Film director Baz Lurhmann is nobody’s fool. When he took the classic text “The Great Gatsby” and adopted it to the screen, he knew that there was no great film version of this beloved book. It had been attempted in the past but never done very well, so when Lurhmann took “The Great Gatsby” and brought 1922 into 2013, he used every avenue available to him – including social media marketing. Here are some ways that 2013’s “The Great Gatsby” film used social media marketing to drive home the experience.

Facebook

Cover Photo
The cover photo on “The Great Gatsby” Facebook page sets the tone for the film. The classy, wide shot shows all the principal players and really drives home the style that Lurhmann was going for.

Custom Tabs
“The Great Gatsby” has custom tabs to help drive fans to the movie theaters. This is nothing all that original, but the fact that fans of the film could simply click to “like” or “buy tickets now” made the transition from computer screen to movie screen seamless.

Shareable Content
The volume and quality of material available on “The Great Gatsby” Facebook page makes for great shareable content. There are photos, quotes, videos, behind the scenes information on the making of the movie, and so much more, which allows  fans to really see what this film is all about. Content like this went viral on the movie’s Facebook page, which created even more buzz for the film.

Video
There was no shortage of video clips posted online to promote “The Great Gatsby”. Filmmakers need to realize that as soon as they put their films out into the world, they will be available for viewing online, so the key is to provide impactful clips to catch the interest of the online audience before others do. The producers of this movie certainly understood that, and the fact that they offered so much in terms of video clips on all platforms kept fans engaged and wanting to see more on the movie screen.

In the Twitter universe, “The Great Gatsby’s” social media presence also scored big. The use of hashtags for fans to connect and share pictures (#GatsbyPics) made the social media marketing experience interactive, inclusive, and effortless. The marketing team continues to engage with those who mention the film on Twitter, which increases the fans’ enthusiasm for the film. Here is an example of fans on Twitter showing off their Gatsby-inspired outfits before attending the film and sharing it using the hashtag #GatsbyPics. This was later retweeted by “The Great Gatsby” Twitter account.

Tumblr

Another really smart social media move was the Tumblr Fan Art Challenge.  Fans were asked to create an original piece of art from the “The Great Gatsby” film for a chance to win a trip to New York City for the film’s premier. This increased fan engagement, and, like so many of the other social media platforms, led to the fans doing the promoting for the film!  Something else to keep in mind is that “The Great Gatsby” took advantage of its other social platforms to promote the Tumblr contest. Below are some of the entries from the Tumblr Art Challenge displayed on Pinterest.

Instagram

People love seeing celebrities in their natural habitat, and “The Great Gatsby” definitely didn’t have a shortage of celebrities for fans to get excited about. There was major online interest in the flurry of Instagram photos showing actors and actresses from the film strutting their stuff on the red carpet.

Every Aspect of the Film’s Social Media Promotion was Great

From Facebook to Twitter to Tumblr to Instagram, “The Great Gatsby” took its social media marketing presence to the next level. By engaging the audience, allowing exclusive peeks behind the curtain, and giving like-minded movie goers a way to connect via social media, this film has certainly cast a new mold for future films to follow. Viewers of big blockbusters can expect plenty of chances to connect on social media going forward.

What did you think of “The Great Gatsby’s” social media marketing presence?

In the early days of the Internet, text was the predominant medium through which information was shared with the masses.  In a time before broadband connections, HD videos and even Facebook, the Web was more about functionality than style.  While these technical limitations made for a lackluster user experience, they did create a solid blueprint for today’s Internet.

When the Web was ruled by text and rudimentary HTML code, pages had to be coded very efficiently in order to load quickly and images and videos were simply out of the question.  Although text still plays a crucial role in the modern Internet, technological advancements have placed multimedia and rich content front-and-center.

A Tale of Two Browsers: From Mosaic to Chrome – The Evolution of Digital Content

A Changing of the Guard
As YouTube, Pinterest and other popular sites geared toward images and videos continue to grow, the focus has begun to shift away from text as the primary form of content on the Internet.  Today, virtually every website utilizes extensive imagery or video content to engage audiences.  Social networks are certainly no exception.

