Your brand has an online community ..... now what?

I’m pretty lucky to have the opportunity to meet with lots of different types of company’s and learn about their brand from the inside out. Creating a plan for the online community requires an intimate knowledge of how the business is setup. It could be likened to a nutritionist providing a client with a meal plan- there’s no use in prescribing food options that are hard to find at the local grocery store or tasty to the person who has to eat it.

A common mistake is to create a community strategy that doesn’t fit within the business framework. An online community needs to be an extension of existing systems and values. As much as I’d love to fit into a size 6 I know that I will never have the willpower or drive to work hard enough to achieve that goal. I could eat a raw food diet and workout for a few hours every day, but that isn’t realistic. Your community strategy needs to follow the same logic.

The first thing you need to think about is why you want an online community. What purpose is it serving your customers and your business?

Just like a diet, make choices based on the needs and not lofty ambitions that aren’t true to your natural way of doing things. Many businesses need ideas being generated by passionate brand advocates. Other businesses need to discuss pitfalls and challenges to improve their customer service. Some communities are open and public, but others are limited to private members. But regardless of the type of community they should be providing the business with insights and information.

Having an online community is not a one size fits all exercise. Every brand has unique requirements. And each social media platform has its own rules of engagement. Spend time thinking about the messages you need to communicate and where the right audience is located in order to positively receive these messages. Individual motivations are commonly dictated by where a person spends the majority of their time online. Although we’re speaking the same language we don’t all share the same vocabulary.

The way to attack your brand’s strategy for cultivating an online community is to break down barriers and provide the flexibility for users to define their own terms of use. A great example is Polyvore, a fashion portal that invites users to create their own ‘sets’. The barriers are broken down, in that, users can mix and match brands and products. Technically, the products within the sets are sold through different websites and if someone is inspired by a set they can’t buy it via Polyvore.

The genius is that users are able to merchandise products on their own terms. Most shopping portals try to be a print magazine defining the use and purpose of products using out-dated advertising methodology. The community doesn’t want to be sold to. The community wants to create, share, explore, build, compose and once they’re exhausted of mixing and matching they’re ready to make informed purchase choices.

Polyvore doesn’t need to worry about advertising because the entire platform is advertising. The community provide critical data informing brands about popularity and trends. Engagement is a metric that affects your bottom line because it provides a glimpse of your brands longevity. A community isn’t a gimmick – it’s a product. Analytics is information and information is power.

Don't Advertise On Me!

I haven’t posted in a long time- happy New Year! I can’t believe it’s already 2011. A lot has happened over the past few months. One being that I’ve scored a dream job at Lonely Planet, I’m now working with the digital editorial team and loving it. What this means is that I’m no longer as focused on Online Marketing (but I still believe that everything relates to it).

One of the interesting topics that came up this week revolves around user generated content and how to incorporate advertising into the experience. This is a hot topic for a lot of businesses looking for new ways to create ads- especially contextual ones.

The main difference of contextual ads and regular ones is that the user has a relationship with the platform as a content contributor. Many businesses (I think) forget that although the service is free they are also being repaid with free content by a non-paid contributor. Consideration must be paid to this delicate relationship.

Here’s a sample of a few current online business models:

The first one is from Gmail, the free web service has been criticised for scanning through the content of your email messages for keywords in order to serve up contextual ads. I’m not bothered as a user, but I do wonder how many people actually click on the links provided.

The next example is Twitter, although I haven’t personally noticed them as a user I have read about the launch of “promoted tweets”. It’s an interesting concept, but I’m not entirely sold on the application of ads into the tweet stream. I’d rather see a banner (as much as I detest banners) or something that is outside of the tweet stream I can ignore (no, I’m not missing the point I just don’t think they need to be quite so disruptive).

