LIVErtising - "LIVE advertising" weblog

Nice discovery this morning: a case study about McDonald's involvement in social media, together with video. Full of interesting insights that come as a confirmation of LIVErtising basic principles. See for yourselves:

• "It’s not a department that owns social media, it’s the consumer. Rather than having one team “own” social media, lots of departments collaborate on it at McDonald’s, including creative, customer satisfaction, legal, and brand content.

• Fostering existing communities is key. Heather explained how one of the hardest things for McDonald’s to learn was that the adage, “If you build it, they will come” isn’t necessarily true.

• Some of the biggest opportunities in social media are internal. McDonald’s Mindshare community helps owner-operators share ideas with one another. One of Steve’s favorite examples was how an owner in Italy used it to share a simple way to remove fingerprint stains from doors and windows with other McDonald’s owners around the world."

I also wanted to share this with you to draw your attention on the comments. Some Howie commented this:

"So why does McDonalds only have 500 Twitter Followers!"

"mc d may have less followers ! But judging a twitter page by the number of followers is plain stupid! what we need to see is the value being provided to its existing followers!"

European elections

Going to bed two more times, and all Belgian voters will be "invited" to cast their vote on their favourite party or politician(s) both for "regional" and for European representatives. Sunday 7 May is Election Day again in one of the founding countries of the European Union, Belgium, but this varies from country to country.

Another founding father (or mother?) have already voted: the Netherlands. Contrary to the European line, the results have already hit the news, with a double sad victory: the rise of Geert Wilders' extreme right party, boasting its intolerance, xenophobia and Eurofobia, and the relatively modest popular participation.

Two months ago Nicolas Baygert offered us the opportunity to discuss the interface between connected communication and politics during his presentation at Ihecs. I am taking the chance to link to a very interesting paper Nicolas published in 2008, where he very convincingly answers the question: French politics at the digital age – Did Social Media really change the Presidential Campaign of 2007?

I also want to refer here to a report Bastien Van Wylick wrote after participating in YNEM, the Youth and New European Media event that took place in Valencia, Spain, at the beginning of May. Bastien's document provides an interesting picture of this creative gathering for young journalists, journalism and communication students and professionals. It focused on "TAKE THE INITIATIVE. DO IT YOURSELF", which Bastien took literally. You can read Bastien's (unedited) document on our Admasters1 Google Group.

BTW, posting the YNEM report, I realised very few presentations have been uploaded there. It's a pitty this work and worthwhile information is not made available to all. When you find a minute to spare, upload yours: take the initiative, do it yourself!

May these lines enable you and I to cast a useful vote respectful of the issues at stake in European elections!

Jean-Pierre Ranschaert - @LIVErtising

YNEM2

SMX or Search Marketing Expo 2009 is being held in London. One among the many international events taking the pulse of the evolution in SEM.

This offers us the opportunity to confront the claims I made in "Issues in Marketing Communications" with the hard facts of the May 2009 reality and the future. Therefore, I'll reprint here the full notes publishes on SEOptimize. It is most instructive to put our discovery of LIVErtising into perspective. I encourage the reader to go to the original blog for the comments and links to related posts. Comments here as a feedback for the course are always most welcome!  There's nothing like the original! So, here it is:

SMX 2009 London

Anyway here’s the tips I took away, I’ve tried to credit the presenters for these ideas but let me know if there’s any I’ve missed:

Search Needs & Trends

1. Search can be used as a very effective market research tool, you can use keyword research to identify what people are looking in the language of your consumers.
2. Search marketing only has a 1.5% mindshare of the average Fortune 500 CMO. Brian Featherstonhaugh recommended to increase the importance of search by considering the way this can interact with TV advertising, direct mail/email, print, telemarketing, face-to-face retail, sponsorships and recruitment.
3. 69% of agencies are predicting an increase in social media marketing this year. According to Econsultancy/Guava’s UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report.
4. Online PR optimisation is growing, this is important to integrate offline and online marketing.
5. Top social media sites used for marketing in 2009: Facebook 65%, Twitter 49% (up from 3% in 2008!), YouTube 39%, LinkedIn 38%, Delcious 31%, Digg 31% and Wikipedia 24%.
6. 58% believe SEO is the most cost-effective form of marketing during the recession.
7. Bas van den Beld told us that there are 400 million internet users in Europe and of these 93.89% use Google, 2.14% for Yahoo!

Social Media / Linkbait

8. Dean Chew spoke about how Twitter Search is to become a search engine by indexing links from tweets.
9. Lyndon Antcliff recommended tactics for smash a brick into the face link building, by understanding people/bloggers and the reasons why they may choose to link to you.
10. Choose topical linkbait issues, such as swine flu related articles for promoting credit cards or hotels.
11. Discussion sparking content can be very powerful towards creating a buzz and different opinions around the web.
12. In the Blow Your Mind Link Building session Patrick Alfoft recommended that you shouldn’t add a Tweet This button to linkbait. This to help ensure that bloggers link to you instead of tweeting/retweeting a link instead.
13. Massimo Burgio suggested you follow the four P’s of social media marketing; Passion, Patience, Perseverance and Proactivity. Also following the four don’ts; Presume, Panic, Push and Procastinate.
14. Ciaran Norris showed that only one of the top eighteen videos on YouTube is actually user generated content!

