The Bivings Report - powered by the Bivings Group

I was checking out my Facebook news feed today at lunch, and noticed two very different levels of reaction to status updates from two of the pages I am fans of.  One of the pages belongs to San Antonio Spurs basketball hero Manu Ginobili and the other is for online retailer Zappos.com.  As you can see below, Ginobili’s update quickly generated 61 likes and 39 comments, while the Zappos update only got two likes and comments.

This despite the fact that Zappos has 16,745 fans as compared to Ginobili’s 11,663, and the fact that Ginobili’s update is in Spanish and probably can’t be read by many of his fans.  If you go through the fan pages of Ginobili and Zappos, you’ll see that Manu’s updates consistently produce significantly more activity than Zappos updates.  Why?

Manu is a living, breathing person, so his updates fit in seamlessly with the news feed items produced by my friends and family.  It is written in the first person, and publicizes an upcoming charity event he is putting on.  It is actually the kind of update I’ve seen my actual friends write.

Even though I have chosen to be a fan of Zappos, its updates feel a bit like advertising when I see them in my Facebook feed.  They seem out of place and I tune them out.  In Zappos’ case, I tune them out despite the fact the company is doing a great job of making their updates compelling and providing a behind the scenes look at their brand. 

As I’ve written before, Facebook is still primarily about friends.  In this example, Ginobili’s fan page looks and act a lot more like my friends do than Zappos does.  So it drives more activity, and Ginobili’s fans are more engaged with his page than fans of Zappos.  It will be interesting to see if this changes as Facebook continues to grow. 

The Bivings Group attended the Politics Online 2009 conference in Washington, DC, earlier this week to listen to and participate in a large-scale dialogue on how technology is and is going to change the political landscape. Here are a few important lesions I learned.

1. Politicians are getting technical

Actual politicians, not just their IT and communications departments, are learning how to use web tools. Secretaries of State and members of Congress addressed conference attendees on how they’re using new technologies to make their jobs more effective and to improve communication with constituents. Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner is working with Google on the Google Voting Information Project.

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen manages her own Facebook and Twitter accounts, rather than handing the task off to an assistant. The cost of stressing out her communications team a bit is worth it for Secretary Bowen to connect directly with Californians.

(more…)

Energy advocates and online mobilization experts gathered at the Center for American Progress Action Fund in Washington, DC, to talk about successes and challenges in gathering activists both on and offline.

Heather Lauer, director of online strategy for the Pickens Plan, talked about the process of gathering the Plan’s 1.5 million-plus participants and building a social network to connect members. (As the technical partner of the Pickens Plan, The Bivings Group has provided ongoing development and support on the Plan’s web communications network, including its primary site and its Ning-based social action network, Push.)

Other organizations, such as the Energy Action Coalition, built supporter bases through focusing on the goals of a particular voting group. The EAC spread its message among young people throughout college campuses and focused empowering the under-30 vote.

No matter the strategy, all members of the panel agreed on the importance of coming together in a combined effort to face energy challenges and the need to reach out to a growing base of supporters.

"We have a tremendous amount of education that needs to be done and we also have no time. This is not something that the good guys are going to win on the inside," said Brad Johnson of ThinkProgress.org.

In order to reach a broader base, Michael Silberman of 1sky.org emphasized 1Sky’s tactic of organizing community events around key issues, which can be effective both online and off. Silberman and his team worked with Greenpeace to organize rallies and push constituents to contact legislators during Congressional recesses.

While enticing audiences to participate in specific events can be a highly productive way of gaining new members, participants on the panel said it is not as effective as maintaining a long-term, sustained strategy of support.

“We’re relying on dedicated Moveon.org members to motivate other members,” said Michael Sherrard, who works on Moveon.org’s recent Power Up America campaign. “To make real progress is going to require a building crescendo of organizing.”

On top of organizational strategy, the panel discussed effective messaging methods of both within their supporter bases and with the public. Panel moderator and Associate Director for Online Advocacy Alan Rosenblatt recommended using a closed-audience SMS communicator to share messages within your group, and “leveraging Twitter makes that dynamic more public” if you are aiming for a broader audience.

The Center for American Progress Action Fund promotes regular InternetAdvocacy Roundtable discussions as part of its Wired for Progress program. Online attendees can watch live streams of discussions and submit questions online. A listing of past and upcoming Internet Advocacy Roundtables is available here.

While doing some research for a talk I gave a few weeks ago, I came across a fantastic blog called “Found in the Cache” that examines how hospitals are using the social web.  The blog’s author, Ed Bennett, is tracking which hospitals maintain their are own blogs and have launched presences on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.  Below are the pure numbers:

• 206 unique hospitals total have some sort of social web presences (one of the items below)
• 124 have YouTube channels
• 117 have Twitter Accounts
• 82  have Facebook pages
• 22 maintain official Blogs

While Bennett does not claim to have searched for presences for every single hospital (or hospital system) in the United States, to put this number in context there are an estimated 5,000 community hospitals in the U.S.  You can view the raw data of Bennett’s findings here.

