Wielded properly in the hands of masters, there are few tactics more powerful. Practically everyday, we come in contact with brands of all sizes, wanting to better understand how to develop a more holistic content program as a vehicle for nurturing traffic and conversions. Many of these brands shell out massive paid advertising spend and want to dilute the CPA. Other brands fear being left behind in social media without content of their own to promote.

Google’s Panda update left many a site’s ersatz content strategy eating dust outside razed puppy mill-content farms.  These folks are just trying to save their butt by tendering an actual strategy instead of the junk they proffered prior.

Like many agencies, we’re in the business of offering unabashed advice and have earned amazing clients all over the world who lean on us for support in developing their content strategies.

For this post, we’ve gone over a couple years of written recommendations to various clients and assembled 26 tasty tidbits, from mild to wild, to share herein with you, our valued reader.  We use the words, “Feed,” “Blog,” and “Publications” in the post interchangeably. Enjoy!

A: Bring A-list Writers

You get what you pay for so using $14 a page writers or automated software won’t yield the level of content that will matter. Sure, it still works, to an extent, to temporarily baffle Google and Bing with recurrent rubbish but once you get the click, how will users convert? More likely they will bounce.

Garbage content sure won’t earn links.  Puppy mill content does not make friends or repeat visitors.  Don’t kid yourself. Great content takes great writers and a significant investment of time and money. Content marketing is about business and investing money as you reach out to customers with brilliant information to serve, delight, demystify and share.

B: Gain buy-in & Approval For The Right Business Reasons

Content creation is more then just a happy little plaything and the strategy should be rooted in defensible commercial objectives.  Use content to increase keyword diversity and volume, as evidenced by traffic to the site. Dilute customer acquisition costs or improve client retention with the value you create.

Use Google Webmaster Central to measure organic CTR trends at the site, keyword, and semantic clusters levels.  Make long lasting friends for future remarketing.  Lift your SEO.

C: If Content Is King, Creativity Is Queen, Ruling Equally At His Majesty’s Side

Don’t settle for run-of-the-mill-everyone-has-already-done-it ideas or accept the team’s first impulse just because it’s an easy pathway.  The best idea wins.  Challenge your whole team. Run internal contests to cull ideas.

D: Take Time To Undertake Search & Social Demographic Research Creation Process

Use keyword research tools, Twitter, Facebook Ads, competitive intelligence tools and other classic demographic tools to unearth trends and predilections in social chatter and semantics.  This is essential for success.

“D” is also for “development.” Feed development is fundamental. Make sure that your blogging software is up to speed. Don’t overspend for expensive mongrel white elephants. Use Ning and turn the blog into a flat out social platform. WordPress, Drupal, Joomla are awesome blogging software choices.

E: Strive For Excellence

Make it your goal to be the definitive resource to readers in an intellectual space that is small enough to dominate in the SERPs whilst large enough to generate a high enough volume of readers.

F: Have Fun

We can’t emphasize this point enough.  Readers can smell a fabricated puppy mill article from miles away.  Don’t be dry and droll, even if the subject matter happens to be.  A single adjective, carefully placed can mean a lot, as can a screaming diatribe. Know what will teak your audience. Tweak them.

G: GO!

Get this sucker off the ground. Sure do your planning and take time to get things right, but don’t languish in never-actually-do-the-project-mode. Make this a priority and go for it!

H: Have A Heart

Highlight heart warming human-interest stories that matter to readers.  If you want content to go viral, then create content that someone would actually want to send to someone else.

I: Remember That Benefits Of Content Marketing Are Incremental

At first, you might feel as if you’re blogging to nobody. This is normal so prepare your team’s expectations.

J: Just Remember

That 25 visitors a day is over 9,000 a year. Do it right and pretty soon there will be 20,000 a month, then 30K and so on. Though there can be quick hits that yield thousands or even millions of buy-motivated visitors, think long term. This will take some time.

K: Keywords Matter

SpuFu Kombat is a killer paid subscription tool we use discover keyword overlap and areas of uniqueness between competitors. Extend your site’s organic footprint into areas that your competitors dominate without being challenged previously.  We love this tool when planning what to write about.

L:  We love link roundups

Because blogs monitor their reputations by alerts using various tools; bloggers: find out if you link to them or even mention their name or that of the publication they write for.

Often, link roundups yield greater long-term fruit then feature articles that take oodles of time to research and write. Get create and do video, infographic, and other themed roundups on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Recap at the end of the year for extra lift.

M: “M is for Money”

Make no mistake. I’m just saying. In all seriousness, this project is going to cost money. Don’t try and create content on the total cheap (see letter “B”.) On the other hand, don’t be wasteful.

