Dancing hamsters + the top summer song of 2011= awesome!

KIA®’s Share Some Soul campaign encourages dancing…lots of dancing. To enter, consumers can submit videos of themselves getting down to Party Rock Anthem via KIA®’s YouTube channel and Facebook page. What’s at stake? The winner earns his/herself a $10,000 cash prize and a chance to dance with LMFAO on stage. And who better to decide the winner than consumers.

Contest marketing is a social, interactive strategy that grabs user attention and increases brand awareness. “We really see the world shifting from a world focused around information to one focused on people” (Ethan Beard, 9.20.11, AdAge). Consumer power continues to rise as the influence of social media amplifies. Marketers are able to control the level of consumer involvement, build their brands and take advantage of some great exposure to both target and under-served markets through the use of contest marketing.

But contest marketing should not be your only strategy to create brand buzz. Social media is a tool used for communication and should not be the objective of your marketing strategy. To remain engaged in the communication process across all channels, B2B marketers need to expand their online footprints. Thought leaders and lead generation marketers need to merge their once-siloed strategies with traditional and online marketing – align social, mobile and email initiatives to enhance your B2B strategies and secure brand loyalty.

For a few years now, SEO practitioners and other online marketers have been stressing the importance of the long-tail keyword. If you have been focusing your efforts on trying to rank for one- or two-keyword phrases and haven’t seen your site budge in the results, it’s time to shift your focus to the long-tail.

The phrase “long-tail” in this sense refers to group keywords that target more niche or specific markets, and typically involve more words (“Neapolitan-style pizza in Chicago” vs. “Pizza”). A report from Hitwise found that search queries longer than six words increased by 3 percent from June to July. While shorter search queries still account for the majority of total searches, long-tail keywords combined (more than 5 word phrases) account for 18 percent of all searches. As users continue to get more specific with their searches to get more relevant results, this trend will continue to grow.

How do you rank better for long-tail keywords? The possibilities are endless, but here are three things you can do today:

1. Write quality content that people actually want to read. The days of writing for search engines are long over. Writing content for human beings means you’re more than likely using keywords and phrases that people actually use in conversation. Users that enjoy your fresh content will link to it from their blogs, tweet it, +1 it, etc.

2. Create internal links within your site’s content to relevant pages. Remember to create variations of these keywords so you don’t go overboard with your optimizations. If you are a marketing agency, switch up the way you refer to yourself across your site. You might be both a “b2b marketing agency in Chicago” as well as a “Chicago social media marketing firm”.

3. Write very descriptive title tags. Write these titles in a way that users would search to find that content. Don’t stuff your titles with keywords separated by a ‘|’. That form of title is very effective for certain sites, but most people don’t actually search Google for “Best Pizza | Chicago Pizza | Chicago Pizza Parlor;” instead, they’ll search: “what is the best pizza parlor in Chicago?” Therefore, this would probably be a better title: “Mike’s Pizza – The best pizza parlor in Chicago”.

If you’re concerned with the idea that focusing only on the long-tail reduces your chances to show up for broad terms, consider adding paid search into your marketing mix. This gives you have the ability to control and craft your message the way you want, plus the added bonus of seeing immediate results for your targeted keywords.

Get to work on your long-tail terms and watch your conversions and on-site user engagement increase!

Mike Hernalsteen is the Senior Interactive Marketing Specialist at LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency where he develops comprehensive online marketing strategies for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by Mike)

In last week’s issue of BtoB Magazine, Christopher Hosford notes that “[w]hile digital increasingly dominates marketing tactics, the rate of adoption for Web analytics solutions has been comparatively slow, according to new study by BtoB.”

B2B Meet Analytics

Despite the slow adoption rate in the B2B community, the use of web analytics is becoming increasingly important as marketers come to understand the impact of analytics on ROI. Google Analytics (a free service) gives B2B marketers the ability to track and analyze web traffic data for their clients. An important feature of the Google Analytics dashboard is that users are able to view statistics about online visitors from mobile devices – which is a great way to monitor and build mobile marketing campaigns.

Keyword Search

Keyword search is extremely important when it comes to leveraging SEO. By building links and creating searchable content, marketers are able to improve their websites and rankings in search engines. Research your keywords – try using the keyword tool from Google AdWords and see which searches are already ranked at the top. When researching keywords keep in mind the following:

• Relevance
• Volume
• Competition

By optimizing high volume and low competition keywords, marketers can maximize results for their efforts.

Social Media Segmentation

Through Google Analytics, marketers can see web traffic data based on sources like Search Engines, Direct Traffic, and Referring Sites. By creating custom segments we can review detailed data and see traffic based on specific social media websites and projects. The top social networks contribute to SEO because of their high rankings in search engines.

Now is the time to start using analytical tools to develop, define, and drive SEO solutions. Continuously share and link your content so that it is distributed beyond your standard demographic.  As Chris Abraham says “[…] if you cannot target your dream customer directly, you can target everyone around him.” …and her…

Being responsive is at the core of interactive marketing.

