Content is King. For those in digital marketing, specifically organic or natural search marketing (or SEO) this has been the go-to message since the Panda update in 2011. That’s great. We need more content. But why is content so important for search engines and searches, and how do we know what type of content is best for our company or brand?

Let’s start with understanding why content on a website is important and why building content should matter to your company or brand.

Why Content?

Following the Google Panda algorithm update in 2011, quality content on websites became substantially more important. The Panda update, and its subsequent 25 additional updates, aimed to identify spam-like content and give greater authority to those sites producing high-quality content. Recently, the trend toward content marketing and search marketing has increased with the realization that content marketing is, and should be, part of an overall SEO strategy.

In the 2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report – SEO Edition from MarketingSherpa, it was reported that 65% of marketers deemed content creation as a very effective strategic SEO tactic. According to Interconnected World, 44% of online shoppers begin by using a search engine, and 61% of global Internet users research products online. In 2011, 92% of marketers saw content creation as either “very effective” or “somewhat effective”, with 50% viewing web pages as “very effective” for SEO. Additionally, 76% of marketers have content creation in place as part of their strategic SEO campaigns, 61% of consumers are more likely to purchase goods from businesses that offer custom content and 60% of business decision makers say branded content helps them make better product decisions.

In addition to the new emphasis on quality content, there are hundreds of additional factors that Google and other search engines use as part of their algorithms to determine search results and site authority. One of those is time on site. Engaging onsite content offers opportunities for increased time on site as site visitors explore your service and offerings for a longer period of time. Secondly, search engines crawl brand sites looking for information that is relevant to the keywords that have been searched by a user. With increased content, you are able to influence at least those two additional algorithm factors due to the keywords driving the site visit and the length of time that user is on your site, which helps drive the relevancy of your site to the keyword or key term the user searched.

Content offers an outlet for brands to provide additional brand presence and product information. By generating content, your brand is increasing the relevancy of targeted keywords for search engines, increasing sharable content which impacts search authority and improving the “freshness” of the site on a regular basis. By developing, publishing and sharing engaging content, your brand will be able to increase their SEO value, keyword relevancy and social authority. 

Types of Content

Once a brand or company understands why content is important and what impact content can have on its SEO strategy, the next hurdle to cross is deciding what content is right for your brand. Building a content strategy allows your company to determine the types of content best suited for your audience - think, “what information does my audience care about?” And “what content is my consumer most likely to share?” Being able to answer those two questions will help determine the type of content best suited for your brand. Content can range from blogs, landing pages for SEO, articles, whitepapers, press releases, photo galleries, product photos, videos and more. Anything that you can create that will increase the number of pages indexed from your site by search engines and that encourages sharing among site visitors will help boost your SEO strategy results. Sharable and engaging content should be top of mind when developing content for your site. If your audience responds best and is more likely to share photos of your products, then promote product photos and continually add new ones to galleries.

Content, specifically quality content is the moving needle in today’s SEO environment. Content not only improves the information and pages available on a site to be crawled and indexed, but quality, engaging content provides additional opportunities to share your site. Content sharability is important now, and will continue to increase in the future as social search becomes more prominent within search algorithms and user experience. After all, the goal of a search engine is to provide the best user search experience possible.

When I’m interested in something, I obsess over it. I research it. I want to know what it looks like, sounds like, and smells like. I want to figure out what makes it work. I look for different perspectives and angles that may or may not be related. Each clue reveals something new and significant about the subject matter that makes me dig even deeper.  I’m like a kid who sees the awe and wonder in everything and gets excited about the little things.

In both my personal and professional life, I strive to capture content in order to better explain it to the world. I have a need to connect people to something bigger than themselves. Telling stories is more than entertainment; it’s about shared experience.  Everyone knows the passion of a first kiss or the trembling of tragedy. We become fully human in these moments. Everything is interesting when you take the time to see what is really going on. 

Commerce is a part of the unique ecosystem of the cosmos. Products and services are characters in our everyday narrative, adding detail to our lives and prompting us to act or react. When your child gets a rash, you care about what cream you put on them. You do your research, find out the facts and you choose the one that has the power to heal. That brand has become a part of your personal tale.

If commerce is a motivator in the bigger story of life, why do so many companies choose to script it over capturing it? For years, corporations have produced some of the worst videos in human history. Teleprompter's steal the humanity of individuals in exchange for perfectly written brand copy, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Consumers are people, not “profiles.” They’re the characters in the story of life. When you settle for perfection, you miss out on real-life. Perfect copy can be powerful, but authenticity has the ability to change hearts and minds.

The power of documentary filmmaking is that you don’t have to manufacture insight and drama. You just have to find it. It exists in places that get overlooked everyday. A brand documentary allows people to discover something for the first time. It’s the drama and excitement of business and pleasure. It’s the place where commerce and everyday life meet.

Social media has knocked down the walls that protect brands and now they have to have real conversations with consumers. Likewise, scripted corporate videos are like an online dating profile: too good to be true. If you’re looking to get serious with your consumers, lose the teleprompter and capture real people who are excited to work for your brand and tell their stories. If your people can't do this, then maybe the problem isn't the video.