Reputation Management

15. Mikkel deMib Svendsen suggests that it may be easier to offer to buy offending websites so that you can remove any negative content. Everyone has a price!
16. Reputation management can also be a very effective method of finding honest market research. Mel Carson gave an example about how social media has been very effective to help provide feedback for Microsoft products so that any issues can be reacted to quickly.
17. If your brand has negative listings, in addition to try to outrank these with positive articles or neutral social media profiles, try using PPC to quickly make your side of the case visible. That’s if you have a case!
18. It can be difficult to remove negative content from authority domains which are ranking for your brand. So instead why not try and find a positive story on the same domain. By building a few  links containing targeted anchor text it may not be too difficult to switch the negative story with the positive one.
19. Rob Ousbey suggested that you explain your side of the story to the author of negative content (or back-up your side of the story in comments) often they will edit or remove the post if you ask. Always an easy option before trying to outrank them, plus if people want to find a negative story they may search deep enough to find it anyway if it’s still active.

SEO / Link Building

20. When reviewing competitors, Rand Fishkin suggested reviewing on-site SEO factors such as; where keywords appear in title tags, URL’s, H1’s, body text etc. Also looking for weak sites which are ranking highly because of a high number of keyword-rich anchor text links.
21. Use Wordle to quickly review the main keywords a webpage is optimised for.
22. Target misspellings using SEO, perhaps using a glossary to target these keywords so that they do not look unprofessional when used in web copy.
23. It was suggested that buying lower value, keyword rich anchor text links may have a positive impact to authority domains which already have a large number of quality inbound links. This is a strategy which would be very risky for weaker websites with average link popularity.
24. Patrick Altoft showed how you can build a directory containing an individual profile page for each business within an industry. The aim is to rank for company names and later request that they link back or add a badge to the directory which can prove to be very powerful in terms of generating high-quality inbound links.
25. Rand Fishkin recommended that you use your analytics package to identify any 404 error pages so that these can be 301 redirected.
26. Rand also pointed out how you can perform a query such as “keyword site:domain.com” in order to find the most important pages for a keyphrase on your own website. From here you can add internal links from the top related pages to the URL you are trying to rank for this term.

Paid Search

27. Kerstin Baker-Ash showed a study of increased clickthrough rates for brand queries when the TM or Official were used in the headline. This reassures users that this is the brand they are searching for.
28. Use the extra space in display URL’s to contain targeted keywords, this helps to describe the landing page more clearly so that users know they’re likely to hit a specific landing page targeted to their query.
29. The Google content network has improved greatly during the last 12 months, take advantage of being able to have more control over the sites targeted.
30. You should establish all conversion goal metrics, for example there may be many different types such as; buy now, apply now, add to cart, enquire online etc…
31. If you’re looking for inspiration in finding new PPC titles and descriptions, Guy Levine suggests visiting the local bookstore and looking at how the magazine headlines are crafted to make you want to pick it up and read. Try applying the same methods to your PPC ads.
32. Find potential opportunities by comparing traffic from a city or county and comparing this with the actual population. If this is not in proportion perhaps you need to increase your bids in London, for example, to maximise the traffic in this location. This was recommended by Brian Clifton.

Keyword Research

33. Look at your internal site search data to identify top keywords on your site or new content you can create which your users are already looking for.
34. Build content around popular and topical stories by reviewing search volumes in Google Trends.
35. Look to target transactional keywords as the main goal, but also be aware of high search volume and important industry terms which are likely to be important to a client.
36. Use Twitter tools such as Yahoo! Sideline, Tweetbeep, Twhirl and Tweetdeck to find popular keywords and trends. Suggested by Christine Churchill.

Web Analytics

37. Will Critchlow gave a very useful presentation looking at how to use Google Analytics to filter IP addresses, find the referral page of search results, identify real PPC keyphrases, separating Google.co.uk and Google.com referring domain, find universal search clickthroughs and many more. Plus he saved his wife from a night with Rand by winning the vote-off!
38. Analytics should be used to find the customer journey, highlight the when and where reasons why users bounce and using this to identify why this has happened and how it can be improved.
39. Analytics and tracking should be for all traffic sources. Often just paid search traffic is analysed when direct and organic traffic as likely to be just as valuable sources.
40. Calculate the potential analysis of traffic using the formula: (1- Keyword Volume/Search Engine Referrals) (Pages Viewed) (Time) (1-Bounce Rate).
41. Look at the following 5 analytics performance metrics:
    - Keyword performance - breakdown where traffic from by applying the 80/20 rule to find which keywords are sending the bulk of traffic.
    - Brand engagement - find the percentage of brand queries by performing a partial matching filter search to exclude brand terms in keyword reporting.
    - Percentage of pages yielding search traffic - Look at keyword referrals per page and optimise landing pages specifically.
    - Bounce rates - Red = 50%+ bounce rates should be improved. Amber = 20-50% - lower priority to be improved. Green = >20% this is good.
    - $Index - find the value of pages which contribute to a conversion, looking to increase views for high value pages and reduce importance towards lower value pages.

