Content is King (of the Internet)

The King of Content

TV mogul William S. Paley made a fortune as a purveyor of content. He understood one simple idea: people love to watch TV. His business model thrived because advertisers were willing to pay for attention and his television network provided tons of it. Paley capitalized on the abundance of the 1950s: attention, spare time, and trust. Specifically, people watched a lot of television in their spare time. They payed attention to television advertisements; and they trusted most of what the advertisers were pushing them.

Times have changed. What was abundant last century is now scarce; and what was once scarce is now abundant. But We can learn from William S. Paley; not by duplicating what he has done but by thinking like him. Paley would understand the importance of capitalizing on the abundances of today’s marketplace.

The End of An Era

We’re hearing a lot about push vs. pull marketing. Mass Marketing defined an era of push marketing. Advertisers pushed ads in front of as many eyeballs as they could - as many times as their budget allowed. In the mass marketing era television reigned supreme because attention could be bought very inexpensively. Now, because the supply and demand has shifted, mass media is dying.

Want My Attention? You Have to Earn it.

The scarcities of the William S. Paleys’ era are now incredibly abundant. Television airtime isn’t scarce any longer; The diminished role of the FCC means it has a more difficult time creating artificial scarcity. In the early years of television there were just three channels; now there are hundreds.

Communication is abundant: We don’t have to rely on Television and Radio for our information. Now with the Internet and Search Engines we can get the information we want right when we want it.

In contrast, what was abundant then is now very scarce.

Spare time is scarce. We don’t have spare time any more because we spend our time: Searching the Internet, watching movies we’ve downloaded, TIVOing, arranging play lists, on the phone, buying stuff online - the list goes on.

Our attention is scarce. We don’t watch television advertisements because our time is too valuable. If we want to learn about a new product or service we look it up ourselves. If you want our attention you’ll have to wait for us to come looking for you.

No Barriers To Entry

Television Network moguls built empires by producing content. We see successful Internet businesses and non-profits follow the same path: Amazons users develop tens of thousands of online book and product reviews; AOL and Weblogs Inc. form a content network that produces blog posts for several top 100 blogs; OpenCongress.org brings together real government data with blog posts and comments to give users a better look at what’s happening in the US government.

Unlike with television, magazines, and radio - the Internet has no barriers to entry; you can join the party anytime. Just keep in mind a simple goal: produce content that people will be interested in - content that tells a story.

Permission Marketing

The Internet, more specifically Social Media and Search engines, enables consumers to retrieve the information they want when they want it. They don’t pay attention to advertisements anymore because they don’t have the time; and now they have the power to avoid them. They have been over-exposed to a marketplace flooded with marketing messages commanding their attention; and ultimately they just don’t care what advertisers have to say. It’s more reliable and more fun to learn from each other than it is to watch television commercials.

So what does this mean for marketers? To be successful you now have to build direct personal relationships with millions of people; sharing your message only with the people who want to hear it. Consumers only listen to messages from sources that have earned their attention and their trust. This type of communication is very difficult if not impossible with traditional marketing but Social Media makes it not only feasible but also easy.

A Glowing Umbrella

They key is delivering relevant content to people, who want it, when they want it. Visualize, for a moment, an umbrella with a glowing handle. This umbrella is just like your ordinary umbrella except it contains a processor, a wi-fi card, and its translucent handle is embedded with LEDs. While you’re brushing your teeth in the morning, the umbrella is accessing the web and downloading the weather forecast. If rain is on the horizon the handle lights up and you know to reach for it as you make your way out of the house. The umbrella improves your efficiency (and your way of life) by providing you with the information you need when you need it. Soon you learn to trust and rely on the umbrella for that information every morning.

