Episode #185 - January 27th, 2012 Intro How to interact on Twtter: Include #MktgUp in your tweet! On the show today is Karen Rubin (@KarenRubin), Mike Volpe (@MVolpe) and Kipp Bodnar (@KippBodnar) As always, all the old episodes are in iTunes. If you like the show, please leave a 5-star review! Anyone is welcome to come by the show to watch as part of the live studio audience - 4pm Friday Question of the week: What's a common business blogging mistake you've seen, and how can you fix it? Special Guest: Kipp Bodnar Co-Author of The B2B Social Media Book and [ ] at HubSpot How did the book come about? The first chapter in the book is titled "Why B2B is better at Social Media than B2C" tell us why? What are the reasons that B2B marketers don't use social media? do you have tips for how they can overcome some of these? You also talk about why when it comes to reach, more is always better. Does that mean in the quality/quantity debate you are on the quantity side? What the #1 thing you want people to take away from the book? Headlines #McDStories Backfires for McDonalds http://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-twitter-campaign-goes-horribly-wrong-mcdstories-2012-1 A twitter campaign by McDonald's backfired when people started sharing the wrong kind of #McDStories McDonald's kicked things off on Thursday with the hashtag #MeetTheFarmers, in a campaign meant to draw attention to the brand's guarantee of fresh produce. Later in the day, however, the burger company used a dangerously vague hashtag: "When u make something w/ pride, people can taste it," McD potato supplier #McDstories Fingernail in my BigMac once #McDStories I was surprised I didn't know there was actual meat at McDonalds #McDStories Ordered a McDouble and something in the damn thing chipped my molar #McDStories I lost 50lbs in 6 months after I quit working and eating at McDonalds #McDStories Emailed statement from McDonald's social media director Rick Wion We quickly pulled #mcdstories and it was promoted for less than two hours. Within an hour of pulling #McDStories the number of conversations about it fell off from a peak of 1600 to a few dozen. It is also important to keep those numbers in perspective. There were 72,788 mentions of McDonald's overall that day so the traction of #McDStories was a tiny percentage (2%) of that. With all social media campaigns, we include contingency plans should the conversation not go as planned. The ability to change midstream helped this small blip from becoming something larger How did the hashtag really do? Using Hoosuite, we were able to pull up the mentions of the hashtag for the last week 1/19 - the day the tag launched, there were 2347 mentions of #McDStories 1/24-1/27 - 24,115 mentions of #McDStories Mostly related to the press around the backfiring campaign Marketing Takeaway: Be fearless... but have a backup plan! Too Many Ads is Bad, Unless you are Google http://searchengineland.com/too-many-ads-above-the-fold-now-penalized-by-googles-page-layout-algo-108613 The “page layout algorithm” — takes direct aim at any site with pages where content is buried under tons of ads. We’ve heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s difficult to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Cutts told me the change will impact less than 1% of Google’s searches globally, which today’s post also stresses. Another issue is that ads on Google’s own search results pages push the “content” — the unpaid editorial listings — down toward the bottom of the page. This is a site-based algorithm that looks at all the pages across an entire site in aggregate. Although it’s possible to find a few searches on Google that trigger many ads, it’s vastly more common to have no ads or few ads on a page. Marketing Takeaway: Be valuable to your potential customers and they will love you for it. Google's New Privacy Policy http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2012/01/google-plans-to-merge-more-user-data-across-its-products.html http://www.google.com/policies/ http://pandodaily.com/2012/01/24/larry-page-to-googlers-if-you-dont-get-spyw-work-somewhere-else/ SPYW = Search Plus Your World All of your data is now being centralized, and will be used to target content and ads to you, among all Google services. Scary or awesome? The content of your Gmail might affect the ads you see on YouTube, or what search results you get. Is Google selling their soul? Marketing Takeaway: It's not what your policy says, it's how you use it. Facebook Timeline Coming to Business Pages http://www.fastcocreate.com/1679443/facebook-update-yes-brands-are-coming-to-facebook-timeline-open-graph "There’s a lot of speculation [about Timeline]," says Carolyn Everson, VP of global marketing solutions at Facebook. "The goal has always been to have your personal experience on Facebook not be so different than the brand or page experience. And right now, it is different. You have Timeline and you have a page-brand profile. So we are absolutely moving in the direction to sync those up. We believe that brands want to be able to curate how they’re represented in a more visually pleasing way, and we’re in the midst of trying to figure out how best to do that." As for the Open Graph, the platform that has enabled third parties such asSpotify and Netflix to create apps on top of Facebook’s network, Everson says the company is still in the early stages of bringing brands on board. "We’re just getting started with Open Graph and are focused on working with developers and brands to build good Timeline app experiences for users," the Facebook spokesperson says. "New apps are rolling out slowly, with an emphasis on the types of apps that help people express themselves on their Timeline. Brands should focus on building apps that fit people’s lifestyles, such as appealing to their love of fashion, travel, fitness, or cooking. But right now, the Facebook team is focused on exploring the best ways to incorporate brands with its products. "We’re working brand by brand," Everson says, "and frankly, industry by industry." Marketing Takeaway: Update your Facebook business page! Marketing Tip of the Week Less