It's All About Beers! - Digital Campaign Case Studies

Today, many beer brands are very active online and take a serious focus on digital marketing. They try to use different tactics and tap on various touch-points to capture wider attention and brand new experiment from the target audience. It could be vary from impressive 3D projection mapping, highly interactive YouTube takeover, socially driven campaign with gamification or purely social promotion for both online and offline activities. Here are some recent highlighted campaigns from Carslberg, Desperados, Polar Beer and Guiness.

1. Carlsberg global digital campaign 

• Agency: Skive
• Big Idea: All echoing the new tagline, ‘That Calls for a Carlsberg’, its new brand positioning.
• How it works: It’s Carlsberg’s first global digital initiative and features content for YouTube and Facebook.Carlsberg has kicked off their new campaign in UK with a couple of pretty big 3D projection mappings on the iconic White Cliffs of Dover and the famous Liverpool Street Station. On their YouTube channel the TV ads and other video clips produced for the launch are available, along with the YouTube Takeover experience. On Facebook Carslberg have gone for something different with an app that invites users to type in a transmission, upload a photo – and send a message to your mates from the moon using text-to-voice and face mapping. 
• Take-aways: The digital campaign will support the new television advertising, ensuring that it reaches audiences who spend their time online.

2. Desperados Beer YouTube Takeover 

• Agency: Dufresne Corrigan Scarlett and MediaMonks 
• Big Idea: Create a pretty cool and ambitious YouTube takeover by integrating the Facebook Connect functionality as part of the experience. 
• How it works: The YouTube campaign for beer brand Desperados is different to most by letting you interact with the story as it unfolds instead of the 99% that just break up the YouTube interface in various ways. Additionally, the Facebook Connect functionality is a neat way of socalising the whole experience, with the takeover bringing your FB friends into the party by pulling in photos on the fly.

3. Polar Beer scores a socially driven campaign 

• Agency: Almap BBDO 
• Big Idea: Tapping into peoples unyielding fanatacism to their favourite football team and the general win-at-all costs attitude of sports fans
• How it works: They created a groundswell of engagement, facilitated by Polar Beer, that engaged tens of thousands of passionate fans from two opposing football team fan bases and endeared them BOTH to the brand for significant periods time (avg ion site was 11mins plus). A true WIN-WIN that managed to align the brand to two opposing audiences and deliver a positive branded experience to both.
• Take-aways: The campaign shows how a powerful call to action based on a real passion point (in this case Football – a religion in Brazil) can motivate online action, participation and engagement.

4. Guiness rises to the top in Singapore

• Agency: BBDO Proximity Singapore 
• Objective: The campaign was developed for the Singapore market where engaging and attracting young consumers to Guinness is a major focus in order to drive a groundswell of engagement on Facebook within 8 weeks.
• How it works: Using a simple but compelling promotional idea to give Guinness’ Facebook fanbase a major boost with its Rise to the Top Social media campaign. The highly partcipatory campaign had a strong viral element and was activated online, and offline. Offline activation was enabled via an innovative iPad app that the agency created allowing brand ambassadors to engage and enrol consumers in bars and in trade outlets.
• Result:The campaign caused explosive growth in fans on Facebook page, achieving 21,000 in only a few weeks, making it the #1 beer and spirits brand fanpage in Singapore. This socially activated short term campaign is the first step of Guinness’ social media engagement strategy in Singapore with even more innovative and engaging content and promotions in 2011 and beyond.

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"Yellow Tree House" & "Mini Gateway" - Digital Campaign Case Studies

How can your digital campaign stand out of the crowd? Thanks to the Internet and its growing role in our lives, agencies have come a long way in the past decade, and they’ve begun to hone in on and innovate in the realm of digital marketing. There are more evidences of the growing appetite of  brands to really get behind innovative digital ideas to get more interaction with the target audience. Therefore, from now on, I would like to share about the case studies of innovative digital campaigns around the world that I've known recently for an overview of the scene.

1. Award-winning “Yellow Treehouse” Campaign 

• Brand: Yellow Pages Group (New Zealand)
• Agency: AIM Proximity and Colenso BBDO (NZ) for true integrated work
• Big idea: Using Yellow Pages book and website can help you achieve any task, no matter how big or small.  
• How it works: The Yellow Treehouse program is all about putting Yellow to the test. Tracey, like everyone, has a mission, hers is to build a restaurant in a tree. The test is that she can only use the Yellow Pages, yellow.co.nz and Yellow Mobile to do it. She’ll need to find architects, builders, restaurant suppliers – everything using just Yellow. Even though it’s a brand campaign you can only take the planning so far – what happens from one day to the next can change very quickly.
• Results: The power of the insight and idea lived well beyond one campaign, and successfully led to the second generation of the campaign – “The Taste of Yellow Chocolate” , which achieved the same heights of success for Yellow in terms of business results, and the chocolate bar created went on to outsell every other chocolate bar in NZ in its first week of launch.
• Takeaways: The campaign leveraged a multitude of touchpoints to deliver spectacular business results for Yellow and it also demonstrated exactly how digital can be seamlessly integrated into a campaign, rather than being an afterthought (as we still see so often today).

2. Mini Gateway Stockholm Campaign 

• Brand: MINI Countryman (Sweden)
• Agency: Jung von Matt Stockholm
• Big idea: From the “Gateway” global concept and the specific challenge in Sweden was to create MINI evangelists, the idea behind is to create the world’s biggest reality game on iPhone – transforming Stockholm city into a living game board.




• How it works: You used an app where you could see the location of the virtual MINI within the Stockholm city border. All locations were updated in real time so you could easily follow how everyone moved.
If you got closer than 50 metres of the virtual MINI you could take the virtual MINI with your iPhone.
Then you had to get away, because anyone within 50 metres could take the MINI from you. The person in possession of the virtual MINI at the end of the 7-day campaign gets the car.  
• Results: The buzz started spreading within minutes after the app was put up on Appstore. Hundreds of thousands discussed it in social media. People from everywhere followed the game on the website.
The campaign created astonishing interaction with the MINI brand. During  the game week  11413 people participated and transported the virtual MINI nearly 1 500 physical kilometers. Average gaming time was 5 hours and 6 minutes per person. 
• Takeaways: Mini has successfully ultilize digital and technology platforms to create a fun, relevant and engaging experience, rather than just being there for some buzz.

