Brad Wellman
Spyder Trap Online Marketing

News has just been released that Facebook is rolling out its new Ad Conversion tool for Facebook advertisers to track not only how ads are performing, but also to “track activity that happens on your [the advertiser's] Web site as a result of someone on Facebook seeing or clicking your Facebook Ad.”

Sound familiar? If you answered “yes,” you’re correct!

This is all-too-similar to Google Analytics and AdWords. By allowing advertisers to assign specific values to actions on their Web sites, advertisers can get a deeper understanding of a user’s involvement with a particular ad, optimize ads more effectively and determine ROI more effectively.

Currently the tool is in Beta form, but will steadily be rolled out to everyone. This is huge for Facebook, as this will allow it to compete more toe-to-toe with Google in the multi-billion dollar online advertising market.

How do you think this will affect Google?

A big announcement happened today from Google, officially launching real-time search, integrated into search results pages (SERP’s).

The real-time updates will include live tweets, Yahoo Answers, news articles, and web pages will now stream in actual result pages for your query. Don’t worry iPhone and Android users, this feature is built for mobile use (thank goodness).

Included in today’s announcement: Google has partnered with both Facebook and MySpace for their real-time data pull. This will include any public pages within the networks.

Here is the official video demonstrating the real-time search:

Why is this significant? This should simplify search for many users. The goal with this is to consolidate as much information into one central hub known as Google. I cannot wait to try this out and use this first hand. The live stream reminds me of the Twitter Search function, which is very helpful in monitoring real-time conversation about a product, show, or public figure. I am also impressed with the partnership established with Facebook and MySpace.

I am curious as to the potential fallout from this. Once Facebook and MySpace users find out that anything on their profile is fair game, will this prompt people to privatize their profiles? Or will users be more careful of what they say and publish? This may help the social media world grow up and think before they speak.

As we look into the benefits and negatives of this further, there are a couple questions I need to get answered:

• How will this impact how people use search engines?
• How does this impact the importance of search engine optimization?
• Will this detract from people looking at sponsored search ads?
• How can we use real-time search to benefit clients?
• What new data will we have access to?

What questions do you have about this feature that should be live within the next week?

Jason Douglas
Spyder Trap Online Marketing

Earlier this summer, I purchased the iPhone 3g[s]. Once in the App Store, I downloaded as many applications as I could at once; I felt like a kid in a candy store. Google App, Weather Channel App, Facebook app, TwitterFon; the options of apps that were just a click away was overwhelming. The best part: all were free. I still have yet to pay for a single app.

When I got to searching for a Twitter app, I noticed there were free versions, and ‘Pro’ versions that cost anywhere from $0.99 to $4.99. I went with the free TwitterFon application, partially because I am too cheap to spend even $0.99 on something I would use daily, and partially due to the fact that there was a fully-functioning free option.

What if free was not an option?

That day may come, and may come quickly. We, as social media and social networking participants and contributors, have been lucky to use and enjoy networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogging platforms, etc. all for free. We all know that in this capitalistic world, there’s one thing we are all trying to do: make money. These social networks, along with all the others, are no different.

If tomorrow, an announcement came from all the above mentioned social networking channels that starting Monday, September 14, there would be a monthly fee to use their respective service, what would you do?

The question: social media: would you pay to play, or would you go away?

Jason Douglas

Spyder Trap Online Marketing

Yesterday, Ric Bucher of ESPN sent a tweet from his personal account stating: ‘The hammer just came down, tweeps: ESPN memo prohibiting tweeting info unless it serves ESPN. Kinda figured this was coming. Not sure what this means but’. On Monday, the Marines issued an order banning social media sites including Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace within its network. Each is an example of censorship, but for two very different reasons.

ESPN, like many companies, have employees that are visible not only on television, but in the social media world. These employees are an extension of the brand that ESPN has built over the last 30 years. With that comes a large responsibility to represent your company as best as possible. There is a fear that within this ‘new’ method of communicating called social media and with information available instantly, if something improper is said, it will spread like wildfire and may have a negative impact on the individual and the company they represent.

There are two approaches to take here: you an either set guidelines for how to approach social media (in this case: Twitter); or you can choose to trust your employees, and allow them to interact with fans, readers, and other athletes who are using Twitter or social media as their platform to announce newsworthy happenings about themselves. We know which approach ESPN went with.

