Introduction

As this was part of a panel (with Shira Abel of Hunter and Bard, Jon Sumroy of National Positions and our fearless moderater Sam Michelson of Five Blocks) I wanted to focus quite specifically on reputation in the search results; rather than the social media sphere in order to prevent too much overlap.

My perspective on ORM in the search results (and therefore the wider content/reputation messages these results point to) is not about trying to “control” search results, but more about a strategic approach to message-management; with content-strategy, message position and communication tools being the essential stages to managing a campaign.

On the bonus side, nobody can tell that you haven’t pressed your dress suit!

If you really want to rock the party, it pays to have a clear idea of why you are there in the first place. If it’s primarily a customer growth objective or a credibility objective, this will effect your follow strategy.

Here’s a few tried and tested, but imaginitive ways of finding people to follow…

1. Use a Directory

A number of directories exist just for people on Twitter. You can search for Twitter users by their interests or categories and/or geo-location. www.wefollow.com is one of the largest, and allows for both interest and location based searches. Other directories include www.twellow.com, www.justtweetit.com, www.twitterdirectory.com and www.geofollow.com .

Make sure you add yourself to these directories too; so that you can be found by people who are interested in your chosen categories and physical location.

2. Speaker ‘Circuits’

If you want to follow and establish a presence with the leaders of your industry, it’s a good idea to familiarise yourself with the ‘speaker circuit’. Industry leaders and conference speakers tend to have a highly visible media presence and you will find many on Twitter. Check your industry conference and exhibition websites for a list of speakers. Most websites will feature a detailed speaker profile with Twitter ID included. If not, take your list of names and do a “Find People” search on Twitter.

3. Competitor Websites

Following your competitors is always a great idea. If your industry is super cut-throat, be warned that they may not follow you back, or may even block you from seeing their Tweets. This is a bit extreme and most competitors will have nothing to hide from you, and many may welcome a bit of banter and exchange with an industry peer.If any of your competitors are on Twitter, most will have a link to their profile on their website.

4. Follower-Drilling

Once you have identified a good person or competitor to follow, check who is following them and use the profile information in the followers list to see who could also be of interest to you. In most cases with a well managed Twitter account, you will find followers of a like-mind.

5. Keyword Searching/Hashtags (#)

Use the Twitter search functionality to search for keywords or hashtags that are relevent to your brand and your product. A hashtag is slightly different to a keyword in that adding a hashtag to a Tweet, collates all Tweets that use the hashtag, regardless of content. As an example #LAC is the hashtag for the London Affiliate Conference next week. I may well see Tweets like this…

“Where is everyone staying then? #LAC”

or…

“Going to the closing party?” #LAC

So a hashtag, when used correctly, can help you identify people that are involved or interested in something, even if their Tweet content does not specifically call this out.

Search results for keywords will show Tweets from Twitter users that have referenced the keyword in their Tweet. In many cases this may be because they have a specific interest in your product. It may be a good idea to directly introduce yourself to them by sending a Tweet (@mention) solely to them. Be aware that someone you follow will be quite likely to click your profile to assess if it is worth following you, so please don’t do this!

I want To Be Special!

Tip: If you use a third party application such as Tweetdeck you can create a column for your keyword search or hashtag and all public tweets containing your keyword or hashtag will appear in this column in realtime.

6. Other Social Media

Many other social media sites allow users to add their Twitter ID to their existing profile. If you already have an established community elsewhere, such as your Linkedin network, then check the profiles of your contacts and those that are also on Twitter will be easy to find!

Of course, the standard way to find people on Twitter is to use the “Find People” search within Twitter, however this is a little long-winded and relies on you knowing who you are looking for by name.

We hope these resources and tips give you a bit more of boost to your follow strategy, so that you can easily find people to learn from, connect with, market to and create a relationship with. Do you have any questions about Twitter in general that you would like to see answered in this blog? And do let me know if you have any cool ideas for identifying people to follow!

I’m not going to call this a ‘definitive’ list, as the game rules are evolving every day, but I’m hoping that this information will serve as a thorough consideration of tried and tested business models that may fit your existing idea – or add a complementary revenue stream to your web business that maybe you hadn’t considered.

It is important to mention that many of these business models have their roots in traditional commerce models. Conceptually the model may be the same offline as online; however the mechanics and performance metrics differ in the online world.

Advertising Model

Overview: I have an audience. You pay me to promote your product/message to my audience.

