Marketing Insights

Super-fast Content Curation: Scoop.it + HootSuite

internet.vision@yahoo.com (Administrator) — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 20:43:39 GMT

October 29th, 2012 | Author: Scoop.it

Social Media is easy. But only in theory.

When you get down to the practical things Social Media requires, you realize that a lot of them take time, require some special skills or are simply too complex to bother. While blogging and social networks have now been around for years, the truth is that for a lot of people, using Social Media in a professional way is still anything but a no-brainer; whether your job consists of running a business, pitching new customers, fundraising for a cause, educating students or coaching clients, it usually takes a good 100% of your time, so how can you “do Social Media” on top of that?

The key to solve this includes working on smarter workflows. At Scoop.it, for instance, we realized that having a suggestion engine combined with a bookmarklet for 1-click publishing greatly helped our users. And by adding features like the connections to the social networks they wanted or the ability to rescoop one another’s content, we have taken – and continue to take – steps towards making the whole Social Media Publishing workflow much simpler.

HootSuite is another company that has worked extensively on this workflow problem. By combining monitoring and cross-posting, they’ve built one of the most popular Social Media platforms to date with millions of professional users.

We’re therefore thrilled to be partnering with HootSuite today and to introduce the Scoop.it App for HootSuite. From now on, HootSuite users can combine the powerful stream layout that enables them to monitor various sources of content at once with Scoop.it’s easy content curation capabilities. This means more relevant content but also more visibility for this content when it’s published to your Scoop.it pages, whose topic-centric nature drives on average 3 clicks per visitor and greater discovery from Social and Search. Scoopiteers who already leverage topic-centric content curation to develop their visibility online can now diversify their sources of content by using HootSuite to monitor various content streams, including the topics they follow on Scoop.it or some specific Scoop.it searches to closely monitor their interests.

To install the Scoop.it App for HootSuite, login to HootSuite and visit the App Directory. Or visit this link directly once logged into HootSuite.

As you install the Scoop.it App, you can choose either one or both types of streams: your followed topics and/or a Scoop.it search. This means that you can now leverage Scoop.it’s topic-centric model to narrow down content on specific keywords and benefit from all the great work of the Scoop.it curators to identify the most relevant content you need.

You can add as many streams as you want by simply clicking the Add Stream button and going to Apps:

You’ll quickly build a customized version of your dashboard that helps you monitor at a glance all the streams you need:

But that’s not all!

From any of these streams (Scoop.it, Twitter or Facebook), you can now easily curate content to your Scoop.it topics and benefit from the additional visibility and engagement they will drive.

- Scoop links within tweets:

- Rescoop from your followed topics or your Scoop.it searches:

Give thanks, share directly to your HootSuite connected networks: it’s all there in one place.

Enjoy!

OPA Study Defines Today’s Smartphone User

internet.vision@yahoo.com (Administrator) — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 18:10:02 GMT

According to The Online Publishers Association, with Frank N. Magid Associates, over two-thirds of Smartphone owners reported that they “cannot live without” their Smartphones. 44% of the U.S. internet population, (107 million consumers), ages 8-64, owns a Smartphone, up from 31% in 2011, and is expected to reach 57% by Q2 2013.

Besides phone calls, 93% of Smartphone users regularly access content and information above any other activity, followed by:

Accessing the Internet (59%)
Checking email (58%)

The primary types of content Smartphone consumers access are:

Weather information (47%)OP
Video (31%)
Local news (29%)
National news (24%)

Pam Horan, President of the OPA, says “... consumers now expect the world at their fingertips anytime, anywhere... over half of Smartphone users (are) accessing content on a daily basis... (with) 24% of users reporting that they have purchased... content for viewing on their Smartphones... “

The study showed that 39% of the all Smartphone content consumers take action after seeing a Smartphone ad:

15% of all Smartphone content consumers have clicked through an advertisement
12% have used a special offer or coupon
12% have made a purchase either on a PC or at a store

According to the study, purchasers of Smartphone content were a much more engaged and active audience:

79% have taken action after seeing an ad
31% have clicked through an ad
30% have used a special offer or coupon
27% have made a purchase on a PC
24% have made a purchase at a store as a direct result of an ad

Horan adds, “... Smartphone content purchasers are a substantial subset of the general Smartphone population... 29% of Smartphone content purchasers indicate that Smartphone ads are eye-catching... 26% report that ads are relevant... 25% report that ads are unique and interesting... compared to 17%, 15% and 14%, respectively, for all Smartphone content consumers... ”

Other key findings from the study include:

96% of Smartphone content consumers downloaded apps in the past year averaging 36 apps, with 14% paid
22% of Smartphone content buyers have purchased video, 21% entertainment content, 21% books and 19% weather content
54% of multiple mobile device owners prefer using their Smartphone for at least one of a range of activities over PC/laptops and tablets.
68% of Smartphone users who watch video on their Smartphones regularly watch short-form news and entertainment videos: TV shows and weather clips
57% of those who watch videos on Smartphones watch user-generated content (e.g. YouTube)
84% of Smartphone are two-screen multitaskers (TV + mobile phone/tablet); 64% are three-screen multitaskers (TV + PC + mobile phone/tablet)

For more information, and access to the complete study with charts and graphs in a PDF file, please visit the Online Publishers Association here

Linkedin Guide To Top Marketing Firms in PDX

internet.vision@yahoo.com (Gabe Elliott) — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 01:07:27 GMT

Beer, Grimm, Portlandia, and "keeping it weird" are what make the city of Portland go round. But what about the advertising scene you ask? Portland, Oregon is not your typical advertising town. As a writer for The Portland Egotist put it, it's more like a small town that has been jammed full of creative scenesters that were forced to make ends meet by getting a job. Much less an advertising job. There are quite a few contenders that work under the gray cloud cover making some great work. Though we may not have 4000+ ad agencies and marketing firms that our neighboring city of San Fransisco has, we have our fair share.

If a Facebook "like" on your company page is somewhat of a statement of advocacy for your product or service, then the "followers" of a companies Linkedin page may tell us the measure of popularity from those within the business community.

