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Friday, March 28, 2008

Recessions Can Teach Valuable Marketing Lessons

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 1:50 PM

Search engine marketing budget - to cut or not to cut?

Recession, recession, recession… I don’t know about you but I have had my fill of this doomsday word! It seems to me the panic caused by this word simply increases the chances of a recession occurring. Recessions, however, have a silver lining because they provide business owners with the opportunity to look long and hard at their expenses and this can provide valuable insight in strengthening the business long after a recession recedes. Some cut backs may become obvious such as eliminating frivolous office expenses and are a wise move but should business owners cut back on their web marketing? Lets look at the circumstances within web marketing where cutbacks may or may not make sense.

When You Should or Should Not Cut Back on Pay Per Click or Search Engine Optimization Campaigns
So what is unnecessary marketing? Logic dictates that any marketing that is not profitable is not worth keeping. That said, how certain are you that a particular form of marketing is not profitable? Perhaps the following questions and notes will help you decide:

Have you been tracking key performance indicator(s) (KPI) since the inception of the campaign?
Let me explain; say you launched an SEO campaign to drive more traffic to the “Norco Bikes For Sale” page on your website. In this case a very simple key performance indicator (KPI) would be how many visits the page has received from people that stayed longer than, say 6 or 7 seconds (this time qualifier would all-but-eliminate low quality clickthroughs). If you tracked this all the way from the inception of the campaign and you saw that this KPI had increased perhaps more research is in order before cancelling this campaign. If you saw no measureable improvement in your KPI then the campaign should be canned, or at the very least, paused.

If you haven’t adequately monitored the success of a campaign from the start is there a way to determine it now?
Usually there is a method to determine the success of a campaign using historical data but the method depends on a multitude of circumstances. Here are a couple of the most common methods:

Dig into your web statistics: any hosting company worth its salt (like LunarPages or WeDoHosting) will have web statistics compiled for your website. These stats can provide revealing historical information on the ups and downs of traffic on your website.

Note: I recommend setting up Google Analytics on your website (free) for an alternative view of your stats. I find it best to have Google Analytics installed if even just for piece of mind that you have a backup of your stats (if you move hosting providers for example). If you do this, however, please read this handy article by Matt McGee on protecting your privacy while using Google Analytics.

If web site statistics are not an option then you may have to review your income history and see how much of your income you can tie into the specific marketing campaign. This process is not likely to be painless and may very well be impossible if you have a large number of campaigns going on at the same time; however, it could prove worthwhile if it keeps you from wrongly shutting down a profitable campaign.

What do your frontlines say? Are you getting more sales from the web?
Every sales person in your office should be asking how prospects found you and they should be keeping meticulous notes on this information. If they are then ask them if they have seen a marked increase in web-related phone calls and whether they found you through a (specific) search engine. This kind of info is invaluable to determining the success of any marketing campaign.

Is the campaign nearly profitable but not quite?
If you can see the campaign is close to being profitable then I strongly recommend sticking to your guns (if you can afford to) and conduct testing to increase the viability of the campaign before giving up on it.

Multivariate testing is often a great technique for improving a campaign. Multivariate testing is a term used to describe the tweaking of a landing page in manner that (hopefully) influences a desired reaction from the visitor. Tweaks could be as simple as removing an image of a Norco Bike at the top of the landing page which in-turn moves the marketing text higher up the page. A multivariate test would examine how this seemingly minor change positively or negatively affects the page. Usually a positive reaction would be an increase in clickthroughs to a goal page (such as a purchase page or an inquiry form).

Here is an excellent example of successful multivariate testing.

Did you check to see if your pay-per-click campaign was profitable before turning it off?
When you are looking at cost cutting your attention will most likely be focused on major expenditures like pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns and rightfully so; a poorly performing campaign can be a major drain. That said, you must do your homework before shutting down a PPC campaign because it could be delivering the profit you desperately need. In a perfect world this question would be a waste of space but I am sure a vast number of PPC campaigns are run without proper monitoring so I feel this reminder to verify profitability is warranted. If your campaign has not been properly monitored then I suggest thinking carefully about your next step. You can either turn it off for the time being and see what effect it has on your sales OR immediately install the appropriate mechanisms to track a pay-per-click campaign and monitor it long enough to determine if it is in fact successful; the time required depends on the breadth of the campaign but 2 weeks should do the trick.

