The SEM Blog

Twitter – Why Automatic Twitter Accounts Fail

If you are on Twitter I’m sure you’ve encountered that surreal moment when a company/organization/individual starts following you after you tweet about them. Sometimes it is great and sometimes it is creepy and then sometimes it is downright funny.

Case in point:

Yesterday, in my personal Twitter account I tweeted about Hockey being ‘the sport of kings!’

@TheOtherLeslie I'm talking about Hockey - the sport of kings!  Balsillie, RIM/Blackberry CEO is trying to buy a team
about 17 hours ago from twhirl in reply to TheOtherLeslie

30 minutes later the basketball team the Sacramento Kings start following me

Wow, I tweet about hockey using the word 'kings' and the Sacramento Kings follow me. That right there is a Social Media Monitoring FAIL
about 17 hours ago from twhirl

@rxmike replies to my tweet about the Kings following me

@deneyterrio had a similar exp tonite. Tweeted about St Louis Cardinals #fail and now they are following me. #poorsearch
about 12 hours ago from Tweetie in reply to deneyterrio

This is where it gets really strange. An unofficial St Louis Cardinals Twitter account must be set on auto-pilot and RTs anything that is said about them. Their account Retweets @rxmike’s tweet

RT @rxmike @deneyterrio had a similar exp tonite. Tweeted about St Louis Cardinals #fail and now they are following me. #poorsearch
about 11 hours ago from web

At this point I have figured out that account is on auto-pilot so I decide to do a little test. I in turn Retweet their last tweet

RT @ST_L_Cardinals RT @rxmike @deneyterrio had a similar exp tonite. Tweeted about St Louis Cardinals #fail and now they are following me. #
about 10 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Sure enough the auto-pilot account Retweets it again but not before

RT @deneyterrio RT @ST_L_Cardinals RT @rxmike @deneyterrio had a similar exp tonite. Tweeted about St Louis Cardinals #fail and now they ...
about 9 hours ago from web

Surreal for sure.

So what is the point of all this? Well as you can see above if you are promoting your brand online in such a disconnected fashion as the St Louis Cardinals are you could run into some potential problems. Yes this is not the official St Louis Cardinals twitter account, I can't easily find one, but as you can see if you don't pay attention to your brand online you can run into problems down the road. If a team or someone famous follows/replies to you and you never visit their Twitter page you might think they are the real deal. In this case they are NOT the real St Louis Cardinals Twitter account but you should always be monitoring your online presence. Our tweets above raise the awareness of actually monitoring your brand online and thankfully we were not malicious but that might not stop someone out there that might want to harm you and/or your brand.

Steps to Take to Avoid Bad Online PR

First thing you need to do is have an actual person reply and retweet about your brand. The beauty of Twitter and Social Media is that it lets regular people connect with the companies/organizations/celebrities that they love. If you are a robot you will be treated like a robot.

You should also have other people in your company/org tweet as well. They don’t have to tweet about your company exclusively but they can occasionally. A ratio of 1 to 5 is a good measure, 1 company to 5 personal. If you are an employee and you constantly tweet about your company people will tune you out. The reason for this is people want to connect on an individual level. I know I am more likely to do business with someone that I have a personal relationship with or someone I know online that has always given me the time of day.

Ways to Monitor Your Brand Online

Twitter Search

All public tweets are searchable as business you should always be searching on Twitter to see what people are saying about you

Blog Pulse

Blog Pulse is a great search engine for Blogs. Type in your brand name see what people are blogging about you and/or your brand.

Technorati

Technorati is another great search engine to see what people are saying about your brand. Technorati is blogs and Google is to websites - a great search engine.

But This is a Fan Not the Real Team!

This account I am referencing is auto-tweeting everything that has to do with the Cardinals in Twitter and in doing that they run the risk of someone attacking or ‘flaming’ them online, even if it isn't their account. This type of account shows that Twitter and Social Media in general are not as free spirited as some might think. You can’t just put your brand on auto-pilot and expect the world to be amazed. Well, they will be amazed – at how vacant and distant you are.