In fact, social media posts or tweets containing images or videos are more likely to be shared or “liked” than those exclusively comprised of text.  The bottom line is – rich content is the key to a more effective Social Media marketing strategy.

How to Engage Your Audience with Photos & Videos
Though I specifically cited YouTube and Pinterest as “media-focused” networks, other social profiles can equally benefit from rich content.  Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn have all recently added enhanced video and photo integration capabilities for user and business profiles.  This functionality allows users to more easily display rich and engaging content.

However, it is always important to consider your audience.  When creating new rich content, first ask yourself if your consumers would find it helpful or intriguing.  Originality, creativity and even humor are all elements of successful content.  Keep it relevant, fun and informative.  Developing infographics, instructional videos, customer testimonials and new or upcoming product photos are all engaging ways to reach your social following.

Every successful Social Media Optimization and Marketing campaign begins with delivering quality content to your followers.  By offering up unique, captivating videos and images as part of your content strategy, you’re well on your way to Social Media success!

Want to learn how to get even more from your Social Media marketing campaign?  Ask our Experts or share your thoughts in the comments below!

In 2001, Grammy award winning rapper and producer, Dr. Dre, announced his return to the hip hop scene…taking his song to #1 after a long period behind the studio glass.  He returned to the microphone to record “Forgot About Dre”.  The song emphatically announced his reemergence into the spotlight.

What made Dr. Dre so successful in the past was his ability to speak to the needs of his core audience. Upon his return, he continued to provide music that was focused to what his loyal fan base wanted to hear. When looking at SEO campaigns, it’s important to take a note from Dr. Dre and continue to provide high quality content that speaks to the needs of the people who will make or break your business – your customers.

During Dr. Dre’s hiatus from behind the microphone, his fans and fellow competitors forgot about him because he stopped releasing new music. In the same vein, many prospective clients of ours find that their past customers forget about their business. Why? Because they never utilize the touch points below. By taking advantage of the following seven touch points, your business will be much like the legend of Dr. Dre in the music industry – unforgettable.

1.)    Website
Your website is often times the introduction to your brand or company offerings. Too often, the website is forgotten and pages that haven’t been relevant in ages continue to be both prominent and live on the site. The website is used in so many ways through:

i.    Communicating through product visibility
ii.    Being upfront about the offers, your brand
iii.    Allowing a customer quick easy access to checkout

A customer-centric web presence is key to the overall success of not only SEO (visibility), but also for the customer experience and loyalty.

2.)    Follow up from purchase

a.    What happens after your customer makes the purchase? Are there follow up emails sent? Are they entered into a newsletter program to stay current on the latest news/offers?

Keeping involved with your customer is essential to maintain a relationship for future interaction. This can be accomplished through the methods mention above, which can make a huge impact for your business. Not only will it allow the customer to speak highly of your brand and experience, but also keeps you current and relevant while their next purchase decision is underway.

3.)    PR
How in touch are you with your customer through online news outlets…they are reading online just like you are. Public relations in and around your community, city or state is a great way to remain current. Press releases can also bring national exposure as well as beneficial link building from an SEO perspective.

4.)    Retargeting
Have you ever seen retargeted ads that ‘follow’ your online click paths and online navigations? This is called retargeting in our industry and it provides extreme value in terms of brand awareness and relevant ROI clicks.

Customers can leave your site for a variety of reasons. Distractions, competition, and improper use of your site are just a few. Why not through retargeting, remain with the prospect over a span of 30 days or so, which will prove to be a very effective way for brand distribution.

5.)    Paid Search
Exploring the paid search platform is not only a great way to gain quick exposure and traffic, but also allows a great deal of learning as your potential customers respond to the ads. Some ideas to test with paid search include:

i.    Keywords and how your demographics respond
ii.    Ad groups and the impression/click rates
iii.    Landing pages to better conversions (includes call to action that could be tested during the paid search initiative.)

