A lot of attention right now is given to the technical tasks associated with structuring and presenting content in a way that allows the search engines to index your content effectively. This sort of activity involves tasks commonly associated with Search Engine Optimization. Activities like content silo’ing, meta-tagging, keyword placement, XML site map submitting, cross linking, A/B and multivariate testing, etc, are some of the tactics involved in a broader strategy for ensuring your content is optimized for search engine indexing. If your content is well indexed by the search engines, then the people out there searching for something related to your content will hopefully find you before they find someone else. The irony obviously, is that in this stage you have to appease the bot to get to the humans. You need to know how the bot “thinks” as much if not more than how your audience thinks.
But assuming you do a good job of appeasing the bots, and the bots in turn bring you unsuspecting humans, then you have to know what to do with the humans. This is where a deep understanding of your audience’s psychographics will help in developing a strategy for broadening and, more importantly, deepening your relationship with your audience. Psychographics refers to an understanding of who your consumer is, where they are coming from, what they are looking for, and how they look for it…what motivates them. It’s the psychology counter point to demographics which is more focused on quantitative group profiling than understanding the motivations or attitudes, interests, and opinions of the people that compose that group. Both are important. But the motivations side of that coin is most often overlooked.
Publishing excellent content is good. Leveraging Search Engine Optimization practices to promote your excellent content is great. But if you have a growing audience for your content, it rapidly becomes important to understand why they like you. Knowing why your audience likes you will help build a sustainable approach to your content strategy as you understand the motivations behind the numbers for your success.
So, this all begs the questions, “how do I discern the motivations of my audience?” Well, there in lies the tough stuff. It requires primary research. I mean talking to actual humans….I know, this is something we thought we could avoid in an era of Analytics. I thought for a long time, that math would enable me to tool away in my little digital cave and at the same time affect real people through the internet everywhere. Well, it seems analytics shows us what’s working, but still fails to explain the details of why (or as a colleague recently pointed out…why not) Primary research with real life humans is still required in understanding why humans behave they way they do.
The good news is that this primary research when coupled with rigorous analytics is like pulling the curtain back to expose a method behind the magic. And that’s powerful.
About now, the media and blogosphere start publishing lists of the most important things that happened during the course of the year. I’ll be referencing here some of the Top 10 lists I find and think are most interesting.
Top 10 Biggest Social Media Stories of 2009This post in Vator.tv by Ronny Kerr lists is interesting on a few levels. I personally think #7 in his list is the most important as it references the growing role of Citizen Journalism. As main stream media news continues to degrade, we will rely more on the notion of the citizen journalist. The local concerned individual empowered with tools for publishing and distributing news will become a greater force as those platforms continue to evolve. On top of this, the advent of real-time search exemplified by Twitter’s efforts in this area as well as Google’s year ending adding of real-time data to their SERPs will enable us all to stay informed through new channels of information and new forms of journalism. Sifting through the growing pains involving insanely poor quality journalism will unfortunately be a condition we need to suffer through as this trend seeks maturity. Jeff Jarvis refers to this as the “deprofessionalization” of journalism in a recent post. (His post is not a list, but definitely worth reading on the subject of citizen journalism.)
Crunks 2009: The Year in Media Errors and CorrectionsOK, this post is not a Top 10 list, however, it’s an awesome line up of errors and corrections made by news media outlets during 2009. I predict the issue of news reporting errors is going to trend in a devastating way in the coming years. This will be due to two fundamental reasons. First, fact checkers are getting laid off at all the major news organizations. Second, the dissemination of any information (including erroneous) on the internet is like wildfire…which I guess shows reason number 2.5, which is, inflammatory erroneous information spreads faster than the boring stuff accurate stuff. All business models are stoked by fast dissemination of information, so there is a clear incentive to spread total crap. Total crap pays better on the internet. Thankfully, we have the blog, Regret the Error, hopefully to stem the tide of this unfortunate trend by showing a possible crowd sourcing model for news fact checking.
President Obama’s recent speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize seems to have been viewed by the Right as a surprising reaffirmation of american exceptionalism. The speech also seems to be viewed by the Left as a surprising contradiction to the idealism that supports a rigorously (and some might consider utopian) pacifist social ethic.
I can understand why the Right is emboldened by Obama’s apparent affirmation of american exceptionalism. I heard Obama refer to America’s unique position in the world during the course of his speech. But the notion of american exceptionalism finds its foundation in the sense that America is given by God a unique role to play and that betrothal is a reflection of our society’s unique affiliation with the Almighty. Our dominant role is bequeathed by God…or so the adherents to american exceptionalism tend to believe.
