SEO - Content Writing Advice - Web Design

Up next is the final session of today – the keynote roundtable, real social media stories from the field. Featuring Danny Sullivan, Drew Conrad, Social Media Marketing Specialist at Zagg.com, Jean Sceidnes, Social Medida Marketing Editor of Neilman Marcus, and Martin Beck, Reader/Engagement Editor, Los Angeles Times.

Danny Sullivan – So, Drew tell us about what you do?

Drew Conrad – I am part of our internet marketing team. We have two marketing teams. 1 does traditional marketing. I report to the director of e-commerce, we work with the e-commerce team from SEO to PPC to optimization to enhance the site and increase conversions. Also in charge of implementing the social aspect. It’s very marketing focused, very ROI focused. There isn’t a whole lot of focus on customer service. We have a full time employee who kind of responds to tweets, posts on the forum, and tries to kind of keep people satisfied.

Danny – Who do you have for social Media?

Drew – It’s myself, a social media person, and a team of bloggers who churn out content for us. On the other marketing team there’s five of us, for our combined marketing team it’s like 30 people.

Danny – I heard discussion forum you have a forum?

Drew – Yeah, we have a forum it’s customer focused and if anyone has problems they can come there and our social media person can help answer these questions.

Danny – Martin, so what’s your marketing team like?

Martin – So our marketing team is me and one other person. I’m in charge of social media and engagement on our site. We have a couple of part timers who monitor those comments. Essentially our goal is to, and because we’re a daily publisher we deal with that we need to publish out to the major social media networks like twitter and facebook. We have a team of copy editors who handle most of our twitter publishing. It’s about a third of our copy. We publish to that and schedule tweets throughout the day. So after we publish we’re also listening. My assistant does most of the responding to people.

Danny – How many different twitter accounts do you have?

Martin – We probably have about 150 of them.

Danny – So you have roughly…

Martin – We have a good 40ish accounts for people who want to see everything that we publish on twitter. Those that are all certain brands. Branded pages. We have about 20 pages on Facebook.

Martin – That’s one of our biggest goals is to spread this around all of our accounts and gain exposure for all of these articles.

Danny – Does everybody get a response?

Martin – I wouldn’t say everyone gets a response. I’m sure we missed some but everyone that we see that we missed and she’ll forward me an email and tell me about it. The ones that I see need a response is probably about 90%. And if I don’t know that answer I will reach out to a person who can answer it.

Danny – Jean, what do you do?

Jean – My role on a high level is as editor to create and curate the content for our social profiles, which includes Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, as well as a couple of others that are all related to fashion and shopping. And the core piece of our content strategy is to write it daily with our blogs launched in February. Mainly it’s an editorial We want people to think of it daily alongside their favorite fashion blogs. We churn out that content and we respond to it. I quickly discovered that the customer cases on FB were a huge time suck, it’s a priority for us, we have a reputation for exemplary customer service and we need to deliver that in all such ways with our customer but that’s not what I try to do. It’s not what I was hired to do. So I created a duty with our call center and they now, about 24/7, scan facebook and twitter for any negative customer experiences and they respond directly.

Danny – Will they respond directly on Facebook?

Jean- Yes everyone.

Danny – It’s interesting because you talk about having a blog as it’s the core to everything else you’re doing you definitely try to go beyond “hear our specials” and would like to have the publication of your own.

Jean – Yes. We also want to have a hub that is accessible by many keywords and would like to have that be our eventual goal.

Drew – That is an idea that we had around 2010 we knew if we wanted to do blogging we knew we had to have more than 1 blogger in order to do this. We hired interns about five of them – and had them produce 7 articles per week. We have 10 bloggers who are turning out 7 posts per week – it’s all text focused. They try to create content that people are interested in. We tweet out every post, use twitter for all the posts, and add posts to Facebook stuff like that.

Danny – You can never do everything you want to do. We’re reviewing a session model and would like to do a session on blogging. It sounds pretty much that that’s the bedrock of what you’re gonna need.

Drew – Yeah, you create the content that somebody wants. The thing about blogging with content is that you have to create content that people would want to share.

Danny – Tell me about your time with Facebook.

Martin – Yeah, that’s one of our biggest challenges as I’m only one guy. We are a constantly churning content engine and we look at the front page we look a things in different news meetings there are certain things we won’t miss. We will use twitter. We tweet out probably everything that we publish. And content that I don’t think is as relevant will be posted to Facebook. Would like to share things on Facebook that people would want to share. It’s not enough that it’s an important story. It has to be an important story that will resonate with our friends on Facebook. We see the result and then we use it if it shows good ROI.

Danny – Can you explain that it seems that on twittter you can share a bunch of things and you can share those on Facebook as well to really generate extra traffic as you knew that would be shared.

Martin – Right. You pretty much know that that’s going to happen but because our home page producers are somewhat connected with our social media team we use stuff like Overture and Google Analytics to know what to write at times based on keyword research with those tools.

Danny- Does twitter give you a sense of what works on Facebook?

Jean – No there are two different content strategies for each one. You have to have it clear in your mind regarding what content is right for each platform. You have to look closely regarding what content is going to work well for you. It’s something that you have to determine through testing. You have to look at the nature of the content that you’re holding and figure out which platform it lends itself to.

Dany- You mention instagram this is the first time that I have seen it mentioned as a traffic tool…

Jean – Yeah, it’s very popular with business professionals whom you’re targeting.