6.)    Blog
Your blog is not only an SEO powerhouse (still), but your customers in many situations look to read more about and support information your company or brand is involved with. They will often times look for news, product updates, information, etc. Your blog also gives the customer a platform to interact with your brand or products.

7.)    Mobile
More and more, we are seeing a tremendous amount of mobile data from Google Analytics on many online businesses. If your site is not mobile ready, then you are indeed alienating a percentage of your demographics and customers. Creating a mobile ready site is often times quick, and inexpensive, but can make a world of difference for the potential customers shopping experience.

As you can tell, it takes some work to be remembered. After all, it took a Grammy winning song for Dr. Dre to emerge back into the consciousness of the masses. And his competition was just fellow rappers, our clients are up against something that has unmatched credibility on the streets – Google.

How many times have you clicked on a link in a list of search results only to sit there and watch the little circle spin on your browser tab? Like everyone else, you probably hit the back button and proceed to click the next link in the long list of results. The speed of a website is a very important aspect of SEO that gets overlooked far too often. It is important that site owners start to make page load time a priority when optimizing their sites.

But why is site-speed such a big part of SEO, you ask? What if your site was the first link that was clicked in search results like the one mentioned above. But the page didn’t load fast enough and the visitor left your site to try another. You just lost a potential conversion.

Setting high usability standards is a big part of SEO and site speed is an integral part in building a user-friendly website. Unfortunately, users are not very patient and getting your visitors to your pages as quickly as possible is something you should always be working on. The average visitor expects a page to load in 4 seconds or less; if not, most are willing to leave your site for a competitors.

Although usability is the main reason why I try to keep a site fast, a slow website can also affect your rankings as well. Studies have shown that when slower sites rank in search results, people actually use Google less. Not to mention the negative effects a slow site and server can have on your crawl rate as well.

What Slows Down Your Site?
There can be many contributing factors to a slow, bogged-down website. Anything from the type of hosting service you choose to the amount of code in your sites files. Below is a list of the major reasons why your site may be bogged down:

Large Images – Images that are too large or take too long to download is probably one of the biggest problems with site speed. Before inserting images into a webpage, they must first be resized and compressed to ensure a faster download time.

Server/Hosting Issues – The type of hosting and server your site is on can cause many issues. Shared servers can be fast at times and really slow at other times and in some cases a hosting/server package may not be adequate enough to handle a specific CMS you may be using for your site.

Too Many Ads – Ads are a great way to earn some extra cash but is it worth losing visitors because you’re site isn’t loading fast enough? If you have several ads on your site, try removing a couple and you will probably see instant results.

JavaScript – Too many scripts that are located to close the top of your sites pages can really slow down a site. Remember that for every line of code is another server request which only takes more time for all the page elements to render. In some instances, JS can even be consolidated to reduce the amount of requests.

Uncompressed Text Files – Compressing text files on your server reduces the amount of bytes sent over the network and can really save on bandwidth use.

How to Test the Speed of Your Site
There are many great and free tools available for anyone to use to get a good look how fast a site really is and what may be slowing it down as well. Below are a couple of my favorites. And because all of them give slightly different reports, it is a good idea to run your site on all of them to see what problems one picked up that the others may have missed.

Google PageSpeed Insights – This one is my personal favorite. To use this tool, all you have to do is enter your URL into the field and click Analyze and in a few seconds you have  a list of items that are slowing down your site organized in High, Medium and Low priority. You can even go further by clicking each item to find out how to fix each issue.

YSlow – This is another great tool that can be used to analyze the speed of your site. This one works a lot like a browser extension or add-on. Once installed you can run an analysis on any site you are currently on. After a few seconds of analysis, you will receive a letter grade for all elements pertaining to site speed and suggestions on how to fix them as well. But one thing that YSlow offers that PageSpeed does not is the use of some tools such as Smushit to achieve your optimization tasks.

