“As much as people want to connect through the Internet, the practice also can have the opposite effect: Social Networking Fatigue,” so says the article Social Sites Becoming Too Much of a Good Thing (via: SteinBlog). It’s been noted in Compete Inc’s paper on Social Commerce that marketers are facing the challenge of Social Saturation:

“While social networking sites continue to grow, online socialites are reaching the limit of how many online communities they want to participate in. The average online socialite currently frequents three social networking sites; when polled, these same socialites stated they would consider participation in up to four communities.”

I’ve often thought that it would be a great if people could port their digital persona from network to network; then the burnout rate would be lower. Wouldn’t you love to go over to a new social network and be able to have the basics of your digital identity and related network contacts added without much work on your end?

In a Knowledge at Wharton Podcast earlier this year, on the topic of portable reputation and identity across communities Julie Herendeen, vice president of Network Products at Yahoo, said:

“Openness is the direction that the web is moving. Identity does belong to the user and we really want to be as open as possible with identify while protecting users privacy. What can syndicate in identity? And what things remain unique to the site?”

But is openness the direction of Social Networks?

Ever since I blogged about ID+ last year - which would have reproduced inter-personal networks on digital accounts that were connected in an open peer-to-peer network, enabling new and more effective ways of working - I’ve been waiting with baited breath (well not quite “baited breath” but you get the point) for the day when an online persona could be taken across platforms. Alas, the ID+ site seems to have disappeared; and if Jay Stevens, vice president of sales and operations with MySpace, comments about Bebo, Facebook and MySpace being “unlikely to ever offer an open platform for users to integrate the services offered by these sites” at a recent Marketing conference are any indication, openness is not the direction that Social Networks are moving.

Yesterday I had a conversation with Alf Watt of iStumbler on the train ride home about the very topic of Social Network burnout. Alf, who also works at the Social Networking site imeem (which combines Social Networking with Instant messaging) burst my bubble on the whole idea by pointing out the privacy issues. I guess we can still dare to dream.

The What Have I Been Reading Reading List:

• Online Marketing Ranks Second to In-Person for B2B in 2008 - “Business to Business marketing, in order to be competitive in the Web 2.0 environment, has to be ahead of the trends. According to the Direct Marketing Association, says the report, by 2008 online marketing efforts will be the dominant media for business-to-business initiatives. Traditional direct mail, industry print, and events and promotions will take a back seat to more efficient and sophisticated online efforts.” (Download PDF). See also: Marketing 2.0 : Omniture to Unveil “Plug and Play” Online Marketing Technology
• Plugging In: Can E-Commerce Leverage Social Networks? (via: Media 2.0) “Across the rest of the Internet, meanwhile, including the Web 2.0 realm of social networking, eBay is extending its reach thanks to the work of some of its 1,000 third-party developers. The developers program, now in its sixth year, has created scores of plug-ins and other tools to help people sell, with 25 percent of all eBay listings now being generated through third-party tools.” See also: Can’t Find That Dress on the Rack? Retailers Are Pushing More Shoppers to the Web “Daniel Corsten, a former visiting professor at Wharton who now teaches at the London Business School, says he’s not convinced the new strategy of pushing in-store customers to the Internet will work. ‘What happens is the store turns an impulse buy into rational buying. You come into the store and you want to buy something, but it is not there. You realize you were intrigued about buying [the item], but now you have to rationalize it. This breaks the purchasing process. All of a sudden you think twice.’” While I would general argue that it is a great idea for retailers to push low-selling merchandise and special orders via the web, I can’t help but agree with the quote above.
• A Role for Time and Query Quality in Search Results – “I’ve had people ask me if it was worth keeping older articles and documents on their web sites, especially when information in those documents might become outdated. My response has been that as long as the pages clearly indicate what time periods they are relevant to, and that if the site owners include updated information, it’s easy for people to know that, and find that new information, it can be helpful to them to keep those pages.” Measuring the Quality of Queries, Adding Time to the Determination of Quality and Yahoo Temporal Relevance, oh my. It is posts like this that make Bill’s Blog a must read.