[Contributed by Brandon Faris, Director, leapFRAME]

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Mobile is here, mobile is now, mobile is everywhere. Mobile is where your customers are and it has rapidly become the best place for your brand to become a lasting part of your customer’s life. Apps have been downloaded billions of times to billions of devices; and still, mobile is young (Apple’s app store launched less than five years ago!). As this market matures and consumer preference changes along with it, consumer demand for quality is skyrocketing.

The metaphorical bar has been lifted and, unfortunately, most of the turnkey solutions and app generators out there just can’t reach it. To keep your users interested, your mobile app needs to do more than just echo your brand on their device, it needs to do so in a way that fits in to that user’s lifestyle and daily interactions. Interacting with your app shouldn’t feel like the user has left their world, your app should feel like an extension of their world.

Turnkey solutions and “app generators” have popped up all over the market causing an influx of “me too” and one size fits all interfaces. Running a search on an app store can turn up hundreds of apps for your search, so how do you stand out from the crowd? How can you capture the user’s emotion? Of course a great marketing team will help you go far in getting in front of users, but what is it that drives success once you’re there?

Quality! Surprised? I wouldn’t think so. Quality should drive all of your decisions for mobile. “How can a mobile presence improve the quality of my brand or campaign?” “How can I leverage mobile to improve the quality of life of my customer?”  Getting an app out there without thinking through the quality of the user experience can have a lasting negative effect on your brand through reviews and user perception.

Every phone operating system presents a different ecosystem and experience to the user and developer. Achieving quality on all platforms can seem like a ridiculously difficult task. The majority of the cost associated from this doesn’t generally come from the user interface; the cost comes from the time spent on porting libraries of backend code and business logic to each platform. To download a file and save it on each phone OS requires completely different code. Taking a picture? Different code for each OS. There is nearly zero cross platform abilities when using the recommended approach for each phone.

Hello Xamarin

Xamarin has done all of the hard work. Their mobile tools allow a developer to write all of their business logic targeting the .net framework and then use that same code on each mobile platform. The code you write is directly bound to the native calls for each platform, the performance is native and in some cases (Android) it actually out performs apps written using the standard tools. As a developer this can be summed up in one word, Freedom!

Things like downloading a file, taking a picture, getting a user’s location can all be written once, tested thoroughly, and tucked away so we can focus on delivering that awesome experience that you and your customers expect. When using Xamarin, the bar is not out of reach, we are the bar. We are able to dress our experience for the device and user in a way that feels natural and engaging; we can wear the right suit for every occasion.

The folks at Xamarin have a broad vision of the world. With employees living all over the world and working on every PC platform available, the Xamarin team has cross platform in their DNA. They are the team that implemented the open source versions of Microsoft’s .Net Framework (Mono) and have brought the C# language to nearly every device on the planet.

But what has Xamarin done for you lately? A lot! As a longtime user and Xamarin partner, I recently attended the Xamarin Evolve conference in Austin Texas for both the training/certification and the conference talks. During the conference keynote, Nat Friedman (CEO) and Miguel De Icaza (CTO) announced that they were bringing the latest version of the C# language (along with F#) to their mobile frameworks. They also announced an automated testing framework to allow you to upload an app and test it on hundreds of physical devices all at once. In addition to the new products and features, they announced the ability to develop iOS apps on Windows using Microsoft’s Visual Studio development environment, a move that is sure to make many enterprises very happy.

The announced Xamarin test platform, called Test Cloud is an absolute game changer. It greatly reduces the cost barrier for testing large application rollouts and updates. The attention to detail and quality that Xamarin showed with the product is inspiring. My tweet below sums up my feelings during the keynote and they have yet to change.

#Xamarin just opened a case of whoop ass on mobile development. #async, #fsharp, #iOSdesigner, #testcloud No better time to get on board

— Drew Greenwell (@DGreenwell) April 16, 2013

Over the last few years we have been increasingly happy with the Xamarin products and the value that they allow us to provide for our clients. There are way too many benefits for me to list them all here but the key is that these benefits are all targeting at improving quality, cost, and enjoyment; which echoes our core values. As always, we are happy to pass this value and experience on to you!

User-centered design is a type of user interface design and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of users of a product or website are addressed thoroughly at every step of the design process. The key to user-centered design is approaching a project, design problem, or piece of software as partnership on all fronts.

Developing a website that implements user-centered design is much like marriage. It is a relationship between design and the user, let’s take a look at the journey…

A digital agency enters courtship with a client because they share common interests, or responds to an RFP like an online dater to an e-Harmony ad. The relationship grows as each side proves themselves and displays trust. Eventually vows are made, the client and agency sign a contract. Work begins and the "marriage" is consummated, but things don't end there - there are plenty of kinks to work out. Just because expectations and a schedule are set, doesn't mean they live happily ever after.

User-centered design is a process within a process. During the length of a project, many iterations of a design will be created, scrapped, recreated, shot down, improved and eventually agreed upon. There isn’t just the honeymoon phase. Every relationship goes through its ups and downs. What isn't necessarily stated up front is that neither the client nor the designer is infallible. There will be differences of opinion.

Let's take a step back and look at who the user really is.

In terms of user-centered design, the user is the end consumer and target of all of the project's efforts. It's also important to note that the client is part of the user pool, although their opinions may be biased. In the user-centered design process, the user provides feedback at all phases and during all iterations of project. This can be everything from market research, ethnographic studies and report analysis, to more hands-on measures like usability and prototype testing.

