Ever heard of Bebo? If you’re like us, it rings a few bells, but was long ago stashed away into the box reserved for social networks that fell before the behemoth that is Facebook. It appears that Bebo is aiming for a comeback. The social network, now owned by AOL, is targeting 18-24 year olds that have grown tired of Facebook.

I doubt Bebo will knock Facebook off its throne. Even if every 18-24 guy and gal abandoned Facebook, transporting their networks to Bebo, you’re only talking about 11.8% of the adult population (U.S. Census, 2008 Community Survey). While this demographic accounts for a greater percentage of internet users, older demographics are adopting at a faster rate, and they’re not likely to flock to networks made up of people half their age, or younger. Facebook’s user base will continue to swell. Bebo’s user base will also swell. So who should you be paying attention to?

Both!

The reality is that people adopt different networks and engage in various online behaviors for different reasons. Bebo’s niche targeting approach should serve as a reminder – when developing your online marketing and social media strategies, you need to do three things:

1. Go where your customers are today.
2. Plan for where your customers will be, or migrate to.
3. Pay attention to where the people who will one day be your customers are now, and where they’re going.

Few of our current clients are focused exclusively on the 18-24 market, but Bebo is on our radar. In fact, I’ll be setting up my Bebo account today. Please don’t tell them how old I am.

More than just a blip on the radar, or a short-lived social media meme, the Old Spice Responses video series is an online marketing campaign you should be watching. In case you’re not familiar with the campaign, Old Spice rolled out a new ad spot in February featuring a shirtless manly “man your man could smell like”. Tongue in cheek, humorous and full of over-the-top sophisticated machismo, the ad spot quickly became a favorite on TV and online. This week, Old Spice, marketing agency Wieden + Kennedy and actor Isaiah Mustafa recorded personalized messages to influencers and regular people, responding to comments and questions posted online. It’s important to note that, in many cases, the content selected for response has nothing to do with Old Spice brand or product line.

Watch a few Old Spice Responses. I guarantee you will laugh out loud, literally. Then watch the online response. Conversation in my social circles has gone from a roar, to a low study buzz as the video series has ended, but the blog posts and articles analyzing the campaign’s effectiveness will hum on for quite some time. And for good reason – it’s a smart campaign.

Three articles cut straight to the point on why Old Spice Responses worked so well:

1. Read Write Web – How the Old Spice Videos Are Being Made
2. Mashable – The Old Spice Social Media Campaign by the Numbers
3. justbrand.me – 5 Things @OldSpice Taught Us About Social Media

Still have doubts about the campaign’s significance, consider two more things:

• Reddit reader Pandarr asked @OldSpice Man to record his outgoing voicemail message. His request was granted, and within hours, other readers had downloaded the audio files, spliced it, and built the Old Spice Voicemail Generator. Now anyone can enter their digits and select from a handful of messages to create their own outgoing voicemail greeting.
• The wave of parodies, spoofs, and spinoffs has just begun, and the videos are being circulated nearly as fast as the Old Spice series. They’re unlikely to have the same reach or same effect, but they will continue to fuel the brand awareness of the very campaign they poke fun at.

Now that’s virality!

We have been working closely with a client to develop a reactive response protocol for identifying reviews from dissatisfied customers, addressing their concerns, and delivering service corrections. After four months of active listening, we found the majority of negative reviews occur on two consumer complaint sites; of 118 issues identified, 54% appeared on PissedConsumer.com, and 16% appeared on ConsumerAffairs.com.

There are three basic types of consumer review sites:

1. Consumer Reviews and Ratings – These sites are distinctive in that they require contributors to rate the business, often on a scale of poor to excellent, or 1 to 5 stars, as part of their written review. Built around the idea of customers helping customers, the rating gives a quick read of the company, while the written reviews detail strengths and weaknesses, and dole out advice. Consumer rating sites often allow users to rate the helpfulness of the reviews they find on the site, thus shepherding the overall trustworthiness of the content. Examples: Yelp or Rate It All
2. Consumer Awareness – These sites were developed to provide objective third party reviews of product or service strengths and weaknesses, as well as provide general consumer education. Many of these sites have grown out of long-standing, well-reputed publications that have been trusted by consumers and journalists alike. Example: Consumer Reports and Edmunds.
3. Consumer Complaint Sites – Unlike their digital cousins, complaint sites have only two purposes, to provide consumers with grievances a soapbox on which to vent, and to profit from those grievances.

Businesses battling the parasitic effect of consumer complaint sites find themselves up against a daunting challenge. For starters, their names can instill a sense of paranoia in a consumer before they even read a review, for certainly nothing on pissedconsumer.com can be good. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to most visitors, consumer complaint sites are for-profit entities. They generate revenue primarily through advertising with Google AdWords and other ad networks, they sell business reputation management services, which I’ll touch on again later, and Pissed Consumer even goes so far as to charge users to feature their complaints. Called preferred positioning, the site promises greater visibility by other consumers and better chance of being contacted by the company for resolution in exchange for “a small fee”. I find it hard to imagine any consumer would pay for this so-called service; although I suspect a competitor might see it as a viable defamation tactic.

While I am no fan of these profit tactics, my greatest concern with consumer complaint sites is that in this age of customer-to-business dialogue facilitated by social media, consumeraffairs.com and pissedconsumer.com effectively amputate opportunities for true dialogue.

ConsumerAffairs.com does not provide a response mechanism for companies that want to reach out to, and solve the problems of, dissatisfied customers. Nor do they provide the ability to comment on individual postings. They have one form: a complaint form. Businesses who wish to respond to user reviews are instructed to use the complaint form. All complaints are screened by moderators before publishing, and my experience has been that company responses do not get published.

Pissed Consumer allows commenting, which provides businesses with the opportunity to respond within the thread to both the complaint’s original author and others who have commented on that thread. Unfortunately, comments are not tied back to user accounts, even when a user is logged in at the time of submission. This prevents readers from viewing other activity by the author. Notification of follow-up activity is also wanting. Both businesses and users are forced to manually search for responses to their posts.

ConsumerAffairs.com and Pissed Consumer do promote reputation management as premium services, enabling businesses to respond directly to consumers, but they are secretive about the features and benefits of these premium services. To find out more, I had to fill out a contact form and wait to be contacted by a sales representative. When Pissed Consumer called, I quickly discovered that they would not talk to me because they “don’t do business with agencies”. Pissed Consumer will deal only with the actual company that complaints are against and require a signed non-disclosure agreement before discussing any of their premium services. I advocate that companies manage social and customer service internally for greater authenticity, but agencies help clients by vetting service prior to recommending them. If you won’t talk to me, I cannot, in good conscious, recommend your services to our clients.

I’ll admit it, I felt affronted by this exchange with Pissed Consumer, but I hope that you are too. As businesses adopt social media to deliver customer service, consumers will begin looking carefully at how companies are responding to negative reviews. I firmly believe that sites that don’t provide a response mechanism do a disservice to customers who are looking to answer the question “if I have a problem, will the company help me resolve it?”

During the 2010 f8 conference, Facebook announced that it would be launching a new set of data permissions as part of the new Graph API.  The permissions themselves, while they provide more granular coverage of the data available via Facebook, aren’t really that interesting – the interesting part of the new data permissions are what Facebook grants to clients in terms of license to use and store the data.

User Experience

The user experience has changed as part of launching the new data permissions.  Using the old permissions required a user to click through a number of authorization dialogs, one for each permission required.  This series of dialogs sometimes caused confusion for users, depressed conversion, and sometimes left developers with an incomplete permission set as users began authorizing the app but quit when they felt they were giving too much away.

Figure 1 – Facebook previously required four popups to log in, allow offline access, and read/write access to the user’s stream.		Figure 2 – With the new permissions dialog, all of the required permissions are displayed in a single authorization prompt.

Facebook’s CTO Bret Taylor wrote in the Facebook Developer blog  that this change increases conversions for applications by 28-41%.  If only we could get that kind of conversion rate increase from flipping a switch on other websites.

