OMG! Is blogging DOA? Last week the Pew Research Center released a report that found blogging has slipped in popularity with teens and young adults. The 28% percent of teen Internet users that said they blogged in 2006 has now slipped to 14%. The study cites social networking and micro-blogging as the cause for the drop in popularity. Basically, kids these days can’t be bothered with long blogs about how their best friend stole their lip gloss when they can just post a quick status update on their Facebook that efficiently describes all of their drama in just a few words.

The study goes on to note that the majority of bloggers are ancient types (over 30 to be exact) who also read other blogs. It’s suggested that the over 30 set has the time and attention span to devote to reading and creating blogs. With specialized and professional blogs seemingly on the rise, it is hard to dispute the reports findings. This being said, let’s not shove blogging in the more…

I came across this really cool advertising stunt by Coca-Cola. The marketing geniuses responsible for the event rigged a Coca-cola vending machine to gave out extra goodies to college students who put their hard earned college coinage into the machine.  Students who visited the machine got a bevy of freebees designed to make people smile: free bottles of Coke, a pizza, a bouquet of sunflowers, even a very large sub. Imagine if your blog, website or social media campaign followed this same format. Instead of just regurgitating the same stuff over and over, what if a blog or a website or a social media campaign gave you doses of happiness. Okay, you don’t have to spread happiness, but you should strive to make people feel something. Whether you make them laugh, cry or get angry, you are doing what the Coke Machine is doing. You are getting people to engage with your brand. When people come to your site, blog or Facebook page expecting the same-old stuff and you give them a dose of something more…. bonus! And what do you get in return? You get loyalty, readership, engagement and possibly one more person out there who likes you. It’s a simple yet powerful lesson, one that i will aspire to practice as a marketer. So what have you done to spread the good stuff around?

Blog marketing has, in a certain very real sense, become the new SEO. The old SEO revolved around keywords and back links. The new SEO revolves around strong content and link bait. What’s the difference?

With the old SEO, webmasters wrote keyword-based content designed to get their pages ranked in the search engines based on how they used the keywords on the page. Then they market their web pages by building links to those pages using approved link building tactics. These tactics still work today but webmasters can achieve the same thing in less time by engaging in blog marketing.

Blog marketing is about adding new, fresh and original content to your website often. The more often the better. The more original your content the better. The higher the quality of your content the better. See a trend here? Let me explain:

• The reason more content is better is because it brings the search engines back to your website to crawl it more often. More robots on your site means more chances to get your pages ranked. Plus, every blog post is a unique web page with its own unique permalink. More pages rank in the search engines for your keywords.

• The reason original content is better is because duplicate content won’t get ranked. Don’t copy someone else. Be original. Add your own content with your own thoughts and ideas.

• And finally, the reason quality is important is because higher quality content draws more links. When people see that you publish highly relevant and authoritative content on a consistent basis they will link to you

And that’s why blog marketing is about quality content and link bait. It’s the new SEO.

I recently attended the OMMA Video (#ommavideo) event at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles. A lot of our customers ask us about viral video, so I hope this post sheds some light on the subject. The panel “The Art of Being Discovered: Is Viral Video a Strategy” was moderated by Bob Heyman, (Managing Director, The Digital Engagement Group) and included the following panelists: Andrew Budkofsky (SVP Sales and Partnerships, Break Media), Benjamin Carlson (Chief Strategy Officer, Bradley and Montgomery), Gregory Markel (Founder/President of Infuse Creative), Matt Martelli (CEO/Creative Director, Mad Media) and Bret Wilson (Co-Founder/CEO of TubeMogul). Here are some of the talking points I walked away with that I found interesting:

• The best techniques for driving “virality” starts with content. But it doesn’t end there. Then you have to promote your video via SEO, social media (Twitter, Facebook, Myspace etc.), social bookmarking sites (Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon etc) and  getting bloggers to review and talk about your video.  Oh, and it can’t hurt to launch a full PR campaign to get a reaction from appropriate media outlets that are relevant to your audience.

