Times are tough. Search shouldn't be.

Despite the bad economy, computers are still popular and Google is still in business. Imagine that…any way, here are some tips to make the most of your search campaigns no matter the current economic condition. These tips are not inclusive nor are they groundbreaking, but hell, our clients aren’t complaining.

Monitor your accounts…every day

Again, probably a no brainer, but with all the automation that Google offers it can be easy to ‘set it and forget it.’ For instance, Google offers an ‘optimize’ ad serving option that automatically shows your ‘best performing’ ads. Google determines performance by CTR. So what if your campaign needs to back to a certain CPA, but some of your highest converting ads have low CTRs? They won’t show. You can’t ignore the human element.

Keep your ad copy fresh and keywords relevant

This suggestion isn’t to say that you need to be changing your ad copy constantly. Let your campaign gain some traction then analyze which ads are not delivering according to your performance metrics. It’s surprising what a few minor changes can do. For example, for one of our clients, I just changed the headline in the ad and left the body the same. It is now the best performing ad in terms of conversions for the month. As for keywords, make sure they are backing out to your goals (clicks? conversions? cpc?). Those goals will determine how you go about optimizing your keywords. General keywords have a tendency to negatively skew metrics, make sure your keywords are relevant to your audience.

Adjust your bids

The search landscape is constantly changing, it’s important to keep a close eye on your keyword bids as competitors are always making moves to secure that prime real estate. So with your performance metrics in mind make the necessary adjustments to remain competitive, but efficient. Another area where Google provides automation, but again, if you’re in your accounts everyday there’s no need.

Ongoing Research

Google offers a variety of helpful research tools when it comes to mining for new keywords. So use them! It may spark new ideas for your campaign. Think about what themes you may be missing from your target market. It’s rare to see a campaign go from start to finish without needing an infusion of ad groups and keywords. You never know, it could save your campaign.

Search Engine Strategies New York (#SESNY)

What an incredible first day at SES – and for none of the reasons I expected. The day started off with Guy Kawasaki telling us how he spams everyone, yet people love him. The woman 2 seats over from me fell asleep in her chair and was snoring loud enough for 4 rows over to hear. 30 minutes later I found out that she was the lead speaker in the next session I sat in on! Then the first three session breakouts I attended talked about Twitter twice as much as they did search strategy (I proposed a name change to TES over lunch – but the conference went on as SES). I watched a panel on Universal search that included Ask, Yahoo, Live Search and more – but Google was no where to be found. The final session I sat in was incredible – and it was led by CMO’s discussing do’s and dont’s of search…

If you aren’t following me on twitter, you can do so at http://twitter.com/mediatwo and I’ll be live tweeting Day 2 as well. But here’s a few more details on first and last sessions I sat in on:

SES NY Key Note: Guy Kawasaki
Guy kicked off the day with the keynote speech. As he was speaking I was twittering and noticed that he was too… Only he wasn’t near his computer??? As he spoke deeper, he revealed that he spams people, he uses ghost writers, he doesn’t pay attention to anyone that follows him unless they D or @ him. He also revealed his ultra scientific way of coming up with his “non-automated” post-topics: randomly grab links that sound interesting from a couple sites (one being Alltop.com – his own). With all of this information in the palm of my hand – I still choose to follow him on twitter (as do 90,000+ others). I know – it sounds crazy – but you know what – he’s a very likable guy. That, and he revealed some very useful tools that I re-tweeted earlier in the day including:
• www.Twibs.com helps you monitor companies
• www.Retweetist.com Good gauge of how many people are RT you.
• www.epenis.nl. Check out that site! It's your twitter penis size!
• www.adjix.com it shows stats for your links
• www.Twirl.com allows you to monitor multiple twitter accounts in the same window.
• www.cotweet.com is for multiple tweeting companies.
• www.Tynt.com quotes the original source when copied.
• www.Twitterhawk.com "the ultimate spamming tool". Looks for keywords and auto tweets content.
• www.twitterfeed.com allows you to post to others twitter - huge opportunity to build affiliates. It is a custom feature "beg Mario"

Dozen most common search engine mistakes that CMO's make
I must admit, I was pleasantly surprised by this panel. My objective from this conference was to get a pulse on what CMO’s thought of search and interactive. As immersed as I am personally in interactive strategy, I sometimes find myself talking over clients – and in particular, C-Level types. I went to this session because the panel consisted of top-level marketers from brands such as Ameriprise, World Travel Holdings, Constant Contact, and more – and I felt like this would be a great representation to CMO’s everywhere. Well – if it is – then congratulations CMO’s – you get interactive! The reality is, this was a group of seasoned veterans that understood their marketing mix, and there is a lot that can be learned from them. Below are the 12 mistakes that they pointed out during their session:
1. Failing to set measurable goals.
2. Failing to assign monetary values to each action
3. Assessing the SEM success Solely on a direct marketing model
4. Treating SEO as a project rather than a process
5. Making a #1 ranking your most important objective
6. Focusing on big keywords and forgetting the long-tail
7. Engaging in paid or natural but not both
8. Using your language and not that of your customers
9. Optimizing your web site but not other digital assets
10. Integrate SEM with your other marketing initiatives - don't silo it
11. Failing to bid on terms for which your site already organically ranks high
12. Bidding solely on branded terms

All-in-all – I’m looking forward to day 2! I’m not sure what to expect, but I’m looking forward to it…

Social Media: 140 Random Strategies on Twitter

In my previous post, Building a Social Media Strategy, I referenced 5 items that needed to be tackled in order to create your social media strategy. What I’d like to do is give some of my observations to what can be done to help build out point #3 – “Identify Strategy & Opportunities”.

