Twitter Grader - Do You Know Your Twitter Rank or Score?

April 4th, 2009

by Laura Thieme

I attended SMX Analytics Toronto this past week. The guys from Hubspot.com gave a presentation on competitive intelligence. The tool featured by Dharmesh, in his presentation, is http://twitter.grader.com . They checked out Vanessa Fox’s Twitter rank and compared it to Danny Sullivan, the former of which scored a 99.8, and the latter - a 100.

So what’s your Twitter grade, rank or score? Check it out.

I reviewed my Twitter.com/bizresearchlmt grade - a 94 - an A. Yay! The rank - not so good - 102,000 something. Hmmm. Might need to work on that. Now what I really like - you can see my Tweet cloud - or the topics that are trending. Very cool. According to Twitter.Grader.com - my trending topics include Toronto, SMX, Analytics, MattCutts, and Danny Sullivan. You can also post your Twitter grade on Twitter, through a link on the page.

So, I wanted to check some others’ scores:

@Romeothecat - cool cat trying to raise money for animal rescue: uh - oh - a crash on the site. May have to add to this later??

Okay, back online Saturday night, early Sunday morning:

Checked out the grade for Guy Kawasaki - a 100 score @guykawasaki - note his Tweet cloud - nothing that sounds of interest. Guy has recently been criticized despite most of us liking the “guy” - for his use of spamming Twitter. He has nearly 100,000 followers.

@randfish - 99.9 grade score - Tweet cloud shows reference to SMX Sydney
I’m fascinated with his number of updates and number of follows - so about the same number of updates that I’ve had, but over 5,000 followers. Impressive. He also just keynoted the conference, which could have sig impact on followers.

@leeodden - 99.7 - nice tweet cloud

@carolethieme - my mom - who just started the other day - so I was beginning to wonder if anyone had a bad grade. Yes, my mom does. She needs to Tweet more often, but pretty cool that my 65-year old Mom, who is a techy graphic designer, is on Twitter.com and now Facebook.com, not to mention Linkedin. She’s going to have to find time for Twitter if she wants to improve her grade. It just goes to show that what you put into it, you get out of it - like any other class in school.

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SMX East NYC - October 7 - Paid Search Analytics

October 7th, 2008

by Laura Thieme
October 7, 2008

Well this should be good because Avinash Kaushik is speaking at the podium first. In eleven months, his book “Web Analytics: An Hour A Day” has raised $31k for charity, which are profits. Avinash is now full-time at Google.

He talks about Head Terms versus Long-Tail Terms (the latter of which we’ve heard so much about for years in search engine marketing). Head terms are your branded terms, the latter are the category, generic terms, or several early bird keyword phrases. We’ve all heard about this, right? We often focus way too much money and time on the highly trafficked terms, aka the “head terms”. You should be leveraging SEO, as Avinash states, on the branded head terms. The long-tail terms are easily leveraged using PPC.

Use math to figure out the long-tail terms. Keywords with 20% higher or lower traffic over the last 7 days - is this a new report in Google Analytics that I have not seen yet?

More importantly, look at the entire ecosystem - competitive intelligence is what you need to understand - what are people searching on. Insights for Search by Google (BETA version) - What is the trend for this search term? Nice tool - which I often forget to utilize. It showed a search for a client keyword phrase as declining since 2004, but showed/suggested other terms that have rising search volume.

Marin Software was up next.

Website analytics are designed around purchase behavior and visitor patterns.

They have a tool that shows what Bizwatch does, one including a chart on clicks and average position. The average position had a different axis on the right side, compared to the axis on the left side. You can choose your metric from a drop down box at the top of the page.

They pull daily information. You can choose your date range on the left hand side. There are also filters and views you can control. They have a paid search creative snippet analysis. Honestly, I had a hard time understanding this slide, or what he was trying to say - perhaps he can clarify online another time through an email to me. He showed four example search marketing charts - basically a demo of his tool. Not bad advertising, eh?

Richard Zwicky, Enquisite, tracks the long-tail of search regardless of whether it’s paid search or organic. The most important you can do in the beginning is research, and then begin to segment that data by Geo, Organic/PPC, Long-tail, web pages, and actions and conversions. Next, during the campaign, you need to be able to monitor trends. Their tool allows you to use a segmentation panel that has a match, type and segment filter. Also important to review actions versus conversions - both matter, both act differently. Zwicky talked about the importance of being able to “glance” at your analytics and know what is working, what isn’t, or the analytics is likely not set up correctly.

