you do, out on the web. That’s how you build a comunity centric way to market. ~Listening and monitoring panel
• Email’s role in the marketing mix is more important than ever. Email is a main DRIVER of social web activity. ~Greg Cangialosi, Blue Sky Factory
• The blog is the ANCHOR of our social media efforts. ~Paula Berg, Southwest Airlines
• Where else can you get immediate and passionate feedback from your customers other than in social media. ~Paula Berg, Southwest Airlines
• Social Media optimization created the findability of social objects – keywords, titles, descriptions, tags, syndication. ~Christopher Carfi, Cerado
• If there are a bunch of kids in a playground, and there are no toys there, they’re going to leave. (referring to making your Facebook and website interactive). ~CC Chapman, Campfire
• Everyone needs a CMS (even if it’s just WordPress), in order to update site,keywords, tags, etc. ~CMS panel
• Whereever you are finding the most uncomfortable information about you, look there 10 times harder! ~Tim Walker, Hoover’s
  
• What are Social Media Influencers (SIM)? Harnessing social media and social influencers to achieve a goal. ~Shiv Singh, Razorfish
• Market to the community not just the individual. ~Shiv Singh, Razorfish
• Social engagement results in purchases 24 days later on average. ~Shiv Singh, Razorfish
• Focus not just on the platforms, but on the relationsips… focus on WHO is influencing your customer. Research influencers. ~Ken Chow, R2 Integrated
• Great Marketing = Convince people to SELL. ~Dharmesh Shah, Hubspot
• Google’s ranking algorithm = context (does it match what they’re looking for?) + authority (how much does Google trust you?). ~Dharmesh Shah, Hubspot
• Titles are the most important piece of information you’re giving to Google about what the page is about.The MOST important is the one on your home page. Earlier words send a stronger message to Google. So, your title keywords need to be ordered appropriately. Don’t make your Home page titled HOME (even if you sell homes!. ~Dharmesh Shah, Hubspot
• Don’t buy ads on Facebook. Use it to look at the demographic info to find who meets your target profile (brilliant!). (I don’t agree about not buying ads, but the target demos are great!). ~Dharmesh Shah, Hubspot

If you want to see even more highlights from me or others during the Inbound Marketing Summit, check the #IMS09 hashtag on Twitter Search.

Overall, an incredible conference!! A few suggestions for IMS next year. Include people’s Twitter names in the program, on their nametags,  and on the screen while their speaking. Improve the wireless.  Add a case study component… so many great minds together in one room!  We can break into a group of 10 and all work on a different case to put together a social media and marketing strategy and tactics.  Do short presentations so we can all learn from eachother.

(Photo credits: Group, Chris Brogan, iPhone, CC Chapman)

Anything important I missed?  Feel free to add or comment on the above!

If you’re not familiar with BlendTec, they are a company who used videos to market a fairly unexciting product, in a brilliant way that turned into a viral sensation. They pick items that you would never ordinarily put in a blender, such as iPhones, golf balls, glow sticks, and show how powerful the BlendTec blender is, by the fact that it can crush up these items on their “Will It Blend?” show. The shows are hysterical, and have proven to be an amazing tool to market their product.

Last weekend, I decided to conduct an similar experiment of my own. Except that it really wasn’t planned. It just happened by mistake. I put my iPhone through the washing machine. Yes, rinse cycle and all. So, what happened to it? Well, by the keen knowledge of my friend Claudio, my phone was saved, and seems to be in 100% working order. Here’s what Claudio did to save the day:

• He said, no matter what, don’t turn on the phone until we fully dried out the insides.  So, despite my impatience to just turn it on and see if it was working, we kept it turned off
• Then, Claudio instructed me to suck all the water out of every single hole in the iphone.  It tasted like Tide.  (maybe that was just his way of getting me to wash my mouth out with soap!).  Anyway, I literally sucked as hard as I could out of both microphone holes, the volume buttons, the headset hole, the on/off buttons, the charger hole, and the SIM card hole.
• Then, he pointed a hairdryer at the charger hole and blew medium heat air into the iPhone for probably an hour and a half.  Every few minutes, he rotated the iPhone around so the hair dryer blew into different holes.
• Then, we charged the phone.  We’re not sure if my phone had run out of battery before the washing machine incident or if it disengaged the battery during the incident, but it did need to be charged.

