Dan Soschin

Building a Social Media Team
Depending on the size of your company and your exposure to social media platforms, you may need to build a social media team, rather than just relying on a single individual.

As I have stated before, if your social media team is just one person, you should really focus on ensuring that this individual has a strong marketing and business background, knows how to understand your business objectives (especially as they pertain to social media), has analytic skills, is a good communicator and has strong customer-focused skills.

Notice how I didn’t say “has a strong understand of social media technology”. To me, this is actually the least important, and it’s only important once all those other aspects of the roll have been full met. This is because social technologies are changing each year. Would you hire someone because they have mastered MySpace? Friendster? No! So why would you hire someone who has only mastered Twitter or Facebook? The bottom line is that just because someone is familiar with these technologies, doesn’t make them an expert. These technologies can be learned and mastered by smart people with a good marketing foundation.

Liana Evans for ClickZ, writes an article about assembling a team from across multiple departments – the departments that all have a stake in social media. This is a novel approach to constructing a team, and I can certainly endorse the strategy if you can actually field and support such an investment. If not, I suggest an equally successful strategy: partner with key POCs in each department.
- Connect with a department manager
- Pitch the value of social media to the organization
- Explain how their department will play a role
- Set expectations (turnaround times, hours, resources, etc.)
- Establish well-documented procedures and policies
- Communicate regularly with the department stakeholder
- Provide regular feedback to the department manager
If you follow these steps, you don’t need a six-person social media team; you can run social media yourself for a smaller business, but still have the support and endorsement of a larger group of individuals – ultimately positioning you for success.
Google, 2012 and SEO

I’ve long been a major complainer when it comes to low-quality content sites gaming SEO with big bucks and dedicate resources all with the goal of being in the first few organic SERPs (so they can steal traffic from higher quality sites).

The bottom line is that people like myself (and great sites like SEOmoz) are busy producing good content – which is where they should be spending their time; not gaming results to get high rankings like eHow and About.com. If you have ever come across a useful, meaningful article from one of those sites, please let me know.

However, those sites bring Google billions of dollars because of ad sharing programs such as AdWords.

But, Google has finally realized that if users find valuable content, that quality user experience will pay better dividends in the long run versus spammy sites or low value sites.

So, Google has been rolling out a number of new programs that place emphasis on social signals, authority and semantics and a little bit less on “all that other stuff” that big companies have mastered gaming over the past 5-10 years.

Read a great article by SEOmoz on this very subject, and how you can make sure your site is positioned for success in 2012.
Are Tablets Increasing the Number of Bad Clicks on your Ads?

If you are a Google AdWords advertiser, then you have the option of targeting tablet users with your ads. With the growing popularity of tablets, and the fact that studies show increasing home use for activities such as browsing, advertising is a huge opportunity.

On the Pingdom blog, they discussed a recent report about the increasing use of tablets and how they are generating CTR’s for ads that are performing 37% better than comparable ads in desktop/laptop targeting.

One hypothesis is the “fat-finger” problem. Simply put, on small screens, viewing a clutter website can be difficult – and interacting with it – especially click small links, can be quite a challenge. It is very easy to inadvertently click the wrong link. Similarly, if you are trying to scroll and there is an ad near the edge of the table, you may accidentally click the ad. I’ve done this many times.

The results is a click-through of the ad. I try to hit back as soon as possible.

The major search engines claim that they are able to filter out these types of clicks most of the time – clicks that result in an immediate bounce. However, I have not be shown definitively that this is indeed the case, nor provided any data to support this. Of course it is in their best interest to not charge advertisers for these clicks as it will erode their ROI and the advertiser will not continue spending on campaigns. So for now, I’ll have to take their word for it.

But, perhaps we are not far away from a scenario where on certain devices such as small-screens (tablets and smart phones), when you click an ad, perhaps you’ll get a quick prompt saying, “would you like to continue to view this link”. Maybe something like this is a good way to keep people from miss-clicking and to protect advertisers who ultimately pay the salaries of the search engine purveyors.
Truth in Advertising

Quick lesson: if you are doing a video, advertisement or other piece of content and a person would reasonable assume it is a live feed (or current feed), but it actually isn’t… don’t show it, or use a disclaimer.

In other words, if you are showing a video of a blimp’s view of a stadium during a football game, but the footage was filled weeks ago, you need to tell people that. Otherwise, it is a bit untruthful and lacks transparency. You’re basically assuming that your viewers are dumb and don’t care.

