In one of the bravest social media campaigns in recent times, Skittles turned over the shop space to the general public. Not their real shop space but their virtual one – and integrated their homepage with Twitter. This sent the blogospere and microblogging sites alight with buzz regarding the campaign, not least Twitter. However, the page has now been taken down to be replaced by their Facebook page

Skittles Social Media homepage

The initial response was overwhelming and I would suggest well beyond what Skittles would probably have been expecting, however this turned sour on Tuesday, as a number of ‘Twitter vandals’ started tweeting profanities which ended up on the Skittles homepage. Whether or not this type of activity should have been foreseen by Skittles is another question, however it is unlikely we would have seen the same level of buzz had this been deeper embedded within the site. The whole campaign was based on impact and impact was certainly what it got, however by trusting consumers with content, in a medium where they could not control the conversation – they lost control of the conversation and tone of conversation on a very public forum.

Given the well established nature of the brand, I personally believe it was slightly naive of the brand to undertake such a brave step, however well intentioned it was. That aside, for around 24-36 hours I would suggest Skittles would have been extremely happy, however it was always (imo) a risky manoeuvre – and it proved as such.

For that reason, I would suggest the following lessons should be taken from the campaign:

1. Undertake due diligence before you undertake the campaign. Make sure you understand the full implications of the campaign, including both pros and more importantly cons.
2. Choose your medium carefully. Twitter is the current flavour of the month, but it is an unmoderated forum and as such is not without considerable risk. Other channels such as Facebook or blogs, could provide a far more manageable forum in which to have such a discussion, which could be seeded by channels such as Twitter.
3. Ensure your monitoring tools are in place, you need to know what is happening quickly and effectively. There are a number of online monitoring tools out there including Radian6, Sentiment Metrics,  Market Sentinel,  Trackur, even Google Alerts will suffice.

Despite the fact it has ended slightly unceramouniasly, I can only applaud Skittles on the campaign to a certain extent. If nothing else it has given the rest of us a fantastic case study on social media and the power of word of mouth.

In a year that has already seen significant growth for Twitter, things continue to go from strength to strength. Following on from making around $1 million during the Christmas break by alerting followers to sale items, Twitter has announced a range of Twitter-sclusive deals for its near 12000 following.

@Delloutlet on Twitter

As expected the announcement was made via Twitter as well as on via this Direct2Dell blog post:

Beginning today, Dell will offer deals from the Dell Outlet exclusive to Twitter in the U.S. With over 11,000 followers, our team wanted to show their thanks to the Twitter world through these new deals which will continue each week.

Its interesting to see the continuing evolvement of Twitter, it will be interesting to see how the continuing engagement with Twitter affects how other channels particularly email.  I single out email particularly because of the similarities – however the ‘invitation’ nature of twitter may mean take up of Twitter sales messages may be higher as a result, however at present I have seen very little evidence to support that.

However there are increasing numbers of intuitive and inventive tools and ‘plugins’ to Twitter, something which I feel is going to continue to see the potential monetization of Twitter move forward apace, particularly as I would suggest Twitter has four main benefits over other comparison channels:

• Users are warm prior to engagement. Primary readers are generally followers and thus highly receptive to any sales messages you may be distributing
• However responses may be read by secondary ‘followers’, and also be tertiary distribution points such as blog plugins and the like.
• Twitter is accountable (Yes I did say accountable). URL shorterners such as TinyURL allow you to pass tracking parameters which could be integrated back into your analytics.
• Twitter is permanent – well to a degree. Once posted the post cannot be deleted from the timeline by your recepients – unless they remove you – thus tone of voice and quantity are important (a bit like email)

Given the continuing uptake of Twitter by the mainstream public, perhaps the Dell example may be the first of many…

Link development remains one of the most important aspects of any search engine optimisation campaign. Whilst the mechanism of acquiring links may have changed over the last couple of years, the desire for good quality link certainly hasn’t. A few years ago, many search engine marketing experts could acquire links via various directories (paid and otherwise) and via various paid link networks such as TextLinkAds (and for some sectors the use of various link networks (no names mentioned of course )

These days Google is a lot more fussy about what it determines to provide value in terms of linkage. Many sites have seen a significant impact on performance as Google tweaks its algorithm accordingly. For that reason we have put together a list of link acquisition tactics, ranging from simple to implement to the more far out suggestions.