An in-house blogger-extraordinaire is a fearsome weapon at a very reasonable cost.  Finally, don’t be afraid to spend some well planned cash on Facebook Ads, press releases or even Adwords to promote occasional posts that are brilliant.

N:  Being Naughty Is Good Sometimes

Don’t avoid controversy if the matter needs to be highlighted and there are no regulatory issues that prevent you from taking on tone of righteous indignation.

An industry wiz once called me out as being a troublemaker and indulging in click bait. It was the nicest things anyone has ever said to me. Sometimes Minnesota nice is a better answer. Have the wisdom to know the difference.

O: Organization Is A Major Key To Success

Make a publication calendar, just like in the old days. Budget, set organic goals and report regularly. Also gain buy-in from the whole organization. Each department of your company can contribute content or content ideas. Make sure everyone understands what the objectives are.

P: Think Of Your Feeds As A Publication, Not A Website

The best content marketing efforts we’ve ever seen treat the process as if it’s a magazine or newspaper. Ask the question, “how do we create an industry leading” publication in this space?” “What weekly features can we create as branded vehicles?”

Make a contribution to the industry your company runs in a build out a true serialized publication.

Q: Stay True To Quintessential Blogging Tactics

Cite other blogs as complimentary and non-competitive resources for your readers. Share data that really matters. Give until it hurts, without giving away information that is truly proprietary or gives you an edge that you want to hold close.

R: Recurrent Content

The idea here is to bring recurrent content, day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year. Slow and steady wins the race.  We’ve found a sweet spot that seems to happen socially and in search engines once a blog publishes 3X per week or more.  The point is that you need to blog, over and over, even if you don’t feel like it.

S: “S” Is For SEO

Make sure to undertake keyword research to advise the words in your blog headlines and body copy. Remember, one of the ideas here is to attain greater visibility in the SERPs. Blog optimization is crucial to maximize the effect of content marketing.

T: Allocate Enough Time

We know some strategies that take 20-40 hours a month. Others take a lot more, with multiple employees fully devoted to the endeavor.

For perspective, this article took me about three hours to write and that’s pretty fast for the type of response it will likely garner.  If this post had required research, then it could have easily taken 6-8 hours or even longer. Really amazing research can take teams days.

As a rule, it pays to invest time in content.  However, see letter “L.”

U: Deploy Useful Tools For Users

Make it easy for them to share with social buttons to like the content in Facebook, follow on Twitter or share in Google +1.  Also make it your goal design content that readers return to over and over as a resource.

I love the way Rand Fishkin publishes his SEO Ranking Factors study every couple of years. I go back to it over and over. It was well worth the time and money SEOmoz invests in this killer resource. It’s just so freakin’ useful.

V: Use The Adjective “Vital” To Describe Your Publication

Be vibrant, vivacious, effervescent, spirited and oh so alive. Make it your goal to hear subliminal crescendos of music and applause between written lines.  Be that good.

W: Be Timely & Capitalize On Obvious Windows Of Opportunity

Don’t regurgitate third hand news but, if you have an industry-shaking scoop, get it out there.  Don’t be afraid to rewrite a post if you need to publish it before you can complete it. Newspapers do this all the time. Still, be careful to get news right.

X: Play The Middle Against The Extremes

Explore issues with your readers that challenge their perceptions of important issues of the day. Create content that takes on relevant matters and conducts an internal debate taking each position in the same or serialized posts.

Try on the views of many and compare them, to draw in all parties.  This is a classic technique that always works because it draws in those who both agree and disagree with each perspective.

Y: Don’t Be Afraid To Leave Your Personal Mark As A Writer

Character sells so don’t try and squish the memorable traits that make you, you. At the same time be cognizant that the firm paying for the content has ownership of the project. Learn the line and walk it.

Z: Understand The True Zen Of Being A Blogger

Read CopyBlogger, ProBlogger, Danny Sullivan, Michael Gray, Rand Fishkin, Barry Schwartz, Greg jarboe, and Guy Kawasaki.

Dissemble their tactics and make them your own.  My kids think they invented Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith. LOL! This generation of marketers did not invent content marketing. Visit with the masters and study their venerable ways.

Image Credits

© Stephen VanHorn – Fotolia

© vlorzor – Fotolia

Such classic concerns actually make a ton of sense. Social media certainly can be a double-edged sword. On one hand brands must consider the downside—that inviting users into the public corporate communications stream might mean dirty laundry is aired on the street. Among the upsides brands can enjoy increased visibility, better customer service and increased sales as happy customers champion the brand’s reputation in public. Even so, marketing bosses are often wary of the risks.

