The Web Uncovered

While online marketers are still determining the best practices for online marketing, the Federal Trade Commission is also figuring out some details regarding regulations governing online marketing.  Blogger Jordan McCollum explores these new policies in the blog post “Are You Breaking the Law with Social Media Marketing?”

The key phrase that the FTC is pushing is:

If you’re being compensated to talk about someone’s product, then you need to disclose it.

There are various implications and applications of this philosophy.  For more details see the original post here.

As Twitter begins teasing users with the idea of bolstering their search engine so that it not only searches through tweets, but also crawls the content of links in tweets, a new door of possibility has opened.  This would create a much more time-sensitive search engine, where search results could be populated by content updates within the last hour.

Not only could this change search technology as we know it, but it also could impact your search engine management (SEM/SEO).  This would be especially true for buzz marketing.  One key way to generate a buzz marketing campaign in the digital age is to create a very specific campaign with a viral capacity, and to create a microsite that is solely used for the campaign (see my favorite example here).  While they are created with SEO in mind, with high keyword density, often times there is a lag between their release and when search engines actually show their content.  This new search engine technology would pick up on the microsite faster  than ever, granted you successfully generate attention to it with twitter users (who are increasingly becoming representative of the American market in demographics).  Utilize the power of now in the digital age.

The Takeaway:

With traditional marketing and public relations, timing is everything.  In the modern online marketing world, the same is true, and the specificity of time is more acute than ever.  While utilizing technologies that allow you this chronological targeting, begin recognizing how changing technologies further change the face of online marketing.

While in a previous post we talked about how Obama’s 70 person team for online presence dominated in the area of social media, an interesting reports suggest there were weak parts in his campaign.  For instance, when it came to Pay Per Clicks, John McCain brought his A-game.  

In fact, as Obama began dominating in traditional media in ways that John McCain could not afford to keep up with, his team began focusing online.  At that time his ad impressions jumped by 250%.  Furthermore, the McCain camp mobilized quickly to dominate in buying up keywords for PPC ads.  For instance, immediately after Obama chose Biden as his running mate, the McCain team put bought up related keywords and had landing pages ready.  Similarly, they bought up all keywords relating to “Branchflower,” “troopergate,” and “Palin.”  They did this so well that that the actual articles covering this story were burried behind their ads and related websites created to refute the claims against Palin.  

The Takeaway:

Quick mobilization and clever keyword choice will assist in keeping the available content available to voters in your control.  Be sure to find related words that could similarly drive traffic to your site, or if you are inactive, to your opponent’s website.

In the previous post regarding Marshall Mcluhan, we talked a bit about interactivity as a means of evaluating media.  As said, the internet is a tricky new world where interaction can be built in many new ways.  Traditional media outlets, like television, radio, and print, are very much a one-way conversation, with them the outlets feeding content to us, the media consumers.  the interesting thing to watch is when traditional media outlets begin exploring new media, and trying to figure out how to effectively choose and place content in new opportunitities.

I read one prime example of this on the Sublimal Pixels blog by Manny Marrero.  In his “Open Letter to Channel 10“, he fumes about his passionate disgust for how the local television network has botched their campaign on Twitter.  Not only does he admonish them for their flood of follow/unfollow moves in an attempt to bolster numbers, but he also calls them out on not utilizing the medium of Twitter.  Rather than creating a space to interact with their audience, the station simply feeds their newslines into posts, without responding or interacting with their “followers.”

The Takeaway:  Before you can effectively market on a specific platform, website, medium, etc., you must know what the experience is for their users.  Only after understanding the platform which you are working with can you adjust the message to fit the medium.  This includes making it cooler/hotter, or more less interactive.

A new technology that could change information distribution is gaining some serious recognition.  Developed by a small team of University of Chicago business students, Bump Technologies has created a Iphone aplication called “Bump,” which exchanges basic contact information instantly, when the two Apple devices “bump” into eachother.  Currently, it only works between two Iphones or Ipod Touch’s that have the application.  However, by creating a standard and implementing it, it could be revolutionary to mobile devices.

The Takeaway: While for now this a great tool for networking, this technology could be developed to bump larger pieces of information, and also create a seamless cross-platform standard to remotely exchange information.  Imagine I could bump my Ipod into your Blackberry, and then within 15 seconds you have a copy of my favorite Bob Marley track.  There is a lot of potential to take this technology and run with it.

A phenomenal achievement by Social Media experts Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas, The Conversation Prism (V2.0 recently released) is a visual representation of the various categories and associated websites that make up the Social Media landscape. By their own admission, the creators recognize that the constatant evolution of online conversations and communities makes this a snapshot at best. Far be it for any one of us, expert or not, to define social media in such specific terms. However, we should be so lucky that Solis and Thomas have made such an attempt! A clear and crisp image of of the Conversation Prism and it’s many details is difficult to come by online. However it should be noted that a full size 18″x24″ poster is available for purchase at www.theconversationprism.com. (Click to view V1.0 | V2.0)