Monetizing Social Media

I recently came across 11 Business Plans for Twitter, a collection of business plans submitted by people on how to monetize Twitter.

It's pretty tough to monetize social media. People on Social Media generally don't like ads. You might object and say that there are ads on Google. Well, Google ain't Social Media. And people searching on Google are often given added value by the Pay Per Click (PPC) ads that appear. That's why Google is so successful. If I'm searching for "furnaces" and a PPC advertisement shows up that offers to sell me furnaces, I really don't mind. There's a full list of non-PPC search results right there anyway.

Now, if I get an advertisement on Facebook, we're not in the same situation. I wasn't searching for anything. It's just an ad in a place where I'm really not looking for ads. Facebook even lures advertisers with the line, "Reach your customers before they start searching. Pay per click." See, that's not a benefit. I want a customer who IS searching for my product.

Now, occasionally, I get a see a few ads on facebook that are useful. When I went to Queen's I constantly saw ads for Queen's Student Housing. I never clicked on them, but still, they were more useful than most ads. However, now most ads seem to be internet marketing offers to MAKE $5,000 WITH GOOGLE NOW or HOW I MADE $100,000 POSTING LINKS ON GOOGLE. I don't even know what possible business model there is that can be described as "posting links on Google."

Some businesses have made good use of this. See Burger King's great viral marketing campaign. Oh, wait. Facebook didn't like that idea.

I'm not saying Facebook has no business offering advertising. That's silly. Facebook advertising has worked for people. But I don't think it's very optimized right now, and the ads don't add value the way Google does.

Let's move on to Twitter advertising.

Twitter has over a million registered users, but it isn't yet really monetized. That's where the business plans linked at the top of this post come in. They are attempts to turn Twitter into a valid business model.

"Targeted ads" isn't really a very innovative business model, but there are a few in there. I like the one about contextual Tweet response advertising. For example, someone posts, "Going out tonight. What restaurant should I go to?" and the response comes, "@example user Bob's Restaurant is located on Madison Ave. Check it out at: www.exampleURL.com!"

The problem with this is that you'll probably get a lot of crud. And if it becomes popular, it'll just plain pollute your Twitter feed.

However, if they were VERY targeted, it would be useful. What if the example I outlined above was more, "I'm looking for a good pizza place to go to tonight? Recommendations?" and the answer/advertisement came, "@example user Bob's Pizza Restaurant is located on Madison Ave. Check it out at: www.exampleURL.com!"

That's a lot better. But there's only so much a search spider can do. But the more users start using Twitter, and the more advertisers there are, the more specific the ads can be. In short, they can take advantage of the Long Tail.

But before Twitter can do this, it needs even more users. In short, it needs to harness the market for microblogging, and the market for microblogging has to expand dramatically.

But it's possible. Who knows. Smarter people than me will be looking at ideas like these for a long time to come.

How your website displays in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

How your messaging is displayed in the Search Engine Results Page is very important. It's your first impression towards potential website visitors.

The Search Engine Results Page is the page on a search engine with a list of links to websites, their descriptions, and their URL.

This is what it looks like:

The blue underlined text is the link to the website. It is the page title on your website (what displays at the very top of the browser title. Google indexes the first 70 characters of page titles.

The black text is your meta description. Google will display the first 150 characters of your meta description. However, if your meta description is not relevant, Google will just grab some text from your website that it does think is relevant.

The bold words in the page title and meta description are the relevant keywords that Google has found. In the example above, I searched "example" and so it is bolded in all of the results.

The green text is the URL of that page that Google is displaying.

For SEO, Google looks at all of these things! But if you cram keywords into your page title and your meta description, things will just look ugly!

Your page title and meta description is a chance to advertise to potential customers. Here are some tips and ideas for your page titles and meta descriptions:

1. Treat your URL like a headline.
2. Include your company name in your page title.
3. Consider asking a question that will draw interest.
4. Include a call to action ("Visit our website," "See our Knowledge Centre," etc.) in your meta description.
5. Speak in complete sentences.
6. Use only your most sought after keywords with their modifiers, so that they don't turn your page title and meta description into a nonsensical list of keywords.