Consumer empowerment has taken over marketer power for what seems like the past decade. With the tremendous growth of social media, consumers expect marketers to know everything about their buying habits and patterns. Social media has enabled consumer loyalty, but not necessarily the consumer experience. A company may have a massive brand presence on Facebook, but having one million fans does not mean they are giving the consumer the desired brand experience.

Interactive Marketing Plus

Social media provides the opportunity for market researchers to listen to and mine consumer insights, but this is not the only opportunity presented. Social media allows consumers to directly respond to the changing marketing conditions. Social networking has created a virtual space for people to be advocates for their fellow brand ambassadors. However, interactive marketing involves more than just internet marketing.

Crowdsourcing & Measurable Results

Consumers are more likely to talk about a brand via social media rather than through surveys. Although social networks use analytical software to produce measureable results, they are slow to make the data, analysis, and insights available to marketers. Marketers need to reconnect with consumers to optimize the consumer promise and the brand promise.

The mission and challenge for marketers is to be responsive to consumers’ concerns and behaviors with a more measureable, data driven approach by customizing the marketing experience.

It is time for marketers to engage with consumers and effectively meet their expectations. The question remains: when it comes to interactive marketing, who is really in control?

The business of marketing continues to evolve, and there’s a fundamental shift in how marketing works. Businesses are allocating an increased share of existing and new marketing dollars developing an online presence — a hybrid of brand building, direct-response marketing and public relations. The Web is the place consumers and b-to-b decision-makers go to research products and companies to build confidence in their purchasing decisions. Now, every interaction that takes place on the Web is measurable, providing you with very useful business information.

Well-Informed Decision Making

Still, many marketers are not spending enough time and resources gathering and dissecting this valuable information. They are stuck doggie paddling — continuing with monthly and campaign-based online marketing — with limited analysis of the resulting data. All marketers involved in online marketing initiatives can learn from a deep dive below the surface, into the analytics and tracking of links, paths, clicks, actions and conversions. Ultimately, conversions make the revenue needle move, so an in-depth analysis of what is driving conversion is a worthwhile part of the dive.

Six Step Process

The key is planning in advance of the launch to prepare everyone on the team for proper analysis of the on-going results. This is crucial, as it allows you to adjust and optimize campaigns to improve performance and reach desired goals.

Here’s a checklist to make sure your analytics are on track for your next Web-based campaign:

1. Define goals/objectives of the project (Increase newsletter opt-ins? Increase awareness of a new product?)
2. Develop user-path scenarios to ensure they align with the goals of campaign, and make opting in-to an e-newsletter as simple as possible.
3. Tag all links and critical paths
4. Test (Create a profile that doesn’t block your IP addres and test the tagging/tracking to ensure everything is being tracked accurately).
5. Post campaign, analyze the data: did you meet the goals/objectives? What is the data telling you as to why goals were not met? (Not enough click-throughs? The form link isn’t properly highlighted?)
6. With an increased percentage of your marketing dollars focused on interactive media. Measurement of project success is a constant issue. How and what you measure to optimize your campaigns is crucial. The choice is yours: You can stay on the surface or dive deeper into your analytics to optimize your results and exceed your goals.

Mark Hollingsworth is the Vice President of Consumer and Interactive Divisions at LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency specializing in content marketing strategies and customer acquisition for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by Mark)

Evolve or become the next fossil in the wake of social media and brand management. The days of sitting in the ivory tower on a pile of cash are over, you’ve got to be with the masses in the muck to get any kind of footing in the new business of curating the attention of others.

But how?

Be a thought leader, become a peer, and transform your brand into a competitive, free-content driven resource for others to utilize. “It used to be so easy when dollars equaled dominance, but now there’s a digital fly in the ointment,” (Brand Week, 4.4.11, p. 12) and that fly is causing huge ripples for brands.

It’s all well and good to be a big dog brand but without drawing people’s focused attention to your content, a big old fossilized dog your brand will become. Content can be bought but the reality is content is generated every second by a spectrum of free agents, and catering to and providing for that new power is essential.

It is important now to bolster one’s in-house talents and recruit those well-versed in generating interest in the new way — social media. Whether brands adapt or not, those who are watching them are most likely tweeting, facebooking and blogging about them — after all “a person’s a person no matter how small” (thanks Dr. Seuss).

The TEDTalks have been a constant source of inspiration for me with their seemingly simple mantra of “Ideas Worth Spreading”. Those of us who love TEDTalks and those of you who are new to them, should be excited about the TED Conference’s newest contribution to our world — “Ads Worth Spreading“.

“Ads Worth Spreading” is a challenge to the ad world to submit truly creative work and not just a 30 second regular commercial to bombard a viewer.

The charge is to inspire a conversation, an action, a move towards social good — to create an advertisement that is worth more than its quantified profits. Maybe people would buy more Ho-Hos if they knew that a portion of the proceeds went to funding urban farming or school gardens to insure proper nutrition in young children. Chris Anderson, the curator of the TED Conference, even cites Wal Mart as a partner in the conference that wanted to discuss how they could become more sustainable as a company.

