Recap: Mashable’s DC Remix
Mashable always seems to bring out the DC-area’s best social media crowd, and last night’s Mashmeet DC Remix was no exception. Hosted by Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence team and partnering with The Social Times, the event lived up to its remix name by throwing in a new programming twist from their previous networking events by showcasing several presentations in addition to the steady stream of business-card sharing and networking.
Streamed live online by JanMedia, Mashmeet gave Searchles, Voxant, Mixx, Lumifi, and Kluster an opportunity for lightning-round demos of their products and services. However, it was Kluster—fresh off their much-publicized demo at TED—that got the crowd talking. Kluster puts the “wisdom of the crowds” on steroids, allowing companies of all sizes to tap the masses for ideas on just about anything from logo design to problem solving, and then compensates with appropriate cash rewards for participants. As the web rapidly enables companies to better interact with their customers, look for these crowdsourcing services to really take off. In the meantime, Kluster’s creative approach and slick UI sets them ahead of the pack.
Despite audio issues with some of the presentations, and a few that could have benefited from some “gentle reminders” to keep it within their five-minute limit, the remix format was a welcome change to the standard networking event. The DC-area has some incredible up-and-coming talent, and I hope that the next Mashmeet DC focuses on showcasing more of the local emerging technology and entrepreneur leaders.
Get Your Web Site Into Shape in 2008
We here at Viget Labs know that your web site might not be the sexy, sleek machine you know it could be. Here are some recommendations that will bring the type of gratifying results you can tell your friends about:
- Get Analytics: Knowing what’s happening on your web site is crucial. My heart breaks a little when clients don’t track their site’s performance – especially because it’s free (see Google Analytics). If you need help, check Google’s list of Google Authorized Analytics Consultants, (we’re one) and just ask.
- Get focused: Why do you have a web site? Do visitors know what you’re offering? Can your customers find what they’re looking for? Answer these questions, and then fix areas that aren’t achieving your goals and those of your customers, too.
- Start Optimizing for Search: If none of your content is text-based, you are making a mistake. Have a link-building strategy and target keyword list to optimize your online presence for growth. Take the time to read about search engine optimization at SEOMOZ.org or one of the other 60,000 articles about it. Test your content’s performance. Substantiate your online budget with factual data.
This can be the year you radically improve your web site. These three tips will get you started in the right direction. Stay tuned for more.
Toyota Prius Target Your Customers
I finished eating a tasty morsel at Chipotle (three crispy tacos) and my buddy and I headed back to our cars. He was parked near me and had a little flyer on his windshield. I didn’t. The flyer—an advertisement from a local vendor for Sirius Satellite Radio—was only for Toyota Prius cars. Talk about targeting.
In advertising, there’s nothing worse than spending ad dollars on a group of people that simply don’t care about your product or service. Putting that flyer on my car (or every car in the parking garage), for example, would have been a complete waste of money.
The good news is that today, you can “toyota prius target” your customers online. Tools like AdWords allow you to advertise to those searching for answers (e.g., a Google query for “brooklyn dodgers baseball cap"). You can also focus those ad dollars on specific geographic regions, cities, or areas, otherwise know as geo-targeting. That means if you only do business and have customers in Fort Myers, FL, you can advertise solely within that city.
The story goes on too. You can drill down into analytics to see what paid visitors looked at after they came to your site. You can see if they took any specific actions, like downloading a brochure or filling out a contact form. And by the way, hopefully when potential customers visit your site, you have both kinds of SEO working for you.
I don’t think my friend actually acted on the flyer he received but he definitely looked at it. It is tough to get people to take action. But it is even harder to get someone to act on something that is totally irrelevant to them or worse, something they intensely dislike. Note to advertisers: I went to school in Boston but if you ever send me anything related to the Red Sox, I will boycott you forever.
Gary Vaynerchuk: Lessons in Video Blogging, Conflicts, and Social Media Marketing
I was playing with Pownce and Twitter over the weekend, and through various clicks on friends of friends ended up finding Gary Vaynerchuk—a guy who “drinks wine and tells people what it tastes like”—which led me to Wine Library TV. I expected a polite video about some nice chardonnay, but instead was smacked by the high-volume “VAY-NER-CHUK” opening Gary uses on his daily 15 minute wine review show.
Gary was recently featured in the article Totally Uncorked in Time Magazine. A telling point:
“I can’t write, so I missed the whole blog thing, and I was pissed,” he says. So when he saw Andy Samberg’s Saturday Night Live video Lazy Sunday explode on YouTube, he got himself a video camera and started winelibrarytv.com.