Better Data Provisions

One of the most debilitating parts of a Facebook application, performance-wise, were the restrictions on data that prevented most Facebook data from being cached for more than 24 hours.  As Facebook’s Ethan Beard wrote in the Developer blog, we often had to write special code paths to handle Facebook data due to the 24 hour caching limit, or worse, we never actually stored the data at all, instead using FBML or XFBML to access it.  Now with explicit consent, we can access the user’s preferences and store it forever (as long as we provide a way for the user to opt-out).  This opens a number of new possibilities – imagine a business like Amazon.com taking advantage of knowing a user’s preferences.  All of a sudden, they could start recommending books similar to Anthem or 1984, even though I’ve never bought those books on Amazon, because I listed them as part of my favorite books on Facebook.

On top of the new data retention policy, Facebook is actually going to start pushing data to application owners via a process they’re calling Real Time Updates.  Now, application developers don’t even have to query the data – it gets pushed to us as users authorize our applications or as they change their profiles.  This will hopefully speed up Facebook by not having numbers of redundant queries being made on behalf of applications, but it will also provide the opportunity for more interesting development tools to be included.  I’m happy to say that real-time updates were important enough to me to include support for real-time updates for users as part of OpenGraph.NET, an open-source .NET Framework-based toolkit for developing for Facebook’s Graph API.

Like It or Not

As of June 30, you can access these changes via the Developers application .

Figure 3 – The New Data Permissions setting is disabled by default for existing applications, but enabled by default for new applications.

I haven’t seen in our applications that the new permissions are causing much trouble because of the way they’re used, but as always, your mileage may vary, and it would be better to check it out now before they’re forced on your app.

After months of developer community anticipation and beta releases, WordPress 3.0 is finally out in the wild. WordPress updates the core code several times a year for maintenance reasons, but this iteration has some pretty significant improvements that have got the Terralever developers of the WordPress persuasion (myself included) pretty excited.

If you don’t know what WordPress is, it’s a powerful, lightweight, flexible CMS. It’s evolved from a powerful blog tool (which it still is), into a tool that can power myriad websites with varying content and technical requirements. Terralever has built several websites with WordPress as a backend content management system, including the award-winning Ashley Fiolek site we recently built for Red Bull at http://www.ashleyfiolek.com.

There are a few new features that have me excited about the new version of WordPress, both from a development perspective and an end-user perspective.

1. Child Themes
2. Built-In Menu Support
3. Custom Post Types
4. and last but not least…Multiple Site Support!

One major limitation that’s been lifted by WordPress 3.0 is support for “child themes,” which are themes that inherit functionality and styling from, you guessed it, a Parent Theme. This gives you the flexibility to create variations of your base theme (such as creating a seasonal, holiday, or promotional theme). It’s also helpful for developers who do a lot of WordPress development, and want to use a base theme with common resources for each build, but don’t want to have to modify the core code of the theme. When a WordPress site utilizes µ (WordPress MU) functionality, child themes can be utilized to provide variations of a base theme for the different site instances.

One good indication that a feature should be included in the core, is how many plugins have been developed to deliver a basic piece of functionality. A perfect example is built-in menu support (Just search the plugin repository <http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=menu&sort=> for “menu”). Previously, there wasn’t a whole lot available out-of-the box in terms of building a dynamic navigation menu based on your site’s page taxonomy. However, in WordPress 3.0, it’s simple for non-technical admins to manage the organization of their navigation through the backend. The new interface provides a means to quickly create menu items, and drag/drop them into their proper hierarchy. As long as your theme has support for this new feature, you should see immediate results. If you want to take it for a drive, look for the ‘menus’ option under the Appearance menu in the WordPress admin.

Custom Post Types are especially interesting to me, since we use WordPress to power such a diversity of sites with varying content requirements. Essentially, this feature addresses a need that’s been handled previously by users creating posts and categorizing them in categories such as “portfolio” or “products,” or otherwise creating a custom plugin to manage content. Custom Posts allow developers and admins to more effectively manage different types of content on their site, by organizing them under their type of post, alongside similar posts in the admin. This opens the door to something like turning your WordPress site into an ecommerce site, or a collection of any other type of data that can be administered through the post editing interface.

And perhaps my favorite new feature, is that WordPress µ (Multi User) support is built into WordPress 3. If you need to create a bunch of WordPress sites, and you don’t want to get a separate server for each one, this feature is your friend. Each site built off of this base can be managed by administrators that only have access to that specific site, but the super admin can access all sites on the WordPress µ install. Themes and plugins can be shared from the root of your site with each of the individual sites, so it now becomes very easy to manage updates and maintenance to your codebase across multiple domains.

And that’s just a few of the new features in WordPress 3.0. For a full list of new features, visit:

In March of 2010 the e-tailing group and Power Review performed a study that found that one half of Internet users research online before making a purchase. This makes sense; with information at our fingertips it would be silly not to research a purchase first. In the same study it was reported that 49% of customers will leave a site if there is a lack of user-generated reviews. The study made it clear; purchasers want to see reviews.

The interesting part is that despite the importance of customer reviews in the purchasing decision, a majority of companies are still putting Facebook strategies higher up on the priority list. In-fact, according to the e-tailing group, 91% of companies either employ or plan to employ a Facebook fan page in 2010, while only 85% plan to implement customer reviews on their site.

Even more interesting, the “2010 Social Shopping Study” found that customer reviews had a strong influence on over 70% of respondents and the purchases they make. At the same time, only 25% of respondents felt that Facebook had a strong influence on their purchase decisions. In fact, the survey found that social media sites were the least likely place for customers to do research to aid in their purchase decisions.

The customers have spoken; if the question is ‘to buy or not to buy?’ they want to see some reviews.

At the age of four, my parents and I left Tempe, Arizona, and ventured into the heart of Europe, to live in the capital city of the Czech Republic, Prague. My family traveled there as missionaries to work with the local church to develop student ministries, just a year after the the country split from Czechoslovakia in the Velvet Revolution. Growing up overseas gave me a cultural experience like nothing else and a much wider perspective of the world. Europe branded me with a passion for travel and culture that has followed me to this day.

Since my family and I have moved back to Tempe, in the summer of 2007. I’ve had a chance to intern for several of the most innovative and exciting design and development agencies in the metro Phoenix area, including Perk, Integrum and Keane Creative. Working for all of these awesome agencies has given me a chance to be involved in multiple exciting projects and gain the practical workplace knowledge not taught in high school, as well as aiding in funding my passion for photography.

I first became interested in web development in 6th grade, where our class assignment was to create our own personal web page. Although, I would cringe looking back at what I created then, the experience left me with a longing for more. To discover how everything worked, to break things and put them back together again. This passion has grown since then to all things from laptops to webpages, but it always leaves me with a desire to learn more.

Currently, after graduating from McClintock High School, I am pursuing my degree in Business Management at Mesa Community College while I Intern at Terralever. The work that I do at Terralever isn’t the typical intern work, such as sending faxes or refilling staplers but it’s getting to do what I love, web development! It gives me a chance to work on huge projects such as Red Bull Stratos or Flugtag, collaborations I would never have a chance to be a part of working freelance. It gives me a chance to utilize my abilities to the fullest extent. I believe that the experience and training I receive while I intern here at Terralever is as valuable as the teaching I could be studying at ASU. The web is growing explosively and the demand for current and up to date programming is increasing. It’s difficult for college course content to keep up with the growing pace of the web. That’s why I believe that interning at Terralever, not only gives me practical workspace knowledge but allows me to work with technologies that aren’t being taught.

One of the best parts about working at Terralever is having the ability to go to developers who are higher up than me and get their help and assistance in any project I am working on or struggling with. Not only does this teach me new ways to problem solve and tackle different issues, it prevents me from hitting walls or road blocks in which I am unable to solve a problem myself. I can get immediate help and feedback, which makes me significantly more productive. I get the opportunity to learn an exceptional amount of web development as well as teach others what I have learned, or what experience I have gained.