In a marriage, however, the "user" is actually many people. Certainly, the spouses of a marriage are the most important individuals, but many other people affect this relationship as well. Peers, friends, family, counselors, lawyers, priests, and so on have the power to strengthen or break a marriage. Listening to everyone's advice all at once can be extremely problematic. Valuing outside influencers' opinions over your spouse is even worse. But, thinking you know everything and not looking for ways to constantly build and strengthen your relationship is the quickest way to lose the love and respect of others.

Don't forget that people and projects also change with time! There are no defined benchmarks in a marriage that say "if I hold in there for this long, I win." The same is true with a brand or project. Websites live on after their launch date, and should evolve with their users and with web standards.  Ask users for feedback with your designs and embrace critique and data. Ask your wife or husband how they feel, and actually listen. In the end, success can be measured by whether or not your partner (spouse, client or consumer), is happy.

The user can be the partner, priest, counselor, parent, etc. but what's important is the constant input. In the beginning the excitement and newness can help create a spark, but as time progresses, communication is what keeps it all together.

 

[Contributed by Alex Lockwood, Senior Designer]

 

Connect with Alex:

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I quit Twitter 4 years ago. I became annoyed reading posts about what people ate for breakfast, or that their favorite American Idol contestant was “so amazing last night.” Who cares?! Certainly not me. That’s why I decided to cut myself off from being one of “those people.” I promised myself that I wouldn’t return until I could provide something worth people’s time.

In the meantime, I set up my blog with the intent on sharing stories about my twin daughters and all the things that were going on with them. I needed an outlet for family and friends, who didn’t see them all that often, to be able to follow along with their lives from a distance.

As the girls got older, it became increasingly more difficult to track the new and exciting events in their lives. This was especially true when they started talking. That’s when the light bulb went off. I could use Twitter to keep track of it all (in 140 characters or less). The beauty of it was that it wasn’t me, it was them. It was content that people might actually want to read.

From that point on, my Twitter account, blog and the majority of my Facebook quotes would be “Twicethefunny.”

This…was my social brand.

Throughout the process of finding my own personal brand voice, I couldn’t help but notice the parallels to how brands should approach social media. Too often today, brands are just on social media for the sake of being there. Everyone else is. Right?

They’ve heard that if they don’t have a Facebook page, Twitter handle or a Pinterest account, then they’re missing a great opportunity to reach their audience. They crank out post after post in an effort to get in front of their consumers and “stay top of mind.” But that’s not really the point of brands on social media.

Brands often don’t take that step back to see if what they’re doing within these channels actually adds value to their followers’ day. They may not have the time to look at how they can create content, specific to each social channel, that allows their audience to consume their brand in bite-sized, valuable nuggets that they want to share, don’t mind reading or exploring. And to be successful in this space, brands have to make the time to figure out what their brand voice is. They don’t take the time to figure out what their brand voice is or to understand what’s important to their followers in these specific channels.

Obviously, it’s easier for me to go through this exercise for myself; it’s what I do for a living. There’s no pressure to “sell” my brand online, create meaningful content (my kids do that for me), or to justify spending money hiring someone to do it for me. But if you ask me, one of the most important things a brand can do online, in the social space, happens offline. First, understand who you are and what you have to offer. Then, find ways to creatively deliver that to your audience so they won’t just turn you off, unfollow you or hide you from their feed. Once you’re out, you’re out. And the last thing you want to be is one of “those people.”

Media Buying is quickly changing. The emphasis placed on real-time bidding and the exchanges is growing daily and will continue to grow. If you are interested in resources about this phenomenon currently taking place in media buying, view the article list below. Also, look for our upcoming edition of Logic & Magic where we discuss media buying at length.

• The war between programmatic buying and creativity, iMedia

• Real-Time Bidding to Take Ever-Bigger Slice of Display Pie, eMarketer

• Real-Time Bidding's Biggest Buyers: AT&T leads the programmatic pack, ADWEEK

• Agency Trading Desks Lag In Awareness, Understanding, MediaPost

• A Look Into RTB's Quality, Ad Impressions, Data & Future, MediaPost

• The 4 biggest myths about programmatic buying, iMedia

• Real Time + Real World = Real World Retargeting, MediaPost

• How Search Retargeting Is Bridging The Gap Between Search & Display, Search Engine Land

• Is RTB Helping To Increase The Pie?, MediaPost

• Exchange-Based Media Dominate Big Agency Spending: RTB Is Growing Fast, But Still An Also-Ran, MediaPost

 

Someone recently told me that if the end game of any professional or business relationship is the same, which it usually is, then there is no reason why the current game, or the ongoing relationship, should be rocky or at the very least not be able to be smoothed over. Anyone who has ever experienced difficulty with a relationship in general will tell you the previous concept is easier said than done. When it comes to affiliate marketing however, taking a little extra time to carve out a personal inroad to the established business relationship can make both parties a lot of money.

Media buying in the affiliate market place, in my opinion, is a last resort. I will admit that affiliate CPA networks can be extremely lucrative if executed properly, should you have the cash to manage it.

