In the beginning there was SEO.  Then on the seventh day, Google created PPC.  Then, the creators of our acronyms realized that there was an opportunity for a new one called Search Engine Marketing (SEM).  It would combine paid and organic search techniques and the Gods would be pleased with us for being so clever.  So why the snark?  I am tired of the obsession that we seem to have for “driving”  (sounds like something we do with cattle), “traffic” (aren’t these actually people), to our site (a magic land where we ensnare traffic into the inevitable conversion act with our elegant design, crafty copy and inescapable marketing acumen).  This is not how people behave online an we all know because we are (most of us) people and we do not behave that way.  The time has long since come for us to consider more than the one url that our magic land resides at but rather all the ways that users can encounter our brands through distributed content and conversions in what I daresay I have a new acronym for.  How about Search Experience Marketing (that way you don’t have to learn a new three letter abbreviation, SEM)?  Here’s my argument for why this makes more sense and is ultimately better search engine marketing than traditional approaches.

When a user searches they are presented with a SERP that has lots of options on it.  Maybe your website is one of them, but it’s only one of them.  What other things could they encounter:

• review sites
• blogs
• forums
• videos
• maps
• images
• news sites
• vertical industry search directories
• white papers
• press releases
• everything else that the internet is made of

If you are fortunate, this user may visit your website but why should they stop there with so much more information close at hand.  Would you? The reality is that every day people either encounter (or fail to encounter) your brand through all of these areas listed above.  A content marketing strategy that creates valuable, useful stimulating and helpful content in a variety of forms that flows socially into the fabric of the layered search experience that I describe above is the best way to attract and influence your target audience.  Obsessing only about where your site sits on a specific set of SERPs seems so narrow a consideration.

How does this work in action?  I recently shopped for a refrigerator.  This falls into the category of a considered purchase.  I searched for fridges and found that a website with helpful decision-making tools on it.  I narrowed it down to a type that I preferred.  On an ecommerce site I found some options.  On their corporate site I saw some specification and sometimes a helpful product tour.  On blogs I saw discussions and reviews.  My mind changed.  I settled on a brand.  I saw other helpful videos about the product by organizations other than the brand.  I was now romanced into the state of high gadget lust that I needed to be in.  Pennies are now being saved and product will soon be purchased.  What role did traditional SEO play in that?  A very small one.

Search engines are intentionally trying to make the SERPs more about answering questions than just scanning the web for keywords.  Your audience is going create an experience for themselves when they search in your space.  The more deeply woven you become in that experience, the better your brand will perform.  It’s not just about keywords and rank.  It’s about the totality of the search experience.  Is that what you are seeking to influence today?  If not, could it be?  Please?

As social media content continues to find its way into search engine result pages (SERPs), interesting new data reveals just how much traffic is referred to our s facebook pages from search.  The folks at the very useful Facebook analytics engine PageLever published their analysis of over 1000 fan pages with 10,000 fans or more and found that 33.98% of the referring traffic to these pages came from one of the three major search engines.There are two things about this that I find very interesting:

Firstl, this stat means that about 9.5% of all traffic to  facebook pages comes from search on average.  That is definitely higher than what I would have anticipated.  Also it should be noted that Google is by far the largest contributor to this percentage. Almost 82% of the traffic from search to facebook pages is coming from Google.

The second thing about this that interests me is the degree to which this may impact our content strategies on Facebook.  Good SEO strategies usually begins with good content strategies.  Social media is important outlet for a content strategy.  Therefore, we can now realize how important it is to apply solid content marketing principles, with SEO underpinnings, to our Facebook fan page output whenever it is possible to do so.

I’m not recommending keyword stuffing your posts but just being mindful of the fact that the search engines, Google in particular, are crawling what you create, and they seem to be making more off an effort to make it visible through SERPs.  Well-thought out, useful, entertaining or engaging content is best path towards greater search visibility in all channels.  That’s good news for the marketer and even greater news for the consumer.

Since the widespread adoption of the tablet as the content consumption platform of choice, the industry has been eagerly anticipating the rise of the Internet TV as the next disruptive platform to change the way we thing about digital content consumption.  Is it happening?  Sort of, but not as quickly or with as much innovation as we had hoped.  With the drop in price of the Logitech Google TV set-top box and the announcement by Viewsonic that it is deep-sixing its plans to build a Boxee powered TV, there is growing evidence that the marketing for this technology is softening.  Or is it just that the right forces have not yet come together to make this technology take off?  I once saw an attempt at creating a solid-body electric guitar that was build in the early 1930s.  That was the wrong time for that technology to take off.  Musical styles (content) had not evolved, manufacturing processes (technology) had not become cost efficient enough, and the demand was not there because people did not know what to do with it (user experience).  Internet TV is that same moment where the content, technology and user experience pieces have not yet come together in a moment that will drive consumer adoption.

