Dave Knox over at Hard Knox Life just posted this great slideshow on Content Marketing by Helge Tenno. Although I strongly dislike the addition of “two-dot-oh” to the end of any term, I will admit the Agency2.0 he speaks of at the end of the show sounds pretty appealing!

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The first few slides call out the development of online marketing. “2007 was all about rich media and customer participations”…”but 2008 is ..all about a range of different ideas coming together and forming a new kind of marketing changing the way brands connect to their consumers”.

The ideas are the following:

1. Culture
2. Technology
3. Mobility
4. Activity
5. Ineffective
6. Emotional Research

A few statements worth calling out:

Content isn’t king. Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.

The application itself is not a goal at all - it’s an obstacle between the user and their goal.

we tend to throw out the most meaningful and most revolutionary if we ask people about their preferences.

Content marketing = participating in activities facilitated by the brand.

Slide 13 states that “most products and services are actually developed by users, who then give ideas to manufacturers”. The premise (and this is one I called out in my recent review of Accidental Branding,) is that the best products are designed to address specific problems. If that’s the case, obviously why not give users the empowerment (and the forum) to help drive innovation for you?

As a developer, I probably shouldn’t like the comment that the application is not the goal. For me, though, effective marketing and strategy is not about jumping to implementation. A client shouldn’t want “a widget”. They should want “a means to drive traffic from the social networking space”. A widget is one way to do this. By assessing what the user goals are, we can work to achieve those goals, and they’ll be satisfied. But unless we determine the rationale behind a decision, we have a hard time assessing its success (and risk having an unhappy client in the end). I maintain that the decision of the best technical solution to a business need should be left in the hands of we web geeks, who have been eating, drinking and sleeping this stuff for a loooong time!

This notion of “don’t tell me what you (think you) want” is raised later in the deck as well. I can only attribute the reason that we ‘throw out the most meaningful information if we ask people their preferences’ to a lack of self-awareness or willingness to be honest. My biggest concern with a blanket statement like this is that some organizations may take this as justification not to solicit or incorporate feedback from users at all.

As someone who espouses user-centered design principles, this whole idea of “content marketing” makes sense. People are doing to “do” stuff and talk about it. Why not facilitate these activities by offering something to talk about? I am currently listening to “The Anatomy of Buzz” and Jeep Jamborees are mentioned. There is a certain demographic that buys Jeeps and has a certain lifestyle. Why not support them in their activities? We are an experiential society, and people who go off on a Jeep Jamboree weekend are your best brand advocates. They will converse among themselves, further establishing that brand loyalty, and also tell others about their experiences.

I love the idea that we are looking at establishing relationships with consumers, as well as between them. It’s no longer about focusing inward on creating that ultimate pitch: it’s about a facilitating a personalized experience for each individual based on his own needs and desired level of interaction.

As a previously scheduled post on accessibility and indexability went live, a few folks pointed me to some news on searchable/indexable swfs.

A few of the articles I checked out:

1. Google Now Crawling and Indexing Flash Content
2. Improved Flash Indexing (Official Google Webmaster Central Blog)
3. SWF searchability FAQ

I will admit I referred to the articles with a critical eye; google has been flirting with retrieving some amount of content from .swfs for quite awhile. Yet for the first time, I got a sense there has been real progress.

The premise is that Google and Yahoo! spiders will access the content via an enhanced Flash player. This enhanced player will give the search engine spiders the ability to navigate within the Flash experience, and access and index associated resources.

This is an exciting prospect, as until now many site designers were resigned to duplicating the content that was available from within Flash on the HTML page wrapper that housed the Flash. This followed the web development strategy of ‘progressive enhancement‘, where a non-flash-enabled site visitor (like the Googlebot) would be able to access at least the core content, and the more capabilities the visitor possessed (CSS, rich media), the more enhanced their experience. In addition to potentially increasing maintenance costs (to ensure the two versions were in sync), implementing this method is sometimes not feasible at all, depending on the complexity of the application.

I was eager to see how what I knew about Flash accessibility best practices came into play, and eagerly read through the documentation. As I did so, however, I found I had more questions than answers. In the Google Webmaster Central Blog, there is an intriguing statement:

we do not generate any anchor text for Flash buttons which target some URL, but which have no associated text.

