Guest Blogger - Harnessing the Power of Social Networking
The blog post below is courtesy of Bob Ruggio, of Webgio.
Webgio is one of our web solutions partners, based out of New York, and Bob is one of the sharpest minds that I know when it comes to web strategy, and has a great pulse on emerging tech trends. He was kind enough to provide a guest blog for me.
Harnessing the Power of Social Networking
Article by: Bob Ruggio
Social networking has been a media buzz word over the last few years.
Sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter are connecting friends, businesses and information through the World Wide Web via any device, anytime and anywhere. I personally think social media is in its infancy and yet to be fully tapped. This is what makes it such an exciting topic to follow. In mid December I had the opportunity to experiment with this technology in a non-conventional way. The outcome was a viable model for harnessing the power of social networking within communities, businesses and organizations to achieve results.
Here’s how we did it -
The Challenge
A Central New York family of twelve lost everything in a fire in the middle of winter and needed the help of the community. Unfortunately every possession was lost, the children only had the clothes on their back and some evacuated without shoes into the snow covered streets.
When hearing this tragic news, the number of children involved, and losing every possession including car keys, it was a moment in my life that I felt the need to step up. My next immediate thought was “What could I do to help?” And within seconds I was planning to use a social networking solution.
Action Taken
I choose Facebook as the social medium because that network had the largest number of community members within my network who could provide local support for the victims. It all started as a simple note and making friends aware. The family needs were clothing, nonperishable foods, toys, financial gifts and a key ingredient of helping us spread the word.
Within minutes of our first post, a flood of questions came in from the network. Within hours we had over one hundred members participating.
Until this event I never truly felt tapped into the sheer power of social networking on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.
The first thing we did was coordinate with volunteers and local businesses to identify drop zones for donations. Next we conducted a needs assessment with the family for ages, gender, shirts size, pants size, and shoes size. This information was then updated on a newly created group called the Angel Donations Network. The use of a group vs. a note gave us several advantages for administrative control and communication over the project.
Then something special happened as donations began to pour in on the first day. Traditional media outlets learned of our use of the social networking tools to help the family and this created a viral media buzz.
For some reason traditional media loves writing about social networking.
This resulted in people joining Facebook through traditional media awareness such as television and newspaper. It was very exciting being able to harness on a small scale the power of social networking, turning what started as a dripping faucet of data, into a full water main break of information flow by Facebook members. This presented one of our biggest challenges, controlling the information of the social network.
As donations came in volunteers kept inventories and relayed data from the donation drop zones to the Facebook inventory. We learned to control the information through the use of well crafted press releases posted to the Facebook group. The press releases served as what I call a “valve”. The press release valves gave us control over the flow of activity and information. After this discovery we now had the ability to turn a dripping faucet into a full water main break of information flow on command. This served as an effective tool in the project.
The Results
As in any project, this didn’t go without logistical challenges but some amazing social networking lessons were learned while using social media.
In the end social networking helped catalyze traditional media and successfully rallied an online community around donating all basic needs for the family within 4 days.
The first lesson learned from this experiment was the speed that we were able to enlist the help of community members. Within minutes we began helping this family. Very few phone calls and most communication happened by social media.
The second lesson was the level of awareness we could achieve by using social media. Each member of the Facebook group was able to stay up to date with posted statuses as the family was helped. This allowed for easy viewing of outstanding donation needs against current inventory levels. From a management standpoint this was vital to in achieving our objectives responsibly.
The third lesson was choosing the correct mediums, frequency, and timing around using each. I viewed this as situational. In this experiment we used Facebook notes then shifted gears to a group to allow more advanced features of control.
The forth lesson was balancing traditional media with social media at a low cost or no cost based on the “buzz” of what you are doing.
Traditional media is always looking for a good story to fill a newspaper or evening news spot so exploit that gently.
Lastly and probably the most important lesson was learning to control the flow of information by carefully crafting press releases in the Facebook group. This served as a valve for speeding up and slowing down the flow of efforts and activities based on needs. This allowed us to effectively communicate the message at specific frequencies and outline specific actions the group could help with. It gave everyone direction and turned what could be chaos into social harmony.