The following list consists of companies which Linkedin has labeled as being in the marketing and advertising industry with actual headquarters in the Portland, Oregon area. I've broken the list into what I would consider big, medium, and small sized firms as well as a shout out to all those 1-9 person shops (to which there are many) and marketing software companies and ranked them in the order of number of Company Page followers. I'm sure there are many companies missing which offer marketing services and have a strong presence here in the area but in the spirit of local, I've chosen just those who are headquartered here.

The Big Players (or player)

Looking at the 500+ employee sized marketing agencies, there's just one who stands alone and anyone who lives here, knows who that is.

Wieden + Kennedy

18,476 followers

W+K was founded in 1982 and is an independently owned American advertising agency best known for its work for Nike. Founded by Dan Wieden and David Kennedy, and headquartered in Portland, Oregon, it is one of the largest independently-owned advertising agencies in the world. Over the past year, Wieden + Kennedy has expanded on its traditional marketing services and rebuilt new digital departments all around the network. These efforts are evident in terms of the breadth of work coming out of each office – from large-scale sites to flash experiences and web applications. It has expanded its experience of the social media world alongside additions to its strategy and planning teams.

The Mid-Sized Players

The list opens up for those companies in the 50-500 range. There were just over 20 companies listed in this field with the top 5 being the following.

CMD

1,217 followers

With an arsenal of specialized disciplines, CMD takes a synergistic approach to tackling the toughest marketing challenges in a new era of communications by using the right blend of powerful solutions—including digital, advertising, social media, PR, promotions, film and video and more. Headquartered in Portland, Ore., and ranked among the nation’s top 20 independent agencies, CMD works with some of the world’s leading brands including Microsoft, JELD-WEN, Intel, McCormick & Schmick’s, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, NW Natural and Timber Products. CMD also has offices in Seattle, San Francisco and New York.

HMH

730 followers

Founded in 1978, HMH is a full-service creative marketing communications agency lucky enough to call Portland, Oregon, and Charlotte, North Carolina home. Clients include globally-recognized brands as well as local favorites.

R2C Group

662 followers

R2C Group, the industry’s largest independent direct response advertising agency, offers clients a winning combination of creative and production, media-planning and -buying, as well as performance-based media for TV, online and mobile. For more than a decade, the team at R2C Group has been harnessing the power of TV for marketers to drive response, acquire customers, sell products, and build brands – ultimately providing the most efficient and effective advertising possible for its clients. Headquartered in Portland, Ore., with offices strategically located across the country, the agency’s clients include Adobe, bareMinerals, Humana Healthcare, NordicTrack, Rosetta Stone, Shark, TiVo and many others.

roundhouse

519 followers

Roundhouse is a creative agency which works across channels while always growing its digital roots. It has an assemblage of talent from many disciplines hellbent on providing clients and partners increased brand awareness and identity. Clients include large multinational corporations, local business all-stars, and up and coming organizations

Instrument

452 followers

Instrument is a Digital Creative Agency which offers video/ motion graphics, web development, e-commerce, digital campaigns, mobile/ tablet, branding, and social. Clients include, Livestrong, Google, and Xbox.

The Smaller Folks

With nearly 150 listed as having 11-50 employees, it's clear that the majority of marketing firms here in Portland are on the smaller side. Below are the top 10 as ranked by followers.

Anvil Media, Inc.

564 followers

On the top of the list is Anvil Media, Inc. (Anvil), a search engine marketing (SEM) agency specializing in search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) management, search engine marketing public relations (SEM PR), online reputation management (ORM) and social media marketing (SMM) services. Anvil has been recognized by the Portland Business Journal as a Lighthouse Award winner for ranking on its 100 Fastest Growing Companies list five consecutive years and has has made the Inc. Magazine 500|5000 Fastest Growing Company list for the second consecutive year. Current clients include Advantis Credit Union, Icebreaker, International Rescue Committee (IRC), Lucy, Oregon State University, Provenance Hotels, Right Management, SEMA, Seminole Gaming, TEKsystems, The Nature Conservancy and Travel Portland.

NORTH

480 followers

A brand advertising and content agency born in 2006. North helped launch Subaru’s 2012 Impreza and includes recent clients Clif bars and Dick’s Sporting Goods. Driven by that and other business, the agency’s staff has doubled to 24 in the past two years, according to Ray.

Pop Art, Inc.

386 followers

Established in 1997, Pop Art is a full-service digital agency with a collection of proven marketing strategists, designers and software engineers.Clients include companies big and small, from local to international brands, as well as non-profits and government entities.

DHX Advertising

379 followers

Founded in 1998, DHX Advertising is a full-service marketing agency that provides strategic marketing and communications at all levels, from business cards to "tweaking" a website, with many offerings in-between: ad design and media placement, marketing communications strategy, photography, signage, displays and packaging.

Sasquatch Advertising

343 followers

Sasquatch is a full-service advertising and marketing communications firm specializing in outdoor products and services, travel and tourism, and food and beverage. Founded in 1995, its clients include Widmer Brothers Brewing, Burgerville, Franz Bakery,Wiley X Eyewear, Northwest Community Credit Union, Oregon State University, College of Forestry, and North Clackamas Parks and Recreation Department.

Mutt Industries

325 followers

Mutt Industries is a full–service, creative agency whos founders come from a long line of well-known agencies like Wieden + Kennedy and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. Founded in just 2008, Mutt founders have capitalized on their years of relationships to gather their own A-list clients, including the NFL Network, Nike, Adidas and Coca-Cola soft drink Mello Yello.

eROI

315 followers

A digital agency who has won a variety of awards including Addys, a Cannes Lion, four AMA Max Awards, and a Marketing Sherpa Award for email. Ryan Buchanan has led the growth of eROI from a couple employees at its inception in 2002 to a full team of e-marketing experts, creatives, technical, account, and sales teams and has driven significant growth to earn eROI a spot as an Inc. 500 company.

Grady Britton

312 followers

GB opened in 1974 with its first client, Freightliner, still one of their clients today. Since then GB has partnered with hundreds of others—local, regional and national— including EartH2O, Gunderson, Better World Club, Flextronics, Daimler/SelecTrucks, Port of Vancouver, and Travel Portland.

