Exploring Marketing Technology

Category: Web Marketing

New ways to create and measure sites so they improve their ability to bring your best customers closer and attact other individuals just like them

  • Social networks for business verticals are less-known benefactors of OpenSocial

    The OpenSocial alliance among a variety of consumer social network sites (SNSs) — most notably MySpace — is designed to allow marketers to leverage as never before the word-of-mouth strength of a social graph. This story about the less-known business vertical SNSs (such as those catering to physicians and telecom professionals), reminds me of this exciting reality:

    Any b-to-b site with an active community and the flexibility of adopting OpenSocial can reap the same benefits.

    Below is Google’s somewhat dorky video explaining the OpenSocial API.

    [youtube 9KOEbAZJTTk]

    Also, here’s a terrific explanation of what a social graph is, why marketers should care, and what they should do with the sites they manage in light of this information.

  • Third party site works with Twitter to promote virtual IOU’s and real beer

    Twitter interests me more for what it foreshadows than for what it does. This micro-blogging system is currently little more than an electronic water cooler, where information workers and students can socialize and blow off steam. But it also has aspects of a social network — a very open social network. And that means it has the potential for some exciting innovation.

    I look at Twitter as a VisiCalc of this era. VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet program for the personal computer. Primitive by modern standards, its greatest feat was setting a new paradigm. Spreadsheet progams look odd to those who have never used one, but for adopters, it is a powerhouse– something that many couldn’t imagine working without.

    Of course, that’s the magic of the paradigm, not VisiCalc specifically, which was usurped by competitors within a few years of its release.

    Sooner rather than later, a Twitter competitor will take the new behaviors of microblogging and deliver something extraordinary. This will be something we would not want to live without. Similar to Excel, this competitor will arrive with bigger, smarter features and scoop up market share.

    Or maybe I’m wrong and Twitter will do the impossible. Perhaps it will be able to hold onto and expand its base of users as it morphs from networked toy to networking tool. Here is one ray of hope for Twitter that they will have a better chance than VisiCalc did: Twitter courts and encourages third party developers.

    May I Buy You a Beer?

    Which brings me to the latest Twitter-affiliated innovation: Along with Foamee, Twitter users can now publicly proclaim their intentions to buy someone a beer. Foamee then tracks the IOU, and even allows for scores to be settled and ledgers closed. Good work, Dan Cederholm of SimpleBits Design, for this fun Twitter add-on. Here’s a screen cap showing my IOU (middle posting) from this morning:

    A Foamee Thread

    Twitter continues to innovate by opening up to the creative community at large (another fun example is this mashup: TwitterVision). How incredibly smart. This week at ad:tech New York, Google announced it has organized several major social network sites to back an open source way of building and sharing widgets. It’s called OpenSocial.

    The folks behind Google (and its own social network, Orkut), wisely recognize that innovation can only be accelerated through the “network effect.” And innovation is, after all, a key to survival. They might have even been inspired by watching Twitter.

    If so, Google owes Twitter a beer.

  • With Bizographics, ZoomInfo unveils a novel step toward more targeted b-to-b marketing

    It’s a silly name but a sound concept: Segment the registered users of your site by industry, company, title, education, seniority and role within the company. For good measure, throw in some traditional demographic items like location and gender. ZoomInfo calls this bizographics, or business demographics. The new ad offering was just announced to the press, and at the ad:tech New York internet marketing conference.

    In his most recent blog entry, senior ZoomInfo VP Russell Glass gives the following example of how bizographics can precisely focus an online ad’s viewers: “[a company offering an elite credit card] would have the ability to place advertising in front of users that fall within the “senior executive” bizographic, and focus messages based on this targeting — i.e, ‘CEOs now hear this.’”

    Frankly, I don’t see that as being the best example of the power of this new ad platform, because the same ad buy could be made on sites specifically visited by senior executives. But I certainly see the potential. For much of my career I’ve yearned for a way to reach, say, “service industry executives with HR responsibilities.” If ZoomInfo’s system can allow for that type of pinpoint marketing, I see bizographics succeeding in spite of its unfortunate name.

