Want to get this video up of the New York Tech Meetup I attended tonight at the IAC Building

My thoughts about SMX East starts 6 minutes into the online video, above.  For one thing, the advertisers were much the same as what I’ve seen at all the other search shows I’ve attended, so I can’t really get excited over the floor, because there wasn’t much to note.   On the other hand, the session I went to on Search and The US Presidential Election at SMX East that Sara Holoubek put together was absolutely fantastic and probably never would have happened at a SES Show.

On the other hand, doing a panel about a topical subject, such as the US Presidential Election, and the interest in the election, is hard to do on a regular basis, from show to show.  Still, I think, in  a lot of cases, content could be better than it has been.

Overall, I’d give SMX East more points than Search Engine Strategies in terms of quality of panels, it truly is a better experience.

And the Tech Meetup was great - plus I got to see the US Presidential Debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, on a gigantic screen - who can ask for more than that?

An announcement was made on Monday at the Conversational Marketing Summit: New Brand Way in New York City (where I live) about a new Conversational Measurement Toolbox allowing advertisers to target audiences more precisely and measure the success of campaigns they run on Federated Media's blog network.  The Press Release, titled Federated Media Introduces Conversational Measurement Toolbox - Launches Industry’s First Open Platform for the Exchange of Conversational Media Metrics

from Federated says this:

The toolbox consists of a suite of campaign measurement, planning and reporting tools offering marketers greater control and insight into their conversational marketing efforts.

The Press Release also quotes Rob Crumpler from Buzzlogic, one of the platforms used in the Measurement Toolbox:

“The Internet has become a vast network of socially-connected content, which paves the way for advertisers to go beyond the final click when measuring and understanding digital media performance,” said Rob Crumpler, CEO of FM partner BuzzLogic. “The conversational nature of the Web enables advertisers to recognize consumer engagement across multiple touch points, and leverage this data to fuel an online ad strategy – before, during and after a campaign.”

 I met Rob Crumpler last week at the IAB Leadership Forum (At the IAB Leadership Forum for Social Media and User Generated Content today) and had met Todd Parsons last month at Emetrics San Francisco - did a long interview with him in a post on Buzzlogic  in early May.

I'll be speaking to Rob shortly on the details of Buzzlogic's involvement in the Federated Measurement Toolbox; I can't really see the Toolbox yet (I'm not a FM Advertiser or Publisher)- and would certainly like to see the measurement toolbox in action. 

More, after I interview Rob Crumpler. 

I have to say the new Batman Dark Knight Trailer looks compelling - even the less than perfect quality version I can get off of YouTube.

First, you can Watch The Dark Knight Trailer above (I looked around to find the best version on YouTube - this is it) where "… Christian Bale will resume his role as Bruce Wayne and Academy Award nominee Heath Ledger has been cast as The Joker".

I saw Batman Returns a few years ago, when it came out, and it was the best Batman movie ever made. Meanwhile MTV just wrote an article on the 'Dark Knight' Leaked Trailer Shows A Joker Hellbent On Chaos:

"..the trailer is nothing short of dazzling, an impressive combination of whiz-bang effects and deft character touches. Batman rides his new motorcycle through the streets of Gotham; a truck overturns on a crowded street; and the Joker is in custody, taunting his captors with a devilish smirk and looking up at the camera with the cocky self-assuredness of a madman. "

How much Buzz is there for The Dark Knight Trailer.

The Dark Knight got 1/10th of 1% of all the blog traffic in the world, recorded by BlogPulse right around December 15th and from what I can tell (there were 512 blog posts indexed) most people who saw The Dark Knight liked the Trailer.

Deep Jive Interest's Tony Hung describes The Truth About Viral And Social Marketing? Its All About The Sock Puppets. and calls for a "New Media Literacy" where people can figure out what's really viral in Social Media vs. what's been manipulated by people like Dan Acker Greenburg (who revealed how the company he works for creates viral videos on YouTube it basically boils down to marketing tricks, and less to do with the content itself, according to Tony Hung).

