Dear God, it’s me Natasha, please don’t let me start seeing articles calling Second Life Optimization, SLO in the near future. And please forgive the SEO in me who could not resist buying the domain names SecondLifeOptimization.com… ah hem and VirtualWorldOptimization.com. (FYI:  C.C. Chapman of Managing the Gray owns SecondLifeMarketing.com and VirtualWorldmarketing.com)

The What Have I Been Reading Reading List:

• Second Life Optimization – “Yet as with so much of emerging media, I’ve learned to stop questioning why people use it and to start embracing what can be done with it. …The universal principle of search engine marketing applies: You want to be there when they’re looking for you.” See also: Bridging Second Life and Amazon.com. Virtual World Optimization Shortlist:
• Title Tags should include a few important keywords
• Descriptions: Adding keywords to the description can help virtual stores come up for relevant searches
• Link Optimization: In Second Life, if marketers own multiple properties, they can include billboards for visitors to teleport around to each one.
• Advertising: An advertising network for Second Life, MetaAdverse, allows property owners to post billboards, and marketers can advertise on them and track the visitors.
• Moms Respond to Word of Mouth Marketing: “Most moms–67%–would rather get information from a peer than a celebrity mom. The best way to reach them is not through daytime TV–who’s got time to watch?–but through their friends; one study found 91 percent of mothers prefer easy-to-find brands that other moms recommend.”
• Video, social networks to surge in ‘07: “Social networks are estimated to attract $280 million in ad dollars this year, according to eMarketer. Online video-sharing sites are estimated to attract about $385 million. EMarketer estimates that $15.9 billion will be spent in online advertisements in the U.S. this year. That means social networks and video-sharing sites only attract about 1.8% to 2.5% of total online ad spending. Will the gap close?” (via: I Want Media) See also: Boost Mobile pushes it’s phone-based Mobile Social Network, Hookt

The I Also Glanced Over Reading List:

• Overlooked Link Building Opportunities – Discounts via Customer Service for web site mentions. What a great idea!
• Branding via Search Ads: “Now, some advertisers are taking a broader view of search, buying terms they want consumers to associate with their brands, even though the searchers clearly aren’t hunting for their products.” See also: Does anything come close to SEM for online customer acquisition?
• 68 million U.S. Internet users performed an Internet Yellow Page (IYP) search online in July “This represents a 46 percent increase versus year ago. Yahoo! Sites and Verizon SuperPages garnered the largest share, with 23.9 percent and 20.1 percent, respectively.”
• Social Bookmark Scripts & Widgets - Thanks for the code… now I just have to implement it
• Spy Fu Competitive Research Tool (Similar to GoogSpy)

The Too Cool: Goes to the YouTubers Video. It is a 9 minute short film about the YouTube community compiled from snippets from YouTube videos that is a video response to The Beauty of Being Human Video. It’s like watching a great documentary short on a sub-culture. I can only agree with Pete Blackshaw it is “captivating”. Of course the SEO in me, thinks Mick B, the creator should have also dropped a URL in the end of the video so I could find out more.

“And you may ask yourself / Where does that highway go? And you may ask yourself / Am I right? Am I wrong?” - Once in a Lifetime - Talking Heads

Posted by: Natasha “That Girl From Marketing” Robinson

After having a conversation with a brand marketing manager this weekend about how she and the other marketing managers at her company interact on campaigns I’ve come to the following conclusion: “Integrated Marketing is like Communism. It sounds great on paper, but doesn’t work in reality.” (Update: Unless you you are JoinRed.com)

The What Have I Been Reading Reading List:

• Putting the Fun in Functional - Using Game Mechanics for Social Software – An excellent presentation on how successful social media sites like MySpace are like a game (via: Web Strategy by Jeremiah):
• Collecting: Impressive collections = bragging Rights
• Points: Redeemable points drives Loyalty & Social Points expree svalues of the “game”
• Feedback: Draws attention through movement & change and accelerates mastery
• Exchanges: Are structured social interactions
• Customization: Increases Investment and creates barriers to exit
• 6 Minds on Why Blogging Matters: Including - Peter Blackshaw of Consumer Generated Media: “Advocates for Blogs, myself included, talk a mean and persuasive game of customer intimacy, community, engagement and so-called “participation.” The problem is that that vision is often at extreme odds with the company or brand’s existing listening infrastructure: consumer affairs (call center, feedback forms, online surveys).” Eric Kintz of Marketing Excellence: “Marketers have become fixated on big influencers in the second part of the twentieth century: national newspapers, broadcast TV networks and star radio personalities. Now the pendulum is swinging back and marketers should start paying attention to Bloggers-influencers. Marketers will need to identify first the new key Blogger-influencers in their space… and treat them more and more like some of the other influencing constituencies such as analysts or journalists.” Also included are: Dan Greenfield of Bernaisesource, Will Waugh of Marketing Maestros, David Churbuck of Churbuck and David Armano of Logic + Emotion
• Advertising & Social networks: Bakespace, Classmates and Dates, oh my. Finally an article that explains the different advertising options in social networks (without me having to search). See also: The Score: Social Networking Sites
• Viral Seeding of Video Clips Beats Video Banner Advertising – I just came across this post about a Benchmark test from Universal McCann stating that ,“viral seeding drove 14 times more views than video banners.” While the view of the writer is obviously skewed toward Viral (it is from a Viral company), it would be good to see the actual study.

