Our very own Design, Development and Social Media teams built the Facebook app to coincide with the most romantic day of the year, giving visitors the chance to find out whether 2012 will be the most romantic year of their lives.

As a Facebook user, you need only ‘Like’ the page to get the cogs and springs of the ‘Love Machine’ working.

A series of lifestyle and personality-based questions about your potential husband, wife or civil partner for life will generate a percentage to reveal how likely you are to hear a heart-warming ‘yes’.

The Interflora app is based on data collected from a nationwide survey of more than 3,000 participants. Each person was asked for basic information on their hobbies, lifestyle and living arrangements and, of course, how they think they would respond to a proposal this year.

The Love Machine takes the information that each individual participant enters about their loved one and compares it to the survey data to generate the possibility of receiving their partner’s hand in marriage.

Interflora has been harnessing the power of social media with Branded3 for some time now and has seen a significant boost to its following and overall presence as a result.

Even before development began, the survey itself revealed some interesting stats about the besotted couples of Britain. Women, it seems, are 12% more likely to accept a proposal than men in the first 12 months of a relationship and the chances that they would say yes at any point beyond that stand at 70%. Men, on the other hand, at 63%, are either less enthusiastic about the whole idea of getting married or slightly coyer about admitting that they want to get married.

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Branded3 engineers Interflora ‘Love Machine’

There is an excellent summary of this feature here and examples of how Google favours Google+ here – this post is mainly my thoughts on the service.

When I first tried the system yesterday afternoon I searched for “golf” and Google came up with pictures of myself and some friends on a golf holiday in 2005. For an average searcher they probably wouldn’t think this was amazing but I think it’s pretty mind blowing. To have Google searching the web and images stored in my Picasa albums is just amazing to see working.

I think the way Google has launched this is really clever. In the past both Twitter & Facebook have tried to stop Google indexing all their content and wouldn’t give them full access to crawl sites. Twitter used to give Google a feed of all tweets but turned that feature off and killed the real time search that Google used to show for breaking news events. Now that Google has launched with a massive favouritism for Google+ data we here Twitter making statements saying that this isn’t fair.

For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results anytime they wanted to find something on the Internet.
Often, they want to know more about world events and breaking news. Twitter has emerged as a vital source of this real-time information, with more than 100 million users sending 250 million Tweets every day on virtually every topic. As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter; as a result, Twitter accounts and Tweets are often the most relevant results.
We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.

So Twitter stopped the agreement to give Google a feed of tweets and is now saying that this new system isn’t fair and wants to be included. All Google has to do is agree to include Twitter and ask for full access to data and Twitter will probably agree.

At the moment unless you use Picasa and Google+ or have friends that do then the new system isn’t a major change to the organic results. But once Google gets Facebook and Twitter on board as well as perhaps LinkedIn then this will be amazing.

SEO at present is about getting people to link to sites and the search results are based on a voting system that takes into account how trusted each linking site is. This has no relation to whether the person linking for the site is actually trusted by the searcher or not. I can see in a few years that Google will be focussing more on surfacing sites and search results that a users friends like as well as relying on links from sites that the searcher might have never heard of.

The new changes have a major impact on PPC. A search for “cars” brings up the Google+ results shown below for Ferrari & BMW above the PPC ads on the right hand side of the page. For BMW & Ferrari where PPC is mainly a brand play I’m sure they would much prefer to have their logo and a long snippet of text rather than a PPC ad, especially when it’s totally free.

Getting users to share your content on Google+, Twitter & Facebook has to be a part of your SEO strategy for 2012. Certainly brands need to be working on building up followings on these social networks every single month.

For those people who think this is the end of SEO I can assure you it isn’t. As long as people still search for things then there will still be sites needing to use SEO to get to the top of the list of search results. Whether SEO is about on-site optimisation, links or encouraging sharing via social media sites or some other method is irrelevant.

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Thoughts on Google Search plus Your World

Firstly Google Analytics now has a page speed report which is very good for finding the slowest pages on your site.

Next up is Village Voice who were caught spamming reddit and then said they were very sorry, blamed an agency and said they knew nothing about it. Turns out they were caught spamming Digg years ago. Plenty of people spam social media sites but you need to have the guts to stand up and admit it if you get caught.

A new company is offering digital due diligence services so investors and people buying companies can see whether that company is likely to get hit by a Google penalty or not. Sounds like a great idea aside from that company has a marketing strategy involving outing businesses to Techcrunch. Outing is not a marketing strategy no matter how useful & noble the business idea is.