So, that’s it!  At first, the sound on my ringers and music was off, but over the next few days, it came back to normal.  There was also some fogginess on the screen, but that went away the same day.  Now, it’s good as new.  Thanks Claudio!

Anyone else have any tips for saving an iPhone from a washing machine, being run over by a car, or being dropped?

So, I’m finally back to work after being out of a job for a year. Overall, my year was tough, but I learned so much about social media, networking, and basically just reinvented myself professionally.  Now, the rubber is meeting the road, and I’m back to work.  I started my job at Second Time Around last Monday, so it’s been a full 2 weeks.  So, I am more stressed or less stressed than I was when I wasn’t working?  Yes :-)

Obviously, being out of work was stressful.  It was stressful financially — how was I making ends meet?  How long was my unemployment going to last? Would I get the client I was trying to get?  It was also just a constant stress of feeling like I needed to do something to move my search or consulting work forward all the time.  Even at night, if I wasn’t out socializing or at a networking event, I was very rarely just relaxing in front of the TV or reading.  For most of the year, I didn’t really take a break.  So, in that way, work seems relaxing!  It’s not such a weight hanging over my head, like I felt all year. I do think I’m going to be working at night a bit, having some work travel, or weekend trips (I was in Chicago this week and am going to CT tomorrow), but for some reason, I’m better able to shut my mind off and relax.  I can come home at night if I don’t have plans, and take Stella for a leisurely walk, get dinner, and watch TV. Love it!

On the other hand, my schedule couldn’t be more different now than it was for the past year.  I got accustomed to having the schedule I wanted.  I went to bed no earlier than 2am on most nights, and woke up by 9am at the earliest.  If I was tired, I took a nap.  I took Stella for a walk in the middle of the day if I wanted.  Now, not only do I need to get up at a normal hour for work, I have started working with a personal trainer and am in physical therapy (for my knee), so get up almost every day by 6 or 6:30am.  Going to bed at 2am no longer works.  Napping in the middle of the day is not recommend, at least if I plan on keeping my job!  So, from this perspective I find it more stressful.

But, so far, I seem to be managing OK, and am getting used to going to bed early again.  I am LOVING the job. Everyone is incredilby nice, welcoming, and very dedicated to growing this company.  There is so much opportunity for marketing and social media, I can’t wait to get some of my ideas moving!

How have you coped with a change in lifestyle like this?  Any ideas to help me or others?

(Photo credit: Money Tree, Clock)

Last Saturday, I got a chance to ride around Brookline in a red hot Ferrari for a half an hour! It was part of a program called Ferrari4Charity, run  by Ray Chang. Ray, who coincidentally is also from Lexington, started Ferrari4Charity and FreeFerrariRides as a way to give companies a way to advertise on cars.  He recognized that when people ride around in a hot looking car, like a Ferrari or an Aston Martin, people look.  Look, really is an understatement. Gawk is more like it.  Well, the program charges $6,000 to advertise on the car for a 100 mile period.  Ray rents the car for $1,500/day, slaps the advertisers’ decals on the car and takes people around for free rides.  What a great concept.  People get a fun ride. And the advertisers get many “gawkers”.

I was actually confused as to if this was a non-profit or not, and sure enough, his website had already answered that question: “No we are a not.  We are a for profit business and where the charity component comes in is that we like to donate some of our time, resources and profits to charities during a campaign or after a campaign.”

I had a blast on my ride!  It was very low to the ground, had an amazing pickup (although I think we scared the Brookline locals a bit!), and had smooth leather seats. Ray told me the car would sell for $250,000, a number I can’t EVER imagine spending on a car, no matter how rich I get (thinking positive thoughts).  A surprise to me — not to car aficionados, I’m sure — was that the engine was in the back of the car, and we could see it while sitting in the car.  Very cool!

So, what do I think of this idea?  I think it’s very innovative, and for sure gets people to look.  I wish I had taken photos of a few people with their jaws hanging open, and heads turned.  But, are they looking at the car, the ads or the people?  I tend to think they’re first looking at the car, and then wondering who is driving such a nice car, and then finally look at the ads.  As with many things marketing related, measuring ROI is tough.  Estimating eyeballs on the car is probably an easy task, but measuring if they see the ad is another thing, not to mention if they actually take it in, or are just taking in the car.  Then there are all the side benefits… people writing posts like this, people posting photos that show the advertisers in them, the viral effect of social media, etc.