We’ve noted that setting assertive strategies supported by measurable KPIs (key performance indicators/goals) tend to help remove—or at least mitigate—our clients’ bosses apprehensive chortling about social media forays. Here are some strategies we’ve found effective in persuading key stakeholders about the value of social media marketing. Then I’ll offer some ideas regarding metrics by which to measure success.

Strategy #1: Identify and target English-speaking international users. It often moves the supervisorial needle when the team goal is to expand the pot of English-speaking personas, by identifying users’ global social/contextual space. For instance in there are tens of millions of Facebook users who speak English and don’t live in the United States, UK or Canada. Include authority users at the individual user and clustered level in this research.

Strategy #2: Engage new users and build permanent community. Granted, this sounds a bit clichéd, but hear me out.

I’ve seen the look on clients’ faces as conversational marketing centered here in the good ol’ USA, Australia, New Zealand, India, the Philippines or Singapore resulted in expanded community. Humans usually like to interact with each other and the companies they do business with. Prove to your team leader that it’s possible to locate existing and new customers to interact with your brand and your team leader might understand the opportunity. Sales often follow new customers who stick around.

Strategy #3: Enhance brand visibility. Forge fledgling, expanding and quantifiable community to improve branding, keyword ranking, universal organic search results and measurable sales.

It’s easy to champion the value of listening to customers. They’re gong to make feelings known in public whether we’re listening or not, so we might as well be there. A commitment to hearing customers facilitates better service, which can be measured (see KPIs below).

We’ve not met a CMO yet who does not understand the benefit of enhanced keyword rankings, traffic or improved presence in universal search verticals. Most business leaders understand the value of creating measurable syndicated content channels to disseminate information if the result is new and retained users. To many it’s not a very far reach to justify the value of 47,000 Twitter followers, compared to the value of a focused customer email list. Set these strategies and measure them.

Strategy #4: Prove increased usage of customer service tools with social/PPC mashups. Seed usage of customer support mechanism(s) hosted on social channels by driving search traffic using paid search via Google, Yahoo and Bing for customer service queries. There are many mashup opportunities to serve customers via social channels. Be it a moderated fan page on Facebook, Twitter community manager or YouTube video FAQs, the only limit is creativity. Send users to social support tools by driving them from search as they seek very specific solutions like owner manuals, answers to common questions, and so on. Measure if they come back and use the tools again.

To my mind the holy grail of social media is to solve customer service issues by utilizing social media platforms and tools as customer service mechanisms. Bosses seem to understand the meaning and advantages of improved customer service via any channel.

Strategy #5: Prove social branding increases sales. Almost nothing succeeds like making more money for your boss to ship to corporate bean counters. Provide evidence you can lift paid search campaigns by branding in Facebook and LinkedIn Ads to target highly targeted demographics at high impression/low cost volume.

Social media KPIs for measuring strategic success

Strategies are nice but can ring hollow without the means to measure results. Here’s a starting list of metrics to support the strategies proffered above:

• Measure new and retained unique friends at measurable CPUF (cost per unique friend).
• Measure proclivity to become a customer.
• Measure e-commerce lift without branding compared to e-commerce lift with Facebook and LinkedIn Ads branding in different geographic areas.
• Measure SEO prominence as indicated by traffic to social assets and feed from universal organic search.
• Measure customer service usage on social assets.
• Measure engagement in participation threads, both on and off site.
• Measure inbound traffic to and from the feed and divisional site (churn).
• Measure socio-global expansion as indicated by traffic, sales and support tool usage.
• Measure whether users return on any of these nodes.

Corporate marketing supervisors usually don’t want to throw budget in a black hole, especially given the double-edged sword of social media. We’ve found that setting clear strategies along with associated KPIs can focus the entire process as well as expectations regarding how success will be measured. Use these ideas as starting points for your own planning and go great guns!

That said, demographic research has come a long way in the last couple of years. With nary 24 million members in 2007, Facebook rode shotgun down the avalanche, with the little-lauded launch of Facebook DIY contextual ad platform. Those in the know whispered about an impending social PPC revolution. Some guessed right and began segmenting landing pages by social segment as well as search AdGroups.

Search vs. contextual

To keep terms straight, “contextual” means it is not search. Nobody is typing a question in a box for contextual targeting. Contextual is walk-by traffic targeted to interests, behavior and a number of other attributes on the social graph. Google’s storied content network is a great example of a contextual marketplace, as are Yahoo Answers and LinkedIn direct ads. By late 2007 Facebook wasn’t only for kids anymore. Three years ago there were tens of thousands of Facebook users; over 30 years old, “interested” in “Las Vegas” and other B2B segments were beginning to emerge.

