Media Hatch

Twttr Strts New Txt Stndrd?

2008-09-08T10:00:00.001-07:00

Cn you read/undrstnd ths pst?

In a prior lfe I wrked at MBNA in cllctns. As prt of the jb, I hd to dcmnt accnts re cnvrstions wth cstmrs. To mke thngs qckr/easr we wre instrcted to lve out vwls whn typng, only to use thm whn absltly ncssry for a wrd to mke snse.

Due to Twttr's chrctr restrctions, thnk this nw type of typing cld tke off? Prsnlly I thnk snce Twttr is mnly a biz tool, cld be dffcult to adpt unvrsl stndrd of typng wthout vwls. Tone & cntxt alrdy can be easly misundrstd evn whn typng full characters, and unprfssnl look of txt is prbbly nt the way mst biz wnt to presnt thmslves.

Panel Discussion on New Media

2008-08-29T07:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to be a panelist on a New Media discussion hosted by JumpStart. The other panel members are a very esteemed group - Lauren Rich Fine, Barbara Oney and Anita Campbell. It was really an honor for me to be included with this group of such accomplished professional women, and I'm sure attendees learned a lot from the discussion because I know I did!

Some of the questions asked at the panel included:

1) What is your definition of New Media?

As expected pretty much everyone agreed New Media means it is conversational in nature, but most panelists weren't comfortable with the phrase "New Media" itself. I think the consensus was a better term may be "Interactive Media", and should online and offline techniques that are designed to promote dialogue.

2) An example of a company that is doing New Media really well.

In light of the Democratic National Convention it was pretty hard to ignore Barack Obama's social media strategy - online community, facebook, twitter.

3) How do you decide what social media techniques are right for your company, and where do you start when there are so many options?
I think Lauren gave great advice when she cautioned that social media may not be right for every company or industry, but once you start you'll be able to understand better which channels work for you.

What types of questions would have wanted to ask the panel? Or what do you think New Media should be called?

The Limited - Fashionably Late

2008-08-13T07:35:00.000-07:00

Got a flyer in the mail a few weeks ago, with some exciting news... The Limited is finally getting into the e-commerce game! As I'd mentioned late last year, the current website is definitely hurting their ability to be competitive.

Even better, The Limited e-Marketing team is already encouraging customers to sign-up and register for email alerts. All this before the site is even launched, way to go!

Now I'm curious to see the site's functionality, ease of use, any social media applications... online product reviews? Does anyone know of a clothing store where customers can comment online on the quality of the merchandise?

Kicking the Tires on Google's Ad Planner

2008-08-07T10:58:00.001-07:00

Earlier this week, did a quick trial run of Google's new Ad Planner tool. Overall, I give it a two-thumbs up rating. First of all its free, and I love free stuff! Second, the interface seemed to me to be intuitive. Figuring out how to use the service was fairly simple (full disclosure, I did attend an Ad Planner webinar a week or so ago but still think I could have figured it out), I could easily create profiles and store reports.

Where Ad Planner seemed to fall short was in the breadth of sites currently included. The good news is this part can hopefully be improved over time, whereas if the interface were clunky it would not be as useful of a tool.

For example, we do a lots of local (Cleveland) media planning/buying so I was particularly interested in any sort of geo-targeting capabilities. While it was made clear geo-targeting is not a current option, I thought I could game the system by entering our largest local website - www.cleveland.com. Unfortunately its not included in the Ad Planner index.

Next I moved onto doing research for one of our larger, national clients in the home improvement/home design space. Our client currently does lots of advertising on HGTV so I immediately entered this as a site to benchmark against. Only problem, HGTV is not included in the index either. HGTV is one of the largest home design websites, if they aren't included it is going to be tough to create Ad Planner home design recommendations.

Anyone spent some time with Ad Planner, what are your thoughts? Got any suggestions on how to do inspired geo-targeting?