Danny- One of the challenges you have with Facebook is that everybody can see everything. You share something on your fan page then everyone can see it. How do you approach that kind of strategy?

Drew – That’s really what happenings. We post 10 times a day, 1 time a day, or 3 times a day it really depends on what’s going on with us if we have a sale if we have new products it is a challenge to kind of gauge that we have seen success and I mean there’s a lot of metrics that go into gauging that.

Danny- When you’re doing it you’re not using one tool you do know about Google Plus what about this story do you write it differently on Facebook than you would Twitter?

Martin – We look into a new tweet for content we come across something we think would be tweeted we immediately, and send an email to everyone who’s on twitter and ask them to tweet that. And in the tweet before it goes out we’ll look at it but mostly we’ll just get it out. Facebook, we only do four posts we need to delay because we’ve found the engagement level is significantly less than if you use native Facebook for posting. We then try to communicate that there are times that we won’t post for some things and then we could let someone else post it ’cause like you say not everyone would see everything one may see one post another may see another post we’re backwards on the whole thing.

Danny – Jean, if you could answer what time of the day for a great evening story what do you do or how do you deal with with this?

Jean – On Facebook just try to post every 3 hours. Twitter is me, so I am tweeting morning, day, and night but that’s part of our twitter strategy it’s my point of view that has a little bit of my life treatment and helps me to personalize the brand. I use tweetdeck because I’m monitoring every mention of our brand and I’m looking for things that I can amplify the word. and see people’s reactions.

Danny – Let me ask another question – What do you all think of doing when you ask yourselves – who do I reach out to??

Drew – I look at different things and I look at the follower/follow ratio – to find out who would be most effective. One time I went to klout to find out who would be interested in our ipad giveaway. It’s a good tool to use because it identifies who to tweet but you need to use your own judgment which is important.

Danny – Did you find that it worked?

Drew – Yeah.

Danny – Did you literally see everybody who followed all their accounts and who followed everything that’s coming in?

Drew – I looked at people who were following the ZAGG brand. I’m monitoring both Zagg and Zaggdaily. I follow everything that’s going on it is a challenge but by doing that I am able to get a feel for what’s happening.

Danny – (to Martin) You guys trying to reach out to people?

Martin – We really don’t do a whole lot of that. We’re more reactionary, but we do respond to people who reach out to us. We have had some initiative where we tried to identify who would be good we compiled a list of the top bloggers and twitter accounts, facebook pages, just the people who blog about stuff in LA. So, we reached out to them and gave them a template if they also wanted to reach out to those people. It’s not something that we’ve traditionally done and frankly it’s a little tough, it’s a tough sell to sell work in journalism and we’re used to publishing and hoping that everyone just reads it.

Danny – Jean – You mentioned about reaching out how do you do that?

Jean – All of our articles are tweeted out and we selectively reach out I don’t care if they have 2900 or 29 followers. I work with the members of our team who do all kinds of press media coverage and they’re constantly updating their blogs. Make sure they’re clear on which publications and editors that they treat like celebrities and there are bloggers in that group too.

Danny – If you could choose your favorite channel that would be your most important challenge what would you say?

Drew – If I had to choose regarding revenue I’d have to choose Facebook. We generate a lot of revenue from Facebook. It’s not my favorite but if I had to I would have to use it because of that.

Martin – We have a lot of our referral traffic coming from Facebook. Way more than twitter by far. Kind of started around the time they created a like button. A lot of the social media we get is a lot of sharing of the like, the content of the like button on our page.

Danny – So Google Plus is good?

Jean – If I had to choose it’s Facebook because it is our largest audience. Also our blogs are good because we get a lot of traffic but my favorite is Twitter.

Danny -So Facebook is a big revenue driver?

Drew – I think it’s just another revenue channel there are number of audiences people share things on Twitter just to get different messages on Twitter. The shock and awe approach, however, is the advantage of Tiwtter.

Martin – We use various methods on Twitter

Danny – It’s difficult because the third part would take this, is especially twitter it really should be routing all traffic from twitter to see the traffic. But it’s very easy to undercount.

Martin – We were kind of thinking in our heads that it wasn’t useful to us it was about when we were thinking it was going to be about 4 times as much traffic. So we have to adjust our metric goals because it doesn’t seem like we’re getting that much traffic from Twitter. They’re seeing our message though and because we want more followers and the more followers we have then more of them go directly to our website.

Danny -And personal thing is twitter for you Jean?

Jean – Yeah it’s very personal it’s been very powerful for us to help provide powerful perceptions of our brand and for us to demonstrate our fashion knowledge in a memorable way. Most people would choose their friends for advice because they have that trust. If people are interacting, and people who are following me on twitter are interacting they find that I am a human being, it’s no longer a store you’re gonna walk into I am a human being people are friendly, I’m friendly, I’m helpful and hopefully you’ll find me witty and entertaining and if anything holds true is that it will give people more of an incentive to shop with us.

Martin – And that’s the thing about Twitter it’s really how people in my industry – it’s help the reader contact us or for our journalists it’s much easier than the friction level of trying to find someone’s phone number on a website which is really tough for some. But, on twitter if that person is engaged it’s just as easy and more of our journalists will actually respond on twitter than any other platform I have ever seen.

Danny – Jean one of the questions came back to me. You’re personally talking, writing, and so on. What happens if you go?

