Feedback Loops and the Preception of being heard and acknowledged

Posted by Marshall Sponder on November 06, 2008 | Link It

Reflecting on events this week that I attended; a dinner in Chinatown Monday night where I met Jeremy Wright of B5 Media and Missy Ward of Affiliate Summit fame.

And then, I met the same people, and more, last night, at Mashable‘s Motivational Meetup (Gary Vaynerchuk Videos from Motivational Meetup – 11-5-05) – Gary Vaynerchuk, who’s event footage is now up on this site and CenterNetworks (Allen Stern).

Spoke to Jeremy Wright last night about the penalty Google imposed on most Know More Media blogs, including Webmetricsguru.com, before I bought it off the defunct KMM Network.

The traffic today isn’t terrible, between 200 to 300 visits a day, about the same as when I bought the domain with Sebastian Wenzel for our BlogSpeedWay.com network.

But I haven’t been able to get back to the 1000-20,000 visits a day I used to get, before last January, when the penalty was applied.

Jeremy mentioned he had success with a few KMM blogs he bought, using Google Webmaster Console, which turns out to be another name for Google Webmaster tools.

3 inclusion requests after cleaning up the blog, and no real response from Google, via the tool.

But here’s the thing … A conversation is usually 2 ways, and fully Duplex, meaning you make a request, you get a direct reply.

That’s also Web 2.0 and how this last Presidential Election was won by Barack Obama with a brilliant Social Media Strategy that acknowledged his followers and made them (us) feel heard and acknowledged.

Why doesn’t Google not hear and acknowledge me, not by sending me more automated bots via Webmaster Central, but answering my reconsideration requests with a human voice and face, so that I know I was heard.

Lately I’ve been on rants with companies that sell you on ideas they enable, but don’t actually embody, themselves.

Last month I mentioned ComScore, who sells expensive intelligence to corporations who want to spy on each other (competitive intelligence) running metering software that none of those same corporations will allow to run on their own networks due to privacy policies – pathetic, but true. No wonder the numbers are so far off from the same webstats, when available.

Then last week, Radian6, did, more or less, the same thing, and I wrote about it. It was cleared up when Radian6 talked back, had a conversation with me.

And now, Google,the most successful Web 2.0 Company if them all.

Wha!

Google doesn’t want 2 way conversations, they just tell the rules, something happens and your in the Gulog, they throw the key away.

Here’s my point, and I haven’t even gotten to gotten to Gary’s rant with Howard Stern, today – why can’t Google start having 2 way conversations?

Why won’t Google acknowledge me or my reconsideration request, so that I know my concerns were addressed?

Just a thought, but you’d think, by now, Google would be acting Web 2.0 by just talking to me.

And it’s not like Matt Cutts is easy to reach, these days.

I don’t know, the wholething is frustrating, and, as usual, people who talk the talk, often don’t walk the walk.

Note: I wrote this post on the subway while heading towards DUMBO, Brooklyn, for an Art Opening.  I am finding, I can compose and post my work while commuting, and even, while walking, and my last post was done entirely while walking to work this morning.

Of course, I don’t recommend doing that kind of writing all the time, but feel good that it’s there for me, when I want it.

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Search and The US Presidential Election at SMX East

Posted by Marshall Sponder on October 07, 2008 | Link It

Search and the US President election – Wow! A lot of search and political campaign strategists are on the panel.

Motivations in getting involved in search and politics are varied but unlike other business it never shuts off and your in it to win.

There is no budget and there is a lag in knowledge in running campaigns for search and current spending is only 40-60 million in this election, and that is a drop in the bucket of all spend.

Also, the lady from Yahoo said there hasn’t been many or any studies on campaign effectiveness and paid search. But you need to communicate directly with the campaign manager and to a lesser effect, the canditates, need to understand the utility of paid search marketing and political campaigns.

Long Tail approach (misspell Sarah Palin‘s name in every way possible).

Duh! Candidates don’t seem to understand geo-targeting and micro-targeting! They understand TV and Radio and media markets, but seldom do they yet understand the precision avaiable.

McCain’s campaign is very active in gel-targeting and Eric Frenchman, who runs McCain’s online search advertising, said so.

What I don’t hear is micro targeting on the actual DISTRICT level, or anything with RSS feeds.

Interestingly, just as I wrote this, a question came up about bundling to the District level, did come up and Google and Yahoo, while they allow custom maps of Geo-Targeting, don’t actually facilitate that level of targeting.

And nothing about RSS feeds and Twitter integration on the local district level. It’s amazing to me how much of modern technology is not being utilized.

Amazing how campaigns use speeches of Biden (in the case of McCain) to a negative landing page on the candidate.

Also, Google and Yahoo haven’t yet offered geo-targeting on District Level but….. They are not, as yet willing to set up that specific a level if targeting yet, but are studying doing so in the future.

For some candidates, easing fund online is easier than others, and some times they can’t spend it all, so managing expectations is necessary.

