(CLICK THE IMAGE – NOT AN EMBED!)

I’ve been stalking him researching his work for some time now. I can highly recommend it. He strikes a lovely balance between the exciting promise of tech and Social Media and its cultural limitations.

Check the highlight version of his presentation for a quick two minute roundup of why Social Media ‘truths’ can be good and bad news… (And think about what this means to your brand – the search for your inner truth, mission, value proposition, etc, bla, bla will never be defined by you, but by everyone else: a random ragtag bunch of customers who discuss your brand online.)

And check the full version for a wonderfully funny account of Social Media, content aggregation, important world events and what it is to be an Indian in America.

(For more of his stuff, see here. He’s brilliant. Tune in.)

Do all brands want to sell to all people, all of the time? A can of Diet Coke is different to a Maserati. Price is positioning and all that…

This is the type of question we all ought to be asking right now. Why Social?

The promise of Social Media often gets mixed up, regardless of the brand. Do you need Social Media at all? Is it something for service and support? If for marketing, is it an SEO thing or a PR thing or an acquisition thing or a DM thing, etc? This context is crucial – it’s important not to get too strung out on possibilities and concepts.

Which leads me loosely on to this brilliant video about marketing and sales from ex-Dragon @DougRichard via his School for Startups:

This is marketing’s relationship with sales. So what’s the role of Social in marketing? Can it fulfil the promise of a mega love-in with all of your marketplace, all of the time? Probably not, unless you’re planning to hire a stack more Twitter-friendly sales/support/service/marketing people on Monday. Besides, if Social is to work for you, then who do you want to do the talking? Should talking via Social even be an aim? Is the aim of good marketing to talk or not to talk? Why are you using Twitter/Facebook? Who’s doing talking do for you? You or your customers? How does this scale? Are you B2B or B2C? What should you be aiming for…?

There’s a tension between Social Media expectations and reality here. Marketing is generally about not talking to people (in the physical sense). Talking is usually the job of the sales department, and ‘Sales’ is expensive. Marketing is an operational cost. Good marketing reduces the amount of £ spent on sales people and sales processes by encouraging other people/environments to do the selling and the talking for you (as per Doug’s video).

Right now, lots of marketing departments see Social Media as a must have. Near term this may not be the case – unless they can prove that it helps ‘Marketing’ to do better marketing – without having to invest in all the talking… And these discussions don’t have a great deal to do with the value of a retweet.

A more balanced view of what I’m driving at comes from our very own @rowstar. Says she in a comment on the original post:

I’m not sure I entirely agree that there is no place for beard stroking in all of this. The idea of running analytics in a vacuum and leaving creative until last worries me. I’d like to see a marriage of data and instinct – beard-strokers and number-crunchers working together from the start to come up with meaningful, apposite and intelligence-informed strategies. I agree that lightbulb campaigns are outmoded, but as I said in this blog post last year, the more brains involved, the better. Get the analysts doing their thing, but give the creatives a chance to lend their instincts to that stage of the process, too. I think both camps could learn a lot from each other – everyone hold hands with everyone else, in other words.

Today, sat in a client meeting, Rowan coined the exact phrase I was searching for. We need to do work based on…

Informed Creativity

As opposed to…

Creative Twaddle

Thank you Rowan. Smart call : )

For those not present, here’s that thought in a simple slide deck…

The alternate view is that all of this data and new-fangled toolset-ness is making the birth of brilliant ideas impossible. Here’s a super opinion on the role of the creative via the Ad Contrarian (great blog – check it out… as recommended by @lazbash)…

Put a straightforward idea like this into the hands of today’s advertising professional, however, and he will quickly turn it into a dog’s breakfast. You’ll wind up with planners and analysts and strategists and managers and global chief something-or-others of all types.

He believes that we are living in the…

Age of the Complicator

So – what do you think? Are analysts in or out? Are they essential in the world of Social Media?

Or, have we simply all become a slave to…

Twankernomics

For the record, my point is that Social Media is simply different to traditional marketing/advertising. I’m not saying we don’t need creatives, I’m saying that our creatives need to understand Social Media if their ideas are to work effectively. This means using people with sound experience in this field and great creative ideas, backed up by some proper analysis that makes a case for setting sail.

Having said that – better a ‘Creative’ than a Twanker : )

Thankfully, Hackett has always good content in spades and over the years has consistently invested in assets such as brilliant sponsorship, iconic front men and great, great advertising.

Think Hackett, think British – it’s like eggs and bacon.

As a customer, one of the things that sits well with me – aside from the quality of the product – is the story that’s been built around the brand. Take Jeremy Hackett’s book, ‘Mr Classic,’ for example.

If you want an insight into modern British tailoring and classic clothing then check it out – it’s a superb read. It was published a few years ago – before Social Media arrived – as a ‘best of’ compilation of his weekly column in the Independent on Sunday.

In it you’ll find little in the way of selling, but bags of tips, anecdotes, insights, humour and personality that provide a ringside view of the world of menswear, Mr Hackett and his company. I first read it before I had enough cash for a Hackett key ring. A few years on I’m wearing a Hackett shirt and jacket as I write (granted, both sale stock – but hey I’m getting there). In other words, I’m a customer now mainly because Jeremy Hackett took the time and effort to tell me a bunch of great stories about something I care about.

Our role with Hackett is to help them to deliver this story to the web using Social Media. I won’t dwell on what we’re doing here, but our work together is highlighting something rather important….

Outsourcing Your Communications

In the time between my reading his original weekly columns and buying the brand, corporate comms has changed a lot. Today we’re pondering abstract content ideas like Thought Leadership, Ghost Blogging (great post, btw – do read), Brand Advocacy and the like.

Brands have grown, directors and managers have gotten busier, agencies have been retained and the soul of it all has disappeared.

All of which is fine if you’re dealing with professionalised disciplines like Media Relations and Advertising because you, the brand, only need to dip into certain parts of the process on a part time basis. You can turn up for press briefings and video shoots, say your piece and let the system take care of the rest. Your agency support – by and large – takes the shape of an outsourced production effort and grand creative scheming…. rather than a series of day to day services. (Granted, there are exceptions to this – but only amongst mega-brands who have a multi-million pound, ‘buy the team’ attitude to communications.)

But this approach to content won’t work for Social Media…

The Return of Identity

The point of Social Media (and its value) is that it helps you to talk to people directly and build new kinds of relationships. The mass of supporting tools – Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc – allow you to do this extremely quickly and cost effectively. No real production effort is required… and the basis for communication changes. We’re dealing mainly in conversations and stories now, not ‘events.’

This makes total outsourcing difficult. Because communication is frequent (think Twitter), it’s expensive to pay for your content on a day rate basis. Also, as a conversation – a set of tips, anecdotes, insights, humour and personality – it only really works when delivered from the inside, via the people on your front lines who generate the chat – marketing, support, sales, etc.

Getting back to my Hackett / Mr Classic example, Social Media can only really work when you make a serious commitment to a certain type of content …You need to start telling a series of stories again as part of your day to day life, and, in doing so, you need to take back the ownership of your brand and identity.

Social Media (ROI) Return on Investment

So here’s another spin on the great Social Media ROI debate….

