Author Archive - Kate Zimmerman
Social Media: Personal Democracy Forum - Let’s All Move to Brazil
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | June 25, 2008 | Share This
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Advocacy and political groups aren’t the only organizations exploring new ways to use the Internet– national governments too have begun experimenting with new media as a civic resource. On Day Two of the Personal Democracy Forum, speakers addressed the question of: Now that we’ve built a vibrant political community in blogs, forums and social networks, “What’s Next?” For many luminaries, like Vint Cerf or Lawrence Lessig, the challenges ahead are those of infrastructure, bandwidth costs, and access to the Internet. For others, such as FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, the biggest hurdle will be evangelizing the social web to people with voting power, and then developing a national plan for government’s role online.
Microsoft Bids $44.6B for Yahoo
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | February 1, 2008 | Share This
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This morning Microsoft extended an unsolicited bid to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion, or $31 per share, amounting to a 62 percent premium on Yahoo’s Jan 31 closing stock price. Said Microsoft in today’s press release, “We don’t actually want the company, we just wanted to see what the media would do“… okay, maybe they didn’t say that exactly. But in the search world, it’s an understatement to call this bid a big deal (note Techmeme screenshot left).
For Searchviews readers, here’s a rundown of what happened and what’s important to take away:
Microsoft Wants To Buy Yahoo
…They have for awhile (see rumors from 2007, 2006). Recognizing Google’s unrivaled lead in traffic & technology, Microsoft sees an opportunity to tap Yahoo for its audience, engineering talent, brand value (esp. in search), and social media properties (Flickr & Del.icio.us). In the meantime, Yahoo has spent the past month hemorrhaging money and employees, and is in serious need of a bail out. So far, industry analysts broadly agree that a deal is likely to happen.
What’s the Deal?
There is much discussion about the terms and implications of the deal. Here’re a few standouts:
- Henry Blodget says the deal will happen on Microsoft’s terms, since Yahoo is desperate, and there’ll be no competitors to counter MSFT’s offer.
- Paul Kedrosky says it’ll happen, but the conjoined Microsoft-Yahoo still won’t beat Google.
- Danny Sullivan envisions a lovechild born of Yahoo search, Microsoft ads, Yahoo’s audience, Microsoft’s “technological prowess”, and Flickr.
- Loren Baker concurs that Yahoo Search will take over Microsoft’s Live Search, and predicts that old-school SEO practitioners will feel some pain, while secondary search engines (Ask.com) will potentially gain market share.
- Shar Van Boskirk writes on Forrester’s blog that the merger will help grow online advertising by yielding “laser-target ads” & easier ad management. Shar also has some interesting thoughts about increasing convergence of media + technology.
Though the combined search impact is undoubtedly huge, the opportunities in display should not be overlooked. A combined MSFT/YHOO would be the clear leader in display advertising, reaping the benefits of Yahoo’s traffic volume and Microsoft’s ad serving technology (esp in wake of their aQuantive acquisition).
How To Discredit Your Blog: A Kaiser Permanente Story
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | December 6, 2007 | Share This
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Yesterday, a group of executives from 12 major US corporations launched the Blog Council, an exclusive community formed “to address the unique needs of blogging in a corporate environment.” The group includes most of the usual suspects in social media — General Motors, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Starwood Hotels and Resorts, and one in particular that I haven’t read much about: Kaiser Permanente. Unfortunately, the Blogging Council website doesn’t link to any of said corporate blogs, so I googled “Kaiser Permanente blog”, and found some very interesting search results:
From one to five, the top search listings are:
- “Kaiser Fraud“, a blog that promotes, “kaiser thrives on ruining lives” - recent posts include, “Kaiser Kills…to Harvest Transplant Organs?”, “Kaiser kills more patients” and my favorite “Baby Killed by Kaiser Medical Error” (complete with picture of the mourning mother and her dead newborn)
- A news story about Kaiser’s inability to keep tabs on their patients’ confidential information
- A blog post that slams Kaiser’s latest ad campaign
- A post about patient outrage following Kaiser’s decision to close a No. California kidney transplant center.
- The Kaiser Permanent Medical research blog - Except the blog fails to load.
Though they may be “thought leaders” on the Blog Council, Kaiser is evidently lacking leadership in search. This is a pretty embarrassing front page for Kaiser that could have been avoided with proper search engine optimization. For all it’s exclusivity, one would expect the inaugural Blog Council to require at least a basic awareness of blog SEO.
