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Keeping Your Customers Engaged After the Contest is Over

Thu, 23 May 2013 14:19:00 +0000

The top goal of every client I meet with is to increase the number of "Likes" and "Followers" on their social media pages, but they’re unaware that these metrics don’t accurately gauge a brand’s success. Contests and promotions are great ways to boost these numbers immediately, but the more important question is how to hold on to your customers’ interest after the winning is over.

Social media gives brands an opportunity to listen to customers’ conversations and then speak to them on a more personal level while actually understanding what they want and providing the conduit for a much deeper connection. There is no ROI on trust and loyalty, but when you put the sales first mentality aside and truly connect with people, you build trust, and potentially a customer for life. Brands like Oreo, Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts have been able to make these kinds of connections. By building an audience of loyal customers, they’re able to create the viral content that we talk about every day while generating the kinds of metrics that we all envy.

Provide value to people’s lives beyond the contest. When you connect with them, you build trust, and only then do you earn the right to monetize that relationship. Listen, be accountable, earn, empower and help. We’re in a time where customer service is lacking and the customer’s voice is becoming more valuable to your business’ success. A "Like" may be the most visible metric on the surface, but 200 passionate brand ambassadors will have a much greater impact on your success than 10,000 disconnected "Followers".

The problem with project-based content marketing

Tue, 21 May 2013 12:13:00 +0000

The problem with project-based content marketing

UK marketers say their biggest challenge is to create enough content. They told the Content Marketing Institute and the Direct Marketing Association they struggle to keep up with what they believe is a demand from their audiences for more content than they are able to produce.

Research also shows that more than a third of UK organisations now outsource at least some of their content creation to external providers, presumably to plug the gaps in their own output or to produce time-consuming content such as videos or white papers. However, many outsource on a projects on a one-off basis, making use of a multitude of freelancers or agencies.

This approach has a number of flaws which could cost brands dearly.

It’s not about the numbers

What do you think your audience prefers: spending 20 minutes a day on content that is 80 per cent relevant to them, or spending 10 minutes a day on something that is completely relevant to them? It’s a no-brainer. Consumers don’t want more content, they want better content. This means you need to prioritise the creation of content that is high on relevance and value, and look at output levels as a secondary concern.

It’s easy to write a few passable blog posts a day. The real challenge is in publishing content that encourages specific action - whether that is sharing content on social networks or hitting the ’buy now’ button.

The worst reaction to a piece of content from a marketing perspective is indifference. Inspire action with truly memorable content.

Coherent and cohesive strategy

Trending topics play an important role in marketing; the whole concept of agility in marketing is built on brands being able to adjust their approach to take advantage of whatever is directing their industry at that particular moment in time.

But that doesn’t mean that when a new trend sweeps by, your overarching strategy falls by the wayside. The strength of an intelligent content marketing strategy lies in it being well developed from the start, with a clear set of objectives in mind and with each activity aligned to achieving those.

When a trend comes along that cannot be ignored, it is crucial that whoever produces content around it understands both your overarching objectives and how their activities contribute towards those, to ensure an integrated approach.

At Google’s mercy

Let’s face it: Google makes the rules when it comes to digital content. Already this year we’ve seen it dish out harsh penalties to the likes of Interflora, which didn’t play the content game in the way that Google likes it played.

The biggest losers in the wake of the Panda and Penguin updates were companies that failed to update their strategies as the industry around them evolved. They continued to outsource linkbuilding to dodgy SEO companies, or relied on freelancers to rewrite existing pages which were deemed by Google to be either duplicate content or of low value to the reader.

The single way of Google-proofing your content is by putting the end user’s needs at the heart of everything you publish, constantly asking yourself if what you’re doing is relevant and useful to them. It’s also crucial to remain at the forefront of industry developments and to set up your content team - whether they are in-house, external, or a combination - to react quickly to any changes that might affect your business.

Measurement

Nearly four in ten UK marketers told the CMI and DMA their biggest challenge is measuring the effectiveness of their content.

The most accurate way of measuring content results is by keeping variables to a minimum. For example, if you’re wondering if your audience prefers reading a white paper or viewing a video for how-to type content, create one of each, promote them in the same way, and see which format yields the best results in line with your stated objectives.