Summary
Social networking has many uses and can be very powerful. I believe we’ve only seen the tip of the ice berg on harnessing its true value withinc ommunities, businesses and organizations. Since this event I’ve had the opportunity to use this model to help a small business build its clientele base and develop a means for effectively communicating messages outside the use of traditional mediums. While both projects are small in scope it has yielded the results we set out to achieve in both cases. The next time you have a community or business challenge try tapping into the power of social networking as a solution or compliment to the main plan.
==================================================================
About the guest author:
Bob Ruggio is a Sr. Business Analyst, Project Manager and .NET Developer specializing in building and growing businesses using next generation web solutions. He holds a Computer Science degree from Hawaii Pacific University, a Master’s Certificate in Applied Project Management from Villanova University, a Certificate in Entrepreneurship from Syracuse University’s Whitman’s School of Management, an M.B.A. in Management from the State University of New York at Oswego, and multiple computer based technical certifications.
Lansing, I mean, Landing page Development
In these posts, we always try to bring to your attention the more overlooked elements of strong online marketing campaigns. I have covered ad text, timing, and accountability. My new topic is landing pages. I was recently reading a very good article on landing pages here, by Tim Ash on Search Engine Watch, and it tipped me off to an idea regarding landing pages within geographic campaigns. Many of our clients at Netvantage Marketing use geo-targeted campaigns, meaning that the search engine marketing we are performing are only serving ads for those Googling in certain geo-graphic pockets. A key piece of a successful geo-targeted ads is utilizing the local area within the ad text, as well as bidding on keyword variations with a geographic orientation. For example, instead of “copier suppliers” we may select “lansing copies suppliers”, and then write accompanying ad text that highlighted the geographic area you serve. It can be a great tool to increase click through rate and customers. But then what?
One of which is your landing page. Landing pages are an important element to your AdWords campaign. Sure, you can generate lots of traffic through your search ads, but are they converting? When users go to your site’s content, the real measure of success will be conversion to your goal. Landing page content gets even more intriguing when you enter in the realm of geo-targeted campaigns.
The first and more important recommendation I would make is to make sure that for each of your landing pages, you are taking into accounting utilizing geography within your content. This particularly important for your header tag structure. If a user has clicked on “lansing copier supplier” - have this be prominent within the lead h1 introductory text. Then be sure to use geography within the body content.
The second recommendation I would make is probably more work, but worth it. For each of your services offerings and corresponding ad copy, make a landing page for that geographic area. Your ability to convert customers from this page will certainly rise. So, if you are serving two geographic areas, or geographic areas that could have different names, construct landing pages that fit both. Using our copier supplier example - you may want to point users to a landing page that highlights “Lansing copier supplier” content, - and then also construct a landing page that highlights “Mid Michigan copier supplier”.
Of course, I am getting deep into online marketing strategy and I should stop to say, at the top of this process you should be running an entirely different ad group for “Mid Michigan copier supplier” versus “Lansing copier supplier”, including your keywords and ad text. This is what will make my landing page suggestion work the best.
Yes, this all seems meticulous. Yes, it is work. If you are starting out on your own, I recommend a few ad groups and corresponding landing pages to test and gain a comfort level. Once you are comfortable, add onto your campaign with this strategy. The overall major trend in search marketing is the power of localization — be sure to take advantage of this and use it your benefit with strong landing pages.
The Scary, Growing Ad Group, It’s the Attack of the Adblob!
We participated in the Greater Lansing Business Monthly Fall Showcase yesterday, and I was a presenter at the Lansing IT Council’s Google 101 event. Both went very well. At the Showcase, we had lots of interested companies stop by, and we also saw a lot of old friends and colleagues. At the Google 101 presentation, it was myself, Bill Hamilton of TechSmith, Ryan Vartoogian of Spartan Internet Consulting, and Travis Stoliker of Liquid Web. It was a very exciting honor to be on this panel with such respected and successful individuals, and their companies.
The areas I spoke on within the presentation were:
Search Engine Result basics - explaining the difference between paid and organic results.
Ad Group Development and Ad Construction - a real favorite topic of mine.
Key takeaways - I got to wrap up the presentation with key points of emphasis, and well as some tangible takeaways, such as setting up a Google Webmaster Tools account, and registering with the Google Local Business Center, and some resources available at Google.