R/West

290 followers

R/West provides marketing, public relations, and related services. They are best known for the Trunk Monkey commercials, which they created in collaboration with Limbo Films for Suburban Auto Group.The agency gained national attention as dealerships across the U.S. licensed the ads. Other clients include Burgerville, G.Loomis, Maryhill Winery, Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, and Taco Time. The company was founded in 1997 as Big Ads, and later changed its name to R/West.

Babcock & Jenkins

275 followers

Babcock & Jenkins is a full service direct and relationship marketing agency that combines web-based marketing with traditional agency services for the business-to-business market. B&J has worked with leading organizations, including Qwest, LinkedIn, BMC, Polycom, Ciena and Adobe since 1992.

The Single Digit Shops

Well over half of the marketing firms located here in Portland fall into this category. 380 of the 690 firms listed on Linkedin have less then 10 employees. Below are the top ten.

Amplify Interactive

280 followers

Amplify Interactive is a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) agency, offering search engine optimization (SEO), Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and related services like social media optimization, social media marketing & website analytics.

Formic Media, Inc.

226 followers

Formic Media is a search engine marketing (SEM) agency that provides affordable, localized SEM services for small business, including Web analytics, keyword research, competitive benchmarking, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) management and social media marketing.

Harlo Interactive

223 followers

Harlo Interactive is a full-service digital agency specializing in strategy, web design and development, content management solutions, custom application development, and corporate branding. Since 2004, Harlo has been teaming up with leading brands, both domestic and international, including Consumer, Business-to-Business, Agencies, and Non-Profit.

Fish Marketing

190 followers

Fish Marketing, a full service marketing & advertising agency, provides brand strategy, traditional advertising, digital marketing and more. If you are looking for well-coordinated TV, Radio, Print, PR, Web & SEO to present your brand in a recognizable and unified way, you've found the right agency. Fish Marketing specializes in serving small to mid sized Northwest businesses.

Rain

152 followers

David Savinar, RAIN’s founder and principal, has a 30-year record of directing advertising for Fortune 500 companies and smaller companies across the United States and internationally. Ten years ago he created RAIN to take advantage of a gap in direct marketing and online advertising in the Northwest. Rain has a robust client list including: Costco, IBM, Nestle, YMCA, and Nissan.

Magneto Brand Advertising

94 followers

Magneto Brand Advertising is a creatively-driven full service branding company with strategic planning, creative, account service, media, print and broadcast capabilities. They service brands on many levels–from traditional mediums like TV, print, outdoor and radio, to all things interactive and social.

SwellPath

91 followers

SwellPath is a Digital Marketing and Measurement agency which provides clients with enterprise-level analytics, optimization, usability, search, social and media services for improved customer acquisition and awareness.

Coexist Digital

89 followers

Coexist Digital is a new species of digital agency creating digital shopping experiences that live on mobile devices, tablets and desktops. It's new line of hosted software systems helps brands deliver quick-to-market shopping experiences. Clients:
Bath & Body Works, American Eagle, DSW, Lane Bryant, C.O. Bigelow, Victoria’s Secret, Pet360, Green Empowerment

Mambo Media, Inc.

89 followers

Mambo Media is an award winning, woman-owned Internet marketing agency. For over a decade, Mambo has delivered new media strategy and cutting-edge technology to our clients in the private and non-profit sectors. Mambo’s services include: Internet marketing (lead generation programs, internet public relations, ecommerce, social media marketing, etc.); website design (user-interface optimization, information architecture, content management system development, etc.), and professional services (branding and positioning, video production, logo development, etc.).

Kinesis, Inc.

62 followers

Kinesis specializes in branding professional services firms. This includes developing identity packages (logo, stationery, business cards), websites, and printed materials.

Marketing Software Companies

Marketing software has emerged as one of the must haves for marketing professionals. Combining the functionality of many tools marketers have come to rely upon – email, CRM, display media, search and social media - into a suite that makes it easy to develop, execute and track marketing programs, it’s no surprise that this category is growing rapidly. It also happens to be an area where Portland is seeing some huge growth. Some of the top players in Portland include:

Webtrends

2,581 followers

Establish in 1993, Webtrends offers a diverse products and services portfolio which includes real-time web analytics, unified digital analytics across mobile, social and web, optimization + testing, audience segmentation, targeting + scoring, mobile and social apps creation and Facebook Page management, professional consulting services and general digital marketing wizardry. It has a huge portfolio of more than 3,500 global brands including: The New York Times, Microsoft, BMW, RIM, China Telecom, China Mobile, CCTV, Tencent QQ, Hitachi, The Associated Press, HSBC, Barclays, Vivo Cellular and Petrobras.

Janrain, Inc.

898 followers

Founded in 2005, The Janrain User Management Platform (JUMP) helps organizations succeed on the social web by providing leading technology to leverage the popularity of social networks and identities for user acquisition, engagement, and enhanced customer intelligence. Solutions, include social login, social sharing, social profile data collection and storage, access to the social graph, game mechanics, and digital strategy services, which improve the effectiveness of online marketing initiatives for leading brands like Fox, Universal Music Group, Whole Foods, MTV, Purina, Avis and Dr Pepper.

Urban Airship

871 followers

Urban Airship helps the world's top brands do great things in mobile. As the most globally deployed service for push notifications, in-app purchases and subscriptions, Urban Airship enables thousands of enterprise organizations to deliver exceptional customer service experiences and better engage and monetize mobile app audiences. The company works with leading brands such as Accenture, CBS Interactive, Groupon, Macy’s, Soundtracking and Warner Bros.

Act-On Software, Inc.

397 followers

Act-On Software's cloud-based integrated marketing platform is built around a 3rd generation email marketing system, and featuring forms, landing pages, drip programs, social media prospecting, webinar management and the ability to automate critical marketing tasks, the Act-On integrated marketing platform generates rich analytics in real-time for your multi-channel online marketing campaigns. An adaptive behavioral scoring capability and a deep integration with Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, Microsoft Dynamics, and Sage SalesLogix enable Act-On to push only the most promising, sales-ready leads to your sales representatives. Their clients include: Motorola and Siemens, as well as rising stars like HA Advantage and BreakingPoint.