ESPN

Within ESPN’s memo full of guidelines, included were the following points:
• The first and only priority is to serve ESPN sanctioned efforts, including sports news, information and content
• Assume at all times you are representing ESPN

Maybe I am about to react because the above statements are hitting me differently than others. When you are hired by a company, does that mean you are, in a sense, owned by that company? Are you always on call for that company? Are you ever ‘off the clock’?

If this is the way that ESPN wants to treat social media, they are about to miss the point of social media: two-way communication. One thing about us here at Spyder Trap is that we tell clients that social media is all about communication, engaging with fans, followers, etc. Anyone that just pumps out their own content and does not try to engage with people will not be successful or respected in the social media world.

Giving fans of ESPN the opportunity to communicate and converse with their favorite personality increases the brand perception of ESPN. You are humanizing the personalities, and at the same time, gaining more fans of ESPN. This is now no longer possible due to ESPN’s restrictions.

Marines:

Their restriction of social media sites boils down to one simple word: security. This is an easy out for them. Within their memo, the following is stated:

“THESE INTERNET SITES IN GENERAL ARE A PROVEN HAVEN FOR MALICIOUS ACTORS AND CONTENT AND ARE PARTICULARLY HIGH RISK DUE TO INFORMATION EXPOSURE, USER GENERATED CONTENT AND TARGETING BY ADVERSARIES. THE VERY NATURE OF SNS CREATES A LARGER ATTACK AND EXPLOITATION WINDOW, EXPOSES UNNECESSARY INFORMATION TO ADVERSARIES AND PROVIDES AN EASY CONDUIT FOR INFORMATION LEAKAGE THAT PUTS OPSEC, COMSEC, PERSONNEL AND THE MCEN AT AN ELEVATED RISK OF COMPROMISE. EXAMPLES OF INTERNET SNS SITES INCLUDE FACEBOOK, MYSPACE, AND TWITTER.”

Really? In all caps?

This is an example how having certain restrictions can help solve security fears. Instead of banning social networking sites (SNS), implementing some form of privacy requirements, having an approval process for who’s following you, who’s your friend, what groups you are a part of, etc; would be a better solution.

I have a close friend who is in Iraq with the U.S. Army. Usually, we converse by writing letters and sending care packages, etc. Instead, I know he will be on Facebook at the same time nearly every day, which is how we are able to connect, via Facebook chat. I know that since he is able to communicate with myself and his family most every day in real time, his time over in Iraq has been easier to deal with. If that was taken away from him and the rest of the Army, it could be a demoralizing blow to each member.

Does your workplace have any rules regarding social media? If so, I would like to hear about your company’s policy. If your company instituted a policy restricting your use and presence in social media, would that change your perception of your workplace? Would you look elsewhere for employment?

Jason Douglas

Spyder Trap Online Marketing

Last night, I got home around 10:30pm and logged on to Twitter. I immediately noticed there was a fair amount of conversation about how everyone had lost followers, with many not knowing why. I looked at my followers list, and it had decreased from 786 to 724. To lose 62 people in one day is pretty significant for someone that has the number of followers I have. However, I was very happy about this, as I knew instantly that Twitter was cracking down on spam and deleting any accounts they deem as spam.

This was not the first time Twitter has done this. I thought they did this on a daily basis, as I get between 5-10 new followers every day. Of those, maybe one is a real person that I am interested in following back. The rest are bots, or other types of spam that do not interest me at all.

I’m not too concerned with the number of followers I have. I suppose the more I have, the larger my reach is, which can be a good thing. I am more focused with engaging with as many people, whether they are following or not, as possible. That is why Twitter is great: it’s another medium that encourages communication.

Knowing that Twitter is taking a proactive stance against spam, does this make you feel more strongly about Twitter? It should. Just think if MySpace was better at finding spam accounts a year or two ago; would so many people have jumped off the MySpace bandwagon and deleted their accounts while making sites like Facebook and Twitter their main social media sites to use?

How many followers did you lose last night?