Getting back to Ad Groups, I discussed the importance of setting up very tightly constructed ad groups, with with specific and ultra-relevant keywords. I have seen too many companies group several keywords and keyword variations into too few ad groups. The result are ad groups which generate low click through rates, or worse yet, ads that show up for keywords that are too broad, and attract clicks that result in poor visits to your site. Now that is expensive! In the spirit of Halloween, I like to call it the Attack of the the Adblob!!!
You may start with good intentions and a few keywords centered around your service or product, and then over time the temptation to keep adding keywords to it that you think users may type in. Or maybe you are passive in your approach, grouping in a lot of keywords into just 2-3 ad groups thinking it will just magically work.
While it is good to add relevant keywords that your target audience may type in, you need to establish ad texts in different ad groups that address the diverese keyword variations. And I am not talking about just the color of your product either. Be thinking about those keyword variations for ad texts. ”Halloween costume” should be not in the same ad group as “Halloween masks”. Is there a rule of thumb on the number of keyphrases? Well no, but anything more than 8 should have you concerned.
A fundamental driver to any good Adwords venture is small ad groups. This approach enables specific ad creation, which allows for the usage of keyword variations in ad text, which allows for higher click through rates, which means a better Quality Score, which means lower cost per click. Whew! But seriously, that is the cycle, and that is why that approach is important.
Enjoy your Halloween,,, and don’t let the Adblob massacre your AdWords budget!
A Visit from Google
I attended the Lansing Economic Club Luncheon at the Kellogg Center yesterday, and we were able to hear John Kelley, of Google Adwords to speak. Aside from the surprisingly good chicken lunch, it was very good. John primarily heads up the Google AdWords division, I believe the official title is Manager, Online Sales and Operations, and works in the Google office in Ann Arbor. John dida very good job of laying out Google’s history, direction, and current opportunities for advertising.
And he did it in a way that resonated with a group of business people that really don’t have an understanding of tech, yet of course use Google every day. The event had around 200 people in attendance. I am not sure who on the Economic Club was responsible for bringing John in, but it was a good move, and a great move for our new company.
Having him in front of that audience was a great way to heighten awareness to the advertising potential, and accountability, that Google and search marketing can deliver. My hope of course is that those in the audience may turn to Netvantage for assistance in setting up and/or managing their campaign. And again, my hats off to the foresight of the the Lansing Economic Club to bring in a top-line speaker on an important and innovative subject. (well, of course I am biased in how important it is 
Network, Network, NETwork
Well, shame on me. It has been two weeks since I have posted. We have been very busy at Netvantage Marketing. It seems to me that the business community and associations have a vast period of inactivity between July 1st and Labor Day, and then bam - I am going to Capital Area IT Council meetings, Lansing Regional Chamber of Commerce Bottom Line breakfasts, luncheons, and local business association meetings. Why? Well because we want to network, and pursue all avenues possible to spread the word on Netvantage Marketing. And I am guessing that we will be on this torrid pace until Thanksgiving - and then of course its “we’ll get to it after the Holidays”. But until then, lots of meetings and networking events, which should be a lot of fun.
Why network? Well for lots of reasons that you know. But this is not a post about why network to build leads. You can get that in something like the local paper’s business tips section. Besides the odd chance that we will gain a lead, we network to help build brand. Build brand? Yes, remember a brand is not your logo. A brand is what your various target audiences perceive of you. Is is totally controllable? Unless you can manipulate people’s minds, no. But can you contribute to it? Of course! Giving the right first impression when you network at events helps build your perception and resultant brand.
However, don’t forget to build your online brand. Online brand development is very key to your business. Thinking of the home page of your website as that first handshake and 45 second elevator pitch at a cocktail mixer will go a long way in the success of your website as an important part of your business model. At Netvantage, we are always looking at ways to drive more traffic to your site, with search engine marketing, and search engine optimization, and web analytics. However, first and foremost, before we can do our work, we also need to make sure that our client’s online handshake is strong enough, and that their website is able to NETwork. So if you are looking to generate more traffic to your site, be sure to take a good look at the site, and take the appropriate steps to develop the right online brand.