MySpace (bless their white cotton socks) still have no idea how to manage this issue and put gigantic animated banners front and off-centre of user profiles. And banners follow the user right into their profile dashboard. There are 2 banners – animated, obnoxious and completely non-contextual since the paid placement is only about impressions and has little to do with clicks. A better system is one that provides a user the ability to rate an ad or stop it from being seen.

MySpace has a similar model to Facebook and LinkedIn in that they allow anyone to advertise via a self service tool. They claim (as do others) that they offer precise targeting, but we’ve seen that rarely are these ads able to reach their target audience. Unless you’re prepared to spend a lot of money to ensure you serve up enough impressions 24/7 for a minimum of 3 weeks. Essentially, in order to win at this game as an advertiser you need to outbid every other advertiser to ensure your ads are seen.

This is an unideal experience because most users’ instinct is to block it out, and in doing so the experience instantly becomes annoying. The issue is also that users don’t tend to include enough information within their profile for niche advertising to work. Knowing that a user likes music is not going to help a struggling band sell tickets- but sadly the ads aren’t even about music on MySpace. As you can see on this particular day they’re for a dating service and a dance show.

While Facebook doesn’t have perfect systems for contextual advertising I think they’re better then MySpace or Twitter because they don’t embed the ads into the user’s account dashboard and you have the ability to remove the ad if you don’t like it (although another one will instantly take its place).

LinkedIn doesn’t have the same ability for users to interact with the ads served to them, but at least the ads don’t interrupt the user experience and only exist in one specific area.

The main lesson, I think, is to allow the user to interact with ads so that they can get better and more accurate in terms of context. People are not statitics in this regard and the relationship should be personal. Also, try not to disrupt the user experience by being too flashy - less is more.

In terms of the user experience, contextual means that it makes sense and doesn't infringe on the users ability to do what they came to the site to do. I'm not visiting a friend's profile to see what ads are there- it doesn't make sense in my opinion to monetize profiles, but it does make sense to insert ads into a browsing page or a page where the user is searching for something specific. Providing ads as recommendations based on the context is a good basis for getting the job done.

Optimise All Content

If you had asked me a few years ago if I saw myself working in online marketing or SEO strategy I'd think you were bent - but here I am, in a role I never imagined for myself. I always thought I'd be working in some role that focused on the user experience. Coming from a forum and moderator background - being in the "trenches" is where I've always loved being. I think it's a great job to interact with people, find out what interests them and what they like and dislike about the platform or website content - and then working with the team that makes it the best user experience possible.

I assumed online marketing was just an old practice in a new media. Sometimes online marketing is a little like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. I'm not a huge fan of AdWords and banner advertising - I think it's lazy to be honest and generally ineffective.

I guess because of my background and personality I want to create an experience for people online. I want interactive, fun, and if possible- inspiring capabilities that result in people having a good experience. To me, my job is about making it easy for the right audience to find the right content. That doesn't always mean a website- hence, AdWords and Banner Ads aren't always the right fit. Video is a great tool for just about any brand.

A great example comes from a post by a brilliant guy named Ian Lurie.

One innocent Tweet and everyone went nuts. Sheesh.

The YouTube Video Optimization session at SMX West today kicked butt. Out of many cool tidbits, one really stood out: Matt Ballek pointed out a Forrester study showing that an optimized YouTube video is 50x more likely to get onto page 1 of Google than an optimized HTML page.

I tweeted it. It then got retweeted. And retweeted again. And then some more. And so on.

Since it got a lot of attention, I figured I'd better provide a proper citation. Matt was referencing a Forrester report that said:

Now that's a lot of math, but here's what it means: on the keywords for which Google offers video results, any given video in the index stands about a 50 times better chance of appearing on the first page of results than any given text page in the index.

Matt's presentation was dynamite. Learn more from him on his site, vidiSEO.

I think it's a great point to raise - SEO is about optimised content. As much as it's good practice to optimise a website it's just as important to optimise each piece of media you create.

