Healthy Blog Reviews

Ask has always been the red-headed stepchild of the search industry. It’s always lurking in the shadows as the #4 search engine and usually gets a mention in search share only if there was significant up or down movement. Accounting has the Big 4 but search only has the Big 3 which is soon to be the Big 2 ½ or something once bing and Yahoo fully consummate their relationship. Ask is usually not included in those talks but is making changes to differentiate itself and hopefully make more of a splash in that area. The key to that hope: good ol’ fashioned human beings! The Ask blog reports Today we’ve officially launched the public beta for the new Ask.com, which combines our proprietary answers technology (specifically tailored to extract questions and answers from the Web) with the human insight of the thriving Ask.com community drawn from our 87 million monthly uniques. Now available on an invite-only basis (you can request your invite here), the capability to pose questions to real people is now possible for those complex, subjective and/or time-sensitive queries that, no matter how advanced, computers simply can’t address. That means that Ask.com is now uniquely able to offer the most comprehensive and convenient approach to getting answers, combining pages and people to help users find the answers to all questions – even questions for which no answer is published online. In the search world there may just be a place for this kind of service if it can catch on with people who are ‘blue text link trained’ like myself. In this age of social media and trusting sources that reach far beyond our truly trusted circle of friends (be that a good or bad thing, it still is) there may be more of an acceptance of this approach. Mashable’s Jennifer Van Grove sums up the improvements for you The beta offering is a product of four new features: a completely overhauled look with a focus on highlighting trending questions from the community, semantic search with answers displayed on the page, a large Q&A database and a user community element that targets members for answering questions based on their areas of expertise. The latter somewhat mirrors Aardvark’s formula for finding answers to user questions, and is initiated when users click the “Ask the Community” button on the right-hand side of the results page. Even if this Q & A approach seems to be somewhat antiquated it could have some legs if for no other reason than it looks different. Once again, though, Ask needs to drive people to the site and in the past their approach has been mass advertising pushes that come on real strong then disappear. There has been very little attempt to keep the Ask brand in the mind of the searcher in a way to help them possibly convert from Google or somewhere else to the new Ask. I have always hoped that Ask would put together something that was worthy of challenging bing and Yahoo! to at least push them a bit. Whether this approach is the answer certainly is a big TBD. If it’s not the answer then the next question has to be, is there a place for Ask at the search table or is it time to move on and look for someone else to challenge the Big 3 (or 2 1/8 or whatever it’s going to be)? Your thoughts?

Tags: answer, answers, ask-com, cloud-computing, cloud-hosting, improvements, mind, proprietary, relationship, Search, search-engine, Social Media, thoughts, Yahoo
Posted July 27, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

Advertising suffers from a reputation problem. Here at Marketing Pilgrim we are very interested in online reputation management but even the best social media monitoring tools can’t help some industries. Of course, when you spend years simply ignoring how poorly you are viewed by the public in general, it doesn’t help. This is how the advertising industry has put together its stellar reputation that it is now trying to control a bit with the help of the oldest journalism school in the country, The University of Missouri School of Journalism. The Huffington Report says Industry leaders are teaming up with the nation’s oldest journalism school to launch the Institute for Advertising Ethics. Among the research center’s goals is to improve the public image of a business that spent $125 billion last year but isn’t exactly known for its bedrock principles and unwavering scruples. Whether it’s the duplicitous exploits of fictional television character Don Draper or the latest penalties levied by the Federal Trade Commission, the ad industry struggles to put its best face forward. A 2007 Gallup survey ranked advertisers among the least trustworthy professionals – barely beating out lobbyists and car salesmen. It’s funny in some ways but actually quite pathetic in many others that the advertising industry has sunk to this level. I would be interested to see that survey conducted today to see if there has been any movement either up or down. I suspect it’s either about the same or even worse but that’s just a guess. So why this desire to self-police? “Because it is persuasion, advertising is viewed in a questionable way by a lot of people,” said Margaret Duffy, a former ad executive who now teaches at the University of Missouri School of Journalism and is helping to organize the ethics institute. But even though the industry’s fundamental purpose is to convince shoppers to buy a product they may not actually need, such persuasion can be done in an “ethical and tasteful” way, she added. Honestly, if this is the attitude of one of the founders of the institute I can only imagine what’s going to come out of it as it develops. Maybe there will be a guide called “How to Make People Buy Things They Don’t Want but Still Feel Good About Your Profession” or how about “Top Ten Ways to Screw Someone Without Them Feeling It”. Sorry I seem a bit negative on this one but when an industry built on spin starts to spin ethics then it’s hard to figure out what is spin and what is, well, something else. This group though is convinced that there is good to be done. The leader of the institute is visiting professor, Wally Snyder, who is a former FTC (Federal Trade Commission) lawyer and American Advertising Federation president. He realizes that he has a tough road ahead with such reputation luminaries as lawyers and members of Congress having higher trust scores than advertisers according to Gallup. That’s pretty impressive, huh?! But if the industry is thinking any way like this following agency owner then all we can say is “Best of luck, Wally!” Mark Fleisher, owner of a small advertising agency in central Pennsylvania near Harrisburg, says the industry doesn’t need to be reminded of the importance of ethical behavior. It just needs to increase the honesty quotient. “The industry has become more ethical because the clients have become smarter,” he said. “Agencies are still going to pull whatever they need to (clinch a deal). And those agencies will run roughshod over the honest ones. That’s been going on for years.” Increase the honesty quotient? Industry has become more ethical because clients have become smarter? I’m not even sure how to respond to those kinds of assessments. Let’s put it this way, if the institute is generating revenue there looks to be plenty of job security in the future. Of course, there will be the ‘big boys’ running the show with board members from Procter & Gamble, Omnicom Group, WPP and Ketchum but as Jim Edwards, a former Adweek managing editor puts it “History does not suggest that these things catch on very well,” he said. “There’s a structural problem in the advertising business. The entire industry is engaged in a race to the bottom. Whoever can do it the cheapest and the fastest wins.” I realize I have taken the cynical approach to this kind of endeavor. What are your thoughts? Is it possible to self-police the ad industry like this group and the Interactive Advertising Bureau are suggesting? Let’s hear your take.