Now that Facebook has (allegedly) spit in users’ faces and whored away the store, marketers can really profile demographic segments by mining (arguably) invasive data we used to only dream about. Where I work we’re all for privacy but if Facebook is going to give us the data, then we’re going to respectfully market to users who give away the information. Don’t feel bad. By using Facebook’s software, users explicitly sell their data and submit to Facebook’s terms of service. Imagine the cost of building Facebook. The value Facebook sells advertisers amounts to blood off of users’ backs. Life is grand!

Not just Facebook

Facebook is not the only story for demographic profiling by any means. With some wit and creativity it’s possible to excavate user data from Twitter, YouTube, Google search result pages themselves, question engines, PPC competitive intelligence tools, Google’s DoubleClick demographic targeting layer and organic analytics to build a product-level grid of multi-channel social inventory that goes far beyond classic search keyword research. It’s not your mom’s keyword basket anymore, kids.

Just as with search marketing, contextual segments target users by both organic and paid channel tactics. Here are some examples of radical user intelligence. Look for users, who may well be susceptible to your sales and branding messages, by graphing the following.

Organic contextual

Remember, “organic contextual” is what most us call “social media.” We market by participation and make friends by sharing in community activities. “Sharing” can mean deep research at the users-level, in order to identify crucial users who would consume or otherwise champion what you’re selling. How to do this?

• Networking in YouTube in support of content
• Twitter conversations (graph them as conversations-per-day)
• Making friends in any channel without paying to meet them
• Facebook SEO: Optimizing Facebook groups, fan pages, events, people and apps’ for discoverability by Facebook’s internal search engine
• Participating in LinkedIn and Yahoo Answers
• Finding Twitter friends using Twitter search on hashtags and/or keywords

Paid contextual

Examples of paid contextual channels include:

• Mainstream search engine content networks, like Google’s and Yahoo’s
• Banners served to Yahoo personals and focused Gmail advertising
• Facebook DIY PPC platform
• Paid tweets
• Direct banner buys which match up publishers” content with the content of your ad

The real power for the radical demographic research artist is learning to turn available contextual research tools into finely tuned utensils to follow lines of investigation. Just as with paid search inventory tools (the Google keyword tool, Trellian keyword discovery, WordTracker, etc), there are rich insights to be gained from paid contextual inventory tools. This is especially true of Facebook’s PPC targeting engine. Just as we use PPC inventory tools for SEO, we’ve found splendid insight in paid contextual tools that can be applied to organic contextual activities.

Here are some examples of contextual demographic segments we profile and market to in both paid and organic contextual spaces. These segment examples can be targeted by paid and organic tactics in nearly any contextual space. Take clear aim at Twitter hashtags, Facebook PPC, YouTube buzz, Flickr photos or conversations in any social channels. Advise the process by search inventory as a starting place. Simply put, target these users by conversation or banner, organic or paid.

• Brand + competitors’ brands and current and legacy SKUs
• Consumers and professionals who consume products
• Product categories
• Categorized usage of products by consumers and professionals
• Trade groups and associations
• Non-profits and foundations (interest tool)
• Employees of non-profits and foundations (education and work tools)
• Employees of companies that consume products
• Employees of competitors’ companies
• Application users
• Places of employment (interest tool)
• Places of employment (education and work tool)
• College affiliations (interest tool)
• College affiliations (education and work tool)
• College majors (interest tool)
• College majors (work and education tool)
• Purchased “friend-leads” @ CPFL (cost per friend lead)
• Converted friend-leads @ CPUF (cost per unique friend)
• Authority users/influencer-friends attained by any method
• Users who frequent specific publications
• Chatter surrounding well trafficked questions

The ability to map marketing activity to such fundamentally relevant social media user-segments—people who are unthinkingly going about their business in contextual space—seems to fulfill the internet’s promise for marketers in a deep way. With hundreds of millions of engaged users who reveal their affinities and predilections, it’s getting easier and easier to incorporate emerging demographic profiling capabilities as strategic and tactical levers.

As we add contextual to the search mix for online marketing, surely additional paid and organic models will emerge to elevate traditional keyword research to radical user intelligence.

The search revolution has turned some of our brains to oatmeal by fostering unrealistic expectations for contextually targeted ad space. Traditionally “search” has worked so incredibly well and cost so little that direct response marketing was feasible even for informational searches and “walk-by” contextual ads where nobody searches. Now CPC search costs a bunch more than it used to. Meanwhile Facebook and Google have stimulated a massive expansion of contextual marketing. Keep in mind that, even in the face of throwing in the search towel by cutting the now famed MicroHoo deal, Yahoo still runs a massive portfolio of contextual products. There are many more publishers selling banners of all sizes and formats selling display than there are search engines. Contextual ads are where the massive numbers of eyeballs are.