Jason McElweenie

For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul - sem@schipul.com

Microsoft begins revealing New Decision Engine - Bing

I suspect Microsoft has long felt the burr under their saddle when talking about Google. Looks like their competitive nature has them back in the headlines. They are unveiling the newest updates to their Search Engine technology called Bing. The biggest question is, can it be a competitor to Google?

We do recognize that Search is improving and changing. Bing as being billed as a Decision Engine and you can see short presentation about it at www.decisionengine.com.

In the first versions, Bing will focus on four areas:

1. Making a purchase decision
2. Planning a trip
3. Researching a heath condition
4. Finding a local business

This new view of search engines is very much about comparing information. People using search engines for finding information are often looking for a one best answer. But decisions are more focused on reviews, trust, location and sometimes filtering out what you don’t need. This is where we see search taking on the role of negotiation. Bing seems to take a first stab at search as a negotiation in each of the four verticals. Bing will be revealing results based on Best Match, Deep Links and Quick Preview to provide relevancy and minimize the need for additional clicks. They will provide customer insight built in pages to provide comparisons, reviews and even price predictors in some cases. Really, the market share is open for improvements.

Bing’s advertising campaign will begin to sell the idea that today’s search engines don’t really work as well as thought to solve problems. Even if this turns out to be a better version of search/decision, they will have to compete with the Google brand. Tests showed people still preferred search results with the Google Brand logo, even if the results were not Google results. Positioning may be their biggest hurdle. Oh yeah… the name?

Branding shop Interbrand helped conceive the name Bing, which was chosen because it was memorable, easy to spell around the world and could be used as a verb, as Microsoft hopes to convert people from "Google it" to "Bing it."

Finding words like that these days "is getting harder and harder," said Paola Norambuena, senior director-head of verbal identity at Interbrand. She added that linguistically Bing had a lot of applications. "It's the sound of found."

from Advertising Age

Jonti Bolles

For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul - sem@schipul.com

and follow us on Twitter.

Twitter is Changing – Search, Rank and Indexing

Most people on Twitter have found their way over to the Twitter search tool at http://search.twitter.com. It will show a reverse timeline of all tweets containing keywords you are interested in seeing. This is extremely helpful in looking up brands, trends, and finding other people who have similar interests to follow.

Twitter Search is about to change. CNET notes Twitter will start indexing not just the contents of the 140 character microblogs, but also crawling and indexing the content of pages sent in shortened URLs. This will provide a much clearer indication of what people are interested in and how topics are ranking. This could be a great tool to organize data and filter some of the recent spam clutter on Twitter. Twitter may be positioning for a run at part of Google’s pie in the Search community. Delivering relevant real-time results based on rank, reputation and relevance would be valuable in the semantic search development.

What does this mean to the business user getting started with Twitter? Building a effective profile in now becomes more important than ever. Many small businesses are aware of the impact of Twitter, followers and reputation in their community. Now, reputation could be ranked and the content of websites will be measured via retweets, shortened URLs and quality vs. quantity. This isn’t anything new, we have known good content is the best way to develop followers and build a community, now Twitter will begin to follow the same rules. It is conceivable to realize Twitter accounts with good followers, retweets and good reputation will be ranked higher in Twitter search results.

What can you do? Continue to learn the best tools and etiquette for using Twitter.  For example, Twitter just switched its default link shortener to Bit.ly. Bit.ly offers real-time stats on the most clicked links, clickthrough and where users are coming from. You can link to your own website and announce new blog posts and website updates, but more importantly, share the link love to good content beyond your site and contribute to the community. Use Twitter Search to find others in your community who share similar interests. Follow them and listen, then participate in the community. Finally, monitor how well you are doing compared to others using Twitalyzer to measure Influence and other new metrics.

Jonti Bolles

For more information about this article, learning to effectively use Twitter and other Social Media tools, or learning how to manage analytics, please contact our Business Development Team at Schipul – The Web Marketing Company.