Press releases can be great tools for promoting your company, but in order to reap their benefits you need to make sure that you’re writing your release the right way.  Writing a press release can be tricky because you’re trying to find the right balance between news and advertising.  But if you follow these tips you’ll be able to write an engaging release that promotes your company and has news value.

Pick An Interesting Topic
Press releases are designed to get the press excited about something that’s going on with your business, and if you want your release to be noticed by reporters you need to base it on a topic someone would find interesting.  This can be difficult for some people because they already see the inherent value about what they’re pitching in their press release.  When you pick a topic for your press release, ask yourself these three questions:

• “What is interesting about this topic?”

• “Why would a reporter want to write a story about my topic?”

• “Will anyone outside of my business/company care about this topic?”

If you can confidently answer each of the three questions, you’ve found a good press release topic!

Get to the Point
I did an internship at a newspaper when I first graduated college, and the reporters there would receive dozens of press releases every day.  How would the reporters sort through all of the press releases they received you ask?  It was simple.  They would literally delete any press release that didn’t clearly explain the point of the release in the first few sentences.  Reporters are very busy people.  If they can’t figure out the topic of a press release in the first five seconds of reading it, they won’t even consider covering it for a news story.  The first few sentences of your press release should clearly state every important point you want to make, so save all of your quotes and statistics for the body.

Inform, Don’t Promote
This is the biggest mistake people make when they write a press release.  A press release shouldn’t be a sales flyer, it needs to be saying something newsworthy or attention grabbing about your company.  In order to better understand this concept, take a look at these two samples:

Release A: Houston Cycling is having a 25% off sale on bike chains for the month of May.  Houston Cycling provides their customers with high quality cycling supplies at a low price.  They have some of the best cycling supplies in Houston, and their products are guaranteed to last long and keep you satisfied for years.

Release B: Houston Cycling is having a 25% off sale on bike chains for May.  Houston Cycling provides the greater Houston region with biking supplies and equipment, and they have a wide variety of bike chains and other professional cycling equipment available.

Release A and release B both mention the merchandise the store sells, but release A sounds more like a sales pitch than a press release.  Don’t focus on promoting your business in release, focus on promoting the topic of your release.  If you keep that concept in mind writing your release will be much easier.

Last night, I started reading Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (and subsequently developed a strong feeling of jealousy that our Marketing Coordinator, Danelsy Medrano, saw her present at last month’s Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce event). I’m not sure what captivated me more: Sandberg’s journey to becoming COO of Facebook (a dream job, as far as I’m concerned), or the fact that I can relate to her experiences and dilemmas as a woman and a leader. Regardless, I couldn’t put my Kindle down and I’m paying for it today (sorry, SMO team, for the yawning).

Her memoir/manifesto/however-you-want-to-categorize-it (or not categorize it) helps give women the tools they need to succeed in the workplace by encouraging them to “sit at the table,” raise their hands, and let their voices be loud enough to achieve their goals – to lean in, rather than lean back. Naturally, as I read, I found myself applying the lessons from the book to my own career goals. Then I realized Sandberg’s advice can be applied to the social media marketing campaigns that we manage every day.

Here are three ways business owners can stop missing opportunities by leaning in when it comes to social media marketing efforts.

Do Not Sit on the Side!

“Seek Challenges”
Social media networks and strategies are constantly evolving. In fact, simply keeping up with the latest marketing tactics in an ever-changing industry can seem like a challenge itself. Sitting on the side and missing opportunities to build a community around your brand and ultimately convert fans into customers based on the fact that it’s too challenging is not an option.

Sandberg would recommend pursuing a social media marketing plan because it’s a challenge (and not just because she’s Facebook’s COO). Whether you decide to do your own in-house social media marketing, or you hire an agency, just make sure you “sit at the table” rather than on the side.