I empathize with the vast majority of the 9k affiliates I manage as fellow entrepreneurs, but that does not mean I don’t drive a hard bargain when negotiating on behalf of my clients. I generally stress a mutually beneficial partnership with little to no capital investment on my end when an affiliate approaches one of my brands with an advertising opportunity. However, I do my best to arrange the deal so that the affiliate has the potential to earn substantial income if they follow through on their part. As such, I have come to realize that there is no real need to exchange money in the traditional sense for media buying as a merchant but more so there is a need to incentivize those interested in working together, and prioritize those who take the deal seriously for future exclusive promotions.

One of the more regular negotiations I have with affiliates is trading ad placement opportunities with temporary commission hikes.  From a merchant perspective, the short list of things I am looking for are specific category header placements, newsletter banner placements (depending on stats), home page ad placements when applicable (i.e. Q4), or better yet, specific product spotlights. This is just a warm up before also factoring in sales strategy for the brand, traditional sales stats for the specific time placement of the ads, among other things. A thorough affiliate merchant manager must execute proper due diligence in order for this to work. For me, this not only includes SEM stats pulled from various high authority reporting tools, but also a reputation analysis as well as paid search security aka ad hijacking. If an affiliate is involved in this type of activity, depending on the severity, it may warrant stronger conditions of the negotiations in favor of the merchant, but only after they clean up their act.

One of the up and coming tools that I can use to sweeten the deal these days is a product catalogue within the affiliate platforms. In one case in particular, I was able to offer an exclusive affiliate link of a sports product to an affiliate who focused on just that one sport the product was tied to.  Sales went through the roof in a matter of hours and it even got brought up in a client meeting, at which point I brought it to the client’s attention that almost 70% of the surge was due to affiliate business development.  Needless to say, it was a good meeting.

If you have not noticed, newsletter banner ads and category header placements represent the same end game as any other avenue of media buying. In the case of specific product placement, there was not even a commission change, just a mutual understanding that I want what is best for my affiliates and am willing to put in the time to give them the tools they need to make lots of money. In other words, effort and general responsiveness go a long way and quickly build respect in a world in which you will most likely never meet 99% of the people you do business with face to face.

Numerous articles, even Matt Cutts himself, have indicated that a “major” search engine algorithm update, Penguin 4.0, is coming. The impact of which will be the largest yet of the Penguin updates. Google has made some interesting moves recently from shutting down Google Affiliate Network and penalizing Mozilla which would indicate Penguin could be very aggressive and shutting down small publishers who using spammy techniques to help drive traffic.

 

If you have been performing SEO marketing for any length of time, or you have had an agency performing SEO work, now is a good time to start evaluating the link building work, which has been done. Mostly likely, the biggest impact of the Penguin updates will be in the area of links coming back to your site. In the past it has been the easiest to game and thus many sites, including many reputable sites, most likely have “spammy links” on them. As a SEO or webmaster, take the time to start disavowing spammy links in an effort to improve your link profile.

 

SEO specialists, developers, research analysts, brand managers and CEO’s need to change their definition of links. A link = link is no longer the case. Modus operandi in the past was to acquire the most links you can the fastest. The result is a lot of bad links, which could be detrimental to your site. The focus of link building now must be on quality links. One link to a website with PR 6 yields much better traffic and results than 100 links from PR 2 websites. Link building is hard work. It is more in line with lead nurturing,  

 

The upcoming Penguin update will most likely impact everyone. Diligence will need to be had to minimize the impact to search rankings and traffic when it occurs.

In a previous post I discussed Universal Analytics (currently in public Beta) and some of the new capabilities that Universal Analytics offers. In this post I will address specifically how these new capabilities can be applied to digital media measurement.

Cross Device Measurement

Media is increasingly being deployed across multiple devices (i.e. Desktop and Mobile). If your website includes any type of login, then the use of custom dimensions can allow you to track a user ID to see how your customers interact with your site from multiple devices. This can significantly impact calculations regarding new visits and unique visitors, and can help get a fuller understanding of the reach of your media. This approach is not without limitations, essentially you will only be able to connect data from multiple devices where your users are logging in, but it is a notable step forward in gaining insights to how customers are interacting with your business online. 

Offline Data

For businesses that have both online and offline conversions, the impact of media cannot be solely measured by website activity. The measurement protocol provides new opportunities for tracking activity that occurs offsite (and offline). This can help provide a much truer measurement for the impact of media on your business overall. A great bit of inspiration for the possibilities that this opens up is provided by the folks at Loves Data Tying Caffeine to Productivity.

Custom Data Sources - Cost Data Import

As I mentioned in my previous post – custom data sources is an additional Beta component that is not technically tied to Universal Analytics, but is significantly more powerful when tied to the custom dimensions available within Universal Analytics. This capability allows for CSV files containing (non-Google) cost information to be uploaded programmatically to the Google Analytics API. The same ROI information that can currently be viewed for Google Adwords media can now be tracked for other types of digital media. 

While custom data sources officially only supports online media, there are some methods that can be used to tie in cost data for traditional media. For example, if your traditional advertising uses a custom URL you can programmatically add in the tracking parameters for all visitors coming to the site with that URL – this way you can associate cost data to those tracking parameters. Combine this with the Measurement Protocol in Universal Analytics and it now becomes possible to track the full impact and ROI of online and offline media. 

It should be repeated that these capabilities are still in Beta, and some features of Google Analytics (remarketing, cross-domain tracking) are not yet fully supported. While these capabilities open up new opportunities, many companies may want to wait until the beta is complete before deploying to production environments.