Jean – I’m conscious of that. I’m trying to be just as responsible, and trying to make it different between chatting about your brand, and making it about you.

Danny – Is it your personal account?

Jean – Yes.

Danny – Some companies have the employees themselves be well known and the companies don’t have the account.

Jean – I couldn’t really walk away with it but if that happens I’m sure they’d find a social media manager quickly that would be interested in stepping into that role.

Danny – Now how come you’re not on Google plus yet?

Jean – It’s on the list.

Danny – You also mentioned tumblr and instagram as being important

Jean – We’re just looking at what fashion enthusiasts are using but we’re also looking at what people are using for shopping and Google plus just isn’t up there.

Danny – (to Martin and Drew) Now are you guys on Google plus?

Margtin – At some point we’re probably going to go to Google plus. But uuummm…you know, what was the question?

Dannhy – I was wondering if you were on Google plus.

Martin – Yeah on Google plus we’d probably do a similar type of thing but that’s something we’ll build down the road. We hope it’s unique in that, or could be unique in that the potential of having our journalists getting on there we’ll stick around there and partner with the audience it’s a very small part of our audience but the tool is very selective if we can get our journalists to start using it we’ll be ahead of the game.

Danny – Now, foursquare…people are checking daily drawing…

Martin -Yeah we have a page on foursquare where we’ll have restaurants and reviews like that.

Danny – And Jean do you use foursquare as well?

Jean – Yes, we had a foursquare finished recently and we had an approachable event ; one of the customers we entered into a contest to win a clush handbag. I thought what if we could use a different approach on it? And we could hide them in a location in our stores across the country then people could come in and have a status on foursquare about checking into our store for the contest. I was nervous since no one has done anything like it. What if nobody comes? That’ll be embarrassing that – what if no one comes? None of that happens. If you have a lot of good will, people will come in and they have made the effort to come in; they like games because they’re fun and they don’t actually have to win the game. That was one of our more successful efforts.

Danny – Great.

Danny – Do you guys do foursquare?

Drew – No foursquare never used foursquare. We used tumblr for daily deals but each day on tumblr we probably have 80% off a product and use the traditional way for most content. Kind of first come first serve.

Danny -So what’s on tumblr would be good with another audience?

Drew – We just wanted to use tumblr to find out what’s going on we thought tumblr would be huge and it was huge. As far as Google plus is concerned. We jumped on that as early as we could. We’re still not really sure about how we’re going to use it. The guys that are on our marketing team who are into search and ppc they are all about it and say they’re on Google plus. We’re not on Google plus as much as other channels.

Danny – How do you decide which of the ones (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) that would be good to use?

Drew – For me we are so ROI focused we’re going with Facebook and Twitter but we’re also going to be experimenting with other channels and if something sticks then we’ll use it.

Martin- We’ve pretty much thrown everything at the wall and that gives us our insight but because they say it’s evolved we try to stick our toe into pretty much everything to everything that makes sense in our dinosaur brain. We’re not on it but I’m on it. Because I could, and I got the earliest invitation. But some of it is haphazard but not all of it is haphazard .

Danny – Jean, how about you?

Jean – It just comes back to having a clear strategy it is a huge commitment to keeping everything updated we try really carefully we try not to take on more than we can chew.

Danny – Some of the questions have come in.

Danny – This question is for Jean about the call centers mentioned earlier. Are these your internal call centers?

Jean – It’s where people would call or have complaints. There are people responding to those types of issues they’re just using it in a new medium.

Danny -Any advice to someone that doesn’t have a team?

Drew – I think that any strategy can be a social media strategy – even just posting 3 times a week and tweeting 3 times a week. When doing it on a smaller scale there is nothing wrong with 3 posts or tweets a week.

Martin – I think most people most twitter people will follow about 130 people you really don’t need to focus on the amount you need to know what you can do and go from there. If you can take on more then take it on for responses see what people are saying about you on several of these platforms it doesn’t take us much time to take a look at that. All these giant companies can hire several people to do that.

Jean – We’ve decided that we’re going to monitor Facebook to 24/7 we have the resources to do that. We have a sister store in NY it’s just some store they have Facebook addresses posted on their Facebook page.

Danny – Drew – From a b-c standpoint I don’t really have a desire to dive into it.

Maritn- I don’t use it personally so…

Drew – They send me those spam emails that I hate…

Danny – How do you measure ROI? How do you tell what’s working what’s not?

Drew – WE have built our own URL shortener -0 this shortener ties in with our database and helps us on page too when you attrached every click that you post we can track how many clicks and how mnay sales that we have generated.

Danny – I want to know what your biggest failure/success is

Martin – Our digital marketing team has just added in the last several months have hired a bunch of people. We do have less metrics we have so many metrics we have a hard time figuring out where that needs to be. But we’re hoping we’ll get better guidance.

Jean – We certainly track traffic and conversions it’s not perfect but obviously we’re going to do that we also appreciate any publicity or bug or awareness that we create. We consider if we’re enhancing the brand, if we’re modernizing the brand, if we’re providing customer service. What’s the ROI on the customer. There are things that you are not going to be able to quantify you just have to listen. We listen to the feedback between customer sand our stores.

Danny – You bring people in to the stores through social media?

Jean – Yeah it’s not the stores, but it did create a lot of success for us.

Danny -What is the big surprise you got?