If you have a single team creating content over an extended period of time, they will get to know the metrics that matter. They will know exactly what type of content yields the best results for each objective, rather than try to reinvent the wheel at the start of each project.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint

This isn’t the SEO of old, where you could bombard your site with keyword-stuffed content and almost instantly enjoy top rankings in Google. Regardless of your strategy, content marketing takes a lot more time, effort and intelligence - but the rewards are bigger.

Proof that the best content marketing strategies are built to last, is Coca-Cola’s Content2020 initiative. Far from developing a short-term strategy, the brand has set itself lofty ambitions for what it wants to achieve with content by 2020.

You won’t find any project-based thinking at Coca-Cola, and if you don’t want to take your lead from Interbrand’s top global brand, who will you believe?

Karen Webber is the Head of Marketing Communications at NewsReach, an international content marketing agency headquartered in the UK. Focusing on intelligent content marketing, NewsReach works with leading brands to develop tailored strategies and produce world-class content ranging from white papers and infographics to video news and blogs in all major languages. Follow Webber on Twitter @webber_karen

Graph Marketing Defined

Mon, 20 May 2013 13:31:00 +0000

Graph Marketing is a strategy that places customers and their networks of influence at the center of marketing and advertising by leveraging their social identities, conversations, and communities.

For those of you who are familiar with Eric Fisher and Facebook’s Social Design Principals, the above should sound familiar. I simply have taken the framework that they have pushed developers to follow when building apps and applied it broadly to the marketing and advertising industry.. Why? I think it’s a perfect summation of the parts that make up Graph Marketing. In short:

Utilize personal information and connections to make advertising creative and marketing experiences a personalized experience.
Show conversations, social context, and activity everywhere within your marketing ecosystem.
Make it really easy to talk, share, give feedback, and engage with your brand and its fans & followers.

NOTE: This is my fist attempt at a definition. In no way do I suggest that this is the final. Consider the above as a working definition to help generate dialog, criticism, and feedback that will ultimately produce a more accurate and lasting understanding of this concept.

Why?

THE MOVE FROM THE LINEAR FUNNEL TO THE CUSTOMER DECISION JOURNEY (CDJ): The classic marketing funnel that suggested there was a narrowing array of decisions and choices until purchase has been replaced by a dynamic Customer Decision Journey (CDJ). The CDJ model,conceived by David Edelman – McKinsey&Company, suggests that today’s customers take a more complex iterative path thru and beyond purchase (See “Consider the Honey When Attracting Your Social Customers“). Within the CDJ, customers really emphasize the input of those who define their graphs. Brian Solis from Altimeter Group states “(customers) evaluate the shared experiences of those they trust, and expect business to respond to their socialized questions”. As a consequence, these customer’s follow an elliptical pattern, vs a linear approach, in their decision making.

As customers move around the CDJ “their next steps are inspired by the insights of others, and their experience are, in turn, fed back into the cycle to inform the decisions of others”. This activity is represented by a secondary path within CDJ called The Influence Loop (see illustration below). The Influence Loop is made up of a tapestry of interest graphs, search graphs, and social graphs, etc. These networks play an instrumental role in how customers conduct pre-commerce research and how they express their commerce and post-commerce experiences.

BIG DATA & DATA CONNECTEDNESS: A major by product of the CDJ is a mountain of decentralized real-time data (likes, tweets, tags, check-ins, etc) from social, mobile and sensor systems. This data is connected to consumers, their geographical location, their friends and families, and to their things. This, in turn, has created the field of Big Data and the introduction of new Graph Databases. Data scientists have stepped in to further help organizations efficiently capture, visualize and derive intelligence from this information. Facebook, Google, Twitter, and LinkedIn are employing armies of data scientists to help unlock their network’s potential, create better experiences for users, and develop new products. Brands will need their own for similar reasons.

ACCESS TO GRAPHS: Today, we are witnessing major social networks provide new ways to access their users collection of graphs. In an effort to show that they are capable of monetizing their networks, they have rolled out a number of new ad units that are available via their web and mobile touch points. Facebook’s Open Graph is informing real-time advertising via Action Spec Targeting and Open Graph Sponsored Stories. Eventually, Facebook could leverage their newly launched Graph Search to offer sponsored results, search query targeting, relevant offers and retargeting. Google, which made its fortune from monetizing indexed content on the web, is now applying social graph, interest graph, and semantic data to search results with the objective of predicting users intent, resulting in even more valuable (and effective) SEM inventory. Twitter has introduced keyword targeting to their platform. This means that brands and others can now plan and serve ads to users based on specific words in users’ tweets. Twitter says the service is rolling out across all of its ad network, mobile and desktop, covering 15 languages and all markets where it currently serves Twitter Ads. Additionally, they have opened its advertising API to third parties, which will let larger advertisers create more sophisticated Interest Graph campaigns on Twitter.