(OK, I know! We all know what an advert is, however some of the other business models that will be featured are less traditional and involve more technical explanations; so for consistency I’m defining them all).

Who Pays Who?: Advertiser pays the publisher (website, ezine, application) to display their message to the source’ audience, according to the nature of the advertising product sold.

Specific Commercial Variants

CPM – (cost per thousand impressions), is commonly used to price online display advertising. Many online publishers use this as their primary business model. As a new or small publisher you may want to grow your audience and collect demographic data about your visitors to assist in a pricing benchmark.  Other variables also influence the price you can set, such as the visitor tendency to interact with advertising. Huge choice exists in the display advertising market, as publishers are free to sell their own display advertising inventory using an ad serving platform, or select an advertising network to fill inventory for them.

CPC – (cost per click), is used primarily for text- based advertisements. Google Adwords and AdSense are both examples of cost-per click advertising. In this case, the advertiser bids to have their ad shown when a user searches for a keyword that is relevant to the ad (or is reading content that contains the relevant keyword – in the case of Adsense) and pays only when a click is received, regardless of how many page impressions the advert may receive. This isn’t a business model that anyone can launch. Apart from the fact that the sponsored search market is pretty much sewn up, be aware that Yahoo! owns the original Goto/Overture patent – known as the 361 patent. Instead its best to act as a carrier of text based advertising as a search or content partner.

CPL – (cost per lead), is technically the same as cost per click, in that the advertiser pays for a ‘visit’ action; however this terminology is most often used in situations when user interest tends to have been further qualified.

CPA – (cost per acquisition), is used to describe conversion based advertising. In this case the advertiser pays only when their conversion metric has been achieved. A conversion could be a product sale or a new customer registration.  A CPA model can be a difficult model to launch a commercial website with. It may be best to operate a CPL model until statistical performance inferences can be made about your traffic conversion rates.

Affiliate Model

Overview: I have an audience and website similar to yours. You pay me for directly selling or promoting your product to my audience, almost as if the product were my own!

Who Pays Who?: Advertiser pays its affiliate partners on referred-user-completion of a specified performance metric. An affiliation can often be a long term business model, often lasting as long as the commercial lifetime of the user’ consumption of the advertiser product(s).

Specific Commercial Variants

Reseller Affiliation – an affiliate is paid a percentage share of the total revenue derived from a purchase of the advertiser product, from the affiliate website. Such share of revenue may be a one-off percentage of sale or a lifetime value share.  Many software, application and domain distributors operate reseller programmes. Reselling tends to work well for digital and download products, as physical product distribution costs can be prohibitive for re-sale.

Lead Generation – an affiliate website has a qualified mechanism for the collection and onward distribution of a lead to an advertiser. Many financial service providers offer this type of affiliate programme. If you have a content web site established in the life insurance sector, you could add an enquiry form to collect all the relevant user data, and provide this information to a life insurance provider. Such lead generation mechanism could employ either a CPL or CPA model, however an affiliated relationship by the very definition of the term, is one of commonality and similarity, therefore conversion rates tend to be much higher with affiliate lead generation as opposed to a simple CPL advertisement on a non-affiliated site. Higher commission can therefore be established as the much of the promotion and user intention is qualified by the nature of the affiliate content, as opposed to advertising content. Lead generation affiliations may also operate on a revenue share basis. As an example many Bingo game providers will pay their affiliates a percentage of the gaming revenue spent by a referred user over the lifetime of that user.

Advertising and Affiliate models are the mainstay of the commercial web; therefore require a fair bit of reference in any overview of online commercial models – so don’t be put off by the fact that we’re still on ‘A’ at the end of part 1.

In part 2. I’m going to detail Auction, Brokerage and Donation models. Please do add your comments and additional advertising or affiliate variants I may have omitted. Feel free to suggest any models from A-D that I haven’t mentioned yet!

Final Note: You will no doubt notice that I have refrained from referencing or linking to any specific advertising programme, network or affiliate offer. As theMediaFlow is impartial it wouldn’t do to direct or ‘support by association’ in this particular post. If you want my personal opinion however; Tweet me up!

Resources:

Dosh Dosh: Well written, well researched and well informed blog aimed at beginners to making money online.

Digital Enterprise: Good theoretical content, from an academic perspective.

List of Top UK Affiiate Networks, from Richard Kershaw’s Quality Nonsense Blog.