Blog Council - Blogging Best Practices

2008-08-01T07:04:00.000-07:00

Optimistic Rebel, the newest addition to the Optiem blogging family, just sent an intraoffice email reminding our group about The Blog Council's guidelines for blogging. I particularly think reviewing the section on Blogger Relations is a good gut check (no belly problems here), on the transparency of your outreach program.

Focus: Best practices for how businesses interact with external blogs and bloggers.

When communicating with blogs or bloggers on behalf of my company, I will:

Disclose who I am, who I work for and any other relevant affiliations from the very first encounter.
Proactively ask bloggers to be transparent about their relationship and communications with me.
Always be truthful.
Never ask someone else to deceive bloggers for me.
Never ask bloggers to write a fake endorsement or something they do not believe.
Never use off-topic comment for self-promotional intent.
Never take action contrary to the specific boundaries, terms and conditions, and community guidelines set by each blog.
Not use services or technologies for mass-posting comments.
Use extreme care when communicating with minors or blogs intended to be read by minors.
Comply with all laws and regulations regarding disclosure of identity.
Make it clear to our employees and agencies that these rules apply to them.

The 3 C's of Blogging

2008-07-22T12:20:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I captured on video my comments on blogging for a "coming soon" website. In my need to be concise (1-minute time limit), I compiled the 3 top level concepts I think you need to consider before commencing a blog. Coincidentally all three steps had a "C" adjective that corresponded nicely.

1. Content - What does your audience want to read from you?
2. Commitment - Set the expectation for how frequently you can realistically manage to add new content.
3. Community - Engage with other bloggers, comment on their posts, reference them in your blog, etc.

What else do you think could be added to the compilation?

m0serious Raps About PPC

2008-02-13T07:15:00.000-08:00

Hilarious and has some good info!

Optiem SXSW 2008 Finalist

2008-02-12T07:02:00.000-08:00

Many of you may have already seen it on my colleague Dave Mead's blog, the View from West 6th, but Optiem is a finalist in the CSS category at the 11th Annual SXSW Web Awards. The website is The Galloping Inn, a horse farm/bed and breakfast in Western PA. Way to go team!

Great Online PR Quote

2008-01-31T11:54:00.000-08:00

Reading Brian Solis new ebook "A Guide to Blogger Relations" and it includes this great quote from City Mama....

"We all know PR people don't read our blogs. I mean, if one more PR person starts and email with, 'Hey! How was Hawaii!' because a quick glance through last month's posts mentions my trip, I'm gonna scream…Tell me you looked up my stats on Alexa. Tell me you picked me because you *think* I may be influential. Tell me that you know mombloggers get pitched to all the time but that you'd *pretty please* like me to listen to you. Just don't bullshit me by telling me 'you read my blog.' I know you don't.”
- Stefania Pomponi Butler

I think quote does a great job demonstrating that while traditional PR pitching skills are definitely a part of online PR, the rules of the game are different.

SEM for the Small Business

2008-01-23T13:45:00.000-08:00

I've become a contributor for COSE's MindSpring website in the Technology/SEO category. The first post is a starter of SEO resources for the Small Business. It would be great to get your suggestions about small-business specific SEO resources to add to the list.

What's a Media Hatch Look Like?

2008-01-14T14:51:00.000-08:00

Ever wonder what it looks like at Optiem's Media Hatch? Well wonder no more, here is a snapshot of where we work. Check out our Optiem Flickr gallery to get a feel for our entire space. Its a pretty cool place to work.

Keyword Ranking Reports of the Future

2008-01-07T10:09:00.000-08:00

The first of the month always has our team busy getting together client's monthly reports. These include looking at a variety of KPI's but one of the items that always generates the most discussion is the keyword ranking report. Each client is uniquely fascinated by how they stack-up on Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask.com for their most important keywords.