The I Also Glanced Over Reading List:

• Second-Life Makes the (Virtual) Travel Section of the New York Times. See also: Drawing Up a Virtual Marketing Plan (via: Managing the Gray)
• Yahoo! Search Crawler (Yahoo! Slurp) - Supporting wildcards in robots.txt
• SEO Salaries - How Much Should You Make
• Landing Pages for SEO

The Too Cool: goes to Timeline. The Ajax Widget for Visualizing Time-based Data. From the site, “Timeline is a DHTML-based AJAXy widget for visualizing time-based events. It is like Google Maps for time-based information.” (via: http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/11/timeline_ajax_w.html)

“I hope you’re eating something that will fill your soul and mind – I Know - Raphael Saadiq

Posted by: Natasha “That Girl From Marketing” Robinson

You don’t realize how much you live by the internet until you can’t get yours to work (sigh). And can anyone tell me why my internet connection will work on my Apple Powerbook but not on my IBM Thinkpad?? Just another reason why macs are better.

The What Have I Been Reading Reading List:

• The Future of the Micro Site – Consumer Generated Content: (via: Marketing Vox) As I was about to reply to Collin about an off the Blog conversation regarding my feelings on Microsites, (Yes, you do need to blog what you wrote, good stuff) I came across an article about the report from JupiterKagan “Microsites Becoming More Popular” (I can’t seem to find this report, anyone know where I might find it?). “An important component to campaigns that include microsites will be the movement toward consumer-generated content, 34% percent of advertisers planning to use microsites intend to use consumer-created content in their overall marketing efforts. Advertisers who plan to use microsites are planning to use weblog and viral advertising nearly three times as much as those advertisers who are not planning to use microsites. While only 30 percent of companies whose annual revenues exceed US $500 million used promotional microsites in the past year, 45 percent of such companies plan to use them in the coming year. The movement toward consumer-generated content will be an important component of microsites. Such sites are dependent on viral promotion, and allowing users the ability to add their own created content is a great way to engage users and get them talking about the campaign.” In the article they note the microsite created by Organic for X-Men: The Last Stand on MySpace.com as a microsite example, you can read more about the campaign on Search Engine Lowdown. See also: How-To: Harness Word of Mouth as a Media Channel
• U.S. Teens Graduate From Choosing IM Buddy Icons to Creating Elaborate Social Networking Profiles “Over a three-year period, the top sites among teens 12-17 have shifted from those offering a selection of instant messaging buddy icons to those providing assistance with social networking profiles and page layouts. In September 2003, the No. 1 site among teens was Originalicons.com, with teens composing 77.6 percent of its unique audience. In September of this year, sites offering tools to improve social networking profiles with song lyrics, pictures, quotes and layout designs won out with those ages 12-17. PLyrics.com ranked No. 1 among teens, who made up 68.4 percent of its unique audience.
• S–Commerce: Beyond MySpace and YouTube; A new approach for brands to participate in social networking (download the PDF - New Research Reveals Next Wave of Social Networking Opportunities) “s–commerce” - seamlessly integrating commercial and social web. (via: Click Z ) “S-commerce innovators are using one of six strategies to integrated consumers into their sales and marketing efforts: Branded micro-sites; customer reviews and ratings; online customer forums; peer-to-peer transactions; product-focused blogs; and community-created products. By understanding why people seek out social sites and the factors that shape their participation, marketers can explore and create new ways for their brands to thrive within the social web.”

The I Also Glanced Over Reading List:

• Internet Users Watch Less TV: If you have an Internet connection at home, odds are you’re watching less television. Maybe as much as 25% less. Yahoo users are watching less. MySpace.com much (less), the difference is 20%.” (via: Media 2.0). See also: Mobile and Web TV Are the Future for Disney Media: “Content delivered via wireless devices still has the potential to be a big winner, Disney executives believe, despite the company’s decision to shutter its ESPN Mobile venture late last month.”
• SEO is a Business School of Thought - Not a Process “Many “SEO’s” have went through a fairly specific lifecycle of becoming successful entrepreneurs. Stumble into the web. Learn SEO fundamentals. Apply SEO. Rinse. Repeat. SEO’s are the brains and inspiration behind many web 2.0 business models. Sometimes these innovators aren’t even aware that they are applying SEO principles.”