In my current job, I don’t think I could justify the spend.  But, if I were working back at Jim Beam or Kraft again, spending $6,000 on something that would get me a lot of talk value, on a budget of $10-25MM, I would definitely consider it.

What do you think of the idea?  Would you spend that kind of money for 100 miles?

I was lucky enough to be asked by Ford to test drive the Ford Escape Hybrid for 6 days… how fun! I currently own a Honda CRV, which is a great car, but, mine is a 2000 and was one of the first of its kind, so is very basic and boxy. Before that I drove an Audi A4, and am definitely missing many of the upgraded features in the CRV.  So to be able to drive ANY new car is exciting to me, not to mention testing out a Hybrid. Overall, I loved the car, but here are my specific thoughts:

Positives

• Features
  • AC plug and USB port… very cool!
  • Speaker phone wired directly into the car
  • Built-in GPS (although I think it was turned off for my test-drive as I couldn’t get it working)
  • Funny disco lights around the console — optional pink, white, blue, green (!)
  • Overall comfortable leather seats
  • Cargo cover in the back (yea!  no more hiding my stuff under a blanket !)
  • Car charger in the back seat
  • Radio controls on the steering wheel
• Driving
  • The car was smooth to drive
  • It handles well in the rain (good thing, because we’ve been drenched in Boston lately!)
  • Good pickup — loved getting up to speed quickly when getting onto the highway
  • I felt safe driving it
  • It was roomy in the front and back
  • Beeps while reversing when getting close to something (great for city parking!)
  • Good turning radius
• Hybrid
  • Very quiet when idling
  • 30.2 miles per gallon when driving around the city

Negatives

• I think the front of the car looks manly — maybe I’m  not the target? (guessing I am though, or they wouldn’t have asked me to test drive)
• No lumbar support in the seat — big for me, as I have a back problem, so need good lumbar support
• Childproof windows in back (although I understand all new cars have that as a safety feature)
• VERY sensitive brakes — tough to brake smoothly
• Loud when accelerating
• No reverse view (some new cars have a camera that shows you the view from the back of your car when you are reversing)
• Door locks, when locked, are not flush with the door, so they can more easily be opened if the window is cracked

Thanks to Ford and their social media agency Social Media Group for asking me to test drive the car!

Note: I was NOT paid to do the test drive or write this post. Ford gave me the leeway to talk about the car in any form I wanted (twitter, video, blog, etc), and write positive and negative comments about my experience.

What do you think? Have you driven a Ford Escape? Hybrid?

I recently attended a Twitter conference in NYC, called the 140 Characters Conference. For those of you not on Twitter, YES, there’s such thing as a Twitter conference (and 140 is the maximum number of characters in a tweet)!  The conference was not about how to use Twitter in the technical sense, but more about how to use Twitter to benefit from it, and as a platform to other social media communities.  In addition to listening to the insightful 100+ speakers and panelists, the networking was amazing.  I met so many people I have talked to online for a while, and so many more new people.  And,  of course, there were some cool Twitter celebrities there too!

My key takeaway from the conference was that Twitter can be used effectively by almost anyone, if done well.  The speakers and panelists included topics on: news, jewelry, fashion, music, artists, performers, athletes, non-profits, small businesses, TV shows, large companies, government, moms, and so many others.  There are those who do it effectively, and those who don’t.  Check out the schedule, and you’ll see the vast array of speakers.

My three pieces of feedback on the conference are: time, money and wireless.  Time — It was too rushed, and tough to get some really good information in the short time frames.  Money — The conference was $895, which was quite pricey (I was lucky enough to be there as a guest).  Wireless — The wireless access was intermittent, and frustrating at times.

My favorite quotes

(not necessarily quoted word for word; and if you know who said some of the unknown quotes or if I made any errors, please let me know!)

• 3 most important concepts on twitter – immediacy, transparency, approachability. ~Jack Dorsey
• My job as a publisher is finding interesting people and amplifying their voices. ~Jack Dorsey
• Create more value than you capture. ~Tim O’Reilly
• “Passed links” get shared much more quickly in social media vs. email — watch your traffic over time from these sites. ~Fred Wilson (?)
• Bummer… just saw a wedding band on @etanowitz :-( ~Rachel Levy (yes, that’s me)
  • From etanowitz: Haha thanks my wife @dsashin is here; she’s from Boston.
• Getting Twitter, means “you know it’s a conversation” ~TV panel
• If you want to talk about your product, talk TO someone. Don’t just blast it. ~Liz Strauss
  
