Marketing a Presidential Candidate Online

Here at Geary, we like to cap off each week with an Innovation Session – an informal meeting with food, drinks and a presentation from the front lines of interactive marketing.

Last Friday, we chose to explore the various ways that Barack Obama and John McCain are marketing themselves online — with a particular focus on Web 2.0 strategies.

We tried to keep the presentation non-partisan, but it was difficult because Obama has made aggressive social media efforts his trademark. He has an active presence on MySpace, Facebook, and niche social networks such as Faithbase and BlackPlanet; active accounts on Twitter and YouTube; text message updates; an active social network at my.barackobama.com; and much more. McCain also has a social network on his main domain and presences on the big social networking sites, but his presence on Twitter and niche social networks is bare-bones compared to Obama’s, and he does not have a text messaging program.

We hypothesized that Obama’s aggressive efforts are primarily a function of the citizens he’s trying to reach — young people and first-time voters, as well as independent voters who spend time on niche online communities. We’re guessing that Obama has found that online efforts are a cost-effective way to reach new, disaffected and undecided voters — and he has the deep pockets to back up these efforts.

Here are some fun facts about each candidates’ online efforts:

• My.barackobama.com, Obama’s in-house social networking platform, is run by Chris Hughes, one of the co-founders of Facebook.
• Obama’s various websites get about 20 million visitors a month, compared to 4 million a month for McCain-affiliated sites.McCain is much more active in paid search advertising than Obama. At one point, McCain was bidding on 226 keywords, compared to only 174 by Obama.
• Obama ran 17 negative paid search ads, while McCain ran only three – the opposite of their general strategies, where McCain’s advertising ran much more negative than Obama’s.
• At present, Obama’s infomercial has 1.6 million views on YouTube. This is significant reach, but it’s dwarfed by the 33.55 million people who watched the infomercial on TV.

To learn more about this topic, you can view the full PowerPoint presentation.

I also recommend “Obama’s Wide Web” from the Washington Post and this article from MediaPost, which gives details about the candidates’ paid search strategies.

Is Social Media becoming like High School?

We have talked before about how people can be “so much cooler online” and create whatever persona they wish, but is this causing a step back in time?  Is our ability to become bigger and better online making us like high schoolers?

Social portals (especially twitter) are being bombarded with messages such as “@XYZ has a twitter grade of 98/100″ and “I have just received my millionth follower” and “I have 2 billion friends on Facebook” and so on.  Now a little gloating is fine, but what is the need for intimidation (or intwimidation as one Gearyite likes to say)?

Apply this idea to your high school experience.  Were you the popular kid, the captain of the football team, the homecoming queen or were you more of a loner, hung out with less people, had unappreciated talents?  It shouldn’t matter if you fell into that first group or the second – you were a person (lets hope anyway).  Scoring the winning touchdown of the homecoming game shouldn’t be more important than winning the science fair or playing in the band.  So why would having 2 billion online friends be so much better than having 50?

Many people look back on high school with terrible memories of the cliques and how they were treated.  At some point I would like to think we all grow up and learn that everyone has something to offer – be it a beautiful painting, good advice, interesting tweets or some other gift that may yet to be discovered.  It is possible that some of the people who pump themselves up in social spaces were the kids that did not get noticed.  However, if that is the case why attempt to make others feel like they aren’t good enough or don’t belong?

Don’t discredit someone online who has few followers or friends, they may have wanted it that way or they just joined the site.  Social media is about connection.  So make a new friend today and remember to be nice.

What were you doing when you were 15 years old? Creating a Start-ups?

When I was 15 years old I was waiting tables at a Pizza Hut and would say that many people would have a similar answer.  Not Daniel Brusilovsk, a 15-year-old techie, who just launched Teens In Tech into a private Alpha.  The site offers a community for teens who create (or want to create) content by podcasts, videos, and blogs.  The idea is that this will be a safe place for them to converse about their work, share tips, and showcase their talents in a profile based format.  The site even offers a job board for hiring new talent to Teens In Tech.  Quite a far cry from “would you like extra cheese on that.”

Social Online Marketer, Web 2.0 Guru….Social Media Evangelists?

What’s in a name? Apparently a lot.                                                                          

As more and more companies begin to realize that social media is a space they can no longer avoid, they are looking to hire agencies and internal positions to help navigate the vast space.  However, these new positions (and agency needs) are causing an interesting game of semantics.