Interestingly, Bennett has found that Twitter use by hospitals is growing rapidly, and that it will soon be the most popular social tool for hospitals.  The chart below shows the Twitter growth trend as compared to YouTube.

You can view a list of the most popular hospitals on Twitter here.

In reviewing the actual presences the hospitals created, I found the quality of the accounts to be all over the place.  Some truly great work is being done, such as the Twitter account of Henry Ford Health System, which recently got some press for live tweeting during a brain operation.  Other accounts were clearly experiments, with little activity and interaction.   We’re at the beginning of a trend here, with the hospitals using these tools blazing the trail and establishing best practices for others to follow in the years ahead.

I’m going to keep reading Bennett’s blog, as I think the social web has great potential to help hospitals deepen their relationships with the community’s they serve.

The current version of our company website has served us well.  It performs well in search engines, consistently generates leads and highlights our most important marketing resource, our blog.  This bit from a blog post I wrote when the new site launched in August of 2006 sums up the strategy behind the current site pretty well:

We finally started making progress when we shifted the focus to our blog.  We decided to keep www.bivings.com really simple and not to overwhelm folks with lots of brochure content they don’t want to read anyway.  We brought our blog content front and center.  Our goal with the new site is to tell the story of our company a little bit every day by writing about the projects we are working on and the things we are passionate about.   We think this will be much more effective than producing some sort of slick, heartless brochure site.

But, in Internet time, two and a half years is an eternity, and it is time for us to take a fresh look at the site.  Starting with the homepage, we are starting to go through through Bivings.com section by section and figuring out what improvements we want to make to both copy and design.  We go through this process with our clients all the time, but for obvious reasons we can’t write about it.  Since we are our own clients on this one (which is always a dicey situation), we figured we would write about what we’re doing as it happens as a way of soliciting feedback and educating people on how the process works.

With that, here is a quick summary of what we’re trying to accomplish with our homepage redesign:

• Better explain what we do through a very straight forward homepage Flash feature.
• Show examples of the projects we are working.  We really don’t do this at all now. 
• Better highlight some of the research we are conducting and our contributions to the open source development community.
• Continue to feature the blog, but to a lesser extent than the site does now.  Our blog readers generally go directly to the Bivings Report, so we don’t need to make the homepage of our marketing site quite so blog heavy, although we do want our new users to find headlines quickly and read it.
• Modernize the site design and clean up the site’s CSS.

With those goals in mind, click here to view a rough wireframe I developed for the new Bivings.com homepage.  Let me know what you think in the comments, as I’ll be simultaneously posting this here and distributing internally for feedback.  Stay tuned for more updates as we get further in the process.

Papa Johns Pizza is currently running one of the cleverest Facebook promotions I’ve seen.  Between now and December 1, if you sign up to be a fan of of Papa Johns on Facebook you will receive a coupon for a free medium pizza (fineprint: you must first purchase a pizza online, which insinuates this is really a buy one get one free type of things).

The promotion appears to be working, as Papa Johns has gone from 10,000 fans to 168,509 fans in a matter of days.

Not bad, particularly when you consider the coupon isn’t any different from the ones the pizza chain mails out and offers on their website every day.

Thumbing through the October 2008 issue of PRSA's publication Tactics was a lot like opening up my RSS folders and taking a look around. Featuring an internet/web 2.0 multiple page spread, the issue covered topics ranging from maximizing the benefits of Twitter to the convenience of using FriendFeed. Most of this seemed familiar — maybe a little too familiar, as I had seen all of this content in one form or another on various blogs over the last year or so. Even their articles (the Twitter article in particular, which made use of a numbered list) read more like blog posts than articles. Well, so what?

If the editors of Tactics thought it was worth covering this on such a grandiose scale (the web 2.0 features run eight pages), it simply means that the PR industry as a whole is still learning about these new technologies and how to use them to advance their clients' desires. I mean, these articles are quite basic, and nothing I wouldn't expect most of our readers to at least be aware of — like an entire persuasive piece on why your company needs to Twitter (sound familiar?)

Seeing this spread caused me to stop and re-examine perspectives for a moment. While people 'round these parts may take these basic elements of digital PR for granted, this area of the industry is still relatively very new. Sometimes it is good to go over the fundamentals, to relearn your basics. If you have access to PRSA's trade publications, I'd check out the issue — a good introductory summary of some elementary online PR tactics — maybe show it to your boss and convince them to start a company Twitter account.