The big news of course is that the Panda update is still here and hasn’t gone away. We have still not seen a single credible report of a site fixing itself although there will no doubt be a few borderline cases that move in and out of the Panda zone as Google tweaks the algorithm. The sites we have seen so far all have a few things in common:

• Content which is very similar to other sites (gadget blogs get hit by this)
• Content which is duplicated on other sites (ecommerce & affiliate sites struggle here)
• Sites which get all their traffic from Google (a lot of people who focus too much on SEO struggle with this)
• Sites that get way too much traffic from Google anyway (if you are getting 50k visits per day and lose 10k then that is a correction, not a penalty)

Finaly, Overstock.com the big US site hit by a Google penalty recently has now been released from the penalty box. It seems that ecommerce sites can use link spam in the runup to Christmas and then be penalty free by Easter.

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Thoughts on a few SEO things

Presentations are below via Slideshare, any questions drop me a note in the comments.

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Presentations from TFM&A and Some Comms Manchester

According to Quantcast, an online audience measurement firm, Digg’s domestic traffic has dropped sharply in recent months, from 27.1 million unique users in April to 13.7 million in July. By contrast, Facebook had 145.2 million domestic users in June, according to comScore. While not giving specifics, Mr. Desai of Digg attributes the decline in domestic traffic to changes in Google’s search function that resulted in fewer Digg stories showing up in Google searches.

Yet a more pivotal reason that Digg is falling behind, analysts say, is that users are simply spending more time on Facebook and Twitter than they are on Digg. Instead of Digging, many social media users know that they can post a story they like on Twitter or Facebook.

When was the last time you saw a story page from Digg ranking? Now I think about it I’ve not seen one for months. In 2008 Digg used to outrank the original piece of content on quite a number of occasions even though the page added no value aside from a few dozen inane comments.

Some background in a 2009 post from Danny about social media sites. Google is quite right to do this but if Digg wants the traffic back they need to start trying to add some value to the pages rather than just keeping doing something that Google clearly sees no value in.

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Did Google give Digg a penalty?

The network is a strange mix of public and private, and besides advertising those with pages for their business or organisation need to think creatively about how to attract fans.

Here are a few ideas you can put into practice very quickly and form a good basis for Facebook marketing campaigns.

Think SEO – pages are indexed on search engines so think in terms of SEO for a normal web page. Your page should have the right title and also the right URL. When you have over 25 fans you can claim a vanity URL. Chose wisely as you are stuck with this URL and can’t change it. The profile box on the left-hand side of your page is a good place to post keyword rich copy which is relevant to your title. Also use the Info tab to do the same in the fields allocated for ‘company description’ and ‘company mission’.

Custom landing tab – a great way of capturing non-fans and asking them to invite others, this will appear to all non-fans when they click onto your page. Here is a good guide on how to put one together using the FBML editor. The best landing tabs have a composite image (744×477 is the best size in terms of formatting) that tells first-time visitors where to click to become a fan and also includes brand imagery. This sits above an invite friends box.

Images – upload as many relevant images as you can. Pictures are great content for Facebook pages. Watermark all images before uploading to the page with your company logo or website address (if you don’t have photo editing software use Picmarkr), then make sure each picture has a caption which includes your keywords and website address. Tag people in images, especially non-fans, as this will ensure your picture ends up in their stream with a watermark of your company logo or URL.

Fanbox – you can create a Fanbox by following a link in the Edit Page section of your Facebook page. You can then generate Javascript code which you should embed anywhere you possibly can – including your blog and website. Also include your Facebook page address on email footers, business cards and on your Twitter profile to keep the traffic flowing.

These basic steps are a good start and should start to yield results fairly quickly. You can now move on to more targeted promotional activity like Facebook only offers and competitions for fans, polls and RSS feeds from your news page or blog. Facebook advertising is also coming of age after long being the preserve of spammers and it offers an unparalled opportunity to target users based on demographic data, geographical location and personal interests.

Share your tips in the comments.

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Facebook page marketing tips

The question came to mind when I heard that one of my favourite virals of recent times was getting a sequel.

J’aime la Tour

 
Commissioned by visitBlackpool to promote tourism, this clip gives a humorous take on the Lancashire town, comparing it to Paris with a cinematic nod to French cinema thrown in.

This video is undoubtedly very clever, but by viral conventions isn’t particularly humorous, is a little slow paced and doesn’t really wow.

Despite that it still attracted 60,000 viewers on YouTube because what really made it stand out when uploaded earlier this year was its ability to jump vertically between different media channels. It had crossover appeal which was capitalised on by an effective PR campaign.

While people sharing your video on facebook, twitter, or even through good old fashioned emails is great, it is never likely to have real penetration unless it migrates to other channels.

Mainstream media remains the biggest game in town and successful PR  increased viewers and the video’s spread. National TV coverage included BBC News and Sky News, with newspaper coverage including the Daily Mail and a host of regional newspapers and websites.