Get Creative with your link building

• Use badges. For example – If you are a retailer who has resellers who sell on line. Let them put an ‘authorised reseller’ badge on their website with a link back to your website.
• Provide something useful – For example – mortgage provide -> Mortgage Calculator, Debt Specialist – Outgoings overview. One of the best blog related examples is how much is my blog worth
• Develop a useful tool (and don’t forget to promote it) – SEO is full of such examples. Using for example Joost De Valk @ Yoast.com – developing wordpress tools or Dave Naylor’s multi-browser SEO Tool
• Offer awards – for example Lee Oddens BigList of search marketing blogs (PS Any chance of an add Lee )
• Hold a contest. One only has to look at the success of HP’s 31 days of the dragon campaign to see this in action. Not only did they see significant increases in sales, but a significant increase in linkage as well for both them – and the people involved
• Acknowldege good work by others. Our recent post on ‘10 UK search marketing people you should be following on Twitter‘ has not only enjoyed significant buzz, but also generated a nice amount of inbound linkage
• Promote Local relevant activities. Local Conferences, charities etc could be great ways of doing this.

Don’t forget the basics of search engine marketing

• Submit to Quality directories only. Paul Teitelman over at SearchEnginePeople has compiled a great list of good directories
  
• Submit your blog posts to search engine friendly social media
• Swap links with partners, suppliers and related business. This can have secondary benefits in terms of credibility and the like -  For example – http://www.tesco.com/clubcard/clubcard/partners/?page=EONEnergy
• Distribute your offline press releases online. Services such as Marketwire and PRNewswire will allow you to target both national and regional news sources, as well as online news sources including Associated Press.
• Distribute articles to article sites. Not everything is newsworthy so a range of different sources is always good
• Engage with blogs. I use again the example of the HP ‘31 days of the dragon’ campaign which used 31 prominent blogs to promote their products. Perhaps send a product sample of your product to key blogs – ie if you are a chocolate blog – you may send a product sample to various food or chocolate blogs to see what they think.
• Trade articles with other webmasters. Donna Fontenot aka Dazzlin Donna recently did a great article on ‘How to create No-Fail Hot Content’
• Search for sites with dofollow ‘trackbacks’ and link to some of their blog posts. Google for example is great for this – and a great source of subsequent traffic.
• Study competitors banklinks via Yahoo Site Explorer, and request backlinks from many of the same sources. Competitor Analysis can be a great source of links you may not have considered
• Include links in your RSS footers, so content scaped from your site contains links back to you.
• Don’t forget other blended search opps. Video and Images on sites can be a good source of traffic and potentially linkage. For example lets not forget the Cadbury’s Gorilla ads from last year.
• Don’t forget to submit your blog to RSS feed directories
• Linkbaiting can be a great way to get linkage – however it is not without risk
• If you have other sites – don’t forget to link to them. Don’t overdo this but it makes sense for customers not just search engines
• Work with affiliates, maybe even go as far as developing your own search engine friendly affiliate scheme.
• Don’t forget to offer secondary support, social media platforms that arent SEO friendly may still offer secondary promotional opps (ie Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook etc)

Thought Leadership

• Develop whitepapers
• Participate in survery and questionnaires. Good responses can often be included in any subsequent promotion
• Build definitive lists and resources for others (This being just one such example)
• Offer to do guest posts on other peoples blogs. For example I do guest posts for both Marketing Pilgrim and E-Consultancy
• Develop guides as to how something can be done – For example MoneySupermarkets top ten ways to cut insurance costs
• Release unique research results – For example iProspects study into ‘Offline channel behaviour on Online Search behaviour‘
• Be the first to news stories – For example the Blogstorm/Nokia/I-Spy comment spamming story that broke late in 2008
• Comment on the blogs of others in your industry, or those of related sites. Not all blog comment links are no follow
• Engage in speaking opportunities. For example – many of the sessions at SES/SMX are covered on various blogs and forums.
• Get yourself known by industry, national and regional media. This may result in ongoing coverage and a regular source of linkage. In the UK this may include NMA  and the like.
• Search keyword “add url”, keyword “add site”, and don’t forget to add your site to those sites

One thing is apparent when looking at the list above. SEO has become more closely aligned with traditional marketing practises than ever before. SEO is not about automated link acquisition, SEO is a social activity. Anything less is likely to result in reduced performance and ultimately a short lived campaign.

