We’re all busy. We barely have time to sit down and grab a bite to eat, let alone spend an hour a day pouring through the Internets, scouring for the latest and greatest in industry news. Well, we get that, and we can empathize with your plight. Starting this week, and every Friday moving forward, you can expect to see a social rundown, recapping the social media developments and highlights from the week. If you were a kid in high school that responded better to the Cliff’s Notes version of Hamlet than you did the actual paperback, this column is for you! Without further ado, here’s this week’s social rundown:

Yelp Takes on Groupon!

Clearly, social shopping is on the rise. Yelp has been quietly testing out Daily Deals in the Sacramento market. The news was originally broken on Yipit. With an immense user base, earning over 32 million unique visitors (as of May 2010), Yelp’s Daily Deals could indeed give Groupon a run for its money. And to really make things interesting, consider all of the positive relationships and partnerships that already exist between Yelp and businesses around the nation. They will likely be able to score some pretty aggressive deals that will be harder for other social offer sites to come by, and even harder for consumers to refuse. The competition is heating up, but you can probably guess who will be the biggest winner…the consumers. We plan to keep our eyes on this one!

Facebook and Amazon – Jedi Mind Control Over Your Shopping Cart?

Yes, it’s true. Facebook can read your mind, and now that it’s partnered with Amazon, their combined powers can not only tell YOU what you might like, but also what your friends might like. Now just for one moment, let’s put the creepy factor aside. This is actually pretty darn cool, especially if you’re a person who struggles with indecision when it comes to purchases, or often don’t even know where to begin when it comes time to buy a gift for a friend. Connecting your Facebook account is an easy three-step process, using the Facebook Connect application. Groundbreaking? Not really, as many partnerships like this have emerged in the social space. Cool? Convenient? Yes and yes.

Facebook Gets More Inquisitive with Facebook Questions

Earlier this week, Facebook officially launched the beta version of Facebook Questions, which allows users to pose questions to the Facebook community. How is this different than what users can already do in their own status updates you ask? Well, questions will be posed to the entire community of 500 million users – the engaged ones anyway. It’s actually quite similar to Quora, so it will be interesting to see what effect this new release has on the Q&A site. Just like Quora, users will be able to “follow” certain questions they’re interested in, and be notified whenever there is a new response. Right now, the product has only been released to a beta group, but it’s expected to be released more widely in the near future. Here’s what beta users see when posting updates.

SOURCE: http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/07/facebook-questions-launches/

What other big stories hit this week worth mentioning? Drop some link love in the comments below, or offer your two cents on the stories we reported above.

Before you buy something, do you get someone else’s opinion? When you go to the mall, do you go with a friend? And after you buy something, do you ask what someone else thinks of your purchase? Chances are, you answered yes to at least one, if not all, of the questions above. Here’s my point: Shopping is a social experience whether it’s before, during, or after the point of purchase.

Chance also indicates that you’re one of the 500 million Facebook users, and that you’ve either browsed or bought something on Amazon.com. Well, guess what? Now Amazon and Facebook have teamed up to improve the Amazon shopping experience. Users sign in with their Facebook credentials in order to receive product recommendations based on information gathered from Facebook friends and profile information. Have a friend with an upcoming birthday? Like to buy things both you and your friends like? Amazon and Facebook now make it easier for you to discover those products so you can buy them.

Step 2:

The luster is gone from SEO. The mystique, the veil of secrecy, has long disappeared. In its place are shiny new objects – social, mobile, augmented reality, geo-location.  SEO is the “Woody” to new media’s “Buzz Lightyear.”  As least that is how it is perceived. While it may lack the bells and whistles, SEO remains a necessary component in a well-rounded marketing mix – and it just got a shiny new pair of red pumps to spice it up.  Enter this year’s buzz phrase: “Content Strategy.”

Content Strategy begins with a holistic view of your website and the types of content needed to align with your target consumer.  Ideally, your content strategy includes both your SEO strategy as well as a plan for ongoing content creation and – here’s the key – dissemination.  Yes, you want to look at all of your content as opportunities to expand your web presence beyond the “walls” of the website.

How do you build this optimized web presence?