Here’s ESPN’s gaffe during a recent broadcast.
Social Media & the Job Search
Most users of social media post things without thinking about the ramifications.

Think about it… look at what your friends are posting:
- Political comments
- Opinions on hot-button issues such as religion, abortion, gay rights, gun control
- Derogatory comments about a product, person or service
- Photos (drinking, being ‘stupid’, partying, skimpy-clad)
Now, if you boss showed up and said show me your Facebook page, would you be okay with that? Would it hurt their opinion of you? What if you are a liberal and pro-choice and the hiring manager of a company you are interviewing with is a die-hard GOP faithful. Gonna land the job?

Employers should check in on candidates and employees – what they do in the public space can be a potential liability. If an employee is doing something inappropriate, it can cause real damage to your company – and I’m not just talking about sharing company secrets or dishing on a co-worker. If they are berating customers or being irresponsible, is that how you want your business portrayed in the public space?

The real challenge is coaching your staff to be responsible. I preach, “don’t ever say or do anything on social media that you wouldn’t want your boss or mother to see.”

With that strategy, it’s hard to do wrong in the social space. Don’t give someone a reason to fire (or not hire) you…
Google’s New +1 Social Extensions & Their Impact

Example of a Google Social Extension

If you are a Google AdWords advertiser, pay close attention to a new ad extension recently released, “Social Extensions”.

These will show how many people have “+1” your Google+ page along side the ad. This is basically a very strong social signal. For instance, if I run a search for pizza joints in Reston, Virginia and see an ad that has been +1’d by a couple of people in my Google+ circles, it’s going to catch my attention more than an ad that doesn’t. And I’m probably going to click the ad.

Here’s a short article by Google on this new feature.

For a more in-depth look at the impact of this new feature, check out this article by SEOMoz.

When you pilot these extensions, however, you need to remember why Google does what it does: profit. Google wants people to click ads, as that is how it makes money. And it knows that social signals lead to higher CTR. So, as an advertiser, you need to understand if that higher CTR is translating into a higher conversion rate for whatever your goal might be. If not, you’re essentially getting more clicks that aren’t doing anything on your site.

So, pilot carefully and wisely to see if Ad Extensions are the right fit for your business.
The Role of Technology in Marketing

As you know, I spend a fair amount of time focusing on marketing technology and marketing automation. So, when I recently came across an article by Gennipher Weeks entitled, “Why Marketing Needs to Play Nice with IT“, it caught my attention.

There are a few statements that I don’t agree with:

One example is that marketing will often take on a technology project in the name of it being a “marketing project,” when they would be better off collaborating with the IT department. Marketing doesn’t have the technical expertise to do it well, so they end up in various sorts of trouble, often with scaling or security. These are particularly problems with mobile and social technologies. Either the company ends up in trouble, or IT has to come in and fix up the mess, both of which aggravate the relations between the two departments.”

My problem with this statement is that more often than not, I can say the exact opposite of IT. While they may understand the technology of mobile and social, they frequently do not understand the business impact and applicability of the technology.

Conversely, tech-savvy marketers not only understand and identify new technologies, but they also understand the business impact and applicability.

I find this to be the case in most organizations.

It is possible to build a tech-savvy, analytic-oriented marketing team that can master technology issues identified in Gennipher’s post, especially in technology-focused industries. I know, as I have done this. The modern marketer must have a solid command of both technology and analytic insight in order to be successful. Just ask the people I hire. These skills are no longer independent of marketing. Any marketer who doesn’t possess these skills will eventually be usurped by those who do. IT is simply a tool in the marketer’s toolbox… it is no longer a foreign science that needs to be outsourced to another team.
YouTube Upgrades Insights into Robust Analytics
YouTube’s effort to remain the dominate force in streaming video received a nice boost today with its upgrade of the legacy-driven “Insights”.

The old Insights dashboard which provide somewhat rudimentary data such as number of video views, geographic preferences and how viewers found your video has been significantly enhanced – both in how the data is presented, but also what type of data is provided.

Take a look at the new YouTube Analytics dashboard:

The New YouTube Analytics Dashboard

The first thing you’ll notice is that the data is presented in a similar manner to Google Analytics (I’m still unsure why they don’t straight-port GA’s functionality to YouTube, but that’s for another day to discuss).

What I’m really digging is the “engagement section” which shows you how many video likes/dislikes you’ve received, along with comments, shares and favorites. This type of engagement data is more in tune with social media’s role in the discovery of video.

You’ll also find data on how the videos are being watched… be it on a mobile device, embedded player on a website other than YouTube, and so on.