A recent 2 page AdWeek article on the subject of social media referred to the same type of position in the following ways:

• Social Media Consultant
• Social Media Expert
• Social Media Czar
• Social Media Team Member
• Social Media Marketer
• and my personal favorite Social Media Evangelist

Now coming from the SEO side of things, someone needs to get a WordTracker account pronto and a quick rundown in content optimization.  Beyond that…..what is the real difference here and does it really matter?  I would say none and no.  If the position listing  calls out a proper set of activities the company needs the position (or agency) to fill, finding the right person or group should be no problem.  Naming it or them should be even less of one.  But hey, if this name-game continues I may push for a title change to Social Media Goddess or Princess or Queen or….you get the idea

San Diego’s own, Veoh, brings behavioral targeting to online videos

Veoh is known for breaking new ground in the online space, but their new advertising program could revolutionize the way advertisers purchase advertisements online and how consumers are exposed to them.  The program (being release out of beta today) will group viewers into buckets based upon their past searching, tagging, commenting, and viewing activities.

One could ask if a user watches videos online that fit into their true interests or if they primarily watch pieces that are considered viral (have you seen the water skiing chipmunk?!)?  For YouTube this may be true, but Veoh offers the largest library of online TV resulting in more interest based viewership.  Veoh is even claiming that during beta the program’s ads preformed twice as well as the non-targeted versions.

It will be very interesting to see how this technology develops and what it does to Veoh’s position in the industry.

You know blogging has made it when….

…..people are staring to officially retire from it.  Public retirement announcements are usually focused on athletes, musicians, CEOs, and actors.  These announcements are also generally followed up by the “coming out of retirement” press conference (see: Brett Favre….TWICE).  The “coming out of retirement” press conference basically chalks up the intent to retire as being nothing but a marketing ploy.

Well today the blogger probably best known for marketing ploys, Jason Calacanis, officially retired from blogging.  He claims that it “came with a heavy heart” and “he will not return to blogging” and “he will replace it with a more intimate email list.”  Wow, maybe he called Brett before he made this announcement.

So do we think that this is a genuine retirement or is this simply a blogger getting in on the marketing power of retirement?  I am writing about it.  It is already working.  Any thoughts?

Note:  No Cheeseheads were harmed in the writing of this blog.

Are you Promoting or Diluting your Company Brand and Culture in the online space?

Do you have a Facebook profile? A MySpace page? A Twitter Account? A blog? A YouTube Channel? A personal Wiki?  Chances are that almost every person can answer yes to at least one of, if not all, of the previous questions.

The internet has become a haven for personal publishing and information sharing.  People freely offer opinions, ideas, photos, videos, likes, dislikes, and everything in-between.  However, how cautious are people about the lasting effect their information may have on the company they work for?

This question is something I ponder and am reminded of daily with the things I find online.  Using Twitter as an example, I follow roughly 125 people that are affiliated with SEO or Social Media Marketing.  Numerous people use this site to push out content they have written or are reading that help to show them as industry thought leaders.  When these type of people are free with their company affiliation this can positively effect how the industry views the person and their company.  Yet, some people are not as strategic with the information they share.  When people that associate themselves with their company tweet information about “giving the finger to a client” or “our blog is run by suits” or “my boss doesn’t know bleep” I have to question if these people really care about the work they are doing, who they are doing it for, or what external people think of them?  My opinion has been changed about numerous companies this way, be it fair or not.

To some extent, freedom of speech has to be protected and people should be able to post whatever type of content they please.  Yet, at some point common sense should kick in and say maybe I shouldn’t tell the world that “i hate ABC co-worker” in an open forum setting.

Does it seem fair to judge a company based upon the actions of the people who work there?  Can this really be patrolled?  Should it be?  What are your thoughts?

Social Media Rules SXSW ‘08

Pulling down the window shade to shield my particularly-sensitive eyes (and head) from the intense Austin sun, I write this entry on the flight back from the 2008 South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference. Albeit a massive event with endless panels, events, and parties parties parties – there seemed to be one theme in particular that I encountered repeatedly over the past several days: social media. Most of the panels I attended revolved around these topics in one way or another – and pretty much 9/10 people I met from the conference were somehow involved in social media. Most were start-ups offering niche social networks or aggregation of social media (social networks, blogs, and video). I was pleased to encounter social media in a multitude of different situations as it is becoming a core interest and marketing concern for many Geary Interactive clients.

I attended one SXSW panel titled, “Social Marketing Strategies Metrics, Where Are They?” lead by Tom Parish of Tom Parish Inc, Brian Magierski of BSG, Michael Smith of USAA, Ynema Mangum of BMC Software, and Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy. The only conclusion that I was able to leave the room with was that there basically is no consensus as to social media metrics should even be. The perceived value of social media is user engagement from a qualitative perspective rather than quantitative. Rather than counting number of visits, we should be considered with amount of time spent on the site/blog. And not only that, but what is the level and quality of user contribution? Are they generating content that adds to the value of the site? Therefore “traditional” online analytics methods and metrics are inherently flawed for social media measurement.

