6S Marketing Blog

Geo-Location The Talk of SXSW 2010

Kelly Robertson — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:43:45 +0000

Before heading down to SXSW 2010, 6S Marketing made a video for their SXSW booth, highlighting their services, and how to “untangle the web”. The video also hinted at a major announcement that was expected to take place at the annual conference, where in the past, major announcements and product launches have become the norm. Can you spot what 6S Marketing hinted at?

A few days before our trip to SXSW 2010, speculation about this years’ announcements and product launches was heating up. Rumors about Twitter and a possible advertising platform launch, and geo-location apps for Facebook, Twitter, Gowalla, and Brightkite were the talk of the moment.

And that’s definitely what SXSW 2010 has been about: Location, location, location. Instead of launching their anticipated Ad platform, Twitter has launched richer geo-location data capabilities. Tweets now have the capability to be tagged with location information in Google Maps ( you must choose this in your profile settings). When the Google Maps location marker is clicked on, it brings up a mini Google Map with the location that the tweet was sent from, and the twitter profile pic of the person who tweeted.

Competitors Foursquare and Gowalla, two location-based services that allow friends to check-in at places around their respective cities and are awarded with badges & mayorships of frequently visited establishments, have been based on geo-location data since launch. However, making money off these services is something both have yet to do and Foursquare appears to be moving towards, with their recent announcement of offering stats to businesses to show when customers are checking in at their location. It will be interesting to see what other ways geo-location based services such as Foursquare come up with in terms of a revenue model.

As for the Twitter Advertising model announcement hinted at in our video, it is expected to be announced at Chirp, the official Twitter Developer Conference, taking place in San Francisco April 14th and 15th.

Follow 6S on Twitter From SXSW

Kelly Robertson — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:48:14 +0000

Twitter launched there. Foursquare lunched there too. Now 6S Marketing is launching our “Untangle the Web” approach to online marketing strategies at SXSW 2010. The annual conference, taking place from March 12th – 21st, is one of the top tech conferences in North America and always attracts tech heavyweights including Google, Blackberry, and Microsoft.

SXSW has not only gained a reputation for being the “must attend” conference for techies, but it also has been the launching pad for some of the most influential toys and devices of the technology world. Twitter, Foursquare, and countless other sites and mobile apps have all launched at SXSW.

This year, 6S Marketing represents the largest contingency of Vancouverites attending SXSW. And we’re pretty proud of that. Follow the 6S team on Twitter for live updates, news and events from SXSW:

Check out the full list of Vancouverites attending SXSW here and be sure to follow their tweets on Twitter live from SXSW.

BlackBerry Users Ignored at SXSW

ChrisB — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:57:07 +0000

I am a die hard BlackBerry user and I will sing its praises to the highest rooftops but the SXSW Conference is already changing my mind and I’m only a few hours in. There are a couple of companies at SXSW Interactive showing off some very cool technology that only works on iPhone and Android devices but not BlackBerries. Why is this? Do they not have the budget to develop a BlackBerry App? Is it too complicated for them? Or do they just not care and it’s really a case of iPhone, Android snobbery. It reminds me of web developers that only design for Firefox even though most business still comes from people using Internet Explorer.

Regardless, Stickybits looks awesome. They offer barcode stickers that you can stick to any object and then link a document or videos and photos to it. You can then interact with everyone who comes in contact with that object. It uses barcode and QR code technology that you can ready using your ~~mobile device~~ iPhone or Android device. Maybe they will announce that the Stickybits app is available for BlackBerries at the SXSW show?

It seems like location based services are getting a lot of early attention at SXSWi and it looks like Twitter is going to announce their location based technology on opening day (March 12). Apparently Facebook has something in the works too and the geo-location battle is already heating up.

I am very interested to start playing with Gowalla even though I am a faithful Foursquare user. There is not yet a Gowalla BlackBerry app, but they have come half-way and made a mobile site for BlackBerry users who want to use Gowalla so at least its a start. Foursquare has a huge presence at SXSW getting ready to combat Gowalla in their little war. I have to give Gowalla the upper hand in this fight as they are based here in Austin, but I will be cheering for the underdog, Foursquare, and I plan to collect all 16 of their custom SXSW badges.