The I Also Glanced Over Reading List:

• Hidden Market Research on Ebay, Amazon, and Others (via: Media 2.0)
• University Study Reveals Rich Data on Bloglines Feeds
• Quantcast Open Ratings Service
• How to dominate image searches

The Too Cool: Goes to IBM’s use of In Banner Video Chat: You can video chat with sales reps via the banner ad. LiveBanner, is from AVivocom.

“Liberty you’re so free / Why don’t you come for me / Take me away from the Rat Race” – Liberty Jones – The Shakes

Posted by: Natasha “That Girl From Marketing” Robinson

Well more news seems to be coming in… guess everyone is back from conferences, events, yahoo, etc.

The What Have I Been Reading Reading List:

• The Trifecta of Multimedia Search: The current state of video search, The current state of audio search and The current state of image search. Niall, you rock! I need to print these posts - they are that good.
  
• Choice Kills Conversion: “Users are coming to your site or landing page with a goal in mind. Optimization is the work of anticipating that goal and finding the right messaging so the user knows this is the place to fulfill it. Optimization is not about asking questions or presenting choices. Nor is it, in my opinion, about trying to persuade users to behave in a certain manner. You should have done that work BEFORE the user got to your page.” See also: Google Website Optimizer program. The Website Optimizer allows you to optimize your landing pages
• Freemiums: 9 Tips from VCs to make Your Freemium Service Soar (via: SteinBlog) “1. Have a product or service that truly stands out 2. Know your upselling plan from the beginning. 3. Once you’ve decided that a product will be given away for free, don’t change your mind. 4. Access to your product should be just one click away. 5. Make sure the major bugs have been exterminated. 6. Harness the collective intelligence of your users. 7. Keep improving the product to give users more reasons to stick with it. 8. Identify a range of revenue sources. 9. Timing is everything”

The I Also Glanced Over Reading List:

• DuggTrends (via: Micro Persuasion) Cool tool to plot Digg Trends and Forcasting which stories will make it to the front page of Digg
• Organized Wisdom - The collaborative health information community. (via: WOMMA). Good idea, especially in light of all the information on the use of the internet in health care research. See: More Americans rely on the internet for important health information, Eight in ten internet users have looked for health information online and Blogs and health care
• What Kind of Ad network is Right for You – Excellent article showcasing the different types of ad networks.
• Top 5 Search Marketing Opportunities for 2007 – PDF. I like the new chart that they have on SEO vs. PPC Conversions which includes average website conversion rates.
• David Armano’s Excellent Presentation: Blog’s Eye View (Power Point)
• Loyalty Programs Can Be a Waste of Money
• Second Life Hits One Million Accounts

Too Cool goes to: The Making of HP Hands. Pretty cool video on the creation process of those cool HP Celebrity hand commercials.

“A note to my opponents / Yeah I got now and I always got next ‘cause I seize every moment / I’m an opportunist with ambition / Keep an eye on that number one spot before it wind up missing” – We Got Now – Little Brother

Posted by: Natasha “That Girl From Marketing” Robinson

Note to self regarding Caltrain: Do not put your coffee lid down in order to add sugar to your coffee. You may get really sick and be out of work for nearly a week. Ok, that may not have made me sick, but that is what I’m going with.

 Note to others regarding Caltrain: If you are riding Caltrain, do not do work. Especially if you ride between all the tech stops from San Francisco to San Jose. This means you Yahoo Guy; completing your Powerpoint presentation on the train, bad idea. And you too Quicken Girl; reading your corporate email on the train, not a good idea. 

And speaking of riding the train: So I’m going through my normal morning blog reading ritual on the train on the way to work, when I click over to the post CSS History Stealing Applied to Black Hat SEO. I see that he’s having a contest: Whoever creates a funny description for his site that incorporates his key target phases in 300 charaters or less wins $250.00. So following the process I usually use for Meta Description Copywriting I created the winning description. $250 for 5 minutes of work, can’t beat that. My Shoe Closet The City of San Francisco Traffic Court, thanks you.