When I first read this, I believed it meant that some links may not be followed. This makes sense from the standpoint that a button with no associated text would essentially be a hidden link, and following it may inaccurately represent the content of the site. However, the statement actually focuses on the generation of anchor text. I am not clear where this generation would take place; perhaps in a virtual buffer of all the Flash content? How does the content of the link (assuming that it DOES get followed) get associated with the overall Flash content (since there is no anchor text).

Another consideration is the use of tabindices. When coding Flash for accessibility, tabindices may be used to specify reading order. Is this something that search engine spiders will be aware of? Equally, there is a recommendation in the Google docs to “consider replacing the text within an image.. [to make] ..less informative content.. invisible to [Google]“.
This statement made me question of the sophistication of this enhanced player. For years, Google has managed to determine that items such as copyright statements are not significant content items. So why now are they unaware of this fact now that the content is coming from a .swf? The recommendation to move content from an accessible to an inaccessible form seems terribly shortsighted and irresponsible.
We are now quite sophisticated in using semantic markup for html pages to offer search engine spiders some information about the relative importance of elements.I can only assume that all text being pulled from a Flash element is given equal weighting. If this is the case, as is noted in the Adobe Developer Center documentation we will certainly need to see “best practices emerge over time for creating SWF content that is more optimized for search engine rankings”.

Another major challenge in opening applications up to search is being able to direct the searcher to the relevant section within the experience. This is also a concern with accessible PDFs. Much of the documentation recommended the use of deep-linking. However, it’s not clear to me how the spider is made aware of these deep-links. I will admit that my own exposure to deep-linking with a flash experience is limited: we did this for the People’s Choice Awards site, where querystring parameters were fed into the .swf using flashVars. While the Adobe Developer Center documentation mentions this practice (”you can create multiple HTML files that provide different variables to the SWF and start your application at the correct subsection”), I hadn’t been aware that google supported variables in their search result URLs…

There was also some mention made that external files linked to from within the .swf will be indexed, but separately. The implication is that the contents of a data file will show up in search results, separate from its presentational format (and overall context). While I assume this will be resolved in future releases, a diligent developer will likely want to ensure their “include” files are not accessed on their own. I believe my colleagues did something similar when we launched the Wal-Mart Halloween Flash/HTML Hybrid site last year. They did some great work with deep-linking and history management, and handled orphan content loading (I refer anyone interested in the specifics to Toby Miller). My concern is that based on how this functionality was announced (that developers did not need to do anything for their swfs to be indexed), there will be little motivation to ensure content is always delivered in the proper context.

Obviously, I am very interested to see if this development will enhance the experience of users of assistive technologies. Sadly, I’m not sure it will, as the major breakthrough has been made with the enhanced player. Unless Adobe also plans to work with makers of assistive technologies, I don’t know that any of these benefits will be realized. If anything, site designers may stop some of their earlier practices (textual alternatives).

I’m very interested to know if any of the accessibility properties and best practices have made it into this enhanced search — how great would it be if the use of these properties increased the weighting of content!

As a front-end web developer, I often hear the terms “findable”, “searchable”, “indexable” and “accessible” thrown around interchangeably. For many, they mean that the content can be accessed by a non-human, be it a screen reader or a search engine spider. On some level this is true, but there are several significant differences that are must not be overlooked.

For the sake of this discussion:

• Findable: how easily a site can be found when using a search engine (rankings). Yes, I realize that this term also refers to how easily content can be found once the user is on the site, but I’m ignoring that aspect of it for now…
• Searchable: how easily specific content within a site can be accessed when using a search engine (deep-linking)
• Indexable: how easily the content of a site may be retrieved and used in search engine results
• Accessible using AT: how easily someone using assistive technologies can use your site

(ShoeMoney.com has compiled a list of definitions for SEO from some industry experts, as well)

A site created completely in Flash or Flex may be findable thanks to the use of meta-data, but it is not indexable. With some diligent coding, information may be searchable, but this is no guarantee that it will be accessible.

(Not content with these descriptions? Have more to add? Please let me know what you think in the comments!)

As I’ve mentioned, my background is in accessibility: prior to coming to Resource, I worked on large subscription-based web applications. SEO was not a consideration at all. However, accessibility was. When I first came to Resource, I was eager to see how the two complemented and contrasted each other.

Overall, I see some overlap between the areas. However, their focus is different.

SEO is based on a page mentality - this is apparent in the search results that come up. Many common SEO techniques are applied at the page level, via adding meta tags or optimizing title tags. This is how a site that requires login, or is built using a technology like Flash or Flex, can appear in search results. A search engine can access meta information about the page, and use that to rank it. Findability relates to the notion of the discovery of the page itself.