Think, be creative and ultimately enjoy your link building.

Other sources on this subject

8 ways to buy links without buying links
The Definitive List (75+) of Link Building Techniques in 2008
101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website

As the second part of the Twitter series here on Holistic, I thought I would suggest some of the people I am, and would recommend following on Twitter, and being a SEO in the UK, obviously all these are UK based.

Dave Naylor (DaveN)

Company: Bronco

WHO?: One of the ‘big dogs’ of UK search marketing, Dave started working in the SEO industry over 10 years ago.

WHY: Hugely popular, highly respected and well worth following

WHERE: http://twitter.com/DaveNaylor

Company: MediaVest/MVi

WHO?: Head of Search at MediaVest. Industry veteran (sorry Jon)

WHY: Widely respected and a regular speaker on both the SMX and SES speaking circuits. Amongst other things – he’s my boss.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/JonDMyers

Company: BigmouthMedia

WHO?: Head of Search at Bigmouthmedia.

WHY: Hardcore Search Marketeer – and ‘face’ of Bigmouthmedia (erm ). Passionate about all things search, and if that bores you, theres always his gaming.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/AndrewGirdwood

Company: Blogstorm/Branded3

WHO?: Director of Search at Branded3.

WHY: Been a magic year for Patrick and the Blogstorm blog.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/patrickaltoft

Company:

WHO?: Marketing Expert @ jimsmarketingblog.com

WHY: Hugely experienced marketeer and VERY well connected (Over 16000 followers on Twitter)

WHERE: http://twitter.com/Jimconnolly

Company: Altogether Digital

WHO?: SEO and Social Media Director at Altogether Digital

WHY: Entertaining blogger, and if that fails theres always the music commentary.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/ciaranj

Company: SEOptimise

WHO?: Director of Search at SEOptimise

WHY: Some great posts coming out of SEOptimise at the moment. Worth following for that alone.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/kevgibbo

Company: Microsoft/MSN

WHO?: Microsoft Adcentre’s Community Manager

WHY: Works for Microsoft apart from anything else (Who would turn down the chance of winning an ‘I’m a PC tshirt). Apart from that his regular commentary is hugely entertaining

WHERE: http://twitter.com/MelCarson

Company: Distilled

WHO?: Founder of Distilled with Duncan Morris

WHY: His involvement with SEOMoz is well known, however the site itself is a wealth of information.

WHERE: http://twitter.com/willcritchlow

Company: Ayima Search Marketing

WHO?: One of the Ayima Gang

WHY: Entertaining Blogger, and hugely entertaining twitter read not just in terms of latest on hangovers….

WHERE: http://twitter.com/evilgreenmonkey

Matt Sawyer – DataDial -Online Marketeer, SEO and Social Media Junkie – http://twitter.com/mattuk

Rob Watts – Latitude – SEO – Stephen Pavlovich – Bonytoad – http://twitter.com/bonytoad

Jane Copland – SEOMoz/Ayima – Only here as she isn’t 100% in the UK yet- http://twitter.com/coplandmj

Judith Lewis – I-Level – Search Director at I-Level – http://twitter.com/JudithLewis

Lisa Ditlefsen – Base One – Head of Search at BaseOne – http://twitter.com/LisaDitlefsen

George Hopkin – Johnston Press – SEO Evangelist – http://twitter.com/GeorgeHopkin

Paul Walsh – Various – http://twitter.com/PaulWalsh

Nikki Pilkington – http://twitter.com/nikkipilkington

Dave Davis – RedFly Marketing – http://twitter.com/daveredfly

Dan Alderson – Amaze PLC – http://twitter.com/pinje

and the final one

Peter Young

Company: MediaVest / Holistic Search

WHO?: SEO Manager at MediaVest.

WHY: Why not?

