The Wrong Measures Of Web Success

It all about the benjamins, or in this case, Web hits.

How could it not be? According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD), "The number of broadband subscribers in the OECD reached 251 million by June 2008, an increase of 14% from June 2007."

Think about it.... 251 million potential Web hits; who wouldn't want a piece of that pie? However, you have to ask yourself, what are those hits, impressions, unique visitors, etc. really doing for your company?

I find myself in the position once again where my thoughts are best expressed by author of The New Rules Of Marketing And PR, David Meerman Scott. And I quote:

Many marketers and PR people also focus on the wrong measures of success. With Web sites, people will often tell me things like, "We want to have 10,000 unique visitors per month to our site." And PR measurement is often similarly irrelevant: "We want ten mentions in the trade press and three national magazine hits each month." Unless your site makes money through advertising so that raw traffic adds revenue, traffic is the wrong measure.

Don't get me wrong, I believe there is great value to be found in tracking hits for web analytics, but that value extends insofar as the analytics can be interpreted to help add to your bottom line.

After all, what does 10,000 hits really tell you? Can you talk to 10,000 hits and ask them what they did or didn't like about your site?

With this in mind, you really shouldn't be asking, "How many hits did we get," you should be asking, "What are those hits generating for us?"

Social Media And The Recession

What can be expected of the future of social media during a fiscally tight time like now? I have my own suspicions on the matter (which I'll get to shortly), but I wanted to know what those with more industry experience were thinking.

The best article I found was Social media will transcend the negative aspects of the recession written by author jptrenn on the Digital Street Journal.

Basically, the author addresses the notion that traditionally, marketing and public relations are the first "expenses" to be dealt away with during a recession. However, traditions can and do change.

The most relevant point Trenn makes in the article is that, "Social media is a whole new ballgame because it covers so much - marketing, customer relations, media relations, public relations, and a whole lot more."

Because social media can be used to address so many fundamental business transactions (for such a modest investment), it can no longer be seen as a dispensable resource.

These two graphics illustrate my point. With 75% of U.S. adults using social technologies, organizations can actually use social media to cut the costs of both marketing a public relations efforts.

Even better, as the costs of social media productions like pod and vodcasts continue to drop, social media becomes a more cost effective strategy for an organization of any size.

Sooooo, my prediction is that savy PR and marketing managers will begin to make greater use of social media in order to cut production costs and to reach more highly targeted consumer markets.

Viral Marketing: Old News With A New Name

Viral Marketing, the Godfather of buzzwords. After stripping away all of the corporate speak and nonsense surrounding the term, what remains at the core?


In chapt. 10 of The New Influencers, Paul Gillin said of viral marketing:

This specialized brand of promotion, also called "word of mouth" or "guerilla" marketing, is nothing new. Each person tells several friends and word spreads on a geometric scale. It is perhaps the oldest form of marketing, but the Internet has given it new power.

I couldn't agree more. I see the roots of today's viral marketing campaigns in the original bad boy of 1800s press agentry, P.T. Barnum. Barnum was able to generate buzz/hype/press for his shows well before they rolled in to town.

Using a combination of extravagant impromptu shows and strong word-of-mouth marketing, Barnum helped plant the seeds of modern viral marketing campaigns.



According to Effective Public Relations, Barnum even started the trend of coining language for his viral marketing campaigns, introducing the American public to jumbo.

My point, viral marketing is not a new idea that needs to scare, intimidate or confuse new practitioners. Viral marketing is an old dog with a new trick, Web 2.0.

So lets cut through the junk and start demystifying the "new" trend of viral marketing.

ONU Dodgeball, Public Enemy # 1

Today, while reading the Ohio Northern University student handbook, I came across some shocking information.

Included on pg. 18 in the list of actions that can create a safety hazard, right after bomb threats, is dodgeball...

So I started to wonder, how many injuries really do result from dodgeball each year? My initial suspicion is alot; otherwise, why would ONU ban such a classic "sport?"

Fortunately, to my benefit, I found out that the Canadians keep careful records on this type of important information.

According to a Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Program (CHIRP) 2000-2002 survey, 646 of 47,484 or 1.4 percent of patients surveyed were treated for dodgeball related injuries.