• Evaluate your website and the content – what are the haves/wants/needs?
  • If you don’t have it – how are you going to get it?
    • Build? Buy? Borrow?
• Optimize it.
  • Know your target consumer – how do they search, with what terms, and where?
  • Know your consumer behavior onsite.
  • Develop a comprehensive search engine optimization plan based on the content, web objectives and strategies.
• Find the Pipes.
  • If you have videos – what are the appropriate channels for syndication based on your consumer’s behavior?
  • What will you do with articles, whitepapers, press releases, news information – what are the channels that best suit your business?
  • Are alternate web properties an opportunity?  Do you have multiple brands that would benefit from portals, microsites?
  • Use the social channels as appropriate.
  • The options are endless and should be tailored to the target consumer and what’s appropriate for your marketing objectives.
• Deploy!

Putting a content syndication strategy into place utilizing SEO best practices allows you to create a strong web presence, saturating search engines with your content and links. In essence, you take control and build your own web.

How are you using Content Strategy?

If you were a kid that hated getting up in the morning, you were probably told more than once that the “early bird gets the worm.” Little did you know that all those years ago, Twitter co-founder and CEO, Evan Williams, coined that phrase and receives a royalty fee every time it’s used. Kidding. But given the amount of buzz Twitter’s newly launched @earlybird handle is getting, it’s not all that far-fetched.

Earlier this week @earlybird made its grand debut with an exclusive Twitter-only ad. Followers were offered a two-for-one ticket to the new movie “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” simply by using a promotion code announced through the @earlybird account.

So, if Disney could have simply tweeted this special exclusive offer from its own account, why would it even want to participate in this paid-advertising promotion? Less than 24 hours after the account started tweeting, @earlybird had well over 50,000 followers. Granted, Disney Pictures has more than 55,000 followers on its own, but the potential for the @earlybird account to grow quickly is almost a certainty. For those interested in getting the full rundown on @earlybird, Twitter has compiled a thorough list of FAQs.

In addition, tweeps can now harness the aggregated power of seeing the best, timeliest, most aggressive offers in the Twitterverse by simply following this one handle rather than watching the stream of a multitude of brands. The model of aggregated deals, discounts and resources has worked well for countless others, such as Groupon, or even Peter Shankman’s Help A Reporter Out email list.

So, what’s your take on Twitter’s newest monetizing effort? Are you following @earlybird? Do you think it will succeed, or flop in an epic way? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.

In May Google introduced a new match type option within AdWords called “Broad Match Modifiers.” The initial launch of this feature was only available to advertisers within the UK and Canada. Google deemed the beta a success and announced yesterday that Modified Broad Match has been rolled out globally in most languages.

What It Is

The Broad Match Modifier is a new targeting feature in AdWords that allows advertisers to generate keyword lists which have a larger reach than Phrase match and more control than Broad match. In short, it is an option between Broad and Phrase match.

Why is Modified Broad Match Necessary?

According to Google, “20% of the queries Google receives each day are ones we haven’t seen in at least 90 days, if at all…” Considering this unpredictable search behavior, it can be difficult to produce a keyword list that would account for all relevant queries using just Exact and Phrase matching. Modified Broad Match allows advertisers more flexibility than Exact and Phrase match without opening the flood gates of the standard Broad match option.

What Flood Gates?

The flood gates of synonyms, specifically. The first illustration in this article (below) shows clearly what I mean. Note the inclusion of “sneakers” as a keyword that may result in an ad in the first set of examples. Yes, your ads are being triggered for keywords you didn’t specifically select. Surprised?

Applied Google AdWords Match Type Examples

As a comparative tool to the new Google match type, let’s first reference some standard match type examples: Broad, Phrase and Exact match. As you can see, Broad match increases reach, Phrase match increases relevancy and Exact match pinpoints that exact term only.

Modified Broad Match allows advertisers both the flexibility of Broad match and the control of Phrase match. Simply adding a “+” sign before any word within a keyword phrase does the trick. The “+” ensures that Google will only include matching phrases that contain that specific word, a common misspelling of that word (“floor” vs. “flor”), a different form of that word (“run” and “running”) and a different plural form of that word in a user’s search query. Keywords within a phrase that do not contain a “+” thereby retain the same matching technologies of standard Broad match.

What now?