“Take Risks”
As WebiMax’s Director of Social Media, I’ve noticed that there’s one thing that all of our most successful social media campaigns have in common: the client’s willingness to take risks. A “one size fits all” social media strategy doesn’t exist, so I’ve found that coming up with customized solutions based on each client’s unique marketing needs is the most effective way to increase their online visibility. If you want to maximize the ROI of your social media marketing efforts, you must be willing to take risks that, at times, push you outside of your comfort level.

“Pursue Goals with Gusto”
The first step in creating a successful social media campaign is to clearly define the objectives you want to achieve. But, Sandberg would say, it’s not enough to define these goals then quietly “lean back” and hope for the best. Instead, business owners need to take on more leadership. Pursuing business goals with gusto by becoming thought leaders not just Following them, starting relevant and engaging conversations not just participating in them, and generating the content that your audience craves are ways you can lean in to your social media campaign.

If you hire an agency to help you achieve your goals, it’s important to bring as much enthusiasm to the campaign as if you were performing it yourself. The more passionate you are about the products/services/information that you have to offer, the more successful your social media efforts will be.

Are you seeking challenges when it comes to your marketing efforts? Are you taking risks and pursuing your goals with gusto? Don’t let opportunity pass you by; lean in to online marketing to make your business dreams a reality.

It is essential for every business owner, no matter the size of your enterprise, to have some sort of web presence. While some small businesses just have a Facebook page, it’s more beneficial to actually have a new and dedicated site built to serve as your business’ home base. A .com registered in your name is ultimately more reliable than a single page owned by a social network.

Now that you’ve decided that what you need is a professional-grade website, it’s time to sit down and come up with some concepts. How do you want the site to look? What would you consider a conversion (do you sell things directly on the site or do you want people to fill out a contact form)? What do you want the site to do? As you brainstorm and look at other sites for ideas, it’s important to point out that when it comes to web design, there is often a gap between what you want and what you need.

For the purpose of SEO, you may need to cut back on some of the frills that you think look awesome on other sites but are actually doing a bit of harm with regard to search engine visibility. Here’s a good example of something you may be tempted to have but should avoid: the splash page.

A splash page is that first “welcome page” that many sites have for whatever reason. All that’s on there is a big image and a “click to enter” button. Often this page is made in Flash. If all you care about is aesthetic appeal, then okay, that’s fair. But since you’re running a business, you want the search engines to actually see your site.

Your homepage is your most crucial piece of real estate. It’s most likely the page that is going to rank highest in the search results. It is also the gateway by which both visitors and search engines will follow links to view what else your site has to offer. If your homepage URL is the splash page, you’re forfeiting the opportunity to rank for keywords and establish a solid link structure. Your homepage should have quality content and clean navigation.

Other things you want to take into consideration include the code throughout your site. Your goal, ultimately, is to keep your code as clean and minimal as possible while getting the desired results. That means you really want to try and keep your code to HTML and CSS, with some Javascript used sparingly if you want some extra fancy functionality. But once you start piling in things like Flash, you run the risk of creating content that can’t be crawled by the search engines. They also slow down load times, which are also used in SEO calculations. This same idea applies to your images. Of course you need images to make your site more attractive. But be aware that any text that appears inside an image can’t be seen by the search engines. So if you think putting keywords in the image itself is a good idea, you’ll need to come up with a different plan.

These are just a few of the points you need to consider when designing a new site for your business. While launching a new site is exciting and can open up many new opportunities, it’s essential that you do things the right way to maximize the benefits.

Ken Wisnefski – the president and founder of WebiMax –was featured in Sunday’s edition of the Courier Post. In the article, our boss spoke of taking lessons from his past to sculpt the ideology of our company. Because of his experience, he was able to chart a path that ensured WebiMax would not only provide a great work atmosphere at the office, but a great return on the marketing investments of our clients.

Of course, the aforementioned article got me thinking about how important the past of content efforts is for businesses. In fact, I thought of three key points that every company should utilize to increase the value of their content marketing initiatives.

1. Learn from your mistakes – Not every piece of content produced by your blog, uploaded to your product page, or distributed as a press release is going to be a home run. It’s how a person reacts to the duds along the way that will help determine success or failure.