Jason Douglas

Spyder Trap Online Marketing

That’s the slogan twitter could go with, considering everything that has happened within the last couple weeks. It all started on June 12, with the Iran Election debacle with incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad being declared the winner over Mir-Hossein Mousavi with Mousavi claiming vote fraud. Since then, with many news outlets unable to report from Iran to discuss the current chaos, people have been relying on Twitter to communicate with the rest of the world, and has been at the top of twitter’s ‘trending topics’ section for the last week and a half.

That is, until yesterday happened. Twitter was where I, along with hundreds of thousands of others, found out about Farrah Fawcett’s passing. Though her passing was not a surprise, it was still a newsworthy event that created a lot of discussion. Fans paid tribute to her in their own ways on Twitter the entire morning. This story dominated the conversation and the ‘trending topics’ section until 4:40pm central standard time.

At that time, when I refreshed my twitter page, I noticed that Michael Jackson was #9 on the ‘trending topics’ section. Upon clicking it, I find that Jackson had been rushed to the hospital with cardiac arrest. The source was TMZ. I read the brief article, even refreshed it to make sure I was seeing things correctly. Upon the refresh, they had a new update about his condition. At 4:50, people on twitter were posting links to TMZ reporting Jackson’s passing. I instantly checked @cnnbrk, cnn.com and cnn.com/live, abcnews.com, nytimes.com, latimes.com, bbc.co.uk; a few of the mentioned sites were just breaking that he was sent to a hospital, with no further information. It was around 5:15 locally when some sites were finally reporting his passing. That is a 25 minute gap from when I found the story verifying his passing on twitter to when very reputable news sources reported it. Twitter had an overflow of people talking about is passing, and effectively crashed twitter for a few minutes. Jackson’s passing was 1-4 on the ‘trending topics’ right after, and currently holds six of the top ten topics: 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, and 9.

The above stories are only the most recent examples of how social media, in this case: twitter, kept myself and millions of others in the loop for current events of all types. I found out about former Minnesota Twins owner Carl Pohlad’s passing on twitter an hour before any local news sources reported it. I found out about US Airways Flight 1549 and the crash into the Hudson River from twitter. This image was taken by a person on a ferry, who was able to post it to his twitpic account. Anyone with a cell phone and an internet connection has the ability to be a reporter, and the ability to share their story instantly.

I will use twitter and the people I follow as my number one news source. Since twitter does not censor regulate what people say (freedom of speech), I still check more reputable news sites to get verification. Recently, there were false reports of Patrick Swayze’s passing that spread fast through the social media community. As with any news report, you must consider the source.

My choice source: twitter, the number one news source.

Minneapolis, MN, June 10, 2009 – Spyder Trap Online Marketing, a leading provider of online marketing and social media consulting services, today announced that it has signed a Master Service Agreement with UnitedHealthcare. The agreement allows the two firms to greatly expand their existing relationship.

“We have worked with Spyder Trap Online Marketing on some challenging projects recently,” said Bud Flagstad, Vice President of Strategic Initiatives for UnitedHealthcare. “Their knowledge of the online space along with their work ethic and dedication really provide value to our staff and have elevated the online marketing initiatives on which we’ve collaborated.”

“Healthcare is at the forefront of the public conversation today,” said Mike Rynchek, President of Spyder Trap Online Marketing. “UnitedHealthcare leads the effort to deploy online technologies to reduce the cost of providing care while increasing the quality of that care. We are very excited that this new service agreement will allow us to help them implement that vision.”

For additional information or for sample copy, please contact Glenn Seaberg of Spyder Trap Online Marketing at 612-872-4847.

# # #

Spyder Trap Online Marketing provides online marketing services including strategy, website development, search engine marketing, social media marketing, and online public relations. For more information, contact:

Glenn Seaberg, Vice President
Spyder Trap Online Marketing
612-872-4847
612-872-4861
gseaberg@spydertrap.com
www.SpyderTrap.com

DOWNLOAD PRESS RELEASE: Click Here

Jason Douglas
Spyder Trap Online Marketing

Tuesday, China’s government has blocked Internet users access to Twitter. Though there has been no official statement from the Chinese government, it is likely due to the approaching 20th Anniversary of the Tiananmen Square. The Chinese government may feel that this will curb any negative conversation that may have occurred otherwise.