Drew – You can create something that people hate but you can have a positive return. One thing we did was a fake iphone 5 it was clearly fake. Upload it to youtube put it on blog put it on Facebook it just drove so much traffic it drove probably 40% of the traffic for our blog for the entire year. You can create fake stuff and it’ll work.

Martin – We have learned that and maybe I knew this anyways but it confirmed it – in my role for a big media organization I find that people are surprised when we respond. There are certain instances, like, I mean someone could slag us in a truly bad fashion – someone was slagging us the other day on twitter. In some cases you can win but being responsible with it can be useful for the brand.

Jean – We had many touch points with our customers and the example before where we engaged through foursquare to drive people to the store with the clush handbag contest, it was a perfect example where each touch point drove to another touch point to bring people into our stores.

Danny – Well great, I could talk to you guys for another hour but they all need to have some drinks now…

Whew!!! That’s it for the coverage of the Keynote Round Table at the end of today’s sessions. Stay tuned for more SMX Social Media 2011 blogging coverage!!

Ok we have a new session!!! Without further ado, let’s get right into it- this one’s a doozy!!!!

Our new session is Successful Targeting Strategies for Facebook Ad Campaigns.

First speaker up is Matt Lawson of Marin Software.

His talk is making the transition from Search Marketing to Social Advertising. Most search marketers are built for the process – dealing with large data sets, and other parts of the process.

Facebook allows you to target based on interests which are like keywords but the similarities end there.

There are big differences in the metrics. There is more available ad inventory. We’re talking about people with more specific intent. Very large audiences. It is not unusual to have dramatically more impressions than other advertising.

Lower click through rate. On Facebook your’e only going to get a fraction of the standard 1-2% clickthrough rate.Their average is .09%

Lower average CPC.

Different conversion rates.

Half of our customers are treating FB as a peformance channel. They’re trying to convert them as they would in paid search. In some cases they’re doing better. Half of them are using FB as a branding page channel.

First think about your goals – are you trying to drive people to a like or are you trying to build your fan base? The route you choose will have a dramatic impact on your goal.

Consumers exposed to a brand’s social media are 50% more likely to click on paid search ads.

#1 – Always start with Friends.
The people who are most likely to convert on your paid Facebook ads – your friends.

#2 – Expand to fans of related brands.
This is behavioral targeting. How do you find fans of brands that are similar to yours?

#3 – Use Keyword Stemming to Find Interests
Target people with similar interests in the campaign.
When you’re trying to find out which keywords are good, try typing an extra a, different misspellings, and others that will help target the right audiences.

#4 – Micro-segment your audience.
If you’re targeting a strong market you will end up getting many different people who may or may not be good candidates for the campaign.
Finely tuned segments allow you to shift spend to audiences that perform, increasing conversion and ROI.

#5 – Test images before copy
The big difference between Facebook and search is images – images can be very powerful.
Draw attention to ads with contrasting colors.
Link images to audience to increase relevance.
When in doubt, test pictures of cute puppies!!

#6 – Keep your ads fresh
Finely targeted audience x 4 hours/week on Facebook = Ad blindness.

Rotation = optimization
Rotate ads every 2-3 days or as impressions drop, which indicates people are getting used to your ads.

Maintain impression volume.
Increase click through rates.
Lower cost-per-like.

#7 – Maintain the Facebook Experience
The Facebook graph is a useful tool to help determine more information about your audience.
If you’re taking the social user out of the Facebook they are expecting a more social experience so you can increase your conversions by creating a more social experience on your website.

Next up is Addie Conner, VP Advertising of SocialCode.

Search

People ask, you answer
Ads are a response to demand
Place ads in front of users whose needs are satisfied by your offer.
Filter users by keyword (positive and negative)
Send user down information or conversion path

Facebook
You create the demand.
Looking for profiles, rather than demand-related behavior.
Filter based on user attributes and language within the ad itself.
Ads allow first connection to establish long term relationship with the user.

The thing about Facebook is that it has an ecosystem of its own.

Build targeted fan bases.
Engage Fans.
Monetize Fans.
Pages, Apps, Surveys, Ads, Pages.

It all comes down to research – the core of everything that you do on Facebook is RESEARCH. When you do FB targeting, you’re doing it based upon all the elements of someone’s profile. You have interest data that is self driven rather than data that is just behavioral.

Audience profiles contain a number of elements:

Ad Elements (Headline, body, image, word of mouth, text, category, verbiage, image type)
Demographics (age, gendeer, education  level, marital status)
Interests (competitors, behavioral, media and entertainment preferences, positive and negative sentiment
Lolcation (conuntry, state, region, city, metro vs. Non-metro, coastal vs. Non-coastal)

Brands can use this for a number of things. 1. How can I understand my user? 2. Who is the right person for this ad? Interest Categories by age, and Gender by region. What if I want to use a volume ad for something based on gender by region?

What are the right times? A lot of this can translate to the activity going on on one page. Understanding when should I be heading up my posting schedule? When should I schedule my time to engage users in social media? How can I engage other social media tools at what times to more effectively engage users? These can help make Facebook a lot more efficient, not just in advertising but for the entire Facebook experience.

Understanding value
For most brands if there isn’t much of an ROI then Facebook is not going to be used for a longer period of time.

What they did was that they based their marketing on fan bases that were responding heavily. They wanted to ask: What is the difference between someone who is a fan and someone is not a fan? What they found was, that real fans were converting both off the like and the click.