• Getting a video to go viral is getting harder and harder because there is currently a glut of video out there and it’s harder to stand out. Video is following the same trajectory as banner ads; at first everyone clicked on them and thought they were novel. But today, people pay less and less attention to them. The idea of going into a teen chat room and asking them to check out your video and expecting a response is kind of creepy and pretty much over.

• Want to spread your video effectively? Consider hiring a Weblebrity (a web celebrity that has a following of a million plus fans). Pay them to review your video. Or, even better yet, have them make a video in response to your video. This practice is becoming popular among viral video marketers and weblebrities seem more than willing to participate.

But at the end of the day, it still comes down to the quality of your content and being relevant to your audience. As one of the panelist said, “sites want good content. They’re going to start banning people who flood them with crap.” Woudn’t that be nice.  If you couldn’tt make the OMMA video event, you can see highlights at the MediaPost Raw >> OMMA Video .

I’ve done my fair share of print advertising. Back in the days of yore, clients and media planners alike were attracted to magazines for their ability to target niche audiences. Print newspapers, too, were attractive mediums when you were targeting geographically specific markets. But the days when print could deliver hype-focused niche markets are fading away. Today it seems that advertisers are taking a serious look at blogging as a platform to get their brands in front of niche markets. But not just any kind of blogs. We’re talking blog networks. A recent NY Times article suggests that blog networks may be the next big medium for advertisers. According to the article, most advertisers shy away from the blog medium because they have no control of the content and may be frightened away by edgy content. But when you’re dealing with a blog network like Sugar Inc. or Gawker Media for example,  advertisers tend to let their guard down because the editorial content is all being handled from a single, reliable source; just like traditional print pubs once did. On Gawker’s home page, for example, they define themselves thusly;

“Gawker Media marries a traditional publishing model and an all-star editorial masthead with the audience engagement borne out of the candor, frequency and hyper-linking of the blog format.”

Sounds legit, right? Who wouldn’t want the safety of the traditional publishing model cross-pollinated with the targeting ability of the blogosphere. Traditional publishers focus on content. Digital publishing does the same, but with the added benefit of speed, distribution and hyper-focused targeting.  Here are my top five reasons why I think advertisers will continue to consider blog networks:

1. They offer lightening in a bottle. Blogs can be updated on the fly and can deliver information, news, opinions at Internet speed. Blog networks often employ a stable of writers that are at their keyboards 24 hours a day.
2. Tapping vast resources. In addition to tapping into great writing talent, blogs have loyal audiences that can interact with the writers. Often times, readers feed stories or leads to blog authors allowing the blog to get a scoop on a story before a traditional print pub can.
3. Stickiness. If you have a network of fashion blogs, chances are that if you offer fashion products on your blogs, your audience will click through. They’re already there for fashion content. All you have to do is entice them.
4. Original content. The beauty of creating original content is that you can use it as you see fit. If your original content is highly sought after, there’s no reason why you can’t spread it across your blog network and break fresh content before your print publishers even get their ink rollers wet.
5. A mention is worth a thousand clicks. A mention in a story or a hyperlink to a brand name may mean a significant spike in traffic, depending on how good the content is. While a banner may do little, content can increase sales if done right. Try doing that in print.

I believe that blog networks will continue to gain momentum and increase their clout among advertisers. The image of the blogger clad in pajamas at the typer pouring his/her heart out to the world has given way to real money-making platforms that are both powerful and interesting ways to reach an audience.