I’m in love with the idea that we ought to be tapping into our advertising as a means to inspire others. How many times have you felt harassed by these commercial “come-ons”, as Chris Anderson puts it, and quickly turn the channel or leave the site? Chances are high you lose interest with boring, “sales-y” adverts and probably get awfully annoyed.

Advertising should follow the short film aesthetic – buying into this continued conversation with engaged consumers we keep talking about – and make an ad that tells a story, that provides more intrinsic value than cold profit. We are a global community surrounded by devices and even clothing/accessories that perform more actions than their base purpose.

We are a multi-tasking world and so it follows that click-through rates are falling because our ads are serving only the dollar and cents purpose. The rate at which we inhale media daily has not translated into close attention to this same media. “Ads Worth Spreading”  challenges those of us in the advertising world to create that which will keep the ever-illusive close attention, to cultivate a more informed conversation between consumer and company.

Facebook may have a serious following of 600 million worldwide but LinkedIn is the number one social media network in terms of growth; 1 million new users a week.  From jump street, LinkedIn established Q&A online communities through groups (both private and public). Self-identifying groups with large amounts of members are attractive potential markets.

B-to-B marketers are finding that LinkedIn and these communities, or groups, are the best platforms from which they can communicate with one another and create exposure for themselves. In the constant effort to appear more transparent, LinkedIn has a more buttoned-up, purely professional feel than Facebook or Twitter making it a good spring board for lead-generation and continued and open dialog.

Facebook’s answer to the Q&A feature of LinkedIn, that attracts so many, is the “Questions” tab. This recent and slyly added  feature hasn’t blasted users with the usual Facebook overhaul alerts, “we revamped the entire lay-out of Facebook, get ready for the switch-over”.

You’ll only notice “Questions” when you’re updating your status on your profile page. The move to the additional feature without any official announcement is interesting because of Facebook’s other intentions.

The minds at Facebook have delved further into discussions about implementing real-time advertisement solutions based on your status updates and “questions”. Will this be Facebook’s attempt to gain more users and compete in LinkedIn’s category? Food for thought.

Two dimensional QR codes have been alive and abroad for several years and yet, the U.S. hasn’t quite taken to them.  Customers and users still aren’t sure what to do with them or why they’re on packages and posters. The early adopters didn’t spread as quickly as other technologies that were more tangible.

Marketers must educate the public about using the QR codes, why they are useful and why they are integral to our mobile world. Perhaps they’ve been marketed wrong or not at all – there certainly was no debut like the unveiling of the iPad2 so the codes have largely fallen under the radar. B2B Magazine found that “1% of U.S. mobile phone owners and 5% of smartphone owners had used a 2D barcode scanner in the previous three months” (B2B 3.14.11, p.11).

The importance of the QR code is its ability to act as a bridge between our physical and printed world to the virtual world. The 2D codes offer a direct line to further information for consumers. Post™ Cereals, Macy’s and art museums now sport the codes as another way to attract their audience to the continued conversation (discounts, events, consumer appreciation, surveys, give-aways, contests) and further strengthen the feedback loop. The inherent risks of the technology are broken links, codes that aren’t compatible with users’ mobile devices and thus loss of interest. Given time to develop and greater accessibility this could be the new technology with which the U.S. finally gets on board.

Another windy morning in Chicago last Thursday ushered in an intrepid LoSasso quartet to The Drake Hotel. Awaiting LoSasso President, Scott LoSasso and Vice President, Mark Hollingsworth were professors from colleges and universities around the Midwest, plumbing the depths of LoSasso’s interactive marketing expertise at the 2011 Spring Marketing Management Association Conference. The talk was organized by Don Jones and resulted in great dialogue between area professors and our LoSasso team.

The presentation addressed changes in the marketing industry and what businesses are looking for in new hires, especially those undergraduates hot off the presses. Particular attention was paid to content driven interaction: the driving force behind creating a space for consumers to interact with one another and with businesses. Industry forums and social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, FourSquare) have become the new quilting circle or local watering hole where information is readily exchanged, available and digested at a rapid pace.

The message was clear: the toolbox has changed but the fundamental principles of marketing have stayed the same. Developing a relationship with a client is still at the core of those principles; it is the way in which we enhance that relationship that has grown to include social media, SEO (search engine optimization) and the need to build a presence both physically and virtually for every client.

Frequent and consistent messaging continues to be of utmost importance but a close second is the need for silos within businesses to break down. More than ever, direct marketing and public relations are completely meshed together: communications and marketing departments have to interface constantly to maintain that consistent messaging for optimal success in their campaigns.

The discussion was also centered around best practices for hiring and what makes a new hire successful. Scott LoSasso initiated the conversation by outlining optimal job candidates that contribute to a team work environment. Incoming new hires are strong writers, positive team players, involved in an array of social media platforms, creative thinkers and detail-oriented. For more information about skill sets businesses look for in new hires, visit iMedia Connection.

Thank you to the Marketing Management Association, Don Jones, The Drake Hotel and all in attendance for a great open discussion about our evolving industry!