Evaluating the Success of Social Media Marketing Campaigns
It can be difficult to associate profit with Social Media Marketing (SMM) campaigns since they tend to have a more indirect affect on sales. As a result, determining the success of a SMM campaign could seem nearly impossible. Fortunately that isn’t the case because like any marketing campaign you likely (or should have) started the campaign with some goal in mind. Here are a few questions based on common SMM goals that should help you determine the success of your campaign:

Has there been a regular and distinct increase in subscribers to your blog RSS feed or newsletter subscriptions?
If you are using Feedburner or another RSS management tool look at your average sign-ups on a weekly basis (take more than one sample) before you start your SMM campaign(s) and then compare that to a sampling of a few weeks over the past month or two. Do the same examination for your newsletter subscriptions (using whatever management tool you use to monitor signups). Do you see a substantial increase in signups on a weekly basis? If not then have an in-depth discussion with your SMM team or vendor and determine where the disconnect is. After all, these assets have to be doing something for their money – perhaps they see another metric increasing.

Are you seeing more traffic from social media websites? If so, are they of a high enough quality?
Open your web site statistics, go to your referral stats and look for increased traffic from social media websites your SMM team is concentrating on. If you don’t find any additional traffic stop at this point and have a serious discussion with your SMM team.

If you do find an increase of traffic from social sites then further segment this data and determine the quality of this traffic. For example, using ClickTracks Professional it is easy to create a filter that shows only visitors from StumbleUpon (or another group of social sites) that stays on your website longer than 5 seconds; this will eliminate zero second (aka “useless”) traffic and leave you with the worthwhile data. Now take this traffic and compare it to the expense of acquiring it through your current SMM campaign. If the numbers appear favourable and you feel the benefit outweighs the costs then you have your answer – keep the program. If the numbers are unfavourable either sit down with your SMM team to adjust/tweak/modifiy your campaign (by finding more appropriate social sites to become active on) or shut the campaign down until the winds are again favourable to refocus and try again.

Are you or your company getting talked about more often? Is it positive or negative talk?
No matter what type of campaign you have running it is important to keep tabs on your online reputation. While running a SMM campaign it is easy to step on toes and cause ill-will; especially if your marketers are not taking care to understand the unique etiquette of each social property they participate in. If you are not sure of your current reputation then try searching Google for specific iterations of your business name and your key employee names. Document anything that appears positive or negative. Also make certain to setup a Google News Alert for specific key phrases so that you can be alerted whenever relevant fresh content is made available in Google’s vast database. If you find negative press then handle it immediately by responding to it (decide how this best be done) and quickly inform your SMM team of the issue so they can learn from it and avoid a reoccurrence. If you find a lot of negative press then you need to decide if your SMM campaign is worthwhile continuing since you have to spend so much time pursuing damage control.

Conclusion
In an ideal world where a marketing department is running a tight ship a recession would have little or no impact on a marketing budget because smart companies realize they need to maintain the flow of business. That said many small businesses and indeed large companies lose track of the effectiveness of their campaigns so a potential recession provides a great opportunity to increase marketing efficiency. If you fall into the latter category then I hope this article has/or will help you cut costs without cutting profits. Just keep in mind that these evaluations should be conducted on a regular basis (regardless of a recession) so keep this article within reach as a reminder and (hopefully) a helpful reference.

Labels: PPC, Reputation Management, Ross Dunn, SEO Tips, Social Marketing, Tutorials

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Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Today's Social Media Linkforth

Written by Andrew Clough and published at 12:48 PM

When building a new site you want to create a powerful and respected reputation on the web. A company or individual can do this by having a great homepage (lots of great content and a blog), finding the appropriate communities to share their expertise, creating publicity, and building their brands image (expanding community).

A structured social media campaign can provide lots of traffic to your site. Social media can be indexed in organic listings and provide links to your site. The important point brought out in this article is to not just make a few attempts at social media but to keep on trying. A business should be encouraged to consistently provide new content to social sites because its a great way for their content to be promoted.