Stop pretending to infuse leaders with someone else’s personality. Stop trying to distill fleeting thoughts into ghosted Think Pieces. Stop gambling on barnstorming creative virals and microsites.

Stop wasting money.

A Social Media strategy isn’t a ‘Media’ strategy at all. It’s a content and communications strategy. You are now the media and all these Social widgets are your tools – you blog, Tweet, post, chat, etc. From the get-go ‘being the media’ in this way can save you money and enhance the value of your brand if you rewire the way you communicate and produce your content.

Like Hackett, this requires a senior commitment to developing a content legacy. Important people need to start telling the story, rather than outsourcing it. Your leaders (and/or your front line) should be blogging – on a weekly basis ….they can also be capturing their slideware, documents, photography and general discussions in a way that’s fit for versioning on Social platforms. This costs next to nothing and is easy to do. When this happens, your stock of ideas builds – quickly – and you open up a mass of opportunity for engaging with new people in new networks.

You should also consider hiring specialists into an Online PR/Social Media/Digital Marketing role. These folks will take the content, shape it properly and give it legs in new domains – Facebook, Twitter, etc. This can also save you money. Ditch some of your agency retainer and reinvest it in staff.

Neither of these ideas are radical. When your firm was young it was driven in exactly the same way – through conviction, ideas, stories, chartware and conversations ….not Thought Leadership papers and a bunch of flacks.

Social Media is an opportunity to start over and bin the Corporate communications junk.

Social Media Agencies…?

This may sound a little odd coming from an agency, but it’s not.

The lessons of the past year tell me that our clients need to own much of what they communicate, and that this is healthy. It’s also essential if our work is to be a success. When Social stuff is out on its own on a wing on a prayer – as a tactical offshoot of something else – its impact is very limited and there’s a high risk of failure.

The role of the agency today needs to be as consultant, enabler, trainer, planner ….and as creator and executor of bigger content pieces. We’re helping CEO’s to Tweet, Marketing Directors to use a Flip camera, and Product Developers to blog. In the process we’re helping them to understand their market again in very anti-marketing ways. No key messages, just keywords – based on optimisation techniques and public data.

This is helping them to regain their voice and their identity and save money. And, as any decent brand consultant will tell you, this is the really valuable part.

We put together this diagram in response to a common request from our clients: HELP!

Having dabbled with Facebook and made forays with Twitter, many brands are now stuck wondering how the hell to get any decent ‘play’ out of their Social Media content, assets and profiles.

Oftentimes this is down to two basic things: i) a desire to crack on and experiment, and ii) a lack of time. And this dilemma (particularly in a large, multi-brand or multi-business unit organisation) usually leads to a mild form of Social Media schizophrenia and diminishing returns.

In other words, when you’re rushing to pilot stuff with a lack of time it can be incredibly hard to execute in an integrated fashion, which is why the chart above might help.

Here’s the supporting blurb…

First Principles of Social Media and Online PR

Doing Social Media is not an objective in and of itself. Doing Twitter is not a plan. Customer interaction and retention around a theme is. So, the next time some bright spark suggests a Facebook page, take a deep breath and think it through – no matter how exciting it might seem.

Health Warning: ‘Build it and They Will Come’ is Broken

Communications in this new-fangled Social Interweb era is all about building followings, creating conversations and putting your content in the places it’s most likely to be seen. Nine times out of ten this won’t be in and around your own web site. The trick is to extend the value of what you’re doing to other people’s platforms, networks and services (or ‘go with the flow,’ as they say…)

Have a Plan for Social Media

Broadly speaking, you should think of Social Media as a channel: something to use for publishing stuff and/or talking with people (i.e. like the telephone, in the hands of a salesperson or a consultant).

As such, use it to support your bigger sales and/or marketing objectives. Twitter can help improve awareness levels, but only if you have something sensible to pin it on. Likewise, Facebook can be a killer community tool, but only if you have something that warrants a group interest.

Content is Elvis

If Social Media’s for you, then content is the next thought. Do you have any? Are you already making some? Can this be remixed in more valuable, useful and Social ways? If Social Media is to add value, then it shouldn’t be done in a vacuum.

Look for opportunities to spin off your standard content assets in new ways, so that they’re capable of playing out on Social Media channels as well as doing all the other things that you normally ask them to do. For example, video and images can be re-thunk so that they work just as well on YouTube and Flickr as they do on your web site and on your trade show exhibition stands.

Think Integration: Social Media Content

Whatever the case is, make sure that you publish your content assets ‘home and away’ – both on your web site and on other Social Media channels. This enhances people’s opportunities to see your stuff on their turf.

Your Social Media profiles need to become a core part of your thinking here. That Slideshare channel shouldn’t be sitting in outer space, it should be part of an integrated publishing plan, supporting everything else that you’ve got on your truck.

For example, a seminar can be composed of delegates, speakers, presentations, videos, Tweets and photos. Publishing these assets using Social Media channels can become part and parcel of your activity before, during and after the event.

Think Aggregation

When you’re done, look for ways to aggregate your Social Media content so that it becomes more useful to your audiences. For example, if you’re running grandstand events or conferences, then a Facebook event page could be a great place to bring together your stock of images and videos, so that Facebook users everywhere can find it easily and in one place.

If you’re promoting information-based services, then a subject-specific Ning can be a very useful route into your main site. And customer support apps like Get Satisfaction can also be a great outlet for all of those brochures and manuals that have been collecting dust on the shelf.

Partner content should also be factored in. What opportunities do you have for re-purposing third party blogs, Tweets, images, etc. in your own Social Media content services? These things can add real value to your overall story (and help Google to love you a little more).

Go Social: Party Hard

Once your Social Media content is published and you’ve found useful ways of aggregating it, it’s time to party hard and start sparking up the right kind of conversations in the right kind of places. We’ve written a lot about this elsewhere, but for now the key thought is being relevant, useful and entertaining.

Go comment on other people’s blogs. Follow them on Twitter and exchange ideas about all the good things you have in common. Add value to forums and discussion boards based on your stock of Social Media content, and encourage people to share all of your content, all of the time.

Footnote: If You Do This Then Google Will Also Love You!

Google loves content. Especially keyword-rich content. If you can build the type of publishing disciplines outlined above into your core marketing and content programs, then good linkage and great SEO will follow (we’d also say that Social Media is the new SEO, but that’s another story…)

Any Takers?

Granted, this is an uber-quick overview of the principles of Social Media content strategies, but it’s a sound one. If you agree/disagree or have something else to add, then please do let me know!

Meantime, here’s the chart again, via Slideshare:

It’s an interesting tactic. As NMA states, Comedy Central is paying for ‘association.’ Really they want cable and satellite viewers of the shows, but this activity tells us they’re also trying hard to establish loyalty around the web-based services that relate to the shows (downloads, the Comedy Central community, and video archives, etc) …and ultimately, any search traffic that they can bag is a defensive move against viewing all of this stuff on YouTube and other Social Media services. But what’s most interesting is what Claudia Setini-Samuels, their head of branding and online, has to say:

“It’s unusual for a channel to this but it makes sense. We’re tracking what’s being searched for based around comedy and that will have a direct influence on our content – the site must be based on what people are looking for right now.”