WHERE: http://twitter.com/peteyoung

Thats just some of my recommendations, Please feel free to add yours…

Much like 2008, 2009 is forecast to be another difficult year for businesses. In the UK, we have seen the demise of many established bricks and mortar retailers, household names such as MFI and Woolworths. It is no surprise therefore that advertisers are demanding that their advertising and marketing activities are as effective as possible, and this can only mean that agencies will have to ensure their campaigns are water tight.

It is also a time when advertisers will be looking at trimming wastage from their marketing budgets. We have already seen a number of traditional channels seeing significant falls in spend, areas such as radio in particular. Online is not immune from this, and there is evidence of significant reductions of paid search campaigns and display, affiliate and SEO budgets.

However despite these reductions we are still seeing increasing numbers of advertisers shifting budget allocation from traditional channels to online marketing. These are new and interesting waters for everyone. The last time, many people experienced a recession was in the last century, and many organisations such as Google, Yahoo et all were either in their infancy, or not even thought of. For this reason it is difficult for marketeers to draw directly on any previous experience, however that is not to say, previous experiences should not be discounted.

In particular, during previous recessions – there were examples of many organisations that decided the ‘bunker’ approach. That is – they decided to wait it out, until the recession ends cutting back on assets and investment – including marketing. This often results in an inability to react when market conditions improve – and thus a loss to faster, more nimble competitors. Recessions often see periods of real innovation, and we only have to look at the boom of e-commerce & as a result of search following the dot-com bubble bursting to see how a potential negative can become a positive very, very quickly.

With many downturns, two things often go hand in hand. Accountability on the one , and innovation on the other.  For this reason, I would suggest the winners from this recession are going to be those that innovate during this period – offering clients extra value for their money, and those that invest and provide quality service to their clients.

Accountability is not a difficult thing to cover. In times such as this clients want their money to work even harder. Channels which do not perform will either see reductions in budget, or alternatively the chop altogether. Display for example is seeing falls in budget as marketeers struggle to determine effectiveness.It is therefore imperative, the tools in place to measure effectively – thereby allowing you as the marketeer to make educated decisions based on fact rather than guesswork.  Simple Clickthroughs and traffic are not enough. Conversions and ROI are going to play (and are already playing) a more and more important part – and branding exercises are likely to become more and more scarce.

Spending through a recession may seem like a daft idea, however Dave Morgan of AOL makes an interesting point

“The financial pressure will be severe,” …”When you take out big chunks of money, it’s not just the spend that disappears but also the competition.”

This is likely to mean that two potential scenarios could develop. Areas where ROI cannot be easily determined are likely to see slowdowns in spend (if not reductions) – with channels which deliver on spend seeing increased spend – albeit this comparitively. Expert analysis would suggest channels such as Search (SEO and PPC) are likely to see stability in spend, with other areas such as social media still remaining high on many peoples agendas. Whilst social media has been a bit of a hit and miss channel for many marketeers, there are becoming an ever increasing number of success stories such as Comcast – who have seen successful campaigns on social media platforms such as Twitter, and I would expect the number of success stories to continue to increase in 2009.

Reductions in spend however are reflected in industry figures – E-Marketer have forecast an increase of 8.9% in 2009, from $23.6 billion to $25.7 billion – down from an initial forecast of 14% back in August 2008.  As an agency, we are going to have to work harder to make campaigns work – advertisers are going to be scrutinising all aspects of campaigns, and as a result, I would suggest we are going to see greater movement between agencies over the coming months. It is therefore essential that you get your house in order now – before it is too late.

This is the first post in the Digital Marketing and the Recession series.

Twitter has been one of the tools I have been most into during 2008, something which has given me the opportunity to interact with some people I have only had a fleeting chance to meet during speaking engagements, industry events or attendance of conferences. This has included the likes of Kevin Ryan, Dave Naylor and various people from agencies such as Latitude  and BigMouthmedia.

For people not familiar with Twitter, Twitter is a microblogging service which allows a maximum of 140 characters, something which allows for a service which in my opinion ends up midway between an instant messsenger and a blog.