There are other reasons why I am being sensitive about my Blackberry. I arrived in Austin, TX late last night after a minor flight delay in Denver and then had to track down our trade show booth at the airport before finally arriving at the Austin Hilton where the SXSW Conference is taking place. Upon checkin, the cheery front desk attendant handed me a piece of paper with Wi-Fi set-up instructions and told me it’s free Wi-Fi at the trade show and in all the rooms for the duration of the conference. The guy behind me had the Wi-Fi set-up on his iPhone by the time that I gathered my bags and made it to the elevator. I knew the BlackBerry would take a little longer to set-up, based on previous experience, but I was not worried.

As soon as I got to my room, I set up the laptop with no hassles but my BlackBerry would not connect to the network. After 45 minutes of trying I gave up at 2:30am and went to bed. This morning I talked to the Hilton Hotel Internet support and they had me up and running in under 5 minutes. If you are having the same BlackBerry connection problems at SXSW then call them at 1-800-793-9521. Make sure that you have attempted to connect to the Wi-Fi profile “hhonors” first and then be prepared to give customer support your device MAC address and they can log you in manually. Go to “Network Details” under “Wi-Fi Options” on your BlackBerry. If you can not figure out how to do this take your BlackBerry, throw it out the nearest window, and buy an iPhone.

Chris Breikss will be posting from SXSW all week and you can follow him at @chrisbreikss as well as @6S_Marketing.

6S Untangling the Web at SXSW 2010

Kelly Robertson — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:00:50 +0000

SXSW is undoubtedly one of the largest and most internationally known tech conferences in North America. The annual conference attracts tech industry heavyweights such as Google, Foursquare, Twitter, and Blackberry. This year Vancouver’s 6S Marketing (@6S_Marketing) has a hunch that the annual conference has much more in store than the usual festivities. The company represents the largest contingency of Vancouverites flocking to the legendary conference in anticipation of buzz around location-based apps and functions, as well as the chance to share on the importance of strategy in ‘untangling the web’.

From a booth space on the SXSW floor, 6S Marketing Company Founders Chris Breikss and John Blown will be joined by Cydney Shapiro, Jenn Lowther and Lyn Wilson to uncover tactics for “untangling the web”. Focusing on strategy is the best and first place to start when looking at a company’s web strategy and determining which of the many directions online, will fit their goals best. Broken into four categories for action, 6S points to four levels of strategy critical to delivering online success:

Situation Analysis – Understanding your online business and marketing objectives.
Define Target Market – Who are your audience segments and where do they live online and off?
Define Messaging Channel Strategies – Develop a consistent message and branding strategy for distribution across various online mediums.
Content Strategy – Develop a concise content strategy that communicates brand messaging clearly and effectively.

At a conference renown for launching the “next big thing”, 6S Marketing Founder and President, Chris Breikss, believes that 2010 will not disappoint. Breikss, along with Techcrunch and CNET, believes that geo-location based apps and features will dominate as the hot-topic at SXSW and that Twitter may be making specific announcements around this. Twitter made an unforgettable introduction at SXSW four years ago, which many point to as the services’ tipping point.

“It would only be fitting that Twitter announces new geo-location features at the same conference where they were first launched,” comments Breikss. “We look forward to learning about it as it will relate to the internet marketing industry.”

6S to Untangle the Web at SXSW 2010

Kelly Robertson — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:00:07 +0000

Vancouver Takes SXSW by Storm with 80+ Attendees

ChrisB — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:30:38 +0000

There are more than 80 Vancouverites going to Austin, Texas this week for the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference and festival including 5 of us from 6S Marketing. As far as we know 6S has the largest contigent from Vancouver attending the show plus we will be showing off at our booth #115.

SXSW is a conference that combines music, film and interactive and 40,000 people are expected to attend. The interactive portion of SXSW is likely to attract the most attendees, now in its 16th year. The music portion of the event is now in its 24th year as a music festival.