Whilst this kind of thinking isn’t rocket science for most SEOs, for a broadcast media outlet it’s certainly a progressive approach. Analyse the behaviour of the web in relation to your brand and then make your creative and content choices.

It’s a great lesson for everyone – mix a little of what’s really unique about you (in Comedy Central’s case exclusive ownership of new South Park episodes) and let the Interweb decide the rest of it. A lot less money would be spent on air-head branding campaigns if more of the world thought about marketing ‘acquisition’ in this way. On the web, establishing the demand side of things is easy – Google gives us this data for free; all you then need to do is position your stuff using creative and content smarts that are ‘based on what people are looking for right now…’

Anyways, whatever you make of it all, if you like South Park, Eric Cartman and Buck Rogers as much as we do then check this out… And bravo Comedy Central for producing such a fantastic new site.

Back when we first started Tweeting it felt like just another time-wasting online diversion – a rant into the void. But with millions of people now connecting with others all over the world through Twitter, it has evolved into a powerful networking tool in which friendships are formed, ideas aired, deals  brokered and information shared.

As veteran Tweeters and PR gurus, we have come up with five simple steps to building a loyal Twitter entourage without becoming a Tweet-bore. And whilst we are clearly coming from an Online PR perspective, these rules could just as easily apply to MrsAnyone as to MrIAmPromotingSomething.

1) The Language of (Twitter) Love

Right, I’m going to get all teacherly on you now, but bear with me. You wouldn’t (or certainly shouldn’t) send out a press release or business letter with poor spelling and grammar, so why do it on Twitter? Don’t make yourself look like an idiot (because, er, obviously you’re not…ahem) by neglecting to proof read a Tweet before hitting the ‘send’ button. At a maximum of 140 characters to scan, this is hardly an arduous task, so get in the habit.

Abbreviated SMS-style-speak should also be avoided as it a) comes across as tacky* and b) makes your content far less searchable.

Adhering to the simple brief set by Twitter, to answer the question: “What are you doing?“ will result in a reader-friendly Twitter stream – more like a micro-blog than a dreary list of random proclamations. For example, instead of saying: “check this out: www.whatever.com” try something more along the lines of: “Recommending: www.whatever.com for excellent gig reviews”. Sticking to this discipline will increase the readability of your Twitter page, making it a more appealing destination for potential followers.

2) Style AND Substance

So, you’ve got the wordage nailed, but what about the actual content of your Tweets? For individuals, this can be as abstract or trivial as your innermost musings or the daily shopping, as long as you make it interesting, or at the very least amusing. The same rule of thumb applies to Twitter as a PR tool – it’s fairgame if there is  something of value or interest on offer, but they are not going to be fooled by your self-congratulatory puff. Think of yourself as a performer on stage, reaching out to your audience; who (apart from a certain niche market perhaps) would want to go to the theatre to watch a bunch of actors standing about boasting? To pull in a regular crowd, you need to offer something engaging, meaningful, memorable and perhaps a little thought-provoking.

The plethora of Twitter-feed and posting tools now available (TweetDeck, Twhirl etc) means that it’s easy to forget about your actual profile page. Don’t. Checking in to read through your own Twitter-stream once in a while gives you a sense of how it reads as a whole to potential followers, and might make you think more carefully about what and how you write.

3) Know Your Audience

Just the other day, I was ‘followed’ by a shamelessly self-promoting singer, who introduced herself by saying: “@Rowstar You seem to like ambient music, i would like to offer you 2 free new age music songs from my website. Feel free! Thanks!” Now I am not, nor have ever professed to be, a fan of ambient music – so at first presumed it to be a random spam-attack.  Then I remembered mentioning Enya in a recent Tweet, which presumably triggered an alert that prompted her to target me. But if this gung-ho muso had done her homework, she would have discovered that it wasn’t a favourable reference, so her ill-founded PR efforts were not only falling on stony ground, but actively irritating me in the process.

In case you were wondering, this rather self-indulgent vent does actually have a valid message. It goes to demonstrate the need for Twitter-based promotion to be well-researched in order to reach an appropriate audience. If you use Twitter alerts to identify potential followers, it’s worth checking out the lead; steam in blindly and you will (best case) rub people up the wrong way and (worst case) get yourself a reputation for being an annoying spammer.

4) Who Lives in a Tweet-house Like This?

Another way to engage with your fellow Tweeters is to inject plenty of personality or identity into your Tweets, just as you would with a personal blog or business website. A good case in point is national treasure and Twitter convert Stephen Fry (@stephenfry), who has notched up an impressive 47,411 followers in a relatively short amount of time. Rather than have his PR people relaying contrived content on his behalf, Fry’s Tweets are clearly direct from the horse’s mouth – making them a much more appealing prospect. The same goes for other successful celebrity Tweeters such as @Wossy (aka Jonathan Ross) and @JohnCleese, who, like Fry, make the effort to interact with their followers by responding and contributing to relevant threads rather than simply spewing out shameless self-promotion.

The parallel between celebrity Tweeters and brand/marketing tweets was nicely summed up on the Off Madison Avenue blog: “Give us some insights into your world. Make us feel a part of it. Be approachable. And most importantly, keep it real.”

Using an actual picture of yourself (or a logo if you are representing a non-person brand) on your profile, rather than an abstract image, will also help your personality to shine through.

5) Where do we Tweet From Here?

A good measure of Twitter-success is how often your posts are being ‘re-Tweeted’ by others. When you come across something interesting/amusing/useful via Twitter, it is considered good form to name-check the originator when passing it on, although you are free to add your own commentary. E.g.: “Retweeting (or simply ‘RT’) @MrBrilliant who recommended this genius website: www.blahblahblah.com”.

Re-Tweeting is a powerful (and free) distribution tool and a brilliant way of sharing information, so we should all be doing it more. Get yourself onto the radar of other influential Tweeters by acknowledging and passing on anything you find inspiring from them (they will know when you have). Check out www.retweetradar.com and www.retweetrank.com to see the sort of stuff that is being re-tweeted the most at the moment.

***********

And just in case you thought I was just making this stuff up, here are some verbatim Tweet-hates direct from the Twittersphere…

@jwatton: “bon mots” reaaaally annoy me. i’ve opted out of a few follows based on that alone

@meeware: People who put exactly the same thing in their personal and proffesional tweets with a 2 minute lag. Journos are the worst for it.

@abigailrieley: people who only post to self publicise. All the time. And give nothing back!

@Emclaug: ‘icanhaz’ thing annoys me – feels like people are trying to be too cool when it just seems lame.

@catnip: people only talking about work.

@ryanatmghwom: I hate Twitter auto-messages. “I look forward to connecting with you.” “Thanks for being my associate.” Really? Reeeeally?!

@joshmccormack: I dislike people who do no replies, essentially treating twitter as a 1 directional broadcast.

@sheenashe: really dislike wrong spellings on twitter. it’s hard to read.

@AnnetteElton:  I LOVE when people post valuable links and info – Dislike when they use Twitter for blatant self promotion:-(

@pawsforlavender: Dislike being preached to; sales pitch; self/peeps promotion in disguise.

iwork</a>: the thing I really dislike about 'official' Twitter accounts like DowningStreet is that they’re entirely self-obsessed

@SethGrimes: I dislike the non-personality of corporate twitter accounts.