Twitter

There are a number of reasons however I may choose or not choose to connect with someone on Twitter – for example:

• No Introduction – Always nice to know a little about you before I choose to follow (or not as the case may be)
• No link to website – If your description doesn’t suffice, then a link is always good, so I can find out more about you.
• What you say – Probably one of the more important factors here. There are an awful lot of people who have over 18000 comments. No offence you either have
  1) Too much time
  2) Write a lot of rubbish. I am one of those that would rather have 500 interesting posts than 18000 telling me that you are in Puerto Banus or the like
  3) Swearing and the like. On personal level I am not one of those that wants to read a load of cussing when looking at Twitter. That combined with 2 is a definite nono.
• Kan jy Engels praat – In english – do you speak English. Unless your Dutch or Afrikaans there is not a good chance of me understanding you so in practical terms there is little or no point me following you.
• Have you written anything. I often receive a number of ‘follows’ from people with no comments. What is the point of me following you – if you don’t say anything?
• Are you a brand – Not a keen follower of brands unless I really like you (@starbucks for example)
• Frequency of tweets – One tweet every four months is not that interesting – unless its worth waiting for (and lets face it 140 characters really is difficult to write something knockout in – although I will stop short of impossible)
• Self Promotion – Shameless self promotion is a definite turn-off. People don’t use twitter for pure business purposes (if you want that LinkedIn or Ecademy is great for you. I tend to find people like to get to know you more ‘personally’ rather than your corporate persona.
• Are you in an industry I am interested in. For obvious reasons, SEO, Paid Search and other online marketing professionals are always an easy win – although Andy Murray (Tennis Player) and MCHammer (Remember him) have somehow made their way onto the list

If you are on Twitter, feel free to drop us a line – twitter.com/peteyoung, if you aren’t give it a try (and forget about your social life – at least without Twitter)

Over the last year or so, there have been a number of posts declaring the so-called death of blogging citing reducing blog volumes, lack of uniqueness and a number of other metrics. I would however suggest, that it is not so much that blogging is dying, more that is has matured.

In particular it was the recent announcement by Hewlett Packard (HP) , highlighting an 85% increase in sales – as a result of a targeted campaign using blogs. In an environment were hyper sales increases are becoming less and less common – such figures are all the more suprising, and even more so – when it is considered that this has been mainly attributed to activity focussed primarily online.

The figures primarily centre around the HP Dragon, a range of laptops whose sales were mediocre to say the least, a laptop whose specs should not be frowned at – sporting a 20.1 inch screen, 500GB disk space, and weighing in at a mere 15 pounds.

Following a social media campaign, aptly named ‘31 days of the dragon‘, in which 31 prominent blogs (based on influence andpower (links, rank and recommednations)  were targeted and given the chance to offer 31 laptops as prizes in 31 days – effectively a months worth of competitions where the blogs made up their own competitions with their own rules – but agreed to promote the contests of everyone else in the group.

The result was that the first five pages of Google results for searches on HP and HP Dragon were blog posts about the contest. At the last count HP they had over 380,000 links to the 31 sites discussing the contest. Bloggers got over 25,000 contest entries and an average 150% increase in traffic.

The sites included were:

02 May – 09 May www.absolutevista.com
03 May – 10 May www.arstechnica.com
04 May – 11 May www.osnn.net
05 May – 12 May www.jkontherun.com
06 May – 13 May digitalmediaphile.wordpress.com
07 May – 14 May www.bostonpocketpc.com and www.techronical.com
08 May – 15 May www.the-gadgeteer.com
09 May – 16 May www.thedigitallifestyle.com
10 May – 17 May www.digitalhomethoughts.com
11 May – 18 May www.windows-now.com
12 May – 19 May www.windowsconnected.com
13 May – 20 May www.geekstogo.com
14 May – 21 May bink.nu
15 May – 22 May www.mediablab.com
16 May – 23 May www.last100.com
17 May – 24 May www.labnol.org
18 May – 25 May www.notebooks.com
19 May – 26 May www.slashdotreview.com
20 May – 27 May www.neowin.net
21 May – 28 May www.geek.com
22 May – 29 Mau www.lockergnome.com
23 May – 30 May www.planetx64.com
24 May – 31 May www.thegreenbutton.com
25 May – 01 Jun www.istartedsomething.com
26 May – 02 Jun www.bleepingcomputer.com
27 May – 03 Jun www.hardwaregeeks.com
28 May – 04 Jun www.geeknewscentral.com
29 May – 05 Jun www.geekzone.co.nz
30 May – 06 Jun www.thetabletpc.net
31 May – 07 Jun www.gearlive.com
01 Jun – 08 Jun www.gottabemobile.com

The Result: An almost 85% increase in sales of a computer that was released over nine months ago.

