Blind Five Year Old

There have been a number of recent posts around selecting the right SEO clients.  And I’ve certainly had my share of frustrations. Yet, one of the issues I often run into are potential clients who think SEO is the only marketing tactic they need to grow their business. This is just as difficult as a client who distrusts SEO.

When SEO won’t work

Okay, SEO will always work but it won’t always be the best way to grow your business. Too many start-ups seem to believe that they’ll be able to drive massive amounts of traffic from Google. End of marketing plan.

The fact is SEO is but one part of an overall marketing plan. Sometimes it can be a very large part of the plan, particularly if you have a long-tail strategy. More often than not it’s going to be a focused SEO effort on a handful of high value keywords. While this is a fine strategy it may not bring a lot of traffic right away.

SEO is not a ‘just-add-water’ solution

SEO is tougher than it looks, particularly if you’re looking at optimizing a handful of competitive keywords. Sure, the basics are easy but the devil is in the details. Even when you’re doing all the right things, it may take time to conquer the rankings for those keywords. Never mind the pesky keyword volume data that can provide a reality check on expected traffic.

Unlike skeptics, SEO converts have a distorted sense of the speed and effectiveness of SEO. While they don’t understand the mechanics, they’re sure that some expert can wave a magic wand and turn on the Google spigot.

SEO Infomercial

The lure of SEO is, of course, that it’s free. In some ways SEO is like a late night infomercial. Promises of flat abs in 30 days with just a 10 minute daily workout! Did we mention that it folds up and fits under your bed too?!

SEO can be a very effective low-cost channel. But to get those flat abs you still need to eat right. And if you’re listening carefully to the legal disclaimer you’ll hear that those magical results were ‘not typical’. That means it’ll take longer than 30 days and more work than 10 minutes daily.

Swiss Army Knife SEO

Your marketing plan should be like a Swiss Army Knife with SEO being just one of the tools. Not only that, but you need to use that tool the right way. Getting a whole bunch of traffic that doesn’t convert isn’t going to help your business. Don’t neglect the other tools at your disposal. In fact, some of those other tools might actually help your SEO efforts in the long run.

And if SEO won’t work there’s always social media, right?

A new study by .Fox Networks and comScore shows (again) the positive relationship between display advertising and search.

Video and display advertising both successfully increased brand engagement in each of the four campaigns analysed. The average uplift across the campaigns saw site visitation increase by more than a factor of seven over a four week period following exposure to an ad, with consumers three times more likely to conduct search queries using brand or relevant generic terms in the same time period.

Advertising Attribution

These studies all point to a synergy between advertising channels. That’s not ground-breaking, though the measurement of it is innovative. What marketers have been trying to figure out is attribution. What channel or channels should get credit for a sale or lead? It goes to the heart of the old marketing adage: I know I’m wasting half of my marketing budget, I just don’t know which half.

Impact on Display

Many advertisers and agencies still measure success of a display campaign based on traditional click through rate (CTR) and ROI. The low CTR of display ads makes marketers suspicious. The concept of a view-through conversion made sense to some, but it still seemed like a bunch of hand waving and didn’t solve the problem of attribution. New services like Vizu also go beyond clicks and provide measurable brand lift based on display campaigns.

Studies and tools that provide multi-channel insight into conversion will help advertisers move beyond antiquated success metrics and increase their display advertising budgets.

Impact on Search

Convincing advertisers of the relationship between display and search is only half the battle. How will advertisers respond? The obvious knee-jerk reaction is to increase their display advertising spend. But is that really where advertisers should start?

If display generates more search volume, wouldn’t you first ensure search was optimized to convert that additional volume? Even within search, would you allocate more dollars into PPC or SEO? Would you prefer to pay for that customer twice or once?

Display and SEO

I’d argue that the first action item based on this study would be to invest in SEO. We already know that the vast majority of search clicks come from organic listings. The importance of rank cannot be denied, even with recent studies showing interesting behavior around brands.

Display primes the pump and generates intent. But you could be generating that intent for your competitor if you haven’t done enough SEO. Branded terms are likely safe, but the ‘relevant generic terms’ are a battlefield.

