Web PieRat

Internet governing body ICANN approved custom gTLDs yesterday, making it possible for sites with too much cash looking to be too cutting edge to blow $185,000 per gTLD + $25,000 annually on vanity TLDs and domains like bmw.car, nike.shoes or pepsi.cola.

With such a steep price tag only the very rich will be able to afford these custom gTLDs, AKA generic top level domains, which will hopefully minimize their release into the wild. I have three major concerns:

1. Usability: Internet users are entrenched in their .com ways, or their .ca or .co.uk ways. Whatever the primary TLD is for a country, the majority of internet users will try to append it to whatever URL offered them. Trying to get users to your supercool new hot.wings domain? They’re probably going to stick .com on the end of that and end up somewhere else.
2. Brand: For big brands, the only ones who could reasonably afford this vanity service, why oh why would you risk confusing customers and prospects with the scenario above? Most brands are still trying to master marketing and transactions on their primary .com web site. Adding a vanity TLD to the mix sounds like an expensive recipe for #fail.
3. Trademark Violations: If any word can be applied for as a gTLD, brands will have a harder time protecting against trademark violations. For example, with Nike’s brand strength it should pretty easy to prevent anyone but Nike from registering .nike as a gTLD. But would it be permissible for me to apply for the .shoes gTLD and then put domains on it for nike.shoes, adidas.shoes, etc. Afterall, shoes.com has the right to create a nike.shoes.com subdomain on their own shoes.com domain. Should the laws be different if the domain is nike and the TLD is .shoes instead of .com? ICANN’s site makes reference to this thorny area:

ICANN does not accept reservations or pre-registrations based on trademarks. But registries will be required to operate sunrise or intellectual property claims services for the protection of trademarks.
–gTLD FAQ

The registry operator must implement, at a minimum, a Sunrise period and a Trademark Claims service during the start-up phases for registration in the TLD, as provided in the registry agreement. These mechanisms will be supported by the established Trademark Clearinghouse as indicated by ICANN. The Sunrise period allows eligible rightsholders an early opportunity to register names in the TLD. The Trademark Claims service provides notice to potential registrants of existing trademark rights, as well as notice to rightsholders of relevant names registered. Registry operators may continue offering the Trademark Claims service after the relevant start-up phases have concluded.
– gTLD Applicant Guidebook (PDF)

Personal Note: You may know that I am the SEO Manager for Groupon, a competitor/co-opetioner with some of the sites mentioned here. I found this example reading group buying industry news, not in an effort to spread stories about other sites in Groupon’s space. I would have felt compelled to post this perfect example of good and bad commenting even if it had been a story completely unrelated to my employer’s industry simply because it is related to the SEO industry.

Comment spam is one of the lowest forms of “link building.” Yet people continue to do it because it’s easy, because they think it works and because they don’t understand that many comment sections aren’t crawlable even if the links are followed. But sometimes comment spammers get outed, like in the comments on this TechCrunch post about the partnership between BuyWithMe and SCVNGR. I grabbed a couple of screen shots in case the thread is deleted to illustrate this example (click them to enlarge).

What’s wrong with these comments? If they are from real people with real opinions, nothing. But the same users allegedly posted these comments on multiple posts on the TechCrunch, leaving links to UrbanSpoils on each. Other readers recognized the tactic and called him/them out on it. Personally, I can’t find any duplicate comments from these users, but I didn’t look very long either. The point remains: Comment spam at your peril — is the link inserted valuable enough to risk the scorn of the other readers and commenters? My answer is no. And in this case at least, certainly not. Here’s why:

• Disqus.com comments are fed into posts using JavaScript. The comment spam isn’t even crawlable in this instance (see cache). So if the goal was to seed links into posts to improve link popularity, #fail.
• If the intent was to gain click-through traffic from other readers, it’s possible that some clicks were achieved before the outing. Afterwards, I would doubt that many clicked, at least not with the intent to transact. But only the log files know for sure. Still, I call this a #fail.
• And lastly, even any positive brand recognition that positive comment mentions would have generated have very likely been more than negated by the tongue lashing from other commenters. So #fail.

Not all commenting is spam, of course. When you legitimately have something of value to add to a conversation and when you disclose your identity if you have a self-interest, then comment away. On the very same post, the co-founder of SayLocal comments, disclosing his identity and self-interest. You’ll note that no one flames his comment. It may be just as self-interested, but he has given us the ability to judge his comment honestly.

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Tweet Me

The folks at Necco developed a sweet link bait campaign for Valentine’s Day to celebrate the introduction of new social messages like “TWEET ME” and “TEXT ME” — design your own Sweethearts conversation hearts.

This fun little bit of link bait gives you the power to say whatever you want in your candy heart conversation! Feeling romantic? Bitter? Sad? Witty? Sweet? No problem, say it with digital candy in public on Twitter or in private via e-mail.

Dear search geeks, here’s a sample Valentine for you and our favorite search engines. Try it yourself; the app is available free for the iPhone as well as at the campaign’s microsite.