Startling, and even more impressive if you consider the ongoing benefits

• The amount of positive brand coverage relating to the brand is immense – with the knock on effect – that many of these sites have significant followings – and thus considerable influence
• The increase in natural buzz is significantly better, given both the nature of the sites targeted, and the natural syndication from there. Certainly stats such as those released above are all the more likely to increase the awareness of both the product and brand itself

Certainly a significant argument that blogs are not dead. In my opinion what we are starting to see is a maturity in the channel – don’t get me wrong – there is certainly room for manouvre and improvement. For those that remember some of the posts that were released following Jason Calacanis retirement announcement – and the insuing blogging is dead posts , I would suggest that the above data highlights the power and influence that blogs have and how they have matured, and that blogs are likely to be around for a while yet, because:

1. Many blogs are now established resources – one look at my – and many other peoples RSS readers will display a plethora of blogs amongst their regular online haunts. Many of these blogs have become media properties in their own right – and have built up followings and fanbases.
2. Blogs are evolving – new sites such as Twitter and Tumblr are providing innovative new ways of interacting with audiences
3. Social Media Hybrids – Sites such as Facebook allow you to interface your blog with your social media profile – thus creating a hybrid of technologies
4. Blogs are interactive – Many blogs don’t just contain content – they are  a mix of video, content and imagery.
5. Many businesses have not embraced blogging let alone social media

Certainly the opportunity gap is shortening – however from a commercial perspective I would suggest there is still room at the table…..

A post a little of our normal path, however social media is integrated with a number of search marketing channels. Richard Scoble speaks to Chris Putnam, the software engineer at Facebook in charge of video regarding the release of its new HD Video feature.

Worth a watch… (if not to hear about the way Chris himself got hired – perhaps even you were subject to his ‘cover letter’)

Brand Reputation is becoming a big word in marketing circles. Warfare is taken place on the search engine results pages for many brands, and is becoming an important part of the Search Marketing professionals armoury. However what should you have in your brand reputation toolkit.

1) Know where you stand

It is very difficult to understand how and where to react to an issue if you do not know what is being said about you, and there is really no reason why you shouldn’t be able to setup even the simplest of monitoring tools without spending hundreds or thousands of pounds on brand reputation software.

Simply implementing a Google Alert on your brand will give you some sort of idea of who, what and where your brand is being talked about. I would add however there are some fantastic brand reputation monitoring tools out there that do pick up a wide variety of content, across a range of different channels, and if you are considering some of these tools some of the better ones are:

• Magpie Brandwatch
• Radian 6
• Market Sentinel
• Sentiment Metrics
• Asomo
• and even Trackur from Andy Beal.

2) Dominate your brand search.

Thomas Cook - Dominating brand

There are various ways of doing this, however it is imperative you make it as difficult for a potential brand detractor to influence any searcher, by reducing visibility below the fold. The example above shows an organisation that does this very well by utilising a mixture of subdomains and domains to dominate the top 10 of searches for ‘Thomas Cook’.

3) Use your paid search tactically

Often a lot of brand reputation issues will arise in public forums such as blogs and forums. A large proportion of these sites will carry various forms of online advertising such as Google Adsense advertising, or other forms of online advertising as a way of monetising their sites.

Use of sponsored search for brand reputation

Where particular issues may arise on a suitable site, it is possible to tailor adverts to particular sites – such as Google Adwords – site placement. These ads may carry creative developed particularly for a particular issue advising browsers of where they may be able to find more applicable factual data.

4) Use your offline channels online

Modern day search pages allow search marketeers to influence a far greater proportion of the search engine results page than ever before including

• Video
• PR
• Product Feeds
• Local Listings
• and Images

Blended search allows greater brand infiltration than ever before

Using the example above, for the iPhone, advertisers are able to use a variety of channels to attract potential custom, including

• the traditional organic listings – where Apple (as you would expect dominate)
• the Paid Listings – allowing advertisers such as Carphone Warehouse and Vodaphone to advertise on these terms

but also

• PR – Taken from Google trusted news sources
• Products – taken from advertisers who have submitted Google Base Feeds.