All the big technology players will be there announcing their latest products and news. Twitter is rumored to be announcing their ad platform on the 1st day of the interactive portion of the conference, which, if it happens, will likely make waves across the tech world. More likely however, Twitter will be announcing their location based features as part of the new Geolocation War between Twitter and Facebook plus smaller players including Gowalla and Foursquare.

From Vancouver, there are a few veterans of the SXSW Interactive scene including guys like Dave Olson and Kris Krug but last year there only 15 or 20 attendees from Vancouver. This year more than 50 Vancouverites are expected to attend the interactive part of the conference, with the other 30-40 split over music and film.

Some of the advertising agencies like Cossette West and Wasserman are sending a few representatives down as well as individual interactive designers and larger development companies like Engine Digital. The crew of developers and marketers from the Vancouver based Twitter app Hootsuite will be there with their owl mascot in tow.

Below is the list of people going to SXSW Interactive including their Twitter handles. Watch the action on Twitter using the hashtag #SXSWi.

Vancouver Twitter Users Heading to SXSW Interactive

@chrisbreikss
@6s_marketing
@kk
@jennmae
@hootsuite
@lynnerist
@daveohoots
@JohnBlown
@Cossette_West
@cydneyshapiro
@WPAdvertising
@EngineDigital
@_richardrae
@angelsun
@avibryant
@awsamuel
@boyhow
@bpicks
@bwertz
@cathybrowne
@d1337
@dannyrobinson
@david_a_eaves
@ddonat
@erinberube
@escuincle
@fiercekitty
@giacino
@gracibelle
@hemmm
@jameschutter
@invoker
@johnbiehler
@JohnsChannel
@jordanbehan
@justinyvr
@kungfun
@laurenbacon
@lovesocial
@MackFlavelle
@martyyaskowich
@mikejholly
@modmayjoelle
@mrstephenbeck
@nalei
@Nardwuar
@pescatore
@phillipdjwa
@pictbhoy
@quikness
@riacale
@sheyoshida
@Shoesmith
@somisguided
@SteveRKC
@sxsw
@tangenteer
@tinatinatinah
@weecheekysneaky

Is Crosby about to lose his Crown?….. Google AdWords says Yes!

Simon Lewis — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:31:04 +0000

Everyone knows that Sidney Crosby’s Gold medal winning goal has catapulted him into the history books. A Stanley cup winner and now a gold medalist, Crosby has achieved much in his short professional hockey career and he has certainly had his fair share of the limelight. However another young star might actually be securing his spot in the hearts and minds of Canadian fans.

6S Marketing recently had the chance to work with Elastic Path on the Official Vancouver 2010 Online Store. While managing the Google AdWords program for them we found some interesting statistics in the search query reports. It turns out that Canadian Hockey fans seemed over twice as likely to search for a shirt bearing the name of Jonathan Toews than they were for Sidney Crosby.

A closer look at the figure revealed that Crosby was perhaps not the fans favourite by quite some distance. In fact he was quite a way down the leaderboard when it came to searches for shirts with his name on them. He even failed to beat out Martin Brodeur who was pulled in favour of Vancouver’s favourite Roberto Luongo. Over the last 7 days of the Olympics, the top two Team Canada players to register people searching for shirts with their names on were Toews & Doughty. Perhaps an indication of how Canadian fans rated their performances in the games.

The top ten leaderboard looked something like this:

1. Toews
2. Doughty
3. Iginla
4. Luongo
5. Brodeur
6. Crosby
7. Weber
8. Getzlaf
9. Richards
10. Thornton

We’re sure that results like this certainly won’t have Crosby hanging up his skates anytime soon. However Sid the Kid’s crown may just be slipping slightly. What do you think?

Using Twitter to Rank in Google Real Time Search

Jonathan Becker — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:57:40 +0000

We get a lot of questions at 6S Marketing about how to optimize websites and social media for new Google search features like social search, rich snippets, and real-time search. These are things that our team of 25+ Internet marketing strategists, social media experts, SEO (search engine optimization), SEM (search engine marketing), and analytics specialists are constantly researching and testing.