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Mobile Marketing: Facts & Figures

From mobile commerce and text messaging campaigns to location-based services and augmented reality, mobile marketing is, without a doubt, essential to an integrated communications campaign. Tech-savvy consumers have adopted mobile communication and use it as a preferred method of communicating. As more and more people use mobiles on a daily basis, businesses have to adapt to mobile commerce with various platforms, strategies and marketing ideas. The insightful infographic below by Microsoft Tag displays the breadth of the mobile market today.

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Facebook 2011: Facts & Figures

The World is Obsessed with Facebook by Alex Trimpe, a student at Columbus College of Art & Design, shows some interesting stats about Facebook use in 2011 and goes great with the insightful infographic wrapped up by Online Schools.

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Social Media Trends 2011

Social media changes from month to month. Trends come and go quicker than the seasons change. Having said that there are some trends that I think will continue over the coming year and with that in mind I wanted to share them here. All in all it should be an exiting year in social media with these expected trends escalating and expanding in 2011.

1. Social Commerce: 

Group buying + Facebook Commerce + Mobile Commerce

It’s all the same thing: new ways to leverage your social circle to help you shop or share your haul. Social commerce with the end goal of increasing conversions, leads, and sales started to gain attention years ago with consumer reviews and began to escalate in different methods. The connection of social media to sales, sales indicators, promotions, and other measurable or valued marketing and sales conversions, including couponing, is fueling the investment in social media as companies begin to prove the capability to drive commerce.

• Group buying: You should have heard of sites, such as Groupon, that sell for discounts if you get your friends to “group” together to buy a product or service? Like all kick ass ideas this one is incredibly simple and instantly understandable and there is something in it for everybody. Groupon and like-minded sites are expected to continue to grow, offering a new way to reach different audiences.
• Facebook commerce: 
Facebook has joined the social shopping market by launching its functionality called Facebook Connect. In short, you can now sell on Facebook by letting your customers buy, but also letting them tell their friends. And letting their friends tell their friends. Even if you don’t offer ecommerce on your website, it’s now possible to provide that service through the social network. And it’s overly simple to set up. YouTube has been recently extracted this concept with what was described as the first "YouTique" launched last September, by French Connection.
• Mobile Commerce: Mobile payments enable eCommerce merchants to expand their offerings and create new experiences on the phone, a trend we expect to see continue as mobile blurs the line between offline and online. Shopping will become even more social. Your mobile phone will soon become your identity.

2. Content Curation: Branded Content

Brands are starting to realize that one of the main ways of engaging their customers and offering value is to create content that enriches the user’s social media experience rather than just blasting messages out at them. All companies should become media companies, in that the content they provide is valuable, consistent, and non-salesy. With users starting to get more and more aware of ads and adding their own filters the smart brands will create bespoke content that engages users in a meaningful way and offers value. Building that content in to Facebook and other social sites while all hooking back to their own website will be crucial with video playing a more and more important role in the branded content play.

3. Crowdsourced Innovation

Crowdsourcing as a term and idea is nothing new, but 2011 will likely be the year where it becomes a core part of many organization’s social and customer engagement strategies. Additionally, there is an increased understanding from customers about the concept of Croudsourcing, which means it will no longer just a way of engaing the social media savvy, but rather a much broader audience who will share their ideas and thoughts with brand simply for the reward of recognition and being heard by the brands they purchase form everyday.

4. Niche Location / Location Casting

The ability to drive commerce and hence expand the potential advertising and marketing opportunities is fueling the growth of location-based social networking. Location is a key factor in the future of search, social, commerce, and media, among a lot of other things. It is the most important signal to emerge in the database of intentions since the link. If 2010 belonged to Foursquare and its playful, competitive and sometimes addicting ecosystem of badges, mayorships and specials, it's likely that Facebook will rain on Foursquare's parade in 2011 with its completed Facebook Place.

5. Social Gaming

New media models are being built based on virtual goods and currency, currently connected directly to the increasingly popularity of social games. As a category, social gaming has grown incredibly quickly, becoming one of the dominant drivers of usage on Facebook. The current leader moving this trend is Zynga, which is building a new media model from micro-transactions. From this trend, viable marketing opportunities are emerging, so-called "engagement ads." These are basically an exchange between a player and an advertiser, where players earn points or currency to raise or extend their game play in exchange for some brand-related activity like taking a quiz or sharing an ad on Facebook. The power of gaming to drive revenue and marketing benefit for advertisers, as well as its increasing capacity to catch mass engagement, is driving not only new offerings but also new partnerships, startups, and other innovations.

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Vietnam's Social Media Landscape

“A lot of brands jumped in and said, ‘I need a Facebook, I need a MySpace, I need to do SEO, I need to share all of my content everywhere.” But often it’s lacked of a brand tone of voice. And it’s just created some form of presence that’s not based on strategy at all”, said Daniel King, director of digital, JWT Melbourne. In the emerging markets, which are quite young in onine marketing, the moves might be even slower and lots more problems exist. Vietnam is one of thess cases.

Vietnam has a large population (13th in the world) and half of the country is under 30. The young active Vietnamese are all over the Internet. They’re watching videos, listening to music and reading random news. They’re spending and they’re talking. But there’s little connection that companies here want to cement between those two actions. You could say Vietnamese Internet usage is almost caught up with the world. If the US and Europe are in 2011, then they are in 2008 or 2009. Yet Vietnamese online advertising is still 2002. 

1. Deny acknowledging the trend and taking the lead.

The biggest problem in Vietnam is not that brands or companies are incapable of understanding the fact of the increasing online media power. It’s just that they don’t need to. Understanding online and social media is acknowledging that online could propel an existing brand to greater heights, or it could take a nothing product to become the new star. And though there’s incredible opportunity online because no one is really strong here, no one really wants to consider what that means. 