The entire suite of analytic data is just fantastic. Plus, you can select a host of date ranges for analysis (including custom ranges) through a more intuitive data selector). Here’s a quick breakdown:
- Views – let’s you examine how many views your videos are receiving
- Demographics – gender and geo data
- Playback Locations – YouTube vs. embedded players, mobile, etc.
- Traffic Sources – how folks are discovering your videos
- Retention (a favorite of mine, somewhat unique to video) – shows how people drop off your video over time
The next set of reports are called “Engagement Reports” and include:
- Subscribers – basic data on subscriber counts
- Likes and dislikes – counts of likes and dislikes
- Favorites – counts of how many times your vids have been marked as a favorite
- Comments – data on your comments
- Sharing – data on how viewers are sharing your content
All in all these upgrades are outstanding for YouTube content providers and businesses. Congrats to the YouTube (and Google team) for making a very wise investment in analytic data and making it easy to use, navigate, export and analyze.
Voice Interactivity Changing the PPC Game

Those with Apple iPhone 4s devices may be less inclined to run text searches on Google.com as they grow more comfortable with interfacing with the Siri voice interaction platform. Furthermore, Google voice search and the probably development and maturation of voice interactivity embedded into more and more devices will ultimate force a shift in the way consumers interact with advertising on the internet. One can hardly assume ads will go away. They never have. In fact, with each new technology, ads seem to become even more prolific than on the previous technologies. Consider it sort of the Moore’s Law of paid search advertising.

So what is in store for paid ads if I never visit an actual search engine? Perhaps when I ask for “restaurants near Reston, VA” the system will deliver two sets of results? Or, will the results be intertwined? And if so, how will I know as a consumer which results are sponsored and which are organic? And where to social signals play in all of this? Maybe it’s important to me that three of my friends recommend on restaurant over another, or that one restaurant is offering a half-off coupon?

Advertising is an important aspect of the consumer experience and ultimately underwrites the fact that the internet is essentially free.

Will Apple build its own ad network for Siri usurping Google altogether? That’s a definite probability if not a certainty. Look at iTunes. It’s a complete silo from the internet, controlled fully by Apple.

The voice interactivity is a vast uncharted pioneer town ripe for entrepreneurs and bright ideas to move in and conquer.

Just what will be next for consumers and advertisers alike? Ask Siri, maybe she knows.
Minimum Wage & College Tuition
I recently came across an article by Rich Exner for http://www.Cleveland.com entitled, “Minimum wage job no longer can cover the typical college bill: Numbers Behind the News” where he compares the average cost of tuition for attending a public school in Ohio to minimum wage.

I believe this is a flawed analysis. Here’s why:

Rich is comparing the lowest bucket of wage earners – those earning the MINIMUM wage with the AVERAGE cost of tuition. You cannot compare two things in different cost brackets. The proper comparison would be that of minimum wage earners and the bottom quintile of tuition in Ohio, not the average.

I would argue a couple points here:
1. College is an investment. You should not expect for the investment to pay out a 100% ROI in real-time. This is unrealistic. The investment should provide a return, but over several years, perhaps even a decade, depending on the level of the investment. Therefore, you should not expect to pay for college completely while you are in college. This is why we have (a) loans, enabling people to pay for college over time; (b) grants, making colleges more affordable; and (c) various types of colleges that run the gamut of being free all the way up to $75,000 a year. We also have college savings plans that enable families to save money in tax-advantageous manners.
2. You should pick a college you can afford. If you cannot afford to pay tuition at Ohio Wesleyan ($47,784 for 2011-2012), you should attend a school you can afford (such as Columbus State Community College which will cost just a couple thousand dollars per year or about 95% less than OWU).
3. I’m on the fence with regards to working while in school. If you are a full-time student, and can afford not to work, that’s your best route to ensure you have plenty of time to devote to your studies and your investment in education. If you are a part-time student and a working adult, then you need to carefully balance your course load with your work load (and family life) so that you don’t limit the benefits of your education. However, for the working adult, there will ultimately be some sacrifices. That might be watching football every Sunday or your favorite sitcoms on Thursday. It might be dropping a hobby for a while or eating out a little less. But you make that sacrifice as an investment.
In summary, if you are earning minimum wage and cannot obtain enough grants and scholarships, you may not want to attend the most expensive schools. Evaluate whether taking on a job or heavy loans is the right investment. However, if you make the right choices, you should be able to afford a community college, even if you are in the lowest wage earning category.