The most important thing to understand about SEM for Google search features is that the same strategy will never apply to all websites. An e-commerce enabled dynamic website will require a different web strategy than that of a restaurant, a news portal, or a mobile phone company. Tactics may vary, but keeping up to date with new search developments and always adapting your search strategy is a must.

Getting Listed on Result Page #1 of Google’s Real-Time Search

Recently I had the opportunity to research a few optimization tactics for Google’s new real-time search feature. Two important things to note before you consider using this strategy for your own clients or website:

This research was not the product of a formal SEO experiment. In other words, although it worked for me, I never tried to have a 3^rd party replicate my results, and I didn’t use any kinds of controlling factors to isolate any variables. It was just a test, not a formal experiment. If you yourself replicate these results, I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments section below.

To reiterate another point above, this tactic won’t make sense for EVERY client’s website. That’s right, if you are doing SEM for your engineering client, they probably won’t benefit from this type of tactic at all. You can be the judge of the kinds of websites that can genuinely benefit from this type of optimization strategy.

My goal for this test was to develop an optimization tactic that a client could use in order to consistently get listed within Google’s real-time search results.

Targeting Google Real Time Search with Tweets

We know that social media content makes up a huge percentage of the results displayed within Google’s real-time search feature, so I decided that Twitter was probably the best tool I had available to run the test. I used my own personal @jzbecker account to try out the tactic.

Step 1: Find a Topic With High Search Volume

Google’s real-time search results don’t appear on all result pages; only on those of search terms that are particularly popular at the time. In order to run a test on real-time search I therefore needed to figure out which searches at Google.com were currently the most popular. For this I turned to Hot Topics, a new feature in Google Trends that identifies the keywords of topics that are currently receiving the highest volumes of searches. By seeing which topics were trending in Hot Topics, I was able to easily identify result pages where I knew real-time search was likely being displayed.

At the time, the top two trending topics were “state of the union address”, and “obama gop” so I decided to try to optimize for these two topics.

Step 2: Optimizing my Tweets for Search

Next I used my @jzbecker Twitter account to tweet about these two topics. In order to create the best possible tweets for the test, I ran a quick search on Google.com for “state of the union address” and then “obama gop”. The purpose was to identify some highly relevant content I could include as links within my tweets. Through my Google search I found video footage content that was relevant to “state of the union address” and “obama gop” at The White House and CBS YouTube channels respectively.

Finally, it was time to decide what I was actually going to write within each tweet. Within the first tweet I included the exact same keyphrase that had been listed within Google Hot Topics; “state of the union address”. I decided to take a different approach with the second tweet and simply include the terms “obama” and “gop” contextually within the copy of the message. Shortened versions of URLs to the video content I found were included within each tweet by using HootSuite, my favorite social media management tool. I also chose to include a hashtag within the second tweet in order further optimize it for the keyword I was targeting. In this case I used “#gop”.

Using the “#” within a tweet is a strong indication of the overall subject of your content to both search engines and users. It’s an excellent way of optimizing Twitter updates for a specific keyword or phrase. (I talk about this in a bit more detail in my last blog post, Strategizing for Google in 2010.)

Step 3: Wait for it .. Wait for it …

Here’s a screenshot of how the two tweets looked on my Twitter page:

I sent off both tweets within about 2-3 minutes of one another. To my amazement, one of them (the Obama GOP tweet) was listed within the Google real-time search results only moments later!

Not too shabby! The test worked! My tweet was listed in the real-time results for the search “obama gop”; the exact same topic that I’d targeted and optimized it for. Notice how Google has highlighted the keywords “obama” and “gop” in bold, and both the YouTube link and hashtag “#gop” in blue?

This is part of how Google helps users to determine the relevance of their own search results. Links are returned within search snippets in blue, and matching keywords are returned in bold black letters. How you format a tweet, and how Google then displays it as a snippet, has a huge effect on your click through rates. And while the tactic worked, perfectly optimizing tweets for improved click-through rates could likely be the subject of an entirely different blog post.

Getting Listed on Google’s Result Page #1

So after all that effort, how much traffic can this tactic actually bring to your website or Twitter page? The answer is: it depends.