This was in effect a great PR campaign based around a solid, but not spectacular video.

Repeat success?

A lot what we do online is about the ‘new’. People want  a succession of exciting, fun and interesting experiences (as trendwatching.com pointed out, describing it as ‘nowism’).

The media is no different and is constantly looking for fresh content and stories – especially in the 24-hour news cycle we now inhabit.

In that environment can we expect virality to strike twice? It does sometimes as Blendtec’s Will it Blend? series and VW’s recent Fun Theory videos have shown -  but they are the rare exception.

If you can get one of your viral masterpieces off the ground you should consider it a success – thousands have failed in the same quest, lacking the resources to mount a PR campaign that would help it jump between channels and gain mainstream penetration.

In essence though viral videos are an opportunity to look creatively at your brand or products. While they might not lead to overnight YouTube stardom they can give you a fresh perspective on marketing . People like fun, engaging content –whether it is a video, news story, tweet, picture, or podcast.

So will the second video share the same success at J’aime la tour? I’ll let you be the judge of that…

Love, from Blackpool

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Viral videos – can you catch the bug twice?

Making this a compulsory field simply made me abandon the company profile setup.

The ongoing process of disseminating information about ourselves and our associates online through social networking has an insidious feel about it. Even the most honorable of useful applications usually requires us to hand over login details to complete strangers. Whilst it is often in our own interests to do so, that decision is also often not ours to make. Often we have casually promised confidentiality on the one hand, then casually ignored it on the other. You think you haven’t? How many online services require – in their terms – that you promise to keep your password safe? Well how about paragraph 3 of Twitter’s terms:  http://twitter.com/tos. If you are on Twitter, you agreed to:

You are responsible for safeguarding the password that you use to access the Services and for any activities or actions under your password.”

Or if you look at the same URL on an iphone the agreement simply says:

You are responsible for keeping your password secure”

I agreed to that too. Yet I have given my Twitter password to at least the following: Ping.fm; Twitpic; Twittalator; Echofon; Netvibes; Friendfeed; Facebook; Some third party Facebook App; Apple and who knows who else. If we can’t share the logins with other applications. Mashed up services lose much of their value. But how do we reconcile breaking every agreement we enter into, without so much as a second thought?

OpenID was set up as a solution to this problem… But I doubt that system is infallable either. I feel Big Brother bounding in through the great big open barn door that we refuse to close or even see. Legislation won’t help either, if we so blatantly ignore agreements that we enter into, then legislation has already failed.

Dixon.

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You ARE a Law Breaking Black Hat. Yes YOU!

]]> http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/you-are-a-law-breaking-black-hat-yes-you/feed/ 6 http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/an-honest-banker/ http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/an-honest-banker/#comments Thu, 08 Oct 2009 08:10:24 +0000 Joel Turner http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/?p=3168 Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for Search engine optimisation

An honest banker

]]> Parting the dark clouds that have surrounded the British banking sector since the beginning of this recession is not an easy thing for those trying to market them.

Cutting through the mistrust that surrounds them requires personal relationships with customers, something that many of the bigger banks had lost interest in.

Not an easy job, but one that UK internet and telephone bank First Direct is trying to tackle head-on. The bank, a subsidiary of HSBC, has no branches yet consistently proves a consumer favourite.

Harnessing the excellent word of mouth reputation that the brand enjoys, First Direct has decided to let the world know what its customers think of it – be that good or bad. The bank’s new microsite offers a level of transparency that has never been seen before in the industry. Scraping social media feeds, blogs and forums (much like Squidoo’s heavily criticised Brands in Public site) for mentions and allowing customers to comment on the site.

Natalie Cowen, marketing communications manager for First Direct, explained it thus:-

“The new microsite is a very open and transparent way of projecting the voice of our customers.”

“Pssst- this is any company’s best marketing collateral”

Word of mouth is one of the most powerful and well-trusted marketing tools out there, but amplifying its effect outside of your community of customers and their friends, family and colleagues has always been difficult.

That is until now. First Direct has not only recognised that customer testimonials are their strongest marketing resource, but also that they could do something completely different to other banks by letting good comments sit alongside bad comments and compete for share of voice using crude real-time social media graphs and keyword clouds.

The really clever bit is that the bank has then taken a mixed selection of comments and is using them as part of a wider print, digital out of home and online campaign. Not only are these comments amplified online, but also offline in the wider media.

First Direct has tried this approach before through a series of TV ads that featured customers talking about their affection for the brand.

They didn’t have the same resonance because they lacked authenticity – only offering the good and not the bad.

Consumers are a lot more savvy than we give them credit for and First Direct has recognised people’s dissatisfaction with being spun a story, particularly in the personal finance sector. Now more than ever we realise that banks aren’t infallible and First Direct’s transparency flips the perception that banks are secretive, monolithic organisations on its head.