And a few of our own…

@Rowstar: People who follow but never Tweet creep me out. Bring something to the party, weirdos.

@Rowstar: People who hold lengthy two-way conversations via Twitter instead of switching to DM. Get a room!

@rogerwarner: people who Tweet about ‘getting up’ ‘making tea’ and ‘watching telly’ …..LIKEIFREAKINGCARE (o really? earl grey?

Further reading:

• Ben Ayers on how ITV is using Twitter to engage its audience
• More on the joys of re-Tweeting from Immediate Future
• We Are Social’s thoughts on why people are using Twitter
• A recent Telegraph article aimed at Twitter beginners

Here at C&M we subscribe to the “less is more” philosophy advocated by web usability guru Steve Krug in his book Don’t Make Me Think (New Riders, 2006).

It might sound obvious, but simply hacking down volume of words on a website can instantly and dramatically improve its usability.

Krug’s approach (Ibid, p. 45-48) boils down to three basic rules:

1) Cut the Crap. Resist the temptation to fill your homepage with what Krug calls “happy talk”, e.g. self-congratulatory puff about the company.

2) Reduce lengthy instructions by making functions self-explanatory.

3) Write concise copy. Getting rid of extraneous words reduces “noise”, promotes useful content and makes pages shorter and more accessible.

Sticking to these guidelines will make your web content memorably friendly like a good teacher, rather than laboriously avoidable like a ranting old uncle (apologies to ranting old uncles – we love you really).

This time we have answers on:

• How to make your content stick online
• How to find and locate your audiences
• How to optimise your content
• How to make content relevant
• …and what sort of content to avoid

The idea is simple: in order to engage with your audiences online, you need to shape your words, messages and tactics around their agendas, not yours. In other words, your Online PR efforts need to be a whole lot more social than they have been up until now.

Go get our new Online PR best practice paper now!

(….and please do tell us what you make of it all!)

We’re having an increasing number of conversations with clients who are looking to us for that all-important pixie dust that will drive new levels of awareness and traffic.

No surprise there, right? That’s our job! But rather than sit on these experiences, we thought we’d do the decent thing and share our insights with you…

Nine times out of ten we strike on a a set of common, fundamentally ‘social’ ideas that we know will make 100% of difference – and yet, for one reason or another, they tend to grate with traditional marketing theory.

As such, this paper is our attempt to convince you that great Online PR is easy. All it takes is some basic rewiring.

The idea is simple: in order to engage with your audiences online, you need to shape your words, messages and tactics around their agendas, not yours. In other words, your Online PR efforts need to be a whole lot more social than they have been up until now.

An Early Digression: The ‘Party Hard’ Principle of Social Media Marketing

She shares the same problem as our clients: how to ensure a message hits home in the manic environment of the web…?

Eldermariam draws a super analogy with the social mechanics of a networking party. Imagine it’s in full-swing and you have an important message to pass on to your fellow guests. You have limited time and resources, and no stooges to spread the word on your behalf…

How do you do it? Do you…

a) Stand on a chair in the middle of the room and shout your message repeatedly?

…or

c) Mix, mingle and meet folks, and – when you find the nice guys – pass on your message in the context of a conversation (and in the process encourage them to go spread the word on your behalf)?

Unless you carry the charisma of Jack Nicholson, then options a) and b) are out. Actually, they’re counter-intuitive – they’ll probably alienate you. (Who are you? Why should I care? Jesus – go away!! Somebody call the authorities!!!)

The point is, of course, that when you’re operating in a loosely structured environment like the web / a party – an arena where nobody ‘owns’ the terms of engagement – the best way to communicate is by being more social. Yet we seem to miss this point on a consistent basis.

As Eldermariam describes, the crux of our problem is that when it comes to the web (or newspapers, or any form of mass communication) there’s “a great tension between what people want and what we think they need to know.”

We’re so obsessed with the importance of our message – and so ignorant of our audience’s wants and needs – that we seem content to bleat without direction into outer space. In practice, we run elaborate flash banner campaigns (hey, give me that big chair to stand on – I’m gonna try to shout the LOUDEST!), and we build reams of funky little microsites (hey, screw this, nobody’s listening…let’s have our OWN party!).

A much better approach is to listen first, and then do the talking. We should try to understand what our audience cares for before we open our mouths. Effective web marketing does this in spades, just like the good guys at the party. They get their message across (and get all the traffic) not because they shout the loudest, but because they’re the most engaged and the most engaging…

In other words, it’s all about being more social.

With this in mind, here’s our five Basic Social Theories of Online PR…

(We recommend you print them out on nice glossy paper, stick them on your wall and then bake them into everything you do online…)

C&M’s Basic Theories of Social Media Marketing

1) Listen up! Don’t attach names or labels without taking counsel

SEO 101 teaches us that in order to make our content ‘findable’ by users and ‘indexable’ by search engines, we need to work within the linguistic framework of our searching public.

It’s easy to understand the psychology of search via tools like Google Suggest and Wordtracker – both will give you an instant read on the keywords your audience is using. Your job is to take this vocabulary and weave it into the fabric of your content: in site names, urls, page titles, meta descriptions, headers, links, and so forth.

For example, if you provide a slicker-than-average ‘personalised tone service’ for mobile phones, you may want to position yourself as something bigger and groovier than a plain old grubby ringtone …but your customers won’t be making that distinction. They don’t even know you exist. You might prefer to call your stuff a BingTone or a HumTone, but they’ll be searching for a plain old ringtone. And if ringtone isn’t at the heart of your content strategy, then rest assured you’ll be off the Google map and missing a stack of motivated traffic.

Getting these principles right is what’s known in the trade as Content Optimization – and you can learn how to do it here. It’s inherently social: it’s all about talking like a customer, and it’s the most cost-effective way of generating the right kind of web traffic.

2) Be interesting: create noteworthy content (make people laugh, mad and/or excited)

This dilemma is what separates good Online PR from bad. Your primary goal is to find a home for your message. Your secondary goal is encourage people to spread it on your behalf. As such, you should do everything you can to make your content interesting and worthy of emailing to a friend, bookmarking, commenting upon, or linking to.

If you can encourage people to do this, you’ll achieve a wonderful snowball effect (formerly known in ‘creative’ circles as ‘going viral’). In simple terms, a reference to your content on someone else’s blog enhances your ‘findability’ in the true sense of a referral. It’ll also help your SEO because it represents a ‘backlink,’ which makes you more desirable to the Greater Google God.

As such, you should ask yourself what it’ll take to frame your next piece of content in a more desirable, funny and/or controversial fashion. Tools like Google Trends, Twitter Search and BackType will tell you what the world is currently searching for and talking about. Use them religiously and try to find ways of embedding relevant and popular themes into your work.

At the same time, other more basic formatting ideas will make your content more enticing and accessible: for example, you could re-cut that white paper as a natty, controversial list rather than a long boring essay. And you might find the right angles to change your product literature into cool three minute VoxPops video shorts.