Social media ideally helps to find the best (current, peer reviewed) information available on the web. To be seen as "highly important information" people must be able to find it, want to link to it, and it should be so good that people want to share it with people who have similar interests. The best way to do this is to provide informed, engaging, and unique content.

More and more people who grew up with the web are using it as a trusted space to find unbiased news. Surveys have shown that people are becoming frustrated with traditional news sources because they lack quality and are out of touch with today's generation.

Youtube will be allowing live video this year. That means that people can broadcast themselves and what they are up to 24/7 and promote it to an already large user base. It should make for some interesting content and provide an exciting new venue for people to interact.

Labels: Link Forth, Reputation Management, Social Marketing, YouTube

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This SEO News was posted by Andrew Clough @ 12:48 PM.

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Friday, January 25, 2008

QDOS Will Take North America by Storm

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 1:50 PM

Expect QDOS (taken from 'kudos') to be on the lips of many over the next year. QDOS is a method to monitor and measure your own Internet popularity and, in the longer run, help you secure your online persona from identity theft.

Currently running in Beta in the UK, QDOS is planning to launch in North America in this first quarter of 2008. So how does QDOS calculate Internet status?

Up until now there has been no way to measure digital presence, to see where you fit in to the online world. At Garlik, we've analysed the digital profiles of the nation and have made available a QDOS score for every UK adult . Your QDOS score is made up of 4 different components:

Popularity
Who you know and the extent of your online network.

Impact
How much people listen to what you say online.

Activity
What you do online e.g. shop, chat, blog.

Individuality
How easy you are to find online according to your name, your age etc

I expect QDOS will do very well, if not absurdly well in North America. As Al Pacino once said "vanity is my favorite sin". This is obvious in nearly every corner of social media networking... many people just want to look like they have more friends and show off their accomplishments so this new service just fits perfectly. Don't get me wrong, I am not judging, but I don't think there is anywhere more vain than North America which is why I have high expectations for this company. It also helps that one of their board members happens to be the inventor of the World Wide Web... Tim Berners-Lee.

Aside from the enjoyment of monitoring your online identity and watching it morph in real time QDOS offers a much needed element of security that will really appeal to Internet users the world over... protection from identity theft. QDOS is relatively new but I did find an interview with Tom Ilube, CEO of QDOS that explains how the company will help its clients protect their identity:

"In the digital world, there is information that other people, companies or even the Government makes available about each of us which we are often not aware of, including government database information such as UK births, deaths and marriages. In fact, you could say there is ‘background digital noise’ about all of us."

"The key to tackling data abuse is for consumers to make themselves ‘hard targets’ and the purpose of QDOS is to wake people up en masse to the fact that their identity is worth protecting. Once consumers start to recognise this fact in a major way, it will become harder for fraudsters to abuse their data."

So what will all of this cost to you? Claiming your name and manually monitoring your online identity will be free but QDOS will be providing a $6/month identity monitoring service. The service will provide a monthly "personal identity statement" that highlights any weaknesses in your online identity security. (source: Business Week)

Do you want to get in early and claim your name? QDOS is in Beta but it is accepting requests for registration now.

Here is a teaser video from QDOS:

Labels: New Tech, Reputation Management, Ross Dunn, Social Marketing

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Thursday, December 13, 2007

Wikipedia's Wikiality Stronger Than Ever

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 12:31 PM

My original article on Wikipedia's history of controversial editing was labelled "Is Wikipedia Corrupt?" At the time the title was meant to only raise awareness, however, coincidentally since that article premiered the popular online encyclopedia has been thrashed by mainstream media for some highly suspect behaviour.

Case-in-point, the Register published an article noting how Wikipedia outright banned over 1000 homes in Traverse Mountain, Utah, and an entire company (Overstock.com) in an effort to quash a Mr. Judd Bagley who had recently stated on his own blog that Wikipedia editors were "using their powers to hijack reality." The Register article (which I sourced that quote from) goes into 5 detailed pages of description on how this went down and I must say, I was very unimpressed with Wikipedia by the end of it all. For more information and background on this case please give it a read - it is well worth it.