Even though Twitter is now in its 3rd year, I think there is still a ton of untapped opportunities, so I will try and define 140 strategies that might help your brand on the social media phenom that is Twitter. Please keep in mind, these are more action items than strategies as everyone’s business is so different – but some of these are fun, and may spur additional thoughts for you (if they do spur thoughts – please comment – b/c I need help getting to 140 of them!):

1. Register your brand name, and every variation of it (I’m baby stepping you into this – work with me).
2. Create a follow list. Identify the newsworthy individuals as well as who you want your brand to be associated with, and start following them with your brand.
3. Follow your competitors – but not with your brand. Don’t give them the satisfaction or SEO benefit of linking to them, instead, create a personal account to follow them. Keep your enemies close.
4. Always follow back who follows you (unless rule #3 invoked). If its your brand, you want to build good will, and who doesn’t appreciate the warm and fuzzy of a return follow.
5. Direct Message. If they follow you, and you follow them back, then shoot them a D. Again, personal correspondence is great.
6. Don’t be afraid to direct message special deals to your followers first, and then open it up to your normal post. Again – warm fuzzies.
7. Follow everyone – if they don’t follow you back, stop following them. This one is not set in stone, but for a starter to twitter, you don’t want to be that person that is following 1,260 people and only have 3 people following you – I believe they call those people “affiliates”.
8. Find more people to follow. Try things like http://search.twitter.com, www.Twitseeker.com, www.MrTweet.net, http://twitter.grader.com, etc.
9. Be transparent. If you’re using Twitter to market – let people know that. Don’t let them discover through a “leak” – just bad PR.
10. If you’re marketing to them – don’t market a snow shovel to someone in Florida. People fill out where they’re twittering from, send them market specific information just like you would any other medium.
11. #FollowFriday. Try to get people to recommend you – sometimes all it takes is recommending them.
12. Use of the RT… First person to RT (re-tweet) my name, URL, etc wins a free rocket ship. Get’s people talking.
13. Use of the RT part 2. Say something worth re-tweeting. (this was a RT from someone, I just don’t remember who)
14. Twitter can feed into your blog, website – heck, it can be distributed to anyone you want it to – just give them the code and you now have your own news network.
15. SEO benefits. Recently, our twitter account passed our blog on Google for brand name searches. Now I’m having to blog about Twitter to take that position back.
16. Create a twitter poll. Here’s your modern day focus group, and it’s free. You can even direct them to Google Docs and do it free (http://www.ehow.com/how_4615530_survey-using-google-documents-free.html)
17. CRM. Direct people to appropriate departments, who to call, how to handle things, etc… Let’s face it – everyone hates the voice mail systems, so let’s give them direct access.
18-140. Coming Soon...

I’ll keep updating as results come in – so check back, but I want to get to 140! If you think of any yourself, feel free to comment – or follow me on twitter @MediaTwo.

Building a Social Media Strategy

The terms “social media” have seemingly overtaken “emerging media” for the new catch-all that ad agencies are pitching to their clients. The reality is, social is part of emerging, but I tend to think that when people don’t fully understand something such as Twitter they want to lump it into a general category so they can speak to a broader topic and not get questioned on specifics. With that being said, I’d like to take you into a hypothetical social strategy, but first, I want to identify for you the 5 elements Media Two categorizes are mandatory for your strategy to be successful:

1. Identify Personality. Although Media Two will do all of the heavy lifting, the brand personality should come from within your organization. As a brand cannot speak, this person will be the spokesperson for your brand. The only way to not come off as fake is to be real – not a made up agency person or avatar. We want you to interact in a way that only you know how.

2. Set up brand monitoring. Using a software such as Radian6 Media Two will identify what your current social buzz is, and identify a benchmark plan with ROI objectives in place so that you can see what your actual return on investment will be.

3. Identify Strategy & Opportunities. Depending on where your industry buzz is taking place, whether its blogs, communities, micro-blog’s, news outlets, video, etc – we will identify and define a strategy designed to hit your ROI objectives as previously defined. For example, if we see that you have a strong following in the Twitter community, we will set up a strategy that continues to bolster that.

4. Competitive Analysis. We will keep you updated on what people are saying about your competitors as well. Part of our strategy may even be to go after individuals with our strengths and benefits upon finding dissatisfaction with your competitor’s products or services.

5. Protecting Your Brand Identity. As new trends hit the airwaves, we know that you have other things going on. Media Two will continue to monitor the trade shows, tweet-up’s and what have you to identify where you should be protected. We recommend registering any brand URL’s, Facebook accounts, LinkedIn groups, Twitter names, Instant Messaging names, and Gmail accounts that might be needed in this ever changing interactive environment. This list continues to grow, and you need to stay on top of it.

Every company in the world has an online reputation – whether it’s good or bad is of no relevance. It’s what you learn from yours that makes it an important part of your marketing process. Think of the internet as the modern day Focus Group, only this group isn’t being paid for their thoughts on you in a controlled environment; they’re openly discussing them with their friends and even with strangers in an anything goes format. In my next blog post, I’m going to give you some sample strategies ideas that could be put to use for your own campaign.