Lea Charlton

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Good Marketing #1 – I’m going to “put myself out there” and go way back to the 70′s when I was a kid … YES I am THAT old … There are some funny commercials that are epic examples of “good marketing” :)

I have a client that has a “cursed” Facebook account. No matter what conservative marketing strategies are made, Facebook blocks this client’s ability to add friends after just a few internal invites, therefore the development must come from external resources or personal email invites. Meanwhile, most are friends the client chats with on different pages and in groups. It has become a frustrating situation for this business owner, so … I logged into the account and implemented a new process of adding friends. The client was impressed and wanted to know how I managed to add so many in one day, and a quick witted … ”Ancient SEO Secret” … rolled off of my tongue :)

LOL,  ”ancient SEO secret” is inspired from the old – “Ancient Chinese Secret” – Calgon commercial above (click play and watch it). This funny commercial always comes to mind – over their primary “Calgon Take Me Away” slogan – as a way of teasing someone that wants to know a social media marketing or seo secret that blows them away … an inside joke, per say, that was derived by what I consider to be “GOOD MARKETING” … no matter how corny the funny commercials of the 70s may be (kind of like the styles of the 80s that keep coming to mind … another blog topic for sure! :)

Regardless, the topic here is GOOD MARKETING, SOCIAL MEDIA and SEO SECRETS.

I still watch the commercials with the same interest as I did as a child. The appeal has never been so much as what to buy as how entertaining they are and now I love to gage the different testing and air strategies of this generation of marketing. This is how I confirmed when Facebook and Twitter were finally adopted as essential business marketing sources to major corporations (over the Internet hype), as well as how I learned when to delve into prospecting in particular markets because they were starting to do the same in their commercials. It was exciting to sneak my Twitter comment on CMT while they were hosting the awards … One night, I woke my “hubby” up around 3:30 A.M. to watch the new Axe Body Wash commercial because this was the only time frame where they tested the full version and the condensed versions back to back … to later show the condensed versions during the day / eve. … I could go on and on, but the point here is that you can learn a lot from commercials; as well as the new statistics regarding TV Commercial and Social Media Marketing. People are drawn to videos, flash and social media. Additionally, they are  NOT changing the TV channel, during commercials, as it is presumed that we still do … similar to when I watched commercials as a child … product / program launches are creating new trends and commercials with profound subliminal messages and appeal that will last generations. (Make sure to clarify these for your children … some are like the old Camel logo, cartoons and music … controversial /confusing sexual and political messages). We can accomplish the same in our “online TV show” efforts via videos, flash presentations, mobile apps, etc.

These are obviously a few quick examples of, what I consider “good marketing”. In fact, The Video Consumer Mapping (VCM) study – Council for Research Excellence (CRE) – 2010 statistics of 376 adults observed for 752 days – confirm that I am not the only one to agree (even if YOU are not aware that YOU like commercials, too)!

- 85% of adults watch 26 advertising or promotional breaks. This equates to 73 minutes each day)

- Only 14% of viewers change channels during commercials, compared to 11% just before and 13% just after the commercials.

- 21% of TV viewers change rooms after the commercial, in comparison to 19% before and 20% during the commercials.

- 55% of viewers were solely engaged with media; in comparison to the 45% that were multi-taking during commercials.

“When commercials come on, people stay with the TV. They only go to the kitchen if they’re hungry, and they don’t fight over the remote,” said Laura Cowan, Vice President and Media Director of RJC Advertising and Chairperson of the CRE’s Media Consumption & Engagement Committee. “For years, media professionals have been wrestling with the question of whether viewers actually pay attention to commercial breaks. This new data, the result of actually embedding observers with a statistically significant number of TV viewers, is a major development in terms of learning what people watch and how they watch it.”

How does this all correlate to the “ancient seo secret” – social media marketing – Facebook success? Here are the hints …

WATCH & DUPLICATE …
Study / continuously watch those who are accomplishing the goals that you are not, tweak to apply to your goals and duplicate. Learn from the commercials and videos, as well as the daily strategies that competitors, mentors and online gurus take to become successful.

MULTI-TASK …
You’ve got to be able to do more things at once – don’t get trapped in Facebook alone or doing one major thing in there – develop skills, multi-tasking / multi-channel marketing processes. The same for your overall marketing strategy – mix it up – use different resources – commerical do help; even if just through online video and podcast spotlights.

DEVELOP A SENSE OF HUMOR …
It is social networking / social media marketing for a reason. Make sure to have fun and give of yourself, PLUS you have to dive into online marketing with a sense of humor or you will become frustrated while learning and developing.

