The Web Uncovered

So for those of you who have a content-based website that you are marketing, you know that search technologies are important.  Not only are these technologies important to understand, but media consumers are increasingly looking at keyword searches and trends to determine legitimacy.  Showcasing your own searches, or searches for keywords related to your product or service, has been impossible.

Until Now.  Google has released Google Trends Gadget, which is available for free.  Still not sure how cool this is?  Imagine you are selling an over-the-counter flu remedy from your website.  When people visit your website, they can see how the search results have increased for the word “flu” at the beginning of the flu season.  Also, it allows for comparables.  The customizable aspect of the tool makes it easy to implement and use.  

The Takeaway:   In the new epoch of microblogging, the term “now” means less “this year” and more “the next fifteen minutes.”  Harness developing technologies to exploit this trend, especially those involved in search technology.

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.

Thanks to a recent blog post by Andy Beal, We can find the MarketingProfs survey of Twitter users.  What did they find?

Twitter users were asked to rate the reasons why they participate, on a scale from 1 to 5 (with 1=strongly disagree and 5=strongly agree):

• “I find it exciting to learn new things from people”: Average score 4.65
• “I value getting information in a timely manner”: Average score 4.58
• “I like to be connected to lots of people”: Average score 3.91
• “I want to generate new business”: Average score 3.70
• “I find it gratifying to have people follow me”: Average score 3.64

The Takeaway:  Twitter users care more about being heard than listening.  if you are using Twitter as a marketing tool, then you must generate frequent, targetted content that will truly gain the interest of followers after you have enticed them to  follow you.

When you are hiring a techie to develop your website or another online marketing tool on your behalf, they have a tendency to use a lot of jargon that will make very little sense without a background in computer science (or Star Trek).  One of the first of these terms that you will hear often is “RSS Feeds.”  

No, they are not photon generators from the Klingons.  An RSS Feed (Really Simple Syndication), is format used to publish frequently updated works – such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video.  Blogs, online publications, and status updates from social networks generally all have RSS Feeds.  Where do these feeds go?  That depends on where you want them to go.

Feeds can be used in an aggregator to show several feeds in one location.  Sounds technical, but it really is simple.  For instance, you can make your homepage an aggregator of three sources:  your best friend’s blog, CNN, and The Wall Street Journal.  In this regard, RSS Feeds are a time saver, as you can get up-to-the-minute updates in one place rather than three (or 20).  

But RSS Feeds can also be utilized as a tool for your online marketing campaign.  For instance, you can have your company blog automatically update your Facebook Notes, Your Twitter status, and even have an aggregator on your homepage of your website, so viewers can see new content, making your online presence consistently fresh.  Setting up an RSS has become increasingly easy, up to the point where now many aggregators and social networks accept RSS  in the form of a URL (web address).

The Takeaway:

Not only can RSS Feeds save you time as an information consumer, but they can increase your reach as a content provider online.  By posting content in places that contain RSS feeds, you can invite your target audience to subscribe to your content updates.  Furthermore, you can utilize RSS feeds to update your content across platforms, such as blogs, social networks, and more.

Thomas Freidman’s flattened world may be appear a bit fictious in certain regards, but one technology that has overshadowed the others mentioned in his book, The World is Flat, is that of mobile technologies.  Since the book has been written, the proliferation of Iphones and Blackberries are rudimentarily changing the fashion by which business is conducted.  As an example of how this effects marketing, I’d like to talk about John Mayer.

Sound a bit out there?  John Mayer has learnt about the capability of marketing to mass ammounts of people several times a day.  How does it do it?  He tweets.  John Mayer’s twitter page has over 685 THOUSAND followers, and I am one of them.  With his Blackberry, he uploads around ten updates a day to over half a million people.  It isn’t the mobile technology that makes this so effective, it is how the technology has allowed his fans to feel as if they are personally connecting with him several times a day.

The Takeaway:

While you may see mobile technology as a tool to execute your marketing plan more efficiently, think bigger.  How can your campaign be adapted in a mobile world?  Neil Postman, an American media theorist from my alma mater, taught that the same message changes on different media, often to the negative effect.  Taking the inverse, to be truly on the cutting edge, we all must explore how new technologies in media create new opportunities to adapt our message.