How?

MAKE GRAPHS CENTRAL TO YOUR MARKETING MIX: Today, major networks like Facebook and Google offer access to audiences that rival major broadcast and print channels. Opportunities to engage with customers in real-time are becoming abundant due to rapid marketplace innovations. Additionally, micro-networks are on the rise. In many cases, these small niche communities will play a more critical role to some industries (i.e. health care, personal finance, etc) than the large ones. Each network (regardless of big or small) introduces different paid and organic opportunities. Make it a priority to understand which graphs impact your enterprise, how they connect, and who are the real influencers in each. Waste no time in establishing these graphs as the engine to your marketing machine.

DESIGN SYSTEMS: Stop trying to make heavy weight marketing destinations within networks. Instead, create agile/light systems that follow the principals of social design and maximize your brands ability to increase its share of fans/followers, likes and positive feedback. Additionally, embed graphs intimately into your web and app ecosystems via social login. Done correctly, this will create a better experience for your customers and optimize what you are doing via graph display and graph search paid advertising.

DEVELOP NETWORKING SKILLS: It goes without saying that networks are everywhere. Your brand has many internal and external networks. You personally have social and interest based networks. Understanding how these all should work together is a major priority. Providing the necessary training to your staff and deploying the right tool sets to manage distributed network presences across the enterprise is a good place to start.

LEVERAGE BIG DATA AND DATA SCIENCE: Your company (regardless of its size) is generating Big Data. Avoid being data-rich and insight-poor by not appropriating the right amount of resources to engage data scientists. These individuals should be full-time members of your marketing team as they will ensure that you are capturing big data correctly and deriving the maximum amount of intelligence (via statistics, modeling, & visualization).

Digital Leaders Industry Focus

Thu, 16 May 2013 11:47:00 +0000

Digital Leaders Industry Focus

20th June, Iron Mongers Hall, London
1.30pm - 5.00pm

The Digital Leaders Industry Focus event will dig into the specific issues facing digital marketers in six vertical sectors. It will bring practitioners in these sectors together in small groups to talk about the challenges that concern them most, to share experiences and to learn from each other.

The agenda for each discussion is informed by surveys of marketers in that vertical, so that each one is precisely tailored to the immediate concerns of the sector, guaranteeing the relevance of both the session and the associated post-event report.

Digital Leaders Industry Focus will not only provide you with insights, ideas and best practice thinking it will also enable you to network with leaders from other industries and form valuable and lasting relationships.

To attend Digital Leaders events we ask that you apply to attend. The reason we ask this is to maintain the right balance of attendees and to maintain an element of exclusivity. Digital Leaders events are for Senior Marketers only, if you are a recruiter you will not be able to attend.

Apply to attend

Financial Services Focus - Roundtable

Chair - Matthew Timms, Director of Digital Enablement, Internal Processes & IT, Santander

- What are going to be drivers of adoption of new payment methods?

- Competition from non-traditional banks, such as the mobile operators.

- How to break down the silos between channels and view digital strategy as a whole.

Apply to attend

Above are a few questions we’ve devised in consultation with the industry but as we lead up to the event we will continue to consult with you to include your questions so you get maximum value from the roundtable.

Participating companies: Nation Wide, DAS Legal Expenses, Lloyds Banking Group, RBS, American Express, Santander

Partners: Adobe, 6 Degrees Group

Entertainment Focus - Roundtable

Chair - Charly Classen, Senior Director Of Commercial, Digital & Marketing, ESPN

- How can companies keep up with the plethora of distribution opportunities available now, many of which are unproven?

- How to respond to the growth in video content, both owned and user-generated.

- How to adapt organisational structures and ways of working to be able to capitalise on digital opportunities.

Apply to attend

Above are a few questions we’ve devised in consultation with the industry but as we lead up to the event we will continue to consult with you to include your questions so you get maximum value from the roundtable.

Participating Companies: ESPN, Electronic Arts

Partners: 3xScreen Media

Media & Publishing Focus - Roundtable

Chair - Kiaran Saunders - VP, Commercial Director, Nickelodeon

- Measuring audiences cross-platform i.e. one person consuming content across multiple platforms (print, web, tablet, mobile).

