I’m presenting “Deadliest Online Warrior: “Marketing Tactics in a Battle for Budget” to fellow marketers in the national capital region. My plan is to present online marketing campaign results in a case study format so that the audience can get a feel for how different tactics performed. Until then:

“Instead of a TV show that pits historic and modern warriors to battle to the death, how about a conversation that pits historic and modern online marketing tactics in a battle for budget?

As customers spend more time in social networks and less in their email boxes and traditional websites, how should organizations adjust their online acquisition strategies? Join Kelly Kubrick of Online Authority for insight into the effects of combining paid search and social advertising with the power of social media marketing. Kelly will take you through a head-to-head result comparison between tactical legends of the online battlefield:

•    Paid Keyword Search vs. Social Network Advertising’s Demographic / Psychographic Targeting?
•    Banners: Behavioural Targeting vs. Search Term Targeting?
•    Email Buy vs. Social Media Content Marketing?”

I’m very pleased to report that CMA Ottawa now has online registration available. Event details are:

When:     Tuesday, September 27th, 2011 from 11:45 a.m. to 2:15 p.m.
Where:     Hampton Inn and Conference Centre, 100 Coventry Road, Ottawa, K1K 4S3
Cost:         $ 40.00 for CMA members, $ 55.00 for non-members

As always, there’s plenty of free parking and the cost includes lunch, coffee, dessert, and a great opportunity to network with many other local marketing professionals.

For those of you who may not be familiar with CMA Ottawa, they “host monthly networking and educational luncheons and seminars throughout the year.  CMA Ottawa is a place of dynamic exchange among direct, interactive and customer contact marketing users, creators, managers and suppliers.”

I hope to see you there!

Landing Pages Should Reflect the Rituals of Good Conversation

Dr McGlaughlin kicked off the pre-Summit Landing Page Optimization Workshop by suggesting that landing page optimization is akin to a successful conversation, whereby certain rituals and patterns need to respected before value can be exchanged. The geography of the landing page provides you with the opportunity to anticipate and manage the chronology and sequence of a conversation with your prospects. The entertainment value arose from the irresistible temptation to act out how a flawed landing page contains the same landmines encountered in a flawed pick up attempt at a bar…

My favourite comment related to marketers’ mistaken need to slam product or lifestyle ‘hero shots’ and aggressive calls to action front and centre on their landing pages (guess who’s making that mistake on the home page right now?). According to Dr McGlaughlin, those hero shots are like meeting someone at a bar and immediately asking them to move in with you. Who wouldn’t turn tail and bolt? At best, it’s overly enthusiastic and misguided, and at worst, predatory. Instead, as marketers, we need to take a step back to map the sequence of a successful conversation, and plan our landing pages accordingly.

Consider the Source: Understand Channel Relevance

Start by thinking through the traffic source or channel your prospect arrives by, whether it be via organic or paid search, advertising on social networking sites, or via your own email newsletter, etc. Depending on the source, your visitor may be completely new to your product or service or have already been sold on it, and may simply want you to get out of their way. If the former, assume more copy might be needed and if the latter, less is most definitely more.

Put yourself in your prospect’s frame of mind and remind yourself of the value proposition you implied in that source channel. MarketingExperiments defines your value proposition as “the primary reason why your ideal prospect should buy from you rather than your competitors” (expressed in 10 words or less).

Your Headline Should Keep the Promise You Implied

Ensure that you keep that promise by opening your landing page with a headline that initiates the conversation between the two of you. Your only task here is to intrigue the prospect enough to keep him or her from immediately clicking on the back button. You can do that by ensuring your headline provides the connection between the source channel and the landing page itself. Be sure the visitor is able to orient him / herself by providing clarity about where they are and what to do next. To illustrate, Dr McGlaughlin provided the following examples of original vs. alternate treatment headlines:

Original: Why Try BRAND Online?
Treatment: Get Unlimited Access to all 32 Volumes of BRAND during your FREE TRIAL..
Original: Searching for the Most Accurate Mailing Lists? Your Hunt is Over!
Treatment: We Make 26 Million Phone Calls a Year to Ensure You Get The Most Accurate Mailing Lists Available!