Remember, your display is like an advertisement... but you may not want to treat it exactly like an ad. If you're only getting people looking to purchase something, then go ahead: give 'em an advertisement. But if they're looking for pure information, they will be turned off by anything that looks like an advertisement.

So be careful with your page titles and your meta descriptions, and always keep the end goal in mind.

SEO should improve your website, not ruin it

If you manage to get your website to the top of Google and it's filled with spam links and a poor user experience, what have you accomplished? Nothing, really. There's some money in it if you're one of those spam blog filled only with Google adwords suckering in folks who are new to the web, but this doesn't seem to be a very solid or sustainable way to make money. If you're doing your best to go behind Google's back, eventually they're going to figure out a way to dock your website to the bottom of the rankings. That's kind of their thing, y'know?

But that's not my point. My point is: if you get to the top of the rankings but your website is poorly optimized to do it's job (i.e., sell your products and/or services) then you've wasted your time. SEO isn't an ends, it's a means.

Besides, good SEO will actually improve your website's conversion and user experience. Good SEO means that you use a site map that conforms to what search engines and what people expect. If you build your site according to standards, people will know how to use it. If you make up your own insane navigation scheme, the search engines won't know what to do, and neither will your users.

If you help out the search engines by deep linking to various back pages on the website, you'll also help out your users. Search engines don't want to "click" more than a few times to get to the "meat" of your website, and guess what? Neither do your users.

Good headers tell the search engines what your page is about. It also tells your users what your site is about. Same with page titles, links, and every other aspect of navigation.

Don't suck up to the search engines at the cost of user experience, because in the end you'll be hurting both causes. For example, if we spammed our own website, MarketingBreakthroughs.com, with only one or two keywords, the entire site wouldn't make any darn sense! But we still keep our keywords in mind and make sure they show up in the text. We put them into page headers where appropriate. We try to describe out inbound links as accurately as possible.

It's not simply about balance, because serving one end often serves the other.

Why Facebook Will Never Be a Great Advertising Platform

Well, the awesomeness of Burger King's "Whopper Sacrifice"

online advertising

campaign has come to an end. The application still exists, mind you, but it has been severely de-fanged after Facebook forced the developer to change the way it works due to "privacy concerns".

Seems Facebook had a flame-broiled beef against the way the app notified all of your friends that somebody had been dropped in favour of the almighty Whopper (normally, friends removals are not announced over the news feed).

Unfortunately, that was the whole point of the campaign -- to let your friends in on the joke, and to spread the campaign virally by alerting others about its presence.

Now, nobody will get a notification when they are sacrificed, and all of your friends will think you're a jerk for dropping them with no notice. Yay!

Well, Burger King tried (and hey, they got a lot of press out of it, so this

social marketing

campaign was undoubtedly a huge success for them), but Facebook's unwillingness to play ball with these marketing and advertising agencies isn't doing itself any favours if it still wants to pretend to be a viable advertising platform.

Registering SEO Domain Name Keywords

One of the SEO strategies that we often use at MB is to register keyword rich domain names. In terms of SEO, domains play a very large factor. If you basically register "keyword.com," and you have a decent number of outside website linking to your (Google rates this by "Page Rank") then there's a good chance you'll come up in the top results for anyone searching "keyword." If you register "modifierkeywordlocation.com" then you're almost guaranteed to come up for anyone who searches "modifer keyword location" or "modifier keyword in location."

This is a common SEO strategy, but to do it well you need to think a little first. To begin, you should always have a branded domain name. Forget SEO until you have a branded domain.

Let's take the Marketing Breakthroughs website as an example. Our main domain name is http://www.marketingbreakthroughs.com. The purpose of this domain is 99% branding. As well, there's the added benefit that some people will, even if they know a URL, will still type "marketing breakthroughs" into Google to get to our site. We obviously want to catch those users, but even if this weren't an added benefit, the branding advantages of having "companyname.com" make it your first choice for a domain.

Now, after doing an SEO Audit, you would come up with keyword phrases. There are too big factors when prioritizing keyword phrases:

1. What's the Search Volume - how many people search for this keword?
2. Are users searching for this keyword likely to buy?

The second factor takes a bit more explaining. You could easily sort a list of keywords by search volume and pick the top ones, but that's a losing proposition. For one, those keywords will be extra expensive. And secondly, you don't want to burn all your resources targeting keywords that won't bring in qualified buyers.