- How to work out which digital trends are truly valuable to your business and audience in an ever-shifting environment.

- Traffic from mobile and tablets is overtaking desktop usage, but the money isn’t yet following. Do you chase the traffic and the future, or concentrate on making money now?

Apply to attend

Participating Companies: Nickelodeon, BBC, News International, Yorkshire Post Media, Jamie Oliver, Guiness World Records, Harper’s Bazaar

Partners: Infor, AdKnowledge

Retail Focus - Roundtable
Chair - Philip Long, Global Programme Planning Manager, Unilever Plc

- How much should I personalise the user experience on my site?

- How should brands use social media for marketing and commerce?

- How do I know where to best allocate my marketing budget across multiple channels?

Apply to attend

Participating Companies: Hertz, uSwitch.com, FlightNetwork.com, Unilever

Partners: TagMan, Ve Interactive

Pharmaceutical & Healthcare Focus - Roundtable
Chair: Wade Eagar, Head Of Digital, Nutricia / Danone

- How to provide decision support to HCPs and patients (e.g. through apps)

- How to engage with customers in a complex regulatory environment using social media.

- How to adapt organisational structures and ways of working to be able to capitalise on digital opportunities.

Apply to attend

Above are a few questions we’ve devised in consultation with the industry but as we lead up to the event we will continue to consult with you to include your questions so you get maximum value from the roundtable.

Participating Companies: Nutricia, GSK, GE Life Sciences, O2 Health, Diabetes.co.uk

Who’s attending?

Director of Telecoms, Uswitch

Head of Digital, DAS Legal Expenses Insurance Company

CMO, Flight Networks

Head of Savings, Nationwide

Director, Brand and Digital Marketing; Hertz

Director, Digital Enablement, Internal Processes and IT; Santander

VP, Commercial Director; Nickelodeon

Head of Insight, News International

Head of Digital Product Portfolio, Lloyds Banking Group

Senior Director Commercial, Digital and Marketing; ESPN

Director of Web and Community, Europe; Electronic Arts

Head of Digital, RBS

Head of Digital Marketing Transformation, BBC

Head of Digital, Nutricia

Global Digital Lead, GSK
CEO, Pharmiweb
Digital Director, GSK
GM Commercial Operations and Digital Strategy & Implementation, GE Life Sciences
Director, Diabetes.co.uk

Head of Consumer Channel Development, O2 Health

Managing Director, Yorkshire Post Media

Senior Digital Strategy, Planning and Evaluation Manager, Boots

Director Digital Servicing, American Express

Head of Online, Jamie Oliver
Director of Digital Media, Guinness World Records

Senior Vice President, Global Marketing, Guinness World Records

Digital Editor, Harper’s Bazaar

Meet The Roundtable Chairs

Matthew Timms

Director of Digital Enablement, Internal Processes & IT, Santander

Matthew had an early career in sales, marketing and worked in a marketing agency before moving to General Motors (Europe), where he grew new media/internet development initiatives for Vauxhall in the UK, before subsequently leading the European e-commerce team. (More)

Charly Classen

Senior Director Of Commercial, Digital & Marketing, ESPN

As Senior Director, Digital Media, Commercial and Marketing, Charly Classen is responsible for the leadership and management of ESPN’s digital media business, the marketing team, research and business development in the EMEA region, as well as the commercial management of ESPN’s UK TV business. (More)

Kiaran Saunders

VP, Commercial Director, Nickelodeon

Kiaran Saunders is Vice President, Commercial Director for Nickelodeon in the UK & Ireland, reporting directly to Tina McCann, Managing Director, Nickelodeon UK & Ireland. (More)

Wade Eagar

Head Of Digital, Nutricia / Danone

Wade is a Digital Evangelist and Change Happenist who enjoys rocking the boat in “traditional” businesses in order to bring them into todays world. (More)

Phil Long

Global Programme Planning Manager, Unilever

Phil Long is Global Programme Planning Manager within Unilever and has over 15 years FMCG IT and Digital Marketing experience, gained across local, regional and global roles. (More)

8 Tips to Humanize Your Brand through Social Media

Wed, 15 May 2013 22:18:00 +0000

I had the chance to catch up with a former client about the success of his business. While he has double his business over the last few years, he is always looking for marketing advice. And I am always happy to give my two cents on how to use social media to drive awareness and traffic to your website. Over lunch, the conversation went from marketing to the benefits of social media and how it could humanize his brand.