For example, if Best Buy ran a display campaign for HDTVs, this would create additional search volume for branded searches (Best Buy) and relevant generic searches (HDTVs). A brand search works out just fine. But a search for hdtvs returns Walmart as the first retailer result. Best Buy could wind up spending advertising dollars to drive sales for Walmart.

My fear is that instead of investing in SEO advertisers will simply throw money at the problem through PPC. Never mind that you’ll still only capture a small segment of that additional search volume, it’s also eating into your overall ROI.

As we begin 2010, it’s time for me to go on the record with some predictions. A review of my 2009 predictions shows a few hits, a couple of half-credits and a few more misses. Then again, many of my predictions were pretty bold.

This year is no different.

The Link Bubble Pops

At some point in 2010, the link bubble will pop. Google will be forced to address rising link abuse and neutralize billions of links. This will be the largest change in the Google algorithm in many years, disrupting individual SEO strategies as well as larger link based models such as Demand Media.

Twitter Finds a Revenue Model

As 2010 wears on Twitter will find and announce a revenue model. I don’t know what it will be and I’m unsure it will work, but I can’t see Twitter waving their hands for yet another year. Time to walk the walk Twitter.

Google Search Interface Changes

We’ve already seen the search mode test that should help users navigate and refine search results. However, I suspect this is just the beginning and not the end. The rapid rate of iteration by the Google team makes me believe we could see something as radical as LazyFeed’s new UI or the New York Times Skimmer.

Behavioral Targeting Accelerates

Government and privacy groups continue to rage against behavioral targeting (BT), seeing it as some Orwellian advertising machine hell bent on destroying the world. Yet, behavioral targeting works and savvy marketers will win against these largely ineffectual groups and general consumer apathy. Ask people if they want targeted ads and they say no, show them targeted ads and they click.

Google Launches gBooks

The settlement between Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers will (finally) be granted final approval and then the fireworks will really start. That’s right, the settlement brouhaha was the warm up act. Look for Google to launch an iTunes like store (aka gBooks) that will be the latest in the least talked about war on the Internet: Google vs. Amazon.

RSS Reader Usage Surges

What, isn’t RSS dead? Well, Marshall Kirkpatrick doesn’t seem to think so and Louis Gray doesn’t either. I’ll side with Marshall and Louis on this one. While I still believe marketing is the biggest problem surrounding RSS readers, advancements like LazyFeed and Fever make me think the product could also advance. I’m still waiting for Google to provide their reader as a while label solution for eTailers fed up with email overhead.

Transparent Traffic Measurement Arrives

Publishers and advertisers are tired of ballpark figures or trends which are directionally accurate. Between Google Analytics and Quantcast people now expect a certain level of specificity. Even comScore is transitioning to beacon based measurement. Panel based traffic measurement will recede, replaced by transparent beacon based measurement … and there was much rejoicing.

Video Turns a Profit

Online video adoption rates have soared and more and more premium content is readily available. Early adopters bemoan the influx of advertising units, trying to convince themselves and others that people won’t put up with it. But they will. Like it or not, the vast majority of people are used to this form of advertising and this is the year it pays off.

Chrome Grabs 15% of Browser Market

Depending on who you believe, Chrome has already surpassed Safari. And this was before Chrome was available for Mac. That alone isn’t going to get Chrome to 15%. But you recall the Google ‘What’s a Browser?‘ video, right? Google will disrupt browser inertia through a combination of user disorientation and brand equity. Look for increased advertising and bundling of Chrome in 2010.

Real Time Search Jumps the Shark

2009 was, in many ways, the year of real time search. It was the brand new shiny toy for the Internati. Nearly everyone I meet thinks real time search is transformational. But is it really?

A Jonathan Mendez post titled Misguided Notions: A Study of Value Creation in Real-Time Search challenges this assumption. A recent QuadsZilla post also exposes a real time search vulnerability. The limited query set and influx of spam will reduce real time search to an interesting, though still valuable, add-on. The Internati? They’ll find something else shiny.