So should you scrap everything and jump on board with this? No, you shouldn’t scrap anything. But it’s worth looking at for your campaigns. Consider these reasons why you should take advantage of this new offering:

• Can initiate a campaign without as many negative keyword phrases. In many cases it can take months to build strong negative keyword lists. While standard Broad match can be beneficial in some cases, it can also attract a lot of static (irrelevant impressions). Under standard Broad match, an advertiser must develop strong negative keywords to counter irrelevant impressions. Modified matching immediately cuts out ALL possible static but still allows the user to expand beyond Phrase match restrictions.
• Allows for different word order as well as different plural forms in search terms, all without letting Google take too much liberty with synonyms and other Broad match features.
• Allows advertisers to expand their reach to the most relevant searchers. Additional relevant impressions (more relevant than Broad match) leads to higher Click Through Rates, leading to higher Quality Scores, lower CPCs and, in theory, cheaper Cost / Conversion.

Sitewire recommends testing the new Broad Match Modifier option within your AdWords campaign. But do not jump in head first and completely change your existing campaign immediately. Removing a current Broad match powerful term from your campaign could cause a significant drop in sales, conversions and traffic. Sitewire does not recommend abandoning your current match types of Broad, Phrase and Exact. Each match type serves its own purpose, including Modified Broad match. Each match type performs a function that the other cannot. Sitewire recommends creating new ad groups containing the new match type options. Creating new ad groups will allow advertisers to easily compare the overall performance of the new match type options to the original settings within a campaign.

And most important: test! You need to know how any changes impact your campaign. This is a big one, the first major revision of AdWords match types in a very long time. What works for some won’t work for others, so be methodical. But be quick about it. Money is on the table.

via Data Direct

How do you measure, or more appropriately, identify your best customers? If your business is like most, 20% of your customers contribute 80% of your profits. Do you know this segment? How do you identify and measure them in order to implement a successful contact strategy?

RFM is not new. In the direct marketing world, RFM provides both a scoring model and a segmentation schema to help maximize the efficiency or productivity of a mailing or campaign. It stands for RECENCY / FREQUENCY / MONETARY VALUE.  Savvy catalogers once segmented their list by RFM – the premise being that a scoring value for each variable would bubble the best customers to the top. For example, a customer who bought within the last six months would “score” higher than a customer who bought six to twelve months ago. A customer who bought three times over the last twelve months would “score” higher than one who only bought twice. A customer who spent $200 over a defined period would “score” higher than a customer who spent $100 over the same period. RFM provided the foundation for later, more complex, multivariate predictive models and more complex segmentation.

It is likely that your highest scoring decile or pentile group would be, by far, your most profitable, and would merit the highest spend to drive retention. These customers were, at a minimum, loyalists and more than likely were brand advocates.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how RFM could be used in today’s digital marketing environment.  Just the framework of the schema itself is helpful in clarifying our thinking around how to best optimize our marketing investments as they relate to customer contacts.

The original thinking was based simply on purchases that could be tracked by a household address. In today’s digital, multichannel environment, we may only have an email address, a cell phone number, or a cookie. But are these any less valuable?  Consider this scenario – customer X downloaded your iPhone app within the last 30 days. Customer Y downloaded the same app over 90 days ago. Which customer is most likely to respond to a follow up SMS text containing a promotional offer? Using recency as a predictor, the most recent customer is most likely to respond.

On the surface, this seems obvious and simple. Diving deeper, things begin to get a little more complex. Consider all of the interactions with your brand in the digital space. Consider a Facebook fan who posts frequently, say daily, on your wall. Are they more or less valuable than the fan that posts weekly? Maybe.  Maybe not. But if we were to look at brand interactions the same as purchases and actually assign an RFM value to each customer based on them, a defined segmentation would begin to emerge. If the daily Facebook poster only interacts with that brand in that way, but the weekly poster also recently downloaded your mobile app, is the mayor of one of your brick and mortar locations on Foursquare, clicked through on your most recent email, and visits your site frequently, perhaps they are a “higher scoring” RFM customer and therefore a true brand advocate instead of simply a loyalist.

How could you use RFM thinking to help define a segmented contact strategy? How could this strategy maximize your digital ROI and move customers through the relationship funnel as clever direct marketers once did using print and direct mail?