Next, draw your visitors’ eye further into the page by offering a few brief sentences that expand on your headline. Do that well, and you can entice the visitor to scan a sub-heading that leads into a handful of bullet points that reinforce the value proposition promise. The reinforcement comes from the provision of key quantitative data (in your bullets) that validates any claims you’ve made to date.

At this stage, the conversation should be rolling along well enough that you are now in a position to suggest a call to action. As you  make the ask, you also need to provide an incentive to convince the visitor to actually take the action. Further, that incentive needs to be directly related to your value proposition, and you should include a visual to illustrate the incentive. As an example, include an image of the charts or tables from the report you’re asking the visitor to register to receive.

Avoid Landmines: Don’t Require Your Visitors To Submit

Be careful of the classic landmine, also known as the “submit” button. I wish I could play a recording so that you might hear Dr McGlaughlin’s booming southern preacher voice as he lacerated this bad habit of ours: “I SUBMIT TO THE GODS OF MARKETING!” Instead, the wording of your call to action needs to describe what is expected of the prospect. Some examples (besides “click here”!) include:

• Help Me Choose
• Become a Member
• Get Instant Access
• Download a Free Trial

Anticipate Anxiety and You Will Reduce Friction

MarketingExperiments‘ research identifies the call to action as a point of “friction”, or “the psychological resistance to a given element in the sales process”. Knowing that your ‘ask’ inevitably causes anxiety, anticipate that anxiety and counter the friction through reassurance. How?

Perhaps you might limit the length (number of) or difficulty of fields you require the prospect to complete. Or, you might use “seals” that illustrate policies such as “100% Satisfaction Guaranteed” or “No Hassle Returns”. You can also create a “backstop” by offering a single, powerful testimonial from a respected third party. Ensure these assurances are in close proximity to the source of anxiety.

Anticipating your prospect’s anxiety gives you an opportunity to “intensify the positives” in order to reduce friction. Do that well, and you’ve got yourself a conversion which results in a value exchange between you and your prospect.

The Value You Offer Must Outweigh the Cost to the Visitor

That value exchange might include critical credit card information or simply a valid email address. Regardless – you will have convinced your prospect that the your offer is worth the exchange of their valuable information. Nicely done!

In summary, we end up with a landing page layout that follows the conversation flow illustrated in the chart below:

Optimized Landing Page Flow – or “The Ritual Of Conversation”

As a web analyst, I was most intrigued with the idea that these conversational elements and related landing page layout recommendations are represented by MarketingExperiments Conversion Heuristic”*, which states C = 4m+ 3v + 2(i-f) – 2a© where:

c = conversion
m= (Your prospect’s) motivation
v = the clarity of your value proposition
i = incentive
f = friction and
a = anxiety

*Source: MECLABS Landing Page Optimization Summit Study Guide, Landing Page Certification Workshop

Using MarketingExperiments’ Conversion Heuristic, you immediately notice that the most important elements of your landing page are reflected in the relative value of the coefficients. Thus, at 4, the highest coefficient, your prospect’s motivation (4m) has the highest impact on the success of the conversion. MarketingExperiments defines motivation as the “magnitude and nature of of the customer’s demand for” your products / services.

By targeting motivated prospects by source, you have control over a key lever leading to your conversions. Translation – don’t bring prospects with low motivation to your landing page as you are setting yourself up for failure. This is, of course a core tenet of marketing — target your primary audience / market segments or suffer the wrath which results from a blown budget.

Next in importance is the clarity of your value proposition (+3v). The clarity comes from an articulation of the “appeal, exclusivity and credibility” of your offer. If well articulated, you can overcome, or subtract, possible friction your prospect might be feeling by “adding” an incentive appropriate to your value proposition [+2(i-f)].

Only then can you address the final issue that could deter the prospect from completing the conversion: anxiety (-2a). Notice that anxiety is a negative coefficient and that it is equal to the value garnered from your “incentive minus friction step”. To overcome your prospect’s anxiety, you must intensify the positives and reassure.