• Blogs allow me to go deep. Twitter lets me go wide in conversations. ~ Liz Strauss
• Communication is when the message intended is the message received. ~Liz Strauss
• Benefit of Twitter is “listening for the point of need” — people express needs more on Twitter than on any other social network. ~Corporate panel
• Start with listening, move to listening and responding, then let people see your brand and tell your story. ~Corporate panel
• Listening sends a message to your customers, as much as it receives a message. ~Corporate panel
• One of the worst mistakes we as mainstream media make is to go in somewhere and not see the story from their perspective.  We need to tell the story as if it’s about your mother or family. ~Ann Curry
• What’s pissing me off is that it’s hard to get Americans to care about international issues. ~Ann Curry
• I want journalists to stop just telling the news, and telling stories again. ~James Cox
• The worst thing you can say about Kodak is nothing — we want to hear the happy faces, and the bitches and moans. ~Jeffrey Hayzlett
• It’s about the 4E’s – Engaging, Educating, Exciting and Evangelizing. ~Jeffrey Hayzlett
• If you’re in marketing, and not on Twitter, you just don’t get it. ~Jeffrey Hayzlett
• It’s not “what are you doing”, but “What are we feeling and what do we have to share?” ~Laura Fitton
• Make your twitter account, even if you ARE a brand, a bit more personable. ~Unknown
• It’s not always about the money…. it can be about awareness and passing the word on. ~Social good panel
• While technology can scale and bring us everything, humans can’t scale. ~Steve Rubel
• People need to hear something 3-5 times to trust it (and people believe it more coming from their peers). ~Steve Rubel
• Don’t get too attached to Twitter.  I believe that Twitter has peaked.  No community has had staying power more than 5 years. Keep looking for what’s next. ~Steve Rubel
  
• To make your own game, you have to be there. ~Chris Brogan
• On Twitter, you have a friend wherever you go. ~Chris Brogan
• Making videos is sharing moments. ~Steve Garfield
• The fact that you have one follower should blow your face off. ~Gary Vaynerchuk
• The variety of ideas and people are what makes twitter a bottom up platform. ~Small business panel
• Small business owners should use Twitter in 3 ways to promote their business, benchmark their business, as an ESP tool. ~Small business panel
• I don’t think you should have someone tweet AS you, but FOR you, is OK. ~ Small business panel
• Question: How do you get your clients to be on Twitter? Answer: Show them that their competitors are there. ~Wisdom of Twitter panel
• Twitter is about finding your tribe and interacting with your tribe. ~Wisdom of Twitter panel
• Try to make sure social networking is not social NOTworking. ~Unknown

My favorite speakers/panels

Liz Strauss
Liz did a great job of pinpointing a few great ways to be successful on Twitter

News Panel

Great passionate discussion with Rick Sanchez and Ann Curry

(Part 1) (starts about 3 minutes into the clip)

(Part 2)

Gary Vaynerchuck

Passionate talk about sharing and scaling

Jeffrey Hayzlett

Very motivational, funny speaker

Steve Rubel
Don’t only focus on Twitter…

Thanks to all the speakers, panelists,  people I met, and most importantly Jeff Pulver, for putting together this incredible conference.  If you missed the conference, you can watch the video recordings of the speakers on the 140conf website.

(Photo credit: 140 crowd, Ann Curry)

What do you think of the above?  If you were at the conference, what were your key takeaways?

What I feared would happen when I got my iPhone has happened already, in just a few short weeks. I’m addicted, and seem to have my head buried in it all the time!  Here’s a story for you about a situation that would have been different if I had been allowed to use my phone.

I was waiting in court to contest a ticket I got (made a left hand turn during the 2 hours it’s not allowed… but got out of having to pay!), and was sitting on a bench between two men.  All three of us had our head buried in our phones.  I was checking email, tweeting, and reading my RSS feeds.  The guy on my left was texting.  And the guy on my right was playing a game.  There was a sign that said cell phones were not allowed, but I assumed (and probably so did everyone else currently playing with their phones) that meant talking on our phones, not using them.