Two weeks ago my wife dug out some Fall felt stickers from the closet for our daughter. Delighted, my daughter stuck one of them on my shirt before I walked out the door to work.

It was a red leaf.

Being a bit sentimental, I left the red leaf on my shirt for the day. That decision led to a renewed appreciation for the power of iconography.

Are You Canadian?

That was one of the first things a co-worker asked me that day. The question seemed rather random and out of left field. In reaction to my puzzled expression, he pointed to the red leaf.

Later that day another co-worker asked if I liked maple syrup. And yet another started up a conversation about the upcoming hockey season. (Go Flyers!)

The Power of Iconography

I suppose it does look like the Canadian maple leaf. And the sticker was out of place and likely attracted attention. But all that aside, I wasn’t wearing a Canadian flag sticker. It was a simple, small red leaf.

The meaning that this red leaf conveyed was impressive. A single red leaf created an instant association with Canada and then, like a needle skipping on a vinyl record, to maple syrup and hockey. A stream of data, of experience, of knowledge, was trapped inside that red leaf.

How does that happen?

Semiotics

Semiotics, or the study of signs, helps explain how a simple red leaf can have such a profound impact. The field of semiotics is both dense and ambiguous, filled with academic rhetoric and debate. Even a beginner’s guide to semiotics clocks in at over 5,500 words.

The main elements of semiotics are syntax, semantics and pragmatics, described in as follows in an icon design article.

Syntax: the internal grammar of parts that enable a properly formed sign to be parsable by someone or some system—think of the computer throwing a “syntax error”

Semantics: the intending meaning of the sign by the maker(s) of it

Pragmatics: how the sign is received, perceived, and acted upon by some person or interpreter by the confluence of syntax and semantics; the resulting effect

Pragmatics is where it really gets interesting in my opinion. Pragmatics deals with the impact of context and experience as it is applied to the perception of signs.

Now, back to the red leaf.

The syntax is fine. You know it’s a leaf. However, the intended meaning (semantics) changed through the prism of pragmatics.

The bag of colored leaves was intended to be a sign of Fall. Yet, the one red leaf taken out of context is instead perceived to be a sign of Canada, which opened up a whole new flood of associations based on personal experience and perspective.

Icons and Marketing

The Internet is a vast landscape of icons. My red leaf experience reminds me that iconography can be a very effective marketing tool. It is done wrong and badly for the most part, but when done well can have a tremendous impact. (For more on semiotics and advertising I recommend the retro semiotics hypercard essay from Thomas Streeter at the University of Vermont.)

The challenge is figuring out how to create icons that unlock that stream of data. Creating icons that tap into shared experiences and personal histories can deliver a tone to your website that you simply can’t convey otherwise.

The Icon Test

Sometimes you’re capitalizing on ancient archetypes and sometimes they can be recent and repetitive shared experiences. Don’t believe me? Lets try a little icon experiment. I’m going to show you an icon of sorts.

Tell me what you instantly think about after seeing it.

Post the first three words that came into your mind in your comment.

One of the great things about our new information culture is how disparate sources coalesce into something meaningful. Last week I read a Fortune magazine article on Marc Andreessen, news about IZEA’s Sponsored Tweets and research on the impact social media has on brands and eCommerce. When I put these pieces together the picture is of a powerful locomotive hurtling toward a creaky bridge.

Social Media and the Telephone

The telephone is a social platform. You call family and friends to talk about things from the trivial to the serious. If you know a person’s phone number you can call them. At some point, marketers figured out that they too could call you, so long as they had your phone number. Phone numbers weren’t hard to find.

This didn’t sit too well with most people. They didn’t want some stranger calling right at dinner trying to sell them something. The thing was, enough people actually did respond to these calls and telemarketing flourished. It was a lot more effective than direct mail.

Over time, more and more people became irate. Laws were passed so that you could opt-out of these unwanted calls. But there were loopholes. Giant gaping loopholes. Any company you had a ‘prior relationship’ with could still call you unless explicitly told otherwise.

You might have bought from them before, maybe even kept an eye out for coupons, but you didn’t want them to ring you up whenever they pleased.