Avoid Symmetry

Dr McGlaughlin also made a point of reiterating that their research shows that easing the “eye path” in relation to landing page layout is also critical. Of utmost importance, don’t make the mistake of seeking balance by equalizing page components in your design. Avoid equally weighted columns which are another source of friction as they encourage indecision.

Instead, use a 2/3rd left hand column to contain all of the elements described above – headline, copy, subhead, bullets and calls to action. However, use the right hand column to support the content on the left. Examples of support content could include additional testimonials.

Be Clear About The Objective of Your Landing Page

If you’d like to try assessing your existing landing pages, use the framework offered by MarketingExperiments’ Conversion Heuristic, and then see how well your page performs in relation to the critical elements. Before you do so, however, ensure you have consensus on the goal of that page so you can be sure that you maintain your focus throughout the assessment. This offers the added benefit of helping you identify any conflicting objectives you may have inadvertently allowed on the page.

Just to make sure the audience was taking everything in, MECLABS hit us with an exam at the end of the day. Due to the amount of caffeine consumed, I am pleased to say that yours truly did make the grade:

Evidence of my Membership in MarketingExperiments Certified Professional Members Directory

What do you think of MarketingExperiments proposed framework? Would you consider amending your landing pages to reflect the proposed approach?

• “Better Leads. Richer Insights. Bridging the web analytics and CRM divide“, presented by Zone5ive, OCRI‘s Tech Marketing Forum on May 12th, 2011 at the Marshes Golf Course.  Kudos to Alex Langhshur and Tyler Gibbs of PublicInsite who presented a valuable case study on exactly how they’ve helped Ottawa’s own Dragonwave Inc to convince their sales team of the worth of the web channel by integrating web analytics data into Dragonwave’s CRM
• “Content Strategy from A Global Perspective“, presented by Content Strategy Ottawa Meetup. Billed as an informal night of networking, the group meets at Blue Cactus Bar & Grill in the Market on May 13, 2011 at 6pm
• Now SOLD OUT – “People Before Pixels“, a one-day user experience workshop offered by Follow the UX Leader, on May 16, 2011 at the Courtyard Restaurant
• “Between the Lines of Privacy“, a breakfast with the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Jennifer Stoddart, presented by WXN. the Women’s Executive Network on May 17, 2011 at the Rideau Club
• “Results, not more Reports“, a free web analytics seminar offered by Unilytics also on May 17th, 2011 at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier Hotel
• “Designing for Humans“, a presentation by Martin Gomez of Sparkart from SMBOttawa (Social Media Breakfast Ottawa) at 7:30am on May 18, 2011 at the Great Canadian Theatre Company
• “Stop Searching. Start Finding.” a full day of information architecture training provided by Follow the UX Leader at the Courtyard Restaurant on May18, 2011
• “Creating Web Content that Clicks“, a one-day web writing course also from Follow the UX Leader on May 19, 2011, also at the Courtyard Restaurant
• Ryan Short from Teknision will be the speaker at the next Web Analytics Wednesday at the Heart & Crown ByWard Market, hosted by PublicInsite on May 25, 2011 at 6pm
• FUN for Tech Women event to be held at DiVino’s at 225 Preston Street on May 30th, 2011 from 6pm-8pm. To register, call DiVino’s at (613) 221-9760
• Canada’s Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization, or SEMPO Canada, is holding its first SEMPO Ottawa Members Only Meetup on May 30th, 2011 at 6pm at Johnny Farina on Elgin Street
• “New Era Marketing Mosaika: A Spectacular Multimedia Creation” with Guy Laflamme from the National Capital Commission,   presented by CMA Ottawa on May 31st, 2011 at 11:15am at the Hampton Inn and Conference Room

If I’ve missed any, comment away, and I’ll be sure to add it to the information.

Hope to see all of you at one or more of these events!

Thanks to everyone who joined us at the Exchange Pub; it was a pleasure meeting you all (I’m happy to report that my BlackBerry Torch survived it’s inadvertent Corona bath!) and I thoroughly enjoyed our discussions.

POST UPDATE: Kristina has now posted photos – have fun tagging!