He shows keyword opportunities, from organic, that are not being used by the PPC campaign. The only challenge I have with this issue, is the accuracy of paid search versus organic followed by the difference in the way this data is collected. Search engines and third party tools often search for this data differently, and can cause accuracy problems with interpretation.

Another report would show converting keyword phrases in one search engine that are not converting in another search engine. Try the same reports comparing all major search engines. This sounds good - definitely a worthwhile report - accuracy notwithstanding.

Audit your segments. Adjust your campaigns. This all sounds good - now how much of a learning curve is required, and what costs are involved in ramping up to using this tool?

Lastly, finishing up with Andrew Goodman’s presentation. He talked about the book Fooled by Randomness.

He talked about the importance of using Google’s new Q score tool, as it is valuable data. What if you have a Q score turning POOR on you, but others are doing just fine?

In Google Adwords, easier to track ROI in buckets, instead of keyword by keyword level. The bucket approach looks at near-terms together, instead of keyword by keyword. Highest CTR possible is usual the first primary goal. But secondary eventually. Of course, conversion is best long-term, but in the beginning you need a strong CTR (click-thru rate).

Increase your bias towards CTR, yet extent of bias is unknown. Of course the double win is when you have high CTR in addition to high ROI.

Can we draw inferences from failed ads? Review body copy versus feedback?

Can I just pause for a moment and say that it is rather painful to sit in these chairs as an 8-month pregnant woman? Help for my bones, please? I may have to break here shortly to get a rest for Melina and Mommy.

Posted in SMX - Search Engine Land Conferences. No Comments »

 

SMX East NYC - Search & the US Presidential Campaign

by Laura Thieme
October 7, 2008

Paid Search Track
Eight Panelists - Yowza

Starting here momentarily…. Sara Holoubek moderating

Peter Greenberger, Google, Elections & Issue Advocacy
Diane Rinaldo, Yahoo, Political Ad Dir
Eric Frenchman, McCain-Palin Chief Internet Strategist
Justine Lam, Ron Paul 2008
Mindy Finn, Mitt Romney 2008
Tracy Russo, John Edwards for President, Russo Strategies
No representation from the Obama Campaign, duly noted

Open discussion - Q&A

What are the differences between corporate versus political client?

Greenberg says with corporate America - they’re happy if you’re close to goal - politics - there is only one goal - and there are no horseshoes in politics. Search doesn’t turn off for election campaigns. There is no budget - must be nice.

However, there is still very little ad spend online compared to traditional advertising. .08 percent is spent on political advertising, or $40M.

Ad effectiveness studies have been executed - and you need to understand analytically what it’s doing for an election campaign.

So who signs off on your budget?

The campaign manager is very much in tune with what is being done on paid search, generating emails, etc. In some lower tier races, the candidate himself/herself could influence this.

It was noted that misspellings were not bid upon for campaign strategy in general, such as “Palen” for “Palin”. However, campaign strategists are beginning to experiment on long-tail strategy.

How do you reach mainstream America?
For example, can I reach different demographics with search? Greenberger commented that you can in fact target by state, by zip code, in microtargeted terms? He also talked about dayparting in the New Hampshire area, as the person goes from Massachusets during the day, at night into New Hampshire, commuters, etc.

Geo-Targeting & Customizing Ad Copy
Frenchman talked about geo-targeting, micro-targeting down to the Christian conservative level. Ad copy is customized down to the state level. If you Googled McCain environment in New Jersey, the ad copy referenced the shore line. Generic ads because the strategist doesn’t know what they’re doing (Frenchman talking here), it’s because they intend to show generic ads.

Are You Tying Together Ad Effectiveness Integration with TV & Online Search?
Mindy Finn referenced the problem with measuring ad effectiveness doesn’t come from those heading up traditional advertising efforts, it comes from those in charge of search marketing who perhaps have less clout on the influence scale.

How does search tie into email marketing, and therefore, direct mail marketing?
At times, in the political world, it’s hard to plan out email marketing campaigns, whereas corporate would plan this out better. They are to take advantage of stories that could come up in the media, or to handle negative press, but are highly responsive.

Can Google and Yahoo help us advertise at the district level?
Rinaldo said when there is enough demand. Greenberger’s general Google response was what is the demand for this.

Issue advertising?
Yes, quite possibly - depends on the state and the issue of concern

ROI & Presidential Campaign Depends on Who is Running - Can We Raise Money Online?
More likely to do email acquisition which may convert into online revenue. McCain’s persuasion campaigns went up early last week.

Discussion re an ad serving error from the WSJ - I have no idea what they’re talking about…..

What About Social Media? SEO & Social Media - What Are You Doing Here?

Should You Blog? Should a Candidate Blog?