Uber-hip first cousin of more traditional digital media ad buys such as banner ads, social media ad buying is still a new territory that, for most, can seem like a shot in the dark. But with a little insight, a lot of creativity, and a bit of testing, it’s easy to navigate your first Facebook ad buy.

All you have to remember is A Little + A Lotta’ + A Bitta’.

A Little Insight…

Much like other forms of ad buying (social or not), there are ad options aplenty on Facebook. Before you buy, though, it’s key to know not only how each ad will be displayed, but what each type of ad can do for your page.

Display Ads: The most seasoned veteran ad type, display ads are the small image-and-text ads displayed on the right hand site of the user’s screen.

Display ads are the most targetable of all ad types, as they require no user action (i.e. liking a page, friend actions, etc.) to be seen. You fit the target demographic, you get served the ad.

Sponsored Stories: It’s a fact. We like our friends. So when your friend comments, likes, or engages with a brand page, we’d want to know that, right?

Sponsored stories are messages that come about from your Facebook friends engaging with a page, app or even that a brand has paid to highlight. Sponsored stories can be found on the right hand side or the page (like display ads) as well as in newsfeeds.

Promoted Posts: When it comes to prime real estate on Facebook, the top of the newsfeed is king. Advertisers: you can pay to be there with Promoted Posts. These highly engaging ads take the form of a Facebook wall update that is shared with page fans and their friends. They appear as natural stories in the newsfeed, and are an affordable way to drive traffic to your page.

A Lotta’ Creativity….

Deciding which type of ad will best help you achieve your goals is half the equation. The other half? Developing the creative that will get the click. Facebook does set a few parameters, though.

Facebook’s ad policy states that images and image thumbnails in promoted posts and sponsored stories must not contain more than 20% text. Whether you’re linking to your site or to a specific Facebook page or app, be sure that the visual you have with the ad is just that: visual.

What is the best driver for ad engagement? Quality images, especially in promoted page posts. Here’s a general rule of thumb: whatever would work well as a page post (and see the most engagement) would be a good contender for your next Facebook ad.

A Bitta’ testing….

Sometimes, finding your Facebook advertising sweet spot can be tricky. You may pick the right creative or ad type at first, but use every spend as an opportunity to test. What may work for one page may not work for another, and that’s ok. Continue to fine-tune your messaging, medium, and spend with every campaign, moving closer to your fans every step of the way.

So go ahead and maximize your social media ad buying spend. You can thank us for the math lesson later.

Current hot topics in search marketing include content marketing, social search optimization and Google’s Penguin effects on your link building strategy. And while those are critical search items for businesses to keep in mind as they continue to build SEO programs, sometimes it is good to remember the basics. In this case, optimizing the PDFs on your site.

Google can, and does, index PDFs as you may notice when you conduct searches and PDF documents appear as related to your search. While PDFs are not as prevalent on sites as they once were and may appear only in search on occasion, that is no reason to ignore the ones that you have, especially if they can provide critical information about a topic a search is requesting. So, I present to you my top 5 tips for increasing the searchability of your PDF documents.

1. Create a text based PDF document. Because Google, and other search engines, can crawl text-based documents creating your PDF in Word or Adobe Acrobat, you are increasing the likelihood of it being indexed by search engines.
2. Give your document an optimized file name that tells searchers what the document contains. For example, if your document were about Search Marketing for Mobile Websites, the file name would then be Search-Marketing-Mobile-Websites.pdf. This provides clear guidance to search engines as to what information your document contains.
3. Complete all of the document properties including the Title, Author, Subject and Keywords. The Title field works much like the title tag or meta title field for a webpage and is shown in search results. The author field should most likely be the brand name, as brand names are more relevant to searchers than individual authors. The Subject field should be treated the same way you would treat a meta description field for a webpage. Keywords should include the top 3-5 key terms or phrases you are targeting with your PDF.
4. Use SEO best practices for copy optimization. This means including optimized H1 and H2 tags, optimized copy with keywords and links with anchor text. Yes, that’s right, Google and other search bots can crawl those links.
5. On Site Placement. Think about popular pages on your site where your PDFs content would be relevant. Additionally, those frequently visited pages are crawled more often, making PDFs located on those pages more likely to be found and indexed by search engines.

And as with all your digital content, share it and integrate your PDFs into other digital marketing mediums as appropriate. PDFs offer a great call to action for within a PPC ad, as well as an additional resource to accompany a blog post or a digital response to an RFP. Links to PDFs can also be shared via social media to improve social search optimization (SSO) and provide additional insights for your fans and followers.

Don’t clog your site with PDFs, as search engines and searchers prefer HTML webpages. But for those occasions when a PDF article or other resource is appropriate, optimize it for maximum searchability and usability.

Digital Marketing moves from being a little brother to sitting at the big kids table in 2013. Already two announcements from the biggest players in the space, Facebook and Google, are changing how we market to consumers in 2013. Below is a list of all of the trends covered in the presentation. Check out the entire digital trends presentation on SlideShare.