Now replace phone number with user name. This story has already been written.

Sponsored Tweets and Telemarketing

Sponsored Tweets will not work like telemarketing. The reason why telemarketing works is because you can engage in a dialog. A good telemarketer changes their approach based on the subtle feedback they’re getting from the prospect. And they’ll certainly use every objection as an opportunity. I know a bit about this since I ran telemarketing programs for nearly five years.

The problem with Sponsored Tweets is that the lack of dialog. One way communication isn’t nearly as effective. It’s the reason why telemarketing beats direct mail. No, Sponsored Tweets are not like telemarketing.

Sponsored Tweets are Robocalls

You’ve probably received a robocall.

Robocall is American pejorative jargon for an automated telemarketing phone call that uses both a computerized autodialer and a computer-delivered recorded message.

I’m guessing you’ve gotten one during the election season or, most recently, from some company trying to sell you an auto warranty extension. You don’t like them.

Getting a robocall from Martin Sheen is the same as getting a Sponsored Tweet from a celebrity.

Context Shifting and Social Marketing

Marc Andreessen believes that advertising can be an effective part of social interactions.

He tells me Facebook “will be bigger than Apple” and declares that the social-networking company will become the mass-market window to the web, much as Google has been for the past six or seven years. Twitter, so far criticized for having no way to make real money, will get advertisers to pay to reach people as they are sending messages about the sponsor’s products.

The real issue here is context switching, a term my Caring.com engineers introduced to me. The general idea is that if you’re thinking in one way (about one thing) it takes some time and effort to stop and think about something else. The context of your attention has changed.

This is why I believe social marketers need to build an ice cream truck. They need to deliver something that forces people to shift their context.

The example of Google actually supports the idea of context switching. Eyetracking studies have shown substantial differences in how people scan results for transaction based queries (left) versus information based queries (right).

All searches are not created equal. The intent of that query, of that action, defines the context.

Social Marketing’s Creaky Bridge

Others, like Andreessen, seem to believe that context is homogeneous and can be blended. That social messages and product based messages can live side by side. That as you’re telling someone about the cool new things your iPhone does that you’ll enjoy a message from Palm trying to persuade you that the Pre is the way to go.

… an overwhelming 96% of employed consumers say their opinion of a product brand does not change if that brand has no presence on a social networking site … In fact, just 12% of respondents say their opinion of a brand actually changes if that brand maintains a significant social networking presence and only 11% of social networkers report following any major brand through a social networking site.

This is but one of numerous datapoints that illustrates that creaky bridge I mentioned at the beginning of this post. The locomotive of social marketing continues to thunder down the tracks, ignoring the flashing yellow signals at their own peril.

The personal data Facebook has could be worth millions or wind up being as valuable as a stack of Monopoly money.

Social Media Data Mining

I got to thinking about this because of a FriendFeed comment Dan Morrill made on an Altitude Branding post titled New Books, New Covers.

Not sure if I really want to shift it, if marketing folks know I am getting tired of microsoft based systems and planning on going all apple, what kind of marketing fight would happen over that one? I want them to look at me one dimensionally cause I can blow them off easier.

A few weeks later I had a conversation with Ana Yang at the FriendFeed open house. Ana’s not on Facebook. Why? She doesn’t think it really represents who people are but who they want to be.

The implications of both these statements buzzed around in my head and connected with other thoughts I’d had on social media data mining.

People Lie

Dr. Gregory House is fond of this saying. He’s right too. People do lie, and for a variety of reasons.

Among other reasons, they lie to avoid things, they lie to fit in and they lie to avoid embarrassment.

I’d argue that people are more likely to lie in social situations and that the relative distance created by the Internet also increases people’s proclivity to lie.

So, forget about the privacy issues surrounding data collection. The real threat to Facebook’s plans lay in incomplete or downright inaccurate personal information.

Lies of Omission

The problem isn’t the actual issue of privacy, but the reaction to privacy. The heightened awareness that your personal information might be available to the highest bidder leads many to change their behavior. Some, like Dan, may lie to avoid marketing. Others may go back and remove certain information.