This is not the first time China has blocked various social media sites, as they had a ban during the run-up to the Beijing Olympics in August 2008.

There are other reports that other social media sites have been blocked, including Flickr, Bing.com, Blogspot, and YouTube.

My question: would there ever be an appropriate time for the United States Government to block Internet users access to a site?

Brad Wellman
Spyder Trap Online Marketing

The following is a list (in no particular order) of my favorite desktop and web-based Twitter clients out there right now that make the Twitter social media experience easier and more enjoyable.

1. Tweetie – available for Mac only, this Twitter client gives users the freedom to easily manage multiple accounts in one window. It is designed similarly to the iPhone app, and users love its keyboard shortcuts and threaded direct messages.

2. Tweetr – a handy tool for sending files quickly and easily to your friends on Twitter. It automatically uploads your files or pictures and provides you with a shortened link that you can send out to your network.

3. Twitsay – Got a big announcement? Twitsay is perfect! Twitsay allows you to record a voice message and broadcast it to your network via your Twitter account.

4. Twits Like Me – After you register, Twits Like Me will analyze your tweets and suggest other Twitter users that you may be interested in following.

5. SpreadTweet – Want to get your Twitter fix, but Twitter isn’t safe at work yet? Now there’s SpreadTweet. A Twitter client designed like everyone’s favorite spreadsheet program. Now it will always look like you’re working.

6. TweetLater – TweetLater allows you to manage scheduled tweets for an unlimited number of Twitter accounts. You can automatically follow new followers and send automatic direct messages to new followers, and even perform keyword tracking.

7. Group Tweet – Allows you to make a protected Twitter group so you can discuss private information with multiple people, without anyone else see it. It is useful for co-workers, close friends, families, and others (secret clubs anyone?)

8. CoTweet – Although in Beta form, CoTweet adds a business aspect to managing corporate Twitter accounts. You can have multiple accounts, but the key with CoTweet is allowing multiple people to effectively manage the same account so there’s no duplication, and keep track of who said what to whom. It’s great for scheduling tweets, assigning tweets to coworkers, and adding notes to Twitter users.

There’s my list, did I miss any of your favorites?

Mike Rynchek
Spyder Trap Online Marketing

With Facebook recently achieving 225 million active users, and Twitter – well, who really knows how big Twitter really is – firms are desperately trying to understand how to make social media work for them. Not only is the volume of users massive, so is the challenge of making sure you have a social media strategy in place. As Spyder Trap continues working with larger and larger organizations we are becoming very accustomed to taking a firm who has a fragmented approach to social media and creating an integrated social media strategy. Our task is to consider all stakeholders, business objectives, hearing all voices/pieces of information and molding a model that will accomplish those goals. As fellow Twitter friend Adam Kmiec of http://www.thekmiecs.com/ stated this morning… “You can’t pulse social media. It doesn’t turn on and them off.” In other words, any social media campaign needs a starting point and that starting point should be accompanied with a well thought out integrated strategy.

Below is a strategy and process I devised for a particular American clothing manufacturer with a similar issue to what I described above. After further thought and discussion, I began to think that both large and small firms could benefit from this guidance. I hope it helps.

Social Media Strategy Definition Process:

1. Discovery Meeting/Roundtable – Each department has a stake in the successful development and implementation of a social media campaign. Our goal is to fully understand and address each core-marketing objective of each department. Common questions to discuss during a discovery session are as follows:

1. What are your overall business objectives? What role does your online marketing play in your marketing mix, and what are you looking to achieve via an online marketing program?
2. With regards to your online marketing efforts, where are your biggest “pain points” and/or areas of greatest opportunity? How would you prioritize them? For example:
   • Reach – Are you attracting enough traffic via your paid/organic efforts? If not, what are your goals? What are the biggest barriers to success?
   • Engagement – Are visitors finding your online presence relevant and engaging? Are they coming back?
   • Conversion – Are you getting enough sales? Are the leads converting to sale?

3. Who are your key competitors? Brick and mortar institutions, click and mortar institutions, etc.?
4. What is your key competitive advantage / what “niche” do you serve?
5. What KPI’s (key performance indicators) do you use to measure your online performance? How are you tracking them?