(image credit, The Register)

Indeed, even political comedian Stephen Colbert took a chunk out of Wikipedia for what he calls "wikiality" where inaccuracies in fact are reshaping the reality of those who trust Wikipedia as a reliable source.

What's worse? The first week of December news broke on the Register that the Wikipedia elite has a secret mailing list that is used to "crackdown on perceived threats to their power" behind the scenes without scrutiny from the larger Wikipedia editorial community. When the other editors heard about this they were outraged as evidenced by a respected Japan-based editor by the name of Charles Ainsworth: "I think there was more hidden anger and frustration with the 'ruling clique' than I thought and Durova's heavy-handed action and arrogant refusal to take sufficient accountability for it has released all of it into the open." (source: The Register)

So what does this all mean? At this point the meaning of this is entirely up to personal opinion. Wikipedia is doubtless full of extremely factual and useful information so perhaps this is just a symptom of the growing popularity of this Google-favoured resource. On the flip side I get the creepy crawlies whenever a resource is caught censoring fact and opinion on the Internet; especially Wikipedia for which Google has provided unbelievable visibility (never has a resource had so many #1 rankings).

Unfortunately it seems that wherever social editing takes place corruption is unavoidable; the Open Directory Project has been a great example of this in the past. That said, it is truly unfortunate that such sneaky and elitist tactics appear to be supported by some editors at Wikipedia. Just pray you don't get on the wrong side of the Wikipedia ruling elite... they don't take prisoners and they appear to favor wikiality.

If you want to check out an alternative to the Wikipedia read my posting on Citizendium.

by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.
Celebrating 10 Years of Web Marketing Excellence

Labels: Reputation Management, Ross Dunn, Social Marketing

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This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 12:31 PM.

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Wednesday, November 28, 2007

An Introduction to Citizendium by Editor Russ McGinn

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 4:27 PM

Back in August I wrote an article called "Is Wikipedia Corrupt?" which looked at the concerns caused by controversial editing in the popular Wikipedia online encyclopedia. In the closing section of that article I stressed that Google needed to move away from highlighting Wikipedia in favor of increasing the diversity of its encyclopedic references. In that regard I would like to introduce a great introduction to Citizendium written by Russ McGinn, a Citizendium Editor and former participant at Wikipedia.

Dear Ross,

Responding to your invitation at SiteProNews, I am an author at Citizendium (http://en.citizendium.org.)

We believe the world needs a more reliable free encyclopedia. We are creating a trusted general reference work by giving people a place to work under the direction of experts, and by expecting personal accountability, professionalism and by requiring the use of real names. Our goal is to capture humanity's multivariate understanding of reality, and thereby to paint a maximally broad and detailed portrait of our universe as accurately as we understand it. An indispensable means to this end is the involvement of many experts who will help guide and, ultimately, approve many of our articles. We expect our approved articles to be, in the long run, as authoritative, error-free, and well-written as encyclopedia articles can be expected to be.

As to quantity, we hope to grow to hundreds of thousands of articles within a few years, and millions a few years after that. This is not the traditional goal of encyclopedias, which has been to offer up only mainstream views of the most important aspects of the most important topics. Cheap disk space and bandwidth, and the potential of participation by ultimately millions of people, means that we can capture humanity's understanding of reality with far more nuance and detail.

We are also creating a new sort of online community. We welcome experts as well as the general public; we will be built not by top-down orders but as and where contributors wish to work; and we will be organized as a republic governed by a rule of law. This means that there will be no "dictators," but a regularly changing group of people tasked to manage a public trust in conformity with a relatively stable code of rules. It also means that we will have very little tolerance for the sort of immature disruption, abuse and gaming that plagues so many other Internet communities.

On a personal note, I left Wikipedia, because whilst there are a number of competent editors there, the combination of anonymity, people gaming the system, an overemphasis of 'style' over 'reliable content', and a lack of interest in the management to manage, leads to endless unproductive arguments. In part, it's success is due to exactly those factors - contributors start writing a few articles and are then seduced by the politics - see <this Wikipedia link> as just the latest appalling example - people either burn out become 'wikidrama' addicts.

Not for me I'm afraid.