We started chatting about how to get people to his site. The usual tactics were employed: we have a blog; we work with our affinity partners, etc.

Then I started peppering him with questions like:

“Great, you have blog. How often are you updating it, are you consistently publishing relevant and informative content, have you optimized the blog for keywords, do your employees share the information with others, are your employees contributing to the blog?”

Then I ask my favorite question, “ Are you using social coupled with your blog to personalized the people in your company?”

His answer: Well…We should do more.

Our conversation got me thinking about how to humanize brands. While I am not a proponent of tactics driving strategy for social media, I think you first need to consider why your company should be social. You need to have purpose in your company’s social media efforts, it is all about P.O.S.T.

If you need a reason, here is one: social media is creating a two-way dialogue with people. Social media also produces almost double the marketing leads of trade shows, telemarketing, direct mail, or PPC according to a recent study by Hubspot this year.

And let’s be clear, people are searching for your product or company way before they pick up the phone or send an email of interest. While the sales process is not necessarily longer, however, prospects have more resources to research your product online. Why not give them information to support each stage of the buying cycle.

So here are some tactics to consider:

1) If you don’t have folks outside marketing contributing to your blog. Start today. You need employees to share industry news and trends.

2) Anyone working for your company should be positively promoting your organization through sharing industry news or company articles not always about you, but topics your current and potential customers care about.

3) Worried that folks don’t get social media? Give them a playbook. playbook

4) People need guidelines, consider creating a social media policy.

5) Don’t expect people to jump in and understand what you want them to do socially, train them. train them

6) Have employees contribute to your blog on their interest.

7) Encourage your folks to follow your social media channels and reshare to their followers.

8) Be the influence and guide by your example.

Bonus. You need content to share right? Start using your employees to generate content for your blog

1) The number on rule for your blog should be S.F.T.C (Solve for the Customer).

2) Interview both employees and clients for the blog using a Q and A format.

3) Have clients share best practices.

4) Blogs are not exclusively for executives. Everyone should contribute.

5) If you don’t make the blog a priority, no one else will.

Five Tips to DIY Social Media Training

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:03:00 +0000

So, you want to make your organization more social? Congratulations. It’s a smart move given that social media produces almost double the marketing leads of trade shows, telemarketing, direct mail, or PPC according to a recent study by Hubspot this year.

If you cannot budget funding for a social media strategist to come in, how can you run an internal social media workshop? Couple of things you need to realize and do in order to be successful.

Tip 1: Not Everyone Will Participate

Accept this now. Not everyone in your organization with jump on the social media bandwagon. I learned this the hard way. Even after running multiple workshops on how you can sell, engage, and network more there are still people who will throw their hands up and say, “I don’t have time for this.” Leverage the folks who already using social media to influence others. If you can get even 10 percent more people involved in your companies social media efforts it is a win. Not everyone will be an adopter to this new medium, so plan for it.

Tip 2: Create a Playbook

Single best advice I every received was from Wendy, director of digital strategy from the Red Cross. I attended her session at DC’s Social Media Week in 2012 in which she shared with the audience this nugget, “you need to provide people with guidelines.” So simply, but this step is often overlooked.

Embracing this concept, my social media specialist and I developed a social media playbook. Best thing I did because it outlined the foundation of what I was expecting from employees, social media tips, best practices when engaging online. Don’t assume people will understand how social media works. The playbook is key in training. I outlined what should be included in a social media playbook in a post last year titled Social Media Needs to Involve Others, but There’s a Catch. You can also check out my recent playbook I added to SlideShare.

Tip 3: Practice What Your Preach

Most likely if you are running this workshop, you are already using social media. If you are not active using social media, then get active. You can’t expect people in your company to take you seriously if you are not actually using social media. You don’t have to be a social media ninja, guru, or change agent to convey the best practices. You just need to be enthusiastic and passionate. I got involved in social media back in 2008 when I figured out how that word of mouth marketing was going digital. This doesn’t mean you can’t get there; just don’t think you need some fancy title to deliver a quality program. Answer these questions and you will be well on your way, “Why Should I Care?” and “What’s In It For Me?”