However, Obama’s speech seemed to reflect a more nuanced historical premise. He did not appeal to a simplistic theological justification for America’s conquests as have previous Presidents been so willing to enlist (at least for the sake of rhetoric). In his speech, he references the blood and sacrifice of American troops as the foundation for our current role as the sole super power in geo-political affairs. I agree. We were in a position to defend freedom during the course of the previous century, and so we did. As a result, we are in a unique position in the world, and this unique position enables us to further our defense of freedom for peoples everywhere.
My sense of (what I’ll call orthodox) american exceptionalism is that it finds its justification in a belief akin to manifest destiny. I mean to say, that the insertion of God as the prime mover in our foreign policy seems analogous to the way manifest destiny was justified by a theological premise and thereby influenced our domestic policy from a century prior.
The blending of theology and politics always comes at a price. And that price is often inconsistent policy positions across various issues at best. At worst, the price entails the subservience of justice to a particular constituency’s moral framework.
A lot has been said about the influence of Niebuhrian realism on Obama’s foreign policy. (Here’s a post in The American Spectator) That influence was clearly evident in Obama’s speech at the Nobel award ceremony. Obama’s statements regarding his role involving “seeing the world as it is” showed both Neibuhr’s influence on Obama as well as the burden Obama now seems to grapple with fully. Being President is a far cry from being Candidate.
Obama’s speech made me wonder what Reinhold Neibuhr would have thought of the Administration’s current foreign policy direction. I wonder also what Neibuhr’s thoughts would be on the broader concept of an increasingly orthodox american exceptionalism.
Lastly, Obama’s speech made me glad. If nothing more, it’s nice to see that a dialectic of ideas is evidently playing a role in the thought process Obama pursues as he fleshes out his worldview and how that will inform his role as leader of the free world.
I just finished reading Rae Hoffman’s post in the Outspoken Media blog about Google’s new real time search inclusion of Tweets. Now tweets deemed relevant to a keyword search appear at the top of the SERP evidently assigning huge value to recency in the algorithm. Hoffman does an excellent job of outlining why this is scary as hell. Really, everyone should read it.
The story reminded me of the Google Sidewiki launch. That new service by Google allows anyone to post a comment about anyone else’s website. If you have the Sidewiki tool on your browser you can view the posts left by everyone else over time. It’s a potential nightmare for folks interested in having their website represent their best foot forward. I posted about this issue a while back, and can understand the challenge of blending the internet value of “transparency” with the marketer’s desire to influence brand sentiment. But the tone-deafness of Google in how (now two) products have been released is troubling.
The lack of sensitivity reflected by these launches is alluded to in Ken Auletta’s book, Googled. (Here’s a review of the book) He attributes it to an extreme engineer’s mindset. This may or may not be true, but my concern is that as Google marches on toward controlling more and more of our experience on the web, there will be more and more of these missteps that place our privacy and security at increasingly greater risk.
Here’s a video from Blaine Mathieu, CMO of Lyris, regarding Marketing trends for 2010. He does a great job of pitching his company’s offerings, but regardless, I agree with his sense of industry direction.
From a high level, quant skills will be more valuable than ever in Marketing as Analytics is not something just for the web master to care about anymore. Social Network apps & brand sentiment, Mobile apps, Email campaigns and Search marketing can all be measured in ways never dreamed of before. The ability to measure and track metrics will penetrate more and more deeply into the mindset of modern integrated marketing.
The tools to build these apps and the contexts within which to deploy them are rapidly approaching maturity. This should drive costs down well enough to make app development a function of every integrated marketing campaign. Then tracking all those apps through Analytics will drive a stronger perceived value for quant skill sets in the integrated marketing professional.
There could be a danger of the pendulum swinging a little too far and traditional qualitative skills being slightly less valued in the short term. I don’t know, but I could see how that might happen. But, I think over time, qualitative skills will find solid footing again and the integrated marketing professional will emerge as someone who is capable of thinking equally out of the left as well as the right side of his/her brain.
I absolutely love this time of year. Football, Thanksgiving, Fall weather, then first snows, Christmas, lots of opportunity to assess the year; count my blessings and focus on the most important things. To welcome it in, here’s a video that cracks me up!
I just finished reading Ken Auletta’s new book: Googled, The End of the World as We Know It.
Auletta delivers on many levels with this book. As a general corporate biography, Auletta was given the kind of access required to compose a compelling story about the development of the business as well as the role various personalities played in the company’s founding and success. In fact, the access he was given seems extraordinary in an era where famous people are as easily mugged by the media as they are truthfully reported on. On the flip side of that, the way Auletta takes that access and pens a balanced critique of the people and company position speaks well to his character and ability as a journalist in the face of extraordinary wealth and power.
Definitely, an excellent corporate biography.