Kind regards,
Russ McGinn

Thank you Russ for your detailed description of the Citizendium and your thoughts on Wikipedia. The establishment of a comprehensive community-written encyclopedia is no doubt an incredibly difficult task; one that I cannot even pretend to grasp. That said, the values that Citizendium is trying to uphold are extremely worthwhile and I wish you and your fellow editors all of the luck and assistance in the world.

I would also like to turn some attention to Wikipedia; the current forerunner in the online encyclopedia landscape. I understand Wikipedia continues to sort out some complaints and dissent but that kind of controversy is bound to come with the enormous success it has gained over the past few years. The editors at Wikipedia deserve a lot of respect for their hard work and for keeping their heads above water and their spirits high.

Ultimately the best option for everyone would be to have a wide array of resources to consult in order to prevent a single entity from controlling public opinion and knowledge within the Internet.

A Call for More Introductions
Again I request that any online encyclopedia contact me with a description of their site. Tell me why your site should stand out from the rest and I will be proud to post it for all to see. Mail me at ceo at stepforth dot com and I will review your submission for publishing ASAP.

Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.
Celebrating 10 Years of Web Marketing Excellence

Labels: Interviews, Other Engines, Reputation Management, Ross Dunn, SEO News, Social Marketing

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Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Is Wikipedia Corrupt?

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 12:10 PM

Responses to my previous posting called "How to Ethically Update Wikipedia" have been incredibly polarized and I felt it was important I provide some visibility to the ethical issues and ramifications faced by an immensely influential volunteer-run organization like Wikipedia.

First a Little Background
My July 17th posting was based on an excellent article published at Search Engine Land called "SEO Tips & Tactics from a Wikipedia Insider" written by a Wikipedia Administrator with the pseudonym Durova. My post summarized a few of the unethical Wikipedia listings that Durova had noticed throughout her time at Wikipedia and how Wikipedia responded to each situation. I was very impressed by Durova's article and how transparent the process appeared to be.

The Ramifications
Since my posting I received a few comments on the posting that were obviously from people who felt very strongly that Wikipedia, and in particular Durova, had serious issues with ethics. In that regard I have little doubt that these people had previously poor experiences with Wikipedia/Durova and have an axe to grind; the anger was palpable. One of the comments even revealed Durova's real name (which I chose not to allow) and linked to a page where unkindly and distasteful words are shared about Wikipedia and Durova.

The complainants' comments on StepForth's site and Search Engine Land's insinuate Wikipedia is run in a mafia-like manner where those who administrate the encyclopedia can be malicious when angered and may act without repercussions. Here are some quotes:

One commenter by the name of Gregory Kohs defined Wikipedia:
Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia. It is a blog disguised as an encyclopedia, controlled by a limited number of people with admin tools who have particular axes to grind about living people with real names, all while hiding behind a cloak of anonymity.
Source, StepForth SEO blog post.
A commenter followed up Gregory's comment with a long reply that included this:
Durova's advice to openly declare your intentions as COI (conflict of interest) in her article sound good - but like much of Wikipedia, the intentions are good in the script of the rules, but the proof of the "pudding" in implementation often winds up "on the faces" of the business people who naively trusted Wikipedia to be a professional and business-friendly place. It isn't that.
Source, StepForth SEO blog post.
A Search Engine Land comment caught my eye:
Are we now to the point in our Web 2.0 society where anonymous persons holding authority positions within Top 10 website communities can say defamatory things (that I lie to journalists), and the end result of my politely personal complaint is to have my "professional reputation" further questioned by the anonymous administrator?
That's just lovely.

Thank God I love my wife, daughter, family, and many friends -- who all love me dearly and don't give two whits about Wikipedia. I really can't imagine that if any major donor to the Wikimedia Foundation knew THIS is the type of culture that is fostered there, HOW they would possibly sign that check over to Jimbo and his admins-gone-wild.
Source, Search Engine Land article.

At the StepForth SEO Blog Durova posted the following response to some of the comments:
"I am a voluntary participant in a program called 'administrators open to recall.' That means I'll stand for reconfirmation of sysop status if half a dozen Wikipedians in good standing request it. Nobody's ever initiated such a request. My candidacy for administratorship passed on an 81-0-1 vote (one neutral short of unanimous). So the community has expressed its confidence. I do, however, specialize in investigations and dispute resolution. So some sitebanned individuals sometimes turn up elsewhere on the Web with complaints."