Instead of including my own unique content within my tweet, I used videos from other organizations’ YouTube channels. Rather than clicking through to my personal Twitter page, most of the traffic my tweet received from getting listed in real-time search seems to have gone directly from the Google result page to the YouTube videos themselves. So in order to truly maximize the benefits of this tactic, I’d always recommend tweeting about your own relevant and unique content rather than simply re-posting somebody else’s.

The important thing to consider here is that my tweet almost instantly surfaced on Google’s #1 results page for the exact same keywords I had optimized it for. This is even more significant because of the high volumes of traffic this term was getting at the time, the amount of competing content for result page #1, and the incredibly short amount of time it took me to put the test together (only about 5 minutes btw).

I’ll leave the best usage of this tactic for your own determination, but if you discover anything worth sharing don’t be shy; drop us a comment in the comments section below.

Make sure to follow the @6s_marketing team on Twitter for the latest in SEO, Social Media, and Internet Marketing. For more information on our search marketing services, please see our Search Engine Optimization page.

Yahoo! Microsoft Alliance Approved

Kelly Robertson — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:30:02 +0000

Last July, the long anticipated Yahoo-Microsoft ten year deal was announced, after a number of futile attempts by Microsoft to purchase and work with Yahoo over the previous years. Yahoo quickly learned that saying no to the $47.5 billion offer in 2008 resulted in sagging profits and a slumping stock ever since, with share prices being at just half of what they were offered by Microsoft, $33 per share, during the May 2008 hostile bid.

Late last week, it was announced that after much waiting, US and European regulators had cleared the partnership and the two search engines are now free to form the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance. This alliance is currently only valid in the United States and the European Union with additional countries being added on a staggered schedule in 2011.

The Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance will benefit advertisers by utilizing the Microsoft AdCenter as the single platform advertisers may access and manage their advertising campaigns, with Ads being served to both the Bing and Yahoo! search engines. Additionally, Ad inventory from Microsoft and Yahoo! will join a new marketplace powered by Bing. This marketplace has an audience of over 500 million searchers worldwide.

Obviously, this last benefit to users is a move geared towards ganging up on Google, which currently receives two-thirds of the world’s search queries (according to comScore). This alliance was approved by the US Department of Justice and European Commission as they felt Google was so far ahead of both Yahoo! and Microsoft in the search market, this deal would open up a greater competitiveness in the marketplace.

However, early last year a proposed partnership with Google and Yahoo had just fell apart, due to the US Justice Department threatening to sue to block the deal on “antitrust grounds”. Yahoo wanted to fight it, Google walked away.

This new alliance with Microsoft is eventually expected to boost Yahoo!’s annual profit by $500 Million with Yahoo! receiving $150 Million to start in April, and Microsoft taking 400 of Yahoo!’s total 13,900 employees. The large majority of profits for Yahoo! aren’t expected to start flowing in until next year.

When the alliance is eventually rolled-out to other countries in 2011, Microsoft will manage the technology platforms that deliver the search results (Bing) and the paid search results will be served by AdCenter. The only part Yahoo will play in search after the alliance is entirely rolled-out is support via its sales teams, which will be supporting high volume advertisers (agencies).

For now, there is no change to advertiser’s accounts or services with either search engine in Canada, with expected final alliance roll-out in late 2011. Read more about the Yahoo! Microsoft Alliance.

6S Partners with Tidal

Kelly Robertson — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:00:58 +0000

6S partners with a number of development companies to provide search engine friendly sites within a vast array of content management systems; our latest Partner, Tidal, specializes in open source technologies (i.e. PHP & MySQL). In particular, they have successfully developed over one hundred web sites using the Drupal CMS.

Drupal is recognized as one of the best content management systems in the industry and it’s been used by thousands of different organizations. Most recently, Tidal has developed the following websites using Drupal:

City of Vancouver
Simon Fraser University
Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (Intranet Site)
Asia Pacific Foundation

6S has partnered with Tidal to deliver powerful, robust websites that are also search engine friendly. For more information, please contact 6S Marketing.