Conference notes from the “Advertising in Social Media” session at Search Engine Strategies New York ‘07

Moderator:
Rebecca Lieb, Editor-in-Chief, ClickZ Network

Speakers:
Bill Flitter, VP Marketing, Pheedo, Inc
Marc Schiller, CEO/Founder, ElectricArtists, Inc
Nicole Bogas, Gossip Blog Team Lead, BlogAds

Panelist:
Chad Staller, Director of Emerging Platforms, Organic

[L-R] Nicole Bogas (BlogAds), Chad Staller (Organic), Marc Schiller (ElectricArtists), Bill Flitter (Pheedo)

Bill Flitter, VP Marketing, Pheedo, Inc.

Pheedo - concentrates on RSS and social media advertising.

Broadcast model is “we tell you” whereas social media is “tell each other”. Marketers still contribute dollars and content.

Most adds are targeted to people who click through, and avoid the people who aren’t interested, but the other propects have value as well.

Let people who need more information - subscribe to more info, read a review, speak to a peer. Or someone who was too busy to bookmark the ad and come back later or e-mail it to someone else. And the person who’s a happy customer to act as a resource to prospects.

Target all the people who might be interested.

Powered by RSS feeds.

Does it work? Example Ford Motor Company (Ford Auto Show web site).

4% CTR (good)
20% conversion rate on subscriptions (del.icio.us, etc.)
2% email rate
133 interactions in 7 days (comments, etc.)
1.1% interaction rate is even better than 4% CTR

It lowers cost per customer.

Nicole Bogas, Gossip Blog Team Lead, BlogAds

They specialize in blog ads. Now have 22 staff members and 1,300 leading indie blogs.

Targeted subject “hives” that are topic based (40+)

Blogs are important because they’re real people that customers feel they can relate to.

Traditional media works on a one-to-many model whereas blogs work on a “swarm” model. The blog model is scary to a lot of people because it can’t be controlled very easily.

Example of Perez Hilton doing better than E Online and US Magazine.

BlogAds are designed to look like the blog - vertical, etc.

Bad ads give a lot of things away and people don’t feel like they need to click. What does work is an eccentric image with text and hyperlinks. Minimal branding - look handmade. Don’t give all the information.

Faux video heads can get people to click through to videos without the need to embed the video. “Add to Netflix queue” - all good examples.

Work in participation into the ads themselves - have ads that ask questions to get people to click through and contribute. Another example would be a review from a blogger (as an ad on their blog).

Even standard banner ads can be part of the campaign if you bring in content/themes from the blogosphere.

Marc Schiller, CEO/Founder, ElectricArtists, Inc.

[Editorial Note: Marc had one of the most beautiful PowerPoint presentations I've seen in a long time. If the presentation becomes available, I'll post a screenshot.]

One of the first to start an ad campaign in Second Life.

Hard to distinguish between advertising, marketing and PR.

Focus on experience rather than destination.

You can’t communicate with a community unless you’re part of the community.

People want to see how something is made/created than the final product/results. Pull back the curtain and let people see more.

Good will has to be in the DNA of everything you do.

Creativity is vital these days - you’ll want to tap into that. People want to participate and confirm who they are.

Get people from sitting back to leaning forward. - become the “prosumer”

Second Life is a great place to protype projects and innovate. Only a few things “break through” into the real world.

The problems with Second Life are:

• no direct ROI
• budgeting
• maintenance & management
• slow to create interesting eperiences
• etc…

Example: Starwood Hotels. They announced a new hotel brand (Aloft), but it take 3 years before a real product exists in the real world. They had built a prototype of the lobby and rooms in a warehouse. So they took that into Second Life to get feedback from “customers” - it was a test market for the hotel’s design. The virtual hotel has been “closed” and will be reopened integrating people’s comments. It will be the first brand to leave Second Life (land will be given back to the community) - because they’ve achieved their goal and don’t want to maintain the hotel indefinitely.

Example: iVillage “Girl’s Night Out” - celebrate what’s already there. There was very little for women despite the fact that there were a lot of ‘women’ on Second Life (42%). So they did an iVillage loft with special events like fashion shows. There was a lot of passion for the events.

Pick a niche and go after it with a maniacal focus - “go big or go home”.

Chad Staller, Director of Emerging Platforms, Organic (panelist)

Don’t run too quickly into Second Life. Easy to do the first press release, but then most projects fail.

Go in and learn from the community before marketing to the community.

You need to embrace social networking.

Discussion/Q&A:

“Community” is becoming a bigger and bigger issue. Don’t really want to create a new community so much as inject the concepts of community into your offerings. Moving from the browse and read web to the writeable web. Social networks polarize web, which is something you want to avoid, but you want to inject the idea of feedback and interaction.

“Cause loyal” folks are excited about Web 2.0 to promote their causes. The existing social networks are really valuable as ways to get awareness for non-profits. It’s also useful to get feedback for corporate contributions to communities.

Profile portability is becoming an issue, but it’s up against the fact that people have different personas on different sites.

Best social networks have simple entry points (don’t want to know everything about the person) - let the person’s persona evolve.

Negative feedback is expected and taken in context these days. Let the community police itself by burying bad comments.

Letting people comment on ads can lead to really successful campaigns. In a case study (automotive industry) 1 in a 1000 were negative. But be careful since things like lemon laws can bite you (free car if comment is posted in public and goes without response for a certain length of time).

Digg and Slashdot can be brutal. Hate will always be there. Disagreement is a step up from hate, then people who want discussion is another step up. The worst is “fan boys” who don’t contribute anything of substance.

People get a lot more polite when they know you’re listening.

A lot of the hate comes out of a lack of knowledge. So patiently dealing with them can be powerful and change the whole dynamic.

When the company rep comes into the discussion everyone tends to be really polite because they want answers from someone who knows.

Search on Second Life is really poor right now and they’re looking to improve it, but some people think there’s a downside to better search.

Best to have blog-style landing pages if advertising on blogs - continue themes of participation and feedback. But at the same time, when people click on a banner they expect an ad.

The kids who are in college now are really going to use social networks greatly on a professional level when they graduate.

Registration on comments takes liability off the site/brand - at least to an extent.

But some things should not (or cannot) be blogged about - lawyers shouldn’t blog because of the implications of someone following their advice.

When looking at advertising opportunities - look for something going from ‘early adopter’ to ‘early mass’ and get in at that point. Look at the “current thing” and then figure out the unmet needs and whatever meets those needs will be the next big thing.

Tools don’t build community - the tone and the entry points build community. The community needs a personality.

Tags: online-advertising, Social Media
Categories: Advertising, Social Media