The Edgy Entrepreneur

Marketing and Telling the Truth

I've been thinking quite a bit about branding strategies of late and I have a question...why can't marketing be about telling the truth? I mean, you know, the plain old truth...the "this is a great product, give it a try, if you like it, buy it again", kind of truth? Some sort of "here's the real value to you, here's how your life will actually benefit from giving this a go"...kind of message?

Because that is not what I usually experience...I usually read things that tell me my clothes will shine with radiance like the sun or smell as fresh as the ocean. I am conditioned to look for things that say "extra strength' or "super" or whatever the current moniker is that tells me I have the really, really good stuff...not just the plain old good stuff. I mean, how clean can you get something? If you scrub it with the extra, super, duper cleaner instead of say, vinegar and water with a little dish washing detergent, is it a billion times cleaner?

Consumers have been fed and led by this kind of advertising for so long that we have become jaded to the very adjectives that have been used to motivate us. And this approach might very well have continued had social media and the interactive web not come along. There are many things that happen within the culture of social networks, but one consistent message rises to the top. "We want truth in messaging. We want to know the people who work at the companies that make the products we buy. We want to know why we should care."

Still, there are precious few who are able to respond to this call, online or otherwise. Because this requires an openness, an eagerness to communicate, a willingness to tell the truth...and above all, a desire to understand your audience well enough to know if the product you are trying to sell them will actually be of benefit to them. This means a deeper understanding of your customers and potential customers, less (instead of more) advertising, highly target messages that reflect your knowledge and interest in the communities you serve, and lots of relationship building. Did I mention truth telling? Yeah, there's that, too...

And aside from yours truly, who has embraced this concept to the point of naming my gardening podcast "Good Enough Gardening", there are very few people out there who do a great job applying these concepts...David Meerman Scott is one of my faves. But I know that there are a whole lot of people out there grapling with these concepts, struggling to pave a new marketing road. What about you, what are you doing? Who do you follow or admire?

Why Skittles' New Branding Strategy is Brilliant

Skittles made a daring move in its recent web redesign and online branding strategy. Their home page has become a series of links to pages that show user generated content about their candy.Twitter search, Facebook, and YouTube all make an appearance. Essentially, their marketing plan is to harness the wisdom of the crowds (also known as "crowdsourcing").

And though it is risky to use content you don't control as your primary marketing strategy, I happen to think it is brilliant. Skittles understands their target market,the majority of visitors to their site are teens who are influenced by pop culture and online trends. Take a look at the Quantcast lifestyle analysis for www.skittles.com.
You can see that the site with the highest affinity rating is MTV. We also see gaming and lyrics sites. In the keyword section, we can see that a high percentage of people reach their site using their brand name...which is no surprise given their high brand visibility.

Just taking a look at their user demographics and traffic patterns more than likely sent them in the direction of strengthening their online campaign. The genius is in understanding that implementing a social media campaign means embracing it as a living thing and celebrating the unpredictability of it. And in knowing that their target market will think that seeing themselves on their product website is just about the coolest freaking thing ever...dude.

This site guarantees chatter will skyrocket...much like the people who like to wave at the cameras on the Today Show. But instead of the folks standing in a circle around the Today Show crew, the crew is coming to their neighborhoods, talking to them, filming them, asking them to create the content for the show. And who doesn't want to watch (buy) something they helped to create?

There is always an associated risk with this type of transparency. Anything that is said...good or bad...will end up on their home page. But I don't think that will bother their customers. Anyone who has a teen knows that one week they can't be separated from their best friend, the next week they can't stand each other...and so on, and so on, and so on.

While this obviously won't work for every company, it is an absolutely awesome example of the right strategy, at the right time, with the right people. I can't wait to see what happens!

Top 3 Business Marketing Tools for Adding Value

I don't know what has gotten in to me of late...I am madly exploring and adding things to my sites to boost the value for my readers, while simultaneously using them to market my businesses online. And believe it or not, you CAN market to people and have them enjoy and find value in it.

Case in point: I am mad about a new site called Chi.mp. They just rolled out Chi.mp 2.0 today and man, what a huge difference! These guys are still in beta, but the functionality that already exists is mad...Chi.mp is a "content hub and identity management platform". Essentially, that means that all of the things that are important to you can be a part of a platform you own.

Hang with me here, the creators of Chi.mp want you to have your own domain and the flexibility to add information and design features the way YOU want to...not the way THEY want. This is heresy in the social media realm...a site where you own your own information and create your own platform? Stop!

I recently built out my profile page for the Edgy Entrepreneur. It contains all the feeds for my social media writing, a social media news mashup (which I will get to in a bit) and miscellaneous social media accounts I think are beneficial. Go and check it out, see what you think. I have 4 invitations left for the beta, let me know if you want one.

Another thing I added to my site is a social media feed mashup. I have written quite a bit about my fondness for Yahoo Pipes, so I cloned a copy of an existing pipe and spiffed it up a bit. This contains some of my favorite social media blogs, a Yahoo web search for "social media" and a Digg Top Tech Feed. You can subscribe to this in an RSS reader, add it to igoogle or add it as a widget to your blog. If you have a social media blog and would like to add this widget to your profile, let me know and I will add your feed.

Finally, I added a customized Google Search to each of my blogs. I just decided that the amount of content on my blogs had reached critical mass. I mean, if people can't find it, they can't read it, right? It was a really easy process to set up. What's great about customized search is that you control the sites that you are searching. If you just want to search yours, that's fine...if you want to create a topical search, that's A-OK too.