My passion is to travel back to the Czech Republic and to shoot photography. For now I want to continue pursuing my career in web development as well as continue rock climbing, playing the drums, shooting photography, drinking lots of tea and living for the gospel. Follow me on my blog at http://www.connormcsheffrey.com/

This week Google has announced a few new twists for marketers who use its AdWords advertising program.

One allows marketers an opportunity to re-engage visitors who clicked-through to their site but left with out converting. The other helps marketers understand how visitors interact with the ads they have placed on Google.com prior to committing a conversion. AdWords Remarketing and Search Funnels in brief:

AdWords Remarketing

• analogous to what other providers call retargeting
• allows an opportunity to re-engage with visitors who clicked on an ad, did not convert, and then visited another site on the Google Content Network
• multiple Remarketing campaigns can run simultaneously

Of the two announcements, this is the one that I’m the most excited to. Just to paint the picture simply, I’ll leverage the example from the AdWords blog:

Here’s an example of how it works. Let’s say you’re a basketball team with tickets that you want to sell. You can put a piece of code on the tickets page of your website, which will let you later show relevant ticket ads (such as last minute discounts) to everyone who has visited that page, as they subsequently browse sites in the Google Content Network. In addition to your own site, you can also remarket to users who visited your YouTube brand channel or clicked your YouTube homepage ad.

You can also run a number of remarketing campaigns at the same time. For example, you could offer discount game tickets to users who’ve previously visited your tickets page, advertise VIP hospitality packages to users who clicked on your “How to get to the arena” page, and advertise a sale on team merchandise to users who previously visited your YouTube brand channel.

There’s a lot of opportunity here, and I can’t wait to do some real-world tests.

AdWords Retargeting is alive and kicking, patiently waiting for you to tinker with it in the AdWords Dashboard.

AdWords Search Funnels

• shows user interaction with AdWords advertisers ads over time
• creates relationships between views, clicks and conversions
• provides the following new reports in the AdWords dashboard: Top Conversions, Search Funnels, Assisted Conversions, First and Last Click Analysis, Time Lag, and Path Length

So, in short, Search Funnels provides a much broader view of how users are exposed to and interact with AdWords Ads overtime leading up to conversions.

Search Funnels sounded relatively tame to me until I watched the explanatory video in the post on the AdWords blog.

A lot of the data sounds good. Maybe the person who does the Google product geek-to-human translation was on sabbatical when the video was pulled together. Learn more about AdWords Funnels on the AdWords Blog. Search Funnels are available in the AdWords Dashboard.

Which of these will have more impact on your future AdWords marketing activities?

Originally posted on the online marketing blog of Terralever’s Scott McAndrew.

When Silverlight just lived in the browser, it was relatively easy to interact with the analytics framework of your choice via code; it simply interacted with JavaScript on the browser.  This wasn’t terribly designer-friendly, since it required using code unless your developers were clever, but when Silverlight 3 and the out-of-browser experience came around, suddenly developers no longer had the guaranteed access to the analytics JavaScript hosted on the containing web page.  In response, Microsoft developed the Microsoft Silverlight Analytics Framework, a plugin-capable API for implementing analytics clients within a Silverlight application.  With it, we can now easily add any number of analytics vendors to a single client, without much headache at all, and what’s more, it’s extended to be easy-to-use for designers:

The components and behaviors built-in for Analytics in Expression Blend is already pretty deep.

The Analytics API implements behaviors, so that you can simply attach certain actions and behaviors to events on objects, easily in Expression Blend (so easy, a Designer can do it):

Here, Expression is collapsed, but you can see the Analytics TrackAction behavior is selected and can have its properties modified.

Given how often we utilize Google Analytics within our solutions, we were very excited to hear that Google was one of the providers to implement the Analytics Framework.  As our ability to track behaviors for our clients grows, we’re especially excited to see where the future of Silverlight will carry this capability – to mobile devices and embedded scenarios, or interactive and offline video players, our ability to monitor conversions and user behavior is only going to grow.

On a Friday night this past September, over 170 people gathered at Aloft Tempe to party on behalf of charity. They gathered to eat, drink, and be merry in each other’s company at Twestival Phoenix Local. Twestival is an “international movement where people meet offline for one night, have fun and do some good for an important cause”. Galas, balls, and other social events have always been a core fundraising tactic, but what sets a Twestival apart is that it is promoted almost exclusively by tapping into online social tools.

Invitations are sent via status updates on several social platforms, event pages are set up on Facebook and Upcoming, and tickets are sold through Amiando, which leverages Twitter API and Facebook Connect integration to allow users to tell friends that they’re attending Twestival. Because most user social graphs are not constrained by geographic boundaries, each person who posts about attending Twestival is not only inviting friends who live in their same city to the local event, they implicitly invite friends across the country and the world to participate in the Twestival event occurring in where they live. The effect is that the money raised for charity is multiplied. A quick look at the numbers from 2009.

Like social media networks, Twestival is a connector. The event itself enables attendees to not only catch up with friends, meet new friends and discover local food vendors, businesses and artists who participate through sponsorship and auction item donations. Meanwhile, the planning process teaches small businesses and local charities about the potential of social media to drive awareness.

For the September event, Twestival Phoenix event organizers wanted to be certain that the selected charity benefitted from more than just money raised. Chris Lee, who spearheads much of the planning, said that locally, they looked at how engaged each non-profit was involved in social media. Were they heavily involved and well-versed? Were they avoiding social media altogether? Or had they dipped their toes in the water, demonstrating interest and a real potential to flourish under a little guidance? Event organizers also invited community to participate in selection process by recommending and voting on charities through UserVoice.

By inviting community participation throughout the process, from planning to partying, event organizers helped Saint Mary’s Food Bank through a sustained awareness campaign. Some notable results:

• @StMarysFoodBank’s Twitter followers increased 241% from July through the night event.
• They received countless tweets and media hits they wouldn’t have otherwise received if they had not been the beneficiaries of Twestival Phoenix.
• On the day of the event, www.firstfoodbank.org received double the average number of hits for a Friday.
• The money raised at Twestival Phoenix enabled St. Mary’s to distribute food for over 65,000 meals.

The third Twestival is tomorrow night (March 25, 2010). Another global initiative, it will benefit Concern Worldwide, working towards the elimination of extreme poverty in the world’s poorest countries. Twestival Phoenix will be at Martini Ranch. You can follow their efforts and get event information by following @TwestivalPhx on Twitter join them on Facebook or visiting the Twestival Phoenix website.

I am not fully recovered yet from my first ever South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) experience, however, despite my lacking ability to function at a normal rate, I will attempt to give you my recap on the interactive mega-conference.

A lot of People and Zone Bar Danger Zones

I’ve read that there were approximately 15,000 to 16,000 people in attendance this year, this is not a fact but there is no doubt in my mind that this number is at least close to accurate. The reality of this really hit home pretty much every time a cab was necessary. A 45-minute wait is never fun but with some patience and all things considered, it’s fine and understandable. However, when I received my ‘pick-up call’ from a cab company nearly 2 hours after I called on my last day in Austin, I couldn’t help but laugh at the fact that they actually thought I would still be waiting for them. The cab situation was not ideal and the amount of people in attendance was a bit overwhelming at times but it wouldn’t be SXSW if it was any other way, right?

One of the first things I noticed when I arrived at the convention center was that there were quite a few non-tech related sponsors. Starbucks Via samples were EVERYWHERE and at times, Zone Bar reps were practically throwing samples at us. Seeing the Monster brand mascot playing foursquare (real foursquare, not digital Foursquare) was amusing although unfortunately entirely irrelevant. Microsoft and AOL both had a solid presence but in the end, it was odd to me that there were so few sponsors related to the digital industry. I guess it was just a reminder that when all is said and done, this is a huge ‘event’ – educational and beneficial for sure, but entertainment-based at its core.