The Too Cool: Goes to (if true) Calorie-Burning Beverage Enviga. “Coke, Nestle claim that it can boost a drinker’s metabolism. Coca-Cola and Nestle are preparing to launch a carbonated beverage that burns calories. The brand uses a blend of green-tea extracts known for boosting metabolism called Epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG).” I’ll believe it when I drink it.

“No matter what goes on I’m still getting mine/ No matter the year/ No matter the place/ No mater the time” - 1-9-9-9 - Common

Posted by: Natasha “That Girl From Marketing” Robinson

The study of the month goes to: Tapping into the Super Influencer: What You Need to Know to Engage the Elusive Young Customer(PDF), found via: Some 13-34s Show High Brand Loyalty: “CNET and Starcom questioned more than 10,000 young people through ethnographies, followed by online surveys and conversations. A small but significant portion of the respondents–between 15 and 20 percent–fell into a category dubbed “Brand Sirens.” Those sirens have a profound network effect on marketing through their ability to influence friends and family via word-of-mouth, viral video and applications such as instant messaging and Blogs, among other media.”

Lots of good stuff in the study, including: How To Insert YOUR Brand Into THEIR Conversations:

• Recognize that word of mouth driven by technology has greater impact than ever before
• Pitch the niche
• Follow the content that they are passionate about
• Give them control
• Connect with honesty, humor and social responsibility
• Rethink Reach: The New Reach and Frequency: Audience (influencers/sirens) X Number of conversations generated by them

Side Note: Some this did remind me of the Leveraging Social Media session from Search Engine Strategies. Such as what Gary Stein said about Marketing to Cliques (You can download his presentation at that link):

• Tightly define your group - What do these people think about
• Don’t be afraid to show features - Let the group come to their own conclusion about what they want to use – more features better
• Support the community
• Clone the tactic with like groups when you know what works

As well as what Scott Meyer of About.com gave as the definition of Success in Social Media: Engagement + Authenticity * Target Audience Reach

See also:

• BuzzLogic Platform Maps Top Online Influencers: “The Web-based application joins other ‘listening’ platforms now offered by companies like Cymfony, Nielsen BuzzMetrics, Waggener Edstrom and Umbria. BuzzLogic hopes to differentiate itself from those offerings by focusing on identifying the top handful of influencers — not merely the most popular, in terms of traffic or inbound links — within customer-specified ‘conversations’.”
• Call for Comment: Social Media Disclosure: “Most consumers believe that content in environments like MySpace or YouTube has been created by non-marketers (Do they?). WOMMA’s goal is to establish actionable guidelines and best practices for marketers working in this media. Join us Wednesday, Sept. 27, at noon EST for a full telephone briefing on the issues surrounding social media disclosure. Call 1-512-225-3050 and enter code 495675# to participate.”

The What Have I Been Reading Reading List:

• Verizon Plans No-Holds-Barred Blog To Engage Consumers : “DeVard acknowledged that Verizon is playing catch-up in the fields of online and social networking. ‘We were asleep at the wheel a bit.’ Verizon will spend 15 percent of its marketing budget online this year, and she said that may not be enough. DeVard said it is critical to allocate a percentage of the marketing budget to experiment with innovative tactics so you can understand how they work for your brand. See also: Blog Ads Must Get Buzz To Work: “New clues about online ads suggest we ‘don’t tell the audience what they should believe, or give them a question that they can answer themselves.’”
• Creative that Makes Friends with Social Networks: “Social Media is a Hungry Mouth, and if you get the audience on your side, you have to feed it. …The notion that the Internet is no longer about creating destination points, but is increasingly about creating content for circulation.” See also: Rules of Engagement – How Brands Join Conversations: “Question from the audience: How do you jumpstart a conversation when it doesn’t exist? Answer from panelists: Send bloggers samples to get them talking about your brands, create widgets that people can interact with on the site, know your influencers.’ Reprise Media, Thank you for Blogging the Online Media, Marketing & Advertising Conference!!! BTW: Make sure to check out this oldie but goodie:User-generated content uncovered: Power to the people
• A Viral Campaign Done Right Ain’t Cheap, Easy : “Here’s the bottom line: mounting a viral campaign requires not only social media, which provides remarkable new tools, but also integration with offline marketing, from street teams and guerilla marketing, to billboards, TV, radio, and print. New media marketing is simply not a substitute for all others. It’s a tool: one of the best ever created. But doing it right ain’t cheap, or easy.” See also: Advertisers Seek Safe Havens on User Sites