Sure you can buy Internet TVs but as Van Baker, Vice President of research for Gartner recently observed, “In most cases consumers are buying a television with Internet connectivity as insurance. In other words, they are buying them just in case they need it in the future.”  There are also plenty of price-accessible ways to get a non-ethernet TV connected, not the least of which is my personal favorite the Sony PS3.  The problem is once you are connected, what can you do?  Or more appropriately what can your connected TV now do better than the myriad of other devices that surround us every day.  The answer is that beyond on-demand streaming the user experience is not yet fully developed.

Do consumers want to use browsers on a TV screen?  Despite the fact that the TV screen is large it does not offer a very conducive browsing experience.  But some things do work?  Have you seen the YouTube and Netflix apps designed specifically for the TV?  They have large buttons that are easy to navigate to and click.  They have a display that is almost devoid of text (hard to read on a TV) and heavy on seductive visuals (fun to look at on a big screen).  But until there are more apps and user experiences that are built specifically for the TV, the usefulness of it as digital device is somewhat limited.

However, the promise is still there.  As companies like Adobe help hash out digital rights access with its Adobe Pass offering and as more of these devices continue to end up in consumers’ homes, if for no other reason than the current crop of product is coming equipped with the technology whether consumers demand it or not, the groundwork is being laid for enterprising content providers to realize that there is a new opportunity to wrap bigger and bolder user experiences around their content and make it accessible in ways that best suit the TV as an interface.  I’m still bullish on the technology and anxious to see how this next wave of digital user experiences will evolve.  In fact, I think this is the time for publishers and media companies to take the lead and prove what this technology can be good for.

Foursquare, a location-based micro-blogging service that launched in 2009 seems to be on the verge of relevance. In preparation for their marketing push at SXSW they announced that they have added 500,000 new members bringing their total to somewhere in the 1 million area. Additionally, they are launching a free analytics service for business owners so that could create interesting marketing opportunities for businesses that are based on foot traffic. I’m rooting for them because this could become a very interesting marketing medium. This recent article in the NYTimes explains the new analytics service in some detail with examples of how some of the beta-testing businesses have been using it.Foursquare users use mobile apps to tell the foursquare community where they are and what they are doing.  However, from the business perspective, users are checking in when they come to your location which gives you some information that you can leverage.  For instance, some businesses have found that is interesting to be able to message formally frequent visitors to get them back.  Others have been able to learn more about what messages have been driving their customers to them.  In a nutshell, any business can see the registered customers and prospects around them and look for ways to reel them in or make their experience more enjoyable.

Here’s a screenshot of the kind of stats that they are planning to share with businesses:

Foursquare recently beta-tested this tool with 30 businesses and is planning to expand the beta round to 500 in the coming weeks.  If the user-base grows, this could become useful resource for marketers.  As it is right now, it’s just on the verge of  earning our attention.  Stay tuned and share any information you learn about this service or any of its near-competitors.

For a short while this past week, there was an accidentally revealed document floating around the web that shows some potential upcoming developments in Facebook marketing…and they are definitely ideas that will make business page owners very happy.  The document itself is no longer anywhere where I can link to it but there is this useful article about it on the Inside Facebook site.  Here’s the high points:

1. For page owners, Facebook will track impressions and interactions relative to each post. Right there in Facebook you will be able to see how users are interacting with the content you post which will greatly enhance your understanding of what to post that best suits your audiences preferences.

2. Facebook seems to be planning to offer ad targeting based on a function they call “Real Time”. It’s not completely explained yet but the supposition is that you will be able to target based on the content of the audiences posting activity. So if I post an update about a concert I went to I may be served ads that relate to the artist, venue, genre or anyone else that finds that subject to be defining of their audience. This could be very interesting.

Both of these changes indicate that Facebook is taking a harder look at the needs of marketers on their service. If they continue to make wise choices like the ones listed above I think they will allow marketers to better use the platform while not intruding on the basic experience of their users. In fact, in both of these cases the net result could be a higher quality experience for the Facebook users. Hope to see more about these in the near future.

“What are other people doing and what’s really working?” We got a sneak peak at some of the valuable information in The 2010 Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report from MarketingSherpa. The accompanying chart shows us which social media marketing tactics are most often used and considered most effective by our marketing peers.

There are several tactics not listed here that I wish were.  For instance, apps, games, contests, and communities come  quickly to mind.  However it is interesting to see that blogger relations is considered so highly by those surveyed.  Many companies lack the resources to put consistent effort behind this but information like this might change their reasoning.  I also think that many of these tactics tend to be excuted in tandem and are probably most effective when that is the case.  Also, the greatest amount of effort tends to reside in simply creating valuable content and communications that can flow out into the social media arena.  Once you have done that, it is much easier to leverage it across multiple tactics.