Tags: advertising, clients, congress, country, ethics, federal-trade, institute, marketing, missouri-school, people, Research, simply-ignoring, Social Media, thoughts, university
Posted July 27, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

We like to think of colleges and universities as places where learning trumps all else, but the truth of the matter is that institutions like these are still businesses, which means they need to make money. Says Rob Moore of Lipman Hearne, a marketing company specializing in non-profits: “Higher ed institutions today are facing a conflation of challenges that can best be met through more effective marketing. Increased competition for students, deep tuition discounting, demographic pressures that put many traditional markets at risk—all have a huge impact on the institution’s bottom line.” In response to this, colleges and universities are actively adding new marketing tactics to the mix including social media and interactive marketing. Lipman Hearne recently published the results of a study called “Marketing Spending at Colleges and Universities” and here’s what they found: Interactive and social media budgets are growing. Between FY2008 and FY2009, 55 percent of institutions surveyed allocated more to interactive; and 52 percent allocated more to social media . Institutions that invested more in social media were more likely to report positive outcomes in three important areas: website hits, positioning, and rates of alumni giving. Moderate-to-heavy users of social media were actually spending less per student overall on marketing activities. The moderate-to-heavy investors spent $83 per student, and the light-to-non-investors spent $121 per student. While interactive and social media budgets were on the rise, traditional advertising budgets were on the wane. The study found that more than one-third of the institutions allocated less to traditional advertising in FY2009 than they did in FY2008 (35 percent). And 42 percent of moderate-to-heavy social media users spent less on traditional advertising compared to the prior year. Institutions continue to rely on print publications. Of those surveyed, 55 percent spent the same portion of their budget on print publications in FY2009 as they did in FY2008. In fact, more than one-quarter of marketing budgets went toward print publications, more than any other category. Though marketing spending has decreased at some institutions in the short term, marketing spending has increased substantially over the last decade. According to an earlier study, in FY2001, the median marketing spending for a midsized college or university (2,000-5,999 students) was $259,400 (or $321,900, adjusted for inflation). Not even a decade later, that figure rises to $800,000—an increase of more than 100 percent. One of the most telling points here is the marketing dollar to student ratio. This number indicates that social media marketing is cheaper but just as effective as traditional marketing. Or so it would seem. The trouble with marketing and education is how you define the results. Unlike a retail business where you can see the effect in dollars earned, colleges have to look at a variety of results from number of students enrolling to donations, even the popularity of a faculty member could be seen as an uptick. Donna Van De Water, director of research at Lipman Hearne, and one of the study’s authors says: “In the last five years there’s been a much greater interest in proof, in validation, and in testing. Marketers need to be able to show that their investments are going to have a payoff, whether it’s in increasing enrollments or generating a higher profile. Having the metrics helps an institution understand where it sits relative to competitors, how to better manage reputation, how to shape messages, and how to maximize resources.” For more information about the report’s findings, please visit www.lipmanhearne.com .