A secondary notion is that of searchability. A web application may be found on google, but can the specific content that is being sought be retrieved? Searchability refers to the idea that site visitor can easily navigate to the specific information he’s searching for within the site, once the site itself has been discovered.

Both searchability and indexability deal with how elements of the page can be accessed, but arguably in different directions. Deeplinking into a flash movie may facilitate searchability, helping a site visitor dig into the site at a specific point. In contrast, indexability refers to the ability of a search engine spider to do a broad pull of content from the site.

Where SEO and Accessibility really start to diverge is when we move beyond the retrieval of content itself. A search engine spider is only interested in the data, so that the appropriate search result may be returned to an information seeker. In contrast, accessibility refers to the ability of a site visitor to navigate within an experience. The implications are significant: each interaction must be coded in a way such that a screen reader user can activate the change, and be notified of any changes that occur.

Another important distinction is the extent to which the site content is made available. A site may work to optimize or only make indexable certain aspects of the site. In contrast, accessibility refers to the ability of all content to be available and able to be engaged with.

As always, some of the best outcomes from an event are a result of the interaction with other delegates. There is something special about a group of actively engaged, newly informed individuals. Going into PodCamp Ohio, I hadn’t been sure about the people I would meet. I wasn’t a podcaster, would I have things to share with my fellow attendees?

As it turned out, I was incredibly engaged and impressed with the folks I met. There were folks from a wide background, all united by their passion for social media. The entire conference was very engaging and social, including the automated podOhioCheckIn twitter feed. As I mentioned, the first session I attended was incredibly interactive, with the attendees offering their own best practices and advice. I enjoyed putting faces to screen names, and realized that there is an entire community of like-minded individuals here in town I should get to know!

As someone who has worked on fostering online community for a long time, I have weathered all the comments about how technology throws up walls between people. Rather than interacting directly, we’re sitting in rooms on our laptops or mobile phones. However, how we do we explain the coming together of this group of technophiles? One fellow had driven from Nashville, another is based in Berlin and D.C. The Internet is the communication medium that allowed these individuals to find this information, and brought us together to share and network.

While the day passed quickly and I know I didn’t meet as many people as I could have, I have confidence that we will all leverage these online tools to continue to communicate and share our thoughts and insights from PodCamp Ohio moving forward.

A few minutes ago, JenniferLaycock recommended her ~1500 twitter followers check me out. Evidently she’s cultivated a good trust relationship with them, for my number of followers immediately increased!

Thanks Jennifer, and welcome new readers!

The final session of the day that I attended was on strategies for blogging and social networking marketing. Some of the content was similar to the viral campaign session I’d attended earlier, I liked the use of the one specific case study to frame their work.

Right away speaker Bill Balderaz of Webbed Marketing laid out the three things you need for success:

1. a compelling hook
2. the right channels
3. identify client goals

In the case study he shared with us (Shizuka New York), the compelling hook was “bird poop facials”.

A good litmus test to whether or not your idea is compelling- would you talk about it at dinner? a new CEO hired from a competitor? Nah. But bird poop facials? Sure!

Bill mentioned four specific channels to consider:

1. SEO Press release
2. Blogger outreach
3. video
4. Social networks

I wasn’t really familiar with the terms “SEO Press release”, but it was quite interesting. Bill mentioned that they will search for specific phrases on search engines to ensure the uniqueness of their phrasing. That way they can be sure that when monitoring buzz or search queries, all the results are directly tied to their efforts. He did acknowledge that the most newsworthy your story, the more likely a journalist will snap up the idea and write about it in their own words. In this case, your carefully chosen phrasing is lost.

Through the presentation, Bill was very diligent at showing us the “before and after”, highlighting the importance of analytics and establishing your measures for success. We looked at google news, which had 2 links to the company in May, and roughly 50 post-campaign.

Blogger outreach is refers yet again to really figuring out the type of influentials to tap.

As for social networking, Bill said that they did not try to build for or leverage all the social networks. He said they actually received the most traffic from StumbleUpon, which was a surprise to me. I didn’t realize it was such a bg player. He also acknowledged that like it or not, you can’t ignore mySpace.

Supposedly CNN ran this story on the front page one day, but still 46% of the traffic came from social networks. While CNN gave a one-day spike in traffic, the networks were overall more significant.