First the good news: search marketing still works wonderfully for direct response. Sure, care needs to be taken that the queries we invest in are transactional. For instance, those searching for “surgery” are less targeted for direct response that users seeking “surgeon.” “Surgeon” has a reasonable chance of being informational in nature. The theory is obvious. While “surgery” inquiries might be in the purchase funnel, anyone who searches for “surgeon” is in or closer to the buying-phase and may well be trying to find an appropriate doctor for an upcoming operation.

Timeless marketing values

Back in the day, we wouldn’t send postcards to 4 year olds offering an operator-standing-by 800 number to buy wheelchair scooters or free Sudafed samples. I can’t imagine we would have allocated direct response dollars to next-week’s Mickey-D happy meal coupons sent to inmates incarcerated at the local SuperMax. The investment clearly wouldn’t jive with ROI expectations for direct response in such cases.

Still, most of us were well aware of benefits associated with branding. While direct response was not obviously attainable, we might have asked KFC to sponsor a library program at that same SuperMax for prisoners about to be released. Sure, it would be months until these rehabilitated society members were in a position to actually pony up a 10-spot to purchase an extra crispy meal with coleslaw. However the goodness embodied in the contribution to the prison’s library, in tandem with repeated impressions of the logo and pictures of tasty chicken wings, could influence our target market to think favorably of the KFC brand later. We used to call this kind of marketing “branding.” Remember?

The miracle of search made quantifiable return on investment a reality at a very low cost for early adopters. Even today, direct response search, well targeted and segmented by intent, can be an excellent dollar for dollar value. Don’t get me wrong. Contextual advertising as in Google’s storied content network, AOL or Facebook Ads can often generate direct response sales. But often contextual ad networks are better suited for branding. You remember branding, right? The savvy marketer has the wisdom to know the difference.

Seeking intent in social segments

Because contextual marketing targets demographic attributes as opposed to answering direct questions, gleaning intent is different than classic keyword marketing as suggested above. For instance it’s fertile direct response territory for AARP to run banner ads in Facebook to 64 year olds offering benefits upon retirement. Likewise serving banners to Forbes magazine readers, filtered by technical terms related to investment vehicles, might be a reasonable place to drive responses.

By contrast, an orthopedic surgeon in Duluth, Minnesota might buy Facebook Ads to be shown to every local user who likes “soccer, playing soccer, playing soccer with my daughter, watching my son play soccer,” etc. The goal would not be direct response in this case, but rather an inexpensive way to remain top of mind in the soccer mom and dad community in Duluth, in case their child ever needs surgery. We still call this branding.

Great ROI for direct response successes in search spoiled us big time. Heck, search engine marketing has been so very effective that even contextual networks yielded plenty of direct response, even in traditional branding spaces. However more and more the gazillions of impressions available in contextual space, especially socially targeted, are making brand marketers drool.

Choose thy KPI well

It’s important for brand managers to have realistic expectations. Don’t be afraid to brand in contextual space. It’s crucial to establish realistic goals and get stakeholders (like your boss) to buy in. That .002 % CTR and .6% conversion rate looks much different in light of branding expectations. Don’t miss opportunities to define demographic segments as promising for direct response. Above all, don’t be seduced by the glamor and specificity of direct response search.

When I first started my marketing career, we had to make decisions regarding the likelihood of ROI from direct response marketing. When no direct response pathways were reasonably predictable, we reached for the branding option. These days social PPC and other contextual networks offer excellent CPM values for branding applications. The old has become new again. For many marketers, it’s time to get back to basics.

That said, somewhere to the left of that ethical line in the sand, there’s a suite of killer competitive tactics, fully defensible to even the most sensitive and principled brands and their attorneys. Of course, always consult with Facebook’s terms of service and your legal team to make sure proposed tactics follow the rules and the laws of whatever country you’re geo-targeting.

Facebook subterfuge

There has been quite a bit of buzz lately over nasty tactics purveyed by a few bad-affiliate-apples who, unfortunately, cross the line. Facebook’s powerful PPC targeting features make the platform rife for spammy abuse.

Facebook’s do-it-yourself PPC does not target keywords representing searches. Rather PPC keywords correspond to interest-segments, which define clusters of Facebook users, flagged by Facebook according to its targeting algorithm.

Here’s Facebook’s public explanation of the targeting parameters (read this carefully).

“Keywords are based on interests, activities, and favorite books, TV shows, movies, or job titles that users list in their Facebook profiles. They may also come from the names of groups or Pages users belong to or are fans of. For example, if you choose to target the keyword “Dave Matthews Band,” then your ad will only display on users’ accounts that have listed Dave Matthews Band in the “Favorite Music” section on their profile, or are members of a Dave Matthews Band group or Facebook Page.”