While this is a good indication of how a site is performing, translating this ranking into actual customers is what good SEOs do. But how do you get a client, particulary non-web savvy clients, to take the time to understand web analytics is where the good data lies? Web analytics packages have come a long way in terms of user friendliness, but they are still daunting to navigate for the novice. And a keyword ranking report is not, its nice and easy to understand and provides at-a-glance performance metrics.

But what about in the future, where search is truly local? We may not be able to generate keyword ranking reports for clients based in other cities, or for clients looking to monitor a keyword in cities across the country.

One answer to this questions is timing and training. With time web analtyics will become more and more mainstream. And with training good agencies can teach clients the importance of measuring keywords by the amount of traffic and conversions they drive, not where they rank on search engines.

But wouldn't it be nice if there was a tool that could replicate search engine results uniquely by city or state across the country, or communities around the world?

Addresses on PPC Ads?

2007-12-20T12:22:00.000-08:00

I'm not as involved with day-to-day PPC administration anymore, but noticed something different when conducting a search on Google for "car insurance". A local agent's PPC ad - Mark Nacht Insurance -included the agency's physical location below the display URL.

Is this something new in AdWords or did I catch Google testing using an address instead of geographic location for geo-targeting? I can't get it to replicate but took a screenshot so the example is above.

Interesting direction for local. And gives new meaning to location, location, location. If your company's street address is going to be on display it could heavily influence consumers who are more likely to click on ads they trust, from familiar sources. Having a recognizable street in your ad could be the key to getting more site traffic.

Lead Paint PPC Influencing Holiday Shopping Trends

2007-12-20T06:33:00.000-08:00

The lead paint impact on Pay-Per-Click ads during holiday shopping has been interesting to watch. When the recalls was initially announced in early September, there was little or no competition on keywords such as "lead paint in toys". Even Fisher-Price, the largest toy manufacturer with a recall, did not get into the PPC game until a few months after the initial announcement.

But now try doing a query on "lead paint in toys" on Google, Yahoo, MSN or Ask.com. You'll see there's a minimum of 10 advertisers on each search engine. And for the most part, these advertisers "get it". They are manufacturers and distributors of lead paint testing tools, or companies who are selling safe (aka lead paint free) toys this holiday season.

However this wasn't always the case, at the start of the holiday season major retailers ramping-up their toy-related Pay-Per-Click spend seemed to have forgotten to include "lead" as a negative keyword in their accounts. Which might not be a problem, if they weren't using dynamic insertion in their ad text. I wish I'd taken a screen shot because Toys R Us had a great ad, something like - 10% off all the best lead paint toys this holiday season!

Now the instances of advertiser missteps are few and far between. Shopzilla is still struggling a bit on Yahoo! Their "lead paint" ad takes you to a page on the Shopzilla site touting "toy lead in dog supplies" and "toy lead in outdoor games and fun". Can't wait to buy some of those for Fido & the kids this Christmas!

Targeted Ads Gone Awry

2007-12-12T11:38:00.000-08:00

We've all gotten the email from Mr. Kwesi Adams, regional bank manager of the International Commercial Bank of Ghana, who only needs access to your bank account info to transfer his deceased father's money into the US (because the value of the dollar is so strong right now?!). Well now Google is enabling all of us to go visit Mr. Kwesi Adams, before giving him access to our account information, through targeted ads in Gmail. Right above my Gmail email from Mr. Adams in Ghana, is an advertisement for roundtrip airfares to Ghana from only $695. Oh happy day!

TheLimited.com Limiting Store's Success

2007-12-11T10:55:00.000-08:00

Yikes, was just attempting to do some online holiday shopping at TheLimited.com. Good luck trying to buy anything from the site. The only thing for sale is gift certificates and all the clothing photography is black & white. Compare their site to BananaRepublic.com, which has great functionality including the ability to zoom in on the fabric, change colors and view an item as part of a complete outfit. It will be interesting to see how both retailers report on fourth quarter earnings. Does The Limited's almost complete lack of a website hurt its bottom line, or are consumers brand loyal?