With over 400 million active users who spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook, coupled with the ability to create branded Pages and leverage an advertising platform that provides marketers with some of the most granular targeting capabilities available, it is understandable why Facebook has become an invaluable marketing medium. What is more difficult to understand, however, is what exactly you are and are not permitted to do on your Facebook Page to encourage Fan engagement, accumulation of Fans, signups, or otherwise. Facebook’s Promotion Guidelines have been published for some time, but even after reading them (if you even read them before launching a promotional campaign), you’ll still lack answers about specific dos and don’ts. What about giving away a free dinner for two to the first person who comments on your Page status? (Nope.) What about choosing your Page’s profile picture from a photo contest of Fan images posted to your page? (Nope.)

We’ve worked with Facebook to elucidate ambiguities inherent in their Guidelines. This post intends to clarify what the Facebook Promotion Guidelines mean and provide illustrative examples to help you understand what promotional methods you can get away with on behalf of your clients or company. However you choose to execute your Facebook promotions is up to you, but this should serve as a guide to minimize the likelihood that Big Bad Bigfoot Facebook comes back and bites ya in the bum.

So let’s get started.

How Facebook Likes to Play

• Facebook requires you to have a Representative who can approve your promotion plans.
• Facebook requires you to run your promotion via a third party application, usually on a Page tab. This, along with clear verbiage about Facebook’s non-involvement in the promotion, allows Facebook to avoid any liabilities associated with an unhappy Fan who never got their free BananaHandle (for example).
• Facebook likes money. All promotions that run on Facebook require a $10K budget for Facebook ads to get approval to run on the site. True story.
• Linking off-site to a promotion on your company website or third party site does not require Facebook approval.
• Facebook requires you to complete the checklist tasks below, prior to promotion launch:

Have a Promo in Mind? Check out this Facebook Promotion Checklist

• Designate an individual to act as a primary contact to address any communications from Facebook with respect to the promotion.
• Include the following provisions within your official promotion rules:
  • Acknowledgement that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.
  • Complete release for Facebook from each entrant or participant.
  • Any questions, comments or complaints regarding the promotion will be directed to you, not Facebook.
• Submit materials for any promotion you plan on administering through the Facebook Platform to your account representative for review and approval at least 7 days prior to the start date of the promotion.

Nope. Sorry. You May NOT:

via Dagring (Flickr)

• Condition entry in the promotion upon a user providing content on Facebook, such as making a post on a profile or Page, status comment, like, or photo/video upload.
  • This means all contests similar to “First 50 people to comment on our status will be entered to win a free pickle” are a no-go.
• Administer a promotion that users automatically enter by becoming a Fan of your Page.
  • A solution to this is “Like-gaiting,” explained later.
• Notify winners through Facebook, such as through Facebook messages, chat, or posts on profiles or Pages.
  • This means you need to use email or SMS to communicate with a promotion winner. Notifying the winner via Facebook comments, messages, updates, or wall posts is prohibited.
• Instruct people (in the rules or elsewhere) to sign up for a Facebook account before they enter the promotion.
  • A solution to this is “Like-gaiting,” explained later.
• Market to individuals who are under the age of 18.
• Market to individuals who reside in a country embargoed by the United States.
• If a sweepstakes, cannot be open to individuals residing in Belgium, Norway, Sweden, or India.
• Cannot promote any of the following product categories: gambling, tobacco, firearms, prescription drugs, or gasoline.
• Prize or any part of the prize cannot include alcohol, tobacco, dairy, firearms, or prescription drugs.
  • Dairy? Yes, dairy.
  • You can still promote alcohol or dairy products; you just can’t give them away.
• If a sweepstakes, you cannot condition entry upon the purchase of a product, completion of a lengthy task, or other form of consideration.
• Mention “Facebook” in the promotion’s materials or rules except in the following ways:
  • “You can enter the Promotion through the [application name] application on the Facebook Platform. You can also find the application on the [tab name] tab on the [Page name] Page on Facebook.”
  • As a provision within your official rules for the promotion.