At a minimum, many simply reduce the amount of personal information they share moving forward. This sharing reticence creates a skewed look at people overtime. The personal data becomes a snapshot of who they were, and not who they are.

There are also topics that you might not want to discuss in a public forum. You’re probably not going to fan an incontinence product. You might not divulge the nitty-gritty details of your divorce. Most aren’t going to discuss their pornography habits. If people are wondering ‘ where can I pay for a divorce‘, they can get help from attorneys here!

Social Lies

One of the core issues here is the idea that self-reported social data is accurate. This isn’t a magazine subscription or a warranty card submission – things that have roots in a commerce transaction. Commerce serves as a safeguard against pervasive lying. You can’t receive that magazine if your address isn’t correct.

Social data is untethered from commerce and therefore doesn’t have a natural safeguard. The transaction taking place is psychological and emotional instead.

The act of social lying is pervasive. How many share real information when asked ‘how are you?’ Not to mention the powerful force of peer pressure and the innate desire to be liked.

We acquiesce. We embellish. We edit. We redact. Not only that, but we change our behavior based on the environment and setting.

Social Schizophrenia

At work you might say one thing, but sitting out in the backyard with a beer you might say something different. Your status update on Facebook might be different from the one you have on LinkedIn.

Soon after the FriendFeed open house there was a rather public integration of social personalities. This might not be a frequent occurrence but it’s enough to be unnerving. There is no householding of these different personalities under one address, whether it be an extreme case or simply the different facets of your social existence.

Even if you could accurately aggregate social data across various networks and email addresses, would you be able to extract reliable meaning from that data?

Social Trust

Why would companies pay for social data they can’t trust? Most companies already have multiple sources of personal data. Consumer databases with multiple reporting lines are frequent. Many also build their own through rewards programs.

Yet, marketers are always hungry for more. That’s where profiling and detailed segmentation services provided by companies like Nielsen Claritas come into play. You might think that Facebook could give them a run for their money, but it comes down to the self-reporting bias once again.

It’s not what you say you do, it’s what you actually do that matters. Facebook data is interesting but it’s not a hotel on Park Place. It’s more likely a house on Baltic Avenue.

I am subscribed to a lot of email newsletters. It’s one of the better ways to keep current with email marketing, allowing me to track send frequency, timing and other trends.

The other day I received an email from Smith & Hawken advertising their Memorial Day Deals. Four hours later I got another Smith & Hawken email with a subject line that read ‘Oops, we goofed: Memorial Day Deals for Reals’

Deals for Reals?

The phrase didn’t match my image of Smith & Hawken. Sure, reals wasn’t spelled with a ‘z’ but it still seemed off-brand. A quick peek at Quantcast confirmed my suspicion – Smith & Hawken customers are older, affluent, highly educated women.

I’m guessing most recipients thought it was a typo. To make matters worse, Smith & Hawken figured out (too late I suppose) that they could have changed the image served in the email to reflect the correct price. In fact, the once erroneous price is now displayed correctly in both email versions.

Smith & Hawken goofed three times. Once with an incorrect price in the email, again with sending an off-brand message and lastly for doing so hastily, before implementing a better solution.

Email Mistakes Happen

Run an email marketing program for any amount of time and you’re bound to make a mistake at some point. You’ll get that frantic call coupled with an avalanche of forwarded emails from colleagues. The price is wrong! The product is out of stock! There’s a typo! It doesn’t work in IE6! Trust me, I’ve been there.

Don’t Panic

Your first reaction might be to immediately fix the error and resend the email as quickly as possible. Once that train leaves the station it can be hard to stop. Unfortunately, the focus on speed often results in further errors and limits your ability to think more broadly.

Instead, come to terms with the mistake. Own up to it and move on. Don’t carry the burden of the mistake around like a scarlet letter. It taints your judgment.

How many?

How many people are really going to see this mistake? How big is your list? What’s the average open rate? Is the error on only one item out of many? Do the math and you might find out that it’s not as big a deal as you first thought.