Tags: colleges, flickr, institutions, light, lipman hearne, marketing, metrics, Research, results, Social Media, study, universities, water
Posted July 26, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

Although it comes as no surprise to most, the integration of e-mail campaigns and social media outlets is becoming more popular. Leading the charge are Facebook and Twitter which is probably no surprise either. What is a little surprising is just how quickly the numbers dive with regard to other options for social media integration. The following chart from eROI shows results from a survey they recently conducted (hat tip to MarketingProfs ). With Facebook being the most mainstream option of these outlets its appearance at the top of the list is almost expected. Twitter on the other hand is much more dependent on the type of e-mail recipient because it’s mass appeal is much less than Facebook’s at this time. In other words, Twitter likely skews toward a tech-savvy and generally younger crowd while Facebook hits a more widespread demographic target. What was interesting was the relative ignorance of the mobile market by these very same marketers. There seems to be confusion on subjects ranging from mobile’s usage amongst these companies’ customers to even how the company itself is utilizing the mobile web for their site in general and marketing as a whole. This points to the whole disconnect issue that happens when industry reporting and predictions leave reality in the dust. Why do you think it has been the “Year of Mobile” for about 7 years now? OK, so let’s step back for a second. If e-mail is very important and it is a pretty well known fact that there is a large group of consumers that get e-mail on mobile devices (iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and more) shouldn’t marketers be a little more ‘in tune’ with mobile? If you pay attention to most industry reports they already are right? Is there a perception vs. reality divide present here? Is it possible that hype is out-pacing implementation? How can that happen on the Internet ? As we have warned in the past, it is probably a good thing for companies to make sure they are doing the Internet marketing basics like search and e-mail well before they jet ahead into the mobile space. It’s this rush to get to the next best thing without ever really taking full advantage of the LAST next best thing that gets businesses in trouble online. So where are you with e-mail, social and mobile? Are all three humming on all cylinders or is there work to be done to bring one or more up to speed? Even when the assumption is that everyone does all of this well and is ready to move on, are you going to stick to the basics or go to the next big thing?

Tags: black, cloud-computing, cloud-hosting, facebook, integration, internet, Internet Marketing, mobile, mobile-chart, numbers, Social, Social Media, time
Posted July 26, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

Coca-Cola may be a business giant, but this Goliath is no match for a mom and her mouse! It all began innocently enough with a clever social media marketing plan to promote Dr. Pepper on Facebook. The program was designed to override the Facebook status box of an opted in user with fun but embarrassing quotes chosen at random. “What’s wrong with peeing in the shower?” probably cracked up the football buddies when they saw it on Frankie’s Facebook page, but the mom of a 14-year-old girl wasn’t at all amused with what she found on her daughter’s account. The reference that started the ruckus was an homage to a particularly disgusting porno movie. A reference that has no business being tied to Facebook or Dr. Pepper, let alone the account of a child. MrsRickman (the woman’s online user name) complained to Coca Cola and was offered theater tickets and a hotel stay as an apology. The woman was offended by the offer and took her complaint to a UK mom’s website. 1300 replies later and a wave of discussion in the media and now it looks like the marketing agency is going to take the fall. But who is really to blame? Here’s Coca-Cola’s stance as reported by New Media Age : “We were unaware of the meaning of this line when the promotion was approved and have launched an investigation into why it was included. We take full responsibility and will be reviewing our promotional procedures.” Full responsibility, meaning . . . “We have stopped all our ongoing work with Lean Mean Fighting Machine and are reviewing our relationship with the agency. We will take all steps necessary to ensure this does not happen again.” Coca-Cola’s claim that they didn’t know the remark was pornographic simply doesn’t hold up. Even if the person who reviewed the promotion wasn’t familiar with the exact reference, the line was clearly dirty and they should have asked for clarification. But even looking beyond that particular reference, who thought it was a good idea to subject Facebook users of any age to random vulgarity? Is this really how they want to define the brand? Peeing in the shower, porn and Dr. Pepper? I’m sure they thought it was funny and hip when it was first conceived and even a little controversial and dangerous but this isn’t beer, we’re talking about, it’s a soda from a company whose slogan used to be “Sign of Good Taste.” The lesson here is that companies need to be actively involved in protecting their reputation and their brand. This applies to the corporate giants and the small company just starting out. When it comes to social media marketing, remember that “sharing” is what it’s all about which means that the R-rated photo you offer to an adult on Twitter could end up on the Facebook of a minor with just a few clicks. Now, I’ll leave you with a quote from the terms of service on the Dr. Pepper Facebook Fan Page: “We encourage you to post comments, photos, videos, and links here. But please behave. We may monitor and remove inappropriate, offensive or any other postings.” Unless, of course, they post the offensive material themselves. What do you think? Did the mother in question make too much out of an innocent ad campaign? Or is Coca-Cola out of line?

Tags: daughter, facebook, flickr, line, marketing, media, pepper-facebook, person, promotion, relationship, reputation, Social, Social Media, woman
Posted July 22, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media