The Buzz in a Nutshell

While in attendance I definitely noticed that social media, mobile marketing and location-based services such as Gowalla and Foursquare received a lot of attention. I also enjoyed learning about some up and coming start-ups with creative new digital ideas. Within these start-ups, there were many conceptual trends and again, there was a huge focus on social and mobile, but trends or not the ideas were creative and it was cool to get the opportunity to learn the thought process behind these innovative ideas.  That said, there was one start-up in particular that I feel didn’t get as much love as it deserved.

That start-up is a service called Nutshell Mail and I love it because it provides its users with a super efficient way to being social. It brings all of your social account updates and notices together in one interactive email. You can respond and update your accounts directly from your email without ever leaving your inbox. Users can receive as many or as few email updates as they’d like throughout the day. Critics of the start-up saw issues with real-time response and felt there were already other programs doing something similar. I would argue that Nutshell Mail is obviously not for the power-user. This user isn’t going to be waiting with bated breath to hear where the next spontaneous tweet-up is going to be nor will they be bummed if they miss an opportunity to win a prize for being the first to retweet a hashtag. This service is more for people on the go who love their social networks but don’t always have the time or the ability to log on.  There are similar programs out there, like Hootsuite for example, however, they do not allow you to update all of your networks without ever leaving your inbox – To me, this is a huge benefit and has made a user out of me. As a side note, it’s a great way to monitor your kids’ social networks too… if that’s something you’re into. I personally know nothing about this.

Microsoft, a Creepy Dude, the Haunted Hotel and My First Time

I had a few highlights during the trip. I’d have to say the Microsoft party topped them all. Since Terralever partnered with Microsoft at SXSWi we had the opportunity to demo our Silverlight work at the Microsoft Interactive Lounge during their huge bash. There was a ton of foot traffic and plenty of curious attendees who found their way to the Terralever demo station.

I truly enjoyed showing off our work to such an awesome crowd of people. Well, actually, the majority of the crowd was great – The dude who allowed me to give him my entire Silverlight shpeel, then looked at me in complete confusion and said, “you look good,” he was an interesting character. Besides Creepy McCreepster, it was a great opportunity for some intelligent industry-related conversations and of course it was an awesome event to show people Silverlights’ capabilities and how we have leveraged them at Terralever. Microsoft put together an article that goes into more detail about our SXSW partnership and the projects that were highlighted – If you’d like, you can check it out here.

Other SXSW highlights include:

• The Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA) Unconference that was a collaborative discussion on the future of digital – and asked the question, are digital agencies ready to lead?
• My haunted hotel room which was cool because that doesn’t happen everyday
• The late night pizza that was widely available and very delicious
• Catching up with Terralever alum, Lesley Caldwell, who showed us the town
• Spotting Guy Kawasaki in the taxi line but unfortunately feeling way not geeky or deserving enough to interrupt his conversation to say hi
• Awesome people and a one-of-a-kind experience

The event as a whole was a whirlwind of craziness and I spent much of the time just trying to stay afloat and figuring out things just in time to discover that I already missed them. In retrospect, it’s easy to see that as with most things, your first time is a complete learning experience. Now that I have some experience under my belt and a better understanding of what its all about, I’m confident that any future trips to SXSWi will be a little bit less overwhelming for me.

Has SXSWi Lost its Mojo?

There has been chatter that SXSW has officially lost it’s mojo and has been consumed by the desire to be a huge money-maker and not so much a reliable source for industry people to grow, collaborate and learn (and party). Being my first time in attendance, I don’t think it’s fair for me to take a stance one way or the other, however, I will say that I believe the experience is entirely in the hands of the beholder. SXSWi is, and can be, whatever you want it to be. The early adopters may feel like the event has gotten too big and too mainstream, or perhaps over-commercialized, and maybe that is the case. No doubt the conference has evolved over time but that doesn’t mean that it’s lost its ‘special purpose’, which of course, is to bring bright digital minds and emerging technology together in an entertaining and social atmosphere. Indeed, it did just that. For those who are SXSWi pros – What are your thoughts on the evolution of the event? As a rook, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Geosocial applications have been hot this year. At their most basic level, geosocial apps allow users to share information about where they are and what they are doing with friends in real-time. All updates are geotagged to a particular venue, and venue pages show the latest activity specific to that place. Brightkite, Foursquare, and Gowalla are the top three applications, though with South by Southwest (SXSW) approaching, all the talk seems to focus on the last two.

Brightkite has been around for several years, and having built a critical mass of users, the app enjoyed wide spread use last year at SXSW -  attendees used the app to let friends know what sessions and parties they were at, and what the vibe was. In many ways, Brightkite laid the way for Foursquare and Gowalla, both of which launched last year, and have seen rapid adoption since. As their one-year launch anniversary approaches, some have dubbed this year’s SXSW a geosocial showdown, forming hypotheses as to which application will secure preferred status among users.

Despite the buzz, geosocial is not a one app show. Like any industry, there is room for multiple players. And for all their similarities Brightkite, Foursquare and Gowalla have some key differences that appeal to different segments of the market. To illustrate these differences, I’ll draw very loosely on the work Margaret Mark and Carol S. Pearson have done on brand archetypes. In The Hero and the Outlaw, Mark and Pearson describe archetypes as prototype characters that run through all stories, fictional and historical, that help us understand the key motivations and potential weaknesses of each character we come across. When applied to brands, archetypes can provide insight into why certain brands appeal to certain customers.
Brightkite, Foursquare and Gowalla all appeal to explorers. A key attribute of each app is the ability to discover new places, and to also discover and share insider information about that place. The ability to view the check-ins of others enables users to participate in the discovery process.

Beyond basic exploration, geosocial apps diverge in their appeal toward user groups. Brightkite, which encourages posting notes to a location, and which is the only application to allow users to post photos, appeals to storytellers. Active users collaborate in creating the evolving narration of a place.

Foursquare and Gowalla trend more toward gaming than informational storytelling. Foursquare, with its emphasis on points accumulation, place mayorships and a weekly leaderboard, appeals to rulers. Often demonstrating a competitive nature, rulers aspire to hold designated positions of status. Gowalla, with the introduction of items that can be found, traded, or vaulted, appeals to collectors. These individuals express themselves through the accumulation, ownership and display of objects. With SXSW right around the corner, both Foursquare and Gowalla are further emphasizing their respective gaming qualities by rolling out new challenges, badges and prizes to be won or found by this year’s conference attendees.

Understanding the unique functionality and user profile of various social media applications is a key identifying the ones that best aligns company and user goals. Much like the persona development we do to inform our strategy, web development and online marketing projects, we evaluate social interaction patterns when developing social media strategy. So while others at SXSW will be watching data sparks fly in the hyped geosocial showdown, we’ll be watching user behavior for the implications on platform evolution.

In related news, if you are headed to SXSW and want to meet up with Terralever while there, please drop any one of us a line (preferred communication method listed).

Scott McAndrew, Director of Strategy
Twitter: @scottmcandrew

Erin Enriquez, Account Manager
email: erine [at] terralever dot com

Courtney Crane, Marketing Manager
email: courtneyc [at] terralever dot com

Heather Herr, Social Media Specialist
Twitter: @MsHerr

Update to Mashable Fans: Pawns in the impressions game – The Social Media Guide responds to fan feedback and adjusts their publishing frequency, but not their engagement.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about Mashable’s practice of phrasing all Facebook updates as questions, most likely in hopes of stimulating fan interaction and conversations, while being noticeably absent from those same conversations.

This past Wednesday, Mashable changed their content posting strategy in response to fan feedback that they were simply posting too much content. Mashable is now using their primary fan page to highlight top stories, and has set up eight additional channels for specific interest areas, such as tech, video, jobs and social media.

