IntenseDebate.com – THE answer to blog comments
I came across IntenseDebate.com today and am extremely impressed as well as excited about this new service. The service provides blog owners the ability to install a plug-in on their blog which will centralize the storage of blog commenting, streamline comment threading, improve comment moderation, and encourage additional posting.
The problem I run into a lot when reading blogs is while I'd like to take the time to comment, I'm busy, and don't often want to create a new account to post a simply reply. Plus, when posting in an established community and without "street cred", it's hard to feel like you're adding value to a conversation if you've never posted before.
IntenseDebate.com changes this. As an end-user, I now have a centralized account and any blog that uses IntenseDebate.com for their commenting system, I can automatically comment and my profile on IntenseDebate.com will be shown, as well as other posts on other blogs I've made via my IntenseDebate.com account. It's really quite impressive.
I'll post a few quick comments below to display how it works.
Post on SearchEngineWatch claims “branding is dead”
Sigh. This post claims that branding is irrelevant/dead thanks to search engines and how search is transforming the way in which people research and buy products.
Huh?
I couldn't disagree more. You can't honestly tell me that Lamborghini, BMW, Lincoln, and Hyundai (just to name a few random automotive brands) are all on equal playing fields when a consumer searches for "car" on Google.
The post goes on to talk about the power of SEO and why SEO is not dead. SEO is most certainly not dead and should make for a critical component in your online strategy. His point in trying to prove why SEO is not dead is muddied by the claims of "branding being dead." Brands don't matter in certain categories (probably because there's no clear category leader), but certainly not across the board.
Proper SEO can elevate your brand to the top of the listing for non-branded searches.
They key is creating brand awareness (through advertising, promotion, PR, etc. outside of search engines) and dominating on branded AND non-branded searches for your category. This is done by juggling your SEO work with your SEM campaigns to find the "sweet spot" so SEM can pick up the slack where you lag behind in SEO. Branding then goes onto heavily influence clicks on search engine results.
This type of tunnel-vision thinking is why "online" is still broadly viewed as an IT function.
Flat-out comments like this show the still "techy" and misguided view of some Internet strategists and how marketing and "tech" still quite aren't aligned -- even on established sites such as searchenginewatch.com. Any marketer worth their salt should understand that brands can drive search results. When industry publications and commentary throw out claims like this, it's difficult to create alignment with a marketing department -- especially when marketing should "own" (or at least have visibility to) SEO and SEM strategy.
Automatically monitor changes to competitor websites for free
It's fairly easy to cost-effectively monitor your brand names and trademarked terms (and anything else you'd like to keep tabs on) using Google's Blog search RSS feeds (and several other aggregator service RSS feeds). When you don't have the funds (or a low volume of online/blog conversations pertaining to your brand) for a service like BuzzLogic or BuzzMetrics, it's about as "grass roots" as you can get.
But what if you want to automatically monitor changes to your competitors' websites that don't have feeds built into them?
Page2RSS is the answer.
Page2RSS is a free service which creates an RSS feed out of any URL you enter into the site. Their free service creates a cached version of the page every 4 hours. Simply subscribe to the RSS feed and off you go -- be the first to know when your competitors update their homepage, product pages within their sites, and so on.
Securing advertising dollars in a tough economy
In a tough economy, advertising dollars are typically the first to go. On the flip side, in a flourishing economy, advertising dollars seem to be readily available without needing much justification or proof that the advertising will pay off. Why is this?
Many advertisers have no methodology for measuring the effectiveness of their ad campaigns. In a flourishing economy, taking risks with a low probability for success is often encouraged in hopes of the big pay-off. In a tough economy, investing in anything (advertising, R&D, etc.) will require a great deal of scrutiny.
At SES NY in '06 I attended an invite-only dinner with WebTrends with a group of about a dozen online marketers -- some existing clients of WebTrends and some were potential clients they were wining and dining. One of the dinner guests I sat next to was Rex Briggs, co-author of What Sticks.
