Negative Exposure: Controlling Your Whuffie

According to Tara Hunt, author of the book The Whuffie Factor, your Whuffie is your online social capital. Any negative reviews or posts on the Internet count against your whuffie. Positive Web reviews and authentic blogging along with other social media practices build your whuffie. Think of whuffie like the stock market. And, we've all seen how one bad piece of news can kill a company's stock value.

Your online presence and brand is much more than managing a Web site, e-newsletters or an online ad campaign. You have to participate in the online world to have a credible place at the conversation table. Otherwise, you are opening your company and your work up to potential scams or fraud.

Just ask Clint Page, CEO of Dotster, a 100-employee, $50 million Internet service provider, whose company identity has TWICE been high-jacked. In the June/July 2009 issue of Business Week SmallBiz, Page says, "A comment left unchallenged becomes perception, and perception becomes reality."

Famously, Tony La Russa, manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, sued Twitter earlier this month to remove an account fraudulently made in his name. Now, Twitter as well as other social media companies are often quick to remove fraudulent accounts - but they need to be made aware of the problem. With more than 180 million Facebook users and 32.1 million Twitter users, some self-monitoring is not only in order, it is a necessity.

Use one or more of the following tools to manage your online whuffie: (source: June/July 2009 issue of Business Week SmallBiz article "Saving Face Online")

google.com/alerts: sends alerts when company or brand appears on the Web, blogs, news, video or discussion groups
backtype.com: sends alerst when a comment is made that includes your company name or brand
blogpulse.com: searches blogs for mentions of your company
boardreader.com: searches message boards, forums, videos and Twitter
icerocket.com: searches blogs, news, Web, MySpace, Twitter and images
search.twitter.com: searches Twitter
tweetdeck.com: searches Twitter
technorati.com: searches blogs, photos and videos

Googlenomics

The internet has spawned, at an alarming rate, a bevvy of new words, among them the verb (and noun) google. "I'll google it." "I was googling about that and found..."

It's not too shocking that we are not yahooing things. Google is known for its radical, alternative avenues to success, thereby the company has captivated the general public while at the same time it has redefined media sales strategies and the world of advertising. This is where you get Googlenomics - economics Google-style.

The June 2009 issue of Wired dives into "Googlenomics Explained: The Secret Formula That Made Advertising Smart" by Steven Levy and looks at the auction theory applied to Google AdWords. Advertisers bid on ad space. That's right. There is no guaranteed "price" to ensure the business plan, so Google looks at more than just the dollar amount on the bid. There is a lot of data and quality assessment behind each ad sale.

"The bids themselves are only a part of what ultimately determines the auction winners. The other major determinant is something called the quality score. This metric strives to ensure that the ads Google shows on its results page are true, high-caliber matches for what users are querying..."

Quality score is determined by:
- An ad's relevance to Keywords
- Quality of the landing page to which an ad connects
- Percentage of clicks an ad receives when it appears in search results

To break this down, it is important to do a relevant keyword analysis of a company. This is not a guessing game; there are real tools and analytics and a lot of constant analysis behind the most effective keyword strategies.

Then, you need a quality Web site - not the most elaborate or most tricked out Web site. You need a site that works in all Web browsers, talks about a product relevant to the ad, provides code that boosts SEO rankings and is an actively updated site.

Last, you need a compelling ad that inspires click-thrus. Design. Content. Appeal.

Googlenomics is not a random theory. It is based on providing quality and relevance, and it is based on the data collected by searches, visits and consumer action. "Algorithmic Spelunking" is how the article describes it.

This post just touches on the surface of things, so Read The Entire Article.

Why is Social Media Important to Your Marketing Stratetgy?

Social Media is a definite part of most marketing strategies in today's world. And while many would like to ignore it, the simple fact is that as a marketing tool it is a very difficult thing to push aside and not recommend, especially in the present economy.

Mull over this tidbit from a recent Fast Company article, "Social Networks are More than Networking," by Lon Safko. He writes:

Facebook has more than 150 million members with more than 80 billion page views each month. Facebook is represented in 170 countries & territories, every continent, even Antarctica, and is available in 35 different languages. More than 1 in 5 people who access the Internet visit Facebook. If Facebook were it's own country, it would be the eighth most populated country in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia, & Nigeria....
And finally, LinkedIn is used as a professional directory and has more than 27 million users with an average household income over $110,000. The gender distribution weighs heavily toward males at 65% and 35% Female with an average age of 41 years old.

You can't ignore numbers like these, they are a marketing strategist's dream.

Read the entire article.

Marketicity Featured for Work with City of Columbia, Ill.

As a business based in Columbia, Ill., the Marketicity team was honored to work with the City of Columbia Economic Development Coordinator Paul Ellis to create a marketing tool catered to attracting new businesses to the city. (photo: final DVD and interior graphics of DVD sleeve)

But perhaps the biggest treat came in today's Suburban-Journals article by Kevin Darr, titled COLUMBIA: City joins technological wave, where we found a very gratifying quote from Paul Ellis, it reads:

"They came up with all the graphics and the layout while the words are mine," Ellis said. "They exceeded my expectations and came up with some really great ideas."

Read the full article.