Well that may be a bit overstated. Let me explain. I do think you need a general understanding of what your blog is going to be about. In a corporate setting or a setting where you have multiple authors, you need a an understanding about common sense and what is & isn’t acceptable subject matter (like disclosing confidential information). But I don’t know that your strategy needs to extend beyond that.

Now, we aren’t the world’s most phenomenal bloggers or anything – but I think we’re doing an alright job and executing ‘to strategy’… But I’d be lying if I told you we had any sort of official strategy.

You know the drill from the typical blogging strategy discussion & questions:

• We don’t want to allow comments – “what if someone says something we don’t like?”
• “What’s our “voice”? (if your writers have reasonable grammar and can use spell check, that’s your voice)
• How do we keep our bloggers from stepping over the (imaginary) ‘line’? (in other words – How do we squash creativity and transparency)
• How do we tie the blog to sales? (I don’t know – how do you tie a press release to sales?)
• Let’s have PR manage / write the blog (how about you don’t do that…)

Read the rest of this entry »

As 2007 wraps up and 2008 approaches, there appears to be a significant shift in how marketers are planning to target and reach their consumers – Amplify included.

According to a recent article by Sam Law and Julian Stone, traditional methods of online advertising, such as paid campaigns, banner ads, AdWords & newsletters are losing effectiveness. Consumers have become immune to flashy banners & glaze over text ads. They don’t want to be talked AT. No, no, no…

The online consumer wants and demands much more. They demand transparency and authenticity. They want to engage with others online, to have an experience they can share with their friends, family & co-workers.

A marketer’s ability to capture their audience using Web 2.0 tactics will be the driving force for success or failure in 2008. Some of these include:

• Blogs
• Forums
• Articles
• Bookmarking

The goal in using these vehicles is to create content & interact with consumers in a way that’s meaningful to them.

As we move into 2008, it’ll be interesting to see how social media evolves. My prediction is that online marketing will become a 80/20 relationship, where the consumer is the driving force and long term strategy will be key in developing, growing and maintaining these vehicles.

In part I of this series, I discussed three tactics marketers can use to leverage a successful social media campaign.

1) Create a blog that supplements the client’s service or product offering

2) Join relevant communities & participate

3) Bookmarking

Question is, does a blog have the power to affect change, create a sense of urgency or a call to action? I decided to put the power of the blog to the test…

About a month ago, I had a very negative experience with an online merchant (more like fraudulent) and reported the incident to my bank. I followed the bank’s “company procedures” for reporting & filing disputes and followed up with them (as instructed) a couple of days later. To make a long story short (I’ll spare you the “war o’ words”), they claimed to have no record of my dispute and I was now responsible for over $300 worth of fees the bank had imposed on my account. I was taken for a ride by the merchant & now my bank wanted to do the same?

How can I get my voice heard and get some traction against this giant corporation? I’m one person, one voice up against a large company with endless resources…

Next week I’ll reveal the conclusion in Part III of the Power of the Almighty Blog! Guaranteed to raise some eyebrows…

Social media marketing encompasses a wide range of tactics, but which ones really work? Well, it depends on a few things. You have to identify the needs and niche of the client. Having a clear understanding of these things will allow you as the social media guru to market them in places that will allow for the greatest success, versus trying to “spam” them in every outlet available.

At Amplify Interactive, we’ve identified 3 avenues to explore when a client is looking to engage in SMM:

1) Create a blog that supplements the client’s service or product offering & acts as a valuable resource for visitors.

2) Identify relevant communities to join. Create a user profile & actively engage in discussions with members.

3) Bookmarking (or as Ben says: “bookmarketing“). It’s like trick-or-treating on Halloween. You’re in search of the best candy (articles, websites, etc.), using your favorite bucket (del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, ect.) to store it, so you can share it!

In my opinion, a blog offers the greatest SMM leverage. It consolidates and integrates so much of what social media has to offer and at the same time becomes an additional asset for the client.

That being said, social media marketing is powered by user-generated content & spread by word-of-mouth. In theory, this all sounds great. When put to the test, does a blog have the power to affect change, create a sense of urgency or a call to action?

Can a blog post really get the attention of the “big wigs”? I decided put this theory to the test with a recent “unsatisfactory customer service experience” I had with a large financial institution (will remain anonymous).

In this three part series, I’ll share the trials & tribulations of my “experience” and the final outcome. You just might be surprised…(I sure was!)

Tracking online ad buys on Google Analytics takes a little work with whomever you’re working with to purchase any online buys. But one you get the hang of it, you’ll be tracking your online ad buys on Google Analytics like a pro! Here is a quick little lesson on how to go about configuring a tracking URL so you can track any of your online ad buys with Google Analytics.

Normally, when you purchase an online ad buy, you have the link go to your homepage or a landing page of some sort. Well, in order to track your online buys, we need to make an adjustment on these URLs so Google Analytics can tell when someone visits your site from one of your online ad buy sources.

What Google Analytics wants us to do is “tag” these links with certain parameters so they can accurately report which ad buys are sending traffic. “Tagging” a URL basically means adding parameters to the end of a URL. Here’s an example: on the most basic level, these two links both go to our homepage:

http://www.amplify-interactive.com
http://www.amplify-interactive.com?source=amplifyinteractiveblog

The “tagged” part – all of the characters that happen after the question mark – do not influence the URL or where the visitor goes when they click the link but let our analytics package know that wherever we put this link, someone clicked on it… and with this certain parameter in place, seeing as how the only place we put this link was on this message, we would KNOW that ‘x’ visitors came from this link when Google Analytics shows us referring sources.

So what you’ll need to do is provide your ad buy contacts a new URL for them to put for your ads. You can definitely keep on sending them to whichever page you like your site… but you’ll be providing them a specific link with certain parameters so Google Analytics knows that someone came from that ad buy source. Here is a tool (straight from the source!) that gives you an easy way to “build” a tagged URL:

http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55578&hl=en

Let’s go through this form. I’ll give you an example. Say Amplify Interactive is purchasing an ad buy from Citysearch. It’s a cost-per-click ad buy. We have a specific campaign name of “beer” for this ad buy campaign from Citysearch. So, working through the form, you first want to enter in whichever landing page URL you want in the website form (for this example we’ll use our homepage – http://www.amplify-interactive.com/). The first line you’ll want to enter ‘citysearch’. The second line you’ll want to specify ‘cpc’ (cost per click). Campaign Term & Campaign Content you don’t need to worry about (these fields are to be used if you need to further define the source URL if you have multiple campaigns & campaign terms for your ad buy). Campaign Name is ‘beer’. Click on “Generate URL” and we get a URL that looks like this:

http://www.amplify-interactive.com/?utm_source=citysearch&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=beer

This URL goes to the page you specified (in this case, our homepage). Reading into it, you can see all of the parameters we specified – coming from citysearch, cpc medium & beer campaign.

From now on, you should work through this form and give each ad buy contact a specific URL for them to use. This will allow you to see specific ad-buy stats on Google Analytics in a snap.