As promised, below, please find my list of the resources I mentioned last night. Here goes:

1.  Learn to love Excel’s “AutoFilter” feature (look under Data > Filter) for all of your analysis, regardless of data source. Ideally, export whatever web analytics report you’re interested in and then  import it into Excel. Enable AutoFilter, roll up sleeves and begin analysis! To do that, insert a new column(s) and begin categorizing, or segmenting, the rows of data so that you start to look for patterns and anomalies. Once you’ve got things rolling on the categorization side, you can easily begin to group the segments in a way that allows you to dig around in the details per category and reach some conclusions (see – look at you doing analysis!). How?

2. Use your Excel “Pivot Table” feature. Instead of giving a tutorial here, the best way to get introduced is to search for videos that can help you learn how to use these. Examples include:

• How To Impress Your Boss With Pivot Tables
• How to Create a Pivot Table in Excel 2007

My examples about how a content strategist might use Pivot Tables included:

a) Export your Google Analytics Keywords report (under Traffic Sources) to categorize your entry phrases in any number of ways e.g. brand, service, geography, etc.  in order to identify the phrases you are getting traffic from. Now, turn that idea on its head – which phrases would you have expected to get traffic on, but are not? Use that list to begin brainstorming potential content improvements, and keep track of them in your editorial calendar;

b) Export the results of your on site search engine e.g. Google Analytics Site Search or Webtrends On-Site Search Terms (Found and Not Found). As above, categorize them so that you can begin to analyze how your website’s search engine is being used – which phrases are looked for most often? How does that compare to your navigation labels? Are they comparable or is there a gap? If so, how could you address it in the content? Ideally, you can use the results of this analysis to accomplish two different things – identify the content you need to ‘merchandise’ (and yes, government folks, I expect you to merchandise content too!) by better surfacing it across your website – and identify the content you’re missing – e.g. what are people searching for for which you offer No Results?

c) Export the results of your keyword research tools e.g. Google AdWords Keyword Tool or Wordtracker, and exactly as above, categorize the phrases so that you can begin to identify topics that for which there is demand that you might consider writing content for (or encouraging your client to write content for).

3. Combine your exported Google Analytics Content reports or your Webtrends Pages (Site Design > Pages) reports with the chart function in Excel and create long neck / long tail graphics to explain the concentration of content demand to your client. Help them understand which content is getting consumed more / less across all of the content they offer. However, first understand the core differences between the two theories:

• Chris Anderson‘s “The (Longer) Long Tail” (decreased distribution costs encourages niche markets) versus
• Gerry McGovern‘s “The Stranger’s Long Neck” (cluttered websites created dead and useless content that decreases and potentially destroys value)

and how each applies to your analysis. Are you trying to understand if there’s value in keeping long tail content or in eliminating excess content from your website?

To learn more, here’s the link to Jeff Parks‘ podcast with Gerry McGovern. Enjoy!

4. I’m a big fan of the All in One SEO Pack plugin for the WordPress content management system (CMS) installations because it allows me to see my or my client’s <TITLE>, description and meta tags on one screen across multiple pages. In one quick glance I can see if I’m missing the opportunity to improve my content’s findability with clearer, more specific <TITLE> tags or improve usability with a more useful <description> tag. The plug-in allows me fix content problems on the fly.

5. If you or your client don’t use WordPress, fear not. The alternate way to improve your findability is with the Web Analytics Solution Profiler (WASP) – It’s a Firefox Add-In, and although this sounds like a tool that only a web analyst could love, it’s actually a brilliant tool for content strategists. It automatically scans a website for you, extracting, among other things, your <TITLE>, Description and Keyword meta tags. Once the scan is complete, save this file as an Excel spreadsheet, turn on your beloved auto filters, add a new column for “Status” and populate each row as Current. Then, add new rows per URL and rewrite those tags to your heart’s content. Your client can now see the “before and after” and your tech folks have an easy way to either script / upload the new versions, or at least cut and paste cleanly per URL.

