I’ve always fancied myself as a bit of a therapist. My friends who come to me with problems (you know who you are) only fuel the fantasy. And now that I’m in a new role here at iCrossing UK as Content Strategist, I’m off to buy a chaise lounge and a posh-looking clipboard.

Just a couple of weeks into the job and I’ve seen it already: A client has lots of great content, but it’s not quite doing what they want it to, like engage readers, generate social activity, lead to registrations or subscriptions, etc. But just like in therapy, the first step toward recovery is acknowledging you have a problem in the first place.

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Recently we performed some analysis for a high street retailer around what happened when you stopped bidding on your brand terms. Would the lost Paid Search visits be ‘soaked up’ in Natural Search (commonly referred to as the cannibalisation effect) or would they just be lost? We found the results quite interesting so we thought we’d share them.

Methodology

In order to perform this analysis a two week benchmark period and a test period were set up. The periods were selected to be as similar as possible, both Monday – Sunday periods, however some seasonal variation was inevitable, therefore we analysed the traffic for non brand terms for the two periods to see if there was any change. The results showed a 5.1% uplift in the second period over the first, therefore a 5.1% uplift was added to the first period to normalise the results.

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* * Updated / corrected with thank to @johnniemoore * *

One of the recurring themes for us at iCrossing and our clients over the past year or so has been the way that the social web is should be thought of as a business issue first and marketing issue second.

An article about libel on The Lawyer website called “Virtual veractity” reinforces the importance of thinking outside of the marketing box when it comes to social media. It outlines the libel case against Simon Singh by the British Chiropractic Association and how in a number of important ways social media influenced the trial, from scrutiny and public discussion of the details by a significant online community of interest to the fact that “those following the case on the internet were able to demolish the central element of the British Chiropractic Association’s (BCA’s) case long before it was able to reach the courtroom.”

Image: If social media is re-writing the law, what does it mean for business? ((cc) Eflon)

We have seen the social web begin to change the way that politicians campaign and make laws, how the fourth estate, the media operates, and recently, with this case and in the de facto destruction of super-injunctions we are seeing the influence of a connected citizenry having a direct influence on how our legal system works.
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The latest news this week was that Nine Inch Nails will score David Fincher’s upcoming film,” The Social Network” – A movie about the founding of Facebook. As Trent Reznor (the man behind Nine Inch Nails) truly understands the value of Social Media and how to engage in it, he’s a perfect match.

A while ago he wrote a post in the official forum, which describes the three iCrossing Social Media principles (Understand, be useful, be live) pretty well:

“I found myself realizing that for me to have any concept of how to interact with the community and know what they might want / what they find appropriate, I need to immerse myself in that world and live it for a while.”

And further:

“What you’ve seen happen with the marketing and presentation of NIN over the last years is a direct result of living next to you, listening to you, consuming with you and interacting with you. Directly. There’s no handlers or PR people here, it’s me and my guys – that’s it.”
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One of my duties as a social media analyst is to stay on top of the latest developments in the digital realm. Naturally I am especially interested in those developments that have an impact upon social media and directly influence my day to day work. This means following my favourite writers who cover technology, social media (specifically), as well as a wide array of subjects that aren’t contextually related but often touch upon the aforementioned topics.

One of my favourite sectors to glean up to the minute information from is the music industry. That may sound like a barren pit to mine as the music biz’s archaic approach to digital is well documented and in the main considered to be one of the key factors in the fall of that industry of recent years.

This conception holds weight, but only if you consider the music industry to be limited to a small pool of corporations. The music industry is fractured and should not be grouped into one single entity when it comes to digital.

Yes, there are the giant monolithic majors that on the face of it appear to be laggards when it comes to digital (although I’m sure behind the scenes it is not so clear cut), but then there are also independents and unsigned artists who consistently impress me with their rapid uptake and integration of the latest digital developments. I often see practical implications of the newest platforms and customisations of existing ones first in this sector. It has always been a great resource for me as an analyst and a superb observation point / testing ground for learning how users react to and engage with the latest developments.

I personally regularly test developments through music related content as it is a topic that recurrently stimulates participation (enabling a test with real people). These learnings give me the confidence to advise clients how it may play out for them with a degree of practical experience under my belt (for example Facebook Pages iterations and Twitter best practice).

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This article entitled Why I Sold Zappos had an interesting comment towards the end about observing employee relationships within the online shoe retailer:

“When employees log in to their computers, we ask them to look at a picture of a random employee and then ask them how well they know that person — the options include “say hi in the halls,” “hang out outside of work,” and “we’re going to be longtime friends.” We’re starting to keep track of the number and strength of cross-departmental relationships — and we’re planning a class on the topic. My hope is that we can have more employees who plan to be close friends.”

Setting aside how sharing this personal information may make you feel this is a very interesting exercise in revealing the implicit social network that exists in a business. Wherever you work there is generally some sort of organogram or chart that shows who manages who and explains how the business is structured in theory. Practical experience tells us that this isn’t actually a map that enables us to understand how to get things done. Personal relationships exist alongside implicit knowledge of who is the ‘right’ person to speak to in a given situation, regardless of explicit job title or status.

Tony Hsieh describes one approach in the quote above but we could try and go further by mapping this network, to give us an insight into the strength of relationships between individuals. I’d suggest setting up a means to record this information along the lines of the illustration below:

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As the selection of social media platforms grow, it’s becoming harder and harder to know what’s worth investing time in and where to focus efforts. Platform priorities may change  dependent on the main marketing objectives/motivations of the company.

An interesting study by Burson Marsteller based on some of the world’s larger brands (in this case  Fortune 100 companies) reveals the social media platform selection and useage types that these brands are currently active in. Here’s the key takeaways (via i-Strategy)…

• 79% of the Fortune 100 are present and listening, using at least of one of the main social platforms to communicate with their customers.
• 20% of Companies are using all four of the main social technologies (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Blogs)
• 82% of the Fortune 100 update and engage with customers on their Twitter account
• Fortune 100 Companies on average post 3.6 wall posts to their Facebook page per week
• 50% of the Fortune 100 have a YouTube account and upload 10 videos on average a month

What we don’t get as part of this study though are the marketing objectives for why each of these brands may be using each social media platform.
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Recently, I have been working in both the PPC and SEO teams at iCrossing. Batting for both sides in this way has highlighted the traditionally very different ways in which these disciplines are generally analysed and reported on.

It feels like we are getting closer and closer to the point where we will be able to use the same metrics across search as a whole, and the points here are where I think that Paid Search methods can now be applied to Natural Search campaigns.

…..and I want to go beyond simply reporting the ROI or CPA of Natural Search campaign because, although it generally makes you look very good compared to Paid Search, I don’t need to explain how to do that (hopefully).

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Back in January I wrote a post suggesting that social media would soon overtake search. In March Facebook overtook Google as the most visited site in the US and now after months of waiting Social Media has finally overtaken Search in the UK.

Social media is growing quickly in popularity and shows no sign of slowing down. Facebook the biggest social property in the UK currently has 400 million users worldwide and is growing quickly.
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Digital governance keeps coming up. What big clients mean by this is that something needs to be done about their recognition that success in digital is as much about organisational change as campaign planning – if not more.

The rise of social media has brought things to a head. Advertisers soon come to realise that the way to succeed in social spaces is not through campaigns but by embedding understanding of how to engage in these places throughout their business. Simultaneously, they look to provide the tools that enable them to do so, as well as – if you’re lucky – structures in the organisation for acting on the customer insight that social engagement relentlessly supplies.

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