Go for it. You MAY:

via Dagring (Flickr)

• Use a third party application to condition entry to the promotion upon a user providing content. For example, you may administer a photo contest whereby a user uploads a photo through a third-party application to enter the contest.
  • Users can enter the promotion in the following locations on Facebook:
    • On the canvas Page of an application on the Facebook Platform.
    • On an application box in a tab on a Facebook Page.
• Like-gaiting: Only allow Fans of your Page to access the tab that contains the third-party application for the promotion.
  • Set the Facebook landing Page to the promotion tab. Users must Like the page before they see the content.
• Collect an address or email through the third-party application for the promotion in order to contact the winner by email or standard mail.
• Publicize a promotion that is administered completely off of Facebook.
• Use email as the primary communication channel between an advertiser and promotion entries.
• Provide Facebook-exclusive offers and giveaways to Fans.

Examples of Brands Doing it Correctly

Sweepstakes

User-Generated Content Contests

You’re Now Approaching the End of this Really Long Blog Post

So. Can you get away with bending the rules a wee bit? Probably. And it’s even more likely if Facebook’s making a lot of money from your ad spend. Although we have not yet heard of anyone getting “shut down,” we’d prefer not to risk it with our clients.

Anyway, was this helpful? Do you still have questions? Do you need us to build a custom tab or promotion application for you? How about integration of your Yelp reviews into your Facebook Page? Do you like double scoop ice cream sundaes? Let us know at least something in the comments below!

via Johan Larsson (Flickr)

You’ve built the business case and finally received the approval to move forward with your mobile initiatives, including a site optimized for mobile devices. Now what? If you are like the vast majority of marketers, mobile has opened a wealth of possibilities, but can also seem overwhelming at times.

Here are five keys to get you started:

1. URL: One of the most important elements in rolling out a mobile-optimized site is to make sure that it lives on your primary domain. For example, if a visitor hits your URL from a mobile device, they should be pointed to a URL similar to http://m.CompanyName.com,  NOT http://CompanyName.MobileHostingProvider.com! The second example has dire SEO consequences, causes confusion for users, and is a sure sign of an amateur execution. If you wouldn’t do it with your main website, don’t do it with your mobile version.

In addition, your mobile site should have device detection software so that users are automatically directed to the mobile version of the site and are not forced to enter a mobile-specific URL.

2. WAP + Webkit: Analyzing your business objectives, marketing strategy, customer technographics, and budget will determine the degree to which you customize the mobile-optimized experience for various devices. If your objective is to provide basic information, a WAP site may just do the trick, but if commerce, social integration, and multimedia are part of the plan, Webkit is the way to go. If you move forward with both versions, device detection is critical, ensuring the correct version is served to the device being used to access the site.

3. Content: Avoid the common pitfall of trying to replicate the entire tethered web experience and only include the content and functionality that is of use to your mobile users. With that said, through smart navigation and content optimization, your mobile-optimized site can provide a robust experience for your customers. Writing with SEO in mind, using HTML 5 for video, and using lightweight images that don’t add unnecessary weight to a page are also important.

4. Social Integration: The major social services have APIs available, making the integration of social media as straightforward as you have come to expect with your traditional online properties. Integration allows people to share at the point of inspiration, post reviews, and stay connected with your brand while away from their computer.

5. Actionable: Unless your sole objective is to provide static content to your mobile users, the site should include at least one conversion mechanism. Depending on your brand, these conversions can include a purchase, click-to-call, email capture, etc. Of course, analytics should be included so that conversion behavior can be tracked and optimized.

Have you rolled out a mobile-optimized site? Any tips that you would add to the list?

As Sitewire’s head of “Local,” I think a lot about what “local” really means.  Sure, there are the local-specific search tactics like geo-targeting and Google Places.  There are mobile and social integrations with apps/sites like Foursquare and Yelp.  But what does it really mean for a business to compete locally?  A recent (albeit boneheaded) experience brought home for me the true meaning of Christmas…errr…local.

The true meaning of “local” is community.  It sounds simple, but it’s true.  Merriam Webster defines “community” as, “people with common interests living in a particular area.” So when we think of big box retailers like Walmart or Target — are they part of the community?  Many would say no.  But I bet you that your neighbors working at a particular location would say yes.    Many companies, Target and Walmart included, do quite a bit to foster community in their locations — things like grants, social services and education, as well as local classifieds at a regional level.  One client of mine, a local grocery chain, Fry’s Food Stores, even does local phone outreach during re-calls and individually calls each customer for whom they have contact info, who purchased a re-called product or food item.  To me, that shows true dedication to the community.  I’d call a friend if I discovered they had something potentially dangerous in their pantry — wouldn’t you?