Tip 4: Build Your Workshop for Beginners

For the most part, if you are kicking off a workshop, you need to design it with the beginner in mind. Why? Most folks are using social media for personal connections (hello, most people have a Facebook account and think just having an account is what social media is about). Think of this presentation as a selling your team on the concept. Don’t assume they know anything. When I developed my social media workshop I tried to create a presentation that was interactive and informative. It was filled with plenty of best practices and examples for folks to us. Here is an excerpt. excerpt.

Tip 5: Repetition is Learning

Perhaps my experience teaching was a great primer for teaching adults to use social media. Don’t think you will do this workshop and that is the end. “One and Done” it is not. Plan on folks to ask questions and follow up with you. For people who were generally confused or didn’t know how to do something on Twitter or LinkedIn, I organized meetings to review. We also created an internal social media group on our intranet to upload articles and tips to help folks along. Essentially, I never stopped teaching. Whether it was by example or direct meetings with folks, I had an open door policy for folks to ask questions. Best thing you can do to create internal advocates for social media is to be a teacher. Be accessible and open.

This article originally appeared on my blog, Metscher’s Musing

From Nigerian Scam To The Gaddafi Scam Only On LinkedIn

Tue, 14 May 2013 10:05:00 +0000

After receiving countless Nigerian scams via LinkedIn and occasionally having a bit of fun writing back to the scammers, with short questions prompting essay length answers in responses to waste their time I was in glee to receive this little beauty from a the bogus profile of someone calling themselves Aisha Gaddafi.

Upon Googling Gaddafi scam, Google brought back 1,550,000 results. It seems there is an internet scam related to every member of the family - even dead ones - wow they are busy folk! Boy am I hooked!!!

No doubt Cnl. Gaddafi had mountains of gold buried away in the bank vaults of corrupt regiems never to see the light of day, most proberly now funding armies of boy soldiers or building palaces of the currupt officials he rubbed sholders with.

As you can see from the screen shot, the message is written in better English than your average Nigerian scam and provides links as points of reference to Newspaper articles referencing Gaddafi frozen assets.

Taking inspiration from Ebola Monkey Man I thought it would be an interesting and fun experiment to write back to the scammer and publish all corrospondence here on this blog post for your entertainment.

So do check back for regular updates and feel free to add your scam experiences to the comments section below this post.

JH Replies to scammer - Very interesting, do tell me more?

SCAMMER Replies to JH -

Hello,
I am Aisha Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi, Daughter of the former Libyan leader, Col.
Muammar Gaddafi. I am offering you a partnership proposal in a classified
monetary transaction, which involves the need to secretly relocate and secures
some of our family funds concealed in a special escrow dormant holding with a
financial services company in Europe. I am in a very difficult situation and I
must immediately relocate this fund for safety and investments purposes.

More so, this must be done in such a way that it must not be tied to me as a
result of my father’s death and politics circumstances.

I look forward to your earliest response to my PRIVATE EMAIL:(ashial0201@yahoo.com)

Thank you

Aisha Gaddafi

JH - That was a sloppy response, change the record please and put some effort in!

JH - Replies to Scammer - That’s what you wrote before! Can you give me some more detail of what you are proposing? where is the money?? how can I help?

SCAMMER REPLIES -

THanks for your response

Hello dear,

Thanks for your response.

My family’s rise and fall in Libya with the death of my father and brothers is news I am sure you are familiar with. Though a lot of our wealth has been frozen by the current Libya government, we still have funds in places which no one knows about. It is part of this funds that we now want to retrieve and keep in the custody of a stranger, who has no previous ties with us. This is the reason why I contacted you, because you have no previous dealings with my family.

We have lost a lot of money already, we are now trying to rebuild with what is left. If you believe you can keep this transaction confidential, and you assure me you will not abscond with the money after you receive it, please provide me with the following information so we can prepare the necessary documents which gives you the power to receive the funds.
1. Your complete names you use officially
2. Contact address
3. Telephone, including cell phone. A cell phone will be preferable for more secure communication
4. A copy of you I.D
In handling this business, it is important you did not discuss this with anyone. You cannot trust the next person you discuss this with. Of course, it will not be good for anyone to know that you are receiving money from my family, to avoid sabotage. After you receive the funds, you have to keep in a secure account and make investments keeping everything silently.The funds is deposited in Europe, U.K to be precis

I believe you understand my point. I will explain more to you in my next message. For now, we expect to receive the above information so we can proceed in details.