2. Lack of knowledge 

The second problem is the proper understanding of online media landscape with its current trends and insights in order to furnish the brand strategy and motivate the business to find a real effective communication channel with the target audience with less competition and more cost-effectiveness. Many businesses in Vietnam do not fully understand how social media works and how they could use these channels effectively to benefit their brands and companies. Many marketers or managers in Vietnam may ask you what Twitter is.

3. Lack of attention to detail

Another problem is the lack of attention to detail indicate attitude of most of Vietnamese businesses when go online, especially in customer service. If social media is anything, its core is at customer service. If customer service is not important, then social media cannot be important either.

4. Lack of strategy

Although the rising power of social media, SEM and mobile services, is obvious in all over the world and rising strongly in Vietnam, most of Vietnamese businesses still got very simple reactions when going online, just like the age before social media:

“Let’s put up banners and count the impressions”

“Let’s make a microsite, spend a ton of money to fuel registrations and gather personal data, and then what we’ll do is never use that data and never follow-up. And we can do this all over again next year too.”

Traditional media channels, such as TV, print, radio, outdoor, have been here for ages and intensively competed. But online is completely open, waiting for someone to think and innovate. If you can dominate in this, you could just completely take over – no one else is here or cares. Or they just not care enough to take the lead.

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Facebook Social Inbox - The Email Killer?

Everyday I have to write tons of emails in a similar boring pattern with “Hi Mary”, “Dear Lily”, “Best Regards”, “Cheers”, whatsoever. Is there anyway to make our conversation more simple, connected, time-saving and just “to-the-point”? Suddenly, the Social Inbox idea raised by Facebook few months ago came back my mind. With all the myths, debates and its recent activation. I am so much looking to find out how it could change the ways of communications we have currently by bringing a social world to your inbox. Will it be a revolution or just another Google’s ill-fated Wave? I'm longing to find out...

For those who have no idea about this social inbox, here is a quick wrap-up. Pls be noted that it is just available recently by invitation for limited users.

• A combination of the most popular forms of communications (e-mail, text messaging, Facebook's own private messaging and instant messaging) into one convenient and flexible feed.
• This Social Inbox has convenient features such as storing coversation history by contact, dividing inbox into two parts to filter emails from whom you don’t really know.
• The benefit for Facebook is that it already has 500 million users who are addicted (on some level at least) to the social network’s messaging system, and many of them are probably like the high-school students, and don’t use email. 

A few things for discussion:

• Email-killer? - On the face of it, having just one place to communicate with everyone from coworkers to family members seems like a good idea. But is Social Inbox considered the future of email or online communications? 
• Individual identifier? - Now everything we have on Twitter, Linkedin, Youtube, blogs, discussion forums, etc. are linked via email, by default. That is, it comes back to that unique identifier that marks me out as an individual. But will this social inbox really work when it comes to the integration with other channels?
• Privacy? - Even Mark Zuckerberg told people that Facebook will protect users’ information in this social inbox and not use it for any advertising purposes, people are still always skeptical about the privacy issue on the social environment. Will this be another challenge for Mark on the ongoing privacy debates?

Your opinions?

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The Top 10 Creative Viral Campaigns by The DigiWave

There are a lot of factors to measure the effectiveness of an viral ads or campaign. Personally, I have an appreciation for those that inspiring, creative and entertaining, obviously the one can touch the audience's senses, without showing too much the commercial side. Although most of the campaigns in my fav list are successful in terms of increasing brand awareness and driving sales, it doesn't mean that a creative viral campaign will guarantee commercial success. In most of the cases, it's more about hitting the right target to link the online message into real-life buying action. And that's another story. Digest the list first. It's delicious!

1. Carlton Draught - Big Ad




2. Trojan Condom - Trojan Games




3. Way back home – Red Bull




4. Transport in London – The Awareness Test




5. Berlits – What are you sinking about?





6. Axe – Clean Your Ball




7. Eepybird.com – Diet Coke & Mentos




8. Honda – The Cog




9. Volkswagen - The Fun Theory




10. Nike – Cross Bar

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The Top Ten Successful Viral Ads of All Time by AdAge

Today, viral campaigns become more popular and part of many marketing campaigns. You should have watched a video with over 1 million views in YouTube and thought to yourself: “How the hell this video get so many views?”. In the past, at the beginning of YouTube era, this could happen naturally but nowadays, most of these hits are touched by companies and advertising agencies. It’s the time of viral era. Let’s have a review of top 10 viral ads of all time announced recently by AdAge and Visible Measures and discover the stories behind.

Here comes the A-list launched this year:

1. Blendtec – Will it blend

What was the best way for Blendtec to demonstrate the might of their blenders? Gun for product placement in films? Leverage food channels? No, all they needed to do was blend an iPod, a broom, golf balls and a multitude of other things. This one is a bit surprising. What this really speaks to is the mad scientist in everyone! People love to see things like crazy experiments, and this is just fun to watch for that reason. What's amazing is that a lot of the people who commented on the video online didn't even realize it's an ad for a blender -- they thought this is just some crazy man who put his iPhone in a blender for fun! These videos are effective because they do something that very few viral videos do – they drive sales. Blendtec has created a video series that is not only entertaining but also demonstrates the power and utility of their product. Sales of Blendtec blenders increased by 800% because of this cheap yet moreish campaign. Pure genius.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg1ckCkm8Y

2. Evian - Live Young

It's well known that people love babies in ads. Babies, animals, and humor are three major appealing factors in ads, and this ad combines babies and humor. Whoever planned this out knew it would be a home run because of the babies, the fun music, and the great product placement. This ad was actually great for the brand in terms of getting the message out about the product. However, what makes this campaign stand out from the others is Evian’s use of social networking sites, most notably Facebook. They created Facebook profiles for the video babies, allowing fans to befriend these beloved rollerblading munchkins while inadvertently befriending the brand. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQcVllWpwGs

3. Old Spice - Responses

There is no denying that the campaign was a huge success for the brand, catapulting them into the number 1 spot for men’s body wash and making Old Spice a legend in the world of online marketing. Old Spice’s ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’ began with a single video, which started out online and then went to television. It was an instant success, with Old Spice accounting for 75 percent of all conversations in their category for the first quarter of the year. But the real success of the campaign came later on when Old Spice launched their response campaign, a more personalized digital campaign, in which ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’ interacted with fans via an onslaught of YouTube videos. Simply send Mr. Old Spice a message - through Facebook, Twitter or YouTube - and wait for his visual retort. The campaign goes hand-in-hand with the Old Spice worldwide promoted Twitter trending topic. This was one of the biggest winners in the Cannes Ad Festival, and got many accolades. It really appeals to young men and, while it seems a bit ridiculous and over the top, it works.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFDqvKtPgZo 

4. Pepsi - Gladiator

Soft drinks brand Pepsi recruited a teamsheet of international A-listers to appear in two big-budget TV ads, using the themes of pop music and football as part of its global promotional push for 2004. 'Pepsi Gladiators' starred Beyonce, Britney Spears and Pink singing We Will Rock You in a Roman amphitheatre, while 'Pepsi Foot Battle' featured Real Madrid stars David Beckham, Raul and Roberto Carlos slugging it out in costume. These ads went viral and hit the public as there is a truth that people love entertainment, they love to see faces they know and, at the end of the day, it's an ad with good music, pretty girls and handsome guys.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86Hp1l5s7hM

5. Microsoft - Xbox Project Natal

This one is purely functional. However, the video is visually attracted and entertaining. With something like that, it's interesting that people would watch it the whole way through, but if you think about it, for families to invest that much money, it's important that they know what the product does.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2qlHoxPioM

6.Dove – Evolution

Ogilvy & Mather, Toronto, used time-lapse photography to show the transformation of an normal woman into a glamorous billboard model using beauty stylists and Photoshop enhancements. The clip was released under the slogan “No wonder our perception of real beauty is distorted”. Dove Evolution then took top honours in both the Cyber and Film categories pointing to the colliding worlds of consumer-powered digital distribution and brand building. It is fast becoming one of the most watched videos on the internet. In the two years since Dove decided to brand itself as the beauty company that celebrates real beauty that strategy has rewarded the company with double digit sales increases.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U

7. T-mobile – T-mobile Dance

Saatchi & Saatchi created this fantastic viral ad for T-Mobile in Liverpool Street Station with hidden cameras. Why it’s effective. Sure T-mobile weren’t the first to film a flash mob, but they still hit this one out of the park. This video is clever, energetic, human, beautiful, entertaining and just plain fun to watch. It has huge numbers at over 17 million views and it does a great job of supporting T-Mobiles ‘Life’s for Sharing’ marketing campaign. T-mobile has smartly followed up with a sing-along video in Trafalguar Square and will undoubtedly continue the ‘Life’s for Sharing’ viral video series – a wise decision, but it will be tough to beat the magic of this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQ3d3KigPQM

8. Doritos – Crash the Super Bowl

Crash the Super Bowl is one of many ways the Doritos brand continues to turn control over to consumers. The brand’s commitment to fan-empowerment began with the Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” program, which started in 2007 and has turned the brand’s Super Bowl advertising over to its fans every year. The campaign allowed thousands of normal people, along with ad creatives and film makers create and submit their funniest Doritos ads in an online competition in the lead up the to Superbowl, with the winner, to be played at the main event and the finalists sharing in over $5million in prizes. In addition, Doritos has put consumers in control through a variety of other exciting opportunities, including its “Unlock Xbox” challenge where fans compete to have their Xbox LIVE® Arcade game concept developed and made available for download worldwide; and “Doritos Late Night,” which provided Doritos fans ground-breaking virtual musical performances by blink-182 and Big Boi through the power of augmented reality technology where fans could enjoy and control the performances in the palm of their hand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0EVSP_6XZA

9. Old Spice - Odor Blocker

After the Responses, the hits just keep going with a more insane and awesome Odor Blocker series. This time, we get a bodybuilder who punches, kicks, blocks and generally destroys odor—and everything else in his path—in the service of Odor Blocker Body Wash. This guy's on something, and it's not a horse. Plus, he has these crazy talking abdominals.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tI4CbCniBI

10. DC Shoes - Gymkhana Two

Ken Block is a person with two passions. His shoe label (DC Shoes) from which he is the co-founder and his professional racing career as a rally driver. In order to promote his favorite racing sport to the world, the unknown rally sport called Gymkhana, he created a highly viral video to show cast his own brand, his favorite sport and his sponsor: Subaru. By being honest to your viewers – “We’ll give you great entertainment, but mind that it is an advertisement asset” – the video took away the inner conflict among viewers to not spread commercial videos. Next to the honesty mentioned , the video is simply highly entertaining. A beautiful car, slow motion shots, explosives and speed are elements that catch the attention of the viewer. Everyone loves to watch eyecandy. Which makes it a strong branded entertainment video, which people love to watch. Even if it lasts for over seven minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ7R_buZPSo

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SEO Don'ts - The 15 Mistakes You Should Avoid

You do SEO for the future. If you market your site with press releases but don’t optimize it for search engines, then you’ll have to keep writing press releases indefinitely. When the press releases stop, your website traffic is likely to stop as well. Another common mistake is that many organizations think the process completed once a site is launched. They don't realize that the web site needs to be promoted much like any other product or service. That’s why SEO should be continuously kept in mind to enhance your web performance. Last article, we mentioned some good tips in SEO and of course, along with any list of Do’s come the Don’ts. Then here they are…

1. Having no content
Your website needs content. The search engines need something to rank and you need a way to show authority with users and answer their questions. If you want to create a site that is rich in content and a popular resource amongst internet surfers, then adding quality, unique content is a must. Sure, the search engines like it too. It shows them your site is worthy of being ranked because it’s actively growing with information related to the theme of your site.

2. Lack of consistency and maintenance
If you want to be successful, you need to permanently optimize your site, keep an eye on the competition and – changes in the ranking algorithms of search engines. If you optimize your site today, you won’t see the results of your work tomorrow. You might not see the results even after a couple of months. Search engine optimization, like building a business, takes time to pay off. Therefore, try to focus on your long-term goals. Be patient, and keep working away at it. Eventually, your SEO efforts can turn into a steady flow of free qualified traffic to your website — potential customers coming to you. That’s a result worth waiting for.