Not one of us on the bench made eye contact or even acknowledged each other, until the security guard announced that cell phones will be confiscated if anyone uses them, including texting, etc.  The guy to my left turned to me and made a comment about it, and then we started talking. Later on, we started talking to the man on my right.  Both had fascinating things to say, and both of those people I would have NEVER talked to, had I continued to be buried in my phone.  Here’s what I learned about them…

This is Richard. We started talking about cell phones (of course!), and why he likes his Blackberry Storm.  Then he told me that he’s a cab driver, but only temporarily—  he used to be an Investment Banker, until he lost his job.  He does some consulting work, but drives a cab to bring in some extra cash.  Interesting, that it’s similar to my situation… an MBA who does consulting, babysits and takes care of dogs to help pay the bills. I asked if he feels people judge him for driving a cab, and he said, yes, until they hear him talk and hear that he is smart (which he was).  He’s from Haiti originally (and still has a thick accent)… father used to be a lawyer and mother was a professor.  He told me all about living in Haiti and celebrating a certain holiday where people go around to the various villages and eat a lot of meat!

This is Arnost. He’s from Bulgaria… moved here 5 years ago after selling his Lingerie shop there, and moving here to get married.  He told Richard and I about how he got a DUI when he first moved here.  No one was hurt, thankfully, but he spent $8,000 in the process with lawyers, court fees, and the DUI class.  Richard told us that in Haiti, there are no laws about drinking and driving.

The three of us continued to chat until each of us got called into the court room. So, why am I writing about all of this?  Well, as much as I LOVE my iPhone, and am happy to have access to email and Twitter when I need to, I think there are many missed opportunities talking to interesting people, or seeing interesting things, that pass you by when you have your head buried in the phone all the time.  I’m going to remember to put it down more often and take a look at what’s around me.

Photo Sources: 3 people on phones, No cell phone sign

What do you think?  Have you had a similar experience?  How do you get yourself to “step away from the phone”?

On Tuesday, I attended the Online Marketing Summit in Boston, which was 1 of 18 stops on their “Whistle Stop Tour”. I attended the same conference last year, at the beginning of my journey learning about online marketing, so it was interesting to see how much I have learned in just one year.  I definitely recommend checking out this conference if there is one in your city.

Below are my notes from the day.  By far, the most interesting and personally useful topic to me, was the talk by Chris Baggott.  You can also see other people’s tweets from the day here.  Feel free to ask any questions or make a comment below.

Keynote (Aaron Khalow)

• Online retail up 11%, overall retail down 3%
• 63% of people who go to a website and don’t find why they want will never come
• 92% of people go first to search to find what they are looking for

Integrating Online Into Your Local Marketing Strategy (Internet Advertising Bureau Local committee)

• Weather.com is a great place to advertise because it’s national but local at same time. National news can be Same if register
• Why pay when you can create your own content? Answer – speed
• IAN smart brief is their weekly email
• Technographic – targeting based on a specific technology
• 66% of Internet users would click thru an online ad if it’s well targeted
• Auto, real estate and general merchandise are highest categories.
• 70 percent of Bostonians (city, not Boston area) are online. Higher than national.
• Only 26% of marketers feel that their company is tech savvy
• Local advertising is growing faster than national

Online Video: Secrets to Viral Video and Advertising ROI (eConsultancy, YouTube, BrightCove, Visible Measures, Nabbr)

• Very cool HD18910 Samsung camera phone ad on YouTube – engaged people
• Once you get popular in video it’s easy to stay popular
• Video campaigns that work invite people in and get people to share
• Advertise on YouTube. It’s not a about getting a million views. It’s about getting the right views
• Healthination is good example of video use. Use answers.com.
• Nabbr is about push and YouTube is about pull
• Another way to get involved in video is with sponsorships
• Video knows no limits. May even want to see what ended up on cutting room floor. May have legs
• YouTube is 2nd largest search site after Google
• Kobe Bryant Nike video was watched for 82 seconds although only 1 min. Rewinding and watching again
  • Only 40% of 14million views were on YouTube. Also users engaged with comments and ratings

Improving Search Marketing ROI During a Recession: Top 10 Insider Tips (Ben Hanna, Business.com)

1. Look before you leap

• Know your goals and priorities

2. Don’t try to boil the ocean (take one step at a time)
3. Improve relationships with sales
4. Find where you’re not capturing value

• Marketing Sherpa increased conversion rates by 39% by adding offers to their thank you page

5. Start from a focused base

• Exact match or advanced match
• Advanced match advertises for keywords that are similar to the keywords you’re paying for
• Search implementation vs. content implementation (??)