Park Lane Champagne, the UK’s leading importer of branded and personalised champagne, have selected new consultancy theMediaFlow to assist in the development and promotion of their new e-commerce online presence at www.parklanechampagne.co.uk.

theMediaFlow are assisting Park Lane Champagne with all SEO for their new web site and for ongoing SEO and audience growth strategy; including an upcoming social media campaign surrounding the TechCrunch Europa Awards, for which Park Lane Champagne is again the preferred champagne partner.

Speaking about the selection of theMediaFlow, Alastair Harrison the founder and principal of Park Lane Champagne said today “the move into e-commerce is a new and logical development for the company, largely driven by consumer demand. The internet is clearly a fabulous market place and our site offers Park Lane a shop window to the World – and we have taken orders from several continents already. It was immediately clear that we required professional assistance in the on-going development and promotion of our site and theMediaFlow proved to be the perfect partner. I visited several companies and what singled out theMediaFlow was the prospect of working with a company that understood our needs, that would deliver personal service from a real understanding of our business and where our custom would be appreciated and valued. SEO is a crucial part of theMediaFlow’s holistic approach to helping clients grow audience and revenues, including social media and revenue diversification strategy. theMediaFlow understand our brand, our product and our audience potential and have the capabilities to assist us in leveraging our messages in a number of both traditional and creative ways.”

Notes:

Established in 1994, Park Lane Champagne is the UK’s leading importer of branded and personalised champagne. The company has historically operated in the B2B arena where the demand for companies to have their own brand champagne was considerable. Personalised champagne is hugely popular in the B2C environment and is now available from Park Lane in quantities from 1 bottle, making champagne the perfect gift for every occasion and celebration.

Founded May 1st 2009 by two ex-Yahoo! UK commercial partnership specialists, Nichola Stott and Stephen Adds; theMediaFlow is an online revenue growth consultancy. theMediaFlow provide strategic consultation services, revenue solutions and commercial partnerships, design and build for revenue generation, product/solution integration, Search Engine Optimisation (for increased presence in search engines), monthly management and look and feel optimisation, social media marketing and training for brand growth and audience extension.

For more information contact Nichola Stott, Director, theMediaFlow Ltd.
tel: +44(0)7932052374, email:nichola.stott@themediaflow.com twitter:http://twitter.com/nicholastott web:www.themediaflow.com

1.  Set an objective

Set an objective for your social media strategy to help you focus your efforts efficiently. You can go the ‘whole mnemonic hog’ with a detailed SMART objective. (Your objective should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable and Realistic in a given Time,) or keep things a little more relaxed. As long as you have a specific, realistic goal and an awareness of the tracking tools and measurements of success that are out there, you have the right framework. An example social media objective could be… “promote customer awareness and engagement with my brand by attracting a couple of hundred fans to my Facebook page in a month.”

2. Work the 80/20 rule

You know the 80/20 rule? You get 80% of your revenue from 20% of your clients? Well it’s true for audience as well. It’s extremely important with the huge volume of social media sites, products, tools and applications; that you focus the majority of your efforts where you have the biggest potential return on your (time) investment. Unless social media marketing is your full time job, you need to go where the greatest audience is. Facebook reached 22.7 million visitors in the UK in February (Comscore), which is over two thirds of the UK online population. Twitter grew 1689% year on year in the UK to almost 2 million users in March (NNR). It goes without saying that you do need to consider your audience demographic when compiling the short-list of sites for your social media campaign.

3. Create a consistent social media brand

Use and abuse all the customisation features and profile fields that you possibly can, to customise the look and feel of your profile page and deliver your message. It’s important to make sure that you use the same photograph (or logo), same strap-line and profile data, and the same company name and format conventions to represent your brand. If you don’t make and keep your profiles consistent, professional and recognisable you run the risk of being taken for an imposter profile (sometimes great for a laugh,) however users will be less likely to tune into and take notice of your message if they’re not 100% convinced as to your authenticity.

4. Integrate your social media

So you’re Digging and Tweeting and cultivating yourself an entourage big enough to push Paris out of the VIP area. Great. What about your company website? If you are generating awareness and interest in your brand and leading traffic back to your website, are users offered the same message and tone of voice as your social media? If your company website content is a little dry and lacking in social features this may put people off. Such mismatch in content positioning and tone of voice may come off as a little insincere. Additionally, for potential customers coming to your company website from search engines or type-ins, you may miss the opportunity to connect and interact if you fail to reference and promote your social media outlets. There are plenty of well designed, social media icons available freely on the web that you can use to easily drop onto the relevant space on your site, such as this lovely set from web design agency FHOKE. http://www.fhoke.com/blog/2009/05/07/a-set-of-14-free-social-icons/

Right... that’s the easy bit. Now comes the most important part, which is all up to you! Make sure that you have some great content, advice, giveaways and information to share with your friends, followers and fans or they may not stick around for too long.

theMediaFlow blog is written by Nichola Stott, who you can follow on Twitter @NicholaStott.