3. Choosing keywords you can’t win
Even experienced SEO experts can make this mistake. People usually choose keywords in their mind that are descriptive of their website but the average users just may not search them. Or people may focus on very popular keywords which may not be relevant to the site. Even if you are very resourceful, you can't think on your own of all the great keywords. In fact, choosing the right keywords can make or break your SEO campaign. Most of the sites fail to do enough research on keywords. Using good keyword selection tools, such as Google Adwords Keywords and WordTracker, will help you find keywords that are good for your site. Be thorough in your research, don’t just do it once and forget it. Use as many tools as you can get your hands on – look at web stats and look at the logs for the search feature on your site – get a feel for what people are looking for.

4. Keyword Spamming and Stuffing
Many people may already understand is that keyword stuffing is an SEO technique of the past that should be avoided. Piling up the unrelated keywords needs to be reduced because most of the popular search engines including Google go through the content of the whole page. Therefore they index only the relevant keywords. So, just adding unnecessary keywords is useless. Don’t stuff keywords in your meta tags, image alt tags, etc. Don’t stuff keywords in your page footer with lightly-colored or hidden text.

5. Ignoring the Title tag and Meta tags
A common mistake is overlooking the importance of the title tag. More significant than the name of your business is what your business is all about. This is one of the most important places to have a keyword, because not only does it help you in optimization but the text in your title tag shows in the search results as your page title. Therefore tag should contain the most focused keywords.

Similarly, though you may think that meta tags do no good to your page rank but it cannot be a possible reason to leave your meta descriptions. The search engine research pages vary the description of your web page according to the search keywords. So it’s better to define your web page in the best way you think it will drag a reader towards your site. The tags you put in should be suffice and able to correlate to your page. A good optimized meta description can increase your CTR significantly. Also, a lot of search engines other than Google rely heavily on meta description for ranking your site.

6. Ignoring URLs
Many people underestimate how important a good URL is. Dynamic page names are still very frequent and no keyword in the URL is more a rule than an exception. Yes, it is possible to rank high even without keywords in the URL but all being equal, if you have keywords in the URL (the domain itself, or file names, which are part of the URL), this gives you additional advantage over your competitors. Keywords in URLs are more important for MSN and Yahoo! but even with Google their relative weight is high, so there is no excuse for having keywordless URLs.

7. JavaScript Menus
Using JavaScript for navigation is not bad as long as you understand that search engines do not read JavaScript and build your web pages accordingly. So if you have JavaScript menus you can't do without, you should consider build a sitemap so that all your links will be crawlable.

8. Poor internal linking
We talk a lot about the power of links in SEO. You want people to link to you with keyword-rich anchor text as a way of telling the search engines that you are relevant to those terms. Well, then why aren’t you linking to yourself the same way? When you’re linking between pages on your site, make sure you’re using preferred anchor text to give yourself a boost in the search engines and give users a keyword-rich path to follow. You may not be able to control how other people link to you, but you can control how you link within your own site. Make it count.

9. Flash website without an html alternative
Flash might be attractive but not to search engines and users. Great content embedded into a Flash website get invisible by the search engines. If you really insist that your site is Flash-based and you want search engines to love it, provide an html version. Similarly with Splash pages. A good alternative to both issues is to make use of a flash header. There’s no problem to include a flash animation at the top of your main site, or as a feature within the content area, etc. Because this is an addition to your web site, as opposed to a full separate element.

10. Overusing graphics instead of text
Many people think that an image looks better than text for headings and menus. Therefore, if you are too graphics-rich, you. Most search engines are not programmed to read graphics but instead look for text. may be bypassed by the search engines. An image can make your site look more distinctive but in terms of SEO images for headings and menus are a big mistake because heading tags and menu links are important SEO items. Whenever you’re using a photo, make sure there is also relevant text to accompany it.

11. Backlink spamming
It is a common delusion that it more backlinks are always better and because of this web masters resort to link farms, forum/newsgroup spam etc., which ultimately could lead to getting their site banned. In fact, what you need is quality backlinks.

12. Ignoring local.
You’re loco if you don’t do local! Therefore, make sure your site is listed in the relevant local engines or directories. Make sure your site is optimized for mobile! According to a recent survey, 1 out of 3 smartphone users have been led to a local business after finding in through local mobile search. Danielle Nohe, director, technology and entertainment for Compete, is calling on local businesses to optimize their sites for mobile/smartphone users.

13. Ignoring social media/networking
SEO and social media are interconnected in a way that many people don’t want to admit or acknowledge. Social media is not just a passing trend that is a distraction from “real work” – social media does impact SEO and it can increase exposure and traffic for your site. You don’t have to like it, but you do have to do it (if you care about keeping your site on the forefront). If it’s overwhelming, start with getting a killer Facebook Fan Page up and work on building fans, and then introduce Twitter and then move on to YouTube. It’s OK to do it in stages, just make sure you are working towards social media mastery.

14. Ignoring the trends in the industry
Search engines and social media sites make changes often. Staying current is important for many reasons: you want to be sure your site is cutting edge and taking advantage of all strategies and techniques that are proven to work, you also want to make sure you aren’t wasting your time on old school stuff that doesn’t work. SearchEngineJournal is a great place to stay current and hear all the latest and greatest!

15. Over-optimized pages
Sometimes people go off the deep end after learning about SEO. They start creating overly keyword-rich pages in an effort to move their rankings upwards. This can quickly make for a poor user experience, resulting in a decrease in conversion rates and/or the site being less attractive for others to link to.

Even organizations that are aware of SEO's importance have a tendency to start the process too late. The best way to prevent these mistakes from happening is with education. If you need help with putting that together, hire a senior SEO professional to come in and do the job for you. Once they understand the business implications of their decisions, most senior managers will make far better decisions about the website and SEO.