Leveraging their client fan bases to drive deeper action.
This is a good way to help increase much more awareness of your brand, and allows people to help others recognize your brand. Non fans converted at a rate of 10%.

ROI = marginal benefit of being a fan – cost to acquire a fan.

In every single case the value is there and it could be measured, even though across many different conversion types there are very different conversion rates.

Another way of measuring results is by measuring newsfeed impressions. This allows you to reach the entire Facebook population through fans and friends.

If you are advertising to people who are qualified and have the money to purchase your services, this helps increase ROI significantly vs. if you are advertising to anyone – people that are unable to understand the value of your services and totally unable to pay for them.

Social Responsibility Case Study: The Power of Giving
Aligning with a philanthropic cause (donation of 1$ per fan) saves a brand money

Without donation language:

Cost was 56% higher
Actions/impressions 48% lower
Actions/Clicks 38% lower
CTR was 17% lower

Next up is Marty Weintraub of AIMclear

I swear this guy is an outstanding presenter. Perhaps the cup of coffee he held in his hand throughout the presentation had something to do with it? Or the fact that he’s an all-round extreme expert on this subject? Either way his passion and energy shined through. Well, on to Marty’s presentation. He delivered some fantastic information about developing better targeted Facebook ads.

According to Marty’s presendation, back in the day you had:

Incredibly Low CPM.
Little Editorial Governance.
Very little competition.
And it was the contest Wild West.

Not anymore.

The beautiful things FB took away:
Mine individual PPC user names
Capture User IDs from Templates
Easily buy User IDs
No transparency Apps mined personal info.
Lost reporting clarity.

So how can we get around this? How can we most effectively pursue successful ad targeting?

It’s what you do with what you have that matters.

State of the art is what you do with what you have.

When you think about where people are on Facebook, you ask questions like:

Occupations and employment.
Groups and Affiliations.
Publications online and off.
Product Categories.
Classic Mainstream Interests.
Competitors.

There are several different types of targeting to be mindful of:

Literal Targeting
Targets direct relationship with the demographic segment, often keyword for keyword
Easy to research, often better for direct-response KPIs.
Literal associations are not always realistic in FB.

Competitive = Targets competitors’ fans both positive and negative sentiment.
Qualifies customers by known brand predilections. Killer tactic for poaching other brands’ communities
May run into future legal problems. May have ethical issues now. Watch for backlash from competitors.

Inferred Targeting
Targets deep personality traits of users.
Invokes an emotional response that may seed deeper engagement.
Requires a very creative marketer to map the associations.

Literal targeting = obvious
So you can sell hockey sticks to hockey players.
You can sell Jonas Brothers tickets to 13 year old girls.

Are there future litigation issues with Competitive targeting? There can be.
Competitive targeting includes such qualifies as luxury, gender, age, geography, etc.

Example:
Estimated Reach 24,740 people.
*Who live in the United States.
*Age 18 and older.
*Who like rolex, rolex watches, rolex official fan page, or rolex watch.

There are thousands of vulnerable brands that are not immune to this kind of targeting.

Another example is using Apple for behavioral targeting:

Estimated Reach: 30,920 people.
*Who live in the United States.
*Age 18 and older.
*Who like dell, dell deals, dell go green, dell computers, dell inspiron, dell inspiron 15, dell laptops, or dell studio laptops.

Another example is Canadian Sephora Lovers:

Estimated Reach: 32,560 people.
*Who live in one of the countries: United States or Canada.
*Age 21 and older.
*Who are female.
*Who like sephora.

Another example is Kellogg’s Corn Flakes:

Estimated Reach: 41,300 people
*Who live in the United States.
*Age 18 and Older.
*Who like cheerios, honey nut cheeriors, banana nut cheeriors, or chocolate cheerios.

Yet another example provided is Pottery Barn:

Estimated Reach: 98,760 people
*Who live in the United States.
*Age 18 and older.
*Who like crate barrel.

Negative competitors’ sentiment

Powerful leads are Unsatisfied customers of competing brands.
Could be susceptible to alternatives.
“sucks,” “suck,” “hate,” “terrible,”
“horrible,” “f_cuk,” “f_cked,”

Double Negative: “Like” Bucket + “Sucks” in keyword = “Hate”

An example provided is the iPod:
Estimated Reach
1,400 people
*Who live in the United States
*Age 18 and Older
*Who like “I hate itunes” or “itunes sucks”.

Another example is Big Kmart:

Estimated Reach: 41,360 people
*Who live in the United States.
*Age 18 and older.
*Who like “walmart sucks balls,” “no walmart in monroe,” “i hate walmart,” “walmart high cost low price,” “boycott walmart” or “not shopping at walmart”

Be careful of this though. Be VERY careful.
There can be a backlash of [Brand] Lovers.
The other brand might sue you.
Follow the Laws of Jurisdictions ® © and ™
This targeting should be guided by what you’d do (or not) in public.

Occupation targeting is a killer hack

This is the golden age of occupation targeting.

B2B B2C products consumed by business people.
Never truly off duty.
You can catch them at home, off guard.
You can get hundreds of millions of impressions.

A good example of occupational targeting can be Real Estate Agents/Realtors:

What would I know about a realtor?
Real Estate agents are go getters

What are some good products?
Productivity software, easy-upload video
Cameras, Magnetic Car Signs
Computers, Snow Plowing, Cars, Phone Service & Restaurants.