6. Pick apart the buying process

• You must cover all buying stages

i. Could focus social media on early state of process
ii. Focus SEO on later stages
iii. Early stage – SEO & relevant community participation
iv. Mid-state – directories
v. Late-stage – branded keywords

7. Reduce buyer risk & barriers to conversion

• Office depot boosted paid search revenue 200% by incorporating customer reviews into ad copy

8. Roll out the purchase incentives

• To improve conversion rates, attack conversion barriers
• Clarify target audience & purchase type

i. Blank slate –> free trial (extend it if need to increase?)
ii. Repeat modified
iii. Repeat

• Simplify landing pages

i. Clear call to action
ii. Compelling trial discount or other incentive
iii. Eliminate sensitive form fields
iv. Indicate commitment level – 30 day vs. 90 day vs. autobill

9. Get social

• Search marketing is the glue that holds together all of their activities

10. Target the doer

• 2 basic buying roles

i. Doers – have to get something done
ii. Buyers – attempting to enforce a rational buying process
• Most people focus on doers

11. misc

• Ad copy – what is the person trying to address? What issue are they trying to solve? Benefit not feature.

Advanced Blog Strategies – Chris Baggott, Compendium Blogware

• People who find you because of searching and finding your blog convert more, bounce less, buy more and stay
• Experience is that if you give people the capability to give content, they will
• Search is an acquisition tool; Email isn’t
• Phones and website are changing the way we do business. It’s not the phone or the website itself though. It’s what you can do with it. And it’s not going to be with ads!
• Fastest growing key words are 5+ words. Grew 22% last year
• Benefit to social media and blogging is to win in search! Not to broadcast.
• What is content? Text, pics, video
• Search means nothing of you don’t have good content
• Most of clicks in search happen in organic results; BUT most qualified leads come from PPC – answer to this issue is blogging

i. If you need to target many keywords, best way is PPC, but it’s expensive;
ii. Most clicks in search happen in organic
iii. So blogging is best way to change organic results

• Most people don’t subscribe to blogs – it’s ok because blogging is for search; most are 1st time visitors
• While they say blogs are good for comments, engaging, community dialogue, it’s ok, but much more important as a foot in the door.
• Good for – More inquiries, increased traffic, more qualified leads
• Can’t control referrals or direct navigation, you can only control search — that’s what a blog is for
• Why does blogging work so well?

i. Search works on titles, keywords, recency/frequency, blog volume, relevance, links

• Blogging is not about thought leadership, although it might happen as a benefit
• Why blogs are your #1 search marketing tool; Keys to successful search blogs

1. Title – instead of Chris Baggot as title, use “list building technologies” … you need MULTIPLE blogs for capturing various types of business – need fleet of blogs

2. Use the language of your customers

• Think about what people are going to type and rank on that

3. Keywords

• 4-7% of your post should have to do with the keywords
• Key to writing posts
• Blogging is a volume driven strategy. Not every post has to be a white paper or major thought leadership. Minimum every day or multiple times a day.

4. Recency/frequency

• Need to blog every day
• Employee bloggers are 5 times more credible than C-level bloggers
• All employees who get a business card, should have capability to blog – tough to do, but ideally would be great
• The more you write about a topic, the more traffic you’ll drive

5. Measure both relevance and ROI

• Great thing about effective search is that the customer gets exactly what they wanted. Blogging does that very effectively.
• Need a way on your blog for your customer to convert to a purchase – Best Buy doesn’t have that
• Ok to use same content on your multiple blogs is good if you have a clear path
• Host multiple blogs on same site, with same domain name – still on same website
• Best way to do a link strategy is to have strong content – it will happen

Big Brands, Big Plans Panel

• How handle irrelevant user generated content? Community will automatically vet it
• What’s a proper extension of your brand and what’s not? (bud tv, ESPN phone failed) you have to listen before doing anything
• Is meaty content generated by users or paid? Must be balanced.
• If you’re not authentic, accessible and consistent yours setting yourself up for failure
• Smartphones will really change how we buy; GPS will change things too
• An injection of negativity in content helps the credibility

Any questions about the above? Comments?

Have you ever heard of charity:water?  How about Twestival? I hadn’t until a couple of months ago.  But, the formation of Twestival raised $250 million dollars for charity:water, an organization bringing clean drinking water to people in developing nations.