A new report conducted by Q Interactive suggests that women who are active in social media are turned off by brands and influencers who use the medium to push products/services to them. A report which will be released at ad:tech Chicago today suggests that 75% of 1000 women who were surveyed said they were not influenced by social media when it comes to making a purchase. While social media and micro-bloggin accounts for fewer purchase decisions, the same may not be true for women who are influenced to purchase by blogs. According to a study conducted in May of this year by BlogHer, women are more likely to purchase as a result of a recommendation or customer experience posted on a blog (%85) than on social media (%37). This comes as no surprise as women use blogs more for a source of information and to get recommendations on what to buy whereas they use social networking more as a way to keep in touch with friends and family. But as social media technology becomes more widely accepted, we may see a trend where the lines between social media and blogging start to blur. For now, however, it’s clear that women utilize the mediums for different purposes. For those women who understand and successfully use the mediums as a platform to develop a fan base, they can gain momentum in their power of influence in a salient way. For an interesting look at how some top women bloggers fare by using social media as part of their platform, check out this interesting report released by PR agency Access Communications and twitter analytics company Twitalyzer which suggests that while it may be difficult to achieve “influencer” status in the social media sphere, those who do can solidify their influencer status and create a measureable impact.

Don’t expect people to come knocking down your door just because you have a website. The bottom line is you must have products and/or services people are interested in first and foremost. No duh, right? Let’s say you know there is a demand for what you’re offering and you are ready to attract traffic to your site. This is where Brandcasting comes in. Think of Brandcasting like casting a bag of seeds across a vast field (the Internet). Each seed that is cast will need to be nourished and watered in order to grow tall enough to have a presence. But once a presence is established, you will see many iterations of your brand sprouting up for any passerby to come across. The longer you nourish the seedling, the higher and more prominent it grows.

There are lots of ways to deploy intelligent brand marketing online. We’re just scratching the surface here. I haven’t even touched on press releases, banner ad campaigns, viral videos, ppc campaigns, newsletters, affiliate programs, email marketing and a whole slew of other tools a business or an individual can apply for effective Brandcasting.

The metaphor of scattering seeds and then nourishing them is an apt one. For example, lets say one such seed is intended to grow a branded blog for your company. Having the best blog or writing the best entries doesn’t mean diddlysquat unless someone is interested enough in what you’re offering. So it is really important that you nourish your blog with quality content and engaging information and “water” your blog daily, that is, add content to it daily.  Having a good mix of seeds is helpful too. Having a multi-level marketing strategy that employs the best combination of “seeds” may be the best way attract different niche audiences. So one set of seeds may be intended to grow the company blog variety, another seed is intended to create a presence via article marketing, another seed may be intended to give your brand a video presence, and so on. Ultimately, you want the right mix of seeds to catch the attention of the right mix of customers.

Whether you do it yourself, or hire a company like Brandsplat to deploy an intelligent online branding campaign, you have to choose a strategy and remember to manage your strategy as certain milestones are met. Brandcasting can boost your company’s visibility and over time can give your brand a lasting footprint on the Internet. Just remember that it takes time to build your presence online and don’t get frustrated if you don’t see results right away. Cast those seeds, water and feed them and watch them grow your brand into one that has a healthy presence on the web. Happy farming.

When social networking first came on the scene with sites like Myspace, many people viewed it as technology meant for younger, tech savvy users who want to have a common digital space where they can chat, exchange music, share information and do just like teens do in Europe in their local town squares. This was an ideal solution for towns across America that didn’t have a town square; a digital piazza was the perfect solution. As time went on, it was clear that something more powerful was forming on the horizon. Sites like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin have soon become “virtual piazzas” for much broader ranges of users that include adults, professionals and now, businesses. As I have written about in a previous micro blogging post, businesses now have the power to broadcast deals and offers to loyal customers via micro-blogging. Think of how Kmart used “blue light specials” in their stores to create a loyal following of shoppers. Now businesses can do the same without the corny spinning blue light and they can reach far beyond the confines of their brick and mortar store space. But don’t think that just because you are tweeting deals to your audience that the dollars will start rolling in. You have to have a strategy. To get started, Twitter does a nice job of explaining how the power of micro blogging can help businesses of all sizes. For the novice, I have written a post detailing how to get started with Twitter here. The subject of using social networking is a huge one, so we will just scratch the surface by offering up a few tips for the novice micro blogger.