5 Questions for Matt Creamer
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | December 3, 2007 | Share This
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Four months ago, Matt Creamer, Editor at Large for Advertising Age, approached Reprise Media with a predicament. Despite his renown as a journalist, Matt was not appearing prominently in search results for his own name. A search for “matt creamer” in Google presented numerous unrelated listings, including articles from Gay New Zealand, Wicomico Politics, and Diversity Liason Officers, among others. Because of his position as a journalist, Matt felt his professional reputation was being compromised by these alternate listings.
To help Matt occupy the top search results for his name, Reprise Media created a blog (Mattcreamer.com) that would archive his online published work and serve as the pivot for an extended Search Engine & Social Media Optimization campaign. By coordinating the keyword optimization and cross-linking between 13 different social media properties, we quickly drove Mattcreamer.com to the #1 position in Google for his name. Our network of web properties furthermore gave Matt control over 60%, and a presence in over 85%, of Google’s first three results pages. By the end of our 3 month engagement, we helped Matt rank within the top 10 results for 62% of our target keyword list and successfully pushed all irrelevant results out of the top ten.
Today Matt’s story about the process of being “SEOed” came out in Advertising Age, in “Optimize Me: A Reporter’s Journey into the World of SEO and SEM“. Searchviews interviewed Matt for his take on how SEO and SMM are shaping online media, and for that matter, how the project has changed his perspective on “good old fashioned news”…
SV: Matt, we just completed a 3 month Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Marketing (SMM) project for your story in AdAge. How has your perception of online marketing changed after being “optimized” for search engines and social media?
MC: In talking about digital marketing, it’s easy to get wowed by slick Flash productions, multilayer storytelling, amusing virals, fun games–all the generally cool stuff that’s being done on behalf of brands online. But it’s equally easy to overlook about the crucial, knotty question of how to distribute this stuff so that it actually reaches a critical mass of consumers, which is kind of the idea of marketing, after all. Immersing myself in search really rammed the second point home because it forced me to think about my own work and how it’s being consumed–or not being consumed–and the impact it has on my own personal brand. Producing compelling content is only part of the answer; the rest is figuring out how to get it to people, and understanding the logic and language of the search engines is obviously a huge part of that.
SV: Over the past few months, many web publishers seem to have put a renewed/increased focus on advertising - Microsoft recently announced its intention to become more ad-focused, AOL is re-branding itself as an ad agency, and Facebook is honing an ad platform that target users by profile. How will advertisers need to change their approach to avoid overwhelming online consumers?
MC: The untapped promise of the Internet as a marketing medium is as a place where brands provide true utility to consumers. The Nike+ website is a well-worn example of this. It doesn’t jam a repurposed TV ad down people’s throats. Instead it given them the tools to build and sustain communities around running. There’s real value there and it allows the brand to forge deep, meaningful relationships with its audience. Unfortunately, too many marketers are missing this and they’re merely using the Internet as yet another place to slap ads. The upside is that these ads, at least when compared to TV, are more measurable. Still, I get kind of depressed when I hear people talk of the Internet as a some great ad medium. And I get really depressed when I think that every new web venture that comes along is resting its business model entirely on the promise of advertising, especially when so few of these ventures have the potential to achieve any real scale, which, for all the talk of long tails, is what big-budget marketers are seeking. Those who rely on advertising dollars should be especially wary of an economic downturn. Ad budgets are often the first thing to get cut during tough times.
SV: There are some who believe that Facebook, and social networking in general, is just a fad. Would you agree?
MC: As a cultural phenomenon, I think social networking is more than a fad. So in some form or fashion it’ll always be around. I think the risk to Facebook and MySpace is that the open network idea Google’s pushing will really take off, rendering the walled-garden notions of a network obsolete. This is just anecdotal, but I’m noticing my own Facebook use tailing off. Part of the problem is it doesn’t integrate with the other web services I use, which tend to be Google’s products and include its e-mail program, its RSS reader, its documents program, maps and so forth. I’m increasingly living out of a Google ecosystem that Facebook doesn’t integrate with. So I’m not sure how long I’ll be bothered to keep up with it. And as far as MySpace goes, don’t even get me started. To me, it’s just unusable: pointless, ugly and spamnmy.
SV: You’ve mentioned before that you think social media has created too many “inboxes” - between twittering, blogging, Facebook, Myspace, e-mail, instant messaging, etc, it’s nearly impossible for the average consumer to keep track of daily communications. What company do you think is best poised to take advantage of this fragmentation, or to help alleviate it?