Something For Nothing

You build trust with consumers - and influence their decision making processes - by providing them with valuable information that demonstrates your company is knowledgeable. Take a look at the ideas section of the Razorfish website. Here they offer several free high quality research reports. The reports are current, knowledgeable, and give the reader an insight into the culture of the company. Razorfish could charge thousands of dollars for access to these reports, they are that good; but they give them away for free. They do this because the reports establish Razorfish as a thought leader in their marketplace; and by giving the reports away the company develops meaningful relationships with anybody who takes the time to read them.

Information on Demand

By dicing up the web into accessible units Google makes it practical to access the information we want right when we want it. When I perform a search I am telling Google what topic I am currently interested in learning about. I know Google is listening because I get relevant results both organically and in the paid search section.

By sharing this information with marketers Adwords, Google’s paid search program, enables the delivery of advertisements directly to consumers who are interested in receiving them.

If Adwords is a marketers dream then organic results is her nirvana. What do organic results have that paid listings don’t?

Similar to paid listings, organic results deliver relevant content directly to users who are interested in receiving the information.

You don’t have to pay to be there.

You build real internet equity.

You have automatically established some degree of trust with your target consumer.

Trust Engine

People trust Google and they also trust the results they receive from a Google search. Google shows some amount of trust in the websites that make up their organic search results - They show a whole lot of trust in the websites that make up the top 10 results for any search. If Google trusts your website, the people that use Google will trust your website also.

An AdTorrent Example: SamsungTouchScreen.com

AdTorrent uses these same principles when we build a blog. More specifically our blogs contain insightful, current, and relevant content with sharp focus on a specific niche market (usually we target just one keyword). Ultimately our goal is to reach number 1 in the organic Google (and other search engines) search results for each of our blogs. In most cases we achieve this because we provide the information web searchers want - when they want it.

A good example is the Adtorrent blog samsungtouchscreen.com. The Samsung Touch Screen blog is full of blog posts, images, and videos on all of the new (you guessed it) Samsung touch screen cellular phones hitting the market. Samsungtouchscreen.com rocketed to number 1 in the Google organic search results partly because it was ahead of its time (it was created just before the touch screen cell phone craze hit full stride); but mostly it succeeds because it provides relevant, knowledgeable information on a specific topic. Adtorrent has produced identical results for LG, Nokia, HTC, Sony Ericsson, and Motorola brand cell phones.

The sky really is the limit with this method. The Internet can never have enough quality content.

How-To: Build Real Internet Equity

From Pavement to Pixels

Websites, blogs, Wikis, Social Profiles develop equity similarly to commercial real estate. Successful commercial real estate development follows a formula: First, you purchase some commercially zoned land, preferably on a busy street, in a bustling part of town. You develop the land by laying a foundation, erecting store fronts and putting down asphalt for parking. Shortly thereafter, your new development attracts some long term tenants, like a 7-Eleven or an In-n-out, who bring in significant consumer traffic and transform your land into valuable commercial property.

In addition, maybe you put up a billboard over the busy street and collect some advertising revenue. Over time the land under your store fronts builds real estate equity. You can leverage this equity to buy more land, on a busy street, in another bustling part of town.

Internet properties, like blogs, can develop equity also. You purchase a domain name, preferably one that clearly describes the intentions of your blog. Next, You develop your blog with content like blog posts, images, or video. With each published blog post you announce your presence to the world by pinging blog search engines. Shortly, the search engines will send over spiders that will index your site and add your blog posts to search engine listings. Over time the domain name associated with your blog builds reputation, with readers and search engines, as your blog posts move up the organic search listings.

Building Internet Equity

You’re building equity now because your new web property is attracting natural web traffic in addition to gaining rank, reputation, and trust with the search engines. You can leverage Internet equity in a myriad of ways: collect some ad revenue by putting up banners, promote other web properties you own through the use of back-links from your blog posts, Communicate your ideas and goals to your readers, or describe and discuss your newest products and services. The opportunities are endless. Just like with real estate the sooner you get in and the longer you are around the more equity you build.