2. Trend Identification – Upon completion of the discovery process, the next step is to complete an analysis of the data/comments/thoughts received and formulate it into and actionable social media strategy. Considerations during this phase of the process are as follows:

1. Matching the goals of the individual department with the overall business goals.
2. Understanding how the unique business units work together.
3. Understanding of how the different marketing channels work together to build the brand and ultimately drive sales.

3. Strategy Development – This is the culmination of the time spent identifying goals/objectives, the core business needs and the current brand presence in the social media universe. The output of this phase is an on-brand integrated social media strategy that meets the goals and objectives defined by the different business departments in the discovery phase. Considerations during this phase of the process are as follows:

1. Developing a strategy that is a progression into a full-blown social media campaign. Ex. Start with brand monitoring to make sure we have the consumer approach, language and messaging determined. Slowly work into more consumer engaging activities and promotions.
2. Developing a strategy that is both timely and cost effective as defined in the discovery phase.
3. This strategy must be trackable to the extent that the services and tactics will allow. Goal is to closely monitor key performance indicators (KPI’s) such as:
   • Impressions
   • Visits (landing page, microsite, website)
   • Conversions/Sales

4. Integrated Social Media Strategy – As illustrated below, through this process we began with a fragmented strategy and approach and concluded with an integrated social media campaign. Again, this campaign is designed to support and accomplish the goals and objectives of the business departments and the client’s overall brand.

What do you think? Was this helpful? Any thoughts or feedback to the process would be greatly appreciated.

Mike Rynchek
Spyder Trap Online Marketing

Today I was asked to list out a few of the top reasons why social media should be outsourced versus managed internally. Since it was about the third time this week the question came up, I decided to address it in today’s blog post. This post speaks directly to the question of “should corporations participate in brand/product monitoring through social media channels? If so what are the benefits of outsourcing this work? Keep in mind, the goal of brand monitoring is to understand consumer trends both positive and negative as it relates to a specific product or service.

1. Unbiased Opinion – Outsourcing provides a perspective that cannot be created internally. Our data and analysis are not clouded by corporate-underpants, bias or politics. We simply gather the data, analyze it and tell the client what we think they should do with it.

2. Volume & Cost – As we all know, social media is unlike any other media in the respect that new data in the form of posts, videos and messages are always being created. You need eyeballs on it constantly. The cost associated with hiring the number of bodies required internally is generally much higher than simply outsourcing.

3. Time – Being able to identify the correct places to monitor is truly a skill in itself. The time it takes to gather and analyze the volume of information that is being obtained and then convert into action is usually too stifling for any company to take on in house. The analysis is really the value add that we provide for our clients. For example, we learned through social media brand monitoring that being called a “diabetic” is actually considered a derogatory term by many people, and they would prefer to be called “people with diabetes.” This is a major piece of information that doesn’t necessarily always come through in focus groups and common customer interactions. Other internal projects do not stand in the way of making sure this data is collected and analyzed.

4. Managing Engagement – Finally, unlike any other marketing tactic not responding to consumer engagement hurts and discredits the brand. If you decide to engage with an audience via social media, you need to be prepared to constantly be providing quality information, answering questions and engaging with new followers and users.

5. Strategy – What we bring to the table is very much unlike anything you could hire internally or outsource to one our competitors. For example; I recently presented X Factor to Fox and the CW and they were thrilled. They have heard the ‘we can get you on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace’ pitch a million times. What they have not heard (until yesterday) was a solid business strategy to make these vehicles work together while incorporating it into their business model, and tracking, quantifying and monetizing every step along the way. I probably should have put this first.

6. Best Practice Management – The rules of marketing are drastically changing and social media marketing is leading the shift. Questions such as how many messages are optimal depend on several factors such as: engagement of the audience, quality of the content or message or objective of the social media campaign. Most firms have found that it is much more cost effective to rely on the best practice knowledge of the social media firm rather than managing best practices internally.

Now you are probably thinking to yourself; that’s great but what is the cost associated with hiring an external vendor. I think you will be pleasantly surprised. In most cases you will find social media vendors are willing to be hired on a retainer or project basis for a reasonable fee, depending on the object.

To recap my recommended first step is to identify what your firm hopes to achieve through social media marketing, establish goals and objectives, and then consult a reputable vendor to help satisfy your objectives. Keep in mind the above and you are on the right path to a successful social media marketing campaign.