However, if the mistake is egregious enough (major pricing error or humorous typo) you may have to account for additional views through viral and social mediums.

How big?

Will the mistake result in a loss? How big was the pricing error? Are you bound to honor that price? Is the typo going to damage your brand? In all cases the answer is usually no.

You could choose to honor a pricing error and reduce your margin, or simply build in some extra customer service cost in dealing with pricing complaints. Throw in a retention coupon for good measure and you might actually build brand equity instead of fritter it away.

Typos are annoying but probably aren’t going to damage your brand in the long run unless they become routine. I’ve been critical of typos from Abebooks because I saw a pattern of errors. That, and subject line errors are the easiest ones to catch. Yet, in retrospect, the typos probably don’t amount to much.

How to respond

In this case, I’d opt to do an image replacement and not resend the entire email. Odds are that customers aren’t going to zero in on the one mispriced item.

Those that click through before the image replacement is complete will see the pricing discrepancy but only a few are likely to contact customer service or make it a federal case. Others may mutter under their breath and grumble about the discrepancy but it probably won’t change their behavior.

To safeguard against the latter I’d create a list of those who clicked through on the mispriced item and send a mea culpa email with a coupon for their trouble. (If you don’t have this type of email template ready to go – you should.)

By doing so, I’m only speaking to those who saw the email, reducing my cost and not broadcasting an error to those who weren’t even aware of it in the first place.

Stop Email Mistakes

Don’t let my attitude make you think I’m okay with email errors. I’m not! You should do everything you can to ensure they don’t happen. Have a good process in place. Follow proper QA guidelines. Ensure others are looking at the email before it goes live. Proofread text by reading it backwards. If it is very important and very long, make use of Espresso Translations services agency. Be paranoid!

When mistakes do happen, take a deep breath, resolve the problem and learn from the experience.

For reals!

RSS is Dead

That’s the recent proclamation from Steve Gillmor.

It’s time to get completely off RSS and switch to Twitter. RSS just doesn’t cut it anymore.

Twitter? You mean the platform that has no real grouping function, no trust algorithm, limited information storage and a massive repetition problem? Good luck with that.

RSS is Fuel

If you view the real time web as the ‘river’ of news, then RSS is the snow pack at the top of the mountain. A poor snow pack results in a drought. Without RSS the real time web would be a very different place.

RSS is the foundation of the real time web. RSS allows us to track, consume and share our passions. This is what makes the real time web work. Each person contributes a little bit of their universe to the whole. Give a little, take a little.

If the rate of how much people ‘gave’ declined you’d have less and less to take. Those not ‘giving’ at all are the parasites of the real time web.

RSS is Plumbing

The RSS debate is filled with many who claim RSS is nothing but plumbing. That it doesn’t matter if you think it’s dead or not because it’s built into so many features and products.

It’s this type of talk that has retarded the growth and adoption of RSS.

Of course RSS is plumbing but it is not just plumbing. You get to lay a lot more pipe if you can communicate how great the houses are going to look. It’s time to stop this counterproductive infighting. You can view more plumbing and drainage services here.

RSS is Alive (but not kicking)

The drumbeat of surveys and metrics around RSS adoption are all negative. Forrester reported consumer adoption of RSS was a low 11%. A December 2007 survey for the Canadian government also showed RSS as the least recognized Web 2.0 application.

I’m not the biggest Forrester fan, but they did show some insight in their executive summary.

If marketers expect to reach a critical mass of consumers by using content syndication, then they must take on the burden of education.

I’m not sure I’d call it education exactly. I think of it as translation marketing.

Nothing needs to be complicated. People by nature are simple. We like simple things. Confusion might be fun in a mystery movie or a game of Cluedo. But when it comes to businesses marketing to us, confusion just turns us off you and onto your competitors.

My reference to translation marketing is made possible by RSS. There’s no way I’d have this information available to me – right now – if I’d relied on other methods of information consumption.

RSS is TiVo

Yeah, I said it. RSS readers are like TiVo. I get the content I want and get to consume it on my own schedule. RSS subscriptions are simply TiVo Season Passes. As such, the content can be grouped by genre and date. Recommendations are based on my subscriptions and behavior.