• Facebook Graph Search
• Google AdWords Enhanced Campaigns
• Content Marketing
• Real-Time Marketing
• Real-Time Bidding
Mobile Marketing
• Inbound Marketing
• Big Data
• Social Media Integration
• Email Marketing
• Social Search Optimization
• Multi-channel moving towards Omnichannel
• Personalized Communication
• Marketing Driving Revenue
• Marketing, Creative and Technology Colliding

If you have a social media strategy then you know how important it is to monitor all of your social properties regularly. And it’s no surprise that with the good comments also comes the bad, ugly, and just plain rude comments. Monitoring your pages can give you more information than you think. We’re always told to listen to our audience and know what they want. But there’s a way to get more of what you want while also focusing solely on them…

Whether it’s awareness, engagement, retention, or loyalty, we all want something from our audience. And with all of the opportunities social media presents, there is no reason not to take advantage of the obvious content your audience feeds you. Interacting with your audience should be a key component to your overall strategy. Twitter is a great tool to use for interaction due to the high opportunity for meaningful and real-time engagement.

Brands can also take customer service to the next level by using social media to build relationships. Generating meaningful conversations with you audience will help create more brand enthusiasts and loyalty from them. Brand fans are tweeting you for a reason. People want to be heard and interact with their preferred brands.

Whether it’s positive or negative feedback, social media provides is an opportunity for your brand to speak up and build relationships. NIKE Running is a great example of how to maintain this intimate conversation. They reply to tweets, have a meaningful conversation, and then request more feedback for a later time.

Not all brands currently have the bandwidth or manpower to do this on a daily basis.  But take note that when you are running a promotion, coupon, special deal, or event this interaction can be crucial to your reputation. Replying to someone in real-time can make their experience more meaningful and create more buzz for your brand.

As social networking grows this will continue to become more important to both brands and consumers. So don’t leave your fans hangin’!

 

[Contributed by Hailey Heishman, Social Media Intern]

Precision and efficiency meets branding and reach when brands decide to engage in search retargeting. Search retargeting allows brands to continue the conversation outside of the search engine results page (SERP) and reach an audience who has yet to visit your site. This form of digital marketing creates additional awareness with customers who have already searched your key terms by showing display ads to users based on the search terms entered into their search engine – Google, Bing, Yahoo.

So, what does that mean, exactly?

When a user searches a keyword or phrase and then moves away from the search engine, the display ads the user is shown are targeted toward the search previously completed. This method of advertising allows brands an additional avenue to reach highly-targeted, motivated searchers who have already shown an interest in the company’s products or services.

While search retargeting is considered to be a marketing channel all its own, it is important to keep in mind that this marketing channel works more effectively when integrated with additional channels. In fact, according to Chango, a top media-buying platform, 84.4% of brands and agencies use social media while using search retargeting, 72.7% use mobile marketing and 48.5% use email marketing.

Once a brand has a good grasp on the concept of search retargeting, the next question becomes, where and how can I use this revolutionary technology? The answer is simple… Google, Facebook and Yahoo. All have search retargeting functionality. Additionally, there are many third party ad networks and media buying platforms that offer search retargeting. 

If you are considering adding search retargeting to your marketing mix, there a few things to keep in mind:

• Know your keywords. Create your keyword list from four sources: (1) current PPC list, (2) terms that have been optimized out of PPC due to cost, (3) SEO wish list, & (4) competitor brand and product terms.

• Understand that retargeting is its own marketing channel. It requires unique banner ads, custom landing pages, ongoing optimization and continuous management. It is not a “set it and forget it” marketing channel. 

• Too much retargeting is a bad thing. Find the balance between retargeting and bombarding consumers is crucial. Ideally, consumer should see a brand’s ads 7-12 times over the course of 30 days, but not the same ad over and over.

• Be ready to commit. Search retargeting becomes more effective after it is up and running, giving the program time to grow your audience and seeing three months of impressions is more effective than one month.

• Use PPC accounts to start. For brands that have an active paid search marketing program, retargeting should begin within the paid search account. It provides a familiar platform while exploring this new marketing channel.

As more brands become more aware of the benefits of this medium, the higher the likelihood of increased usage to reach consumers on a targeted level. For brands already leveraging and investing in paid search marketing (PPC), search retargeting presents a secondary avenue to reach consumers through keyword targeting. Search retargeting companies and platforms that offer a specialized focus, services, features and insights are poised to drive performance and ROI for brands.

Arriving where reach and branding meet precision and efficiency, you’ll find the sweet spot of search retargeting. And in the world of new age display advertising and search marketing, that is where you want to be found.

“Set it and forget it”. No, this is not an awful infomercial about that super speedy convection oven that can cook a whole chicken in fifteen minutes; this is the attitude that media buyers have taken in the past when planning a campaign. But as the world is constantly changing, so must our thinking as media buyers.

It’s time to get real (time that is), about planning media in today’s real-time marketing world. When implemented correctly, digital media can be used a tool to conduct real-time marketing. But to be successful, there are a few things digital media buyers should never forget when using these mediums as a means of real-time marketing.

Time should never be confused with schedule

Although the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, they are very different concepts in the world of media planning.

How does “time” differ from “schedule” or “flight”? Schedule is the range of dates that the campaign is planned to run. Time is what’s going on in the world during the campaign. You cannot see, control, or predict time in this sense. And unfortunately, time will not always be on your side. Time is what can make digital placements a marketing disaster or huge success. Knowing your placements and site lists are vital to the media planning process, especially if your campaign is running on volatile sites such as news and media publications.

