Category: Social media marketing

The bosses at Getty had a meeting.

And decided that too many of these geeky, internet types

were using their images without attribution.

So they put their boffins to work

And they came up with the idea of using the “iframe” tag, just like Youtube videos.

Now that’s interesting, and a lot of fun.

Because we can create better content and more interesting websites, in exchange for giving exposure to the Photo agency.

Of course the photographer may lose out, but just as the music business has had to adapt to the changing landscape, so must photo libraries.

Read more about it on the BBC

For me, Living on a Prayer is the, Bon Jovi song.

When creating content you have to be aware of cultural connotation

A connotation is frequently described as either positive or negative, with regards to its pleasing or displeasing emotional connection

Some people will have not watched Spinal tap, and some may not have even heard of it. Which means the headline above will be lost on them. They will also not get the reference from the BBC iPlayer, which goes to 11 on their volume scale.

It’s important to be aware that some will not only have a different emotional connection to the stuff you are putting out, but also will not even know anything about the stuff you are putting out.

Most get away with this by simply running with their own tribe and thus they share the same cultural capital as talked about by the French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu. Note: It is a proven fact if you quote a French Sociologist, you will seem more intelligent than you actually are.

If you are creating content for others, and for tribes that you are not a member of, you need to aware that the reader may not know what you are talking about. This is why most blog content is very shallow and broad in tone.

The headline above will resonate most with those whose formative years were in the 80’s, and by definition represent a distinct target group, ie those with, Mortgage, kids leaving home, divorce, overweight, etc. This of course is a generalised list but represents high probability.

So, think twice about creating content that refers to the second verse in “Love will tear us apart”, by Joy Division, if you are marketing to 18 year olds in Midwest America.

The Joy Division video balances the Bon Jovi video just right.

Read a very interesting article over at Marketingweek.co.uk written by Mark Ritson, about fickle teens, and came across a great quote

Do you really imagine that Facebook will remain the de-facto social media standard by the time today’s 13-year-olds exit the teenage segment in 2020? Do you really believe Facebook is somehow immune from the same disease that infected MySpace?

The writer goes on to say.

The data supporting a teen defection from Facebook remains qualitative at this stage. I am certainly in no position to suggest that Facebook is already losing teen users or that they are already spending less time on the site. But the key lesson from Abercrombie is that while Facebook’s teen downfall may not yet be upon us, it is nonetheless inevitable and will be expeditious once it begins.

There is a saying in share trading, “trying to buy at the bottom of the market is like trying to catching a falling knife”.

Likewise basing your business decisions on if and when a particular social media system is no longer worth the ROI is not very efficient and you could easily get stabbed in the back of the hand by the falling knife.

Google trends reporting for searches based on in quotes, “Facebook is Dead”.

We cannot predict when the fall from grace will happen, but we can design our online marketing strategy to be nimble, fast and adaptable. If you are told, “you need to get ready for change.”

You are listening to the wrong people.

Change has to be in your DNA.

When things move online they move fast, you need to be adaptable. If you think, “I’ve marketed on Facebook, it’s been good to me so I will always market on FB.” You will be dead.

Adaptability should be hard wired into your online marketing plan.

It should seep into your content marketing strategy to take advantage of techniques like Newsjacking, where you need to act swift and decisively.

The image is of Shackleton, a man who was able to adapt to enormous changes in his situation and survive a disasterous journey to the South Pole. You can get a great book about his journey, Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage to the Antarctic

Afflink attached.

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I doubt there is anyone reading this that is not already at least aware of the hit US TV series, Breaking Bad. You probably already know that the last 8 episodes ever are about to be broadcast on August 11th. Even the BBC are newsjacking a show that is not on their network.

But what has this got to do with seo?

Well, we publish content around what people are talking about to get their attention and engage them.

Although I use the term “seo” in its broadest terms.

What I am really talking about is publishing and networking or even content marketing. The debate about “seo” is currently a topic in the industry. http://insocialwetrust.wordpress.com/2013/08/01/were-missing-the-point/ which we can comfortably leave to others a the moment.

Lets explore the reason of whether you should newsjack Breaking Bad.

The problem
You have a website where you need to increase the rankings in Google for specific webterms.

The Objective
Produce attractive, engaging content that gets links, social signals and branding awareness.

The Solution
Publish content on your website about the Breaking Bad show and promote

How do we implement the solution?

The key is in the word “publish”, get rid for a moment of all those fancy pants marketing terms and stick with the basic concept that you are going to publish something and other people are going to experience it and react to it.

It is vital you keep the approach to the creation process as simple as possible and deal with the fundamentals.

Implementation should not be looked at as a one off thing. You need to build a publishing machine, because the competition for attention online has become such that you need to have the most efficient process possible.

It is no longer about producing that one great piece of content, it’s about publishing a continuous stream of great content that gives a good return on investment.

Therefore any solution that is implemented should be part of a wider process, You implement the solution by first building a process to that can efficiently solve this and any future publishing problems.

This raises the issue of content management. Having run a number of large budget operations I know that you have to organise your infrastructure similar to that of a tabloid newspaper. You then have to optimise every link in the chain, trim the fat and make sure the right people are doing the right thing.

But the process is the same, whether you are an in-house seo with a staff of 100 or a piratical, death dealing, do or die affiliate marketer who builds his website whilst downloading Breaking Bad on Piratebay.

Agencies too are no different, it does not matter that you have multiple clients. The solution is always going to be the same, the process is the same for any client but produces a different output.