Online Persuasion.

Do you need to be a true believer in the candidate and party ideology to work for a campaign as a search strategist for them.

However, now, there are many online digital strategists are on both sides.

Social Media and Search with political campaigns. Blog or not? Tracy Russo says no, not enough worth while content. I disagree. And Obama had people who were hired to write to the blogs, etc.

However, the community forming around a blog often continues after a campaign is over, win or lose, and, honestly, not fostering and nuturing that is foolish, I believe.

The idea that there is not much worthwhile to say is lunacy.

Twitter? Again, not as used as much as you’d think, by candidates. Amazing how much is being left, on the table, so to speak.

But, then again, I’m more of a visionary than anyone on the panel, or, for that matter, in the room, judging from the questions from the audience.

Facebook, what works? Buying admin rights for a group, Dan Steele, from Comedy Central.

Interestingly, the question of what kind of participation exists on November 5th, after the election, came up. It seems to me a new “channel” is being created via online media, Paid Search, FaceBook, Twitter, and targeted Blogs, along.

Justine Lam, worked for Ron Paul, and talked about all if that, and how it took a life of it’s own.

What tools used for monitoring Online Buzz?

Google Trends, Google Alerts, but many of the online tools are not useful, yet, to campaign strategists, yet.

Yahoo, Diane Rinalado, says Yahoo Buzz was sited as being better than Google Trends, and HotTrends, but not as highly used.

I brought up a few observations that I voiced including:

1. Increase links shown for embedded videos in Yahoo to include the long tail.

2. Data collected for Buzz Tools need to be refreshed hourly, not days or months later, as Goigle Trends and Yahoo Buzz often are.

Media Buys, as Eric Frenchman said, need to be decided in a few hours. You can see the gap.

Which campaign is doing better online?

Don Steele, Comedy Central, says he’s surprised media companies aren’t better at this yet.

Excellent Panel.

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Social Media Tools are becoming indespensible – need for invention

Posted by Marshall Sponder on September 30, 2008 | Link It

An interesting post from Jeff Jarvis today about The rise of the third estate and the need for Social Media participation and, by extension, Social Media Measurment- though what we have now, is still poor and ill suited for what’s required, moving forward.  According to Jeff Jarvis:

“…. No one’s in charge. I didn’t think that’d be worse than having the bozos we had in charge. But it is.

You’d think the one thing our politicians would be competent at is politics. But they couldn’t even count votes.

We knew the White House was a vacuum. Congress is a vacuum. Wall Street is lie. Detroit and the era it represents is dust. Journalism is sinking like a wet witch.

Who’s in charge? It’s falling to us, the people. We’re in charge. Problem is, we’re not ready. We’ve used the internet so far to organize some knowledge and yell at each other. We are just beginning to create the tools to organize ourselves. If only the meltdown of every authority structure could have waited a few years. Then again, necessity is the mother of organization. New structures don’t replace old structures while they’re still in place. New structures fill voids. And, boy, do we have some voids to fill.

We’re not ready, but then again, sometimes circumstances makes the person – maybe it’s time.   Now, I’m not really for or against the $700 Billion Dollar Bailout (see Bush Urges Congress to Pass Bailout in today’s New York Times) but I noticed how many people on Facebook mobalized to send the Congress representatives mesages against the bailout.

And Paul Krugman, more than anyone else, has been able to explain the $700 Billion Dollar Bailout like Where will the money come from and interestingly, in an analysis very similar to what Web Analysts produce for Traffic and Attribution, Krugman published this chart yesterday in a post on Politics of crisis

INSERT DESCRIPTION

The ghost of Herbert Hoover comes to the rescue

Just worth pointing out: Henry Paulson’s decision to let Lehman fail, on Sept. 14, may have delivered the White House to Obama.

Not entirely clear how the chart above shows that Henry Paulson‘s decision about Lehman Brother’s points the way to an Obama Victory, and the chart above does not deal with Social Media, it’s more like a stock chart – but it has “attribution”, the kind that Social Media needs- along with participation in Social Media, the precise measurement of it is needed.

And that’s where Web Analysts come in; where this blog comes in, why I’m interested in Social Media along with Web Analytics.

If   The rise of the third estate is truly immanent – as Jeff Jarvis suggests, then we need precise measurements of participation and effectiveness along with the mechanisms for contribution (to whatever process, in this case, Political).

We don’t have that today – and most companies aren’t investing in it either.

I believe they should invest, nowand Web Analytics is the right place to start -  more than making that investment, when it does happen, by placing Social Media in marketing, public relations or communications – it also needs to be funded in Web Analytics groups -  liberally.

Or else, we’ll be in a situation, situations like we have now in the public sector,  but in the private sector, as – where the “Third Estate” arrived (it’s already happened, Brands just haven’t accepted it  yet), but the tools and methodology haven’t evolved and the measurement is not yet precise enough to be useful.

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