Comment note: many more inflammatory and defensive comments can be found in a less censored format within this Search Engine Land article.

My Position
I cannot attest to the accuracy of the lengthy complaints against Durova and Wikipedia and I don't have the time or interest to thoroughly research the past (there appears to be a LOT to review). That said, if any of the complaints have an ounce of truth then Wikipedia has to be more cautious about the stance they take on content that may irreparably harm others or face a dmoz-like fate. On the flipside, those who post content on Wikipedia had better realize that whatever they post has ramifications on their own reputations so they had better be 100% certain of their sources and intentions.

Also I commend Durova for replying to the comments by noting that her current role as administrator can be circumvented by a vote by members in good standing. That said, I do wonder whether members in good standing would have any reason to oust a fellow member that may be of like mind. (i.e. who guards the guardians?)

In Closing
I have to admit that a volunteer-operated site that has the ability to seriously harm a business's or a person's good reputation gives me the creeps. This is especially true for online encyclopedias like Wikipedia where content, by its social nature, tends to stray into gossip territory. I realize that this applies to many social media websites but very few have the massive power to affect opinion that Wikipedia currently has. If there is one thing that this whole scenario illustrates it is that Wikipedia's content, no matter who administrates it, should be heavily seasoned with salt. The same goes for any socially driven content online.

If you are in dire need of reputation management on your Wikipedia listing then read the well-written Search Engine Land article by Jessica Bowman where she explores the various ethical techniques of battling bad press on a Wikipedia page.: What To Do When Your Wikipedia Page Goes Bad.

PS) Google Needs More Diversity!
Google desperately needs to level the field a bit and offer up content from online encyclopedias other than Wikipedia (who regularly sits at #1 for most searches) to reveal some differing perspectives and soften Wikipedia's influence. After all, there are bound to be other online encyclopedias that deserve a shot at the limelight as well.

If you represent an alternative online encyclopedia please email me, I would love it if you would submit a couple-paragraph introduction of your site and the reason why your content is just as or more deserving than Wikipedia. When I receive your introductions I will blog them promptly. Thanks!

by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.
Celebrating 10 Years of Web Marketing Excellence

Labels: Reputation Management, Ross Dunn, Social Marketing

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Tuesday, July 17, 2007

How to Ethically Update Wikipedia

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 1:04 PM

An article was published today on Search Engine Land called "SEO Tips & Tactics From a Wikipedia Insider" and it has to be one of the most interesting and best written articles I have seen in a while. The article was written by a lady by the name of Durova who is "a Wikipedia administrator who confronts some of the site's most disruptive editors. She uses a pen name to avoid harassment in real life." (this is a snippet from the bio at the bottom of the article)

The article is about how, in some cases, a marketer can work with Wikipedia in an ethical manner while still emphasizing an online presence. The tips are great and obviously well thought out but I found the most fascinating to be Durova's examples of how underestimating Wikipedia can be a dangerous business. In her examples she notes how the transparent nature of Wikipedia has caught anonymous users on government-based IP addresses editing political Wikipedia profiles to delete unflattering content.

For example, Durova cites how the Wikipedia listing of Tennessee state politicians Matthew Hill and David Davis was edited to remove the information that they had both accepted contributions from pharmaceutical companies. According to Durova, the IP address used to make the edits came from a congressional computer. The best part of Wikipedia is that, much to the chagrin of the illicit editor, each of these edits are publicly available - transparent indeed! Here are the official edit pages: Matthew Hill edit 1, Matthew Hill edit 2, David Davis edit 1, David Davis edit 2. In each case, Durova noted, "none of those inappropriate edits remained in Wikipedia's live version very long. Site volunteers reverted most of them one minute after implementation; the longest endured for nineteen minutes."

The example above is a great example why being ethical with Wikipedia is really the only way to go - anything less is likely to come right back at you.

If you plan on editing on Wikipedia at all be sure to read the full article at Search Engine Land and take note of Durova's great tips for working with, rather than against Wikipedia.

Labels: Reputation Management, Ross Dunn, Social Marketing

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