Micro Blogging Tips

1. Keep ‘em coming back for more. Offering incentives and special deals on an ongoing basis will keep your audience engaged and willing to follow your micro blog. Also, give-aways and promotions work well in growing your audience and keeping your loyalists happy.

2.  Manage your online reputation. Because micro blogging is a social medium, anyone can have a voice. That means that you may receive negative feedback from your customers in a public format. Always address negative comments and if you can, look for ways to turn those negative comments around in your favor by offering a solution or a “make-good” for that customer. While many will agree that there is no such thing as bad PR, there is such a thing as a bad brand reputation and anything you can do to snub negativity can help in the long run and may even turn a sour situation into a sweet marketing win.

3. Bond with your fans. Social media allows you to have back and forth conversations with your most loyal customers in a public format. Always invite your fans to have a platform and create a healthy exchange with your brand. Who knows, you may discover your version of Subway Jared, Subway’s spokesperson who was one of its most loyal fans.

Again, we are just scratching the surface here. Micro blogging can be time consuming yet rewarding if you do it right. It’s up to you to do research for the best micro blogging techniques that fits your marketing strategy for your business. For a better handle on micro blogging, I recommend looking to other businesses that are similar to yours, how-to books and online resources like Twitter. Be sure to check back for tomorrow’s post, the final part of a seven part series. As they say in the local piazza, ciao.

One of the most effective ways to spread content about your brand on the Internet is to write a blog.  Blogging can be a great way to distribute information and good content about your industry. Often times a blog is a good way to set a tone for a brand and allows readers to interact with a real human being within the company. Blogging is a good format to write relevant blog entries that are timely and/or time sensitive. You can easily set up a blog for free. Sites like WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, LiveJournal are among the most popular services that can help you get started. There are others to choose from, so do your own research to find one that’s best for you.

Think of your blog like a daily newspaper. Daily newspapers rely on breaking news and rich/relevant content to attract a growing audience. This is the same strategy you should keep in mind when writing a blog. The idea here is to attract readers who want to check in on a daily basis because your blog is relevant to them, their industry or their likes and dislikes. This can be a time consuming, yet rewarding proposition. If you don’t have the time to write daily entries, you may want to hire a writer who is knowledgeable in your field and employ them to write blog entries that are on topic for you. Or, you may want to consider having a stable of writers, much like a newspaper, who can come at a certain subject from various angles. Successful blogs like the Huffington Post employ this kind of strategy and are able to offer rich content by multiple sources and differing points of view.

The next thing you want to keep in mind is that your loyal readers may want to have an interactive experience with your blog. Think of the Op Ed section of a newspaper. Newspapers will often print opinions of readers in order to give them a voice, and also to get feedback from their readership. You can do this by allowing your readers to comment on your blog entries and to post these comments on your blog. Sometimes readers may post irrelevant comments to your blog. In this case you may choose not to publish comments or simply delete them. The beauty of a blog is that you have total control of the content.

Once you have gotten your feet wet, you may want to consider commenting on other blogs that relate to the subject matter on your blog. This may help you build strong relationships with other experts in your field and will also help build a community of bloggers and readers who are passionate about your industry. It’s often a good idea to offer up intelligent comments to other blogs and hope that they reciprocate on your blog. Linking back to other bloggers and having them link back to you can also help your ranking as search engines will deem your content relevant, thus ranking you higher on search lists.

Google lobs one back into the Bing court by announcing a “creative commons” search filter for images that are queried on Google. This is good news for bloggers and art directors who scour the web for free images that can be used to spiff up that blog or make their comps sing. According to Business Insider, “search results can be filtered by “labeled for reuse,” “commercial” reuse,” “reuse with modification,” and “commercial reuse with modification.” It’s a pretty cool feature, but in my opinion, it still takes longer to find images on Google than it does on Bing. Bing is lightening-fast and has some nifty filters categorized under size, layout, color, style and people. For me, speed trumps nuance filters like the one announced by Google. But don’t let that sway you. Take it out for a test drive yourself right here.