Nearly every person I introduce to RSS falls in love with it after they use it and understand how much time it saves them. I admit, I was a late RSS adopter in the scheme of things. I didn’t fully grok RSS for a while and then … it clicked. It’s a familiar refrain for RSS users … and TiVo subscribers.

TiVo has done the hard work of training people on a new method of media consumption. RSS simply needs to piggy back on this effort.

RSS is Netflix

Another media consumption disruptor is Netflix. They too have done some of the heavy lifting in training consumers on this new paradigm.

You don’t need to go somewhere to obtain your movies. The movies come to you.

You don’t have to watch them in a specified time frame, you can keep them for as long as you like.

RSS Usability

A number of smart people have pointed to the fact that RSS still has usability issues. Current RSS readers aren’t the most intuitive products on the block. I won’t argue that point. Readers could be a lot better.

I support advances in RSS usability since it would make marketing RSS easier. Yet, even without usability improvements, marketing could turn the tide.

Better RSS marketing would mean more users which would lead to renewed interest in RSS usability advances. It’s a bit like the chicken and the egg debate.

RSS Expectations

Brand promise. Part of marketing is building the expectations for the product. A number of people feel guilt about unread RSS items.

RSS readers encourage you to oversubscribe to news. Every time you encounter an interesting new blog post, you’ve got an incentive to sign up to all the posts from that blog—after all, you don’t want to miss anything.

RSS is not about real time. It is the fuel for real time. RSS is about time shifting your content consumption.

Do you stress about having 5 episodes of 24 queued up ready to watch? I sure hope not.

And 20 unwatched episodes of a show may tell you you’re just not interested in that show. Use your unread counts as a way to prune your subscriptions. It’s a signal!

Usability may help some of these people but abuse of any product is going to lead to substandard results.

RSS Enemies

The definition of old media is going to change rapidly. Email, ad networks and – potentially – content publishers may seek to undermine RSS adoption. Some sites may rebel by not offering an RSS option should RSS really take off and visits and page views decline. The chance of this happening has been reduced with the advent of FeedSense – advertising units within feeds.

RSS marketing will encounter these enemies. They will not go quietly into that good night.

RSS Marketing

RSS needs proper marketing. All the technical babble needs to be translated into something consumers can relate to and recognize. Use ‘On Demand’ or ‘Season Pass’ or any other verbiage that better connects the dots for consumers.

Why doesn’t Google white label Google Reader? Wouldn’t that create an incentive for sites to convert them to a branded reader? So, no matter what feeds you were reading you had the brand in front of you at all times?

At the cross section of usability and marketing, why can’t I be prompted to subscribe to a blog when I’m bookmarking it to Delicious or giving it a Thumbs Up via StumbleUpon?

RSS is Dead

RSS is dead. Not the product but the brand. It’s time to let go of the acronym, stop squabbling and figure out how to translate and market this great functionality.

Last week Twitter began to display ads for March Tweetness and ExecTweets.

When this unit showed up under the follower statistics about a month ago it was a clear prelude to a true advertising unit.

I was expecting a more straightforward advertising pitch, something along the lines of contextually relevant ads based on an analysis of your tweet stream. Instead, the ads above point to sponsored microsites leveraging specific Tweet streams.

I’ve been hard on Twitter before, but in this instance I’m impressed.

Sponsored Microsites is the Twitter Revenue Model

Clicking on these ads bring you to sites that are powered by Twitter and Federated Media and sponsored by Fortune 50 companies – Microsoft and AT&T.

Twitter provides the tweet stream and eyeballs, Federated Media builds the site and lands the sponsors. Twitter and Federated split the advertising revenue.

Scalable and Self-Reinforcing Business Model

Microsites are scalable and the participation on these sites is self-reinforcing for both the microsite and for Twitter as a whole. So, not only can Twitter and Federated Media use these microsites to drive revenue, they also help to create higher engagement that make future microsites viable.