From our experience, Facebook does a terrific job targeting users. There are plenty of community members who clearly self-identify occupations, interests, who they follow, what they buy and lots of other useful information. Serving banner ads on these users’ sidebar is a beautifully insidious tactic. Though this flavor of walk-by-traffic marketing is about interrupting users (not search), it’s very highly targeted. Traffic click though ratios are similar to Google’s Content Network and conversions often better. If Facebook’s campaign tools indicate a certain amount of users are interested in “Oprah Winfrey,” chances are pretty good those Facebook users are actually interested in Oprah.

What about brands?

Suffice to say that Facebook’s willingness to target users “interested” in other companies’ brand-terms is an outstanding opportunity for creative and cunning brand managers. Interest-segments for brands are pretty short tail, meaning Pepsi and Coke are much more likely to have a statistically relevant demographic segment, while, even large, local corporations may not show up as a Facebook PPC targeting options. Don’t worry if you’re company is small. There will nearly always be bigger fish with large and relevant followings to raid. Just think about the targeting power for a start-up soft drink company, aiming squarely at 291,500 Facebook users, chattering about Pepsi enough to be flagged, in the ad platform as interested parties.

The marketing assignment

That’s all well and good, but how does a marketer use such tools. Here’s an example. Say I’m working for the Letterman show and my KPI (key performance indicator) is to recruit Jay Leno’s fans by getting them to click on Letterman’s Facebook PPC ad and visit my landing page. Facebook identifies 107,280 users over 18 in the United States interested in “Leno” or “Jay Leno.” There’s 88,360 users interested in “Letterman,” “David Letterman” or “Dave Letterman.”

The recent Superbowl commercial featuring Leno, Letterman and Oprah was a terrific opportunity, because there was fleeting public-warmth between camps. Combine this with the fact that we can target obvious Leno-lovers directly in Facebook and we’ve got potent marketing stew. Here’s the video, in case you’ve been living in a cave:

The KPI & hook

There are as many methods as madmen for these types of tactics. Let’s have a look at one twisted possibility using the Letterman/Leno scenario. Let’s say to objective is to incite Facebook PPC visitors to click through to Letterman’s landing page and login via FacebookConnect. We aim to leverage transient good will or festered hate between camps, to generate subscriptions and crucial demographic data for later use.

The hook is our offer to reveal premium video monolog outtakes, where Letterman discusses Leno and the Superbowl commercial. It would be an added bonus to incite visitors to comment or otherwise engage surrounding the Superbowl commercial. Finally, the home run KPI would be to goad Leno into responding on-air. We plan on “leaking” the existence of the ads to Leno’s crew. It would be awesome booty to have Leno get mad at the ads.

It’s reasonable to assume that there is some crossover amongst common (and uncommon) fans. Count on this fact: There are probably plenty of fanatics who love one of the comedians and hate other(s), like me. That said even if all Letterman fans cross over to Leno, which is unlikely, the remaining differential of 18,920 Leno-lovers are fresh meat for Letterman.

For the sake of simplicity, we think there are 3 basic user profile-types amongst Leno fans:

• Like Leno / dislike Letterman
• Like Leno / like Letterman
• Like Leno / Letterman-Neutral

Remember, we’re marketing to Leno fans. Since we know all these Facebook users like Leno, their feelings or ambivalence towards Letterman can be leveraged.

Sample Ads What’s great about this opportunity is that this particular video content just may be irresistible to all three fan types. Let’s target Facebook PPC ads to Leno-lovers and test the following headline and ad concepts, against clicks and landing page conversions. My comments are in [brackets].

Headline options:

• Jay Leno Secrets Revealed [interesting because we don’t say who reveals what secrets]
• Will Leno Hate Letterman? [pure hyperbole, and does not lie]
• Will Jay Leno Be Pissed? [pure hyperbole, and does not lie]
• Leno & the Secret Video [right, secret to who? Does not say Leno is in the video.]
• Love Leno? Take The Test [It’s pretty nasty to offer something like this and route visitors to a page that shows a video of David Letterman asking 10 questions about Leno. I love it!]
• Can’t Stand Letterman? [no risk of violating brand trademarks, obviously Letterman grants permission. Leno does not have to]

Body Copy Options:

• What really happened backstage during the Leno, Letterman & Oprah Superbowl commercial shoot? View free video now. [remember, this video is Letterman, discussing things.]
• New Letterman video unloads about Leno. View the uncensored video now for free. [Whether or not the Leno fans dig Letterman or not, this is a pretty hooky pitch.]
• Prove your Leno-love by answering 10 simple questions. Win an iPod. Totally free.
• New Letterman video unloads on your favorite you-know-who! View the uncensored video now for free. [no brand trademark issues]

Anyhow, you get the picture. In reality, we test dozens of headlines/body copy combos, from lots of different angles, for these types of campaigns. There is nearly always a combination of hyperbolic headline, provocative body, contest gift and landing page content to accomplish hyper-competitive KPIs. We soon learn what type of appeal results in clicks and conversions to other companies’ fans.