Ensequence

299 followers

Ensequence enables programmers, service providers and advertisers to increase programming ratings, advertising effectiveness and merchandise sales by making their shows and commercials more powerful and engaging with interactivity. The Ensequence iTV Manager® interactive platform solves the technical complexities associated with creating and deploying a high volume of uniquely branded interactive television experiences across cable, satellite, telco and connected devices. Ensequence’s customers include the largest and most innovative programmers and service providers in the media industry: NBCUniversal, MTV Networks, Showtime Networks, Turner Broadcasting, HBO, QVC, WE tv, MSG, Fuse, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Canoe Ventures, DISH Network and Verizon. In addition, Ensequence is deployed on multiple connected device platforms.

ShopIgniter, Inc.

284 followers

Founded in 2009, ShopIgniter is a rapidly growing, social Commerce software company which helps retailers and brands leverage the social web to extend their reach, promote products and generate revenue. ShopIgniter provides the sCommerce Suite of flexible products that include a Social Promotion Engine to power shareable coupons, group based promotions, referral and loyalty incentives, private and time-based sales; a fully transactional Facebook Storefront; and Commerce Influence analytics; all of which can power a stand-alone eCommerce business or be integrated with existing eCommerce systems.

There you have it. I'm sure the numbers will change over time and new contenders will come on the scene and grow like gangbusters as the latest and greatest. It will be interesting to see who thrives and who falls.

Gabe Elliott

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A Guide To Getting Started With Pinterest

internet.vision@yahoo.com (Administrator) — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 21:17:41 GMT

Besides now being the number three most-popular social network in the U.S., many companies indicate that Pinterest is more effective at driving traffic to their sites than even Facebook.

Pinterest is a social network that allows users to visually share, curate, and discover new interests by posting, also known as ‘pinning,’ images or videos to their own or others’ pinboards (i.e. a collection of ‘pins,’ usually with a common theme). Users can either upload images from their computer or pin things they find on the web using the Pinterest bookmarklet, Pin It button, or just a URL. Using a visual emphasis, the social network is very much focused on the concept of a person’s lifestyle, enabling you to share your interests and preferences with others and discover those of like-minded people.

As far as using Pinterest for your business:

Start with making boards on a specific topic which relates to your industry. Pinterest is about visual content so you will need to create pinboards that highlight your best visual content as well as promoting other users’ pins.
If people love your products, there’s a good chance you’ve already debuted on Pinterest. Here’s a trick: Check for yourself by going to pinterest.com/source/yourdomain.com to see the users pinning your photos. You may find that customers pin many photos, have photos that get re-pinned or liked, and even have some Pinterest followers comment on their pins.
Promote your account through other social networks as well as your website. Add the “Pinit” button to each of your products on your site. You can find it right here.
This infographic put together by Pinnable business provides information on how to optimize every pin you post — it includes best practices for sizing, linking, sharing and repining.
Engage with other users and follow those that you think may follow you back.

Some examples of how brands are using Pinterest to react, share, and convert:

Chobani’s Pinterest account doesn’t just feature its different yogurt types, but it also shares recipes of how users can use its products differently. Chobani also has a featured board called “Nothing but Good,” the company’s tagline, which only showcases fun and funny pictures that go along with its brand image; there’s no yogurt to be seen. In this way, Chobani is embracing the main goal of Pinterest -- to focus on the concept of a person’s lifestyle and encouraging users to share their tastes and interests with others and discover those of like-minded people.

With more than 100,000 followers, the online shopping website, Etsy, is one of the most popular on

Pinterest. As a retailer of homemade and vintage goods, Etsy creates pinboards that really take to heart what its brand stands for. They show you how you can make your own products and how to put their products to work in your daily life, which again, emphasizes the lifestyle philosophy that Pinterest promotes. They provide their customers with new ideas for how they can use their products to give them more reasons and incentives to buy from them.

Minted is a great example of a paper company that has created themed pinboards that show unique ways to use paper, mixed in with other related lifestyle photos, such as in its “Trick or Treat” Halloween board.

How to set up a LinkedIn company profile so a non employee can manage it

internet.vision@yahoo.com (Administrator) — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 19:22:04 GMT

Make sure you have an email address from your company domain. For example Joe@MyCompany.com is fine if your company web address is www.MyCompany.com, you cannot set up a company page with a Gmail, hotmail, yahoo or service provider email address – LinkedIn uses this as a way to weed out not-so-serious companies from the real and legitimate companies.
Add your company email address to your emails on LinkedIn
1. Login to your LinkedIn personal page
2. Scroll over your name in the top right corner
3. Select Settings
4. Beside Primary Email click the Change link (note: you do not have to set this email to be your primary email address)
5. Enter in your email address with the domain that matches your company website and click Add Email Address
6. Go to your email inbox and click the link in the confirmation email to validate the address
Claim your company page
1. From your LinkedIn personal profile click Companies at the top of the page
2. Select Add a Company from the top right of the Companies page
3. Enter the Company Name and the Email address from the company domain, click off the box to say you are an official representative of the business
4. Go to your email inbox and click the link in the confirmation email to validate the address
Assign a Designated User to manage your page
1. From your new company page select Designated users only
2. The person that will be managing your page must be on LinkedIn and you must already be connected; begin typing their name in the Manage Admins box, they should pop up
3. Click on their name to add them to the list of Admins
4. Add the required information for setting up a company page: Description, Company Type, Size, URL, Industry and Status (these can be edited by the Admin later but must be populated to activate the page)
5. Click Publish in the top right corner of the page
6. The new Admin will receive an email notification that they have been set up to manage the account
Follow me on Linkedin.
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What Types Of Facebook Campaigns Will Drive Earned Media?

internet.vision@yahoo.com (Administrator) — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 18:35:26 GMT

According to a recent Wildfire analysis of over 10,000 social media campaigns to see what types of campaigns generated the most earned media, the most entered campaigns are not the campaigns that generate the most earned media, or sharing activity. Certain campaign application types generate higher entry and participation rates (contests and sweepstakes for example), while other types are more likely to be shared via a news feed post or an invite to the app (pick-your-favorites, quizzes and trivia).