From a link building standpoint, Sweethearts is putting a lot of effort into generating buzz for the app and the launch of the new candy messages on their Sweethearts Twitter profile and their Sweethearts Facebook profile. Nicely done, Sweethearts — good interaction with fans and frequent but not overly repetitive tweets and posts about the app and the launch.

The piece I see missing is consistent cross channel promotion. There’s a blog / Twitter contest that doesn’t mention the app and some strong news articles focused on the new candy messages that may or may not mention the app but don’t include links to it. So there’s a some promotion of the candy and the new messages happening, but it’s not being tied consistently together to also promote the link bait outside of Twitter and Facebook. In addition, there’s no mention of the app on the official Necco Sweethearts product page, or the games page, or the news page. The Necco homepage does have a large image feature and link, but that’s the sole mention as far as I can see.

The app is one piece of the launch’s promotional campaign, but it’s an inconsistently mentioned piece. From a link building standpoint, the app represents sweet link bait. But it needs promotion to succeed as link bait. Without promotion, link bait is like a tree falling in the woods. If no one sees it fall or stumbles over it later, it may as well not exist. Which means it won’t drive the quantity of links that it could with stronger promotion. Stronger ties with press relations, online marketing for the necco.com site, e-mail campaigns and other marketing channels would strengthen consistency of promotion for the app and naturally generate more links.

I only stumbled over the app as I was tweeting something else. I happened to notice the small suggested app link on my Twitter homepage and clicked it because I love Sweethearts. They were my favorite Valentine’s candy as a kid. The Twitter link is a boon, but it rotates with 15-20 other links. It’s not a persistent, visible presence to drive eyeballs or link juice to the app’s microsite.

Maybe the app wasn’t designed as a link building tactic. That seems likely since it has no links to pass link popularity in to any other Necco or Sweethearts web content or social profiles. I find that extremely surprising. The app developer gets a link, iTunes gets a link for the iPhone app store, but Sweethearts doesn’t link to its own site or profiles. OK, perhaps SEO and link building weren’t taken into account at the beginning. But since Necco has already spent the resources to dream up and develop the app, why not link back to the primary Necco site, promote the app more strongly with the promotion they’re already doing for the new messages launch, and get more buzz and link popularity for the campaign’s cost?

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Thanks for sharing.

I’m really looking forward to tracking the progress of two social media campaigns currently in progress, one complex and one simple.

Smart & Simple
American Greetings has launched a fun and easy Twitter Valentine’s Day campaign that asks followers to tweet a response to 14 daily questions and tag them with #LoveAG. Each day one winner will be chosen to receive $350 in gift cards.

Today’s question: “You’re a Grammy Award winner (like our beloved Taylor Swift) & you’re writing a love song-what’s the chorus?” Horrifying, humiliating, horrendous … but I admit I did submit my own awful chorus. Yesterday was “What does it feel like to fall in love?” Who knows what tomorrow will be, but I’ll be checking in to see.

That’s the entire campaign! Simple, engaging, brilliant! No content creation, no media development, no promotional costs. Just a good idea, $4,900 in gift cards, and the daily discipline and creativity for 14 days to tweet like crazy on the same topic without sounding bored or repetitive.

Could it be better? Even the best campaigns can be better in hindsight. The contest comes from the corporate branch of American Greetings (http://corporate.americangreetings.com, http://twitter.com/amgreetings). The consumer ecards and interactive site has a separate site and Twitter account (http://www.americangreetings.com, http://twitter.com/ag_ecards), which sadly is not participating in its corporate sister’s Valentine’s fun. In addition, I see no mention of the contest on either the corporate or www site, though there are plenty of other Valentine’s promotions. Why not include a homepage link with a fun visual, a blurb in the e-mail newsletter, a press release, shout it across affiliated Twitter profiles and the forgotten Facebook profile? Use the channels the company controls to get more impact for the campaign’s effort.

Going for the Gusto
On the other side of the spectrum, Volkswagen pulls out all the stops for their “Punch Dub” campaign that spans TV advertising, Twitter, Facebook, a YouTube Channel, a Posterous blog and their primary vw.com site. They’ve created a personality (Sluggy Patterson), an online game, video content, and more, all leading up to their spot on the Super Bowl. That’s a whole lot of promotion, friends. It’s sparkly, it’s now, it’s what cool is supposed to be.

The problem is (cringe) I just don’t care. This campaign feels like it’s talking at me, not engaging with me.

OK, so maybe I’m not the target demographic for VW’s Punch Dub. I’m female, I drive a Prius, I live in a rural town in Wisconsin, I probably won’t watch the Super Bowl. Sure, I like crotchety old guys with grizzled senses of humor as much as the next gal. And it’s neato that VW created this character around Slug Bug, a cherished childhood game that admittedly still creeps into my mind as I drive. But I don’t feel compelled to log in today to see what Sluggy has to say on his blog, or video, or tweets.