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SEO Dos - The 10 Essential Techniques for Your Website

It can be very difficult for small businesses to compete on a global level for competitive terms with high profile companies, especially on a small business budget. But that doesn’t mean with hard work and determination that you can’t be competitive and build and market your brand and website successfully. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an opportunity for small businesses to enhance their performance within a limited budget. SEO now becomes a hot topic with a lot of debates. How do you get your web site within the first page or two of the search engines? How do you increase your Google page rank? Here are the 10 SEO tips that would be useful for your website.

1. Content
There is no surprise that content formatting and presentation for the content are the main part of SEO process to build up interest and create huge amount of traffic to a website. Quality content should be compelling, informative, relevant and updated. You can put all the keywords you want in the meta tags, titles, image tags, etc., but if the actual readable text on the page is not relevant to the target keywords, it ends up basically being a futile attempt. Quality content will bring people back and create word of mouth to get forward links from other sites. The more the better!

2. Website Design
First of all, spend some money on web design to attract more visitors. In addition, going hand in hand with web design is developing user experience. It is better to spend some time with a professional web developer who has experience with site usability. Placement of elements in a web design really do matter, and the navigation of your site is very important if you want your visitors to effectively find and meet your end goals.

3. Keyword Density
This is very important section of your SEO crusade. Keyword research can guide you about which keywords have high volume or least competition. However, you should be smart in keyword strategy, by not relying on popular keywords but also looking into long-tail keyword options and local search results. In addition, a look out on keyword density, which is the percent that your keyword or keyword phrase area of your web page text, is also important in SEO

4. Incoming Links
Link building is probably one of the most important parts of any SEO campaign. Back links must be collected from different off page SEO activities and only quality back links are considered by Google. The more links you have the more often you are going to be crawled. It is also important to make sure that you have content that is worth linking to on your site. Instead of spending the time, effort and money on artificial links, put that into your own site content or SEO budget and watch others link to you willingly and naturally.

5. Meta Tags
Meta tags are placed in the head section of a web page. Some people may tell that meta tags don’t matter. The biggest thing they matter for is click-through though. There will be a lot of times when Google will use your meta description as the copy that gets pulled with your search listing. This can help to attract the visitor to visit your web site if it is related to their search query. Therefore, meta tag content is actually known as a weapon for top search engine positions; however, this is not as easy as it looks like. For adding content, description and keywords in Meta tag it requires a lot of research. Be sure to include a few relevant keywords in this tag, but don’t stuff it with keywords either. The description tag should read like a sentence — not a keyword list.

6. Heading tags
Including title attributes on links is another important step that any good website will have. When you are laying out your site’s content you have to be sure that you are creating the content flow in such a way that the heading tags are based on prominence. The most prominent of course being the heading tag, which says this is what this block of copy is about. That’s the little “tooltip” that pops up when you place your mouse over a link. These are especially important for image links, but equally useful for text links.

Construction of your title tag is one of the most important things you need to do. Each page should have a different title with 2 or 3 of your keyword phrases at the beginning. When search engine results are displayed the title is the first thing people see.

7. Domain, URL Structure & Website Title
First, it can help to have keywords you are interested in ranking for within your domain, but only as much as the title, heading and content matters. One very important factor that is coming to light is that domain age is important. The older the site or domain, the better it is not spam and can do well in search results. The domain age definitely isn’t a make or break factor but it does help quite a bit.

Second, ensuring that your URL structure compliments the content that is on the corresponding page is pretty important. Complex URLs are often dubbed dirty URLs because they tend to be littered with punctuation and identifiers that are at best irrelevant to the search engines. Having a descriptive URL still assists search engines in determining what is on a page

Last, making sure that you have the right web site titles for your pages is extremely important. The keywords you place in your title are important in order to ensure that your topic is understood by Google. One of the primary factors for ranking is if the title is on-topic with the search results. Not only is it important for robots to index and understand the topic of the page either. Try to put keywords that describe your product / services optimally in title of a page to get good results. It is important for click-through rates in the search results.

8. Internal Linking & Sitemaps
Making sure that your internal linking helps robots and visitors to find the content on your site is huge. Using relevant copy throughout your site will tell the robots and of course, visitors more effectively what to expect on the corresponding page. You do want to make sure that on pages you don’t want to rank in Google that you add a no-follow tag to ensure that the ranking flow of your site corresponds with your site’s topic and interests. No one is going to be searching Google to find out what your terms of service or privacy policy are.

In addition, search engines also use XML Sitemaps in order to index through your site. For a dynamic website, use of xml sitemap is very much essential. Otherwise crawlers will not be able to search all the pages of your website.

9. Image Optimization
Through Image optimization search engines can drive many visitors who search for images. Putting alt attributes on your images actually serves two purposes. In terms of SEO, putting a brief yet descriptive alt attribute along with your image, places additional relevant text to your source code that the search engines can see when indexing your site. The more relevant text on your page the better chance you have of achieving higher search engine rankings. In addition, including image alt attributes help the visually impaired who access web sites using a screen reader. They can’t see the image, but with a descriptive alt attribute, they will be able to know what your image is.

10. Social Media Optimization
SMO is considered as the part of SEO these days. It actually focuses on driving traffic from sources other than search engines. There are many social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Myspace, Digg, Stumbleupon etc. in which we can submit our web pages and gets a lot of unique visitors. This also includes participation in discussion groups, commenting on other websites, blogging and posting status updates on social networking websites etc.

Do you have any tips and tricks that you would like to add? How has traffic from search engines helped the development and growth of your website? Please leave a comment below, we would love to hear from you.

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Google Success Story and Its Brand Performance

If somebody asks you who made a significant change in technology and human knowledge sharing in this decade, the answer should be Google, a big global brand name, both online and offline. Nowadays, people can simply "google" everything, seriously "everything", that they wish to know and take advantage of their different services. However, have you or other Google users ever wondered how Google actually started and what made it become so successful? Are the key factors simply an eco-system for making money, high quality products for free, smart acquisitions and also smart hirings? Anything left?

Last year, I did two presentations about Google within the brand management module in my master's program, discovering Google success story and evaluating the brand in order to explain the success and recommend solutions to boost their brand performance. I want to share them again as they are somehow an interesting way to examine a very popular brand, in the branding perspective, that I think you may want to discover

The first presentation is a brief summary of Google's starting point, their culture and brand identity. The brand success is evaluated and supported by Young & Rubicam model, focusing on its differentiation, relevance, esteem and familiarity.