The language and style of Mashable’s Facebook posts has also been changing since our initial piece, as Mashable experiments with different approaches. They are still leading many updates with questions, but they are mixing it up a bit, sometimes posting headlines only, sometimes questions only, and sometimes combing both. They have also changed the structure of most questions from the simplistic “Will you watch?” to include references to key points in the article.

I have also noticed a slight increase in Mashable’s engagement in the comments attached to any one post. It is very slight, but perhaps a sign of more to come.

If you’d like to find and follow any one of those channels, visit the Mashable Facebook fan page and check out their favorite pages.

The Social Media Guide asks fans to join in discussion around posts, but don’t participate themselves.

Do you follow Mashable on Facebook? Have you noticed the change in how they post? They’ve recently started asking questions. A lot of them.

Do you think the school was justified in its actions? Or are you simply creeped out?

How do you plan to celebrate Photoshop’s 20th?

What do you think of brands using augmented reality? Does it make you more likely to buy the product?

Be honest: Would you buy/wear these, or is this just a little too nerdy?

And my personal favorite: Will you watch? … Well now, that’s vague.

In the last 3 days (1pm on Tuesday to 1pm today…it’s Friday, by the way, but don’t let me get off topic), Mashable has posted 73 updates. Of those, 58 are questions. 79% are questions. W00t! Mashable wants to know what we think. And they’re going to engage in conversation with us. Right?

Wrong.

Mashable is not participating in the conversation. They’re inviting interaction by asking questions in an attempt to increase activity around each post, which will increase likelihood that posts will make it into the news feeds of more fans and friends-of-fans*, but they are not engaging in the conversations that play out in the comments. The most recent post Tim Burton Talks “Alice in Wonderland” Live on MySpace Tonight [VIDEO] had 24 comments at the time of writing, not a single one from Mashable. A scan of the previous ten posts shows an average of 33 comments, and again, not a single one by Mashable**.

At Terralever, we find this very disappointing. It’s one of the things that we insist our clients not do. Mashable is “The Social Media Guide,” and is the de facto news source for what is happening right now in social. They have also made efforts to truly be a guide by providing several how to resources that help newcomers understand the cultural norms and etiquette that govern social media interaction. This makes their current Facebook behavior all the more deplorable.

We’re not the only ones bothered. Scan fan posts on the Mashable wall, and you’ll see other discontents.

On Monday, Mashable posted this feedback request:

We’re looking to do a better job at serving our Facebook community. Some questions: 1. What would you like to see more of on Mashable’s Facebook page? And less of? 2. Would you like more questions & contests, or would you like us to stick to headlines? 3. Should we share all Mashable posts here, or just selected ones? 4. What other changes would make our Facebook page better? –Pete

Another request for interaction, to which they’ve received 204 comments. Here, Mashable has responded. Once. Out of 203 opportunities.

If Mashable wants to simply leverage their Facebook presence as a firehose that gives fans easy access to their wealth of information, cool. But please don’t use us, your fans, as pawns to gain impressions. That is a violation of our trust, and we will unfan you.

*Facebook uses a complex algorithm to determine what stories appear in your news feeds. This algorithm is a guarded secret, but stories that receive high interaction, via likes and comments, are deemed more relevant and are more likely to appear in your own news feed.

**Disclaimer: Mashable has several writers. It is possible for writers to participate in conversations under their own name, as opposed to as a Mashable admin, but my quick investigation did not reveal any of this activity.

I use the internet a lot. I’m browsing daily, reading articles & blogs, shopping, socializing, researching, paying bills, etc. etc. So, I come across usability issues pretty often. I’m even more prone to noticing these annoyances because it’s my job, which makes it that much more painful. However, I make it a point to learn from these instances. I see an issue and I immediately commit it to the “Don’t ever do that” portion of my memory. So, I’ve decided to start sharing. What’s the point in keeping it all to myself, right? I figure this could be a way to get these usability faux pas out in the open so that history will stop repeating itself. At the very least it’ll make me feel better and we all may learn something along the way. So, here I go….

A story about abandoned towels.

I’ve been thinking of getting new towels for a while now, but the frugal side of me has me waiting for a good deal. So, the other day, as I was browsing my money saving blogs, I noticed a post regarding a great deal on Ralph Lauren towels at Horchow.com. For those of you that don’t know, Horchow is a mail order only division of Neiman Marcus (with the exception of their Horchow Finale Stores—only 3 to be found).

Now, I don’t recall the exact sale price of the towels, but I know it had to be cheap to grab my attention. They were probably $6-7 a towel, and being Ralph Lauren, I knew (or assumed) that they’d be good quality. My mind was made up. I was getting new towels and I was super excited.

So, I went to their site to get my new towels. Everything was smooth sailing at first. I was able to efficiently navigate their “Pottery Barnesque” site to find the towels section and locate the product I was looking for. No problems there. There they were. My inexpensive Ralph Lauren towels.

With all good deals there must be sacrifices.

Now, you have to understand that when you’re shopping frugally, especially on a deal as good as this one, you may need to make sacrifices. In this case the sacrifice would be on the color. I knew I couldn’t be picky, but I wasn’t going to pay any money for something that wasn’t going to match my home. However, white, tan, brown, cream or even a nice shade of green would have been fine.

Here’s a “representative screenshot” of the Ralph Lauren towel product page. The actual page no longer exists because they have sold out, but I assure you this page will do.

It looks like any normal product page. Nice, big product photo, product name, description, price per product type, etc. There are things I would improve about this page, but overall it’s fine. However, the main issue with this page is the product color representation. There is none. The only list of available colors is located within the drop-down menu next to each product type (i.e. Bath towel, hand towel, wash cloth). In some cases, such as offering a product that only comes in red, green & blue, this works fine. However, when you have colors like papyrus, khaki, and crystal, it get’s a little more difficult for users to find what they’re looking for by process of elimination. They shouldn’t have to work that hard anyway.

Roadblock: which color is Larkspur?!

So, this was my problem. The listed color names were too vague and confusing. They were, white, bay leaf green, khaki, papyrus, meadow, primrose, crystal, sachet, petal, coral, larkspur and chili pepper. To add to the complexity, only 2 of the colors were still in stock and I had no idea which one belonged to which color in the photo. All I knew is that there was one color (a bright blue color) that I definitely did not want to get, even at this price. So, I was stuck. I tried to find answers via their online chat, but after about 20 minutes of my time, they were unable to help me.

In the end, I ended up leaving the site without purchasing anything. I abandoned my towels. That one blue color was too bright for me to take the risk and I wasn’t confident enough to make my purchase. I was pretty upset. I really wanted those towels. They would have looked great hanging in my guest bathroom. Just not in that color.

So, what could have made my shopping experience more successful?

It’s easy. One simple addition to the product detail page. All I needed were some text labels on the product photo to represent which color was which. It may not be the prettiest of all product photos, but it would have gained them a sale. Even in the less complex example above, labels would have been nice. The color options for that product are: truffle, fern, celeste and blush. Again, I eventually figured it out after thinking it through, but I don’t want to think. I want to buy. And I’m in the emotional state to buy. In my mind, I already owned those towels. I’m the best type of customer and, as a retailer, you need to take advantage of that. Don’t distract me with silly things such as thinking or guessing.

To take it a step further, they may even want to think about changing the color names to be more user friendly. Such as, brown, green, blue and pink. That may not be so simple for all products, but in this instance it would make things easier.

How many people are “walking away”?

Now, I’m sure they’re not crying about losing my $28 or so dollars, especially since they apparently sold all of the towels anyway, but I can guarantee you that there’s an even smaller possibility that I would have paid full price to play their guessing game.

So, we have to ask, how many sales are they losing because of this issue? How many people just give up like I did and “walk away”? I can guarantee it’s a lot. If a web saavy customer like myself gives up, then it’s easy to presume that there are others. So, make sure to keep the customer in mind when designing and refining your website. Make things easy and quick and intuitive. If you keep those few things in mind then you’ll be a step ahead of your competition, these instances will be avoided and you’re sales wont be impeded. Guaranteed.