It’s actually very simple

• Establish your ability and resources
• Develop a realistic objective
• Create and publish the content
• Promote the content
• Use content to further build network and resources

One person can and often does do this, but larger websites have to delegate specific actions to specific people who have a certain skill set. This can be done both in-house and outsourced. I know of many one man bands who outsource everything and basically run a large agency in the cloud.

The problem suddenly becomes one of management and quality control, this can be alleviated with giving well defined tasks that are simple enough to understand and to track.

The bad news is, this is now the default setting. You have to have a publishing machine behind you to compete on a level that is going to make you a decent living if going solo.

And larger organisations need to build the publishing machine at the core of their marketing operations.

Newsjacking is one component of a content marketing strategy, a strategy that must be underpinned by a road map that has been thought out and designed by someone familiar with such things.

I’ve put together several Content Marketing, Road Maps for clients, they are not cheap and require a huge blob of time thrown at them. But it’s amazing the results a publishing machine can get when it is heading in the right direction, knows its destination and knows when it has arrived.

In future posts I will be talking about how to build your publishing machine and how to create a content marketing roadmap.

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Some very interesting things have been happening in my coaching group. Although it is focussed on linkbait, it seems to becoming more of a PR coaching group. Lots of back and forth about how to contact journalists and get them to write nice things about us and a real thirst for helping build a social media following.

In fact, I would say that getting a following on social media is the next biggest thing after help creating killer headlines.

I have difficulty with this though, because I find it so easy to navigate the rapids of social media I kinda expect everyone else to. But we all have our skill set, and sharing killer techniques and methods between people with other killer skill sets is the best way to learn.

My social media networking skills were being honed long before social media existed or even the World Wide Web. Writing poetry gave me the skill to be able to crack off a rich, terse, to the point Tweet. Cracking sarcastic one liners at the back of the class gave me the snarky humour that sometimes can get you noticed in crowded places and being an avid fan of Encyclopedia Britannica when I was a kid gave me obscure references to the seemingly unrelated allowed me to appear a lot more intellectual than I actually am.

But I would say that the most important thing I learned about success in social media is from sex.

Not actual sex, but the part of the brain that drives us. (Apologies if you were expecting some 50 Shades of Grey Action)
I figured out at the right age that getting girls was not really about being the best looking or the richest. But being able to simply ask a girl out. The more you asked the more you succeeded. Sure you fall flat on your face often. But the burning shame of being told “No” to, was worth it for the ones who said yes.

I had no shame, because I was focussed on the positive results, not the failure rate.

I realised that other guys who never seemed to get the girls simply couldn’t deal with the pain of being told no to. So they just didn’t ask, which to me seemed bonkers. They seemed to expect a 100% conversion rate.

If I can now turn your attention away from sex and to social media, just for a minute.

It’s the same thing when building a social media network. People hate being told no, they hate the defollow, they hate not being noticed and not being retweeted and bewail the fact that nobody seems listen. When the reality is, they never really asked anyone to listen to them or took chances on revealing the good stuff.

It’s not that it takes balls to put it all out there, it’s more about not caring if people don’t give a toss. Because for everyone who things your are a jumped up little turd, with pretentions of grandeur. There are going to be others who think the sun shines out of your assiduously crafted Tweets.

The point is, get out there do stuff, and ignore the rejections. Action is the key to effective social media networking.

Remove or keep digg in your FB timeline?

Digg.com has been rebooted, as they say.

They’ve done a few odd things, like deleting 14 million indexed links which have caused sharp intakes of breathes from seo people.

You have to understand that whilst it seems that some actually care about digg as a website and business, what they are really objecting to is that digg may not worth bothering about when it comes to manipulating helping stories that benefit themselves.

Gaming digg became a rather profitable cottage industry in its day. And we are looking to see if it’s going to be worth investing resources to start gaming it again. I’m thinking no, but that could change.

Whilst I think the site as a business is going to achieve a decent ROI for its owners, I don’t think it has that radical edge that uber social media geeks need to get passionate about.

Sites like this need passion, as the reality is without it they are just lumps of crafted digital data with an advertising banner on top. It needs rabid fans.

Right now it feels a little plastic and has certainly not get the crowd raving on their swivel chairs.

Also, the Facebook curse has fallen upon it, causing you to only be able log in whilst letting your mates know exactly what you are up to.

Makes you thankful for fake Facebook accounts, of which Facebook has plenty of. This may end when Facebook insists on entering our genetic code to open an account.

As a place to find interesting stuff, it’s mildly interesting. Led me to a story about illegal Olympic WiFi detection, which is useful as there is a potential to create linkbait for a client out of that story.

I say, don’t ditch digg just yet. Keep one eye on it, but with a fake FB account.

A few years ago I made the joke about Google buying digg.com and turning it into an affiliate site for gardening products.

After Google has now become a credit card affiliate and giving itself preferred ranking in its search engine it seems it is now competing with the very same sites it has indexed in its search engine.

Moneysupermarket.com gets a third of its revenue from Google organic searches and investment analysts are warning that Googles move into making money from credit card sales could wipe out two-thirds of moneysupermarket.com’s earnings. And the share price has dropped 8.1 per cent lower at 116.2p, its sharpest daily fall in four years.

Does this mean it’s the right time for those relying on Google to seek viable alternatives? But as Google has a virtual monopoly on internet search it’s difficult to see where else to go.

It’s one thing when a website has to worry about another competitor setting up a website, but when Google squats its Billion dollar corporate ass over your niche you may as well pack up and go home.

Time to think beyond Google

Econsultancy
Telegraph
Guaradian