MC: This doesn’t directly answer your question, but my cell phone–a Blackberry Pearl–is a fantastic aggregator of those inboxes you mentioned. Not only do I get my corporate e-mail account and my Gmail, but I get SMS, Twitter, Facebook and just about everything else in one place. It’s where I go when I need a high-level look at the communications chaos around me. Sometimes I’ll even use my cellphone while sitting in front of my computer at work. Otherwise, if you held a gun to my head and made me commit to a current web player, I’d probably bet on Google because…because it’s Google. They get organization and simplification and information streamlining in a way that no other company does.
SV: During our engagement, we helped you start a blog (mattcreamer.com). How has blogging changed your perspective about the future of journalism and online publishing?
MC: I don’t know if it did, but only because blogs have been with us for a while and their role as symbols of the Great Leveling that’s happened in the media world is well-known. I do enjoy maintaining the blog and reading dozens of other blogs on a daily basis, but I view all of that as complementary to a more mainstream, traditional notion of journalism. But then again who knows if the business model that serves that traditional notion of journalism will hold up. Maybe one day we’ll all just be reading Searchviews…..
Google Vote This Story
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | November 29, 2007 | Share This
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Google Experimental has been spotted testing Digg style voting on search results, reports Googlefied. As explained by Google,
“This experiment lets you influence your search experience by adding, moving, and removing search results. When you search for the same keywords again, you’ll continue to see those changes. If you later want to revert your changes, you can undo any modifications you’ve made.”
Users can move search listings up or down, remove listings, suggest a better site or mark favorites. Though the experiment will only be running for a few weeks, it seems like an imminent addition to Google’s Personalized Search Results. As with Google’s other recent “2.0″ developments (Gmail 2.0 release, Shared Stuff, Google Open Social, Google’s purchase of Jaiku, etc), this experiment indicates the increasingly social direction of search. Smaller search engines, such as Naver in South Korea, have already exemplified the power of crowd-sourcing to improve search results, and so it doesn’t really come as a surprise that Google is experimenting with Digg-style voting.
Unlike Digg, however, Google’s social voting functions aren’t an opportunity for SEOs to game the algorithm. If anything, they present a challenge to SEOs to pay greater attention to a site’s usability and utility. Sites that provide users with an incentive to save and refer back to them will benefit from user-controlled rankings, whereas sites that are optimized without regard to user experience may lose visibility. I also wonder how SEOs might incorporate learnings from social media into their site optimization - will we see title tags written like Digg news items? “Google Vote This” chicklets on landing pages?
At the very least, user-voted SERPs will increase the “black box” of Google’s algorithm, making it harder to predict search rankings and more likely that competition for (controllable) paid listings will increase.
Reprise Media Commits to Corporate Social Responsibility
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | November 16, 2007 | Share This
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Today we’re excited to announce the launch of Reprise Media’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative. We’re publicly committing to allocate our expertise and time to help nonprofit organizations advance their marketing efforts.
Over the last four years, Reprise Media has earned terrific recognition for our thought leadership in search engine marketing (SEM) and social media. Though we’re proud of the work we’ve done to help our clients reach consumers, we think there is an even greater opportunity to use search and social media to rally people to worthy causes.
We’ve thought a lot about how an online marketing agency might promote social change, and believe that it is our expertise in search and social media that offers the greatest potential benefit to non profit organizations. We are inspired by the chance to make a difference and we’re eager to share our findings through a series of case studies with the greater non-profit world and our industry peers.
To that, Reprise Media’s first client under this initiative is the Center for Global Development (CGD), a nonprofit think tank that provides independent research and practical ideas for global prosperity. In July 2007, we launched a full SEM campaign the Center’s main website (CGDev.org), and have since expanded the campaign to include GlobalDevelopmentMatters.org, an online video site developed to raise awareness about global poverty, and CARMA.org, a user-friendly global database that reveals the CO2 emissions of approximately 50,000 powerplants and the companies that own them.
Since the campaign’s launch, we’ve increased CGD’s average monthly search traffic by 1500% while more than doubling their click-through rate. In the month of October, our SEM work drove nearly 30% of the site’s visitors.
In addition to managing paid search, Reprise Media has developed an integrated search and social media marketing strategy for CGD’s “Global Development Matters” website. Working with See3, a Chicago-based media company, we’ve established a plan for CGD to use their blog, social network profiles, widgets, and other types of social media to generate discussion about global development issues in advance of the 2008 presidential election.