Small Update.

After browsing through a few more of their towel selections, I did find another group of Ralph Lauren towels with a color chart. It’s a nice added feature but way too far down on the page. I have my resolution set to 1440×900 and I still missed it. The most common resolution these days is 1024×768, which means those users will have to scroll even further down than I did in order to find it. So, keep the important information above the fold. Don’t force your users to search for what they need because they may not do that. If I had seen this on my original visit then I would probably be the proud owner of some new towels, but it wasn’t on the product page I was viewing. However, it would have been nice if their customer service could have pointed me here.

Your turn.

Sachet. Primrose. Larkspur. What colors do you think of when you read those? A Terralever color expert will be reviewing your answers later this week.

(Not really. We don’t have one of those.)

Social Media Shapes Perceptions About You as an Employer

The warnings for any job seeker are loud and clear: be careful what you post because companies are scouring your social sites, from LinkedIn to Facebook to YouTube, digging up any and all information they can to ensure that they are hiring quality, reputable talent. Those pictures of you doing a keg stand at your alma matter’s football homecoming game, or of you riding the subway in your underwear in the most recent Improv Everywhere No Pants Subway Ride may come back to bite you in the butt, no pun intended.

We’ve heard the messages targeted to job seekers several times and we’ll likely hear them several more times because they are worth repeating. But the message we don’t hear so often is one targeted to companies looking to hire savvy new talent.

You Google job candidates before hiring. Has it occurred to you that those candidates are doing that same thing to you?

If you’re a business, I’ve got a homework assignment for you. Yes, homework. As the evening draws to a close with the kids long since in bed and thoughts of following suit dancing through your head, sit down with your laptop. Switch the television channel to whatever network is playing reruns of your favorite comedy or crank up whatever tunes you bump when no one else is listening. Don’t crank it up too loudly though (remember, the kids are sleeping). Take another drink from your half-finished beer, fire up Google’s mighty search engine, and type your company name into that little box in the center of the screen.

Does your website come up first? If you’ve optimized your site properly, it should. What comes up next? With the increasing authority being given to social sites, you’ll likely find Facebook, Twitter and other social sites showing prominently above the fold.

One by one, search the social networks where your company has a presence. Look at your profiles and reflect on what they say about you. What does your brand stand for? How do you treat your customers? Do you have personality? Do you have soul? Look at the people talking with you and about you on these sites and other social sites, including blogs. Who are they? What are they saying? Does the content and tone of these conversations appeal the type of talent you want working for you?

How you participate in social media should be rooted in strategy developed around your business objectives, but don’t underestimate the potential for shaping perceptions about you as an employer. Even something as simple as an around the office photo album on Facebook can give job seekers a feel for the company’s culture, from how the office is laid out and how people dress to whether you place higher value on conformity or individuality.

Finish the last of your beer, and answer me this: What about your social presence makes today’s job seekers want to work for you?

Today Google delivered a much-anticipated new product announcement for a new social networking platform by the name of Google Buzz. Their strategy looks to, rather than build off of their investment with Orkut, to build new social network platform as an extension of Gmail. Interesting approach, and most likely a necessary departure based on the lack of Orkut’s success globally against Facebook. A few initial thoughts on what I saw and what it means:

• While using the popularity of Gmail as a great launching point was most likely Google’s best strategy for rapid user adoption and a good start for building my social graph within Buzz, I wonder if it’ll be enough. For those hardcore Google users that use Gmail as a primary email provider or Google Talk as a primary chat client, I have no doubt that Buzz will be an easy, natural addition to their Google experience.  For the rest of the world (including me) who don’t use either of those services as a primary method of communication, I’m left to manually build my social graph within Facebook. That’s a big ask considering users’ investments in building and maintaining these social graphs in environments such as Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn.
• I wonder what this means for the future of Orkut. Granted, Orkut never had the legs to compete with Facebook globally, but it did have success in a few international environments such as India and Brazil. A social product launch with no reference to Orkut doesn’t bode well for continued innovation with that platform.
• As is typical for a product announcement and demonstration, we didn’t get enough detail on core social topics such as privacy or integration options. While an open, social web is everyone’s goal, when considering the portability of both a user’s social graph and privacy preferences this conversation rapidly becomes complex. It’ll be interesting to see what’s under the hood here with Buzz.
• Completely and conspicuously absent from the announcement, demos and q&a were any sort of integration with any other social platform such as Twitter, Facebook, blog platforms, etc. For all the criticism Facebook gets for being a walled-in environment, they’ve done a great job of enabling integration with these platforms and providing a platform that can effectively integrate with anything. Google chose to launch only with integrations with Google products such as Gmail, Google Chat, Picasa and YouTube, which is curious for an announcement claiming to be the most open social web platform possible.
• What I found to be the most intriguing was the integration of locally aware information with Google Maps and their mobile offering. With their ongoing investments in Google Maps and Google Local, Google has been the defacto standard for local data worldwide. Using this investment to their advantage to instantly create the most locally-aware social platform was a savvy and powerful move. It effectively makes services such as Brightkite obsolete over time and pushes services such as FourSquare and Gowalla deeper into a mobile-game niche.
• Also noticeably absent was any reference to how this will effect Google search engine results. As with most things SEO related I’m sure we’ll be left to discover those effects on our own and it’s something we’ll have a keen eye on in the coming weeks and months.

Again these are a few, off the cuff thoughts on Buzz, I’m sure I’ll have more in 3 minutes when I can actually play with it. I’d be interested in your opinion on Buzz and what it means to the evolution of the social web. Comment here with what you’ve got!

Since business fan pages have gone on the rise in the last year or so, there have been some great campaigns focused on gaining fans for those businesses. I’m sure you’ve noticed that there has been a large amount of businesses offering FREE goods to consumers in exchange for their fan-ship. I mean, who wouldn’t simply click a button and become a fan for a free bag of Oreo cookies? I did. I still don’t have my cookies, but all I had to do was become a fan. So, the time and energy investment for me was low while the outcome could possibly, maybe, fingers-crossed, be high for me and my family. No loss there. But what happens when these campaigns go bad and the experience leaves a bad taste in consumer’s mouths? Social media backlash. Companies typically want to avoid social media backlash of any kind. It’s quick and painful and it’ll hit you in the face before you know what’s coming. So, to avoid this, a social media campaign needs to be thoroughly planned out. If a campaign is poorly planned and managed, it can create a horrible experience for all those involved.

Let’s use this mornings Incredible Edible Egg (IEE) disaster as an example. Being the frugal consumer that I am, I heard through my online money saving network that starting at 10am EST, IEE was offering a free BOGO (Buy One Get One Free) coupon to the first 30,000 people to become fans. Simple, right? Click a button. Fill out a short form (which was pretty much filled out for you). Click submit. Coupon is emailed to you shortly thereafter. FREE eggs. So exciting!

Now, I have to tell you that as an experienced “become a fan” promo goer I am typically not optimistic about these sort of things. 30,000 coupons sounds like a lot, but when you’re dealing with a pot of over 350 million active Facebook users only 0.08% of them are going to get the coupon. I can pretty much guarantee you that if it was promoted well, there were probably over 30,000 people patiently waiting at their computers for the clock to reach “go time.” Everyone loves free stuff. Especially in this economy. So, chances were that I was not going to get a coupon, but I gave it a shot anyway. I figured I would have my answer in a few seconds and be able to get on with my day either way, right? Maybe not.

Here was my IEE BOGO coupon experience and an example of how things can quickly go terribly, terribly wrong.

At about 8:10am MST I clicked on the link, went to IEE’s Facebook page and became a fan. However, instead of being taken to the coupon sign-up page, I get this:

Now, because I work in, on and around the Internet all day long, it was clear to me that IEE hadn’t planned for all 30,000 (or more) users hitting their server at once. But to the average everyday Facebook user the experience is perceived much differently: The Incredible Edible Egg is broken. They hate me. They ran out of eggs. They scammed me. It’s a fake promotion. Really, they’ll come up with anything and they’ll tell people about it. This is why it’s best to avoid these perceptions completely.