Local Rented My Condo

2007-12-10T11:22:00.000-08:00

Over the last month or so I've been actively trying to rent out my condo. I've tried a variety of online advertising sources - local, national, free, paid. You name it, I posted my condo on it. But nothing was really returning results. Until I posted my condo (listed as an "apartment" for keyword popularity purposes) on Google's local business search. I got a call about a week ago from my now new renter (yippee!), who left me a voicemail stating - "Your apartment came up in a map on a Google search I did for apartments in Shaker Hts." Go local search!

MediaHatch is Twittering

2007-11-30T12:43:00.000-08:00

Sorry about the lack of posts, very unthoughtful to stop right in the middle of a top 10 list. Pre-New Years Resolution #1 - blog at least 2x/week and finish the top 10 list asap.

I've been easing my way back into the blogosphere via microblogging on Twitter. Recently I got into a discussion with a coworker regarding appropriate use of Twitter. My colleague follows another individual who is active in social media, she usually has very insightful posts. However today he began to be overwhelmed with her tweet's, coming in at a rate of almost one-per-minute. She has been covering a breaking news hostage situation, even before local or national media picked up the story.

While this definitely would be of-interest for members of the affected New Hampshire community, political figures as the story involves Hillary Clinton staffers or any media who might be interested in the story, I'm guessing these are not typical profiles of subscribers to her Twitter feed.

Should she have set-up a different Twitter channel for her alerts?
Is this a prime example of why Twitter works? Is it a prime example of why Twitter doesn't work?
What about people like my colleague & myself who aren't interested in the off-topic breaking news?

Maybe Twitter should create a way for people to temporarily unsubscribe from following someone, or create a history of people you've "followed"....

Be Ready Online...

2007-10-20T06:12:00.000-07:00

This morning I found a great example of a company being ready online for their offline efforts.

Just finished watching The Office's most recent episode - "Money". One of the highlights of the show is Dwight's agrotourism side business, running his beet farm as a B&B. Dwight is constantly checking TripAdvisor.com to see what type of reviews he's getting. Just for kicks I thought I'd check TripAdvisor to see what type of reviews Schrute Farms receives. Lo and behold NBC is on it, they've created an entry on TripAdvisor that includes a link back to Dunder Mifflin's microsite. The Schrute Farms entry is hysterical, the first review is from "SprinklesMom" warning them about the proprietor's alleged cat killings. Check out the photo gallery too, lots of funny candid travelers pix.

Don't Build It and Hope They Come (Part 3 of 10)

2007-10-19T08:56:00.000-07:00

Remember Bud.TV? Launched during last year's Superbowl, Budweiser spent $40M developing and marketing an online TV channel for Bud beer drinkers. According to Google Jim, Bud.TV's August unique visitor number was 60,000... not that great for a $40M ad campaign. Where did Bud go wrong? Thinking their site would be a "destination site" for Bud loyalists.

There are only a handful of destination sites on the Internet - Google, Yahoo, MSN, Facebook and MySpace - really own the "destination" market. What Jim suggested was identifying how to best to your brand, your website to these destination sites. This can be done through the use of gadgets or widgets.

As Optiem is headquartered in Cleveland, most of our staff has come down with Tribe fever. Watching our Indians battle the Red Sox for a chance at the World Series is our company's #1 past time. Smart marketing personnel in the Indians front office have leveraged this with a Facebook application, allowing Facebook users to enter their "Tribe Rally Cry" for playback.

Be Ready Online for What's Happening Offline (Part 2 of 10)

2007-10-18T14:11:00.000-07:00

I think this is really one of the keys to successful online marketing. You can't always affect what's driving traffic to your site but you can control how your site responds.