Encouraged by our initial success with the Center for Global Development, we’ve launched an online application process for other nonprofit organizations that are interested in receiving pro bono SEM, SEO and SMM services. Interested nonprofits can reach out to us through our website, to receive more information about our work and potential partnership.
More about our CSR pledge: CSR Media Release
Leftover Halloween Eye Candy
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | November 1, 2007 | Share This
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Reprise Media’s annual Halloween party always brings out the best in us. Here are a few of my favorite costumes…but there’s more where this came from.
Facebook Opens to Search Indexing
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | September 5, 2007 | Share This
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This morning Facebookers logged in to the announcement that, “Starting today, we are making limited public search listings available to people who are not logged in to Facebook.” Facebook will begin allowing search engines like Google and Yahoo to index users’ profile names and photos. Though users are being given explicit directions on how to opt-out, the majority of Facebook profiles are expected to go “public”, like those of Myspace.com, by the end of the month.
According to the Facebook blog, the newly-opened listings will, “help more people connect and find value from Facebook without exposing any actual profile information or data.” In addition to names and photos, the listings will offer options to log in or register, send a message, “poke” a person, view friends or add to friends.
Though Facebook rightly points out, “The public search listing contains less information than someone could find right after signing up anyway, so we’re not exposing any new information”, the increased accessibility of names and photos may make some people uneasy. One of Facebook’s key draws is its relatively private network, such that, friend requests rarely come from strangers or spam profiles. The illusion of privacy created by Facebook’s current spam-free environment is one of Facebook’s strongest competitive advantages over Myspace. With “friending” options being made available like a click-to-call-esq personal advertisement, Facebook’s privacy advantage could quickly deteriorate.
On the other hand, search indexing will likely increase Facebook user registrations. As Om Malik predicts,
“This move transforms Facebook from being a social network to being quasi-White Pages of the Web. Every time a non-Facebook user finds someone on Facebook after a “search,” they might feel compelled to sign-up and get more information. It is a virtuous cycle, meant to attract more people to the Facebook network.
This development is going to strike fear in the hearts of entrepreneurs behind people-search startups that have mushroomed in recent months and have raised many millions in venture backing. It is also be a worrisome development for reputation-based systems such as Rapleaf that are creating profiles of people on the web. With the growing database of names, it is only a matter of time before Facebook rolls out a reputation system, and pegs it to an e-commerce engine.”
Hey wait a minute - didn’t the Wall Street Journal just report, “Social-networking Web site Facebook Inc. is quietly working on a new advertising system that would let marketers target users with ads based on the massive amounts of information people reveal on the site about themselves.”? Search-indexed profiles + Reputation filters + profile-targeted ad system… Could we be looking at a new kind of search advertising?
iPhone Story
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | July 5, 2007 | Share This
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On Friday June 29th, Apple’s iPhone went on sale. “iCultists”, as dubbed by the New York Times, lined up for days outside of Apple stores around the United States to purchase arguably “the most hyped gadget in tech history.”
Upon it’s release, I invited a guest blogger to give us her first-hand account of her experience buying an iPhone - First time blogger, long-time “iCultist”, and the only person I know who actually bought an iPhone - my seventeen year old sister Betsy:
“On January 9th, I watched the Macworld keynote address in its entirety - twice. I absorbed every piece of information (sparing as it was) about Apple’s “iPhone” that could be found on the website, in blogs, or in the keynote video. I immediately grasped how important it would be for me to have this product, and starting that day, I bragged to as many people as I could that I was getting an iPhone. Five months and t-minus 2 days.
I waited and waited, frustrated as the release date was pushed back. June 11th. June 29th. 6 pm on June 29th. Apple remained elusive about the purchasing process; should I go to an Apple store or an AT&T store? Come 6 pm on June 29th, I set out to the AT&T store for the coveted iPhone. I figured waiting in line early would be a waste of time, since I would undoubtedly have to wait whenever I got there. I arrived around 6:30 pm, and stood in line for an hour to even get inside the store. As I approached the doors, however, an AT&T employee announced to our disgruntled crowd that they had sold out of iPhones and that our best bet was to order one online.
(more…)
Searchviews Makeover
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Written By Kate Zimmermann | June 22, 2007 | Share This
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Though it’s a little late for spring cleaning, Searchviews figured that it was about time for a makeover.
We’ve scrapped the old design in favor of something that actually goes with reprisemedia.com – because, contrary to popular mistake, Searchviews is Reprise Media’s company blog. And, as much as we liked the serene foliage of our last header, our usability experts tell us it was “distracting”.