Adwords Tactics for Competitive Revenue and Traffic

When revenue dollars dip or seem to slow, it is natural to review tactics with a closer eye. One way to stay competitive is target specific and trending keywords. Everyone is looking for a good value and the best way to stretch their dollars, but this is especially true in the last twelve months. Here are a few tips from Google Adwords Tactics you can apply to several areas of web marketing.

Use Value related keywords: Review your keyword list and top phrases driving traffic to your site. Google Trends clearly shows a trend for the word Coupon in  rising trend for the past twelve months. Can you incorporate price and discount related words? Add discount, savings, coupon, sale to phrases when relevant. Make sure to incorporate negative keywords such as –free to prevent paying for irrelevant clicks or bringing unwanted traffic. Use a Search Based Keyword Tool to both expand and target your list.

Low prices and savings in Display Ads: Customers both new and repeat are looking for values. Let them know about a sale, bundle pricing or a special promotional code. This text can be used in Display Ads and should be reinforced with the same message on the landing page. Can you promote a Sale, offer a bundle or discount for 10% off your web order? From Forrester research in late 2008, half of consumers believe they find the best deals online. Take advantage and market to the savvy shopper.

Market to existing clients: Let people know you have a new offer. Send an email to your house list with the latest coupon or discount code. Examples may include“Mention this email and receive 10% off your entire purchase” or “Print this coupon.” Include a discount code or free shipping if your ecommerce cart provides that option. Create your newsletter with text and graphics incorporating your special offer and keywords. Look at your email list and segment them based on what offer or target goal you are trying to achieve. It may be different offers resonant with different groups. Now, post that same newsletter as an article or page on your website to build traffic and attract additional readers.  Please make sure you have permission to send your email so you will not be flagged as SPAM. Watching your web analytics program, track visitors after sending an email to help measure success of your different target markets. Focus your efforts on the high-performing groups and consider allocating resources accordingly.

Jonti Bolles

For more information about this article or Web Marketing, please contact our Search Engine Marketing Team or Business Development Team at Schipul – The Web Marketing Company.

Analytics for Twitter – Twitalyzer Review

There is hardly an hour much less a day that goes by without a mention of Twitter and it’s growing influence. Eric T. Petersen has watched the growth of Twitter and built a new set of terms to measure users against benchmarks. Twitter analytics is fairly new, so it makes sense new ways to define and benchmark would be needed.

We often get really powerful questions from clients wanting to know the simple things like, “Why would I Twitter?” or “Am I doing it right?” With Twitalyzer, you can see the measurement of key metrics and see how you are doing against others. You see the Twitalyzer 100 most influential people, or simply measure against your friends, colleagues or business competitors. 

A couple of the great values to review are Influence and Signal-to-Noise ratio. Influence is measured not just by your popularity, but a set of calculations based on things like how often you are “retweeted” and your reach with updates and number of followers. Signal-to-noise ratio is a the number of messages with information sharing such as @ references, # hastags, links or retweets. Twitter is a great tool for Social Media, but its popularity is also ramping up some of the noise we are all bombarded with daily. Checking out how much you are contributing above the noise is a great metric. There are other metrics available including generosity, velocity and clout.

How do you become a good Twitterer? There is a dashboard to suggest ways to increase your influence and contribute to the community. Like most analytics tools, it can let you know if you are using a social media strategy successfully.

Finally, we really like the Search tool to find others with similar interests, keywords and get a quick glance at their influence to see if we should be following them.

Of course, we Twitter because we like it and not to chase numbers. Don’t get too caught up, in the super easy to read scores and charts. Remember to enjoy Twitter for the goodness (and sometimes distraction) it brings to your digital life.

Let us know how you like Twitalzyer.

Follow us on twitter.com/semblog or me personally at twitter.com/jonti

Jonti Bolles

For more information please contact the Search Engine Marketing Team at Schipul - sem@schipul.com