Shrewd marketers have probably been targeting competitors’ fans since the dawn of human communication. Search, social media and carefully targeted PPC provides insight and access to other brands’ fans. If trademarks and other legal or terms of service limitations limit the ability to use brand terms in ads, find a work-around. Customer passion for similar brands can be easily turned to encouraging them to have a look at yours.

The ramifications of these stunning statistics, which truly reflect the massive girth of Facebook’s 350 million users, simply can’t be stressed enough to brand managers. To my mind, failure to consider Facebook PPC might now be considered negligent, analogous to dismissing the importance of using traditional PPC for branding.

Let’s analyze reasonable statistics and a case study of a fictional company, culled from an average of moderately large brands we provide services for. We’ll call it “ACME Widget Company.” This post offers a format for presenting data to decision makers. Just fill in your own data and adapt as prudent to embrace the realities of products your brand proffers and the function of your site.

ACME PPC monthly impressions volume. ACME buys traditional Pay Per Click text ads on Google, Yahoo and Bing on an ongoing basis for branding purposes. The value has been proven over time. The KPIs (key performance indicators) for PPC brand advertising are: branding and to engage visitors in compelling content to further support the brand by off-page social engagement.

Success is directly measurable by:

• Average pageviews per click including return visits over 30 days
• Cost per pageview including return visits over 30 days
• Email newsletter subscriptions within 30 days
• Exit clicks to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube during any session

Indirect (not directly measurable) by:

• YouTube channel views
• Facebook fan page signups
• Site’s blog content broadcast and rebroadcast via Twitter, Facebook (as measurable via internal search) and other channels as measured by a monitoring service like PostRank

Search PPC keywords driving impressions are typically a mix of brand, category and product terms. Facebook impressions are generated by marketing to users identified as passionate about (“interested in”) brand terms and categories highly related to ACME’s products. Remember, this is not “search” traffic. Nobody’s typing anything into a box to seek information.

For instance, if ACME is selling non-stick cookie sheets, Facebook segments might include users interested in “cookie baking” and “cookie baking recipes,” in addition to ACME’s brand name permutations.

As a straight up math problem, it’s pretty much a no-brainer for ACME to market with Facebook PPC to scale their KPIs. The lift is palpable. Though the site’s performance is not stellar, the client is redoing the site and results are still somewhat decent. It’s reasonable to expect that any on-site performance lifts due to improvement will scale to somewhat evenly for both search engine PPC and Facebook PPC.

PPC keyword search traffic on Google, Yahoo, Bing

Here are some stats for both a traditional search advertising campaign (ACME does not market in content networks), a Facebook campaign, and the lift provided by the Facebook campaign.

• 09’ Monthly average Google AdWords impressions: 36,589,022
• 09’ Monthly average Yahoo and Bing PPC impressions: 4,457,198
• Average Google, Yahoo, Bing CTR (click through ratio): 2.6%
• Average CPC (cost per click): $.78
• Annual monthly PPC cost: $832,417
• Average monthly PPC traffic: 1,067,201
• Average PPC pageviews per click including return visits over 90 days: 2.1
• Total monthly average PPC pageviews: 2,241,122
• Cost per PPC pageview including return visits over 30 days: $.37
• Average monthly email/newsletter subscriptions (.001 of PPC pageviews): 2241
• Exit clicks to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (.0017) of PPC pageviews): 3810

Facebook PPC “interest” traffic via Google, Yahoo and Bing PPC campaigns

• 2009 monthly average Facebook PPC impressions: 4,457,198
• Average Facebook CTR: .0098%
• Average CPC: $.51
• Annual monthly PPC Cost: $22,277
• Average Facebook PPC traffic: 43,681
• Average PPC pageviews per click including return visits over 90 Days: 3.6
• Total monthly average PPC pageviews: 157,251
• Cost per PPC pageview including return visits over 30 days: $.14
• Average monthly email/newsletter subscriptions (.001 of PPC pageviews): 157
• Exit clicks to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (.0124%) of PPC pageviews): 1950

Analysis of Facebook lift

• Cost: Facebook PPC increases costs +2.6%
• Impressions: Facebook PPC lifts impressions +10.8%
• Traffic: Facebook PPC lifts traffic +4.1%
• Average PPC pageviews: Facebook lifts +.58%
• Average monthly email/newsletter subscriptions: Facebook lifts +7%
• Exit clicks to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (1.24%) of PPC pageviews): Facebook lifts social media exits by 51%

Wow! It only stands to reason that users who click from social media are more likely to exit to a social media KPI. The cost differential from traditional PPC to Facebook PPC is likely window, which will close, as more big brands notice the opportunity. The numbers above are averages of several projects we’ve worked on. We’re already noticing significant price increases in some categories. That said, for now it’s the wild (and often uncontested) west.