Yesterday I streamed a recorded webinar from MarketingProfs titled "Beyond Trade Show Metrics: Improving Your Event Marketing ROI," conducted by Skip Cox is CEO of Exhibit Surveys, Inc.  This interested me since we had a booth at the Personal Democracy Forum for ImpactWatch last month.

During the webinar Cox discussed the concept of selective attraction.  This is basically a smarty pants way of describing the importance of attracting the trade show attendees who are the most interested and in most need of the product that an exhibit is pitching.  These people are much more likely to purchase the product or service than other attendees, and devoting time to someone who isn't interested is a waste of time when a potential client is left alone.

This makes sense since, considering our recent experience, not everyone who is attending a politics and technology conference is interested and/or in need of a media monitoring program.  For instance, I met plenty of great folks at our ImpactWatch booth, but some didn't need what we offer.  However, I hope we attracted the people who were interested in our product.

So how am I going to tie trade show exhibit metrics and search engine optimization together?

Well, selective attraction is also an important concept in SEO.  For example, we may optimize the ImpactWatch site to rank high for searches for a general keyword like "news," but a very small portion of these searchers are interested in a media monitoring product.  Perhaps they simply want to know how the stock market is doing or what Punxsutawney Phil did on Groundhog Day, not reputation management. 

Thus, it sometimes is wasteful to invest in ranking well for a general keyword.  That's why the long tail of search is an important factor to consider.  Although focusing on appropriate long tail keywords may attract fewer site visitors, if a greater portion of site visitors is coming from a more niche term are likely to convert from a visitor to a customer, that is a better practice — especially since it is probably less competitive to rank well for a niche term.  

To learn more read our SEO Basics white paper; we discuss selective attraction in the keyword section.

In many ways, I've learned more while explaining a concept than I do reading or listening about it.  That's why it is always intriguing to explain Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to someone who doesn't work in the realm of web development. 

Over the weekend, I was explaining SEO to a librarian I know. During this conversation I was trying to explain the field to her in terms that I assume she would understand.

For example, I explained that a search engine is like a librarian whom people approach to find the most relevant information about a topic.  In the case of search engines, people ask by using a keyword.  Then the search engine provides a list of sites in order of relevance.

To do this, I explained, that search engines gauge many factors of each information source that a librarian must also consider.  These factors include: the age of the source, who cites (links to it on the Internet) it, how often it is updated, etc. 

During this discussion she mentioned something that intrigued me.  Librarians, like us all, need to conscientiously work to avoid providing biased information.  For instance, a patron may ask a librarian for a book about the librarian's religion, and the librarian may feel compelled to refer the patron a book written by someone who sheds a positive light upon the religion.  Whether this is truly the best book or not, the librarian must refrain from unduly emphasizing one factor of relevance over others.

Likewise, search engines must also work to avoid providing biased information.  This was the case years ago when they weren't as selective with the link factor when assessing a site's relevance.  Many web developers would create virtually useless sites to a human that were chock full of links (aka "link farms") to sites that they were trying to get ranked well.  The search engines eventually became more discriminating when assessing links to prevent such manipulation so that they could provide less biased results to those who used them to search for information.

Although I've understood the concept of link farms before my discussion with my friend, her comments helped me understand SEO in a better way.  Thus, I would suggest to anyone to explain the complexities of their field to someone else.  It helps.

We're excited to post a new document about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to the research and articles section of our site.  This is an important discipline in web development.  It is the process in which one tries to boost how search engines like Google and Yahoo! rank a web site when they provide search results to their users for specific keywords.

Many people openly discuss SEO on the Internet, and we wanted to contribute to the discussion by writing our document, SEO Basics (click to download it in PDF format).  While there are many great resources out there, we hope that we present things in a different way so that we can help more people understand this field.  We hope you like it and welcome your feedback.

In it we briefly define SEO and then discuss keyword selection, title and meta tags, content, site structure, link properties, and content management systems (CMS). It is important to note that in this document, we focus on on-site optimization.

There are many aspects of a web site that one can control, and we have focused on the major ones.  Having said that, there are many factors that a site administrator cannot control that have major influence on a site's search engine rankings.  One such factor is the links pointing to a site, and collecting and managing the links pointing to a site is a very important part of SEO that we do not focus on in this document. So, please keep that in mind as you read our document.

In case you didn't know, Tuesday, June 17th is a big day… for the Firefox community.  That's when Mozilla will release Firefox 3.  It also hopes to set a new Guinness World Record (they've been some wacky ones) for the most software downloads in 24 hours on what it dubs "Download Day 2008." In fact, on the day's official site, people are asked to pledge to download the new browser on that day.

Firefox is one of the most popular alternatives to Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, and it has a cult following.  Thus, it is not surprising that Mozilla, the non-profit organization behind it, actively taps into this crowd to spread its product, and Download Day is one way that it can help foment excitement with the fans.