Another thing to consider is the inclusion of ‘social’ tools that will make it easier for people to pass your content around and/or bookmark it. It’s a simple task to embed an ‘email a friend’ widget and a social bookmarking tool at the bottom of your page templates; and you really ought to provide an RSS feed for all your content as default. In addition, there are a number of great ‘widget’ tools to help you create ‘Content Feeds’ for FaceBook, desktops and web pages – so that users can get hold of your content when and where they please, without having to visit your site.

3) Party harder: seek and you shall find. (Don’t expect folks to come to you!)

This principle is all about operating within your target markets. Once your content (or web site, or widget) is ready, you need to make it stick by seeding it in the most vibrant, influential and interesting places.

Tools like Addictomatic, Google Alerts, Twilert (for Twitter), BackType, and MonitorThis will help you to keep a close watch on the most active and relevant communities of the web. They’ll all provide you with a daily dose of alerts based on your chosen keywords. They’ll also allow you to identify and follow the most influential people within a given debate. It’s powerful stuff!

Once you have this ‘social targeting’ knowledge, your task is to actively participate in the right hot spots and to seed your ideas and content. You should be commenting on and contributing to other people’s blogs, forums and profile pages on a daily basis, and generally getting engaged with the conversations that you’d like to be part of.

Like the party analogy, you need to be a social butterfly. And if you can do this effectively, we guarantee that you’ll soon be able to steer the debate. (In addition, tuning in to communities, debates and forums is simply the best way to get new ideas for new content. When you participate you become part of your own focus group, which takes the guesswork out of content generation.)

4) Be a good social citizen: give your content away freely and generously

This approach is crazy. It’s you who should be working hard to generate buzz, sales and leads, not your customers! You invest stacks of time and money to drive people to your web site, so there’s no sense in locking people out.

In our experience, when you take away the sacred ‘web to lead’ form, the effect is always positive: you open up more keyword-rich content for Google to index and you enable more people to distribute it freely on your behalf. What you lose in ‘leads’ (and I’d question that term strongly – how hot-to-trot can a web sign up ever be!?) you gain in increased visibility and distribution. So, if you haven’t done so already, get your content out in the open today.

The same goes with any non-core tools and services that you create. When you give peripheral value away for free you generate respect, trust and loyalty. A great example that’s close to home for C&M is SEOBook. If you ever need a steer on the science of SEO then look here. You can pay to buy the book or attend the courses, but the site also gives you a stack of fantastic free tools to help you do better SEO work.

As a result, SEOBook makes a lot of money and has an incredibly loyal following. Even better, its decision to give much of its value away for free has had an immensely positive effect on its Google performance on ultra-competitive keyword searches like ‘SEO tools.’ (Note: because much of their stuff is free and because I love it, I’m linking to the site here and adding to that SEO equity. In this respect, ‘free’ and ‘useful’ approaches can really become virtuous.)

5) Be socially useful: don’t build unnecessary content services

This point is best illustrated by some negative examples:

• The celebrity CEO blog sounded like a great idea in 2005 – until we figured out that it had a) no audience, b) nothing interesting to say and c) no real value or utility. (So we ditched it and replaced it with a product development community blog, which is now going great guns.)

• Likewise, the FaceBook widget that lets users connect and share their passion for SprocketWise version 5.7 is also doomed to fail. It may be free, but it has no purpose. (I’ll stop now. This one really gets my goat!)

The point is that all of these new-fangled widgets, platforms and content services can really help us to sell, support, and educate in more sophisticated ways – but only when they’re used in the right context. Social networking platforms are great for hosting virtual ‘before and after’ a conference session. They’re superb for any product or service that has an inbuilt community with a passion for sharing information. But they tend to fail when they’re built for the hell of it. So make sure you can prove their value before you start working with them.

Conclusion: Great Social Media Marketing is – Um – Social

I started off by saying that effective Social Media Marketing grated with more traditional marketing techniques. From our perspective, it’s important to let go of yesterday’s ‘command and control’ approach to communications.

In today’s web-dominated world, the winners will be the firms that are able to listen and tune in to their audiences before they embark on the next big thing. This is what we mean by a ‘social’ approach to Online PR.

It’s not happy or clappy, it’s just common sense. Do a bit of research first, understand your users wants and needs, and then give them a little of what you know they want.

In other words, make like the good guy at the party and work the room. You don’t need an MBA or a degree in Marketing to do this well.

I’ll admit it was very provocative in some areas, but we had a very definite point to make. Traditional PR can be wasteful because it’s inaccessible, it doesn’t scale and it’s not very measurable. Online PR is the antidote to these issues, and is perfect for firms who want to see an immediate return on their marketing spend.

Anyways, the post sparked off a whole bunch of debate (thanks to everyone who commented and wrote to us – all super stuff!!) and a variety of really interesting conversations with clients… So I thought I’d do a wrap up piece that breaks the core ideas down into bite-sized chunks.

So here goes – a bullet list view that describes why traditional PR is broken and why Online PR is a winner….

Traditional PR Doesn’t Scale

• The mechanics are this: when you have a story, the gateways to seeing it in print are i) a reporter and ii) his magazine and its editorial brief. To break through these gates you have to i) beat the reporter’s ‘information overload’ (you’re one press release / one call amongst a million) and ii) conform to an editorial agenda that’s driven by advertising requirements (ie, it’s probably not aligned with your interests!).

• Further, this model is finite: there are only so many traditional magazines and papers, and each have a limited amount of space (determined by advertising) and a limited editorial remit to reach a set audience profile (in fact less so now that audiences are moving online).

• As such, traditional PR doesn’t scale because it’s tough to grab a reporter’s attention and traditional media destinations are few. (In addition, as already mentioned, your PR agency will also have a limited amount of ‘goodwill’ that it’ll be prepared to use to influence reporters on your behalf.) Supply outweighs demand – there is a limited inventory of ‘ink.’

Traditional PR is Fluffy

• Beyond that, traditional PR works on a loose and fluffy principle of influence – ie, ‘I read your article, so I may (or may not) be inclined to call you / visit your web site / etc’. This is not very measurable.

Online PR Scales Infinitely (and is Therefore Accessible to Everyone)

• At a very basic level, Online PR scales extremely well. The guts of it are driven by software and an abundance of user-generated media (blogs, forums, social networks, etc). Both of these things can’t get enough content.

• Google is insatiable – it’s mission is to ‘organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.’ It doesn’t filter content like a magazine editor, it consumes it and indexes it in order to give searchers a richer, more valuable search experience.

• At the same time, the number of ‘user-generated’ (ie non-traditional) publishing outlets is booming (eg, Technorati indexes millions of blogs every day, and this number is growing). This means there are infinitely more ‘homes’ for your content online than off.

• These online services and destinations are more finely targeted than traditional media can ever be – there are blogs, forums and search queries for every requirement imaginable; therefore working within this sphere is more cost-effective as audiences are infinitely more engaged.