Your assistance is appreciated
Aisha Gaddafi

JH REPLIES - Isn’t a dear an animal? I’m confused?????? my name is John

Youtube Partner Meet - Insights

Fri, 10 May 2013 04:04:00 +0000

YouTube Partner Meet Insights

When it comes to online videos there is only one undisputed leader and that’s “YouTube”. Some of us refer to it as “Daddy” of social videos. I was fortunate enough to attend a YouTube partner program in Mumbai, India on “YouTube Foundation Day”.

The crowd consisted of entrepreneurs, marketing heads, designers, college students a good mix. I can easily conclude that YouTube has ecosystem in place for anyone, with the need to produce unique content.

Just to tell you all Drinks were on the House in Google Office obviously ’Non-Alcoholic’ and array of Snacks were available. Complete team of YouTube was very friendly and answered almost every question of the partners.

What it has for marketers?
Some of the interesting stats and the topics of your interest on YouTube

2^nd Largest Search Engine in the world after Google.
YouTube has viewership of over 1 billion unique views each month across the globe. Just to amaze you further in 2011 YouTube received over 1 trillion views.
More than 72 hours of videos are uploaded every minute on YouTube.

Optimize your content on YouTube for more visibility

Anyone who is video content creator and publisher on YouTube, for him the most important part is to increase the number of view. YouTube is a pull platform and not push in terms of marketing, users search for topic of their interest and then YouTube pulls the videos as per the search terms.

Title of Videos : Try and keep your title unique and interesting, but never trick your user to view the video, as that will lead to drop off eventually.

Custom Thumbnails : Custom thumbnails increase the clicks on to your videos. Thumbnails act as poster for your videos in featured video list.

Tags for Videos (Tag It Right)

Tags on your YouTube videos must be divided into 3 major sections general, specific and branding tags.

Example : You have a video which you have named as “Physics - Law of Gravity by Ashutosh Sharotri” , now you need to create tags for the video.

See How YouTube would love it.

General Tag : Physics , Gravity

Specific Tag : Laws Physics , Gravity Physics
Brand Tag : Laws of Physics by Ashutosh , Law of Gravity by Ashutosh , Physics Law of Gravity

Another important point , order of tagging is also important. Tags must convey overall context of video.

How to Use of Description in Videos:

Earlier (before the event), I hardly use to give importance to the description of the video and now I realized that this is one of the most important feature for viewers and also for YouTube to pull out the relevant content.

You can mention your social media links or link of your website for customer reference and interaction in video description.

How to improve activity on your channel?

Use Annotations :

Annotations are like “Sticky Notes” of YouTube. They can be good way of moving traffic within your videos.

Video End Cards :
End of Video Cards also play important role to keep the traffic within your videos or move your visitors from one video to another within your channel.

Subscription :
Reminder for subscription and also update users about next upload.

Copyright Policies of YouTube :-- Important Point

Copyright issues is one of the most important topic for YouTube community, a person can easily safeguard his copyright issues and use of video content without proper use can easily be tracked using various tools.

YouTube Resources:

YouTube help-center : Ask questions relevant to your prevailing issues.

Creators Playbook : If you are eager to grow the channel and, go deeper in your development of ideas for YouTube channel this is the best place

Official YouTube blog : Follow YouTube official blog for all the topic, news and product relevant information.

YouTube Partner Support : For all the content partners .

In the end I would finish off the article by mentioning one very important point “first 15 seconds” are most important to create the interest of the user in your video, else it would lead to drop off.

Google Knowledge Graph: Answers Not Pages

Wed, 08 May 2013 15:17:00 +0000

The logic was sound. When people search for Benedict Cumberbatch, they most likely aren’t looking for a page about the Sherlock Holmes star- they’re just looking for information about him. The movies he’s acted in, that show you saw him in last night and if Alan Rickman really is his dad.

In May 2012, Google announced a new feature to its search product: a knowledge base that would contain verified information that could answer search queries directly. They called it Knowledge Graph.

The logic was sound. When people search for Benedict Cumberbatch, they most likely aren’t looking for a page about the Sherlock Holmes star- they’re just looking for information about him. The movies he’s acted in, that show you saw him in last night and if Alan Rickman really is his dad.

By providing users with that relevant information immediately, Google could tap into the value offered by answer engines of old, like Ask Jeeves, or more pertinently, that friend of yours who always seems to know way too much about celebrities.

But how relevant is the information turning up in Knowledge Graph?