6. Qualitative “voice of customer” data from online surveys tools such as FluidSurveys, 4Q, and SurveyMonkey offer excellent insight into what visitors think of the content you’re providing on your website. However, like web analytics reports, the volume of data can appear overwhelming – especially if you’ve just been told that thousands of free form text comments have been captured this month. If no one knows what to do with it, follow along with me:

Again, your best approach is to analyze through segmentation, using your fabulous AutoFilter and Pivot Tables (I’m such a geek) features in Excel. To provide a specific, step-by-step approach – export all those comments from your survey tool and re-import them into Excel. Add your categories column and assume three choices – positive, neutral or negative. Turn on your auto filters and assign one category per comment; now filter those comments so that you are able to isolate only the negative ones. Begin your analysis:  Do those categories need to be broken down into subcategories – e.g. topic, or product, or feature or time frame? If yes: Add a new column and get classifying! Rinse and repeat for your positive and neutral comments. Create a few Pivot Tables and see what patterns begin to emerge. Ask what actions could you take for the different subcategories and how you might group those action items. Perhaps by implementation complexity? By audience? By responsible party? By urgency?

Before you know it, you’ve analyzed the data and you have a plan that captures what you or your client will be doing about it.

7. I realize this last one might not be at the top of everyone’s list, but as a fan of cost per click (CPC) or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising not only as an acquisition tactic but also as a form of market research, I hope some of you will consider this option. By default, Google AdWords shows you the performance of your “bid” phrases. However, you need to dig a little deeper for reports relating to the actual “search” term used which triggered your ad (look under your Keywords tab > See Search Terms > All) which might be very different from than what you assumed your audience was looking for. Perhaps they combined your keyword phrase with some other concept – a question or task, a local geographic reference, an adjective – in a way that you hadn’t thought of. Each combination might give you ideas for new landing pages that you could offer.

Finally, the third variation requires you to create a custom filter in your web analytics reports. Essentially, you’re asking your report system to show you even more detail relating to actual phrases used by searchers that triggered one of your ads (but that had no clicks in the last 30 days, which is the cut-off for the report mentioned above). For instructions on how your web analyst can create the filters for you, my thanks to all the great bloggers who’ve posted detailed instructions. Where would we all be without you? I’ve tried those listed below, and the data that does result certainly offers intriguing information:

• Update to an Old Favorite – Detailed PPC Keyword Data in Google Analytics (November 2008)
• Exact Keyword Tracking with ga.js (February 2008)
• How to Get Detailed PPC Keyword Data from Google Analytics (November 2006)

So – there you have it; one web analyst’s recommendations for her fellow content strategists. As continued proof that I think we can indeed combine Shakespeare and analytics, see “To Measure or Not Measure, That Is the Question“. Now – tell me what you think. Did I miss any of your favourites? Comment away!

• Stéphane Hamel, famed analytics Immeria blogger on “Establishing your Web Analytics Maturity”; I’ve had the bad luck of conflicts at past eMetrics Summits when Stéphane has presented his web (now online) analytics maturity model. However as a long-time fan – that’s it this is my year!
• We’ve got a double serving of Canadian business icon Research in Motion (RIM) as Dan Quinn compares panel notes about “How Decision Makers Consume what Analysts (and Agencies) Produce” and Simon Austin will be tackling Social Media Metrics – more of that is always better…
• Anne Nash from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) will share stories about “What Happens when the Home Page is NOT your front door”

We’ve got attribution sessions, managing multiplicity (multiple data sources), measuring mobile, measuring video, best practices of testing,  the value of data and more – tons of great topics. As usual, there’s far more sessions that I’m hoping to catch than I expect time will allow.

I’m also very honoured to announce that I’ll be speaking this year, with my web analytics compadres, Alan K’necht from K’nechtology and June Li from ClickInsight. We’re part of the eMetrics Campaign and Acquisition Optimization track where we’ll be answering audience questions on the Fundamentals of Acquisition Optimization. Our session will be held from 1:15 – 2:00 PM on Thursday April 28th, 2011. Hope to see you there!

10 Ways to Make an Impact with Mobile Marketing

Rob Woodbridge from Untether.tv will be speaking about using mobile marketing to help businesses grow. Right now.