Let's say you have a website that sells baseball equipment. So you head over to Google's Search Based Keyword Suggestion tool and you type in "baseball." One of your options you'll see is "fantasy baseball." This has a high search volume, but is anyone searching for "fantasy baseball" likely to be looking for aluminum baseball bats to purchase? No. Someone searching for aluminum baseball bats will search "aluminum baseball bats" or "cheap baseball bats" or something. Those are the type of keywords to target. Don't target unqualified buyers with your keywords.

I don't want to get too much into brainstorming keywords, so I'll move on.

Domain names are competitive. You're not going to get baseball.com. Sorry. But you might get "baseballleaguesinottawa.com" if you register it. You might also get "ottawabaseballteams.com" or something. It all depends on what people are searching for. Depending on your location, you might also trying .ca names instead of just .com names. There will probably be less competition, and if you're actually in Canada, this won't hurt you.

Once you have a few domains registered (the number will depend on your budget and how important targeting various keywords are) you should try and get a few links to them with good anchor text. Good anchor text will be very similar to the keyword. Just don't make all your anchor text for backlinks identical.

You'll also want to look at your competitors and see what they're targeting with their keywords. See if any of them have SEO domains registered.

Also, don't register super long domain names. It's kind of tacky, and the likelihood of people searching those exact phrases is minimal.

Social Media Marketing Manager to the Stars

Do you love Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace? Then you can work for Britney Spears!

Seems that Britney needs a full-time Harvard grad to help manage her online network, develop web marketing campaigns, moderate community activity, and analyze web traffic and search engine results.

No doubt about it, maintaining the online marketing for one of the world's biggest stars would be more than a full-time job. Of course, that also means that Britney herself wouldn't be online -- it's just a PR firm's representation of Britney Spears.

And that's what makes the fact that Shaq himself is on Twitter so awesome ... while Britney's new web marketing guru will undoubtedly come up with lots of cool social media stuff, "The Big Aristotle" himself is actually taking time out of his own schedule to surf the Net, write crazy Twitter posts, and have real conversations with his fans.

In the end, Shaq's method is more "real", and therefore much more effective in building relationships with the online community.

Marketing in Ottawa - How the NCC Stayed One Step Ahead of Manitoba

Used to be, when it came to marketing Ottawa's famous Rideau Canal, it was known far and wide as "The World's Longest Skating Rink".

That has changed.

In 2008, the Guinness Book of World of Records officially declared Winnipeg's 8.5-kilometre Assiniboine River Trail the longest naturally occurring skating surface in the world. This year, the Winnipeggers are expected to push that record distance even further, with the final skating area measuring more than 9 kilometres in length.

So what is the NCC to do? The fact that the Rideau Canal was the longest skating rink on the planet was its bread and butter, right? How could they continue the marketing and advertising of the Canal across Ottawa, Canada, and the rest of the world?

Quite easily, actually. While the debate over which "rink" is the longest resulted in some spirited banter between Winnipeg North Centre MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis Ottawa Centre MP Paul Dewar, in the end, the NCC didn't even put up a fight. It let the competition have their day in the sun, knowing that they had several other cards up their sleeve that would put them over the top.

That's why the NCC is proud to now call the Rideau Canal Skateway ... "The World's Largest Skating Rink", stating that even thought it isn't longer, it has most skateable space by surface area.

It's a simple fix that doesn't destroy any of the brand recognition that the Canal has built up over the years. Good job on the NCC. Just goes to show that when a competitor tries to challenge your position in the market, you don't just accept defeat -- you have to think on your feet, play to your strengths, and look at new ways to present yourself to the public.

Could It Be ... A Facebook Advertising Campaign Done Right?

When it comes to

Web 2.0

and

Social Media

, Facebook is definitely at the top of the heap. However, despite all of its success, Facebook is still nothing more than a place where web advertising goes to die -- the futile attempts to leverage Facebook as an effective advertising medium has been well documented across the web (this recent article on Silicon Alley Insider goes into more detail as to why companies such as Proctor & Gamble are becoming more and more disillusioned with the site's ads).