As for the SEO give it up panel, us bloggers have 30 days to keep quiet and take advantage of some great tips before all is revealed!

Cycle chic

Brussels is not Copenhagen or Amsterdam. It is not Paris either.

Have you ever tried cycling in Brussels. You'd better be in good shape, as it's up and down all the time.

Most people do not realise this, because most people use their cars to drive into and about town. This may make Brussels an unlikely place to organise Velo-City, the international cycling conference.

This gave the opportunity to Guillaume Van der Stighelen, one of the founding fathers of award winning advertising agency Duval Guillaume and author of Maak van je merk een held the opportunity to share his views on bicycle marketing. An invitation to make cycling sexy.

Guillaume insists in his book on the necessity, for the "hero-ing" process to work, of a personal stake, a personal reason for the storyteller to spread the story, an individual bonus for making the story go social.

Now, as a regular user of a foldable bike, I can assure you there is ample opportunity for this when you go about on your foldable. People start talking to you about how practical that must be, how healthy, how cheap, how environmental, how time-saving, ... . They ask you questions about the price, the weight, your own habits, where you bought it, how dangerous or safe it makes you feel, ... . They give you the opportunity to boast. They give you a personal reason to spread the story.

Sounds familiar to you, Guillaume?

And in case you're wondering, I feel in good shape... thanks to velo-citying!

Here are the notes for our next lecture "Issues in Marketing Communication". Please print them before coming to class. The planned speaker will not be able to deliver his presentation, sorry!

Courrier international

Where is the focus in "social media?" At this stage in the course, some have gathered the feeling that everything 2.0 / connected / participatory / networked is about media and technology.

Indeed, interactive rich web technology is the engine of this (r)evolution. But it needs fuel to start and a driver to take it somewhere. All right? Now the driver, just guess? Yes, you are right: YOU are right!  YOU are in the driving seat, no longer the big hats - that is you share the seat with them: companies, broadcasters, publishers, operators, ... . The fuel? Data. This economy, this communication model, this advertising paradigm is based on data. The very data YOU provide when driving.

This aspect (forget the technology, focus on the driver and the fuel) is emphasized in a chapter of Secrets of Online Persuasion by Deborah and John-Paul Micek. You need to read it to fully grasp this. To really feel that the emphasis in "social media" is on the word "social", on the people. This is the people's media.

To do so, just download the first edition of their Twitter Handbook. Pages 9 to 17 of this handbook reproduce that chapter from their Secrets of Online Persuasion. It's free for download. Read those pages... and possibly more if you enjoy it!

Easter just over. Time to come back to you with some LIVErtising info.

I have just come across two interesting pieces I want to share with you.

One is a e-booklet by Paul Isakson entitled "What's next in advertising". It offers you the opportunity of revising,  illustrating and extending some of the important concepts behind LIVErtising: engagement, experience, bottom-up, network, participation, marketing communication embedded and delivered by the product/design... . I regret the black-and-white presentation in terms of "old marketing" vs "new marketing": this is a scale with two clear extremes, where any marketing communication activity does not belong to either: it is multi-faceted and will simultaneously belong to a mixture of both. Do not forget the mantra: remember your objectives, act according to them.

The second is where the first is embedded: the Issuu platform - true web 2.0 tool that enables anyone, you too, to publish documents online in a visually most attractive way on the web. It carries all the 2.0 features. Remember? Open, easy to use, constant beta, rich user interface, community features, free, cloud based, embeddable, mashup-able, platform-based. Among other characteristics. A great tool to discover and use at will, if you have not yet done so.

Hope you'll enjoy using these two sources, one a tool, the other information/revision/illustration.

Yesterday's Ideas Fair in the "Issues" course saw several students animating their ideas exchange with a multimedia support to make their contribution more lively. More portable too, as this enables those who missed an ideas exchange to have an idea of its contents.

This is why I suggest you upload your document to a Google Group I have created for this purpose. I tried to do this on the existing Skydrive from Windows Live, but this was not easily possible. Much handier with the following tool that enables you to subscribe before you can upload:

Tomorrow, Thursday 26, we're starting the ideas fair. I explained in a previous post on this blog what this involves.

As a reminder, all Master 1 Advertising Majors are expected to attend all three meetings. These are to take place in Etuve 315 at 10.40.

I'll see you there and then.

Belgacom is launching a small-scale experiment in micro-payment though NFC, Near Field Communication: you show your mobile phone to pay your Delhaize bill or buy a can of Coke. No big deal? If you think so, just turn to the use of mobiles in Japan to see what promises this contains for marketing communication. Your mobile as a loyalty card? See what I mean? Ping ping is the name.

NFC Contactless Payment