When 68% of Facebook users say that a recommendation from a Facebook friend would make them more likely to buy a specific product or visit a retailer, however, brands want all the earned media they can get, says the report.

Promotions are one of the most popular marketing methods on Facebook whether sweepstakes, contests, or coupons and more. The study reports a number of actionable results for social marketers, including the types of social marketing campaign that tend to get the highest participation rates, the different campaign types that get the highest sharing rates, and the common thread among campaign types that generates the most sharing with friends on Facebook.

In addition, other key findings from the study include:

Coupons, giveaways, and sweepstakes get the highest amount of entries on average.
“Pick-your-favorites,” quizzes and trivia that get the most shares by users, thus creating more earned media for the brand.
The campaign types that generate the most earned media are those that allow users to reveal personal preferences, tastes or opinions to their Facebook friends. These include pick-your-favorites, quiz and trivia applications.
People are equally as likely to enter contests and sweepstakes whether they heard about them directly from a brand or from a friend’s post. In other words, where a user learns about a contest or sweepstakes within Facebook does not impact the likelihood they will enter it.
The earned media generated by users sharing to their networks about interactions with these apps resulted in a significant conversion of new users— in other words, the earned media is working. For example, 82% of the users that clicked on a friend’s news feed post about a quiz they’d taken went on to take the quiz themselves.

On average, coupons, giveaways, and sweepstakes get the most entries and Facebook engagement. These campaigns are closely correlated with low barriers to entry (as in a sweepstakes), high-value perceived rewards (as with coupons), and the popularity of a “sure thing” (as with giveaways).

Most Entries And Facebook Engagement (What types of campaigns get the most entries?)
*Campaign*	*Average Entries*
Coupon	3,037
Giveaway	1,888
Sweepstakes	1,630
Favorites	1,070
Quiz	1,024
Trivia	410
Essay contest	398
Photo contest	381
Video contest	318
Source: Wildfire, May 2012

When earned media is the focus of the analysis, an entirely new set of high performing campaign types emerge, with an interesting commonality. The campaigns types that are most “shareable” are campaigns that include “pick-your-favorites,” quizzes, and trivia.

The most-shared campaign applications are designed to either:

Allow the user to discover an aspect of his personality of which he was previously unaware
Display facets of his personality that he knows about and wants to share

Most “Shareable” Campaigns (Rate of sharing by campaign type)
*Campaign*	*% of Respondents Selecting*
Pick your favorites	39%
Quizzes	32
Trivia contests	29
Sweepstakes	26
Essay contest	25
Photo contest	25
Coupons	19
Giveaway	15
Video contest	11
Source: Wildfire, May 2012

The most important question of all, says the report, is whether or not the shares generated by users get additional new users to engage with the branded campaign too. The analysis of earned media’s ability to draw additional users into engagement with a brand showed positive results: “pick-your-favorites,” survey, and quiz campaigns (that appear in users’ news feeds) have a high chance of being seen and clicked on by their friends.

Earned Media Click Rate (Which types of earned media news feed posts are clicked on most often?)
*Campaign*	*% Engaging*
Pick your favorites	27%
Quizzes	13
Trivia contests	10
Sweepstakes	11
Essay contest	1
Photo contest	3
Coupons	11
Giveaway	15
Video contest	2
Source: Wildfire, May 2012

The study reveals that 82% of the users that click on a news feed post, shared by a friend who took a quiz, will go on to take that quiz themselves. This indicates that when a user’s attention is piqued by the news feed, the engagement potential is very high.

Earned Media Click-To-Entry Conversion Rate (When a user clicks on earned media, how often do they go on to enter the campaign themselves?)
*Campaign*	*% Entering Campaign*
Pick your favorites	27%
Quizzes	82
Trivia contests	69
Sweepstakes	66
Essay contest	47
Photo contest	23
Coupons	74
Giveaway	74
Video contest	13
Source: Wildfire, May 2012

The report says that earned media can account for up to a 12% boost in engagement rates, which means viewing, clicking and participating with a campaign.

For Display Ads Clicks Have “Nearly Zero” Correlation With Conversion

internet.vision@yahoo.com (Administrator) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 21:19:01 GMT

New Research from Pretarget and comScore Suggests that Buyer Conversion is More Highly Correlated with Ad Viewability and Hover than with Clicks or Gross Impressions

PR Newswire

SAN FRANCISCO and RESTON, Va., April 24, 2012

SAN FRANCISCO and RESTON, Va., April 24, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, and Pretarget, the intent targeting company, today released results of an online advertising study which found that ad viewability and hover time are more strongly correlated with conversions (defined as purchases and requests for information) than clicks or total impressions.

"Your ad being seen matters more than your ad being clicked – if you have a back-end conversion metric," said Pretarget Founder Keith Pieper. "After all, what good is an ad that can't be seen? It's intuitive that an ad must be seen to make an impact, and it's even more intuitive than someone hovering and engaging with an ad might convert, even absent a click."

Research Methodology & Approach
To arrive at these initial findings, Pretarget analyzed 263 million impressions over nine months across 18 advertisers in numerous verticals. Pretarget used comScore validated Campaign Essentials™ (vCE) to collect viewability and hover data and a DSP to collect click and cookie-based conversion data. Pretarget then performed a Pearson correlation analysis of the data, including gross impressions, "views" (75 percent of ad within screen, either above the fold or after scrolling)*, time in-view, hover/engagements and total hover/engagement time, clicks and conversions.

Traditional display ad impression measurement and reporting simply verifies the number of ads that were sent by an ad server to a user's browser. For a variety of reasons, this way of counting impressions does not ensure that the ad ever rendered within a browser. In addition, ads can load below the fold (requiring a user to scroll down), which means that most users will probably never see the ad unless they scroll down. In the worst cases, some ads load within 1x1 pixels and therefore never render as viewable impressions.