The I Also Glanced Over Reading List

• SEOmoz’s Day with Andy Beal: A SEO Consulting firm gets consulting – This is a great read for anyone running an SEO business and many will especially be able to relate to the following: “Transitioning from consulting-based services into a true SEO-product company. It took me several hours to wrap my head around the concept that, as valuable as my consulting can be, it will always be a trade of time for dollars and a system that can’t scale. Building SEO products that can be managed by our team (with my oversight), however, is something we can grow.”
• An SEOs Guide to Proxies - FAQ : After reading about proxies in the SEM 2 .0 discussion on ShoeMoney’s Competitive Adwords Tool recently, I find this timely.
• Sneaker Play- OK fellas, start snapping pictures of your classic Jordans for uploading…it’s a social networking site for sneaker freaks (via: AdRants)
• Does Google Maps have a sandbox? (via: SEO by the SEA )
• Second Life’s Fashion Economy

Posted by: Natasha “That Girl From Marketing” Robinson

Not everyone needs a MySpace page, but everyone should have a MySpace page.” I said this at a recent conference and I could see the confused looks on faces. How could I in one breath tell the audience that they do not need a MySpace profile page, but tell them to get a MySpace profile?

Well in less than three years MySpace has now grown to the point where it is sending more traffic to ecommerce sites than MSN - I’m surprised that MSN didn’t issue it’s own press release the same way that Yahoo did when numbers said that it was being beaten in traffic by MySpace. (See: Yahoo - How dare you say MySpace has more Traffic) My point, who knows where MySpace will be in another 2 years…

In the same way that people squatted on domains of major brands, people are signing up for profile names of major brands (this may not be on purpose, as a person’s nickname may be the same as a brand name). People out there can easily sign up for www.MySpace.com/YourBrand in a jiff…. and if they did, boy could they go to town on your brand.

While I think that URLs for MySpace promotions should be named by the campaign, you may want to do some due diligence and secure your MySpace Brand URLs to ensure that the URL doesn’t get taken. Even if you never use it, better to have it in your name than have someone else using your brand URL.

The What Have I Been Reading Reading List:

• AOL Launches Developer Program for AOL Video Search Engine - “Through its new AOL Video Search developer program , AOL has made available a set of open video search APIs (application programming interfaces) as well as implemented a system for video content owners to submit feeds to the AOL Video Search index through new AOL Director Accounts. For content owners looking to broaden the distribution of their video content, the AOL(R) Director Account program is a free, first-of-its-kind offering for site owners and content publishers to submit feeds to AOL Video Search. Unlike other video search engines, this fully self-service online sign-up and feed management system enables users to make their self-hosted videos easily searchable across the AOL Video Search network within minutes of being submitted.” SEOs start your engines…. I see new articles on Video SEO in the near future - lol. See also: Sponsored Video OK For Three-Fourths of Users: “71% of U.S. Internet users who watch online video prefer to watch and download videos for free, sponsored by pre-roll advertising.”
• B-to-B Web Sales Outnumber B-to-C Web Sales. “This year’s Abacus Business-to-Business Industry Insights Report shows that 40 percent of B-to-B sales occurred via the Web in 2005, a 16 percent increase year over year. These results indicate that B-to-B customers purchase online nearly 10 percent more than B-to-C consumers, who chose to purchase over the Web 31 percent of the time in 2005. The differences between business and consumer purchasing habits support what most marketers have long recognized: business purchases exhibit a different dynamic than consumer purchases.” Ok, does anyone have the actual report, I can’t find it on their website… and I have to see these numbers for myself. See also: Business Searching Beats Sex Queries & Who’s Handing Out The Query Data?
• And speaking of Flex and Search Engine Marketing… Making SEM Work in an RIA (Rich Internet Application) - “Budget for the additional work: You will need to display the content in two different formats, one for search engines and one for your users (of course, without cloaking). Based on how much of the content is in RIA and needs to be indexed, the incremental could be anywhere from 5 to 20 percent of your original budget/effort. Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate: Creative departments and agencies can create great engaging experiences but if SEM goals are not embedded from the start of the project and the site is not coded in a structured format, then you will have issues with SEM.”
• On the Rebound - AKA: The Jump Ship Syndrome of Search Marketing Professionals: “Soul searching is a common theme for SEM rebound survivors. Anne stresses ‘you have to know what gets you excited about this business and motivates you to do good work.’ I think we’re seeing big paychecks being offered, but the offering companies are not providing a role or work environment that keeps the employee motivated. ‘One must like what he does. If the job causes lost sleep, loathing Mondays and ethical compromise then the money cannot offset that.’” Truer words…. See also: SEM industry staffing data