But the fact of the matter is, a lot of people use Facebook a lot. So there must be some way to capture this audience, right?

The problem with most Facebook ads is that either they're nothing more than a simple banner ad, or they promote banal and predictable customer interactions such as leaving comments or submitting photos. It seems that although Facebook is supposed to be the very definition of "Web 2.0", the ads on the site are very Stone Age in nature.

That is, until Burger King came along.


Instead of using a normal Facebook ad, BK has opted to market itself through a new Facebook Application -- a program that must be actively installed onto the Facebook user's profile.

This new app, called "Whopper Sacrifice", is offering Facebook users a free Whopper ... but not by doing lame stuff like joining a group or forwarding links. Instead, you can get your free hamburger by choosing to de-friending 10 of your buddies on your Facebook account.

That's right. You have to choose between your friends or your food. And to add insult to injury, the application will also send a message to your ex-pal telling them that they were dropped from your friends list in favour of a juicy, flame-broiled burger. Harsh. As one poster on Fark commented, "Those worthless people I knew in high school are finally proving to be useful for something."

I've already touched on the cleverness of Burger King's previous marketing campaigns, and in my opinion, "Whopper Sacrifice" is nothing short of amazing.

First of all, it's getting people to actually go to Burger King to cash in their free Whopper. Second, every time you drop one of your friends, the proclamation of your burgerish loyalties is displayed on your News Feed -- for all of your other friends to see (which will likely prompt a few of them to download the app themselves, thereby repeating the process ... hmmmm ... sounds like the very definition of

viral marketing

to me).

Some people say that the app is pointless since you can just re-add your friends after claiming your burger. But guess what? That's not the point. As long as the app makes you think of Burger King (and ultimately step inside the joint for your free burger), then it's done its job. The King doesn't care what you do with your Facebook profile after the fact.

The only question is ... is this the start of something good (companies actually thinking outside the box and using clever ways to utilize Facebook), or will this launch a new era of poorly-written and annoying copycat corporate applications that will flood our Facebook profiles like so many zombie, ninja, and pirate apps have in the past? Time will tell.

Shout-Out to Ada Lovelace

I stumbled across a blog post on Boing Boing today that proclaimed "Ada Lovelace needs your support!" This caught my attention. As I read on, I learned that March 24th, 2009 is (the first annual) Ada Lovelace Day.

Who is (or more accurately, who was) Ada Lovelace, you ask? You may know her as Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace... or not. According to Wikipedia, her claim to fame is having written "a description of Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine" (which, in the end, was never actually built) back in the early 19th century.

She is recognized as one of the world's first programmers. It is said that "she also foresaw the capability of computers to go beyond mere calculating or number-crunching while others, including Babbage himself, focused only on these capabilities."

So what is Ada Lovelace Day? Well, Ada Lovelace Day is a day of blogging, specifically blogging that promotes awareness about women in technology. Participants are encouraged to "publish a blog post, video blog or podcast episode about a woman they admire." Why? Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow explains:

Recent research by psychologist Penelope Lockwood discovered that women need to see female role models more than men need to see male ones. But in the tech world women's contributions often go unacknowledged and role models are hard to find. Ada Lovelace Day is a chance for us to sing the praises of the women who make tech tick: entrepreneurs, innovators, sysadmins, programmers, designers, games developers, hardware experts, tech journalists, tech consultants... The list of tech-related careers is almost endless and we want to see examples from all of them!

This initiative appeals greatly to the Third Wave Feminist in me, so I've signed the pledge promising to blog on March 24th in tribute to Ada and all the other technologically inclined women out there. Stay tuned!

It's 2009 ... So Why is Your Website Still Stuck in the '90s?

Here were are the dawn of a new year. Out with the old, in with the new, right? And yet here we are, in the year 2009, and the Internet is still littered with websites that look like they were written and designed during the mid-90s heyday of Geocities and Alta Vista.

While an old book in a library might be a comforting sight, on the Internet, old is bad. Take a look at websites such as the aptly-named Web Pages That Suck -- does any of it look familiar to you? If your company's site looks anything remotely like the ones posted there, it's time to make a new New Year's Resolution and get with the times -- and fast.