You can also target via Education & Work.
You can target precise interests.
Use Alpha Patterns.
Such as searching for assistant a (which will bring up all results for assistant a like Assistant Athletic Trainer, Assistant Administrator, and so on).
Take the alpha a little bit deeper
Such as searching for sales repre, which will bring up: Sales Representative, Sales Represenative, Sales Representitive, and other such mis-spellings.

Use common job title words, like supervisor a.

The professional depth on Facebook is absolutely astounding.

Occupations are fertile for B2C as well.
You can target Budget brands to bartenders and waitresses
Metallica Memorabilia, Synthetic Motor Oil, fishing weekends to auto techs and young machinists

Targeting Professional Associations

Example:
Estimated Reach – 1,880 people
*Who live in the United States.
*Age 23 and older.
*Who work at Dental Health Products, American Dental Association, Goetze Dental, American Dental Partners, Discus Dental, Dentistry for Children

This is awesome – You can also do Fortune 500 Targeting.
Matriculate those with Interests Bucket occupations such as Corporate Marketing Director, C-Titles, etc.
Estimated Reach: 2,132,780 people who live in the United States
And work at: Wal-Mart, Chevron Corp, Fannie Mae, Berkshire Hathaway, General Motors, Bank of America, etc.

You can even go so far as, wait for it – going into privacy-busting targeting. It is a very at-risk procedure however. People are freaks, so try and see what they would be interested in but will never tell you about in person.

Medical targeting
Sell minivans to those who like “Being Pregnant”.
Sell disposable diapers to those who like “Hate Being Pregnant”.

Estimated Reach: 22,460 people
*Who live in the United States
*Age 18 and older
*Who like “i am pregnant,” “i love being pregnant,” “being pregnant,” “pregnancy yoga,” “im pregnant,” or “pregnancy birth baby bellybelly”.

Another example this time for hate being pregnant:

Estimated reach: 340 people
*Who live in the United States.
*Age 18 and older.
*Who like I hate being pregnant.

You can also target Conflict & Violence

14,600 Facebook Users like “Killing Terrorists,” “Probation Workers” & Like “If Killing Was Legal”.

7,220 are 13 years old.

Violent Social Segments = KPI sitting ducks.

1,154,140 women like fighting.
229,640 are 55+ years old!
Brand divorce attorneys.
Spa services.
Vibrators.

Show Me The People
What should you be asking? The following questions are good ones:

What are their personal traits?
Who’s professional characteristics?
Which radically private predilections might they entertain?
This concept transcends Facebook, and delves deep into the user’s psyche.
It is inspired by bottomless personalities.

How far are you actually willing to go to target specific users?
Climb inside the users’ psyche and seriously really get to know them.
Do you want to target body building towards steroid interests?
What about targeting Bali Vacations to Upper Crust Gays?
Or just go plain vanilla on your targeting? Tennis Rackets to Tennis Players?

Of course, there are those methods of targeting that are totally at your own risk and should not be taken lightly.

Real world targeting:
Figureheads
Causes
Political issues & orientations
Charitable causes
Religion
How Button – Current Events
Movements like Green and Occupy

When it comes to targeting your potential clients, the sky’s the limit. Don’t limit yourself to preconceived notions of what people want and where they can get it. Take your targeting to the next level by pushing the envelope and developing ideas that push targeting into the user’s psyche and targets those who may not even know they want your services and product. That’s where you’re going to beat your competition.

That’s the name of the game – you better use it, or you’re gonna lose it.

Next up is the final Question & Answer session for this session.

It seems that FB tactics are designed to combat the fatigue that comes with FB ads. What have you used to increase the efficiency of the ads?

Matt – This is one areas where tools can really help. FB has a number of advertising platforms that can help take a lot of time out of your day.
Marty – Be ready to build new ads, some of the ones that are successful. Know your ROI before you start. Build ads that are relevant.

Do any of your clients ever get concerned with targeting stereotypes that your audience might find offensive?

Marty – Stereotypes are often wrong but they’re often right too. When we target somebody on FB we think of them as the precious object that they are. (smiling)
Addie – A lot of what FB is about is audience discovery a lot of different ways. Brands can use this as a discovery tool within the brands’ guidelines.

Speaking of driving people, one of the questions – which landing page is better for FB ROI the website or the FB page itself?

Addie- We’ve done this multiple times and it’s different every single time. I’ve seen instances where driving off of FB is obviously better so my answer to this is – test it.
Marty – I think that we should consider who we’re targeting and what we’re telling them along the way.

What’s your method for managing Facebook ads from a billing and admin standpoint. Does the client pay for the ad or does the agency pay?
Matt – We charge a percentage/flat fee.
Addie – We manage on behalf of our clients.
Marty – We try to flat rate per month and administer a set amount of money for a company. We work with really good companies who have relationships in place. What’s happening in is that the marketing now with major multinational corporations is they’re starting to separate the marketing from the company.

That’s it for this session’s SMX Social Media 2011 Coverage…until next time!

Whether you are starting out as an internet marketer or a seasoned pro, there are quite a few things to consider as you develop your brand and keep increasing your internet presence.

My obsession with the Back to the Future trilogy started at a young age, when I saw Back to the Future part II in theaters for the first time.  I couldn’t wait for the movie to start – hover boards (like everyone who saw the movie back then, I totally wanted one), ideals of the future, and plenty of other good things made it a truly awesome experience.  I ended up exploring the entire trilogy afterwards by watching part I, and probably saw part III more than 10 times in the theater when it came out.