Research Findings Show Ad Hover Most Highly Correlated with Conversion
The research findings indicate that the traditional way of buying mass impressions and hoping for conversions (aka "spray and pray") is not the most effective approach. The results showed that ad hover/interaction (correlation = 0.49) and viewable impressions (correlation = 0.35) had highest correlation with conversion, while gross impressions (correlation = 0.17) was significantly lower. Perhaps most interestingly, clicks (correlation = 0.01) had the lowest correlation with conversion, far under-performing all other metrics analyzed in the study. These findings suggest that advertisers and media planners ought to break their addiction to clicks and instead look to more meaningful metrics for evaluating campaign performance.

"The Pretarget study helps illuminate several critically important findings for the digital advertising community," said Kirby Winfield, SVP of Corporate Development, comScore. "First, it once again demonstrates the perils of relying on click-throughs for measuring the performance of display ad campaigns, with this metric showing virtually zero correlation with total conversions. Secondly, it highlights why the viewable impression – which is now easily measurable through vCE – is significantly more meaningful than the unvalidated impression. Finally, this study shows why other non-click metrics of engagement, such as interaction or hovering, may be much more important in evaluating campaign performance than the click ever was. It's time to start measuring the impact of campaigns using metrics that really matter, not just the ones that are most easily measured."

The Pretarget analysis supports several third party studies with consistent conclusions. MediaMind "2009 Benchmark Report" released in July 2010 found that "on average, increasing Dwell [hover] from 5% to 15%, increases conversion rate by 45%, from 0.4% to 0.6%." Casale Media's 2011 "Ad Visibility Report," found that "ads appearing above the fold were 6.7x more effective at generating conversions than those appearing below the fold."

Pretarget previously found that approximately 89 percent of display ads on its network load above the fold or appear after a user scrolls down, creating an opportunity for a user to see the banner. Pretarget's position paper is available for download at http://www.pretarget.com

To participate in additional research as part of a broader study, please contact info@pretarget.com

*The Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) defines "in-view" as 50%+ of the pixels of an ad being visible in the browser, and comScore vCE adheres to this definition for its typical definition of "in-view". The Pretarget studies, however, used a more conservative in-view requirement of 75% visibility.

About Pretarget
Pretarget offers keyword based intent ad targeting using patented and patent-pending internet search and behavioral algorithms that reach users "ahead of the click". Pretarget's hybrid contextual-behavioral targeting complements existing search and retargeting campaigns with custom keyword based segmentation. No site tagging is needed. Pretarget is well suited for online advertisers who have maxed out search, find site retargeting offers little scale, are fiercely competitive and see the value of an ad impression.

About comScore validated Campaign Essentials (vCE)
vCE is a holistic solution for complete campaign delivery validation and in-flight optimization. Unlike existing single-point solutions, vCE provides an unduplicated accounting of impressions delivered across a variety of dimensions, such as ads delivered in-view, to the right audience, in the right geography, in a brand safe environment and absent of fraudulent delivery. vCE reports on reach and frequency, comprehensive demographics and behavioral segments. This measurement eliminates all impressions that never had a chance to make an impact, providing a more realistic and accurate picture of campaign delivery.

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital marketing intelligence. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.

SOURCE comScore, Inc.

8 Google Feature Tips For Google Analytics

internet.vision@yahoo.com (Administrator) — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 22:12:01 GMT

Wanted to share a great article compliled by Lars Lofgren, an online marketer specializing in copywriting, conversion optimization, and analytics. Follow him on Twitter @larslofgren or on his marketing blog

Below, you’ll find the 8 critical features that will help you get every possible insight out of Google Analytics. You’ll know whether or not your site is worth the effort, how to protect yourself from corrupted data, and how to evaluate all of your marketing efforts. To figure out how to grow your business, you’ll need to activate each of these features.

1. Ecommerce Tracking

Don’t you want to know where your most profitable customers come from? With ecommerce tracking, you’ll know right where they came from so you’ll be able to brainstorm ways to find more. Nearly every report in Google Analytics can be switched to an ecommerce version so you can see exactly how you’re making money. If there’s only one thing you set up in Google Analytics, it needs to be ecommerce tracking.

Obviously, feel free to skip this one if your customers aren’t purchasing anything from your site.

To set up ecommerce tracking:

Go to your Google Analytics standard reports
Click on the “Admin” button in the top right
Click on “Profile Settings”
Go to “Ecommerce Settings” and change the drop down to “Yes, an Ecommerce Site”
Click the “Apply” button at the bottom.

Now the hard part starts.

You see, we have to connect the ecommerce part of your site to Google Analytics and send all the important data like which items were purchased and their prices. But this isn’t easy. Your best bet is to find you friendly neighborhood developer/engineer/code wizard and buy him or her a case of PBR (or whatever their favorite beverage is) to connect everything for you. You’re going to want help with this.

If you feel particularly courageous, you can get the gritty details on ecommerce tracking from Google here. Be warned, this is not for the faint of heart.

Isn’t there an easy way to set up ecommerce tracking?

There is, as long as your site is built on the right platform. Shopify will automatically pass ecommerce data to Google Analytics once you connect them together. All you have to do is give Shopify your Google Analytics property ID, turn ecommerce tracking on in Google Analytics, and you’re done.

There are also plugins for WordPress that will do this like Cart66. Once again, give Cat 66 your property ID, turn on ecommerce tracking, and you’re all set. I don’t have personal experience with connecting other WordPress ecommerce plugins to Google Analytics so I can’t vouch for other options.

When you’re shopping around for an ecommerce cart or WordPress plugin, make sure that it easily integrates with Google Analytics. This is one of the most important features to have.

What about Paypal?

Honesty time: Paypal does not play nice. I never found a reliable way to pass data from Paypal to Google Analytics. I haven’t been successful but hopefully you will. If you’ve pulled it off, definitely let me know in the comments. I’d love to hear how you did it!

2. Goals

With a bit of creativity, you can tag just about anything you want as a goal. But why do we love goals so much? Because they’re how Google Analytics tracks conversions.

And conversions pay the bills.