For anyone who thinks "advertising cannot be measured," I would recommend reading this book. It covers concepts that online marketers should hold close to their hearts: Test, Learn, Deploy, Repeat. Many traditional marketers are used to deploying large budgets on print and TV advertising with no plan or budget to measure the effectiveness of the ad spend. They excel at developing the creative, but fail miserably when it comes to answering the simple question of "Did it work?"
In the online world, measuring ad spend becomes somewhat easier with the various tracking technologies (particularly if you sell online). If you can definitively prove how advertising positively impacts sales (directly or indirectly), then you'll most likely see your ad budgets remain flat in a tough economy, but not entirely eliminated like some marketers are experiencing this year.
Going to great lengths to “be viral” and generating PR
As the blogosphere ogles at the "success" of the "Elf Yourself" campaign, I find myself wondering if the old cliché "there's no such thing as bad press" is true. While this particular campaign has been positive for Office Max, will it (ever) contribute to the bottom line? Or does this campaign simply go down in the books as "fun" and win an award?
The "Elf Yourself Campaign
Put together by Officemax, here's the comparison of the ElfYourself.com demographics and Officemax.com demographics:
The above graph is for ElfYourself.com
The below graph is for Officemax.com:
Demographic & site analysis
Officemax.com hits the internet average for female and male visitors skewing slightly higher in the 55-64 and 65+ demographics. The ElfYourself.com campaign however is highly skewed towards 65+ females. We do see an obvious jump in traffic to OfficeMax.com during the same timeframe that the ElfYourself.com site has been running (presumably due to the coupons offered on ElfYourself.com when you click on the OfficeMax logo).
Will it translate to revenue? Time will tell.
PR firms focusing on "viral" vs. product
Switching gears from OfficeMax to my day job...it's interesting seeing the campaign ideas we are pitched from marketing firms who aspire to earn our business. There's an overwhelming amount of focus with online marketing, but in our industry (blinds & shades), is making it up the ranks of digg.com really going to translate to revenue? Many marketers think so and go out of their way to focus on links we receive due to PR, blog mentions, and diggs. Let's step back for a moment and focus on digg.com's demographics (courtesy of Quantcast):
Skewing higher than the internet average on the 25-34 Male demographic is not exactly the sweet spot for us when it comes to spending money on press that end up on digg.com.
Common sense in online marketing
Viral campaigns are fine -- if they are targeted towards the demographic you are seeking as customers. digg.com is not a "mass consumer" demographic and should not be treated as one by marketers, but for some reason it is. This is nothing against digg. There comes a time when you have to ask yourself the "So, what?" question when a marketing pitches you a concept. With the viral success of the Elf Yourself campaign, be sure to ask yourself the "So, what?" question if a marketer comes to you with a great viral idea that does not pave a clear path to sales revenue.
Marketing campaigns can and should be measured in sales
Some marketing agencies are not held accountable to revenues generated from campaigns. Generating impressions is great, but if the campiagn cannot be tied directly to sales, then you should find a way to measure it. Every campaign we run is measured -- sometimes we may not know the potential return (which is often the case testing new ideas/technologies surrounding promotions and marketing), so we measure it to see what the return is after the campaign is over with.
Your sales cycle may be a long sales cycle, so campaign "success" may not be measurable immediately -- it could take weeks, months, or even years. If this is the case, plan your campaigns accordingly because the sales cycle should help drive the types of promotions that work for your business. OfficeMax seems to have played their cards right with the coupons/discounts on ElfYourself.com and the traffic spike to Officemax.com.
However, traffic spikes do not always equate to revenue -- especially if the campaign is driving unqualified customers to your site. This is the one thing that many agencies fail to grasp in this new age of viral campaigns and del.icio.us, YouTube, and digg.com's of the world.
Blog by Eric Long
I'm an experienced digital product & marketing strategist and am passionate about providing outstanding cross-channel, mass customization (product configurators), and considered-purchase experiences.
About Eric Long
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