I agree, and wrote about it last night - Viral Videos - Secrets Revealed care of TechCrunch - reaction is mixed but I didn't it as well, in a humorous fashion, as Tony, who likened the whole thing to a bunch of Sock Puppets (more or less -see below).

But Tony Hung brings up a more personal point - many of "us" that were penalized, usually unjustly, by Google last month in a series of PageRank adjustments - even when there was link buying (which many didn't actually do who were penalized) were actually being honest and open while Google doesn't appear to have any way of punishing the much more "sinister" type of viral marketing that Dan Greenberg and companies like his routinely do.

"…At times like this I almost feel bad for Ted Murphy, one of the guys behind PayPerPost. Not just because I met him and he seems like a nice guy. But rather that he tried to build a business that was attempting to do something in a fairly open and transparent way, and with the new Google PageRank adjustment is getting burned for it.

Whereas guys like Dan Greenburg? They’re paying bloggers and list owners under the table where Google will _never_, *ever* be able to tell, and they’re making out like bandits. And that’s besides the practice of creating puppet accounts to pimp their “viral” marketing tactics.

Again, am I surprised and shocked? Not really."

Sure, Google is going after the "low hanging fruit" and paints a "wide swath" perhaps correcting more sites than they needed to or should have - but my point is …should Google be correcting anyone's site - if they can't stop people like Dan Greenberg - if they don't have a plan or way to do it?

I don't think so.  I think that Google is great at algorithms corrections, as far as it goes - but when they supplement the algorithms with humans - they often make situations much worse than if they just left the whole thing alone.  If people start seeing Google and it's properties as a "mess" - it's because the algorithms failed - let them fix that - and keep people out of making "subjective" judgements about sites - as Google has failed to do a good or even fair job of it (they don't even have a  decent process where you can "speak back" easily to them or even know why they are penalizing you - how fair is that?)

Because, to be truly fair, why should Google penalize Ted Murphy but not Dan Greenberg?  Is it only because they can go after Ted Murphy but not Dan Greenberg?   Maybe Google should stop policing their search engines (including YouTube - and just stick to the algorithms - since that's all they're actually good at - to the point the algorithm can do the job).

You get what you pay for and that includes Buzz, according to Nielsen BuzzMetrics - Marketers Can Buy Blog “Buzz,” Nielsen Reports:

"..After analyzing blog buzz volume, ad spending, purchase intentions and actual product sales, Nielsen found the best predictor of buzz for newly launched consumer-packaged goods (CPG) is a large advertising budget. The collaborative study was led by researchers from two Nielsen services – Nielsen BuzzMetrics, the leader in buzz analytics, and BASES, the leading provider of new product forecasting and consulting. The full report – “The Origin & Impact of CPG New Product Buzz” – is available at no charge here. "

Here's some charts to illustrate what Nielsen says:

"..Advertising Spend Around CPG Product Launches
Segmented By Products With Highest Blog Buzz Volume

 
Distribution Of Total CPG Blog Buzz

The 10% that spend the most money on Blog Buzz get 85% of the Buzz.

Search is The Internet OS! also has a writeup on this subject titled - The more money … the more buzz - Nielsen where Arnaud Fischer thinks the Nielsen Research bolsters the case for more Buzz Measurement (by Nielsen BuzzMetrics, of course):

"..The study sounds pretty encouraging for emerging semantic technology applications such as online buzz monitoring, tone polarity extraction and sentiment analysis. The more brand advertising dollars shifting online, the more requirements for evaluating impact on social media buzz."

The only thing that bothers me about this is Blog Buzz is being reduced to a formula where you spend as much as you need to get the  Buzz you want - but that's not the way it worked before - where ingenuity determined what your results ended up being.