To figure out what you should be tracking, start with the most critical element (yes, singular) of your site. Are you looking for leads? What about newsletter signups? Do you have a site that sells ad space by the page view? Whatever keeps the lights on is what you want to track. If you’re just starting, keep it simple and focus on a single goal. Worry about everything else later.

To reach the goal settings:

Go to your Google Analytics standard reports
Click on the “Admin” button in the top right
Click on “Goals”
From one of the Goal sets, click “+ Goal” (goal sets are just a way for you to easily group goals)

You’ll first need to decide what kind of goal you want Google Analytics to track.

URL Destination: Tracks a goal when people visit a specific URL.
Visit Duration: Tick off a goal every time someone spends a certain amount of time on your site.
Pages/Visit: Set a threshold for a number of page views that will set off a goal during a visit.
Event: You’ll need to define an event by adding a snippet of code to your site. Once Google Analytics is tracking the event, then you can set it as a goal. See Google’s Event Guide for the lowdown.

If you’re looking to build one of Google Analytics fabled goal funnels, select URL destination, define the goal URL (the final URL that you want people to reach), check “Use funnel”, and punch in the preceding URLs of your funnel. Here’s what the final settings look like:

3. AdWords

If you’re using AdWords, you’ll need to connect it to your Google Analytics account. AdWords has a wealth of data that you’re paying for, you need to make the most of it. If you don’t take the time to set everything up correctly, your paid search traffic can be reported as organic search traffic.

Step 1: Enable Auto-Tagging in Google AdWords

This tells AdWords to tag each of your links which will tell Google Analytics that the visitor came from AdWords.

Log in to AdWords
Click on the “My Account” Tab, then “Preference”
Make sure Auto-tagging is set to yes. If not, click “edit” and check “Destination URL Auto-tagging”

Step 2: Link Google AdWords and Google Analytics

This will import all your other juicy Google AdWords data into Google Analytics.

But sadly, this is a tad buggy right now. My best guess is the recent UI changes to Google Analytics v5 haven’t been completely streamlined with Google AdWords. Generally speaking, you follow these steps:

Log in to AdWords
Click on the “Tools and Analysis” tab, then “Google Analytics”

Normally, you’ll see a screen asking you if you want to create a new Google Analytics account or if you want to use an account you already have. Select the “already-have-one” option, pick the Analytics account you want to connect to, and you’re all set.

During the past week, I wasn’t able to get the setup to work with Google Analytics v5 at all. So try using the old version (click the link in the top right) of Google Analytics and it should give you access to the setup process.

You can also find your AdWords settings in Google Analytics v5 here:

Log in to Google Analytics, click “New version” at the top if you’re not already there
Click “Admin” in the top right
Select your Google Analytics account
From the list of tabs at the top, click “Data Sources”

4. Site Search

What if you could find out what people think is missing for your site? That’s easy. Just connect your Google Analytics account to your internal site search and you’ll have a list of every keyword people search for on your site. You’ll know exactly what they think is missing and what they have trouble finding.

To set up site search:

Go to your Google Analytics standard reports
Click on the “Admin” button in the top right
Click on “Profile Settings”
Go to the bottom where you’ll find “Site Search Settings”
Select “Do Track site Search”

Now you need to find out how your site identifies internal search terms. Your site uses what’s called a query parameter for this. We need to make sure Google Analytics knows to look for the same query parameter and identify them as internal search terms.

How to Find Your Search Query Parameter

Go to your website and search for something. On the search results page, look at your URL and find your search term.

For example, I get this URL if I search for “google analytics” on the KISSmetrics blog.

Before the search term, there’s an “=” and the letter “s”. The “s” is the query parameter for the KISSmetrics Blog site search. Now your letter might be different (it’s usually “s” or “q”) and you may even have a complete word like “search”. The key is to look for your search term and find the letter or word before the “=”.

Once you know what letter or word your search query parameter is, plug it into the Query Parameter box in the Site Search Settings of Google Analytics.

If you’re not already stripping other URL parameters from your URLs to clean up your data, don’t worry about doing that here. Feel free to leave the “Strip query parameters from your URL” box unchecked.

Check the “Search Categories” box if your search field has a way for people to search within a category on your site (through a drop down for example). If you do, you’ll need to figure out the category parameter the same way that we just figured out the search query parameter. Otherwise, leave it unchecked and apply your changes.

You’re all done. Once it’s connected, all you have to do is wait for the data to come in, find the trends, and fix what your customers have trouble with.

5. Campaigns

Measuring the ROI of search traffic is great. But it’s even more important to measure the ROI of all your marketing campaigns. After all, you’re spending money and time on them. We need to know if it’s worth it.

Google Analytics will track any URL that you can edit. Emails, Facebook, banner ads, you can track it all.

It’s also super easy to set campaigns up. There’s no settings on your profile to manage and no new reports to activate. All you have to do is start building campaign URLs via Google’s URL Builder tool.

Enter in your domain and some basic info about the link so you can keep track of it in your Campaign reports:

Source – What domain are you placing the link on? Which email list?
Medium – Use things like banner ad, PPC, affiliate, email etc.
Term – This is for paid keywords but in general, you won’t use this because there’s a better way to connect Google Analytics to AdWords.
Content – Use this to separate different versions of the same ad.
Name – This is how you’ll easily differentiate groups of ads in your reports. Google groups campaign links by name so this is the first item you’ll see in your reports, make sure you can tell what the link is from here without having to look at any of the other info.

Punch everything in, grab your new link, and drop it wherever you want. When people use the link to access your site, it’ll come up under the campaign you defined.

Don’t worry about adding campaign URLs to AdWords, your ads get tagged automatically if you’ve enable auto-tagging and connected AdWords to Analytics.

6. Safety Net Profiles

What happens if you have a typo in one of your filters? Or you set up your goals incorrectly and don’t catch it until 3 weeks later? That mistake will corrupt your Google Analytics data as long as it’s in use. So what can you do to make sure you always have a backup plan?

You want to create two additional profiles for your Google Analytics account that will protect you from data corruption.

The Raw Data Profile

This profile does exactly what it sounds like. Set up a new profile, name it Raw Data, and never touch it again. That’s it. Don’t apply filters, set goals, or change the settings in any way.