Brad Wellman
Spyder Trap Online Marketing

Yesterday I wrote about how Twitter will soon begin indexing links for search. Ending that post I asked how you think Twitter should base their reputation ranking system; should it be based on the number of followers a user has? What about the number of retweets they have? Maybe some other way?

Twitter is great for finding out that something is happening right now. Its great for getting headlines and brief information about current events, but where it struggles is allowing users to find more information relative to these topics. It is hard for users to sift through the millions of tweets to find more detailed information.

In a post by Stan Schroeder earlier today, he mentioned, “this reputation ranking system is far more complex than a simple combination of factors such as followers and retweets. The system needs to be contextual; it needs to recognize which tweeple are important for a certain keyword or phrase.”

This is an important thing to consider, because if Ashton Kutcher were to tweet about something related to Google, even though he has the most followers on Twitter, it shouldn’t matter as much as if say, Matt Cutts were to tweet something related to Google, given his role within Google and his familiarity with the topic. Tweets relating to Hollywood news or upcoming movies? In this context is where Ashton is relevant and can shine. Much as tweets from the White House are more relevant coming from Obama, rather than say, myself (even though Obama has 1.1 million followers compared to my 700, that’s beside the point).

This is a complex problem because the Twitter search algorithm needs to analyze keyword density within each tweet and connect that to the number of retweets, the user tweeting it, how many followers they have, etc. Hopefully it is something the folks at Twitter are working on ironing out. How do you think they should handle the reputation ranking system?

Brad Wellman
Spyder Trap Online Marketing

Twitter Search, as many know, is perhaps the most relevant search engine out there today, by monitoring and tracking conversations and trending topics. It allows users to get the most up-to-the-minute updates along with what people around the world are saying about current events. Now however, Twitter is making a key move to take them to the next level as a legitimate search engine…indexing.

According to TechCruch, “Twitter Search will soon begin crawling the links that people tweet about and indexing them.” This means that it will not only be just a collection of text-based tweets from Twitter users, but it will also include a heap of webpages, and Twitter will also crawl/index the content of these pages as well.

Isn’t this what Google does? Yep. This doesn’t seem all that surprising, considering the new VP of Operations for Twitter is Santosh Jayaram, the former VP of Search Quality for Google.

Does this mean that Twitter is looking to replace Google? No, actually. Far from. Twitter’s value lies in its ability to provide real-time results. “Twitter Search is meant to be a different kind of powerful search engine in its own right. A smaller, potentially curated, real-time search engine.”

How is Twitter going to tailor search results? They are looking to develop a reputation-like ranking system for filtering search results, but how they will do it is anyone’s guess. Should they base it on the number of followers a user has? The number of retweets a tweet receives? That is still being determined, but one thing is for certain; it will be an interesting thing in the works over the next few months.

Glenn Seaberg
Spyder Trap Online Marketing

At the core of every successful sponsored search or e-mail campaign stands a great landing page.   Designing a great landing page, however, is counter-intuitive to everything most website designers think they know.

If you want the highest conversion rate possible from your landing page, follow these absolute rules:

Designate only ONE purpose for your landing page.  Allow your visitors to take only one course of action such as request more information, subscribe to a newsletter, submit an inquiry, or make a purchase.  If you offer them a choice, chances are great that they will decide on neither and bounce.

• Answer these inevitable visitor questions in less than five seconds.

- What are you offering me?
- Why should I care?
- What do I do next?

You have six seconds to convert your visitor.  Do not expect them to stick around longer.

• Unless your goal is to repress response, don’t ask the visitor for more information than you need to begin the relationship.

• Keep both the offer and the response form above the fold.  This will increase the visitor’s ability to process your offer.  Adopt a side-by-side layout to ensure this occurs regardless of a visitor’s monitor size or settings.

• Your landing page is not a portal to your website!  The only link you should include is the one that links your submit button to your “Thank You” page.

• Be prepared to test.  Split-test your landing page constantly to determine the most effective mix of headline, layout, message, and call to action.

Ignore these rules at your own peril.  Clutter your landing page with too much information or too many options and you will scuttle your chances for success before the first visitor reaches the page.