Since the entire trilogy was released on video I’ve probably seen it more than 100,000 times and I never get tired of watching it.  Needless to say, I was floored when I saw weregoingback.com, the 25th anniversary week long celebration of Back to the Future, held through November 5 – 12, 2010 to coincide with the dates of the movie when Marty arrives in 1955 – Nov. 5th being the “red-lettered date in the history of science” when Doc Brown invents the flux capacitor.  So this post was born – to help me get some creative juices flowing again to get back to work (and back to reality)…although I’ll have to wish myself good luck on the whole getting back to reality thing.

So what, exactly can the Back to the Future trilogy teach us about Internet Marketing?  Well, let’s take a look at some ideas and lessons that show up throughout the movie and were subsequently developed to deliver a movie experience that resounded with the ages.

Utilize original, groundbreaking content concepts.  Don’t just settle for mediocrity/automation for your content writing.

According to multiple sources, the producers (Robert Zemeckis & Bob Gale) were going to use a refrigerator in one iteration of the script rather than a DeLorean.  Let’s face it – how boring would a refrigerator have been?  Other time travel movies had utilized similar devices for depicting the attainment and execution of time travel, so in order to excel where others failed Back to the Future needed a more unique approach.  Thus, the DeLorean time machine was born, a deliciously styled time machine that made Back to the Future, ‘Back to the Future’.

Develop your personal touch and integrate it as much as possible into your website copy.

Doc was originally supposed to be named Professor, and one of the original scripts called for a pet monkey instead of a dog.  Monkeys are all well and good, and when you want to go to monkey island you definitely want to have a monkey on your side!  But in Back to the Future, having dogs throughout the Doc’s life named after great scientists is a personal touch that delivers on character elements that express who Doc Brown himself really was – a man of science.  It’s all in the details.  Whether you’re working on a blog or a hit movie, you need to have a personal touch to deliver on special character elements that can make or break your production.  When you include these, audiences can better identify and be more connected with your writing, and you can help convert more leads as a result.  Nobody wants to read generic, bland robotic content that was obviously put together by an auto generator.

Use unique branding concepts to propel your marketing to a new level.

As we all should know by now, the device that allowed the DeLorean to travel through time was known as the flux capacitor. Branding.  Just as the clever Doc Brown came up with a unique device for time travel, the flux capacitor is and always will be the de facto device associated with Back to the Future.  To develop a successful brand, you need to come up with your own flux capacitor, or your USP (unique selling point).  This is what will help differentiate you from the competition and develop an eventual clarified public awareness of purpose that everyone will associate with your brand, leading to increased conversions as a result. It can also help your business stay on track and go after that business that makes sense.

Introduce new, original, and fun concepts/posts to your blog regularly.

Just like the hover board made an incredible splash in the futuristic technology fantasies of every kid (and many adults) that saw Back to the Future part II, so will original fun posting concepts on your blog act in the same way towards your audience.  You don’t want to stagnate by re-hashing the same stuff from previous posts in your blog, so you must dynamically introduce some amazing new concept that will entice your readers to your blog and help solve their problems.

Make usability a central focus of everything you do.

Nearly every one of Doc Brown’s inventions had a significant potential to solve problems for those who had difficulty with coming up with beyond practical solutions…when they finally work.  It’s all about usability – your website, in addition to being functional, must also be usable and displayable on a number of screen resolutions and platforms, not just Safari on the Mac.  The major search engines want to deliver on content and websites that are useful enough to people who are looking for a site to solve a specific problem.  If your website’s product solves that problem, people are more likely to convert and purchase your product.  Conversely, if your site is not user friendly, contains some information (and obviously nowhere near completion), and the architecture doesn’t flow well, then it’s more likely than ever to lead to an increased bounced rate (the rate at which people leave your page after visiting).

By keeping in mind the principles above, you’ll be able to keep your website project on track, and maybe it will one day rival the best website that even the Doc himself could put together!

We’ve all been there.  We have all seen designs that we feel are “old”, haphazard, and generally looks like they were put together by someone with rudimentary knowledge of Microsoft Word.  Yes.  Word.  Like they took the site from Word and exported it to HTML, without paying attention to the elements of design, the elements of marketing, branding, and ensuring that standard SEO techniques are applied in a way that delivers maximum results in a shorter period of time.

Bling is nirvana.

But wait, what’s this I hear?  Is that the sound of a submit button on a cancellation form being pressed, with an incredible echo from the mouse?  Are clients cancelling and not providing the real reason why?  Typically, if clients cancel and they provide a generic reason that has no merit (financial reasons, I can’t afford it, etc.) it’s usually a bunch of you-know-what.  They can afford it.  The problem is that they haven’t been convinced to spend the money or keep the money with the business.  If the core product of your business has a terrible presentation (regardless of what happens with the product after work has been performed with it), then that will result in one thing:  lackluster business.  Almost.  Nearly.  Every.  Single.  Time.  The best service in the world will never be able to get around a lackluster presentation.  People want exciting.  They want to tell their friends and colleagues of the most incredible purchase they ever made.   For the most part, the majority of people want what’s on, for example, templatemonster.com or apple.com or alienware (think iPhone 3GS, people).  Now that’s bling.