Temporary Solutions to Permanent Problems

I view purchasing banner ads, pop-up ads, or paid search listings the same way I view renting space on a billboard or leasing a storefront in a busy commercial development. It’s a temporary solution to a long term challenge. You don’t need the billboard or the storefront; you need the land under them. You can do anything you want with that land if you own it; and you can leverage the equity later to create more opportunities.

You shouldn’t focus on banner ads, pop-ups, sponsored blog posts, or paid search listings. Paid for blog posts can look contrived; banner ads and pop-ups aren’t effective anymore because people ignore them. Paid search listings are effective but they are expensive and people don’t trust them like they trust organic results. The value lies in the web property that hosts the banner ad, or the pop-up, or the paid search listing.

Organic Search Engine Placement is Internet Equity

What is real internet equity and why is it valuable? There are several forms of equity but the type we focus on here, at Adtorrent is organic search engine placement. More specifically, if your blog is number one in a Google search result you’re going to receive a whole lot of targeted traffic.

You can leverage this traffic, the same way you leverage real estate equity, to create opportunities.

People trust Google’s natural search results; if your blog posts rank well in the natural results people are going to visit your site with some amount of inherit trust. Over time trust nutures the reputation you build with your readers and the search engines. Your blog’s pagerank increases and you move up the orgainc search results. You’ve gained equity because now there is value, built up in this website, where before there was little or none.

In Google We Trust

The key here is trust. Increasingly, your online reputation precedes you, like it always has in the offline world. Its easy to trust somebody with a sparkling reputation. Google shows a great deal of trust in websites that make up their top 10 or 20 organic search results. Googles’ livelihood depends on the quality of their first few search result listings. So it makes sense that only websites with a great reputation top the organic results. We trust Google because they are excellent at what they do. The websites that rank highly in Google maintain a great reputation because Google trusts them - and we trust Google.

There are two ways to build your reputation online: You broadcast your voice throughout the Internet on your blog, with your tweets, or on your facebook page. If you remain transparent and provide the thoughtful information your peers are looking for then you can depend on word-of-mouth build your reputation. Or, you consistently rank highly in organic search listings. Think of moving up the natural search results like building a friendship with the Google. Friendships are predicated on trust and honesty. As you maintain this trust over time your reputation grows. New blogs start off with a small amount of trust with Search Engines - they like to give everyone a chance. You can capitalize on this goodwill.

SEO Zen

A blogging initiative should be the focus of every complete marketing effort. At Adtorrent achieving the number one spot in the Google natural search engines remains our goal for each blog we produce. Blogs are perfectly suited to maintain top search engine placement for several reasons. Their simplistic, stripped down design makes them easy to crawl and index by search engine spider bots.

Blogs are full of links. You can tell the search engines to revisit and re-index after each new post, update, or comment. Most importantly - and this is where Adtorrent specializes - blogs are full of content. We produce fresh, insightful content; and this appeals to the core mission of Search Engines which is to provide recent, relevant, and reliable information to the web searchers who want it - when they want it.

A Marketplace Transformed By Social Media

Traditional businesses are over matched by the speed and effectiveness of Social Media communications.

For centuries, business marketing models have relied on slow unpredictable communications to reach masses of consumers in hopes of converting 1-2% into customers. We can’t blame you – you build your organization around the marketing tools you can use most effectively. You make what you can sell; and you sell what you can market.

Traditional business worked by making average products for average people. We produced in bulk then inserted our commercials in front of as many eyeballs as possible. TV was godly because we could reach masses of people quickly and cheaply.

This model succeeded because people were glued to the television, there was a stockpile of attention, and consumers had few alternatives. Consumers made purchases because they remembered our commercials when reaching for our product, on the shelf, at the local retail store.

At the Speed of Ideas

Times have changed. People aren’t watching TV like they used to, and they don’t watch commercials at all. Mass marketing techniques aren’t very effective anymore because people are tired of being interrupted. Retail store shelf space isn’t quite what it used to be because the internet enables a nearly infinite inventory. Traditional business with its slow cycle times and expensive interrupt marketing rollouts don’t stand a chance against the speed and cost effectiveness of Social Media Marketing.