Sidestepping the CTR Debate

The sponsors Federated Media are bringing to the microsites are big. They’re interested in reach and branding not the CTR and ROI on the specific campaign. Twitter and Federated would be wise to do a brand lift study on these microsites to prove their worth from a brand equity perspective.

Privacy and User Issues

While Twitter is public, this is a whole new level of distribution. Could it generate more caution regarding tweets? Will some feel like Twitter is ‘using’ them to make money?

Twitter and Federated Media have already addressed this in some ways by letting people opt-out of ExecTweets. I wonder though, if that’s a slippery slope. Will we all wake up one day and have to check a box to agree to have our tweets used on ‘third party’ sites?

Or maybe that’s the plan.

Syndication or Subscription

If the microsite business model works, perhaps the future is a choice between having your tweet stream syndicated to microsites or subscribing on a monthly basis.

Whatever the future holds I’ll eat some crow and give credit to Twitter for finding a creative way to monetize their product. (Mind you I still think FriendFeed blows Twitter away.)

Are sponsored microsites enough to be a sustainable business model? I don’t know. But I’m more confident that Twitter will figure it out based on this implementation.

Social media sites like Digg, MySpace, Facebook and others are finding it difficult (to say the least) to get by using an advertising based revenue model. A drum beat of research shows that users don’t like the ads on these venues or simply don’t see them. The poor performance of these social ads translates into dreary CPM ad rates.

Social Advertising

The Q4 2008 Pubmatic AdPrice Index (pdf) puts Social Networking sites at the bottom of all other verticals and the trend for Social Networking sites continues to slide.

Many of these social sites have incredible engagement metrics. Users are there every day, multiple times a day and stay there for – sometimes – hours on end. You might think this would be a huge boon for potential advertisers. Yet, the exact opposite seems to be the case.

The Participatory Marketing Network (PMN) conducted a Generation Y study that detailed why “advertising remains a tough sell in these environments.”

84 percent noticed ads on social networks, 74 percent say they click infrequently/never (36 percent saying they don’t click on ads at all).

Then there’s a recent Nielsen study (pdf) of social networking users which showed that ‘false’ was the term most closely associated with ‘advertising’. Yeah … that’s not a good sign.

The high engagement on these sites means users become intimately aware of the structure of the site. They understand exactly where to look, how to navigate and what links to click.

The impetus for their visit compounds the problem. It is usually, and not surprisingly, social. Firing back responses to comments on your high school yearbook photo just isn’t the best advertising opportunity.

So while users may ‘notice’ ads I’m not sure they’re really ‘seeing’ them. They know where they are but they’re avoiding the advertising and they’re getting better and better at doing it.

Rearrange The Furniture

What if you made the navigation or design different. Not a major redesign but an ongoing number of smaller, incremental changes that break a user’s rote click pattern. Keep them on their toes!

Think of it as rearranging the furniture in a room. You’d still be able to find the couch, the coffee table, the chair and the TV, but it would all be just a little different. They’re in slightly different places or they’ve been reupholstered.

Wouldn’t that make you take stock of the entire room again? To get your bearings you’d see things you might have missed before. That picture on the wall that you hadn’t really looked at in ages?

Inconsistent Design

I’m not recommending something like this for just any site, but it makes sense for social sites where users become habituated to the design through repeated use. In these instances rearranging the furniture every month might help them see the paintings (aka banners) on the wall.

Is Facebook is seeing an increase in CTR since their much maligned redesign? Sure, 94% of users might be giving it a thumbs down but they’re looking at it with ‘new’ eyes. (Contact me if you had a campaign running during the redesign.)

A substantial redesign, nevermind the ruckus, wouldn’t scale well. Instead I’m thinking of smaller changes. It could be as big as moving columns or the order of top navigation or as small as a color change or resizing the logo.

The idea sounds radical even as I suggest it, but traditional techniques are not working. We take regular navigation off of lead generation and cart pages. Sure, that has more to do with keeping the user focused on a task, but it’s still a break in the natural design of the site.

Advertisers, by in large, still don’t understand how to market on social sites. I’m not sure any of us really know what’s going to work or not. So why not test inconsistent design, even if it’s a transitional measure?