Someone asked about the time this campaign took, and he said the video shoot was the biggest task, coming in at about 10 hours. The rest of the campaign and marketing was about 40 hours. In the end, the company saw traffic increases from all sources, not just referring sites. People weren’t just clicking on links they had presented to them; bird poop facials at Shizuka had reached a point where people were talking or thinking about them, and motivated to seek them out.

He talked some more about some compelling ideas and hooks, including the work they did for Hatteras networks (the cash cow), or the scantily clad etymologist at HotForWords.com

While I don’t know that this session really offered me many “strategies” for blogging and social media marketing, I did find the session interesting. I appreciated the focus on the results achieved, and how they were managed. I still feel in many ways that analytics is still in its infancy, and I appreciated the approach that was taken to demonstrate the campaign’s success.

The second session I attended was “Igniting Viral Campaigns”, by Jennifer Laycock. Her session was in such high demand that we had to change rooms to accomodate the number of attendees!

Jennifer presented an incredibly comprehensive slide deck on the topic. She started with an introduction to viral marketing itself, the premise being:

1. people distrust ads
2. people trust friends
3. people trust strangers
4. the web connects us

Initially I wasn’t sure I agreed with her “people trust strangers” comment, but as she explained it more, it made sense. She considered strangers to people we don’t know in real life, whereas for me, it’s people with whom we have no relationship at all.

She clearly called out the benefits and challenges related to viral marketing. While for many companies it may seem an obvious tactic given the low budget, but the challenge is in coming up with an idea that is genuinely buzz-worthy. The consumer needs to have some motivation to share it. Once again I’m struck with the idea that good marketing (as well as good design, good client relations, good anything) is just what I’d consider user-centered design. What consumer needs (realized or unrealized) are being met? Indeed, Jennifer referred to the customer reaction effect. That is, by empowering ordinary individuals to share and promote a brand, you are offering them some sense of celebrity and giving people a chance to talk about your product. In turn, the brand benefits from a level of increased credibility, as it is being ‘blessed’ with personal recommendations.
The potential downfall, however, is that you lose control over your brand messaging.

As for any project, it is important to establish goals to be able to measure the success of the project.

There are three questions to be answered when coming up with this idea:

1. what sparks passion?
2. what hasn’t been done before?
3. will they risk their reputation?

For an idea to catch on, it has to address the above questions. The last refers to the idea that a forwarder is basically offering his personal recommendation to whatever he is forwarding, and will need to believe in the message or cause.

Jennifer then did a great job at walking us through specific strategies to developing a campaign. She shared tangible examples to really drive her points home.

I was impressed with her specifics related to the delivery of the campaign. She warned us to be sure to watch out for scalability, inventory, sustainable ROI and backup servers. I suppose the idea is that you should always plan for the worst case (which in this case is the best: your viral campaign takes off!). This actually reminds me of when we helped out Wal-Mart with their holiday campagns last year. Evidently there had been some question about our use of Akamai, and someone had questioned “what if akamai goes down?” At the time, we all laughed. Our thoughts were that if akamai went down, the Internet as we know it would cease to exist.
Guess what, at the height of the campaign, Akamai went down.

She offered us a list of different campaign types: humour, debate, attack and fear. Along with examples, she listed out pros and cons for each campaign type. It was a wonderful overview while also offering us the benefit of her expertise.

The next part of the presentation specifically dealt with pitching bloggers, which is an arena where I’ve only ever been on the other side of the screen. As Jennifer went through her pitching checklist, I reflected on how I’ve been pitched to myself, and determined that I am way too easy-going I guess I don’t yet have any reason to be too picky!

Jennifer’s biggest rule was “respect the blogger’s time”, and many of her recommendations were based on this (for example, read at least 5 posts, write a few contextual comments). I also felt that this was simply good practice to ensure you’re on the right track. If you have identified this blogger as an influential, prove it by opening yourself up to be influenced

At some point during the presentation, Jennifer noticed that we were running behind, and offered to cut the presentation short. The room was unified in their desire to hear her entire presentation. It was truly an incredible session, well worth the price of admission

Jennifer walked us through a project they’d done, through using brainstorming worksheets to assessing capabilities and the actual execution of the plan. It was a great way to really understand their methodology and gave a lot of credibility to their process. While she was great in not using her presentation to pimp out her company, I was definitely interested in learning more about them, as it is obvious they shine in this area.

Afterwards I was following on twitter as Jennifer and the session attendee that was sitting next to me talked about #SBMU and despite the fact I don’t actually have a small business, I’m tempted to attend!