Amanda Rose, the founder of Twestival, created the event in under 2 weeks.  I interviewed her for another project I did, and she told me that after she attended a small charity:water event, “I just couldn’t stop thinking about the power of Twitter and how if this was magnified in other cities the amount of awareness and donations it could bring to a cause.  I knew the cause had to be one with a clear message and something everyone could identify with.”

So, she founded Twestival, which was an event on February 12, 2009 in over 200 cities around the world where people in the Twitter community hosted events to raise money for charity:water.  Over 10,000 people contributed to the cause, and raised enough money for 50 villages and 12,500 to have clean water.  How inspiring!

The event in Boston was run by Justin Whitaker, was held at the Om Lounge in Cambridge, and raised $4,000 for charity:water.  There were over 100 people at our event, which included raffles from sponsors, and a slideshow to educate us about the cause.

What is so incredible to me about this event is that Twestival was created and promoted entirely using Twitter and a simple website, and raised so much money,  primarily from donors who had never heard of charity:water. The costs of the event were also low, and the only costs were covered by a sponsor, so 100% of the proceeds went to the charity itself.  Also, Twestival was founded by Amanda, who does not work for charity:water, she was just incredible moved by the cause.

This event was also successful in my mind because it utilized social media’s incredible power of relationships and conversation to get buzz going. With no other traditional marketing could you get so much support for one event, with new donors, in such a short time, with no spending.  This is why I am such a supporter of social media… it’s a great way to get things moving, and allow the power of relationships and viral word or mouth to take over.

So why am I writing this post 2 months after the event?  Well, drilling in Ethiopia began today!  Below is the video from the first day of drilling.

(If you can’t see the video, click here)

Why do YOU think Twestival was such a success?  What other charities do you think could benefit from a similar strategy?

Most people probably know by now that Facebook changed the layout on the personal homepages fairly drastically in the past few days. It seems to be the “in” topic of conversation, and I certainly have some thoughts on it and would love to hear yours in the comments below.

What changed?

Rather than having a few “status updates” at the top of the page, and then everything else people do (post photos, add applications, RSVP for events, etc.) below that, the new look has everything together in one long column.  The new format has also integrated photos more, and given us the ability to comment on almost everything.

The other major change is that you now have the option to make your entire profile visible publicly.  There are other changes, but these are the ones that I see as having the most impact on the user experience.

Why did they do it?

I’m not sure, really, but I do have 2 hypotheses:

1) To increase the interactive nature of Facebook

On Twitter, the nature of the application is that there is much more “backing and forthing” between people.  On Facebook, that didn’t happen much in the old version.  Since new version was implemented, I have noticed that my friends are commenting much more on what other people are doing.  There is a lot more interaction.  And, since there are more updates visible at a time, it’s even easier for that to happen.  For example, in the past, if I updated my status, and a few people commented on it, after a while, I would have to go to my profile page to see the comments because they would be off the page.  Now, they stay visible much longer.

2) To better compete with Twitter

While Twitter is nowhere near the size that Facebook is, Twitter is growing rapidly, and is starting to become more mainstream.  While Facebook and Twitter serve completely different purposes, there IS cross-over, and Facebook should work quickly to integrate what is working in Twitter, into their application.

I have also heard some people say that Facebook made these changes so they can show more advertisements.  I’m not sure how that’s true, at least at this point, as I am not seeing ANY ads on my homepage, whereas before the changes I was (note to self: check how my facebook ad for my busines fan page is doing!)

What do people think so far?

My personal thoughts… overall, I don’t like it!  My favorite thing to do on Facebook was to look at people’s status updates.  While I can still do that, the updates get lost in the sea of everything else everyone is doing (that’s why I love the new Tweetdeck Facebook integration, as it shows me status updates only!).  However, I DO like that you can remove some people from your status update list (for those you are less out of touch with). I also like that there is more interaction between people.

I haven’t seen any positive comments, but definitely fewer negative ones (and certainly no protest groups) than the last major Facebook update).  But, here are a few things my friends have said:

“I don’t like that you don’t see your own status update at the top of the page anymore”

“I don’t like the new pages.. feels like I can’t find anything i need… ugh”

“I was just getting comfortable and then they changed it! Ugh!”

“It’s got to much on the page.. all the crap down the right side. Yuk”

The last time Facebook had a major visual update, I was hoping they would pay attention to all the negative comments and go back to the way it was.  They didn’t, and I don’t think they will this time, unfortunately.

What do you think of the new updates?  Why do you think they did made these changes?  How will it impact how people use Facebook?