So, I headed over to their fan page to check out the status of things. Their wall was already filled with comments from angry coupon-less deal goers that were being turned away by their server issues. Within 10 minutes they had hundreds of wall posts related to the promotion. Most angry, some calm and a few funny ones that included the expected egg related pun like, “Well, this didn’t go as EGGspected” or “Looks like the yolks on us.” Har har.

What’s amazing is that, even though they were angry, some fans were still trying to get their coupon 3 hours later and posting about how much of their day they’d wasted trying to get this coupon. They must really love eggs.

In attempt to keep diffusing the situation, IEE had been posting updates every now and again asking people to be patient, but at this point the damage had already been done. The experience IEE provided had not fulfilled fan’s visions of 12 free eggs all nestled away in their fridge for future enjoyment. And trust me, there’s no easier place to express your anger than a forum where you can post your feelings and run away with no consequences. Especially when you get a mob of people doing it at the same time. And it all stems from the fact that users feel entitled to receive what you said you were going to give them and it’s completely unforgivable if they don’t get it. Especially if it’s free.

So, when moving forward with a simple social media campaign like this, make sure you plan out every minor detail. Make sure that the user’s experience is fast, simple and easy. Let them get in and out without any hassle so that they are compelled to leave a positive message on your fan page and possibly even pass along your promotion to their friends through their many social media avenues. You want and need them to pass it on to make your campaign more successful. And ensure that you plan for worst case scenarios so that your promotion doesn’t die within the first two minutes of its launch.

I’m sure that IEE will recover from this incident. They’ll get the system working again and will probably have to give all of their fans coupons, well beyond the 30,000 they originally intended. Once they do that, everyone will be happy again and IEE will be able to live a more enjoyable existence. But, with better planning and guidance IEE could have saved themselves the heartache by doing it correctly from the start and keeping everyone happy all along.

Here are some of my favorite posts:

Not every email marketing best practice is an obvious one. In fact, in my experience there are quite a few best practices that companies seem to ignore. Here are 10 email marketing mistakes that you should avoid, the good news is these are all easy best practices to adapt and adhere to.

Below are the common mistakes, and what you can do to avoid them:

1. Not Having a Marketing Plan

Make sure you have a strategy in place before you launch each and every marketing email. Decide on a theme that matches with your business goals and will help you achieve them. Create articles, promotions, tips, and offerings that are in line with the strategy.

2. No Permission

You must have permission from every single one of your recipients before you can send email. It’s more about quality than quantity. Before investing your time and money in an email marketing program, start by getting permission from your customers. It’s easier than you think, and it’ll result in fewer spam complaints, better deliverability, and better open and click results.

3. Unrecognizable Address and/or Domain

Keep a static “From” address and/or domain — subscribers determine if your email is spam or not if it’s not relevant or recognizable. Ask to be added to the recipient’s address book or safe sender list at the top of each email.

4. Poor Subject Lines

Because the subject line is the first thing a reader sees and reads, it is really important to make one that will capture their attention. It should make them want to open the newsletter and read some more. Your subject line should be seven words or less (or 35 characters). Using the following conditions in a subject line can lead to being flagged as SPAM:

• Percent of Capital Letters: Too many uppercase letters compared to lowercase letters
• Repeating Capital Letter: Too many upper case letters in a row (e.g., SALE)
• Gaps: When the words have gaps between letters like s*t*y*l*e
• Repetition: When letters or characters are repeated (*****)
• Special Character Flag: Overuse of special characters (e.g., & $ # @ ( )[ ] !)
• Punctuation Flag: Too much punctuation (…) or the type of punctuation (!)
• Word/Space Ratio: Spammers use blank spaces to catch the recipient’s attention resulting in a high ratio of spaces to words
• First Character Flag/First Word Flag: Subject lines starting with a special character or punctuation. Words like “Free”, “hey”, “Sale” etc.

5. Too Much Unnecessary Content

Keep in mind that you should never put information that is not related to the main topic when writing a newsletter. Be straight to the point. Make it as short as possible but with quality. There will be times that you can’t avoid making your newsletter long — if this is the case, make sure that it will not bore your subscribers to a point that it would make them want to unsubscribe.

6. Bad  Code

Set the pixel width to 600. This prevents the need to scroll to the right—and the potential to lose interest if someone feels they have to do too much work to read your email.

Don’t use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) in your HTML coding. It is stripped out by many ISPs, so if you want to avoid more testing and revisions keep it basic.

Many ISPs suppress images by default. Do not create your email message out of one big image or your subscribers may only see a blank page with a little, tiny red X. If you use any images, to be on the safe side, feature a view in browser so they have another way to see images if they are suppressed.

7. Failing to Use Call To Actions (CTA)

The top one-third and the left-most area of your emails are the most valuable real estate. Try to place a CTA in those areas, in text and as minimal images. Include two to three instances of your CTA above the fold. Make sure to include at least one graphical and one textual CTA.

8. Poor List Hygiene

Practice good and consistent list hygiene. Most people know to honor opt outs in 10 days to be CAN-SPAM compliant but you should also clean your list(s) of hard bounces after each send, plus monitor soft bounces and remove from your list as needed.

9. No Unsubscribe

Don’t make people jump through hoops to opt out. The unsubscribe link must opt out on the first step, per CAN-SPAM.

10. Not Testing in Different Internet Service Providers (ISPs)

HTML emails look different, depending on which email program you use to view it. Just because it looks good in the preview window, or when you send a test to yourself, it doesn’t mean it’ll look like that for all your recipients. Test your email in all ISPs!

The Society of Digital Agencies today released their 2010 Digital Marketing Report. The report is a must-read for digital marketers, including all companies who work with digital marketers, companies looking to work with digital marketers and pretty much anyone who is interested in what we can expect of digital marketing in 2010. The findings highlight key statistics from over a thousand of the industries top executives, including global brands, traditional and digital agencies, vendor and service providers that operate in the digital space, as well as freelance and independent digital practitioners.

Snapshot of results:

81% of brand executives expect an increase in digital projects for 2010. Of this group, 61% said they will be shifting funds from traditional to digital media. Additionally, when asked about “Top Priorities” for business in 2010, respondents indicated a continued focus on Digital Advertising, Digital Infrastructure and Search Optimization, followed closely by Social Networks/Applications.

In addition to industry statistics, contributors provide:

– past and future trends
– current and up-and-coming digital platforms
– explain the evolution of the social media revolution
– address the shifting roles of producers, advertisers and audiences in an on-demand world

In chapter two of the report, Terralevers’ CEO, Chris Johnson and Strategy Director, Scott McAndrew are highlighted as they speak about the evolution of Facebook where they answer the question, “what’s a marketer to do to innovate in this space?”

The information provided in this report by Terralevers’ very own, plus many other experienced digital marketers is invaluable.

To view the complete report visit, http://sodaspeaks.ning.com/page/digital-marketing-outlook

A recent case study presented by Marketing Sherpa shows that social media is a solid marketing tool for generating leads

The case study discusses 6 social media steps to help fill the sales funnel:

#1 Create a blog to start and join online conversation

#2 Establish an active Twitter account

#3 Create a LinkedIn Group (or Facebook page depending on your demographic)

#4 Modify your press release strategy for blogger coverage

#5 Promote social media channels on your company website and in email signatures

#6 Measure growth of social media accounts and web traffic

Results:

Results of the researched company’s social media campaign showed that there was a dramatic correlation between the use of social media channels and the growth of the company’s web traffic and leads.

After only six months, their campaign resulted in:

– 10,230 unique blog page views in Q3
– 280 Twitter followers
– 141 members of their LinkedIn Group
– 155% increase in unique web visitors

The most important thing to note is that the increased web traffic contributed to the majority of the teams leads.

