One very important realization for me in this last week has to do with our obsessive need as humans to name, label, and compartmentalize anything we come in contact with, all while simultaneously connecting these concepts with our preexisting notions. This process is the foundation of how we learn. I think of the tagging, meta tagging, categorizing, and tracking on this site alone, as an example of how we interact with and change the web, essentially leaving a trail of breadcrumbs to find our way back or to allow others to follow. (Of related interest actually, a news story released this week said that scientists believe that our use of technology, specifically the internet, is actually evolutionarily changing our brains and how they function.) Links within our minds and links on the web are powerful tools for helping us find our way. But what does this mean for marketers?
Well, search engine optimization (SEO) itself is not a new concept. Dating back even before 1996, the use of tags within code and counting links to determine placement on search engines were just two ways that early websites ensured users could find them. Granted there were not as many sites to search in 1996 (Yahoo indexed over 19.2 billion individual webpages in August 2005 by comparison), the huge growth in the number of sites has created an environment where even more sophisticated (though in some ways simpler) approaches to SEO have been born.
One of these approaches relates back to my opening point about “connecting concepts to preexisiting notions”. It is not enough for the marketer or site developer to ask themselves “What words or phrases best describe my product, service, or site?”, they must also ask “What preconceived words or phrases will my customers come to the search engine with?” Because really, all the tagging, labeling and categorizing on the web is generated by the connections that already exist in our minds. A self-perpetuating circle is born and reborn daily as users search what are to their minds learned and logical terms and site developers then use tools like Google Adwords: Keyword to determine which search terms are most popular.
The recognition of this cycle also supports the assertion that it is more important than ever before for marketers and site developers to not compartmentalize themselves, but work together to create full customer profiles and design and optimize e-sites that meet the needs of those customers. In this way, we are all building the world wide web together.
I am addicted to Facebook. I’ll admit it and don’t even cringe anymore when I hear it called by its other name: Crackbook. The reality is that I check my Facebook account between 4-6 times a day, nearly every time I check my e-mail. How can I admit this compulsion so easily? Because I am positive that I am not alone in this habit (thanks to the Facebook IM feature I can now see which of my friends are logged in too).
For those of you who have only just recently emerged from that cave you were living in somewhere in Nepal, a quick background on Facebook before I get to my point for the week. Facebook is a social networking website, which means essentially that the point of the site is to provide the tools and applications used for building an on-line community. These sites provide the platform and the space and the users provide the content. Perhaps before you arrived in Nepal you heard of MySpace. Launched in 2003 it was the first social networking site to gain popular use in North America, but has since been overtaken in terms of accounts and unique individual visitors daily by the aforementioned Facebook. Originally founded as a tool to connect Harvard University students, Facebook is now available in numerous countries around the world, in over 25 languages and boasts over 110 million accounts. Scientifically speaking, that equals a ‘whole buncha’ eyeballs! Which brings me to my point.
Facebook is marketing magic, or at least has the potential to create and control the crystal ball, for two reasons. First and foremost, it is a goldmine of market research and demographic information. No need to craft an enticing survey to get the low down on what a market segment is excited about. Every second of every minute of ever day, people around the world are freely writing about and connecting themselves to trends, friends, finds, and all kinds of specific descriptors. All of which is being stored by Facebook to use as research for marketing campaigns and the sale of ad space. How do I know that they (or at least some sort of algorithm) is paying attention to the content I am adding to my Facebook page? Because, the ads on my page match the content (check your page, they will match too – creepy, I know!)
This is called “targeting” or “contextual” advertising and Facebook has been at it for a while, according to an article in Tech Crunch by Duncan Riley. From an efficiency and clutter reduction point of view, this can be seen as a good thing for consumers. Unlike the continual spam I get in my e-mail for “male member enhancement aids”, the ads I see on my Facebook page might actually be applicable. Not only does this mean that Facebook can charge a higher rate for ads ($10 CPM as of 2007), but it increases the likelihood that users will respond to the ad because it speaks directly to that user’s need.
The second trick up Facebook’s sleeve is that they have not relied on this “targeting” technique alone. They have gone one step further and provided a direct opportunity for users to interact with the ads on their pages. Next time you are on Facebook look for the small thumbs up and thumbs down you’ll see below every ad. If you click on them, they allow you to rate the ad you are seeing. You can let Facebook know if this ad is applicable to you, or if you find it offensive or irrelevant (just two of the many optional reasons for giving an ad a thumbs down).
In these two ways Facebook is poised to take the lead in contextual advertising, building a database of information that may allow them to crack that ever elusive code and begin to successfully predict and pre-emptively offer to meet the needs of consumers.