Google Brand Success

The second  presentation is an analysis and evaluation on Google brand, using Prof. Leslie de Chernatony's brand building model, "From Brand Vision To Brand Evaluation", in order to fully "audit" the brand itself. From that, some ideas for boosting the brand performance are coming after.

Boosting Google Brand Performance

Basically, that's what I learned and discovered one year ago about Google. However, there have been so many changes in the virtual world  recently, therefore, the evaluation should be updated to keep up with the trends. Should any factors be added or  eliminated? Hopefully to receive your updates and opinions about this.

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6 Keys to Success of YouTube Stars

Last May, I surprisingly found that YouTube, a world based on searching, sharing, and a bit of serendipity, has just been turning five years old. Since this online video-sharing site has a significant impact on the social networking and online entertainment, it makes me feel like its existence has been through decades. However, what I want to mention here today is the "people", who definitely contribute a lot to the success of YouTube, not the site itself.

If you keep following my blog, the recent article is right about shining stars on YouTube, who may believe this site is a miracle for them to fame and richness. YouTube did change someone’s lives, from being the online celebrities to landing roles on TV shows as well as becoming “household” names. However, these people weren’t accidentally successful. They do work hard and are passion about what they do. This is the number one secret to their online video success. What else’s?

1. Targeted

As you may realise not many famous YouTubers try to target mass audience. With the demographic of YouTube being predominantly 18-34 years old, most famous Youtube stars are among this age and their video are mostly targeting this group. It seems more difficult to find a favourite channel on YouTube when you are over 40. Then the common pattern easily found here is targetting the right audience with the right content. 

2. Interesting Content

Most of moneymakers on YouTube produce video blogs, comedy skits and parodies, inserting their humour and creativity on daily activities or interesting topics. It seems that the fastest way to impress the audience is making them laugh and feel entertaining.

3. Personality

Most YouTube stars try to embed their personality, character and personal view in their videos. Sometime you cannot bear the fact that how that sucking video got million views. It simply did, as it is simple, even nonsense but might be real and entertaining to the targetted audience, who may find themselves somewhere in there.

4. Edit well

Editting is important to make a video neat and interesting. Most of YouTube stars spend hours for editting. It requires software knowledge, content planning, filming and editting skills, creativity and definitely, hardworking.

5. Promote everywhere

An interesting video will somehow attract the audience attention. But the best way to increase the viewership in a fast pace is to promote your video elsewhere online. Nowadays, thanks to the booming of social media, people can find you not only on YouTube but also Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Digg, blogs, discussion forum, search engines, and so on. All of the YouTube stars now have their “fan” pages and profiles on other networks. It helps to spread their videos to audience in multiple rates.

6. Keep loyal viewers

Hot video-sharers do have their loyal “fans”, who are keep following their channels and spreading their videos to the others. In one or another way, most of YouTube celebs try to engage more audience but at the same time, keep interacting with their current fans. They respond to their loyal viewers, keep them updating with their schedule and sometimes also organise “offline”activities. 

It is undeniable that YouTube stars have developed their online content and impact audience by their very own way but somehow, they are sharing commons on their way to success. Once again, I want to emphasize “passion”, the greatest key, which I believe do exist in all of these online celebs. Let's wish them well and keep the fire burning in their hearts!

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Top 10 YouTube Money-Makers with Their Hit Videos

According to a recent analytic study from TubeMogul based on the viewership data from July 2009 to July 2010, there are 10 independent Youtube stars, who is not part of a media company or brand, make over $100,000 in the past year. The revenue is estimated only from from banner ads served near content, which is splitted 50-50 in revenue for Youtube and its partners. So this is the most basic calculation for income of a YouTube Star, regardless other earnings from brand endorsement or other types of commercial business. Then it would be a much higher number in fact. By the way, here is a review of the top ten listed and their most popular videos in terms of viewership.

1. Shane Dawson ($315,000 – 431 million views)

This 22-year-old Californian comic actor has three YouTube channels. The first one is the most popular, consisting his comedy skits and music video parodies. The second channel is a video blog (vlog) and a separate series called "Ask Shane”. The third one includes only videos taken from his iPhone. Targeting teenagers and young people, Shane provides sketch comedy in a teanage sort of way, acts different roles frequently in his own “highschool drama” and delivers a message or question, which is usually quite meaningful, at the end. By the way, I like watching him in different hair styles.

FRED IS DEAD! - Shane Dawson


2. The Annoying Orange ($288,000 – 349 mil views)

The Annoying Orange, which often publishs short videos under 2 minutes, starring a talking orange, is a comedy web series that takes place in a kitchen and is about talking fruit. It is funny and honest. Dane Boedigheimer is the mastermind behind the series and is also the voice of Orange.

Annoying Orange Wazzup - The Annoying Orange


3. Philip DeFranco ($181,000 – 248 mil views)

Philip Defranco, who began uploading clips while at university, provides parody and satirical content on his show, containing vlogs about various topics

Doda Elektroda has some huge…… - Philip DeFranco


4. Ryan Higa ($151,000 – 206 mil views)

Ryan Higa, the Hawaiian-born Japanese-American, makes comedy skits and is a video blogger. Ryan’s highlights are the “How to be Ganster” and “How to be Ninja” comedy videos. Similar to other YouTube moneymakers in the list, his channel is again another sketch comedy YouTube channel.