It’s that kind of mentality — looking out for your neighbor — that truly means community to me.  Case in point (and addressing my boneheaded reference above), for the first time in my ten years of owning a mobile phone – I left it in a cab.  And not only was it left in a cab, I left it inside the vehicle as I exited at the airport and proceeded to rush through check-in and security in a mad dash for the departure gate to fly out of town for a client meeting.  Awesome.

I didn’t even realize that my phone was not on me until I’d passed through security and heard my name on the airport’s paging system.  I was asked to pick up the white courtesy phone!  Fortunately for me, the cab driver found my phone, called my mom (yes, dear old mom was the last number in my call history), found out who I was and had me paged at the airport.  Long story short, the phone was safely delivered back into my clutches and I am forever indebted to Discount Cab Company for their true, customer-first approach.

The fact is, I use Discount Cab Company all the time for business and personal travel.  The company boasts a progressive fleet of green vehicles (not just the paint job, but the hybrid engines to boot), and offers an outstanding SMS communication system.  Every interaction with a Discount Cab employee has been top-notch and this last encounter solidifies their community-centric priority.  This company oozes “community” at all levels and herein lies the real value in competing at a local level – your entire company, from stem to stern, CEO to janitorial staff must be focused on the customer.  It’s not just the corporate message that your PR team pushes to the media, rather your entire company’s actions.  That is how you build community, local equity and a base of loyal, repeat business.

I’ll leave you with some prepositional directives before ending this post:

• For the customer first.  Always.
• Throughout the entire company.
• Look inward before you look outward.

Now I know many of you don’t like to “blow your own horn,” but tell me how your company puts the client first and share some success stories with us!

via lamarhowell

Picture a world without search engines. Hard to do, isn’t it? But the existence of the modern search engine is barely a decade old. The changes from then to now have been enormous, and there are no signs to indicate that pace slowing down anytime in the near future. Yet advertisers and their agencies are incredibly myopic when it comes to the future of search.

Future of search? Are you joking? You type in a query, hit a box, and you see a mix of paid and free results. Simple.

Yeah… not so much. Neglecting the fact that the algorithms Google, Yahoo! and Bing¹ use are incredibly complicated, search engines directly impact the performance of clicks on those paid and free results. That’s not to say that they manipulate the data. But they do make design and layout changes on a near constant basis. And if you think those mods are for nothing more than aesthetics; think again. There’s a calculated and well-planned strategy behind each change, with a host of performance gain expectations stacked against. Those that meet their goals stay. Those that don’t are rolled back or put up for further refinements. In a world where (tens of? hundreds of?) millions of people use search engines every single day, tiny percentages add up to vast profit changes quickly.

So what about you, the business that relies on the search engines to send you a good amount — if not the bulk of — your traffic? Don’t you have a say in the matter? Aren’t you impacted by these changes, and can’t you do anything about it? Well… yes and no.

No, you can’t tell the engines “please don’t do that.” Nor can you tell them “I had more traffic before that last tweak.” Well, you can. They just won’t care.

But on the “yes” side of that, you can do something about the change. You can change right alongside the search engines. You can change in ways that makes your content more relevant than someone else’s content. You can change and provide the engines what they are looking for. You can change and make it easier for them to find the content they are looking for. And you can change to quickly recognize impacts and formulate a plan when those impacts are noted. You can do all of this. But you have to change.

Change is hard. Change means stopping one set of behaviors and adopting another. In this case, it probably means this: stop sticking your head in the ground. You aren’t Ron Popeil. You cannot set it and forget it. Succeeding in search today requires constant attention, investigation and evaluation. Monthly reports are fine for trending, but they are terrible at spotting and reacting upon trends. Spot checking things once a week only ensures that you’ll miss all the other spots that needed attention that week. And tracking the rank of a handful of keywords to act as “indicators” of your site’s overall performance doesn’t do much more than placate.

Worried about how much time this will take? You should be. But there’s no turning back. It’ll only get harder. Time to get serious about search. Because it won’t end. It will just get harder to master.

^{1 – In theory, Yahoo! & Bing will be using very similar algorithms by October, so this may just be “Google and Ying” or “Google and Bahoo!” very soon.}