A good majority of people are not willing to face confrontation or provide much value in the way of complaints unless things get really terrible, so they will make up an excuse like “they can’t afford it” or “the economy’s bad” or something similar that doesn’t provide much ammo for the other side of an argument or make them look like the bad guy.  And who loses?  In the end, the business does because they can’t tailor their product to meet specific complaints because of one problem:  the complaint doesn’t exist!  The product is there.  The service is there.  But, the product’s default presentation is not “enough”.

If Things Aren’t Working, Change It Up and Adapt to Market Demands.

The problem typically is not that there’s anything wrong with a service or even the product.  There’s typically nothing wrong with customer service.  You can have the best customer service and product in the world.  You can have the best back end that includes gobbs and gobbs of goodies that include the capabilities for customization.  However, if the core product of your business (and this is especially true for those companies who have a product that is at the core of their clients’ business) does not provide enough of a reason for clients to want to stick with you for the long term, what do you do? Change.

That’s right.  You have to be able to adapt to the times, changing circumstances, and a consistently evolving market where consumers are becoming savvier than ever before, and a lackluster presentation won’t cut it.  Yes, I know.  You hate change.  We hate change.  Nearly everyone hates to change from already-established paradigms.  Change is hard work.  But, the fact of the matter is, that change is going to be the catalyst that determines the success of any one company in any particular market.  Consider this example.  A company has been in business for years.  They’re an industry power house.  They’ve changed everything:  the way they approach clients.  The back end of their platform.  Their own web site.  But, one thing has not yet changed:  the clients’ own product presentation – the stuff their clients present to their own potential clients.  And, this particular clientelle is not especially savvy in the principles and technical abilities that are required to develop a professional, competition-destroying presentation.  They also don’t want to have to work on their product or pay more than what they already are to get it to where it needs to be.

A Lesson to be Learned.

There’s a lesson in all of this.  If you don’t consider how your product’s presentation is going to affect your clients’ own business, or how your products’ presentation is going to help clients land and close on that all important deal, then you’ve lost to the competition.  The competition HAS a better product.  The competition HAS flashier products.  The competition HAS the same level of service, if not better.  The competition HAS a lower price.  The competition is not afraid to try new things, to provide bling.  Yes.  That’s right.  Bling.  Bling and substance sells.  Drab and substance usually don’t the majority of the time.  Sometimes, though, drab and substance is a hit.   But, that’s usually very rare.

Are you ready to put these variables in place that will destroy your competition?

There is a model of marketing that will help put the various pieces of the marketing puzzle into the appropriate context for your industry. For the purposes of this post, however, the model discussed will be modified to apply to real estate. This model is called the four Ps of marketing. Quite simply, the four Ps formula is a model that’s used to craft a well-developed marketing section of a business plan. Some may believe that the four Ps formula does not apply to real estate, but it can. So, in a twist, I’d like to alter the four Ps formula so that it applies more to real estate. I’d like to introduce the SPLP formula!

S = Service

Normally, in the standard four Ps model, Product would go here. But since the real estate industry already has their product esablished (homes, land, etc.) you don’t need much to budget for research and development purposes. No, the primary thing that you are selling in real estate is your service to find, buy, or sell homes for your clients! Not the homes themselves. The homes themselves are the product being sold by your service, but you still must primarily convince people that you’re the agent that will help them the best out of everyone else.

This first letter takes into account the service that you offer, e.g. a fiduciary agent acting on your clients’ behalf. As a real estate agent or Realtor(R), it’s the duty of the public servant to provide a service that allows potential clients to make decisions with as much information as possible. The fee you get in exchange for this service is your commission. So, how can you market this important aspect of your business plan differently? Simple solutions with immediate measurable benefits include adding a newsletter to your site if you don’t already have one, providing a relocation package, or even providing additional services. Services could even include a free web site featuring your client’s property in exchange for their decision to use you as an agent.

P = Pricing

With any product or service, pricing is extremely important. If you price your product too high, you won’t sell enough units to break even on your investment. If you price your product too low, it’s not going to sell well either. The low price will alienate those connosieurs that are looking for something with higher quality. Remember, quality of service is incredibly important. If you provide better service, you can charge a higher price because the better service differentiates yourself from your competition with lower quality service. If you can strike a balance between price, value, and perceived value it will make the difference in how the service sells. It’s all about striking a balance utilizing that magical combo of supply and demand.

P = Placement (distribution). For real estate: L = Location

Placement is pretty important. When it comes to real estate, you might know this better as location. Get to know your market like the back of your hand so that you can come up with an excellent price for the location of the property. Location + price can make or break a sale, so be sure to get both of these elements of your marketing plan right.

P = Promotion

Now it’s time to discuss the final piece of the puzzle: promotion. Without a way to reach the potential clients within your target market, there’s no way that you’re going to make enough sales to make a decent profit. Promotion begins with a plan. This part of the plan should be developed in the very beginning as one of the first steps to crafting a well-written business plan. How are you going to reach the target market of your product? Who are the competitors and what kinds of promotion are they doing? The answers to these questions should help you start out with information to craft a decent promotional plan.

Typically, promotion consists of advertising efforts that are designed to increase public awareness about a product or service. These efforts can be anything from online search engine optimization to offline marketing. The important thing is that you need to develop a solid comprehensive plan that targets the market of buyers that you’re attempting to attract to your product or service. I could go into significant detail about how to launch an effective promotion plan, and I’ll probably be writing a post about that later.

Remember the four Ps of marketing. They will help you greatly when it comes to marketing your product or service.