The number of U.S. Internet users aged 65 and older increased more than 55 percent between November 2004 and November 2009, according to data from Nielsen. The measurement firm estimates that 17.5 million seniors are now online, compared with 11.3 million five years ago.  What is also interesting to me is the fact that they list online activities like Facebook and YouTube as popular things to do.  Here is a chart from Clickz showing the top 10 online destinations of Internet users 65 and over in November of 2009:

I hate the click.  We obsess about clicks.  We track clicks.  We pay for clicks.  We want more and more clicks.  We are click-absorbed and it is time to make online marketing about more than this.  This week marked the 15th anniversary of the first online banner ad so I have chosen this time to launch a revolt against the single-minded click-only metrics that prevail today.I recently read this great article by Scott Severensen that suggests 5 things you can do today to start moving beyond clicks.  Here’s why I think this is important:

• If you track online marketing conversions back to the nearest click that precedes them it will always make things like search and email marketing campaigns look like they are tactics driving revenue.  They may be but they are more likely to be just the only thing you are tracking.  Many steps usually lead up to that precious moment wherein a user types your name into a search engine, finds you and buys your thing.  Be careful not to over-attribute revenue generating actions to just the nearest measurable click.
• Benchmarking is forgotten yet it is a very valid method of tracking.  “My metric was X before I did these three things and now it is X+25%.  That means these three things are likely to be good things to keep doing…and doing them together.”  Maybe one of those three things was a search marketing campaign that got a lot of clicks.  If you had not done it in concert with the overall campaign might not have worked so well.
• Display ads (banners) don’t get many clicks.  That does not mean that they have no value.  You have to develop other ways of monitoring their impact on awareness, intent to purchase and the impact that they may have on overall site visitorship outside of the direct clicks they generate.
• Each click is actually a person..not a click.  Each non-click is also a person.  We are interested in engaging all people within our audience.  Clicking does not qualify you or disqualify from my consideration as a marketer.

I hate the click.

But I got this great click-through-rate on one of my PPC campaigns by making some changes to the offer and ad copy.  Let me tell you about it.

If you publish a blog or any site with an RSS feed you have probably been frustrated by the lack of information that you get from the click activity in the feed.  Though there are certainly ways around it Google has just announced an integration with Feedburner that makes RSS analytics easily accessible.  This article from the Google Analytics blog explains it in detail but here are some of the highlights and a screenshot of what to expect.

• count the clicks from your feed to your site
• what kind of reader generated the click
• count those that come from email
• see the geography and reach fof your feed audience
• breakdown of click activity by piece of content

Here is an image showing what the data might look like in your Google Analytics account:

I’d be interested in hearing from those of you who have implemented this.  It looks a little awkward in the sense that you have to bounce between your Google Analytics account and your Feedburner account depending upon the kind of data you are looking for.  Also, if you have been using tracking URLs in your RSS feeds then you might find this data to be redundant at best.  However, for the lion’s share of site operators who have not had the tools to track their RSS feed activity this could be big help.

The EVoter Institute has recently released a report entitles “Persuading and Motivating Voters: What Will It Take in 2010?” that drives home the importance of the Internet and the changing dynamics in the ways we all consumer news and information.  The study is well worth the read no matter what industry you are in primarily because it illustrates the increasing ways that social media content is being used by consumers.As a quick summary, the report breaks its results into the following 7 findings:

• Finding 1: Voters will increasingly expect candidates to be making heavy use of the web with campaign sites, social media,  email, online fundraising and multimedia content being the most popular.
• Finding 2: Voters are engaging in a wider range of political activities online. The new definition of activism continues to reveal that there are many ways for voters to participate in the official and unofficial campaign.  What they mean here is that voters forward things, search for things,  share content as opposed to simply volunteering or donating.
• Finding 3: The Internet is increasingly integrated into our everyday lives. Traditional means of getting information and news is slipping in popularity though those trusted brands are finding audiences online.  However when voters go to the web for information they still most frequently go to their traditional trusted resources such as newpaper web sites.
• Finding 4: Voters realize they live in a crowded and fragmented media environment and that it is hard to get their attention.  Voters still identify TV ads as the best way to get their attention but there is a noteworthy rise in those who identify social media tactics, particularly with certain demographics.
• Finding 5:  There is clearly a maturing of certain web tools in the political campaign process, particularly the candidate’s web site, the use of email, and search. An official web site is now expected by over 80% of voters at all levels of political activism. Following that means of communications is email which is even more expected by those who are very politically active than television ads on a web site.
• Finding 6: Age matters most when it comes to donating to a campaign, attending a political event, volunteering for a campaign, and sending and receiving email about political issues. As people age, voting decisions are more influenced by television and cable news reports and commentators. However studies such as this sometimes are lagging indicators because older voters are rapidly increasing in their identification of Internet tools as vital resources for them.
• Finding 7: Debates were cited as having the most influence on voting decisions regardless of party affiliation, ethnicity or age.  However it is not clear whether they are watching the whole event on TV or picking up snippets of it online through video sharing.

What I find interesting about this study is that it shows how consumer behavior is best influenced by a deeply integrated strategy that allows for the widest variety of ways that people search for, consume and share information.  The key word in that previous sentence is “integrated”.