The I Also Glanced Over Reading list:

• The ROI on PPC vs. Affiliate Marketing - (via Biz Report) “If companies invest sufficient time and effort to develop strong affiliate programs, can affiliates deliver a better ROI than PPC advertising? Please note that the purpose of this brief is not to encourage marketers to abandon their PPC advertising in favor of affiliate marketing. Instead we are suggesting that a strong affiliate program can deliver additional revenues with a very favorable ROI.”
• More auto dealers embrace natural and paid search- “Currently 75% of auto dealers use search engine optimization, J.D. Power and Associates says. While only 33% of dealers currently use paid search engine marketing, more than 80% of those dealers say they believe that it improves web site visitation, as it takes vehicle shoppers directly to the dealer web site as opposed to shopping through an online buying service.”
• B-to-B Blogging — Prelaunch Checklist and How to Build Interest. See also: Companies wake up to blogs’ barking (via Modern Marketing )
• Are You Listening? See also: The Social Bookmarking Faceoff

BTW: Make sure to check out Logic + Emotion’s Working Class Blogger Diagram. If it’s possible to fall in love with a blog, I think I’ve fallen in love with this one. Sorry Three Minds, I have a new love.

The Too Cool: Real Simple Furniture. The first week I moved to San Francisco, I bought a table from IKEA and I have literally rearranged it 3 times… ie: rearranged the IKEA box and the tools necessary to put it together… but I have yet to put it together. Finally ready assemble furniture that is actually ready to assemble. (via Springwise) “Real Simple Furniture lives up to its name: their flat-pack furniture can be assembled and disassembled with absolutely no tools, other than a pair of hands. The pieces simply click together using lips and grooves.”

Posted by: Natasha “That Girl From Marketing” Robinson

This past week the company I work for threw an excellent educational event called Interplay. The great thing about the event, is that staffers got to share some of the knowledge in our respective specialties (I discussed SEO and Social Media) with a small group of Brand Marketers. I especially loved the sessions on Usability which introduced me to Flex (of course the SEO in me was like, “Is that Search Engine Friendly?”).

What I enjoyed the most though, was getting to “nerd out” about some of my areas of interest with the attendees. Such as the discussion I had with an interaction designer from Apple who helped me to better understand Interaction Design (A topic I became interested in after coming across the term on a Blog I have fallen in love with: Logic + Emotion), discussing the power of Blogs in an online marketing strategy with a marketer from QLogic, getting to discuss all thing SEO with an online marketer from Micron (finally, I have met someone who agrees that the circus around Matt Cutts’ Blog is ridiculous. Did we really need so many posts about his vacation, people? It is really creepy how much we have in common.), having a web strategy specialist from Broadcom, explain the power of China in the future of the internet to me, and getting to see the cool things that Surfline is doing with Google Earth (finally some practical usage for Google Earth), as well as speaking about brand opportunities in Second Life. But the best part of all, was watching and singing along to Journey songs on a bus while vineyard hopping. I wish we had a video of that one - lol!

Below, you will find a list of some of the topics I discussed in my presentation:

• The role of Blogs and RSS on technology purchasing decisions
• Wikipedia Dominates Brand Search Results
• Does MySpace Have Any Link Juice Power?
• Harvard Business Review on Avatar-based Marketing
• Ford Bold Moves Blog
• Purina Pet Feeds

And FYI – I have decided to take CalTrain, so I will finally get a chance to update this blog on a regular basis. Spending two hours in traffic a day sure took the blogging spirit out of me. Please expect a full blog post this evening.

“Working hard to get my fill, everybody wants a thrill“ Don’t Stop Believin’ - Journey

Posted by: Natasha “That Girl From Marketing” Robinson