Instead of shrugging your shoulders, ask yourself why a piece of content didn’t work. Did your blog answer the questions of your client base? Was your product page visually appealing to your target audience? Did it provide useful and unique text? Did it funnel towards a conversion page? Was your press release truly newsworthy? By answering these questions, you can avoid making the same mistakes twice.

2. Stop Repeating Yourself – There are always ways to be unique. While many blogs and webpages will focus on particular keywords, you would be amazed by how many different angles you can take with just a little bit of creativity.

Even if you had success with a topic in the past, don’t beat it into the ground. For example, instead of a car dealership posting five blogs covering the different questions to ask a used car dealer, they should vary the text with vehicle profiles, safety tips, common repairs that can be done from home, things to listen for on test drives, and more. When you repeat yourself, you bore your audience. Competition is fierce; uniqueness will help you stand out from the pack.

3. Capitalize on Successes – When monitoring spikes in traffic, our experts will often attribute those spikes to fresh content. When your traffic begins to plateau, it’s important to update your text. Freshness is essential in Internet marketing. Keeping your online presence timely and relevant will not only impress your audience, but assure the search engines that your site offers more value to searchers than your competitors.

Whether your content past is a point of pride or the reason you sought out this blog for advice, the information you can obtain by looking back is invaluable. Just as my boss looked back to move this company forward, so should you with your content marketing strategy.

Back in 1997 I was a webmaster for a site that incorporated businesses in Delaware. In those days, promoting a site meant finding ways to deliver traffic to its pages, and building relationships with other site owners and businesses. PageRank was unheard of at the time, and the idea of anchor text being used as a relevance signal for web pages wasn’t anything we were concerned with at all.

Being included in directories was one way of being found, and finding complimentary businesses who we might share referrals with was a great way to cross promote a site, as long as you felt you could trust your visitors with the owners of that other site. We didn’t have social media sites like Twitter or Facebook or Google Plus, but the internet had been a pretty social place even before the Web came about, with newsgroups and Bulletin Board Services (BBS) providing a way for people to meet and interact. Forums provided similar chances to be social in the 90s.

I remember adding a link to a Polish Classified Ads site – written in both English and Polish. Honestly, I didn’t expect any response at all from it. I had found it, and it looked like people might be using it, but would there actually be any interest from people in the region in creating Delaware corporations. If I judged it by the standards of a world pre-occupied with SEO, I probably would have passed.

It didn’t leave me a chance to provide a live link so it wouldn’t have passed along any PageRank or anchor text relevance.

The audience was business people, but it wasn’t topically inclined towards people creating new businesses. I created a classified with address and phone number (the owner of the site liked talking to people on the phone rather than responding to inquiries by email), and left it there, and didn’t think about it again.

We started getting phone calls from Eastern Europe. Not a lot of calls, but they were interesting. Financial services companies from countries that were little known in the United States were working with clients that wanted to ship goods across the world, and wanted to incorporate each voyage, to limit their liability from other journeys.

The little classified advertisement I left on the Polish site lead to enough business to sustain the incorporation company for its first few years of business, all for the sake of getting cargo containers filled with commodities like olive oil from one side of the Atlantic to the other.

I recalled that link, the phone calls in response, and the business that it lead to because it reminded me of a time when the Web was more social.

Regardless of the lack of sites like Twitter, we built pages to answer questions, to offer goods and services, and to provide information to people. We weren’t concerned about how highly a site might rank in search results, or even what search results were. I think sometimes sites today forget about that social element of the Web, and worry more about where they might rank for some main terms, and how much traffic their products and part numbers might draw through web searches.

Social isn’t just about including sharing buttons and profile buttons on your pages to Twitter and Facebook and Google Plus, though those are a good start these days. Make it as easy as possible for people to find your profiles on those sites, and for them to share something you’ve written. Social isn’t just about making sure that you use avatars and images and backgrounds on social sites and profiles, though that can help as well.