Today ideas move quickly. The distance an idea travels from the brain of the designer to the intended consumer is minimal – it’s just a blog post away. So Social Media allows (and requires) for rapid innovation; prototyping, failure, and adjustments - all streamlined to move at the speed of the marketplace.

How fast is Fast

Apple inc. found out the hard way just how fast ideas can move. Apple initially released it’s iPhone in an exclusive partnership with AT&T. Anybody could purchase the phone but only those of us with an AT&T wireless contract could use it to make calls. Many people were left standing on the outside, without an At&T contract, and wanted in. Ideas began to flow; designers, hackers, programmers, and bloggers began to communicate via Social Media. Blog posts, forums, and chat rooms were filled with ideas about how to bypass iPhone prevention measures.

Less than a month after its initial release a software solution had been released which bypassed the iPhone’s prevention measures – now anybody, in any part of the world, could use the iPhone. iPhone sales picked up (so did the stock price) as phones were shipped out to people in Europe, Asia, and South America.

AT&T was unhappy; their previously exclusive agreement with Apple wasn’t so exclusive any longer. Additionally, a secondary market emerged; hackers were now unlocking the iPhone, marking up the price, and reselling them on the open market. Apple had to do something. Apple designers and programmers started looking for answers and found them in the same places the hackers had shared their ideas – Blog posts and community forums.

One month later, Apple issued a warning that future iPhone software updates would render unlocked phones unusable. Hackers went back to work, and in less than a month the prevention measures had been bypassed again. Apple continued to fight back, releasing updated versions of the iPhone operating system which patched the holes the hackers used to penetrate their system; but in the end the hacking community prevailed. iPhones are being used all over the world.

We Get What We Want

Now, with the help of Social Media and Search Engines, consumers get what they want; they will retool, redesign, and reverse engineer your product until they get the result they require. Social Media spreads ideas quickly allowing consumers to communicate faster than ever; if your company is not prepared to move at the speed of Social Media you will be left in the dust. Consumers require extraordinary products; if you don’t make it for them they will make it themselves from your products or move on.

Every Industry is Affected

It’s not just the consumer electronics industry; all businesses are affected by Social Media. Your business is affected.

Media companies have to change. Advertising money is being shifted online – away from traditional media outlets. Bloggers are beating journalists to the scoops and headline news. Movies and TV shows, are being ripped off the internet, remixed, and redistributed on sites like Youtube.

Traditional retailers’ monopoly on distribution is over. People buy from each other on sites like eBay. Internet storefronts can have nearly infinite selection and inventory making retail shelf space less relevant. Price comparison happens instantly online, consumers share with each other where to find the best deals, and make purchasing decisions in an instant.

Social Media has redefined business hierarchy. The big and slow have been replaced by the small and fast. People read the news online, purchase goods, or find a date; and the traditional businesses that used to fill those roles have become less relevant.

Consumers are Talking: Your Brand Should Listen

Consumers thrive on word-of-mouth communication; and when they talk your brand or company could be affected. In fact, consumers are probably communicating their thoughts, about your brand image, on community forms and in blog posts; if they aren’t talking now they will be soon. In reality, customers see your brand for what it really is and not what your advertising campaign projects it to be.

Amazingly some businesses are thriving in Social Media, because they now focus on “for whom to produce” rather than “how much to produce”. This means making remarkable products for sophisticated consumers. You can listen to the conversations about your brand taking place in Social Media – the customers will tell you what they expect. After listening you should enter the conversation and bring your message directly to the people who want to hear it. Your brand should tell a story and if it’s worth talking about people will spread the word.

Your Social Media Toolbox: Blogs

Blogs Are Here To Stay

Blogs prove to be more than a passing fad; they aren’t going away. They’ve become your most important tool for engaging the Social Media conversations surrounding your personal or corporate brands.