That said, I’m not exactly American Greetings’ target audience either. I might buy 6 traditional greeting cards a year and I hate ecards. Sorry, AG, I’m a Snapfish photo card girl.

So why does American Greetings’ simple campaign speak to me and VW’s fancy multi-channel campaign not? For me it’s the engaging factor. It’s the invitation to participate in the fun rather than sit at a brand’s feet and wait for it to speak at me. What do you think?

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Thanks for sharing.

Finally, the chicken and egg dilemma solved on a t-shirt

Tweet Me

Being the new kid on the web is hard. You need links to boost a site’s visibility, but it’s awfully hard to get links naturally without visibility in the search results. Sites can’t link to you if they don’t know you exist, right? It’s a little like the classic chicken & egg causality dilemma. But not really since if you don’t have a site you wouldn’t care about links anyway. Whatever.

The point is, link acquisition is hard work. Researching topically relevant sites and crafting the right approach for each takes time and creativity. Cutting corners leads to poorer conversion to links at best, and outright spam at worst.

BK's Subservient Chicken

On the surface, link bait seems like an easier way to build links. After all, you just have to think of something totally cool that could go viral. “Subservient chicken? Ha, I coulda thought of that.” OK, fine, dreaming up a great idea is a good start, but what about content creation and promotion. The “If you build it, he will come” theory only worked when the interwebs were very, very small. And not really then, either. Let’s assume the audience actually gets to the bait. Once they devour it, cross your fingers that it will cause enough of a reaction to convert to links.

Frankly, if link building was easy, everyone would do it. It would be easy to spam. Which means that it wouldn’t remain valuable for long in the search engines’ eyes. Which also means it would cease to be effective for SEO, and we’d all be talking about something else.

For now, links rule the roost. What’s your go-to link building tactic?

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     Thanks for sharing.

Once upon a time Jesus is said to have proclaimed that his followers shouldn’t “hide their light under a bushel.” Actually, I didn’t know Jesus coined the phrase until I looked it up. But 2,000 years later, in the same spirit, I proclaim that you shouldn’t hide your social networks under a bushel.

An incredible number of brands maintain profiles on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social networks. Why, oh why wouldn’t they promote participation in those networks on their sites and blogs?

Let’s pick on a couple of big brands:

Old Navy: The only place on their site where they promote their Twitter and Facebook profiles is below the fold on their stores & events page. Why not as a standard part of their template near the e-mail sign up form?

Banana Republic: Old Navy’s big sister similarly hides their social profiles away on the mysteriously named Style Download page. Again, its below the fold, even though they participate in 3 networks (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube). Who would think of looking for Banana Republic on YouTube? If they promoted it, even passively, on their site’s template and as a standard inclusion in their e-mail marketing template think how much more exposure they would gain. The sad part is that in a couple of months they’ll likely decide that this social media thing just doesn’t work, when part of the problem could be their own lack of promotion of these channels.

DSW Shoe Warehouse: They actually have an active Twitter presence, with tweets to the media that cover them, tweets to customers and tweets to other shoe lovers. But not a single mention of their Twitter life on their ecommerce site.

It’s as if some ecommerce sites don’t want to come out of the closet on social media. They want the benefits, sure, but they don’t want to rick losing their shoppers to a medium where customers can’t directly convert. Guess what, when a customer follows your brand on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or another social network, they’re actually volunteering — opting in — to receive your message. These are your brand loyalists. What do you gain by making it harder for them to follow you on the network of their choice?

Social media promotion has upside, folks. When that brand loyalist fans you on Facebook or follows you on Twitter, she’s saying “YES tell me more.” And when you follow up on that request to tell her more with intelligent tweets about your products, charitable initiatives, industry insight into coming trends, product intelligence tidbits, as well as sales and promotions, you’re helping her feel in the know. And she’s going to crow about that to her friends and fans. As your fans and followers spread your brand’s messages to their networks, it widens your brand’s reach for at least that single communication. As others in her network like what your brand has to say they too may opt in to be in the know. And now your brand’s sphere of influence has increased as well.

Let’s look at a couple of brands who do this well:

Kansas City Steak Co: Persistent Twitter & Facebook icons in the left navigation, on every page. They’re a nice size to draw attention but not dominate, and they may even be in the first page view on some screens.

Eastbay: Persistent Twitter and Facebook icons in with the footer with their e-mail sign up on every page. I could wish they were more prominent and perhaps a bit larger, but they’re there on every page at least.

Sure, critics may say something you’d rather they didn’t on your Facebook wall or in a Twitter mention, but a brand’s visible response to that individual in a caring and professional manner reflects well on your brand. Trust me, if they’re going to say bad things on your profile, they’re saying them anyway. Your management just doesn’t know it yet. Owning your brand and promoting it via social media just gives brands the chance to respond and turn something unpleasant at least into a neutral in the eyes of the fans following the brand.

You’re spending the resources to create and maintain social profiles. Claim them loud and proud to get the benefit from them, before upper management decides that social media doesn’t work for your brand.

Image source: Poeticpixel

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     Thanks for sharing.