But what gives the book, and story, significance isn’t just the extreme success achieved by Google and it’s principals. It’s the role Google is playing in a larger story about the transition our media industry at large is currently suffering. These days, there’s quite a bit of blaming going on in old media directed toward Google. I don’t tend to subscribe to the belief that Google is an evil plotter in the demise of an American Icon industry. I think content will always have a central role in our culture because we value storytelling as much as any culture ever has, and we value News as a pillar for our Liberal Democracy. Content will always be King. However, just as real monarchies in different countries have to justify their role in society from time to time, so does Content need to re-establish it’s role as King in our context. It’s true to say our modes of distribution are evolving at break neck speeds. This pace of innovation compels us to wonder whether new forms of content that effectively dis-intermediate the Media Companies will become King. We’ve been experimenting with user generated content in that regard for some time now. But it seems to me the experimentation is leading us to conclude once again that some people are awesome story tellers, and the vast majority of us benefit from the consumption of their art.
So I’m not worried about the demise of Media. We love it and need it too much. How we pay for it, well, that’s what everyone is really freaking out about.
One of the recurring themes or aspects I picked up on in reading this book had to do with the way Google is perceived. There’s a chronic question as to whether Google is naive or evil. The question is typically posed to people in traditional media who believe their livelihood or wealth is affected by Googles presence in the market. It makes sense for them to believe Google is evil. According to Auletta, this baffles the people at Google in a way that then lends itself to believing they are not really evil. Truly evil people know they are evil and are not surprised when others think it as well. So, the other alternative is that they are naive. Naive enough not to recognize and understand the way they are perceived by the people they are affecting adversely. Auletta ascribes this naivete to being a function of an extreme engineer worldview. Everything is logical; not emotional. Efficiency matters more than anything else. So the ability to relate to people that feel harmed by Google eludes the people at Google.
I’ve been in the Valley long enough to know this is not something unique to Google. So, I’d probably side with the perspective that the folks at Google are maybe guilty of being insensitive over evil. It seems to me Googlers are probably as good as folks at any other company. They’re not out to kill anyone, they are just out to make a difference.
Which seems like a rather hohum conclusion…which is not good for blogs. I know this by looking at the Google Analytics for this blog
So, in the interest of being somewhat controversial, here’s my greatest concern. I think that the current management of Google is composed of people who really believe the ideals they espouse as corporate values. At the same time, I see the power Google is accumulating through its position in the industry as the collector of all manner of consumer data. This power is currently wielded by personalities that seem inclined toward benevolence. But a company with that kind of power necessarily attracts evil geniuses over time. My greatest concern will be when the current management team moves on to the next challenge and the personalities vying for control of Google’s assets represent a very different profile than the current personalities do today. I know if I was an evil genius I could do a lot with the kind of data Google is gathering and controlling right now.
I love this zigzag punt return! My favorite parts of the video: first the pose a blocker strikes after making a hit on the second zag; second, the way the player stands in the end zone looking pretty baffled by it all while he just drops the ball…hilarious!
Play of the day: Grant's Kenneth Acker's amazing punt return touchdown
Latoya Egwuekwe put this graphic together displaying the progression in rising unemployment rates by County across the country. Nebraska never looked so good! Click on the image and press play to see the graphic in action.
Yesterday, I taught my 3 year old daughter how to arm wrestle. We laid down on the carpet, belly down, facing each other. I showed her how to plant her elbow and grip my hand for a serious arm wrestling match. She’s as convinced she’s stronger than me as she is 3 years old. No question. So, I had to ask myself whether I was going to let her win every match. I decided to use this as a teachable moment. She won the first one, I took the second…she started crying. Yea, not exactly what I had in mind. So, I told her I understand how badly she wants to win and I think that’s great. But she’s not going to win every time. So she needs to learn how to handle when she loses. It’s not something to cry about, but it is something to learn from and let motivate her next time. She’s pretty smart, of course, so this all seemed to make perfect sense to her, and she was cool with a 50% winning record for the rest of our matches. I think she realized she enjoyed the competing as much if not more than the winning.
Well, that got me thinking (again) about the decision to put my last startup on the shelf. We built a service for parents serving about a dozen cities nationwide, we grew a great team of local “work-from-home-mom” editors, we developed some really interesting software to manage the whole thing. But at the end of the day, we (I) couldn’t find the funding necessary to let us take it to the next level. So, in my book, we (I) failed.
The last couple months have provided the kind of time to reflect that does not come along all that often. As a result, I’ve learned a lot. In fact, I think I’ve learned more than had I still been focused full time on building it out. There’s more clarity now than before regarding all the things I know I’ll never do again. But there’s also a ton of things I would do again, and am growing eager to get back at it!
Here’s one of my favorite quotes, sent to me by a friend in the early days after deciding to shelve my last company…
It’s not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or when the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat. Theodore Roosevelt
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