BTW: You know you need a break from Search Engine Optimization when you win a contest and they ask you what Anchor text you want for the link back to your site and you ask for the text surronding the link as well! SEOs gotta love’em. And speaking of SEOs, see also: Thanks for the Game: It’s Been Fun Beating You.

The What Have I Been Reading Reading List:

• Forrester has been on a roll lately. From: How Consumers Find Web Sites In 2006. Generations’ Media Habits Shape Their Site-Finding Behavior: “To plan effective integrated campaigns, marketers must start with search and layer on site messaging in the media that resonate with target consumers: buzz, blogs, and banners for Gen Yers, deep search and word of mouth for Gen Xers, print and product packaging for Boomers, and the written word for Seniors.On “How consumers have found websites that they have visited in the past month”: 71% from general search engines (Why Search Engine Marketing is important), 46% from a link on another website (Why link building is important), 41% word of mouth.” (Emphasis is mine). Forrester Recomends that Marketers should:

1. Use search engine optimization as the backbone. All consumers favor search as the best way to find Web sites. Smart marketers will prioritize their search optimization efforts to ensure high relevance and ranking.
2. Orchestrate media channels by generation. Search is an essential part of the marketing mix, but marketers must leverage generational IQ to make smart choices about what other channels to include and how to portion the dollars.
3. Design creative to bridge cross-channel gaps. To capitalize on an optimal media mix, marketers must ensure that their creative goes the extra mile to help consumers bridge the gap between channels with which they’re engaged and the Web site itself.

• Also from Forrester: Profiling Social Network Users In Europe: “Social network sites are used by 17% of the European online population: In the UK, 34% of online consumers are members, making them Europe’s biggest users of social network sites. Users are young, Net-centric, and have bought into the social computing vision — they are heavy users of RSS, blogs, and podcasts in addition to being members of social networks. Almost 70% of social network users go online daily — compared with 52% of all Internet users in Europe. Around 19% of social network users have listened to podcasts and 10% subscribe to RSS feeds. MSN was one of the top three players in all the countries we surveyed — building its social networking presence on the back of its successful Web portals.”
• The 3 corners of radical trust: “But this media [the internet] requires a level of interaction where all other mediums have not required before. Most of the time, some sort of front end, basic interaction with a “flash toy”, game or otherwise seemed enough to keep the consumers coming to a site. But in reality, these offered little to no true communication with the client. In the end, the interest dissolves and the flash bit is used less and less. The sites that have offered true forms of consumer dialogue are the ones that are winning.” I’m currently on an online marketing mental tanget: What makes a site useful? Good to see others are pondering this. See also: Listening to the Pulse of the Internet
• Public Relations Social Link Invasion: “But what can happen is in our zeal to make it easy for people to share content (or in this case, press releases) we encourage social media spam in the form of “illogical submissions” to venues that aren’t really appropriate. Thus embedding quick submission links to certain venues can create a stream of inappropriate submissions.” Thanks Eric. See also: Vote for ChangeThis Manifesto on Social Media Optimization.

The I Also Glanced Over Reading List:

• 18 Questions Your CEO Forgot to Ask When Building Your Website. This post highlights why Internet marketing Consultant, Todd Malicoat is on everyone’s Blogroll (he’d be on mine if I ever got around to adding one): he creates resource posts that you bookmark and comeback to over and over. If I were a business, especially one with limited resouces, I would bookmark this post.
• Cool Tools: Ning - “A platform for creating and sharing Social Web Apps… you have the power to create your very own Social Web App in a few easy steps.” (via: Conversation blog). See also: Slideshare: “A kick-ass! new way to share slideshows on the web.” (via SEOmoz). BTW: : I love that that is the description that they write on their slideshare blog!
• Web 2.0: Problems of Measurement

The Too Cool: Goes to Big Spaceship’s Flash Effects Engine (via: Three Minds@Organic). From the Three Minds Blog, “Originally created for the Nike Air ‘Lift-off Experience‘, our friends at Big Spaceship have now opened up the source code for public consumption. It is an engine that allows you to experiment with Flash effects ranging from blend modes to bitmap filters. You then have the ability to take your creation and implement it on your own site or project. The latest release allows the integration of video and your own background images.”

“My heart is like a marching band / I’m a fan in the stands / Yes I am ”- Morris Brown - Outkast

Posted by: Natasha “That Girl From Marketing” Robinson