Online PR Drives Valuable Web Site Traffic and is Very Measurable

• In addition, even with a low volume of audience ‘impressions’ (ie, low readership/viewing), if you’re able to make an impact in these online destinations, then the ultimate payoff is better PageRank and search engine performance. Your very presence on them will establish more paths back to your web site (aka backlinkage) which provides enormous value to Google. This aspect is an extremely powerful reason for doing Online PR: when done in the right way (and using the right language/keywords), it will have a very positive effect on your SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) performance…

• Either way, a very basic benefit of good Online PR is generating high quality web traffic – ie, you can more or less guarantee that good Online PR will deliver a positive, demonstrable result that can be measured easily (via a web analytics package, by signups, by purchases) …unlike traditional PR, whose ultimate gain is intangible (at best, ‘feel-good’). (Of course, there are other benefits to great Online PR – such as reputation management, customer engagement and support, buzz and so forth – but I won’t go into them here…)

Now, I’m not suggesting that traditional PR is a bad thing. Far from it. It’s a brilliant tool for generating trust, awareness and validation. A piece in a trade mag or the FT is worth its weight in gold.

My point is that this net result is attainable only after investing a stack of cash. Therefore for some companies, it’s better to start in the Online PR arena for first – ie, create some Online momentum and then go for traditional PR tactics when you’re ‘hot’ enough for the traditional PR machine to care for you and accommodate you.

In other words, in traditional PR, the cards are firmly stacked against some companies because the model doesn’t scale to accommodate them… whereas, with Online PR, if you box clever, you’ll always find success.

Online PR Agency Content & Motion got all hot under the collar today with a new ‘Think Piece’ that suggests that ‘Old School PR’ is a waste of money for companies of a certain shape and size – those in the ‘small to medium’ bracket.

The piece looks at the basic social economics of the Old PR business model, and states that “Traditional PR no longer works as a revenue and brand building exercise for small to mid-sized companies with a limited profile and budget…. even if they have great ideas, products and services. The reason for this because the traditional PR game doesn’t scale very well.”

The full piece can be read at:  http://www.contentandmotion.com/blog/why-the-old-pr-game-is-broken-spend-wisely-online-pr-rules/

It’s controversial stuff – and a recommended read for anyone in the PR business or those companies who are evaluating their PR spend. The basic premise is that if a traditional PR agency has “X number of clients (and more, if it’s a good agency), then every day it will make decisions that enhance its core assets (its media relationships) at the expense of some of its clients interests.” …and goes on to reason that Online PR delivers far more value and less risk when it comes to generating brand awareness and quality web site traffic.

Says author of the piece and C&M founder, Roger Warner: “our intention isn’t to rubbish ‘old PR.‘ But in many cases ‘old PR’ simply won’t work for small to mid-sized companies because the cards are stacked against them. We’re biased of course, but, nine times out of ten, if you’re looking to drive awareness, sales, signups and general web site traffic, then our advice is to check out Online PR first.”

For further information about who C&M is and what the hell they do, see: http://www.contentandmotion.com/online-pr-agency-services/

About Online PR Agency, Content & Motion

C&M is an Online PR agency that excels at Content Creation, Content Optimisation, and SEO. We use a variety of groovy web marketing techniques to help you win new friends and influence people. The company was founded in mid-2008 by Roger Warner – web marketing junkie, ex-director of PR at IBM Europe, and personality type D.

The company works on the partnership model of all great consultancies, meaning that ownership is shared, staff are obsessive, brains and egos are large, and attention spans are notoriously focused. Fortunately this is good news for our clients, who tend to benefit from consolidated bouts of outrageously good service and smart thinking and execution.

For further information about what C&M, the Online PR Agency does, see: http://www.contentandmotion.com/online-pr-agency-services/

Here’s our (semi-controversial) hypothesis on what’s at play…

‘Old PR’ tactics and large PR Agencies no longer work as a revenue and brand building outlet for certain types of small to mid-sized companies who have a limited profile and budget…. The reason for this is because the ‘old PR’ game doesn’t scale very well.

I’ll explain why in a moment.  First off….

Here’s a quick review of the mechanics of ‘old PR’

Acme Corp will pay PR&Co a monthly retainer to help convince reporters to write about them in print and online news media.  PR&Co may offer additional services such as writing press releases and positioning and message consulting, but this is a second order of business to generating press interview opportunities – as it’s really only here where this stuff can be put into practice.

So, the primary function of ‘old PR’ is to act as a broker of relationships between Acme Corp and a set of reporters.  And the reason that Acme Corp pays PR&Co a retainer to do this is because PR&Co – because of it’s track record in press relations – is able to do it better (and on a more flexible basis) than Acme Corp could in-house.  In other words, Acme Corp is paying PR&Co to trade on its database of press contacts and relationships.

(At this point I should say that this stuff really does work extremely well in the right circumstances.  The Acme Corps of this world can’t do this work effectively themselves unless they employ an army of PR consultants in-house – and even in this case a ‘old PR’ agency will tend to do a better job because they have a greater variety of experiences and reporter relationships by virtue of working on more than one account.  And there are stacks of really great ‘old PR’ firms out there.  Plus the flip side of this client/agency relationship is the relationship between ‘old PR’ agency and the media, which is also invaluable because reporters rely on good ‘old PR’ relationships to supply them with decent content to write about.)

As such, this setup tends to work best when Acme Co is either ‘hot’ or ‘loaded’ – ie, when it’s…

1. …an established brand that reporters really care about
2. …an innovative company that has ideas that reporters want to learn about
3. …a wealthy company capable of spending large amounts of money to convince reporters (and their agencies) that they really ought to care

But if your company doesn’t fit this description then there can be problems.  You may be either a start up or a smallish fish in a big pond that struggles to be noticed.  You may also have good ideas and products that don’t quite sit in the ‘killer’ category.  And, of course, like many of us in today’s climate, money may be tight.

As such, I’m suggesting that these types of ‘contender’ firms shouldn’t spray their money on ‘old PR’ with a traditional PR agency in an effort to become ‘hot.‘  (Typically, I’m talking about those firms who are plugging away with a spend of £3k per month or less on ‘old PR’ services)… because the cards are stacked against them.

Here’s why…

‘Old PR’ Agency Service Models Don’t Scale Well to Accommodate Smaller Fish…

As mentioned, ‘old PR’ agencies trade on their relationships with reporters.  These relationships are treasured, polished and nurtured over time.  They are of incredible value to PR&Co – they’re the Coca Cola formula that the company sells to its clients; and they’re the assets that Acme Corp is really buying when it buys ‘old PR’.

The trouble is that they’re finite and that PR&Co also works with other – often bigger – clients.  There are only so many relationships that PR&Co can establish within a given market, because there are only so many magazines and reporters that really matter.  And it’s PR&Co’s express objective to nurture and protect these relationships by providing reporters with a steady stream of helpful, smart comment and ideas that will help them to write better stories and advance their careers (this is the end game for ‘old PR’ – the brokerage service).  As such, the ability for PR&Co to provide a good service to reporters is dependent on its roster of clients and the quality of these company’s stories/pitches/ideas etc.

Now, this is all fine if Acme Corp is ‘hot’ or ‘loaded’ – because its commercial interests are perfectly aligned with the agency’s.  But if you’re not so hot or not so flushed with cash, then the ‘old PR’ model gets a little bit broken because it doesn’t scale to accommodate your needs.