While bigger stars like Cumberbatch have accurate information about them in their knowledge graph entries, some of the comparatively smaller stars who’ve earned knowledge graph entries still have to contend with occasional moments of misinformation.

World renowned drummer Gary Husband for instance, has a vast list of Level 42 songs attributed to him in spite of the fact that he wasn’t involved in writing, producing or even performing most of them during his tenure with the band. For an independent, far-reaching and original artist like him, this somewhat major miscalculation of his temporary relationship with Level 42 could have a big impact.

He explains: “Google’s Knowledge Graph is gravely misrepresenting a large number of artists that I know, myself included, by frequently presenting misinformation as "factual" information (more akin to Wikipedia). Since Google is widely perceived as a trusted source of intelligence, such widespread errors have the potential to be highly damaging to artists’ careers and of course wholly misleading to anyone searching for accurate facts - journalists, booking agents, producers, promoters or fans. But for me, the most alarming part of all this is that we seem powerless in our efforts to get Google to rectify the errors. This is totally unacceptable. The lengths I have gone to over the past nine months to set my own ’record’ straight with Google have been in vain: it would seem that nobody there is remotely interested.”

So where exactly is Google getting the entry wrong? It would appear they’re misunderstanding some of the information they’re collecting and the quality of relationships between them.

All the data in knowledge graph comes from four sources: Wikipedia, Freebase, The CIA World Factbook andinterestingly enough for brands, Google Plus. All 570 million objects, 18 Billion facts and the relationships between all these different entries are based on the information available in these four sources.

The algorithms traversing this massive amount of data appear to occasionally misinterpret the quality of some of this information. In the case of Husband, it might be Wikipedia’s separated section about his relationship with Level 42 being misconstrued for greater involvement.

Where the algorithms are misfiring, is something that will only ever be clear to Google.

What is clear though, is that Google are aware their algorithms aren’t perfect just yet. Hence their repeated removal and re-entry of different Knowledge Graph sections from time to time.
With some interesting competition from Bing’s knowledge base Satori, Google are certainly being kept on their toes when it comes to making sure their knowledge graph entries are always relevant and useful.

More importantly, if Google are to keep up the incredible momentum they’ve worked up in their march towards semantically indexed, socially relevant search results, then they’ll be desperately keen to make sure the entries for Husband are as accurate as the entries for Cumberbatch.

Multichannel Strategies and too much advertising: What lack of collaborative approaches and technologies has to do with it

Tue, 07 May 2013 20:13:00 +0000

Multichannel sales strategies mean that the customer can be reached via various marketing channels, whether (i.e.) search, display, video, digital supply or traditional channels.

What happens when these channels are used by different actors working in independent corporate business units, agencies, operation profit centers each one with his own view of the targeted audience, execution strategies, KPI goals and measurement tools.

Last week, from the stage of the Advertising Week Europe in London (March 18-21 2013), we heard from Microsoft’s VP of advertising and online in Europe, Andy Hart that

“The amount of content [all forms including ads] users receive is over-abundant,” adding that ” We’re looking at a new set of rules that limits supply [of advertising inventory]… Otherwise you get people engaging in ‘ad avoidance’ both online and off-line.

Naturally operations can be streamlined, synergies sought and team work promoted.

With advertisers availing of various agencies to execute their strategies in traditional and ever-growing digital channels. Agencies might make offers of an holistic approach, all inclusive to their customers.

Mike Drexler in his today article on Ad Age wonders “How Can True Agency Collaboration Be Achieved?” and consider that this is possible “Via Financial Incentive programs”

However, despite financial incentives it seems logical that only a dedicated client project/service manager availing of a comprehensive technology platform can really ensure a better management of Ad campaigns.

Adobe, is offering solutions that in my opinion allow agencies, corporate and smaller businesses alike to engage with the targeted audience and strike a balance to reach an optimal Return on Marketing with no “ad avoidance”.

Cloud based for scalability and to enhance team cooperation Adobe Marketing Cloud is a single service that includes everything digital marketers need to get ahead: a complete set of analytics, social, advertising, targeting, web experience management solutions and a real-time dashboard that brings together everything you need to know about your marketing campaigns.

With the added advantage of availing of Adobe technology for the digital creativity production with the creative cloud tools which comprise of Adobe creative suite with cloud storage, the ability to sync to any device, create website and iPad apps without writing code “Ad avoidance” might well be a purely strategic issue, with these tools and a collaborative client/project manager.

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