How to be Gangster - Ryan Higa


5. Fred ($146,000 – 200 mil views)

Lucas Cruikshank plays a character called "a lonely six year old named Fred" who uses his mom's video camera and posts videos on a YouTube channel. The character is so popular that there will be a Nickelodeon movie based on the Fred character. The channel seems to be targeted as a Children’s online TV channel

Fred Goes Swimming - Fred


6. Shay Carl ($140,000 – 192 mil views)

Shay is a 21 year-old Idaho radio DJ and comic posting his comedies on YouTube channel titled “Kalebnation” 

Fat kid dies skateboarding!…..(almost) - Shay Carl


7. Mediocre Films ($116,000 – 159mil views)

Greg Benson created Mediocre Films initially for a sketchy comedy TV series called "Skip TV." The show lasted for one season, and now Benson makes low budget comedy videos for the web, published once a week 

Retarded Policeman #1: Hi - Mediocre Films


8. Smosh ($113,000 – 154 mil views)

Smosh is the comedy duo of Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla with their first shot to viral fame called "Pokemon Theme Music Video", which became YouTube's most viewed video in Spring 2006 and unfortunately was removed later due to copyright reasons.

Beef 'n Go - Smosh


9. The Young Turks – ($112,000 – 153 mil views)

It is a political talk show founded and hosted by Cenk Uygur that also airs on Sirius Satellite Radio. The show focus on politics with some news, pop culture and entertainment. Their vast viewership has proven that the Internet can be a viable broadcast platform

Woman Shows Face After Chimp Attack - GRAPHIC VIDEO - The Young Turks


10. Natalie Tran– $101,000

Natalie Tran, 24-year-old Vietnamese-Australian hot girl with adorable Australian accent, is the most subscribed to YouTube user in Australia. She uses her YouTube titled “Community Channel”, consisting vlogs and occasional comedy skits, like most others on this list, to discuss some of the day to day issues with Gen Y women but done with a clever dose of subtle humor and satire.

How to fake a six pack (Re: How to Fake Abs). *SARCASM* - Natalie Tran


An article on the reasons behind their success is coming soon. In the mean time, leave your opinion on reasons for success that you think may apply for these viral stars...

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Facebook is empowered by “Places” – "Who. What. When. And now Where."

Few days ago, when manually updating apps on my Iphone, I found Facebook got a new feature called “Places”. So now, after buying FriendFeed, lauching a new real-time search engine, which declared a battle to Google in social search, Facebook has now expanded its power into location-based services (LBS). It is time to welcome a “Where” on Facebook, after the recent “When”. People who know search and LBS believe that there’s gold in real-time and social data, as well as geolocation and behavioral data. Then it seems Facebook is racing in a very fast pace to these latest trends and technologies, in order to consolidate its leading position in the world’s social network and technology map.

From now on, people can easily share their locations, tag friends who are with them at the location through “Places” from their mobile devices. At first, Facebook Places will be integrated with popular LBS poviders such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Booyah and Yelp by pushing the check-ins from these LBS providers’ apps to Facebook Places. Some providers are planning to launch location-based social games, which built on Facebook Places and based on interacting with people and sharing real-time posts at real-world locations; allowing users to socialize, meet new friends and track popularity. 

As Facebook has a large base of members of nearly half a billion, it is definitely a high proportion of their users will, intentionally or not, use the location sharing through “Places”. Although Facebook has just jumped on this location-based market, "Places" is now a threat to other LBS providers as it is taking the advantage thanks to Facebook current user base. It is predicted that “Places” won’t take long to become the mainstream.

In my opinion, the secret super power of "Places" didn’t lie in the concept or technique but in the local business location-based advertising market. Because as well as trying to attract users, Facebook is also trying to attract local businesses to build Facebook Place pages, and associate their Facebook presence with a location. It helps the Facebook advertising engine working more effectively by targeting audience using profile data, searching information and now, users’ geolocation. It opens opportunities on developing Facebook social games and apps using the location-based feature, but it also presents challenges in terms of privacy protection and requires Facebook to be careful in updating more rules to its current privacy setting.

All in all, it is seen that the social media giant has done many things to strengthen its power, expand its reach and certainly, to make more money. While waiting for the “Places” full functioning version coming to other market after testing in the US, this topic on location game is broadly opening for your personal opinion and discussion.

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LinkedIn Aims to Bolster Relevancy and Recommendations for Growth

As the Internet users have seen the exponential growth of the content on the social Web continue for a long period, in order to prevent the uneccessary data overloads, it has become increasingly important to take in place smart tools that help users to filter the things that are most relevant and useful to them. In that spirit, the white-collar social-networking LinkedIn, which has 75 million members and seven-year history, has recently announced its acquisition with mSpoke, a small SAAS (software-as-a-service) start-up that offers recommendation technology.

Who is mSpoke?

If you have no idea about the acquired company, here is a brief introduction. MSpoke is a small online recommendation software start-up, which maintains a cloud-based recommendation engine to make content more relevant through recommendation technology. MSpoke’s machine learning technology is designed to make recommendations based on consumer’s implicit and explicit feedback. From that it builds a so-called adaptive personalization engine with three core products:

• mPower creates widgets and personalised e-mails to let web publishers filter content according to the preferences of users, which is great for direct e-mail marketing. 
• mTrend API allows companies to monitor competitors and emerging trends. 
• mSense tool analyses content and creates and annotates metadata within systems. 

What does LinkedIn get from the acquisition?

LinkedIn will take advantage of mSpoke's recommendation technology to integrate and add functions to its rapidly expanding network. The company expects the recommendation technology will deliver relevant content, advertising and products to its social network users to keep its users more engaged on the site, and to increase its presence on mobile devices. Then it also offer opportunities for online advertisers to target the right audience and create relevant copywriting.

The generated data from mSense, the most valuable component for LinkedIn, could be exploited to provide users recommendations about other relevant people in the LinkedIn networks based upon trends, usage or networking patterns.

The combination of recent added social features and recomendation technology will provide professionals on LinkedIn personalized news, highlighted updates, and what executives in similar careers are reading and doing on the network. For your information, LinkedIn has recently become more social by adding social features, for instance, revamping its “Groups” feature with “Likes,” Follows and Discussions options. LinkedIn has also been building more Facebook- and Twitter-like features on the homepage and link sharing options to generate more traffic and data to the site. All of these developments will generate a lot of valuable data. When they are combined with mSense, all will make LinkedIn a more useful and interactive site to users.

From all the observations, in a sense, it is seen that the world is moving very fast, social businesses are even moving faster, and every player aims to be the fastest forward-mover in order to maintain its reputation and engage more audience.

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