Doesn't seem like much, right? Wrong. Dodgeball injuries surpass those of seemingly more aggressive sports like floor hockey, lacrosse and field hockey.

With statistics like these at hand I can no longer question the logic of Ohio Northern's executive staff.

Let this be a warning to any and all hooligans at ONU trying to play dodgeball. Thanks ONU, you always have my best interests at heart.

Brand Name Social Media News Releases

If you're like me, then you may be wondering what a high-profile, brand recognizable social media news realease actually look like. Learning about the theory of SMNR's is effective only to a point...

Searching through PROpenMic I found an article asking: "Who Uses a Social Media Release?" with a link to a blog titled "PR squared."

In one of co-founder Todd Defren's posts he talked about the growing popularity of the social media news release. What really caught my attention were the sheer number of high profile scoial media news releases he gave examples of.

In reality, not all of the releases are as well made as they could have and perhaps should have been. However, they provide a basis for soon to be practitioners like myself to understand how to format and improve on current social media news releases.

Even better, PR squared authors posted their own suggestions for formatting social media news releases.

So, if your feeling a little overwhelmed this can work as a good starting point for developing your own personal style for your social media news releases.

Search Engine Optimization

This weeks readings really struck a chord with me. In a nutshell, much of what is being discussed concerns search engine optimization, something I worked on with University Hospitals for much of my summer.

Wiki defines SEO as "...the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results." So what does this really mean?

Well, much of my experience with SEO stems from crafting meta tags, the keywords or phrases users search to find information about a specific topic.

David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing And PR makes an excellent analogy about met tags when describing them as the dewey decimal systems of the Internet.

Just like in a library, users browsing the Internet must search through hundrends upon thousands of entries containing useless information to find what they're looking for. However, savvy marketers/PR practitioners can take advantage of the clutter on the Internet by specifying meta tags with keywords their users will search for.

Back to my job at University Hospitals. Being somewhat familiar with the role of meta tags already, I was tasked with the job of going through an entire portal ( of which University Hospitals has approximately 20 or so) and updating the meta tags of each page with key words.

Without much more direction, other than to pull the keywords in from the text on the page, I was set loose. It didn't take me very long to discover that the majority of the text on the Web site sounded as if it were written for other physicians (the majority is not). Could I really expect the average user (who I am told in Cleveland has a 7th grade or lower reading level) to be searching for Opthalmological surgeons?

Probabaly not. Finally, realizing the futility of crafting meta tags from physicians jargon I began crafting my own. Opthalmological surgeons became eye doctors and meta tags became useful!

So like Scott, I advocate the use of keywords that will really "speak" to your audience in a way that they will actually understand.

Talking With A Marketing Legend

This evening I had the privilege of having Dr. Ron Tatham as a guest speaker in my Consumer Behavior course.

Dr. Tatham has a laundry list of accomplishments in the field of marketing, including his most recent 2007 receipt of the American Marketing Association (AMA) "Legend of Marketing Research" award. I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that when any professional organization labels you a "legend," you're damn good at what you do.

And tust me, he is.

As is customary on such occassions, my professor sent our class a bio on Dr. Tatham several days ago and requested we come to class prepared with several questions to ask. Usually I don't get very excited about these events because in my experience most guest speakers aren't overly enthusiastic or insightful and cause time to drag.

But, After reading Dr. Tatham's Bio my interest was peaked. Admittedly, I still didn't prepare any insightful questions. I like to think I work better on the spot.

Dr. Tatham's speaking style had clearly been honed over decades of boardroom and classroom experience. Like every good teacher or mentor, he was easy to listen to.

As the discussion progressed and I became more vocal, the topic suddenly turned career advice. Dr. Tatham said there only three questions any person in any career at any level needed to ask to be successful:

First, ask the question, "What decision do you need to make?"

Second, determine "What info. you need to make that decision?"

Third, determine "What criteria will the information be judged by?"

I truly belive with these three questions I've just learned everything I will ever need to know to be a success in any career.

If anyone checks this out, let me know what you think. I may be way off-base, but I feel like Dr. Tatham is on to something.