Your website is your "virtual storefront", the place where first impressions are made and sales won or lost. And if you have a poorly designed website -- or even one that was a state-of-the-art "online brochure" 10 years ago -- people will quickly leave your site and never come back.

For whatever reason, bad websites can happen to the very best of companies (for more information on this topic, I recommend reading the series of posts at EvoBlog). However, that's not an excuse to just let your website slide into obscurity.

Yes, you'll need to invest in a reputable

web design firm

to do much of the work on your behalf. But there are so many easy ways to improve your site, and you don't need to be a programming guru to make thing happen. For example, writing

search engine optimized web content

is easier than ever thanks to

Google Analytics

and its plethora of SEO keyword tools.

With a few clicks of a mouse, you can find out what exactly people are searching for, how many people are searching for it, and what they are doing once they finally reach your website. Having this information at your fingertips makes it extremely easy to revise your copy, as necessary, on a regular basis. So what's stopping you?

Of course, if you need help getting the most out of your website, or simply don't have the time to write copy, well, that's where web marketing companies like Marketing Breakthroughs come in. Our staff of Web 2.0 and web marketing specialists has turned around numerous websites, providing extraordinary results to our clients.

The pages of the calendar have turned. You owe it to yourself and your clients / customers to make sure your company's website isn't stuck in the past.

Sitting at Your Desk Burns 1,400 Calories a Day!

Welcome to 2009!

With every new year comes new hopes and dreams for dramatic life-altering resolutions. The most commonly made new years resolution: Lose Weight.

I annually decide to begin a new rigorous healthy eating plan involving a highly unrealistic exercise plan and a diet that includes food normally eaten by a rabbit.

Seeing as these past new years resolution haven't always proven affective I'm trying a new approach this year. Maintaining a healthy diet and exercise plan can be a lot of work, but methods like keeping a 'food diary' is a timeless method says Dr Jack Hollis, a researcher at Kaiser Permanente's Center for Health Research in Portland, Oregon.

"Those who kept daily food records lost twice as much weight as those who kept no records. It seems that the simple act of writing down what you eat encourages people to consume fewer calories."

My plan this year is a little more fitting into our high-tech, web savvy, modern society. Yes, I will be keeping a food diary but it's a free online web-based software on fitday.com. Once you log in the site tracks your calorie intake, calories burned, weight goals and moods all specified to your individual size, shape and lifestyle. You can set up goals and the software generates a scheduled plan of attack for you. Fitday.com could be your new 2009 lifestyle change. Try it!

I'm already replacing 'vending machine' food for celery and am feeling more reassured knowing that I can burn 1,400 calories simply sitting at my desk blogging!

Introduction to Twitter Marketing

"Twitter's power is in its authenticity and transparency." - Aaron Brazell

"People don't want mediocre interaction." - Seth Godin

Marketing on Twitter isn't the same as, say, marketing on television. On television, there's a time for content and there's a time for commercials. On Twitter, people will have no patience for flat out advertisements. If you "tweet" a blatant advertisement, people will just ignore you.

Twitter requires interaction. That's the point. It's not a place to shout out announcements.

This does not mean it's useless - far from it. It's a good way to build relationships and network. And yes, when you put in the time to talk about this and that with those following you and those you're following, you'll have the authority and the trust to announce new developments with your company and brand.

And when you do have that authority and trust, these announcements will be even more meaningful. Because the relationship between people on Twitter is not the relationship between an advertiser and a consumer. It's more like a friendship.

Once you've built those relationships, you can talk about your company positively and people will genuinely want to hear more. That's the advantage.

Right now, Marketing Breakthroughs isn't on Twitter. I am, though. (By all means, follow me; my username is MikeLesiuk) We're not on Twitter at MB because right now we're working to build our

marketing blog.

Twitter may not be for you, but I suggest you check it out. Get an account. Even if you decide it's not for your company, it may be valuable for you and your personal brand.

And who knows, you may have a bit of fun. Did you know that you can find Shaq is on Twitter? It's true. You can join one of over 24,000 people currently following him:

His username is THE_REAL_SHAQ by the way! I'll be honest: I can't get enough of Shaq's tweets.

Some more valuable reading for Twitter marketing:

The Golden Rule of Twitter Marketing

7 Ways Marketers Can Use Twitter

Twitter Marketing Guide