And of course, all of these things are beneficial to both me and my readers. I am able to generate content that is informative and engaging, add other related content, and create a search that will save them from clicking on a hundred categories to find it all.

And, the overarching search engine benefit is insane. First, Chi.mp is designed to show up well in search results...and you can add Google Analytics, which ensures it will be indexed. The Yahoo Social Media Mashup is obviously indexed by Yahoo, and Google too...all of those gorgeous keywords attached to your site. Last, a customized Google Search? Hello? Can you feed Google more relevant information about your site than to have your readers search for things they EXPECT to find there?

It was a lot to complete, but I was on a mission...think about adding one or two of these items to your website...it could make a huge difference for you and your readers!

OneRiot: Social Search and Online Marketing Tool

Recently, I was followed on Twitter by a new social media application, OneRiot (@oneriot). And while Google is still working out its social search function, OneRiot has it in place. In fact, that's all they do. These guys are not only providing a cool service, they also have built a platform that doubles as an online marketing tool.

OneRiot is a search engine whose results are completely based on the preferences of its users. By installing their toolbar and agreeing to share your browsing habits, you are automatically influencing search results. And it is the aggregated browsing behavior of the 2 million+ users that prioritizes and generates results. These rankings are subject to change on a regular basis, dependant upon what's hot and what's not.

Not long ago, Google added user controls to search results. We could now add, remove and vote on the relevancy of the rankings. And though we knew we could affect our own results, it wasn't really clear how much our choices would impact the overall results. Frankly, the who's who in the SEO community ignored the new features, seemingly nonplussed by the potential for reducing the effectiveness of SEO keyword and linking strategies.

And, I can't say that I thought it was much of a threat either. Google is a behemoth and instituting that kind of change would take a huge effort and quite a lot of time. But OneRiot's whole framework is built on the concept of social search. There rankings are not at all based on linking structures and keywords. Which means there is no place for SEO in their world.

This is what makes their search system great for market research. In addition to checking the search page results for trending topics and user interest, you can also install their tool bar which shows at the bottom of your screen.

Here it is in action on the home page of Edgy Entrepreneur. You will see there is a pulse rating and an average visit duration graph. These two bits of information tell you how often OneRiot users are visiting the site and how long they are staying. Clicking on the pink square takes you to their search page. You can also install OneRiot as a search option in your browser bar.

There are a couple of ways to use this social search platform to boost your marketing efforts. The most obvious way is for market research. You can:

• use the search function to find trends in your topic area
• use the tool bar for a quick and dirty assessment of the popularity of a site

Another way to use this information to promote your business is to take advantage of the real time search rankings to find trending topics. This can be done by going to the home page or by subscribing via RSS. And here's where SEO folks like me might actually be able to evolve to meet the needs of this new era of search.

One of the great tactics of building web traffic is to identify keyword or topic trends and use that information to drive readers to your site. Though Google offers some trending topics options, OneRiot is better able to provide specific trends in real time. By searching with your keywords, you can find out:

• the focus of the conversation
• the hottest sites with the most hits
• sub topics/current events within your field that are generating interest

Collecting this information, then using it to compile and promote a post is a great way to keep your content relevant. It also gives you the benefit of snagging surging topical traffic. And while some of that traffic won't be sticky, some of it will. Not to mention, you will be a cutting edge content provider.

OneRiot is a great ancillary search tool with online marketing benefits. And while I definitely won't be giving up Google any time soon, OneRiot will now become a regular part of my website marketing and brand development efforts.

Who's Linking to You? Yahoo Knows!

Links back to your website are an important part of online brand management. And while many people engage in the practice of building links, very few actually understand the value that this brings to their brand.

Sadly, we have oversimplified the benefit of many SEO techniques. We have put them in the category of "higher search rankings" without understanding their larger benefit. And with backlinks in particular, we have become so one-sided in our application that we rarely, if ever, talk about its benefits for brand research. Today, I want to spend a bit of time helping you get started gathering information and analyzing your findings.

Let's start by pulling up a list of links back to my site. There are several ways to find this information, but Yahoo seems to have the best search options with the most user friendly interface. Let's walk through an example:

Here, I have entered a search string that will pull up outside links back to my domain. You can see that I have entered a "-site:edgyentrepreneur.com" phrase. Theoretically, that will exclude interlinks from one of the posts of my site to another. In practical application, some seem to sneak by...

Yahoo returns with a list:
This is just a portion of the links for my site...I have 500+, which is a really small amount compared to my other sites. This gives me my first bit of pertinent information: I have really neglected this strategy as a way to promote the Edgy Entrepreneur brand online.

Next, I see that many of the links are from social media sites: various profiles, microblog aggregators and social bookmarking sites. This is actually a good thing, since many of my posts are about using the web to build business. The other thing that I discovered is that each time a link is posted on some of these sites, it remains in place for a significant amount of time. This is important because it helps me prioritize my link posting efforts.

Finally, I see other blogs and websites that have linked back to me. Identifying other non-social media sites that are interested in my content is an easy way to do a bit of market research. It also gives me a sense of community allies and ideas for future partnerships. And, it alerts me to negative commentary/concerns on the horizon.

Yahoo's advanced search has the ability to be much more sophisticated in its results. If you feel like playing around with the features you can drill down to a much more specific level of information. But, it isn't necessary to use all of the bells and whistles to generate valuable brand management information. Analyzing your incoming links should be at least an occasional component in your web marketing plan. Give it a try, you will be surprised at what you learn!