Social is about what you contribute to social sites and how you interact with others.

Social is about building relationships with others, and taking the time to meet people, to talk with them, to find common interests and objectives.

Social networking sites are channels that enable to you find others, to educate and be educated, to influence, and to be influenced. There should be a thrill of discovery when you log into Twitter, and have a chance to learn something new.

Social media isn’t a broadcast channel where you blast out offers to others, and tweet and retweet things you think “your” audience might be interested in.

The “social” in social media and social networking is the most important part of being involved.

When I put the classified out there on the Polish website all those years ago, I was inviting conversations with others who might be interested in what we offered. It was a first step, and the phone number I provided was to someone who loved to talk, to educate, and to learn about others, and how they could work together. Being listed there in terms of today’s SEO might have revealed it to have very little value, but in social terms, it was the right place to be listed at the right time by people who needed the service offered.

Social Signals Today

Social media is being incorporated into both Google and Bing these days with social annotations appearing in searches from both. When you’re signed into Google and perform a search, it’s quite possible that you may see relevant results that appear because someone you’re connected to might have shared something from a site or endorsed it. When you perform searches at Bing, you may see similar results with annotations from people you’re connected to, that wouldn’t have appeared in those results (even though they are relevant) without those connections being made.

If you run a business and have a website, one of the reasons to get involved in Facebook and Twitter and Google Plus is to connect with people on those sites that might be interested in what you offer, and in what interests you may have.

Social networks enable you to reach out across your neighborhood and across the globe to find people who share common interests with you.

A lot of people are writing about Google Authorship Markup these days, and how Google might introduce Agent Rank, or an author rank, that might influence organic search results even when someone isn’t logged into a Google Account. Google hasn’t explicitly provided us with details on how they might rank such results, but there are a lot of hints that have come out via patent filings and white papers and even interviews that people have held with representatives from Google.

In January, I wrote a post titled, What’s Your Google Viral Score? about a patent from Google that describes how Google might come up with a viral score, or “content propagation likelihood” score that attempts to estimate how information might be spread by someone within social networks based upon activity such as sharing, responding to comments and threads, endorsing content, liking pages and profiles, and so on. Such a score might attract advertisers to choose a particular member of a social network to share something with them.

Signals Involving Activity and Influence

In 2010, Google published a whitepaper titled AdHeat: An Influence-based Diffusion Model for Propagating Hints to Match Ads (pdf), to be presented at the WWW 2010 Conference held in Raleigh, North Carolina (and it was a Best Paper Nominee at the Conference). Yesterday, Google published a patent application based upon the paper which provides some additional details about how an advertising system like the Adheat system might be set up on a social network such as Google Plus. The patent is:

AdHeat Advertisement Model for Social Network
Invented by Dong Zhang and Edward Y. Chang
Assigned to Google Inc.
US Patent Application 20130103503
Published April 25, 2013
Filed: September 14, 2012

Abstract

In one implementation, a computer-implemented method includes receiving at a server information indicating activity levels of users of a computer-implemented social network or acquaintance relationships of the users on the computer-implemented social network. The method further includes generating by the server influence scores for the users based on the received information.

The method also includes recursively propagating by the server an ad through the computer-implemented social network between users having an acquaintance relationship by transmitting the ad from a propagating user to a recipient user when a difference between a first influence score of the propagating user and a second influence score of the recipient user is greater than a threshold.

According to the paper on Adheat, this advertising method was tested on Google’s Q&A websites throughout the world. Google doesn’t have a Q&A site in the United States, but they do in many other countries across the Globe. Those sites are very social in nature, and participants’ reputations and results are ranked on the basis of a user rank that looks at both contributions and interactions they make to the sites.

One of the interesting things about this user rank is that it would translate over very well to Google Plus, and a system like Agent Rank, which could potentially be used to help rank web search results based upon user activities with the social network.