Video Blogging
Gary’s show shows how much video is changing the way people make and share content online. Here’s a guy who would never write a blog, but can sit down for 15 minutes straight with no cuts, no edits, and pull off an entertaining show that’s got something new every time. He leverages the medium well, too. He knows his web page layout, and points viewers to key spots where they can “friend him up” or click on a link he mentions lower on the page.
Expect to see more and more people who a couple of years ago might have launched a traditional text blog going the video route. Players like veotag, which includes a clickable table of contents and other text content, and the wide-format viddler, which allows time-specific tagging and comments, makes the viewing experience significantly better. Throw in the fact that search engines can pick up this meta content (not true of the video itself) and the video model gets even more attractive to content producers, because the primary method for attracting an audience (search engines) is covered.
Conflicts
The Time piece says:
Only on the Web could Vaynerchuk review wine ... because he’s trying to sell wine on the very same website where he’s rating it--which, despite his deep knowledge and spot-on nose, reduces his trustworthiness. But, Vaynerchuk says, what people seek from him isn’t individual reviews but lessons in how to enjoy wine.
It’s true, the whole show spawned out of Gary’s wine shop, and he’s a life-long wine salesman. But would he really score a bad wine higher just to sell a few extra cases? He puts his reputation on the line (and in a permanent archive) every time he voices his opinion on the show. As soon as he hocks wine without his audience’s best interests in mind, his reputation will be gone along with his audience—and both are far more valuable than any one-time up-sell gains.
I’m all for journalistic integrity and I think the debate about conflicts with bloggers (read: not journalists) is an important and evolving topic. I think the transparency of Gary’s opinions, relationships, and conversations with the community go a long way to showing how it can work.
Gary knows a lot about wine because he sells it for a living. As he’s sharing his expertise, why not create a seamless shopping experience for me? I think the process should be even more integrated than what he has setup now. In fact, I think a see-it-buy-it process should be plugged into all online content (text and video). Done unobtrusively, it only enhances the user experience. Integrate it behind the scenes with affiliate programs (or direct sales) and you’ll inspire a lot more great content to be generated. Who wouldn’t want that?
Social Media Marketing
I caught Gary on a good weekend. On his 7/19 episode he went a bit heavy on the “friend me up” routine, asking viewers to connect with him on corkd, facebook, myspace, etc. They let him know their feelings in the comments, and he responded in a multi-URL video scavenger hunt that started with garyissorry.com.
He isn’t really sorry, of course, and at waitgaryismad.com he rants about his audience not appreciating his free content and late-night email responses. Fair enough, but it’s the whydoesgarysendmetosomanyplaces.com video that offers some lessons on the latest marketing techniques. He calls it “spreading the thunder.”
An example: on a recent trip to San Francisco he twittered about meeting him at a wine bar, which sparked a multi-hour exchange with some of his “Vayniacs” in person. No press release, no lead time, no event planning. A 5 second microblog post online leading to a 2+ hour meeting offline with people Gary wanted to meet. For more on his thought process, watch for yourself:
Two points of emphasis are spot on:
- It’s about people. He loves making connections, and he’s using the latest tools of the trade to help him do it better.
- It’s all up to the audience. He’s not telling anyone to do anything. He’s encouraging and engaging people. How they take it is up to them.
Social media marketing isn’t about manipulation, and going into it with a business-minded strategy doesn’t make it so. It’s about engaging communities and contributing value to make them better. Play a part. Gary was already providing value with his show, and he’s been savvy enough to jump on all (and I mean all) the social networks and community platforms to spread his message.
Will Gary’s show grow because of it, or will his shameless self promotion be too much for his growing audience to bear? Gary listens to his audience and reacts, and even if he doesn’t always agree at least he gives them free stuff. But as he’d probably tell you, it’s all an experiment these days, which is what makes it so interesting.
Each step we take seems to more closely connect and intermingle content generators with content consumers. The result is that success or failure is more about the quality of the actual product (in this case Gary), and less about all the fluff around it. That’s how it should be anyway, right?
Google AdWords Qualified Company Status
On the heels of announcing Viget South, we have more good news. Viget is officially a Google AdWords Qualified Company.
Google AdWords management is part of our Search Engine Marketing (SEM) services. AdWords helps clients drive new and qualified paid traffic through search engines and sites within the Google Network.
What does this mean for our clients? Well, at a bare minimum, we hope pursuing the qualified status indicates our commitment to keep up with industry knowledge. Receiving this status verifies that we know our stuff. An added benefit is that we receive limited amounts of promotional credits we can apply to clients that employ us to manage their accounts.
You can check out our Google AdWords Qualified Company page on Google.
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