Constant observation is your BFF.

Utilizing digital media as a function of real-time marketing can turn online display ads into a function of PR, much like social media. In time-sensitive situations, online media should be treated with the same care and strategy as social media by altering its message and, more commonly, pausing during a time of incident. This is why constant observation of your campaign and, more importantly, the world is crucial for real-time marketing.

If the timing ain’t right, don’t do it.

Just because your brand is keeping up with current events and trends, doesn’t mean it’s always appropriate to utilize real-time marketing. Media planning with a reactionary nature can be extremely beneficial if it’s implemented correctly. Don’t join a conversation just because everyone else is talking. If the timing isn’t right or appropriate for your brand, sit this one out. A vital part of real-time marketing is knowing when it’s not the best time to speak to your consumers. Should your brand decide to join a conversation, be sure to join it promptly.

It’s time to get real.

Consumers are numb to advertising. Not to ruffle any feathers (including my own), but it’s true. They want to communicate and connect with brands on a personal basis. Effective media planning for real-time marketing has a recipe. It’s 2 parts science, 2 parts art, 3 parts creativity, 2 tablespoons of caution, and one teaspoon of luck. And (to add another cliché) practice makes perfect, too. The more experience a brand has, and more importantly the stronger relationship they have with their consumers, the better and easier media planning will be in a real-time world.

My trip to Ad:Tech San Francisco is wrapping up and I sit here in the heart of San Fran at a Starbuck’s window reflecting back on everything that I experienced.

Having never been to San Francisco, I jumped at the opportunity to speak at Ad:Tech SF, admittedly not knowing much about the conference. Upon arriving to San Fran, I was instantly in love with the scenery and culture. The diverse and forward-thinking culture makes me excited about life. I spent the first day sight seeing while walking through my presentation in my head, nervously awaiting the next morning.

First thing Tuesday, I met the rest of my panel of speakers for breakfast to rehearse. Our topic was on “Brands & Agencies: Success Stories for Working Better Together.”  It’s something that has been a long-time topic of the agency world that I’m not sure anyone will actually master, but that was the fun of it.  I remember in the early stages of my career, everyone acted like it was a science to speak to a client, treating them as if they spoke another language. I always considered myself to be a people person and that is partially why I’m in this business. The more and more I thought about the brand and agency relationship, it finally hit me; it’s just like an actual romantic relationship. So that is the “aha” moment that has brought me to where I am today, sitting at a breakfast table with 4 amazing professionals that make me feel as though I am horribly under qualified. The company I was in was:

• Mike Crowell

VP, Global Marketing, Oakley

• Jessica Randazza

VP, Strategy and Business Development, Interference Inc.

• Megan Fearnow

VP, Client Strategy Factory Design Labs

• Jeff Smith

SVP, Product Leadership for Ad Effectiveness

The presentation felt like it was done in a flash.  All the practice and all the build up and that was it. I did good, but I know I will look back years from know and laugh about it. And if I don’t, I know I am not learning and growing.

With the pressure off, it was time to enjoy all the conference had to offer. Starting with my co-worker, Ali Turner’s presentation. She spoke on a panel about Social tactics, a hot topic at the conference.  Ali knocked it out of the park and I quickly learned I may have a speaking partner in the future. The next day I had the chance to walk through the expo area, what I like to call the “flea market”. I was overwhelmed about the amount of vendors trying to sell their products all of which I struggle to see how they were sustainable - targeting, retargeting, affiliate marketing, email programs, plug and play designs, apps and more.  Oh yes and don’t forget data, data and more data.  Being from the creative side of things, I felt like I was in the matrix. I am not discounting its importance as much as the fact that it seems like everyone there was chasing the next widget to help sell his or her product. 

In the end, I had an amazing time and learned a lot, good and bad. But as I sit typing this looking out the Starbucks window watching the busy foot traffic of “consumers” in San Francisco I smile to myself because this is what brought me out here in the first place, the idea that we are all people and consumers ourselves. It’s not a science, we just need to open our eyes to our daily lives for the answers.

When you’re starting out in your career, there will come a time when you realize you’ve transitioned from someone who does what you do really well, and someone who is an expert. For me, that moment came when I stepped on the stage at Ad:Tech San Francisco and presented in front of 200 of my advertising peers.

The topic? Well, it was something I’m very passionate about when it comes to social media: the impact of visuals on your social channels. You see, over the past six years (from, really, the time brands began using social media as a marketing tool), social media has shifted from a text-heavy medium to one where brand experts let visuals do the talking.

Think back to the Facebook timeline of yester-year. It was simply a stream of words and your friends’ photos.  Have that vision in your mind? Now, think about the new Facebook. Not only are photos a huge part of your own timeline, but they are a significant part of your newsfeed as well.

So how can brands adjust to this increasing importance of visuals in social media? Here are three best practices that I not only presented to my Ad:Tech audience, but have helped shaped how I approach social media.