Blogs became a popular choice for communication because they satisfy one basic human need: our need for self-expression. Self-expression used to be private - you kept a personal journal, snapped photos at a family function, or painted a picture. Or, Self-expression was difficult – you struggled to sell and promote a book you wrote.

Self-Expression Made Easy

Now, as technology progresses, you can go public with your personal creations both quickly and easily; you can use lulu.com to publish your own hardbound books – they even provide you with an ISBN so people can order your book from anywhere in the world. In fact, that’s how blogs started; they were a public platform on which to publish your personal thoughts. Most early blogs were personal journals we published publicly to keep our friends and family updated on our current situation.

A Good Source For Reliable Information

Today blog posts read more like excerpts from a technical publication than a personal journal. Powerful voices have emerged, transforming the blogoshpere into a source of reliable information. Consumers seek out credible blog authors for purchasing guidance, trip advice, technical know-how, and news. New authors enter the conversation and contribute their own unique voice; as a result the quality of communication continues to improve.

Blogging remains a popular form of communication because we can distribute our thoughts, to millions of people, quickly and cheaply. You can garner a lot of attention by having your blog posts voted for on sites like Digg or Sphinn. You can publish your articles on sites like Helium or Gather or your videos on sites like Youtube. You can join blogging communities like MyBlogLog and share your blog posts with people who have similar interests. Even sites like Myspace and Facebook encourage users to update their profiles with a blog feed.

Conversation is a Two-Way Street

People can provide you with instantaneous feedback through your blog site. Now we see many companies using blogs to unveil new product concepts to their customer base. Customers can reply directly to the blog post providing the company with instant evaluations. Dell’s ideastorm takes this approach a step further by allowing users to vote on ideas to improve the companies’ products; Dell then implements the most popular ideas. The commentary on your blog post doesn’t stop at the feedback section of your blog site.

At their core blogs enable relationships. They promote feedback; there is a comment section at the bottom of just about every blog post, and they encourage citation. Blogging is about sharing ideas and one of the unwritten rules of blogging is: you can cite my idea, paraphrase it, remix it, or do just about what ever it is you want as long as you link back to me.

Links: The Currency of The Internet

Links are important. Interlinking creates relationships between blog authors and forms the blogoshpere - an intricate web of blog posts that connect to one antoher via HTML hyperlinks. It is a lot like “ill scratch your back if you scratch mine”. Blog authors will link to your blog post if they find it interesting; likewise they expect you to acknowledge their . The link is like a vote for your blog and the more votes your blog receives the larger your reputation becomes.

Listening 101

You can use blogs to bring your message to your target audience. First, you should listen to the conversations going on in Social Media. Read the blogs and message boards that talk about your company or target market. Think of it as joining a conversation between several people, you wouldn’t want to jump right in without first listening to the topic of discussion.

To help you locate the conversations worth listening to you can use Google Blog Search and Technorati – both are excellent free tools with powerful search options.

Locate the influential blog authors in your field and bookmark their RSS feeds (Google Reader is an excellent RSS aggregator); keep up with their daily topics of discussion even if they don’t directly pertain to your brand.

There are some professional brand monitoring services out there like Buzzlogic, Nielsen Buzzmetrics, and TNS Cymfony which do most of the heavy lifting for you and then aggregate the information they collect into a tidy user interface. Of course, these services can come with a hefty price tag. Several monitoring services also provide sentiment monitoring. This amazing bit of technology automatically discerns the disposition of a comment or forum post. A simple example: a forum post contains your brand name and “sucks” or “not good”; instead of scanning hundreds or thousands of comments for signs of unrest you are immediately alerted to this forum post for review.

Join The Party

Your next step is to start commenting on blogs, industry websites and forums. You expect feedback on your blog posts so you should start by contributing to the community. More importantly, authentic and insightful comments go a long way in building your reputation as an industry expert. Also, once you have your blog up, a well placed comment can guide new readers to that fresh blog post you just published.

After that, Start your own blog! Need Help? We can help.