The whole concept of creating a special day to set a new world record may seem gimmicky, but it is also creative.  While a more traditional advertising and marketing campaign might promote the release of the new browser well, Mozilla likely lacks the funds to adequately pull this off on a global — or even national — scale.  Further, Firefox is an Internet-based product, and advertising and marketing is different on-line than it is off-line.  However, that's not necessarily a hurdle since a well devised scheme can cheaply and quickly turn into a viral phenomenon.

While I bet existing Firefox proponents will make up most of the potential world record participants, the novelty of helping set a record might attract some people to give the browser a test drive.  However, the hoopla is mainly for the current user.  It gives them a chance to revel in using the program.

Are you excited about Download Day 2008?  Do you like to have special days to celebrate your favorite products? 

The Bivings Group is a busy web development firm, and as such we don’t always spend the time we should on our own websites. As a consultant, you focus so much on helping clients that sometimes you don’t spend the time to help yourself.

In an effort to improve the performance of our own online program, we are going to take some time this summer to update the content, graphics, etc. on our main site, our blog and the website of our principle product, ImpactWatch. One of the first things we are doing is looking at ways to improve our performance in search engines. Our sites do pretty well in Google, but, like anyone else, we want to do better. We know that search engine optimization (SEO) is an ongoing process, and that if we don’t consistently put in work our ratings will drop. (more…)

In our post announcing the launch of our Bivings Twitter account, I mentioned being inspired by the way other companies/organizations are using Twitter (what is Twitter?). The organization that I was thinking of specifically when I launched our account was Zappos.com. Lots of organizations are jumping on the Twitter bandwagon and using the tool to publish RSS feeds and have one way conversations. But very few at this point are using Twitter to actually engage with customers and stakeholders. Zappos.com is one of the few.

Zappos has set up their own Twitter micro site to highlight the company’s use of Twitter. The site features:

• A “Beginners Guide to Twitter” that does a good job of explaining what Twitter is exactly.
• A leaderboard, sorted by number of followers, that lists all Zappos.com employee Twitter accounts (252 of them). By doing this, Zappos is empowering all their employees to engage with customers through Twitter.
• A reverse chronological list of all employee tweets.
• A reverse chronological list of all Zappos.com mentions on Twitter.

Importantly, Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh is the company’s most active and followed Twitter user. Just in the last few days, he has used his account to:

• Share some details about what he’s up to personally and professionally.
• Provide some behind the scenes info regarding what its like to work at Zappos.com.
• Launch a Twitter contest asking people to help them rewrite their confirmation emails.
• Incubate an idea for polling customers on Twitter.
• Explain why he is using Twitter.

Don’t believe they are into it? Check out Tony’s business cards.

Zappos.com is successfully using Twitter to put a human face on the company and engage with customers more deeply. I’m impressed. If we do half as well with our own Twitter account, I’ll be happy.

An interesting study crossed my screen recently.  According to this press release, media agency Starcom USA, behavioral targeting network Tacoda, and digital consumer insight company comScore collaborated on a research study whose results call into question how well click rates on ads measure a consumer base.

The study states that only 6% of the total Internet population represents 50% of the clicks on ads.  Online media companies may use click rates as points of negotiation with their clients, but if this study is accurate, that measurement is not a clear view of how many people are seeing these ads.  Further measurements from the study show no correlation between display ad clicks and brand metrics, and show no connection between measured attitude towards a brand and the number of times an ad for that brand was clicked.

So who are these clickers?  Reading some forums concerning the topic led to some interesting, and occasionally probably ideas:

• Young children that may click more than they should
• Overly frugal consumers fiendishly looking for a great deal
• First time Internet users
• Employees who click on their own ads to raise metrics
• Professional ‘ad clickers' who are hired to click to raise metrics

The ‘Heavy Clicker' is profiled in the study.  These users are typically between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40000.  They also spend four times more time online than the typical Internet user and are more likely to visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites.  Clearly, these are not typical Internet users, nor are they the type of people that many of the above suggestions implied.

As I mentioned in a past blog post, measuring click rates is archaic and unnecessary.  Ads on the Internet are not what they were promised to be-noninvasive and simple.

I think that it's actually sad that what could have been a great aspect of the Internet (essentially, selectable commercials) has been destroyed thanks to pop-up ads, spam, scams, and the need for online metrics.  It's time to move on to a new form of online advertising.

Let's face it; China needs to bolster its reputation before the Summer Olympics begin.  Otherwise, the several countries that are already considering boycotting may, in fact, do so.  In my opinion, it would be a shame if a past representation of political and economical unity were to be halted.  After all, if this one year is a bust, future Olympic games may follow in failure.

PRWeek recently ran an article in their online resource that the Chinese government was interviewing potential US and UK-based PR firms in the hopes to gain some positive pre-game press, prior to the events.  However, no PR firm has admitted to being in the bid war for this lucrative account.

(more…)