The purpose of your Raw Data Profile is to silently collect data in the background and serve as a last resort if something goes horribly wrong on your other profiles. You’ll have a set of data to work with and depend on no matter what happens.

The Test Profile

Before rolling out new settings on your main profile, test them on a junk profile that you never use for analysis. This way, you’ll be able to experiment with settings as much as you want and you’ll never have to worry about corrupting your data.

Set your Test Profile up with the exact same settings as your main profile so you can see exactly how they’ll change your real data. If the test goes well, apply the new setting to your main profile. If something goes wrong, keep making changes until everything works or remove the new settings altogether.

How to Create a New Profile

This takes no time at all:

Go to your Google Analytics standard reports
Click on the “Admin” button in the top right
Click on “New Profile” on the right
Name your profile, then select your country and time zone
You’re done, apply any settings you want

Word of Caution: Every account on Google Analytics is limited to 50 profiles. For most people, this isn’t a problem. But if you have a bunch of different website, you can hit this limit pretty quickly. Rumor has it that you can petition this limit and get it raised but I wouldn’t count on it. You’ll probably be forced to split your sites up between different accounts or avoid creating any new profiles.

7. Filters that Exclude Internal Traffic

Google Analytics collects data on every visitor (as long as they have cookies and javascript enabled) and that includes you. And if you’re constantly checking your site, tweaking details, and updating content, a sizable portion of your overall traffic could be you and your team.

This will skew every metric in your reports. Instead of gaining insights about your customers, you’ll learn how you behave on your own site. And the way you use your site is going to be VERY different than how your customers use your site.

But never fear, you can exclude all of your internal traffic to your own site. We’ve already posted a great step-by-step tutorial for how to set up filters that exclude internal traffic.

Use your newly created Test Profile and make sure you’ve set everything up correctly. To verify it, just compare the traffic from your state/country between your main profile and the test profile. If the filters are doing what they’re supposed to, you’ll see less traffic from your location. Go ahead and apply the same filter to your main profile when you know it’s working.

8. SEO Reports via Google Webmaster Tools

Google recently released a batch of SEO reports for Google Analytics. They help you see how you perform within Google’s search rankings. Previously, we could only get data on which keywords people click through on. Now, we can also see what Google sees:

Which keywords give us the most impressions
What our click through rates are
How we rank for individual keywords (and our average position)
Click through data for our top landing pages

But we have to jump through a few hoops to get the SEO reports activated. You’ll need to activate Google Webmaster Tools on your site and connect it to your Google Analytics account. Check out the KISSmetrics Beginner’s Guide to Google Webmaster Tools for help on how to set up GWT for the first time.

And the KISSmetrics 2012 Guide to Google Webmaster Tools will show you how to connect Google Analytics to GWT (it’s towards the bottom of the post).

About the Author: Lars Lofgren is an online marketer specializing in copywriting, conversion optimization, and analytics. Learn how to grow your business at his marketing blog. Follow him on Twitter @larslofgren.

A Visual History of Advertising

internet.vision@yahoo.com (Administrator) — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:59:45 GMT

Here's a cool little illustration of the history of advertising, the advertising timeline dates back to 2000BC when Egyptians first invent outdoor advertising by carving public notices in steel, to the year 2011 where online advertising worldwide becomes second in budget priority, typically at the expense of print and radio.

The illustration was created by/for InfoLinks.

How To Set Up A Facebook Welcome Page

internet.vision@yahoo.com (Administrator) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:23:00 GMT

Your Facebook landing page (also known as your “welcome” page) is the first thing people see when they come to your Fan page. If a person goes to your Fan page and the first thing they see is your wall, they are much less inclined to engage with you or "like" your page than if the go to your landing page first. The reason is that your landing page can tell them exactly what you want them to do. You’re landing page can list an offer that is more enticing because it is bright and colorful, it can point directly to the “like” button requesting that they become a Fan, or it can use video to excite viewers or encourage them to interact with your business.

Thanks to applications like Static HTML, MyTab and iwiPage, it’s easy to create a "reveal tab" welcome page. Check out the fan page for Hungry Microbes to see this in action. Here’s how to set up a Facebook reveal tab welcome page.

Static HTML

1. Add the Static HTML Application to your Facebook Page

Go to the Static HTML Application then click on "Go to App in the upper right. This will take you to the apps page. Once there, click on the" Add Static HTML To A Page" button.

2. Edit the “Welcome” Tab

Head over to your Facebook fan page, and find the “Welcome” link in the left-hand sidebar under the page image. You can create a regular custom tab by only filling in the top text box. Or, you can create a reveal tab by placing the pre-fan content in the top text box, and the fan-only content in the bottom text box.

Your default content should be something that encourages users to like your Facebook page, possibly by using something like an incentive, discount, or exclusive content

Your reveal content should provide your new fans with whatever you were offering, such as something to download, a discount code, or a link to the exclusive content. You might also want to thank people for liking your page.

3. Edit the Tab Title

Go to your Facebook page and click the “Edit Page” button on the top-right corner.

Then click “Apps” on the sidebar.

Then scroll down the page until you see the Static HTML application.

Clicking “Edit Settings” will bring up a lightbox on which you can edit the name of your tab. Type in your tab’s name, click “Save,” and then click “Okay”.

4. Make your Reveal Tab the Default Tab

You’ll want to make sure that your new reveal tab is the first thing that visitors see when they have not yet liked your Facebook page. To do this, go back to Edit Page, then click “Manage Permissions.” In the Default Landing Tab dropdown, select your new reveal tab.

Additional Apps

My Tab

Go to http://facebook.com/revealtab, and click on "Go to App". From there, simply click on the "Get Started" button and install.

This application follows all the same steps as mentioned above but has an additional "HTML Tips" tab which offers some great help to those new to HTML coding.

iwiPage

iwiPage. This app offers several very short tutorials to help you get up and running as well as easy to use drag and drop scripts to easily upload images and content. No coding required.

That’s it! Some easy ways to set up an awesome welcome tab on your Facebook page that encourages people to like your page.