Greg Tirico - Tirico.net

Internet Marketing – Search Engine Marketing, Email Marketing, Social Media

Big Brand Social Media Success...

Ford is a company to watch right now.  Their recent Ford Fiesta social media campaign has been a success (pre-orders measure in the thousands).  Their Global Digital and Multimedia Communications Manager, Scott Monty, has some great things to say about Ford's use of social media as a means of reaching out and talking directly to the customer.

In this brief interview, Scott talks about the one thing required to get a company headed in the right direction with respect to their social media strategy.

In a recent Marketplace story, Scott talks about some of his initial conversations at Ford regarding the use of Social Media:

[Scott] says it took a while to get the company up to speed. When he first asked Ford's CEO if he'd answer some questions on Twitter his immediate response was: Sure, what's Twitter?

Filed under, "never thought I was likely to say this".......Good job, Ford.  Keep it up.

Are You a "Straight"?

During a recent recording of This Week In Google, Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) pontificated about people that get it vs. the people that don't.  People that get it, he argues, understand how to use the internet and the change it has brought about to propel themselves, their businesses and their industries to new levels of success.  Those that don't get it (the "Straights") watch as the industrialized world crumbles around them as they simultaneously try to recreate their world online.  Recreating a traditional business model online is typically not how the structural or societal nature of the internet works.  Those that know how to leverage this shift have the ability to create massive opportunities and subsequently monetize.

You can reference the death of the newspaper as a classic example or the heavy-handed legal tactics that the RIAA has resorted to in an attempt to salvage what is left of their pre-internet revenue streams.  

Continuing, Jeff Jarvis draws the battle lines between these two camps based on John Perry Barlow's "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace".  As was described during the recording, this declaration is nothing short of prophetic when considering that it was written in 1996.

A brief quote from this piece:

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

Interesting and bordering on immoderate but poignant nonetheless.  The stepping stone for this entire conversation was the Italian government's recent conviction of three Google executives for failing to remove content from YouTube.  

Who knew that Ferris Bueller was such a visionary?  "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

A Return to Customer Service...

If you believe the argument that a larger social media presence correlates to a higher level of customer service (in many instances.....but not all.....this is true) then the most recent report from eMarketer is a step in the right direction.

As the total amount spent on social media marketing increases across most sectors can we expect brands and corporations to become more genuinely interested in their customers?  Eventually we will all be in the customer service business, right?

Search Gets Smarter...

Based on HitWise data, searches using 4-8+ words increased last month.  Searches containing 1-3 keywords fell or were flat.  That is a significant shift for two reasons.  Maybe more....but I'm only going to list two:

1.  We're getting smarter as search consumers.  The days of typing a URL into the search box to find the website at said URL are not entirely gone but, clearly, we are learning how to refine our searches by using more terms.

2.  As more search terms are used the amount of keyword inventory increases.  Do the math.  4! (24) contains 18 more combinations than 3! (6) and that's just for a single search.  Multiply that difference by hundreds of millions and you've got an exponentially increasing level of keyword inventory. 

experian-hitwise-percentage-us-clicks-number-keywords-october-2009.jpg

Dictionary.com....no, Ask.com....no, Google.com

I commonly run single word queries through Google when seeking formal definitions.  Several years ago, Google started providing direct links to definitions of words via Dictionary.com.  This relationship fizzled but the helpful "definition" link on Google continued to function with a new partner, Answers.com.  I saw an ad today on Google (yes, they commonly run ads for their own services) for the Google dictionary service.  How much longer until Ask.com is replaced by Google's internal dictionary service?

Twitter Postings - Design Advice

As usual, Jakob Nielsen nails it:

It's a common mistake to think that only full-fledged graphical user interfaces count as interaction design and deserve usability attention. As our earlier research has shown, URLs and email both contribute strongly to the Internet user experience and thus require close attention to usability to enhance the profitability of a company's Internet efforts.

In fact, the shorter it is, the more important it is to design text for usability.

Here is the full article on how to design a Twitter posting for maximum effect - http://bit.ly/4AMitd