Obama’s campaign hired a writer. If you can get on the road, and tell something from another perspective, a blog makes sense. Authenticity is just as crucial. As I’ve said before to corporate clients, don’t blog for the sake of blogging.

One additional point made was that blogs are great for listening as much as talking. A community forms at blog sites and word-of-mouth forms from that. Comments about Elizabeth Edwards blogs - would post on the campaign blog sites - with her, it was almost always her blogging, sometimes without her name indicated on the blog post.

Twitter - micro-blogging - how effective has this been for your campaign?Twitter has a high influence, hyper media consumers, these people are highly influential - so yes, Twitter is good. If there is something really big, one puts it out through Twitter. There were just a handful of us on Twitter in the room - perhaps seven or so.

I’m on Twitter - see my profile posts through username BizresearchLMT

What about Facebook & 1 Million Strong … Against Sarah Palin???
A highschool student started something, a Stanford person bought administration rights for $75, and it went from there.

Posted in SMX - Search Engine Land Conferences. No Comments »

 

SMX East New York City - October 6-8, 2008

October 6th, 2008

by Laura Thieme

I’m in New York at SMX East, which is Danny Sullivan’s new show (SMX). It’s the first time I’ve had the luxury of attending. I’ll be blogging live tomorrow from the link building, and paid search tracks. After eleven years of SEO, and often speaking in these sessions, I’m all for the paid search advanced track, as well as some new insights desired on links (organic or paid).

We just launched our new SEM paid search & analytics tool, Bizwatch 2.0, to clients, last week.

Tune in daily to see what’s the latest in paid search and linking from SMX East.

For quick Twitter updates, Facebook Friend community updates, I’ll be sending one-liners from my mobile phone when possible. You can also check out sphinn updates.

Tomorrow’s PPC (paid search) track begins with:

http://searchmarketingexpo.com/east/2008/full_agenda2

Paid Search Track 10:45 - 12 Noon EST (Tuesday, October 7, 2008)

Search & The US Presidential Campaign - 2008 is, by accounts, the year that the Republicans & Democrats finally “got” search and used it effectively in the US presidential campaign. This session looks at the ads, tactics and overall strategies employed by the Obama & McCain camps.

Moderator: Sara Holoubek, Consultant, Columnist and SEMPO Board of Directors,

Speakers:

Mindy Finn, Partner, former director of e-Strategy for Mitt Romney ‘08, Engage
Eric Frenchman, Chief Internet Strategist, McCain-Palin 2008, Connell Donatelli Inc.
Peter Greenberger, Team Manager, Elections & Issue Advocacy, Google
Justine Lam, Former eCampaign Director, Ron Paul 2008, Ron Paul for President
Diane Rinaldo, Political Advertising Director, Yahoo
Tracy Russo, Chief Blogger and Deputy Director of Online Communications for the John Edwards for President Campai, Russo Strategies

Lunch, or 12 Noon - 1:30 - do they actually have sessions during lunch? Hmmmmmmmmm - must be my mis-interpretation - has to be from 1:30 - 3:00 or something like that hopefully (we’ll see)

Paid Search Track

Reviving A Failed PPC Campaign - Has your paid search campaign flat-lined? This session examines ways to roll out the crash-cart and get its heart going again.

Moderator: Matt Van Wagner, President, Find Me Faster

Speakers:

Addie Conner, Director of Search Marketing, Course Advisor Inc.
Andrew Goodman, President, Page Zero Media
Joanna Lord, Senior Search Strategist, OneTime.com
Alissa Ruehl, Manager of Paid Search Services, Apogee Search

3:15 - 4:30 EST

Paid Search Track

Landing Pages & Multivariate Testing - In this session, a look at what happens when you combine landing pages with multivariate testing tools — tools that let you change various elements of the page dynamically to see which tests better with people.

Moderator: Gordon Hotchkiss, President & CEO, Enquiro

Speakers:

Scott Brinker, President & CTO, ion interactive
Jason Carmel, Senior Optimization Manager, ZAAZ
Jon Diorio, Group Product Marketing Mgr Adwords, Google
Mona Elesseily, Director of Marketing Strategy, Page Zero Media

4:45 - 6:00 Paid Search Track
Paid Search Track

Paid Search Analytics - This session looks at the types of analytics you want to perform in terms of paid search, in order to increase ROI and conversions.

Moderator: Matt Van Wagner, President, Find Me Faster

Speakers:

Andrew Goodman, President, Page Zero Media
Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist, Google Inc.
Wister Walcott, Co-Founder and Vice President of Products, Marin Software
Richard Zwicky, President, Enquisite

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