1. Ensure your site will load without the ‘www’ prefix.

Ensure your .ht access file captures URL type-ins without the ‘www’. Unless ‘told’ otherwise, any URL entry should resolve to ‘www’ as a matter of course. Failure to make this simple change could result in users thinking that your site is down, broken, or over-capacity – none of which look particularly welcome or professional and mean you may have lost a potential customer.

2. Ensure your logo defaults to ‘home’.

When a function becomes a common convention; such as clicking on the website logo taking you to the homepage, this then feeds audience expectation. So much so, that we often use a website logo to go back to the home page rather than any other navigation convention, as the logo tends to be the biggest, brightest (and therefore quickest) single-click route home. It is essential to adopt this practise, as users may seek to re-orient themselves within your content, starting again from the homepage, if they do not find the content they sought on first attempt.

3. Clear and consistent navigable element

What good is all that excellent content, surrounded by beautiful ad modules if nobody can find it? Even if you get lots of traffic from search engines (have good Search Engine Optimisation) – you won’t be encouraging repeat visits or further tours through your content unless you have a clear primary navigation element which remains in the same place throughout the site. Best-practise sites nearly always have a horizontal primary navigation element, with second and third level navigation being on a left hand side menu. It is not compulsory to have your navigation like everyone else; the most important thing is consistency.

4. Clickable breadcrumb

A breadcrumb trail shows the user their path through your site and content. Many Content Management Systems will automatically generate a breadcrumb for you by picking up the page title and its position in the content hierarchy to display a simple trail. Additionally, if a user has arrived at a content page on your site via an external link or a web search, a quick glance at the breadcrumb gives the user an immediate picture of where they are and may encourage an extended visit if the original content was relevant and of interest.

5. Font size 12pt minimum or scalable

Web accessibility is the practise of making your website as accessible as possible to as many people, including those with physical impairment. Web accessibility is a considerable separate topic in itself, and as well as the legal and ethical obligations to ensure your website is as accessible to all as possible, there are very good business reasons to do so as well. If there is one single accessibility tip for increasing your revenue potential, it is to ensure your content is at least 12pt or can be scaled. According to the RNIB at least 2 million of the UK population are visually impaired, which is a significant consideration as a percentage of your customer base. Ensuring that your primary content is at least 12pt, preferably scaling larger, will ensure that you are not discounting this community.

7. Add a searchbox

Adding a searchbox is one of the single biggest wins for any website seeking to improve incremental revenues. If you are an e-commerce site (regardless of how simple and logical your navigation) users tend to favour a searchbox, rather than a directory, to find the product they seek. If you generate revenues from adverts on your content pages, adding a searchbox will allow you to surface relevant content more often. Again here, providing a free-text entry search box promotes a quicker route from intent, to content and the more relevant the content to the user query, the more relevant any ad or product content should be.

8. Searchbox look and feel

Regardless of whether your search box is a direct source of revenue (search results contain products or ads) or an indirect source of revenue (search results contain content pages with complementary advertising – therefore raising ad impressions), there are a set of look and feel practises to adhere to which promote greater and more successful use of the search facility.

• Make the searchbox a minimum of 26 characters wide (not high) and for e-commerce sites between 26 and 50   characters is optimal. Our Yahoo! experience tells us that bigger is better – as user queries become more sophisticated and ‘query string’ length increases

• Do not put any text (‘search here…’ ‘put your search here’ etc) in the searchbox as when scanning the page for the searchbox we tend to look for the ‘big white space’. Even allowing for the varying levels of user sophistication pre-filling a searchbox is definitely not necessary and may cause confusion

• Position your search box top right, or top and centre (close to primary navigation) both positions are a conventional best-practise and promote greater search engagement through ease of searchbox identification

Making these simple tweaks to your existing site, or ensuring that these usability foundations are an integral part of any new build, will ensure efficient revenue performance. Improving incremental revenue performance is a quick win and if you are lucky enough to attract hundreds of thousands of page impressions a month, such a win could be considerable. If you’re not on this scale yet, ensuring usable and efficient performance of your commercial website is an important part of getting you there!