We don’t know if Google will ever run advertising on Google Plus, and it’s possible that they might not, but that they might look at Google Plus activity for people, and use that information to show people ads in Google search results and on pages that carry Google sponsored results.

At the heart of such an advertising method is how people might be decided upon by advertisers to show ads to, and how those ads might be spread to others as well:

In some instances, a method and system is described by which an advertiser can target ads to users of a social network according to a user’s interests and influence on the social network. An opportunity to display an ad to an influential user with interests relevant to the ad may be more valuable to an advertiser than an opportunity to display an ad to a non-influential user with unrelated interests (or even a non-influential user with related interests). A user’s influence on a social network may be determined by looking at the user’s level of activity and/or acquaintance relationships on the social network. An advertiser may receive a ranked list of anonymous users according to user interest and influence. A bidding mechanism may be used to accommodate multiple advertisers seeking to obtain the opportunity to display ads to a finite number of relevant, influential users on a social network.

In some instances, once an opportunity to display an ad to a specific anonymous user has been awarded to an advertiser, an ad from the advertiser may be propagated from the user to the user’s friends using a heat diffusion model. For instance, a user’s influence on the social network can be represented as a heat intensity or a heat score, where users with more influence have a higher heat score. Propagation between users can then be modeled using a heat diffusion model. For example, an ad may spread (propagate) between two connected users as long as the user targeted with the ad has greater “heat” than the user yet to be targeted. This may result in ads propagating throughout the social network from more influential users to less influential users. One advantage that may be gained from the described method is the ability of advertisers to maximize advertising efficiency by propagating ads from influential users to influenced users.

Take Aways

The patent filing and the paper on Adheat do provide more information on how social activities and interactions might influence the spread of advertisements based upon user interests and user influence. They also provide hints at how Google might be viewing participants in a social network such as Google Plus. These can include who you interact with, what topics do you write about and respond to, how you interact with others, who shares the content that you create and share and respond to.

Google Plus cares little about a link graph, and more about an interest graph that is uncovered based upon the topics that you are involved within, a social graph that identifies who you interact with and whom you might influence and be influenced by. That’s not to say that profile and post pages in Google Plus don’t accumulate PageRank and might show up in search results themselves. They are pages that can be ranked that way like other indexable pages on the Web. But that’s just a small part of the picture.

We’ve been told by representives from Google that Google Authorship and social signals will likely become part of how pages are ranked on the Web at some point in the future, and it’s something that the search engine is experimenting with.

As my story at the beginning of this post illustrates though, social activity can lead to good things regardless of whether a search engine is working upon how to incorporate those signals into search results.

Make it easy for people to interact with you and your website through social sites and profile buttons and social sharing buttons and get on those social sites and actually interact with people in meaningful ways. It can lead to positive results regardless of how it might be incorporated into search engine rankings in the future.

Managing your brand on the Web is critical and even the strategies you employ to market your organization can influence your consumers.  The evolution of SEO has made quality a priority and has also greatly reduced the success rate of “black hat” search engine optimization campaigns.

Why has Google cracked down on unethical tactics?  While there are several definitive (and largely correct) answers to this question, the primary reason is often cited to be disruption of the user experience.  Often times, strategies such as keyword stuffing or spun articles are an eyesore to users (and potential consumers) that may be looking for relevant and useful information.

Today, these not only impact rankings, but they can also lead to negative reviews and complaints from disappointed readers.

Avoiding Complaints
Online marketing firms such as WebiMax have weathered the Panda and Penguin updates and emphasize quality and originality when developing content.  By applying our knowledge and philosophies to our client’s campaigns, we have avoided complaints related to low-quality content or other black hat tactics.

It is essential for every business to understand the importance of quality within digital marketing and that “cutting corners” can lead to serious reputation concerns.  Designing an SEO campaign with a strong focus on proven “best practices” will help to protect your brand from damaging user-generated content and diminished revenue.

What are your thoughts on White Hat vs. Black Hat SEO?  Give us your feedback in the comments below or send your Tweets to @WebiMax!