Lee Odden has a good post on just the kind of thing I'm trying to do for some of my clients - promote them without really focusing on SEO.  In the post, Lee mentions Eric Ward, who says:

"…The more powerful a person is to help your site get exposure the less likely they are to ever be reached by a mass distributed press release. In other words, who has time to weed through 15,000 press releases a day to find the two that actually say something?"

Makes sense to me …. if someone really is an influential - they probably too busy to handle tons of garbage press releases - they're most likely "laser focused" on what they do well.

Widgets also seem the way to go; I'm finding that it's not as easy as it sounds to just stick Widgets everywhere - it depends on the business and what it makes sense to "widgetize".

I suppose generating BUZZ has, up to now, been thought of as a one way street - you get people to be excited about what your doing.  But what if it was also the other way around?   What if your FANS and sympathetic others, interested in your BRAND, were calling the shots?  Would you still idolize someone when you know what they had for breakfast this morning?

A recent New York Times article had an intriguing title: Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog which track how the dynamics of being well known cuts both ways - the artist as manager of his or her fans, who also manage them.   It's old hat to me because my wife has been following Clay Aiken for 4 years and he's very much a model for an artist created by his fan base.   The record labels haven't gotten it right yet, often trying to co-opt and cross-promote artists who literally are in it for their fans.

I first heard about the Times article from FutureLab - who suggests the artist - fan - relationship is going to continue to evolve:

"…There will be further stages in the evolution of artist-fan relationships, and the chances are that they some of the most interesting developments will be led by the artists with what you might call 'human scale' fan-bases — that is, small enough to be able to treat fans like people instead of numbers. "

To me, that means "quality" over "quantity" and that one artist does not need 60 million fans - maybe they just need a couple of thousand fans - and one artist can interact with that many fans.

Here's a tactic that would have really worked well for several of my clients had they the "balls" to do something along the lines of Pepsi's User Generated Soda Can Contest, according to B.L. Ochman

"…Pepsi's new "Design Our Pepsi Can Contest" offers $10,000 for the re-design of its soda can. Consumers create and enter their design on the site, where the public will be able to vote on a winning design that will be featured on 500 million Pepsi cans."

I like they let you use your own tools or theirs - I tried theirs and found them too limiting - I was hoping to upload a painting of my own to wrap around the Pepsi Can.  Too Bad I can't use the Coke Painting I just did over the weekend (see below):

This painting was really about how Branded Objects are magnified  in significance and power in Virtual 3D Worlds - I'm not sure I got what I was looking for in my study - but there are elements of my painting that I like and I'm enjoying looking a print of it that's hanging in my office - as reproductions all my recent work is.

Getting back to User Generated Content - in this case really doing that - how would it work for different types of sites:

1. My House Plan Architects - They could have run a contest for people to visit their site and design a house plan - at least the facade of one.  The "winning" design gets full development and is named after the creator - plus the creator gets round trip air fair and 5,000 dollars to visit the Architects offices and party for a weekend.

2. My Ireland Travel Distributor Clients - They could have run a contest to design their own vacation - the most "exciting vacation" becomes a real vacation and is paid for - and named after the Winner.

3. My client, www.ChaaCreek.com   Travel Resort in Belize - they could have designed the ideal resort vacation at their hotel and spa, and the winner get to take it and get filed in clip shown on the site.

All this stuff does cost money to do, but it creates BUZZ and Customer Loyalty.  Frankly, I'd rather see the money spent that way than giving it to Google and Yahoo in the form of PPC that often doesnt work and converts poorly -  but that's just me.

People love contests and the chance to express themselves for a prize - who just to compete; give them the opportunity to do so and win something meaningful - that's the lesson of the User Generated Pepsi Soda Can.

I admit, Sven Goodsson's site - IMPROVE YOUR KARMA - is pretty darn good!  Not so much commenting about the content of the Karma dialog as the concept - what he's doing with getting people to participate in the dialog about creating good Karma.