NICHE / NEW / PRODUCTS / SERVICES …
“The world is your oyster” when it comes to niche and new; even if you have to become creative and tap in on niche / new ways of presenting your  product(s) and service(s) to target markets. Niche products, new products, niche services, new services or presenting the old to niche/ new markets … put on your creative “thinking cap” each time while knowing that these are where and how you can gain advantages where you were failing to do well. Online branding is everything … keep it fresh!

TEST … TEST … TEST … SWITCH THINGS UP TO “BLOW THEM AWAY” …
This is self explanatory, but I will break it down for those who claim that they are testing and switching things up correctly, though not producing expected results. You have to  step back and do #1 (above) or ask others to help with opinions / suggestions, and “once it ain’t broke” (when you are seeing results – even  if it is just one or two likes or comments) don’t fix it (stop testing) and “go with it” until the trends demand the process again.

Are these suggestions “Ancient Chinese Secrets” to you? Do you not have the time or need hands on help? Contact me for social media marketing / seo secret services or comment below!

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Digg.com, Stumbleupon.com and Technorati.com are a few of your best friends in search engine optimization / social media. They are three of the many isocial sites that you should use regularly. They have organic SEO and Internet Marketing advantages that provide you with more control in increasing search engine popularity in several ways:

1) Indexing (Authority sites help with rapid reads on new websites)

2) Ownership (i.e. Technorati Blog Claim, Digg permits website links, etc/ )

3) Popularity (reaching larger audiences and more regular search engine crawling)

Use these 3 resources regularly for social seo advantages!

August 2008, Matt Cutts excitedly announced that a new Google Search Engine under development called Google Caffeine. He says that this is a new Google indexing system that required a team of architects to recode how the engine search works. SEO experts scratched their heads for a second while watching the interview (see below) and then scurried over to the Caffeine Sandbox (beta test site) to try the new Google engine search features.

The changes were not as apparent as I would have expected to see, though as Matt Cutt’s Q & A page explains,”even power users won’t notice much of a difference at all. This update is primarily under the hood: we’re rewriting the foundation of some of our infrastructure.”,  therefore it is agreed that there was not much to see on the surface. Every once in a while, I would spot a difference in a Google search engine position or two. The Caffeine Sandbox was available until after Google started testing live. I would like to note that I did notices the changes in the SERPS and this is what prompted my return to the test site. It was gone; just the message you see in the image below. I would have hoped they could have kept the Caffeine Sandbox active so that we could study the new architecture a bit longer.

Regardless, it is 6 months later and we are still waiting for the Google Caffeine Launch. I have been telling students and friends to expect Caffeine to launch after the holidays. This was validated when I placed a Google engine search for Caffeine and saw Matt Cutts new blog post, “Expect Caffeine After The Holidays“, in the 9th position on the first page. Guess I do know a little about how the search engine business works -eh? LOL :)

The following is what I have been noticing over the past few months. Google Caffeine may or may not have direct influence on these Google SEO changes, but after using similar strategies over the past 2 years and then all of the sudden not seeing Google search engine results as expeditiously as expected, I would have to say that these are direct results of Google Caffeine OR what occurs during live tests of the new algorithm. I am just grateful – as are most SEO experts – that the changes did not occur during the holidays. One year, Google did make code changes during the holiday season (I think this was two years ago; might have been three years ago). IT WAS TORTURE working on a rather large ASP website project at that time and clients having fits when seeing the page ranks changing on the Google toolbar. Little did they know, I was having fits as well because I was detecting inconsistencies in the SERPS and working double time to adjust metas and launch static pages. Keep in mind that one of the sites had many sets of dynamic metas to adjust for about 20k pages. This included changing the follow attributes until I noticed that the Googlebot was ignoring my desired crawl times. One of the changes of that Google update. The point is that we had to become psychics and work simultaneously in order to increase or maintain rankings DURING A HOLIDAY SEASON – this really ticked me off, so many thanks to Google for not doing the same this year. Meanwhile, wouldn’t it be funny if the Google Caffeine changes are so subtle that they launched it without telling us and will just announce in the 2010 New Year?

I will have to post a “stick foot in mouth” blog in that case – LOL – :).  One never knows what to expect from this company!!!

What should we expect when Caffeine launches?

Caffeine will deliver Google search results faster and better.
- I personally did not see any major SERP changes aside of when logged into Google Accounts.
- The Caffeine indexing system was a bit more refined especially with the PPC & PPC rotations.

Parameter Control enables us to define which duplicate content the Googlebot should ignore.
- Click the Site Configuration tab in your Google Webmaster Tools.
- See the Settings and Parameter Handling – use it.
- This feature will instruct Google to read the duplicate content pages as ONE resource.

I will add more information as I determine Google Engine Search changes. Lets keep an eye out for when Caffeine launches and post comparison notes in the comments section of this page.

In the meanwhile … educate yourself on the new SERP and SEO changes.