Look at it this way: if PR&Co has X number of clients (or more, if it’s a good agency), then every day it will make decisions that enhance its core assets (its media relationships) at the expense of some of its lesser clients interests – since some of its clients won’t possess powerful (or helpful) enough stories/pitches/ideas.

Or, to put it another way, how willing is PR&Co to pitch your story over and above any other story that it may be responsible for pitching?  Are you ‘hot’ or ‘loaded’ enough to compete in this finite market of ideas and relationships?

An Alternative Way to Drive Your Brand:  the Online PR Agency…

Alternatively, you could invest your time and money in an Online PR Agency.  In fact, if you’re not currently ‘hot’ or particularly ‘loaded’ we’d say it’s the best thing to do right now.

Here’s why…

Great Online PR is primarily concerned with making you more noticeable in and around the web – via search engines like Google, and within the right online communities and blog networks and such.  It aims to:

1. Generate real Online PR buzz when and where its needed most… (eg, a blog- and Twitter-torrent and Google stardom at the moment you’re pitching the big deal)
2. Get important people to do the things you really want them to do… (eg, drive people to crucial events, have them put their hands up, declare love for you and even buy stuff off the page)

And, as a healthy byproduct, this activity will tend to radically improve your PageRank (by using smart Content Optimization, SEO and link generation techniques).

Great Online PR is all about raising your brand awareness and driving web site traffic in an very tangible and measurable way via smart online networks.

Importantly, Online PR doesn’t have to maintain a set of relationships with a finite number of human beings.  (It can do if you want to use Online PR tactics to feature in online news stories (ie, by doing media relations, online); but in order to generate the type of outcomes outlined above, traditional PR techniques aren’t really necessary).  Instead, successful Online PR is driven via a different mechanism where search engines and other web-based networks are the middlemen.  In other words, Online PR Agencies are in the business of convincing Google rather than reporters.

And this is the critical difference, because there’s no real concept of ‘scalability’ in Online PR. Unlike a reporter, Google can’t get enough of your content.  In fact, the more the better.  And unlike a traditional news media outlet, the web possesses a myriad of platforms that will all welcome your contributions.   As such, a sensible spend with a good Online PR Agency ought to enable you to create great (well optimized) content and seed it in such a way to create buzz, excitement and, most importantly, search engine visibility.  (And you don’t need to be burning ‘hot’ or ‘loaded’ to do it – you just need to be SMART.  Check out this case study as a good example.)

(Note:  I’m not talking about ‘content spamming’ here! I’m talking about smart generation, distribution and seeding of good content in the most appropriate outlets to drive quality traffic and boost your Google rankings on a set of pre-determined keywords.)

Conclusion:  Think About Online PR First, ‘Old PR’ Second

Don’t get me wrong: my intention isn’t to rubbish ‘old PR.‘  I’d be a fraud if I did.  This is my background, and I know that it works extremely well given the right client/agency fit – and there are many, many great ‘old PR’ agencies out there that do super work on behalf of their clients and their reporters.

My point is that in some cases ‘old PR’ simply won’t work because of the mechanics described above ….and yet many companies seem hell bent on spending their way out of this dilemma.  (Believe me, lots of firms continue to burn cash in this way – as there are no shortage of agencies waiting to pick up the cheques….)

So if you’re looking to drive awareness, sales, signups and general web site traffic, my advice is to check out Online PR first.  It’s an extremely simple way of standing out in a noisy marketplace.  It may not buy you a framed reprint of an FT centre spread feature, but it’ll probably help you to drive sales via your web site in an extremely measurable and cost-effective way.

Besides, there’ll always be time for an executive press breakfast briefing after you’ve made your first £15 million….

Something about the name of the blog and the article should have warned me…. But I waded in nonetheless. It’s a good read – very provoking, and very right and totally wrong in equal measure.

The basic argument is this: you don’t need to pay top dollar for specialist SEO services because all of your SEO best practices ought to be built in to your site design and production at source.

This thinking is spot on.

Who needs additional ‘Content Optimisation’ and ‘Link Building’ strategies if we’re creating compelling, SEO- and user-friendly content in the first place? Nobody! Well implemented content and good site design pleases the Google God and human readers in equal measure. And, if your stuff is really interesting, then someone, somewhere may be kind enough to give you a backlink or two by referencing your stuff in their content, or bookmarking you on Stumbleupon.

There’s just one problem: we don’t live in this world. Not every marketing manager, web designer, or copywriter understands the basic principles of good SEO.

When all’s said and done, the discipline of SEO – as an activity and a profession – is a stepping stone on the road to online marketing enlightenment. One day we won’t need to outsource all of this wizardry to yet another consultant whose role it is to overlay technical SEO smarts on our stuff.

Nope, the future is a place where every online marketing person does SEO as part and parcel of their wider work. Great search optimized page titles will be written without taking counsel; great code will be implemented without expensive rewrites; and great link-generating content will be dreamed up and implemented…. all because the marketing of the future will be web-native. Anything and everything we do online will be done in the spirit of ‘Online PR’.

Born-on-the-Web firms get this (particularly those that are offer promotion-based services like Twitter and Seesmic), as does the FaceBook fraternity: every move they make promotes the brand or the individual in a web-friendly way. It’s all about online PR and awareness building. They participate in other people’s online presence and they facilitate and encourage dialogue via the fantastic content they produce and the tools they build. SEO is just a natural part of their DNA – it’s not an add-on.

As such, smart companies don’t ‘do’ SEO – they do Online PR instead.

In the meantime, the rest of the world is in catch up mode: it needs help so that it can rewire the work that it does.

Footnote: the source article is a GREAT example of a smart SEO campaign. Controversial content, well written, technically spot on, and stuffed with great ideas and keywords. The result? Bucket loads of comments and links and references to it (including this one), all around the keyword theme of ‘SEO.’ Our man doth protest too much! I know a good SEO at work when I see one.

The Beta version of the C&M web site was launched last week.  As the Online PR and SEO firm with a difference, I’m pleased to say that it’s already being indexed by Google.  If nothing else, this ought to suggest that we know what we’re about and that we’re not a bunch of fuckwits.

This here then is our formal launch blog post.  Instead of the normal blather about the heartache, pain and bloodstains behind the launch effort, I wanted to tell you how easy the whole process has been, and to talk a little bit about why we’re here and what we’re up to.

The Thank You’s…

That this web site is here is thanks largely to the efforts of the wonderful Paul Jarvis, our resident design and Wordpress development guru.  He really is one of the finest webheads alive.  A month or so ago, I had a rough idea about site design values and a vague sitemap that described our core content assets.  A few days later Paul gave me some templates and an Alpha site – the site you see here now.  I hope you with agree me when I say it’s a wonderful piece of work and that Paul’s a real genius.

Also from a design perspective, I should mention the intrepid efforts of Adam Bognar, friend of Paul, pictured above, and ace photographer/adventurer.  The images you see dotted around the site are all commissioned from his camera.  And here, blood and pain were in fact risked.  For example, the road shot on our contact page was so dangerous that it almost lead to Adam taking up homestead with a passing family who told him not to concentrate on his work so much, beware of the passing Chevvies (it was shot in Vancouver) and to be more careful with his karma.

(You can find out more about who else C&M works with here.)