In showing its human side First Direct has reconnected with current and prospective customers and reinforced one of its USPs – industry-leading, personalised customer service.

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An honest banker

]]> http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/an-honest-banker/feed/ 5 http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/who-does-social-media-best-marketers-or-prs/ http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/who-does-social-media-best-marketers-or-prs/#comments Tue, 06 Oct 2009 07:11:53 +0000 Joel Turner http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/?p=3133 Not getting the rankings you want? Hire us for Search engine optimisation

Who does social media best – marketers or PRs?

]]> Marketers and PRs have always enjoyed a fairly uneasy co-existence. Often based on mutual misunderstanding that unease has only grown in recent times as both come to terms with the power of online advertising and PR and the growth of  social networking sites.

Traditionally the ones with the bigger budgets, ad agencies have been staking their claim and winning some high profile social media accounts. Invariably when an ad agency muscles in PR execs claim they’ll lack the ‘right tone of voice’ and the ability to ‘position’ brands. They also suggest that the PR skill set is a better fit for social media.

While marketing agencies can comfortably integrate social media into their campaigns (they already often have responsibility for online advertising, email marketing and to a lesser extent SEO) the main criticism levelled by PRs remains their inability to handle the mysterious duo of tone of voice and positioning.

So what the hell do they both mean? And is that the only difference between PRs and marketers when it comes to carving up the social media cake?

What you say

Ultimately this is what tone of voice means. It is the simple realisation that the same way of communicating a brand to consumers or businesses can no longer be used across different media. It used to be the case that marketing involved two types of copy –  creative words for advertising and editorial words for PR.

The world is a different place now – what you say and the way you say it can differ widely from Facebook to Linked-in and a corporate blog to Twitter. They all offer different audiences which are receptive to different approaches.

I would suggest that one of the major differences is that PR has been a little quicker out the of the starting blocks. Sensing the demise of traditional media and the continual squeeze for column inches, PR agencies rapidly embraced the opportunities available online  to their clients, including blogging and podcasts. Used to adapting their writing for different audiences while keeping a brand’s identity and key messages intact, PR agencies were well placed to take on social media responsibilities.

The charge often levelled at marketers is that they don’t do this very well and instead focus on the mediums they have complete control over – such as banner ads and PPC -  which allow them to focus on selling rather than fostering conversations.

Where you say it

The positioning bit is even less complicated. Online it amounts to effective blogger outreach and the ability to identify and nurture advocates on social networks. Again it comes down to strong writing and that much hated phrase – ‘people skills.’

PRs have been doing this for some time in a different form. Media relations does differ from blogger relations but many PRs have the right mix of skills to engage bloggers, learned from their experiences courting journalists. They also have the research skills to identify and target publications or blogs that are best suited to their story.  

SEO catches a steal on both

The SEO industry has quietly gone about doing what is does best, while ignoring both marketing and PR agencies clamoring for the role as guardian of the social media landscape.

SEO uses whatever tactics it can to build links and improve SERPS. It has a separate - but not incompatible - set of concerns to marketing and PR and has seen the benefits of forging good relationships with bloggers, as well as the benefits of using social media and social bookmarking sites like Digg and Reddit – all with the aim of producing high quality links to sites.

The activities of SEO closely align with online PR and if done correctly PR can prove hugely beneficial to SEO in a way that other digital marketing techniques can’t.

PR doesn’t do itself any favours

Good PR practitioners draw out and tell stories, enhancing or protecting their client’s reputation – all the while ensuring they fit within target media by providing the right tone of voice and positioning (oh yes, they’re back!). None of this is an easy mix to get your head around and does take experience.

At the best of times people struggle to understand traditional, offline PR and now agencies are faced with also explaining what they do online. I would suggest that PR doesn’t do itself any favours in this respect and can also fail to highlight the SEO benefits of good online PR.

PR agencies need to explain their place within the digital marketing mix more assertively and ensure monitoring online is as rigorous as it is offline.

And the winner is…

Some would say this whole debate is futile as PR is a subset of marketing. In part they would be right, but it does matter in the sense that both marketing and PR agencies are struggling to find new identities during the current media revolution.

In contrast SEO has never known anything but change – the goalposts are constantly shifting as new ideas take hold and the mysteries of Google’s constantly evolving algorithms are unlocked.

At this time anyone can lay claim to expertise  (just look at this SERP) but it will be those who react quickest to the shifting sands of social media and remain flexible and open-minded who will claim the business. In this respect both marketing and PR practitioners could do with taking a leaf out of SEO’s book.

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Who does social media best – marketers or PRs?

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