You can add "Good Karma deeds" or "Bad Karma deeds" to your own personal version of Sven Goodsen.

You can use the "Karma Meter" to monitor you own reputation (or some else's) in MySpace (see above).  It's not a deep analysis - but it's a very intersting way of inviting people in and getting them engaged.  This is a well designed, well functioning site.

You can upload a photo of yourself - and I did - and it will analyze your "aura" but it did not show me my photo with the aura analyzed so I don't know how that would look - or how the site operates with the photos.  I suppose it will put it in a gallery view eventually -as they have with several other people who submitted their photos.

And when you "Spread the Message" it looks like it's a Cell Phone ad - so maybe the whole thing is a viral site that's designed by PR Agency … I don't know.  By buying a Motorola Red Motorazr V3m your "Improving Your Karma" by allowing Motorola to donate 17 dollars USD to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Africa.

Seems to me Sven Goodsson's site - IMPROVE YOUR KARMA is one of the best I have seen to engage people and to do something good with your money.

Online Marketing Blog has an interview with Lawrence Coburn on Marketing with Widgets and Widget Analytics - it’s interesting to read for a two reasons:

A. Widget Analytics     B. Examples of Successful Widgets.

"Widget analytics is still in its infancy. Currently, you can get a rough idea of how many times your widget has gotten picked up by doing backlink searches on Google, Yahoo, or Technorati using the “site:” qualifier to isolate the big widget aggregators like MySpace. Inbound traffic from widgets can be measured by checking your log files. However, as of now, there are no off the shelf solutions to help widget publishers understand exactly how folks are engaging with their widgets. There’s a company called Clearspring that is working on this problem, and I look forward to seeing how they progress."

I did some research on on Clearspring and this is what I came up with

"Clearspring, currently in preview, is working on widget technologies for widget developers. The company asked not to share any visuals of their offering until they launch in January, but was open about their plans. They have explained their strategy in terms of three major components:

• Write once embed everywhere
• Widget service container
• Widget usage analytics

Clearspring can track how many times a widget was invoked.

"Because the company wraps widgets into a container, they are also able to track the usage of widgets. This is an interesting and very useful service as it will allow developers to track which sites are most effective. The analytics data will be viewable on ClearSpring.com and will be similar to the traffic charts offered by most web hosting companies, only it will show the actual user clicks on the widget. "

Clearspring, for a publisher, allows creation and updating of any widget created with this platform.

And for a Developer

I wrote about Widgets recently for Brand Marketing, and threw in some ideas on what kind of Widgets some of my clients could develop, given what they offer in content and services.

In the interview with Lawrence Coburn, Lawrence gives 3 examples of "successful" Widgets -  IE:

"… A widget that I think is great is the iLike widget. iLike is a social music discovery site that features an iTunes plug in that captures all of your iTunes listening behavior. iLike spits out a widget that displays your most recently listened to tracks, as well as your top bands overall. The widget is also a music player that allows readers to play samples of the songs from your own iTunes history. This widget is updated in real time, and is a great example of a widget that is powered by implicit, personalized data.

Bitty Browser is another widget that I like, that I think provides a glimpse of the next generation of widgets. Bitty Browser is an embeddable web browser, that allows publishers to embed mini versions of their favorite sites within the expience of another site. Unlike most widgets which offer snapshots of content, Bitty Browser enables a fully functional experience within the body of the widget.

A third widget that I’m a big fan of is the community widget provided by MyBlogLog. The MyBlogLog widget attempts to provide social networking functionality like user profiles and user to user messaging across various blog properties. Blog publishers embed the MyBlogLog code in their sidebars, and MyBlogLog displays thumbnail photos of the blog’s readers within the widget. Clicking on a thumbnail launches the reader’s MyBlogLog profile page, and allows basic social network functionality like testimonials and messaging. Readers are also assigned to blog communities based on their reading habits, and introductions are facilitated to similar readers."