In Very Simple Terms…

In terms of the business and what we do, I’ve described who were are here and why we exist here.  But in short, Content and Motion has arrived to help the world take a more profitable, cost-effective and content-first approach to its web marketing challenges.

Web marketing is not a rocket science activity in and of itself.  It is, however, treated by many in our industry as an atom-splitting exercise.  SEO, online PR, online branding and the like are often wrongly presented as deeply woven and multi-layered activities that require an army of expensive, chin-stroking consultants and a large dose of black magic.

My view is that this is not really the case.  Whilst it might have been necessary to rub crystals to improve your Google rankings a few years ago, today it isn’t.  Search algorithms now tend to ignore all the old black hattery in favour of good old high quality content.

Why?  Well, for a start, good content is like cream – it rises to the top and it’s hard to fake (…in that the fake stuff tastes like crap).  So rather than focus its efforts on metadata and the layers of invisible technical stuff that sits beneath a site, search crawlers are now primarily concerned with the content of your actual content.

This is because the ‘reputation’ element of search measurement (and SEO) is now more important than ever.  I mean in the sense of other people rating your site and ‘voting’ for you by linking to it.  The rise of social media apps and bookmarking services make this so.  Rather than focus on the technical make up of a web page, a search engine is able to get a far better read of its value by proxy – by relying on the thoughts and votes of the rest of the web.  And having the rest of the web cast votes just got a hell of a lot easier with the likes of Digg, Stumbleupon, delicious and Co….   Which is, of course, the key principle of Google’s PageRank.

What the World Needs Now: Content Optimisation…

So in terms of futures, the writing is on the wall.  Good web marketing, good SEO, good online branding and good online PR must now be based on great content that satisfies two audiences in equal measure – search engine spiders (so that you can be crawled, indexed and ‘understood’ in the right fashion) AND human beings (so that you’re compelling enough to be read, understood, rated and linked to).

As such, the job of web marketing is now less technocratic than it used to be, and relies more on the creative processes involved in hatching a good plan, producing great content and seeding it amongst the interweb.  Technical know-how is necessary (and we have it in spades here at C&M), but the real job is in producing killer content that makes heads turn – both the algorithmic and the fleshy kind.

In broad brush terms, we call this work ‘Content Optimisation.’ It’s more than just creating content – it’s creating content with a very specific web mission.  It’s more than online PR – it’s precision PR with a search marketing hat on…. and it helps you do your SEO in a very different, more productive way for your customers (by giving them interesting content rather than hidden ‘trickster’ stuff).

What’s Next…

Anyways, that’s the basis of what we’re doing here.   I’ll be writing up more of our mission statement on this blog in the next week or so.  In the meantime, do get in touch if you like the sound of it and need some help!

Oh… and feel free to leave me a comment or five about what you make of this all.  I’d love to hear your views!

I’ve been mulling on this one for a while: how does Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, blogging, and every other web 2.0 BlaBla service change what we need to be doing in marketing, and what are the concepts that matter?

Well, an aborted journey around the M25 in the rain today provided a little thinking time. Here’s my conclusion…

Firstly, a Disclaimer – Reports of Death are Usually Exaggerated

I’m not a doomsayer. The internet does not spell the end for traditional marketing. In fact, the best of it seems to be getting more and more engaging and creative. In fact it has to be by virtue of the environment I’m about to describe…

Fact: The Media/Marketing Environment has Changed for Good

We have all this new Facebook-ish stuff which didn’t exist yesterday – and most of it is great entertainment. Predominantly, it’s all ‘me-media’ – the services themselves don’t provide content, but their users do.

This in itself is exciting: as a publisher I can create whatever I want to, whatever my interest is; as a consumer I can read/view/access an infinitely richer set of content than I could a few years ago. I can also now connect with folks and share stuff in easy, fun and exciting new ways (Facebook, Flickr, etc).

An Introduction to Pico-Branding

These new things are both a threat and an opportunity for marketers…

• Threat: unless everyone’s playing hooky at work on Facebook, then we have fewer opportunities to engage with them in traditional ways because less and less time and attention is devoted to things like TV, newspapers, email or web sites. (Proof: yesterday I was really dedicated to being a couch potato; today – whilst a Sopranos binge on the couch will continue to be highly desirable – I also tend to devote a bit of time to reading blogs in the evenings.)

• Opportunity: we have a mass of new ways of connecting with people.

So if you’re a marketing agency, you need to think about acquiring some new skill sets to compliment your standard work (and to safeguard your fees). And, if you have a brand to manage, it’s time to think about how to capitalize on all of these new-fangled destinations.

When thinking about how to engage with the market, we need to bring two different strategies into play:

• Mega-branding: press, posters, big web sites, mass email campaigns, TV, etc.

• Pico-branding: Facebook, YouTube, blogs, Google AdWords, Twitter, Flickr.

Mega-branding is an exercise in ‘gorilla marketing’ – it has a large footprint; it reaches many people; lives a long life; and it can be (hairily) expensive.

Pico-branding is an exercise in ‘guerilla marketing’ – it has a small footprint; it’s opportunistic and targeted; it’s fleeting; and it’s (relatively) cheap. Importantly, because it’s delivered via the web, Pico-branding is also extremely measurable in a way that Mega-branding can’t always be – and so ‘cheap’ can also be very cost-effective.

How to Get With the Pico-Program

Most importantly, Pico-branding requires us to think in new ways…

Pico-branding is not about building grand audience destinations (like the mega-bucks web site of yesteryear), because if you spend lots of time and money building it there’s no longer a guarantee that they’ll come (there’s every chance they’ll be polishing their Facebook profile instead).

No, Pico-branding is all about building smaller, more discrete stopping points across all of these new online outlets, with the aim of capturing your audience’s attention and either complimenting (and informing) what they’re doing or diverting their interest towards a destination that you do own (ie, something from your Mega-brand bucket of work).

A good analogy is with the board game Monopoly. Everyone knows it’s a bad strategy to invest in only one area of the board. Too random and not enough traffic. A better way to generate cash is to buy lots of smaller properties at all of the places that people visit regularly, as well as investing in the big stuff: so, collectively, a bunch of houses on Whitechapel and the Old Kent Road can add a great deal of strategic, money-making value to those expensive hotels on Park Lane.

In Pico-branding terms, this translates as:

• Reaching out to the blogs that your audiences read and engaging in valuable discussions with them

• Publishing your own blog in a focused way that adds value to (and interacts with) the discussions surrounding your marketplace

• Using tools like Twitter to broadcast snippets of information that you own and other people care about

• Posting engaging videos on YouTube that show you and your wares in a new light

• Creating Facebook (et al) groups or applications that either provide users with content services that they couldn’t get elsewhere or add value to their experience of your brand by helping them connect with like-minded people

• …and so on.

Conclusion: Go Small

Pico-branding is all about accepting that your audiences spend as much time on a varied bunch of web-based media, forums and services as they do in their armchair in front of their TV…. and making whole hearted attempts to engage with them in new ways that add value to these online experiences.

So here’s the new rules for marketing…

• Go ‘Pico.’ Build more small things than big things

• Do this in all the places that your audiences are to be found

• Don’t spend less or more – just spread budgets across a wider variety of stuff