Session details from the folks at Zone5ive:

“Whether your business is high tech, low tech, consulting or selling ice cream, your marketing plan should include mobile. Never has it been easier or cheaper to extend your brand and measure its impact through the most personal of all impersonal items, the thing we both covet and hate but won’t leave at home: the cell phone.

Do you want to know what is beyond Foursquare? Interested in learning about context-driven commerce? What about predictive analytics or the latest location-based marketing services? Come and discover tactical ways in which you can begin to embed mobile into your marketing execution.

What do you want to know about how to leverage mobile marketing in your industry? Submit your questions now to rwoodbridge@gmail.com or via Twitter using hashtag #zone5ive.”

Register Online

Date: Wednesday November 10, 2010

Time: 11:45 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. for Registration/Networking/Light Lunch, 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. – Presentation

Location: Brookstreet Hotel, 2nd Level, 525 Legget Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K2K 2W2

Complimentary underground parking (3 hour limit)

Costs:

Early Registration (received by OCRI no later than 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday November 9, 2010)
$40.00 – OCRI members (plus 13% HST)
$65.00 – Non-members (plus 13% HST)
$15.00 – Students (plus 13% HST)
Students must register via fax or via email
Late / On-Site Registration
$50.00 – OCRI members (plus 13% HST)
$75.00 – Non-members (plus 13% HST)
$25.00 – Students (plus 13% HST)
Students must register via fax or via email

The speaker submission deadline is December 12th, 2010.

In particular, eMetrics is looking for stories that tell the ” how-to and how-much, about the challenges you overcame, the experiments that failed, how you won a budget increase for online marketing because your ROI rocks! And, how you are evangelizing online marketing analytics and experimentation in your organization.”

In other words, open your measurement kimono! Consider sharing the good, the bad and the ugly from your recent analytics learnings. Why would we ask such a thing? Simply because it works – eMetrics is about receiving golden nuggets of learning from fellows and friends in our burgeoning analytics industry. Having attended three eMetrics summits myself, I can tell you the best presentations were those where practitioners described the particular digital measurement problem they tried to solve and explained the results. No holds barred.

Memorable speakers for myself include Breanna Wigle, who proposed an “RFF Score” (Recency+Frequency+Number of Facebook Friends) as a methodology for social network analysis for Military.com. Then there was Alain Tremblay from Bell Interactive who walked us through identified points of failure in a shopping cart, and explained how qualitative data analysis pointed them towards solutions. Wonderfully concrete. Or the always charming Vicky Brock who delivered a great case study on understanding visitor behaviour when you don’t sell online. She described specific content improvement actions that could be taken based on her analysis of a university’s onsite search engine data. Great stuff.

I’m hoping that Ottawa folks will consider submitting a speaker proposal – whether it be for an analytics or a social marketing outreach campaign within a federal government department, or a search marketing program at a private sector company, or a social media membership recruitment effort from an association. I know you’re out there, fellow Ottawans – let’s make sure we let the rest of Canada know it!

Please contact me if you have any questions about the event or to discuss ideas or topics you are considering. To help you brainstorm, the 2011 eMetrics content focus includes the following topics:

• Digital Management
• Media Analytics: Cross Media, Cross Platform
• Site Optimization and Usability
• Campaigns and Acquisition Optimization
• Social Mobile Marketing Metrics

Good luck!

1. GTEC (Canada’s Government Technology Event) is in full swing – if not nearly done – at the Westin Hotel (search for GTEC on Twitter to get a sense of the conversation…). Very healthy exhibitor floor and I caught a couple of sessions, including the G20 case study on Canada’s lead role in “the world’s largest social media project”. Kudos to Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada for opening the kimono and sharing details on how the whole project got off the ground, how things went during and what’s likely to happen next.

2. Zone5ive’s next session, “The Bigger Picture: Taking your Product into Today’s Market” is set for Thursday, October 14, 2010. This month’s speaker is Corien Kershey, Director of Strategy at Marketing Magnitude. In case you haven’t attended this year, please note that Zone5ive has moved to the Brookstreet Hotel in Kanata (who put on a great lunch in September – thanks Brookstreet!).