    Update 11/06/07: ad:tech is the stage for another, and similar, announcement. Facebook certainly has its share of user information to mine for ad value. Today one of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s big announcements was the launch of an ad platform called Social Ads. This targets ads based on member profile data and “spreads” these ad virally. It appears to be a B-to-C version of Bizographics. One that naturally has far greater reach. Scratch both of those statements. A clarifying article on 11/07/07 talked about what makes Facebook’s offering unique from other ad platforms. It doesn’t necessarily make for far-reaching ads. But their impact could be much greater, due to a word-of-mouth effect.

  • Who is Nick Haley and how did he earn his Gen C credentials?

    Apple fan Nick Haley, an 18-year-old “fresher” at University of Leeds, got his first Macintosh computer when he was three. Earlier this year his enthusiasm bubbled over. The new iPod Touch inspired him to create a 30-second TV spot, complete with an infectious musical bed. But this act of creation didn’t earn Mr. Haley his Generation C strips. The “C,” after all, stands for Content, or Co-creation — as I described earlier in this post. No, he truly arrived when he posted the ad on YouTube.

    If that were the end of the story, it would be inspiring enough. Here is a young man who acts on the urge to express his love for a brand — and home-grown video production — with like-minded fans and friends.That’s pretty cool.

    But as this New York Times piece puts it, “Leave it to Apple to … think differently.” They rung him up, flew him to Los Angeles, and turned his concept into their newest TV spot. Kudos to the production expertise of Apple’s long-time ad agency, TBWA/Chiat/Day, for not distorting Haley’s vision in the final product (it’s a pity they had to ditch the catchy song from the original, by the Brazilian band CSS).

    It’s no surprise that Apple gets it when it comes to helping their wired fan base spread the word about their products. I look forward to seeing how many other brands follow suit. For me, at least, user-generated ads will be a major force in slowing down my inclination to zoom past commercials on my DVR.

  • If Strunk and White worked in adjoining cubicles

    My dusty but beloved writing stylebook by William Strunk and E.B. White urges the reader to use active voice, not passive voice. The AP Stylebook agrees, adding: Write in an inverted pyramid, with key information in the first sentences, and supporting but less vital facts trailing behind.

    All of this conforms to how people consume information found in printed magazines and newspapers. Do these rules hold up to web reading habits?

    According to web usability demigod Jakob Nielsen, the answer is yes and no.

    Initially in his recent post, he asserts, “Active voice is best for most Web content.” But he concedes that the web has introduced a new concept to consider. It’s called the information scent.

    This refers to “the extent to which users can predict what they will find if they pursue a certain path through a website.” He continues as follows:

    Using passive voice can let you front-load important keywords in headings, blurbs, and lead sentences. This enhances scannability and SEO [search engine optimization] effectiveness.

    It also breaks several sacrosanct rules of conventional writing.

    Neilsen defends his points well. He says that users scan content so quickly that they “often read only the first 2 words of a paragraph.” [Emphasis mine.] Therefore, he contends, this summary statement is acceptable by all measures except scannability and SEO effectiveness:

    Yahoo Finance follows all 13 design guidelines for tab controls, but usability suffers due to AJAX overkill and difficult customization.

    To fix this, here is his proposed solution:

    13 design guidelines for tab controls are all followed by Yahoo Finance, but usability suffers due to AJAX overkill and difficult customization.

    Much better! Why, you ask? He explains it this way:

    Because “13” is sufficiently short, users will likely fixate on the first 3 words, not just the first 2, when they initially scan the blurb. Also, numerals beat words when referring to specifics, so starting with “13” is even better at attracting the scanning eye.

    I’m sure Mr. Strunk and Mr. White are spinning in their graves like a pair of synchronized swimmers. But in fairness, they never faced the challenge of an audience so awash in information. It’s a challenge that I, for one, find exciting. But I still will occasionally dip into this duo’s eloquent love letter to clear writing. I’ve probably reread it 20 times.

    What’s more — and this is quite sincere:

    I feel sorry for writers who did not fall in love with writing back when active voice reigned supreme.

    Scratch that. How about:

    Writers raised on passive voice, necessitated by information scents, are a target of my pity.