Show. Don’t tell. There’s a reason why people say, “A picture is worth a thousand words”, you know. For example, if I’m Starbucks, and I told you “Frappuccinos are  delicious”, you’d probably agree with me. But am I creating a brand experience for you? No. Instead, I would rather show you this image:

 

As human beings, we are designed to have an emotional response to most everything we see. If I show you a picture of Frappuccinos, you can create your own experience. Maybe this image will make you think “You know what Ali, Frappuccinos are good.” But maybe it will connect with you on a deeper level, one that Starbucks could never know. Maybe you’ll recall tasting your first Frapp on a hot day, or maybe you’ll remember taking a late night trip to Starbucks to grab one with your friends. No matter what you think about, it’s your experience to imagine.

Pick a theme. But you have to remember that obvious product placement is not a theme. Again, obvious product placement. Not. A. Theme.

One brand that has mastered the art of thematic posting is Forever21, a teen and 20-something clothing retailer. A look at their Instagram account description says all you need to know about their theme:

Follow us for peeks behind the scenes of our fun, fearless fashion world.

And on that promise, it delivers. Yes, all of the photos are on brand and, yes, even most of them include some product placement. But the important factor here is that the product is secondary to the brand experience. The behind-the-scenes theme is well thought out and executed, helping foster deeper relationships with a new audience.

My final takeaway? Think inside the frame, but outside the box. All of the social platforms have parameters that you must fit within. On Twitter, it’s 140 characters. On Instagram, photos must be perfectly square. Facebook? Yes, it has its dimensions and character limits, too.

But even though all the platforms have some sort of parameters (or a frame), it’s up to you to paint what’s in it. Using all the creativity you have at your brand’s disposal, come up with a way to make an impact in the social space. Your bold photo or different way of using a platform is your way of cutting through all the noise of social media, and making a lasting impact on the consumer.

One company that has set a standard for thinking outside the box on Pinterest is Peugeot. Peugeot Panama’s Pinterest page set a standard of thinking outside the box with its 2012 Pinterest puzzle campaign.  They thought outside of the box (literally), sweeping images across multiple boxes.

Moral of the story? Don’t be afraid to use visuals to your advantage. Sure, it may require some investment of time and money to get high quality images to use, but in the end, it will be worth it.

So, go ahead. Show. Don’t tell. Pick a theme. And think inside the fame, but outside the box.

It’s no secret that I am an advocate of Google Analytics. While it is not the most powerful analytics platform available, it has played a large part in making analytics mainstream, and has helped us to show many of our clients the value of analytics.

Despite the benefits of Google Analytics, there has been a gaping hole in the capabilities offered by Google Analytics, namely the ability to integrate external data to fully customize tracking for an individual client. In instances where I have recommended a different analytics packages (i.e. SiteCatalyst) to a client, 90% of the time it was this missing capability that necessitated the recommendation.

With the launch of Universal Analytics, Google is stepping up their game. While it is still in Beta, Universal Analytics (UA) has bridged the capabilities gap by allowing several methods of incorporating external data:

• Measurement Protocol – This is perhaps the coolest feature in Universal Analytics, providing the ability to send data from any device to Google Analytics, including server data. This provides opportunities to track data from any device, including offline data. 

• Custom Dimensions and Metrics – The possibilities with this are remarkable (although not limitless, at least in Beta there is a limit of 20 custom metrics and 20 custom dimensions). This provides new opportunities for segmentation within Google Analytics, as well as collection of new data. (Note: one thing that has not changed is Google Analytics restriction against personally identifiable information).

• Expanded configuration – Universal Analytics also provides additional new options for configuring your account previously unavailable, including setting up domain exclusions for referral sources, customizing search sources (whether a visit shows up as search or referral), and setting up exclusions for key terms.

While not technically part of the Universal Analytics rollout, the ability to upload cost for additional data sources is also in beta and remains available in UA. This capability provides an opportunity to address additional cost sources (i.e. cost of e-mail sends or display advertising media) to provide visibility to ROI data within Google Analytics.

Good analytics leads to better marketing performance, and with the massive adoption rate of Google Analytics, these increased capabilities are a win for the marketing industry as a whole.

Tuesday, April 9 marked the first day of ad:tech San Fransicso's two day convention, as well as the first time LeapFrog Interactive has participated in a conference of this magnitude. More than two thousand members of the digital marketing industry were in attendance to learn about industry trends, new technologies and changes to old (and new) platforms. 

Brad Geiger, Senior Art Director, and Ali Turner, Social Media Specialist were asked to participate as session speakers.

Geiger participated as a presenter in the session titled "Brands & Agencies: Success Stories For Working Better Together”. The session focused on how the Brand / Agency relationship is one of trust, communication, and respect. Geiger specifically focused on the importance of knowing the expectations for your relationship before embarking on any kind of contract. Like relationships in everyday life, one between brand and agency must be effective in order to ensure longevity. The presentation spanned the stages of a brand / agency relationship. From the pitch to the maintenance and growth, each participating speaker provided insight in what they aw as five distinct stages of this fragile relationship.

Turner lead the session "Pinterest, Instagram & Tumblr: How to Build, Maintain and Measure Your Customer Base". She was responsible for painting a picture about the importance of each of these visual social platforms, and how they influence other social media platforms. Each of the five presenters who participated in the session helped support Turner’s thoughts on this visual environment and how to best incorporate the social platforms into your brand’s strategy. Turner launched the presentation by quickly outlining statistics and usability of each platform. She then turned it over to each presenter to help frame best practices and industry case studies specific to these visual forums.

Stay tuned for a blog and access to both session participants’ presentations.