All these channels allow a far wider variety of usage outside of pure search results, for example the video used above is obviously pulled from Youtube – and has already received nearly 6 million views since it went live.

They also tend to dominate key areas of the page, for example

• Google Products – often visible between positions 1-4 (above the fold of the screen)
• Local – Generally the first result – and highly prominent in terms of eye catchment
• PR – Often within positions 1-5
• Video – Depends but normally anywhere between 1-10

They are in many cases ‘eyeline breakers’, often breaking the natural browse of a results page, and meaning users spend more time on search pages – something Enquiro looked into recently.

5) Use Your affiliates

This is obviously going to be more pertinant to some advertisers more than others, however it is worth noting how much real estate can be taken up by affiliates. Whilst this may be a more expensive way of taking up search page real estate, it can result in some significant coverage, all of which is likely (as long as you treat them right) to result in good brand (and sales focussed) coverage.

The role of affiliates on brand searches

And more:

• Use social media (Will cover this in a later post)
• Is Wikipedia relevant – WHilst you aren’t likely to get any link juice – this does take up valuable real estate
• Create a Squidoo lens

One thing is for sure – don’t just ignore the problem. There are a number of high profile examples out there in, that highlight what happens if things are simply left to fester. Certainly people like Dell have developed a brand reputation response learned from the ‘Dell Hell’ days.

I, like many have been following the recent events in the US election, with the fight for the White House. It was therefore interesting to see the influence online has played in the campaign. Two recent articles have really struck a cord as a result.

Firstly, Sage Lewis highlighted the importance of online (and in particular Search and Social Media) played in Obamas rise to the White House. In his article, Sage mentioned a number of interesting statistics, namely:

• There are nearly 2 million links to Obama’s website, nearly twice as much as those pointing to John McCains website.
• According to statistics released by Rubicon Consulting, “Democrats are more active online than Republicans. Democrats are more likely to participate in online communities, and say they’re more heavily influenced in their voting decisions by information they find online.”
• Obama’s campaign had social media at its heart, not just in terms of the site itself, but also in terms of the personnel involved. The involvement of Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, shows the importance of social media within the strategy.

The second article of particular interest to search was Kate Kay on Clickz. In the article, Kate highlighted that Obama’s campaign spent nearly $8 million through October to Google, Yahoo, Facebook, news Web sites, ad networks, and in-game ad firm Massive (which I talked about at the recent Interactive Marketing show in Manchester). In particular it is interesting to see where the money was spent.

• Just over $4 Million on Paid Search – roughly broken down $3.5 Million to Google, with Yahoo accounting for about an eighth of that, with $673000.
• Nearly $8 million spent on online ads.
• Interestingly, the spend on Social Media comes to the fore. Nearly three quarters of the social media budget used in September alone, with Facebook taking the lions share.
• The use of MSN owned Massive Incorporated (well worth a look) was interesting alone. The campaign placed ads pushing an early voting message in EA games, including a racing game called “Burnout Paradise,” targeting them to players in 10 battleground states.
• Ad networks were a particular focus with more than $600,000 was paid to a variety of networks throughout the year, including AOL’s Advertising.com, Collective Media, Undertone Networks, Burst Media, Quigo, DrivePM, Pulse360, Specific Media, and online video networks Broadband Enterprises and Tremor Media.
• Local online media targeting also saw significant spend with around $100000 being spent.

Politics is an area many people have an opinion about, and it is therefore suprising it is often not integral to modern day political campaigns, however it is encouraging to see more and more focus given to Online. In particular key channels such as Search (inc Online PR/Blogging), Display Online Brand Management (and monitoring in particular), should be a fundamental part of any modern day political framework.

Given the noise that has been generated on Twitter by many of my search colleagues with regards to the US Elections, it is suprising that McCains camp didn’t use online as a bigger battleground, and I personally think this is the first of a more digitally focussed policital landscape moving forward, as even we in the UK start using online as part of the political juggernaut.