3. Although technically not an October event, NeoInsight and OCRI are offering an early-bird discount (until 5pm on October 15th) for their Task Management Masterclass with Gerry McGovern in Ottawa on November 3rd (and Halifax on November 1st). Having attended a previous Gerry McGovern event, I expect this one will be a sell out too!

A quick round up of those I was able to catch:

• GovCamp Ottawa, our local version of GovCamp Canada: “an open environment for conversation about the role of municipal, provincial and federal governments in cultivating the growth and prosperity of Canada’s vibrant communities…”. My first ‘un-conference’, and an intriguing experience. After hearing from a kick-off panel, the audience created the agenda on the spot. I joined a debate about how valuable (or not) subject matter experts are in an open government model, a discussion about inter-jurisdictional (federal, provincial and municipal) applications and a session about how to measure the impact of open government data using examples and success stories. Overall though, my favourite part was the live Twitter feed during the panel itself; highly amusing to be part of a top-trending topic on Twitter for a day…

• “Winning the War on Google” featuring Rebecca Lieb, presented by the nascent Ottawa Web Marketing Club.ca. Rebecca has an impressive search pedigree and covered a lot of the fundamentals of search. Unfortunately, the most interesting material – the future of search – came at the end with little time left. She touched on implications of universal search e.g. the blending of search results – organic, news, images, video, social, etc. to illustrate why it’s – truly – no longer about rankings. Also, intriguing stats from comScore: “In early 2008, 17 percent of searches contained some type of blended result. In late 2008, it was 31 percent of all search results.” Look out marketers!

• “Social Media Marketing Experts Reveal All” with panelists Scott Lake from SWIX, Erin Blaskie, Lifestreamer (my new favourite word – see BabyCenter’s research segmenting social moms) and Michele Bedford-Thistle from Microsoft, presented by OCRI‘s, Zone5ive technology marketing speaker series. Each panelist had an extremely different take on social and how they’ve incorporated it into their professional selves and businesses. Finally – concrete evidence about why organizations don’t need to panic about the ‘right’ way to ‘do’ social.

There were still other events I was not able to attend, including:

• “Wikibrands – Reinventing Your Business in A Customer Controlled Marketplace”, featuring Sean Moffit and presented by SMB Ottawa (Social Media Breakfast Ottawa). For reasons that I’m unclear about, there’s no reference to the event on the SMB Ottawa web page,  but you can find the presentation on slideshare. Perhaps they are pure-Twitterists?

• MARCOM 2010 – “professional development and educational forum for public and not-for-profit marketers and communicators”

• Your Facebook Business Account – Turn “Fans” into Customers Session 3 of Using Social Media to Drive Business featuring Erin Blaskie, presented by the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce. Fortunately for me, Erin posted the presentation on slideshare.

If you were able to attend any of these, comment away – I’d be curious to hear what you learned at each.

And finally, although it not exactly an event, there is a deadline worth noting – CMA Ottawa is touting the fact that the entry deadline for the 2010 Canadian Marketing Associations Awards is June 24th, 2010.

Go Ottawa!

My intention is to explore a challenge faced by many organizations today – the struggle to stay relevant to an increasingly distracted group of stakeholders. All of us, and libraries in particular, need to take full advantage of any and all available tools to help us to build and remain connected to our communities.

In fact, for today’s library, the availability of online tools can be a double-edged sword – a profusion offering overwhelming opportunity. Should you use these tools to build an online community? Or are they best suited to build our ‘offline’ community? Or, should we stop trying to differentiate, and embrace “non-line” marketing – with thanks to http://www.nonlinemarketing.com – in our community building efforts?

Could your library use these online tools as a gathering place for book lovers? Or to harness enthusiastic members willing to increase non-member awareness of your library’s facilities and programs? Or to help identify potential donors, volunteers or Friends? What about using these tools to influence your community ‘influencers’? Which approach makes the most sense for your library?

On May 19th, I hope you’ll be able to join me in exploring examples of nonline communities and be inspired about ways you can use today’s online tools to enhance your library’s community building efforts.