Business blogging FAQs
Last week, Blogware's Chris Baggott and I participated in a webinar about business blogging. As is so often the case with these things, we received more questions from the participants than we were able to respond to. Moreover, many of the questions are ones I've frequently heard over the years when presenting on business blogging at conferences and from readers.
So herewith, the FAQs on business blogging I hear most often...along with answers that will, hopefully, help move things along at organizations that want to blog, but are stymied by confusion, doubt and uncertainty around issues both technical and content-oriented.
Q&A: Bryan Eisenberg, Co-Founder of FutureNow
Back when dot-com mania was at its peak and marketers crowed about the number of "hits" they were able to attract to their web sites, a voice of reason came out of the darkness and said, in effect, that it's not about the traffic. It's about what you do with the traffic, and -- hello? -- more important, whether that traffic makes money.
That voice was Bryan Eisenberg who's gone on to become a noted speaker, columnist, blogger, co-founder of the Web Analytics Association and author of a string of best-selling books. A new one is in the works: Trim the Fat will draw analogies between what's needed to improve website conversion and the author's recent shedding of 50 (!) pounds.
And Bryan will share those insights at Econsultancy's inaugural U.S. event in New York on Oct. 8, the Peer Summit, as both a keynote speaker and a moderator. We caught up with him for a preview of what he'll be sharing with attendees.
Q&A: The marketing duo behind New York's social media hotel
The Roger Smith Hotel may be the most social media savvy hotel in New York -- if not the world.
There's a blog. A Facebook fan page. A YouTube Channel. Over 3,000 Twitter followers. A Flickr photostream. And two guys behind all these efforts, both of whom winnowed their way into overseeing online marketing for the property following stints in food and beverage services at the hotel.
We caught up with Adam Wallace, the hotel's new media marketing manager, and his sidekick Brian Simpson, whose official title is still assistant food and beverage director, to find out how they built a family-run, independent hotel into a digital force to be reckoned with.
Q&A: Marc Schiller, CEO of ElectricArtists
Marc Schiller is CEO of ElectricArtists, a groundbreaking digital agency in New York with a client roster that has included such major and broad-ranging clients as American Express, Starwood Hotels, A&E Networks, The History Channel, USA Network, Microsoft, Netflix, and The Los Angeles Lakers.
The company has created some of the most innovative and original work in the social media arena, from the first marketing presence in Second Lift back in 2006 to the much more recent Trackingtwitter, a site that tracks (and rates) major brands and products on Twitter.
Marc spends a great deal of his time considering how social media influences marketing, and how marketing can leverage social media. He'll share some of that thinking with the attendees of our Peer Summit in New York on October 8.
Being the impatient types, we asked Marc if we couldn't have a sneak peek now as to what he'll be sharing with the audience next month. Happiily, he obliged.
Q&A: Evan Saks of 1-800-MATTRESS
Evan Saks' hands were tied. As a regional head of advertising for a national franchise, he wasn't allowed to build a better website. So he created a single landing page instead. A deft combination of that one page, a live chat application, and a new keyword management and discovery tool made conversion rates skyrocket -- and resulted in 10X ROI.
We caught up with Evan to ask him how he did it.
Q&A: Web metrics magician Jim Sterne
It's unlikely anyone in digital marketing is unfamiliar with Jim Sterne. His career as a marketer, author, conference chair, speaker, and above all, web metrics guru has earned him international renown and respect. Jim will deliver one of three keynotes at Econsultancy's Peer Summit in New York in October, so we caught up with him to find out what he'll be sharing with the audience, and what's been on his mind lately in terms of how metrics can help build organizations.
Q: So, what are you going to be discussing at your Peer Summit keynote?
A: My favorite topic these days is using Web metrics to drive the business. What I mean by that is most people are using Web analytics as a benchmark: how did we do yesterday, and how are we doing today? Smart people are actually analyzing to optimize their website. The advanced people are using Web data to optimize all of their marketing. They're measuring what's happening on their website to inform the rest of their marketing. So when Best Buy does a television ad about Twitter, that's what I'm talking about. Really good companies - and I've only come across a couple of them - are actually using it to drive their business. In other words, watching behavior online to determine what new products or features or territories to move in to.
Google wants to create your search ad for you
"What if you told us what you were trying to sell and we matched that to the queries of our users?" asked Nick Fox, business product management director for Google's AdWords team. What if search ads just...happened? You tell us what you're selling, we do the rest."
Keyword-free ads are just one example of the potential future of paid search advertising Fox presented at Search Engine Strategies today. Google is also looking at CPA ad models and "smarter formats."
Do the little guys have a digital marketing advantage?
Brian Fetherstonhaugh, chairman and CEO OgilvyOne Worldwide is a guy who talks to a lot of CMOs. And insofar as digital marketing is concerned, he's not impressed with their either their knowledge or skill-set.
"Marketers lag behind consumers in digital adoption," he told an audience at Search Engine Strategies, speaking at a session devoted to selling search to the C-suite. "Your average 12 year-old has a better-integrated performance dashboard than a CMO," he pointed out, illustrating his point with a World of Warcraft screenshot.
Doing social media right...and wrong
Cargo cults. Cowpaths. The Ex-Boyfried Bug. Often the best writing about social media (or business practices in general) centers around good, solid writing. And that's what Christian Crumlish is up to in his forthcoming book Designing Social Interfaces, with co-author Erin Malone.
Crumlish's recent article, The Information Architecture of Social Experience Design: Five Principles, Five Anti-Patterns and 96 Patterns (in Three Buckets), published by the American Society for Information Science and Technology, is a small masterpiece of clear-headed, common-sense, well-communicated dos and don'ts for social media rendered in clever and memorable metaphors.
Global online ad spending still in decline
For the second consecutive quarter, online ad spending has been in decline: 5% in Q3 of this year, according to IDC. The company forecast continaul shrinkage in spend for the rest of the calendar year, saying we may have to wait until mid-2010 for a meaningful recovery in online media buying in search, display, and classified advertising.
Global online spending shrunk this past quarter to $13.9 billion, versus $14.7 billion in the same year-ago period. Only the Asia/Pacific region and Japan saw slight spending gains.
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
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Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