One of Google Jim's examples on this point showed a Google Trends chart for "lead in toys". The search traffic spiked, literally going from nothing to significant volume in July/August of this year. This coincides with an earlier post on the MediaHatch, where I reviewed Fisher-Price's initial response to their massive toy recall. Basically Fisher Price's website was not ready to address the questions/concerns in the early days after the recall was announced. However, I do have to give FP kudos on their new "safety" section that includes a multi-media response.

Another great example Jim used was highlighting Google's Hot Trends for August 2nd. Hot Trends is where Google shows you the search terms gaining in volume/popularity. On August 2nd keywords in this section included phrases like "Pretty Woman Lyrics" "We Got the Beat Lyrics" or "Just Once Lyrics". Can you guess what summer hit was on the night before? The Singing Bee, and NBC sure was prepared. NBC's Singing Bee section includes video clips of previous episodes, the ability to buy music from NBCUniversalStore.com and a polling feature for visitors to vote on something related to the most recent show.

Google's 10 Trends Shaping the Digital World (Part 1 of 10)

2007-10-17T11:44:00.000-07:00

Just got back from a great luncheon put on by the American Advertising Federation of Cleveland "Google's 10 Trends Shaping the Digital World". The featured speaker was Google's Midwest Director Jim Lecinski and he did a great job explaining to this largely non-technical audience how to best integrate the Internet into marketing campaigns.

Digital Trend #10 - Be Always "On", Consumers are Online 24/7

Makes sense to those experienced with online marketing but for traditional advertisers more familiar with terms like "flighting" the concept of constantly campaigning is harder to grasp. Consumers are online 24/7 and so is your website (hopefully), if someone wants to learn about "hot dog eating competitions" at 2 a.m. they can come to your site. But are you ready...?

More on getting your site prepared for traffic tomorrow.

Who is Using Social Media for PR?

2007-10-16T06:02:00.000-07:00

I've gotten quite a few comments online & offline about my previous post on Social Media Newsrooms. Mainly people asking - who is using them? does the press really want them? how could I use this for my company?

Yesterday PR Squared had a great post aggregating companies using Social Media News Releases. Seems to be the appropriate place to host a Social Media News Release would be in a Social Media Newsroom. Why go through all the trouble of creating a dynamic, engaging PR only to house it in a standard, non-conversational press center?

Social Media Newsroom

2007-09-28T06:28:00.000-07:00

Every now and again there comes an invention and you think to yourself, "Why didn't I think of that?"...bottled water, sliced bread, the pop-top, the iPhone.

Seriously though, all these great ideas have one thing in common - they took existing ideas and made them smarter and better.

That's the concept behind the Social Media Newsroom. Optiem's own Online PR Guy recently introduced this idea to the Optiem team, its a simple way to evolve and integrate Online PR, media relations, customer perception, online reputation management in one easy format.

Optiem's proof-of-concept is designed to show how powerful and yet simple this concept can be. The Social Media Newsroom incorporates common social media and public relations elements into a Web 2.0 format. Depending on how tech savvy your company is, you can scale-up or down the interactive elements, but the point is interactivity.

What do you think? What other Social Media or Public Relations technologies would you want to include?

Universal Search = Digital Media & Content

2007-08-23T12:47:00.000-07:00

While I am Optiem's go-to resource for SEO, my title and the name of the department don't use words like "organic" or "search" or "engine". Frequently this confuses people because they think what does digital media have to do with search?

At SES San Jose this week Google Engineer David Bailey explained why. In the words of Chris Smith from Netconcepts:

One major piece of advice he [David Bailey] gave to companies who wish to rank well in the new Universal Search paradigm really stood out to me: he recommended that companies look to diversify the types of content they have out there in promoting their products and sites — to work to have content in each of the major vertical areas now, including Images, local business listings in Google Maps, video, news, etc.

Search is now about the types of media you produce, how you distribute them, how they are tagged and used to drive traffic & organic search results for your site. This is something we've been suggesting to our clients for quite some time now but Universal Search makes it easier to understand the reasons why.