Chances are you have heard of Ze Frank. If you have not, go now and check him out…I’ll wait…Seriously… I’ll wait…if you have not seen his site yet, or the Show with Ze Frank, or his presentation at the 2004 Ted Conference, or the on-line birthday invitation that started it all – go now and have a look. I will enjoy the vicarious thrill of knowing that someone is going to experience Ze Frank for the very first time! You can come back and finish reading my blog in 3 hours when you suddenly realize that you have been pulled into a time warp, flipping through an entire year’s worth of Ze’s witty and insightful vlogs, playing with the numerous cool applications (the kaleidoscope, synthesizers, and sound memory game are my faves), and checking out all the great user generated content.
…Oh, you’re back! Great! To my point for this week: Ze Frank truly is a viral marketing success. After launching his own website in 2001, it was an on-line interactive birthday invitation that featured ridiculous dancing forwarded to only 17 of his friends that went viral and resulted in millions of hits. Now he has built his own empire complete with a cult following, numerous awards, and critical acclaim. But why? How did one little video build all this and why do users still forward his content on to their friends, and their friend`s friends, and so on?
The answer is two-fold. The first component focuses on the viewers themselves, and the second on the content generator. First the success of any viral video is based on the same motivator I mentioned in the opening paragraph: the vicarious thrill. The best way for viewers to relive the humour, shock, awe, or amazement of something they have seen before is to spread it to someone else and enjoy their reaction (or in the case that they can`t actually see or get feedback from their friend, imagine what their reaction will be!). This is why people send one another countless forwards of pumpkins that look like fannies, and that video of the baby who turns the water on in his sleep (the two most recent examples I`ve received multiple times).
My second point requires us to reframe viral marketing success. There has been a lot of hype about viral marketing over the last decade, and perhaps rightly so. It can be astoundingly cheap by comparison to traditional marketing and it has the potential to reach a mass audience in a climate of increasing fragmentation. However, it is important to remember that in the long run 80 million people viewing your clip may not make your campaign a success; especially if all those views did not translate into reaching a clear goal for your company or website. What has made Ze a success over time is that his content was backed up with value. A high percentage of people who received the ridiculous dance video and forwarded it on, also visited his site and found enough value there to keep them coming back and wanting to share that value with their friends again and again.
So to answer my question more directly, how did one little video build Ze`s empire? The short answer is; it didn`t. Nearly anyone can make a funny, shocking, or water-cooler worthy video. The challenge is consistently providing for your customers once they have been hooked. Ze`s dance video merely brought the folks to the gate. It was the value built into to Ze`s site that made all the difference in whether they stayed or not.
Thanks for reading again this week! I`ll leave you with links to my favourite episode of the Show with Ze Frank, all about product placement and brand identity.
This week I’ve been thinking a lot about the 7 C’s (7 design elements) of an e-commerce website, specifically context and content and their “not necessarily fully-realized” potential. Before I get to that though, let’s define context and content. Content is everything you add to your site. It is the ‘stuff’ that viewers see: text, pictures, sound, or video are some examples. Complimentary to that is context, which is how your website is designed and functions.
What you need to realize about context and content is that whether you are aware of it or not, they are telling a story. In combination with your site’s context, the content tells the user a story about your company, your brand, your product, and most importantly what you think, know, or ‘think you know’ about your users. This has powerful implications.
The human mind wants narrative. We automatically look for it because it helps us make sense of the world and remember important lessons. Further to this, we fill in gaps in stories with devices like stereotypes to save time and help us feel that the story is complete.
What does this mean for your website? Well, if your website is going to tell a story whether you want it to or not, it would be a good idea to consciously write that story yourself. The use of narrative can take both a macro and micro form on the web. On a macro-level, websites as a whole can tell a story that pull the user through the site in a logical process predetermined by the site designer. On a micro-level individual narratives may exist on a single page. A good example of this in e-commerce is the testimonial that tells a customer’s first hand experience with the product being sold.
Another example of how narrative can consciously tell a story in e-commerce is ‘Catablogging”. Catablogging is just what it sounds like, a hybrid of blogging and e-commerce. On his blog all about catablogging, Brian Clark defines the term as “a blog that is designed to mix content and commerce in a very deliberate fashion. It’s looking to attract people who are interested in buying things, but who are also interested in immersing themselves in the lifestyle surrounding the products”. He then goes on to outline the steps in designing and building your own catablog. It is a great resource with many additional links.
A final note for this week about narrative and commerce, I’ll leave you with an insight by Hugh McLeod: “If people like buying your product, it’s because its story helps fill in the narrative gaps in their own lives”.
Shouldn’t our e-commerce sites fill that gap as well?