The 7th Future of Digital Advertising

I'm attending The 7th Future of Digital Advertising on Jan 28, are you? Please get in touch with me if you're in Sydney on January 28, and planning to attend. Also, I've created a quick follow list for the event- go here if you're on Twitter and would like to follow other participants, speakers and organizers.

Here are the det's:

AIMIA and IAB Australia invite you to kick off 2010 with a competitive insight into the future of digital advertising at our 7th Future of Digital Advertising Event.

As the recovery begins from the most challenging year our industry has faced since the dot-com bust in 2001, it is time to turn our attention to the future. This event will explore:

1. What will 2010 be the year of? Mobile, FMCG or Online Video?
2. Will paid content become a reality and how will that affect advertising and consumers?
3. Will the migration of hundreds of millions of advertising dollars from Tv and newsprint to online continue?
4. How much money will the online advertising industry be worth in 2010, and how much will search, display and classifieds grow?
5. How does Australia compare with the US, the UK and other EU economies?
6. What will be the focus of content producers? Agencies? Advertisers? Consumers?
7. These key issues and many more will be addressed by some of Australia’s leading digital media and marketing voices. Hear their opinions and thoughts in an engaging and entertaining seminar and then challenge their views in the Q&A session.

If you want to learn from industry and business leaders ideas, views and trends that could shape your own business direction, then this is an event you must attend.

Register now to ensure you don’t miss out!

Chairman:
- John Butterworth, CEO, AIMIA

Speakers:
- Paul Fisher, CEO, Interactive Advertising Bureau
- Pippa Leary, Managing Director - Media, Fairfax Digital
- Mark Shaw, General Manager, Media Smart, Sensis
- Mac Walker, Digital Director, Hyro
- Claudia Sagripanti, Director of Mobile Communications, GroupM
- Darwin Tomlinson, Creative Director, The White Agency

Event Details:
Date: Thursday, January 28, 2010
Venue: Powerhouse Museum
Address: 500 Harris St, Ultimo

Time:
08:00am Registration & networking
08:30am Forum begins - 4 presentations
10:00am Morning tea
10:30am 2 presentations
11:15am Q & A Panel discussion
12:00pm Forum ends

Price:
$99 AIMIA Members (exc. GST)
$149 Non Members (exc. GST)
Ticket price includes general entry into The Powerhouse Museum after the event.

Register Here

Brought to you by:
AIMIA and IAB Australia

5 Tips to Help You Optimize Your Ads on Facebook!

Have you tried advertising on Facebook yet? If so, here's some tips I recently received from Facebook for improving your results.

Facebook's 5 tips to help you optimize your ads on Facebook!

We encourage you to use them for continued success in 2010:

1. Pull reports about your ads. Reports show you detailed demographic information and provide insights about what kinds of users are interacting with your ads. They may also show likes and interests of users, and you may find new keywords you should be using to target users.

2. Remember to frequently visit your Ads Manager to make sure your bid is within the suggested bid range. The suggested bid range you see when creating your ads is based o n the bids that are currently winning the ad auction for the users you've chosen to target. This bid range will fluctuate over time as the pool of competing ads changes. You want to make sure that your bid is within the suggested bid range so it’s reaching the most relevant users.

3. Monitor your campaigns and budgets. It’s easy to forget how many campaigns you currently have running, and what budget you have selected for each of them. Visit your Ads Manager to check up on this so you maximize your spend! You have the ability to change your daily budget for any of your campaigns at any time.

4. Increase your conversion rate by choosing a clear and simple destination page. Make sure that the site you are advertising is easy to navigate and that it presents information clearly. If you are promoting a product or event, feature it prominently on your site so users are able to click on it right away.

5. Take notice of the ads that seem to be receiving more clicks or impressions than others. Simply changing your image or ad title will make the ad appear new to users. If you see impressions or clicks declining, refresh your ad more often to ensure that your ads don’t become stale.

Learn more about how to get started advertising on Facebook.

Learn about other company's success stories:

Flying Solo Forum Discussion

Facebook Advertising: It’s All Local