Although social media currently resides at the periphery for most online campaigns — I see it rapidly approaching the center. And as it does, there will most certainly be new and different analytics methods developed to better capture the essence of what makes social media efforts a success — or failure. I’m also curious to see how all of the social networking aggregators come into play here and how they effect analytics numbers for the sites they are pulling from.

However the issue of getting C level executives to even consider entering the realm of social media dominated the panel discussion. I was surprised and simultaneously grateful that at Gearyi we have such progressive clients, whom give us the opportunity to utilize newer and more innovative online strategies like social media. While social media might not make sense for all industries or clients, it’s going to be tough for most organizations to ignore the impact that social media is having on how users interact with each other and the web. That interaction may be the very thing that the C level execs find most intimidating — suddenly the users have a voice, and a very strong one at that. Therefore transparency and moderation now surface as primary concerns. This brings us to another consideration for social media ventures: moderation.

In the process of developing community sites, one resource that is often overlooked is a community manager/moderator. At least one, living, breathing human being will be required to manage the community site. But who is best fit to take on that daunting role? SXSW panelists Miles Sims and Jake McKee explained several options: You could hire someone internally (or with your agency) who does this as part of many other job requirements and responsibilities. But, chances are, that unless the resource can be fully dedicated to managing the community, you can rest assured that moderation on the community will be very minimal.

This might work for more some communities, however, there are many others that require constant moderation to keep things from becoming unruly or even illegal. In the case that intense moderation is required, it’s best to allocate more than one, full-time dedicated community managers to the site. These managers can be internal employees, agency reps, or even volunteers from the site itself.

There is also the option of having the community platform provider manage the community. For example, Small World Labs offers community management among their many other services at different levels and pricing depending on the requirements and size of the community. If it were my community, my top concern in this situation might be the level of brand knowledge that can be provided. Agencies and clients work hard to build partnerships based on a solid, mutual understanding of a particular brand. It could be quite risky to bring in a third party for community management when that party may not have such intimate knowledge of the brand’s identity.

One way or another, it’s crucial to have a community deployment AND management strategy in place early-on. You can help steer the community in the right direction and pre-empt extensive moderation is to provide community members with a clear understanding of what the purpose and/or mission of the community is. Users are more likely to contribute (and contribute quality content) when they feel as though they have a “job” to do as part of a greater effort or movement. Let them know what you are hoping to achieve with their content and why their voice matters. It’s not enough to simply create a community for your website and to hope that users will figure out what it is they are supposed to be doing there.

Preview the Future Of Search Engine Results

Ars Technica did a great review of Google’s “Alternate Views Search Results” experiment. To take some of the new features for a first hand test run visit this page. On a similar note, Yahoo has been testing the integration of delicious social bookmarking into their search results pages.

So what does this mean for searchers?

A few weeks back Ars Technica did another posting title “The ‘Google Generation’ not so hot at Googling, after all” after review of a report published by the British Library and the Joint Information Systems Committee. The short version of the report is that even the generation that has grown up Googling everything and unaware of a world without Google still isn’t very good at formatting their search queries. Current search engine results pages on the top three engines are fairly straight forward and simple. They got a bit more complex with the introduction of universal search, however they are still a basic and static page. If searchers are having trouble finding what they want now, how will searchers be able to handle dealing with more complex search results with timelines and maps thrown into the mix? Maybe it will create a completely new industry in which you will need to hire search professionals that are highly skilled at sorting through the information via the search engines. Maybe training classes that teach people how to maximize the value of search and search engines will run along side Microsoft Word and Adobe Photoshop courses. Either way it is going to require every searcher young and old to learn how to use the more sophisticated searches to find the answers they are looking for.

So what does this mean for the search industry?

My first thought is that this will extend the long tail of search phrases. Search marketers will need to start thinking about more complex queries with dates and locations. Also, dependent on how the suggested searches are displayed (logically it would be by highest search count to lowest?) it will likely drive up the traffic on the suggested terms that are shown first. Secondly, whomever came up with the “SEO is dead”theory, I think the morphing of search results will give new challenges and opportunities to our industry. Lastly, it will force search marketers to focus even more on creating high quality websites with multiple types of content to stay competitive with their search engine visibility.

Yahoo Search Takes A Tasty Next Step

An announcement came today via TechCrunch that Yahoo has begun testing the integration of delicious bookmarking into their standard search results. The posting states that it’s unclear whether the data from delicious is affecting the search rankings as of yet, however it seems like the next logical step. It has always seemed that adding user input into search engine results as a clear next step to improve algorithmic relevance. It appears that Yahoo might actually be a step ahead of Google for once!