Leads by source:

– 55% inbound web
– 23% trade shows
– 20.5% email
– 1.5% seminars

Marketing-influenced pipeline by source:

– 75% inbound web
– 17% email
– 4% seminars
– 4% trade shows

The following image shows the growth rate of new lead generation (blue), unique web visits (red), Twitter followers (yellow), LinkedIn group members (green) and blog views (purple) through Q1, Q2 and Q3.

Using social media as a marketing strategy is obviously still very young compared to more traditional marketing concepts however, as it evolves it is becoming less and less complicated to track its affect on your brand and your bottom line.

Social media is an incredible way to create strong relationships with hard-to-find prospects, on a limited budget – but don’t be fooled, it’s not easy and it’s a major commitment. To learn more about the exact strategies the company carried out to get these results, check out the full case study on MarketingSherpa.com.

It’s a new year, a new beginning, a new leaf, which means plenty of new opportunities for your web site and online marketing program. By this time, I am sure you have made your own personal resolution list for 2010, but have you taken the time to make one for you web site? To help you get rolling, I put together a list of key strategies for you to consider.

PPC
1.    Test New Ads – Try out new ad variations, it can never hurt to test out something new and fresh.
2.    Update Landing Pages – If you don’t already have customized PPC landing pages, now is a perfect time to implement them. If you are already utilizing them, analyze your results and make modifications accordingly.

On-Site SEO
1.    Rewrite Title Tags – When was the last time you updated your title tags? My guess is that they could use a little refresh, especially if you have added new products, services, and/or offerings.
2.    Fix broken links/URLs by 301 redirecting them to relevant new pages.

Link Building – Set Monthly Goals
1.    Identify X number of link opportunities per month.
2.    Send X number of link requests per month.
3.    Create X number of new pieces of “link worthy” content a month.

Blog  – Set Weekly Goals
1.    Blog X number of times a week.
2.    Comment on X number of relevant blogs per week.

Social Media – Set Daily Goals
1.    Participate consistently, but don’t force it. Tweet & post when you have something to share, not just for the sake of getting something posted.
2.    Ensure your profile bios are optimized to their full potential.

Email Marketing– Set Monthly Goals
1.    Develop a campaign calendar for the year.
2.    Commit to sending X number of emails per month.
3.    A/B split test your campaigns and messaging.

Analytics
1.    Commit to spending X number of hours per week digging into your analytics.
2.    Analyze the bounce rate for the top 20 landing/entry pages of your web site.
3.    Identify and analyze your biggest abandonment pages and modify them for success.

Tools – Test Out New Tools
If you don’t already have a solid list of online marketing tools to help in your efforts, below are a few of my favorites free tools you can check out:

1.    SEOBook ‘s Backlink Analyzer
2.    SEOmoz’s LinkScape
3.    SpyFu
4.    Google Webmaster Tools

Set goals for your web site and online marketing program. Monitor the success of each of them and then modify the tactics based on the results you see. A resolution list is a perfect starting point. And with a little strategy and planning, your web site is bound to be a success!

Easy ways to spice up your social media efforts, with a little help from Dick and Jane.

A new year is synonymous with starts, either on new goals or on older ones that we’d like to take another crack at. Each goal represents a desire to be better than we were last year. A new year is also synonymous with new lists created to make that path toward success a little bit easier.
Whether you just got started in social media or have been playing in the space for years, there are several ways that you can add a little spice, extend your reach, and increase your impact.

1. Grab your name on every social site you can.
You can lay a foundation for continued social engagement by protecting ownership of your brand name, be it your company name or your own name. Sites that allow users to select a unique handle do so on a first come, first served basis, and while some offer restorative action where copyright or trademark infringement is involved, there’s no guarantee that you’ll recover your name in a timely fashion if some other Dick or Jane beat you to the punch bowl. KnowEm and namechk allow you to see where your username has been claimed. Neither tool contains a comprehensive list of all social sites, but they contain most of the major ones and are a great place to start. Signing up for one account is relatively quick; signing up for a dozen can take considerably more time. If you don’t have the time, KnowEm offers to do them all for you for a fee.

2. Pick one new platform to experiment with.
If you’re already participating in the social media space, you probably have an account on both Facebook and Twitter. These are among the most popular social sites, and every Jane has a profile, but Facebook and Twitter are only the tip of the iceberg. Try adding something new to your mix. You might try category platform, like LinkedIn. As the leading social business networking site, LinkedIn’s groups and answers features could be prime space to further a reputation for knowledge leadership. Or try something more niche that Dick hasn’t discovered yet, like 12seconds. Launched in 2008, the 12seconds micro-video platform is increasingly a space of expression and experimentation by creative individuals and companies.

3. Encourage social inside the company.
If you condemn participation in social networks as a distraction from the work at hand, you undervalue the contribution your employees can be making toward your business’ social efforts on the same networks. Social media is a word of mouth tool, and that word can start to spread from within your office. Embrace social as a way of doing business and allow employees to engage social media to connect with friends and each other, you’ll find in between posting pictures of their weekend hike or scheduling a lunch date with Dick, you’ll get featured. They will comment on how much they love the people they work with, retweet that job posting, and take notice when a Jane, a recent connection they may have yet to met in person, mentions she needs to launch an ecommerce site, which just so happens to be something your company rocks at.

4. Take your online social activities offline.
Your online social presence should augment and enhance in-person interactions. Give people a chance to deepen their relationship with you by interacting with you socially even while offline. Invite Jane and others to join you for happy hour or coffee at a locally-owned business. Open up your office space to Dick’s Historical Autobiography Book Club for their monthly gathering, attend the meetup and get to know the club members and what fascinates them.

5. Find at least one way to engage that has absolutely nothing to do with your core business.
All work and no play makes Dick a dull boy. All work and no play makes your company just another dull company. Nerf wars may spring up in the office during the day when you need a break, but if nobody knows, you’re missing an opportunity to showcase a bit of personality. Why not make the last Friday of each month a themed dress-up (or dress-down) day, post the best photos on Facebook and invite friends and fans to write the captions? Or why not take the engagement offline (tip 4) and organize a weekly meetup at your local dog-park for people who have dogs, as well as those who want dogs?

6. Share media and content that inspires your thinking.
The products and/or services you offer are your output, but what are the inputs that shape how you design and deliver these things? Books, blog posts, TED talks, even outside hobbies – the things you read, see and do have the power to influence how you do business. Share the very best of these via your social profiles. At the very least, you’ll give friends, fans and followers greater insight into the philosophies and values that guide you. At best, you’ll develop deeper relationships with customers, prospects and peers as you engage in idea-driven conversations. And if you’re really lucky, you’ll inspire both Dick and Jane along the way.

½. Be helpful.
We aren’t the first to say this, and we won’t be the last, but some tips are just so important that they are worth repeating… Be helpful. If Dick has a question and you know the answer, or can point him in the direction of a useful resource, do it. If it’s not about your company, product, service or industry, still do it. Never pass up an opportunity to demonstrate to your customers, friends and fans that meeting their needs is important to you.

Let these tips be a starting point to get you headed to more social 2010. As you put each of them in play, please share your ideas, questions and successes. Share your failures too, and the lessons that result, so that we can learn from each other and help each other make this year a rockin’ year.

Originally posted to the Phoenix Business Journal

Terralever has become one of slightly more than two dozen companies to be recognized as a preferred developer by Facebook.

The Tempe-based interactive marketing agency is one of 14 companies in the Facebook preferred developer consultant program, which can build programs for the massive social networking platform.

Terralever has been involved with Facebook applications since 2007 and has built programs for companies ranging from Apple and BMW to Red Bull and the University of Phoenix.

“Clearly, Facebook is one of the most innovative companies in the world. In the last five years they have strategically found ways to capture the attention of users everywhere, attracting more then 350 million active users worldwide,” said Chris Johnson, Terralever CEO. “We are honored and excited to be a part of this new program and to have the opportunity to continue to develop new experiences on Facebook Platform.”