If that’s not enough, here are nine more compelling reasons to run an ongoing Facebook PPC program:

• 32,460 Users “Like” ACME and Are not Friends of ACME fan page yet.
• 12,454,060 identified users and 19-20 million estimated Facebook users are devoted to categories related ACME Products.
• 10% PPC traffic lift at-will for any traffic related KPI (aren’t they all?)
• Defend crucial space vs. negligence: this is a simple matter of reputation management
• Every Facebook impression is a priceless branding vehicle
• Environment so completely viral, any message can explode, diluting the global CPA
• PPC (Facebook and AdWords) proven avenue to build fan page
• Demographic detail on impressions and users is state of the art, low cost. Use responder demographics data to learn more about customers.
• Facebook + AdWords Data = Priceless insight to advise SEO process, messages, content design and organic conversion funnels

Do you experience a similar lift with your Facebook campaigns? Please share your experiences in the comments section below.

We’ll follow the 9 clues with a simple questionnaire any stakeholder in [brand’s] success can forward to the marketing manager to help improve [brand's] public image.

1. Google rarely shows ads for [brand name] because of “low quality score,” and when the ads do display the destination URL points to the brand’s homepage. This means in part that when users do search for [brand] they don’t click on the ads. Even the freakin’ brand doesn’t have a clue what the brand is about. This is a true sign that [brand] = sucks!

2. For searches that are [brand name] + [product category] (e.g. “acme lawnmowers”) AdWords indicates “low search volume.” This means that (tragically) pretty much nobody associates [product category] with [brand].

3. Due to unfortunate lack of foresight, the initials formed by your [brand word 1] [brand word 2] [brand word 3] spell out an incredibly difficult SEO challenge—for example, “Masters’ Recording Institute” = “MRI”—fail! If anyone ever does hear about this brand, they’ll search for it and find medical equipment instead of music. A lack of control over alternate expressions of brand can mean weakness.

4. Every post in [brand’s] RSS feed sports a big whopping zero in PostRank. Post rank is a free tool that measures chatter as it expands virally through social channels PostRank deems an accurate measure of reach—for instance, Delicious.com bookmarks, Retweets, comments on the post, FriendFeed views, etc. are important measures. That big honker goose-egg zero indicates total lack of engagement surrounding the feed posts. Lack of engagement can mean that nobody cares about the content.

5. Analytics exposes keyword traffic representing an unforeseen inversion of [brand word 1] and [brand word 2] which form the words of a well-known pornographic slang phrase. The smutty extrapolations run above mid-tail permutations of [brand] searches (we’ve actually seen this phenomenon). Of course the “bounce” rate was rather high, but on the other hand it would be even creepier if these particular keyword visitors hung out longer.

6. The company Twitter manager follows 2,056 people and has 154 followers. 75 of the followers are rebroadcast bots. 27 are employees. Most of the rest have 30 or fewer followers and sell stuff like Viagra.

7. The brand manager screwed up and, in a rush to secure the vanity URL because the fan page had no fans, registered Facebook.com/[Brand] to her personal account, which is the only place she made 578 friends for the brand. Friends include her mom, sisters and a motorcycle club in South Dakota she belongs to.

8. A YouTube search for [brand] yields SERPs featuring a high school rock band from Toledo featuring a song entitled, “My Baby is a [brand word 2] b_tch.” Ouch.

9. Including [brand] in PPC ads lowers the conversion rate.

Questions for brand managers

So, if your brand is exhibiting some of the unfortunate characteristics noted above, what to do? Start by asking these questions, and seeing if you can find good solutions to the problems.

1. What is the AdWords PPC Quality Score for [brand] and why? A low quality score for literal brand searches indicates a problem.
2. How often do users search for [brand] compared to similar brands? If users rarely search, then nobody knows the brand.
3. How do alternate keyword permutations of [brand] such as common misspellings, initials and so on rank in unpersonalized organic search? Mid-tail [brand] keyword expressions should rank at or near the top of the SERPs for a healthy brand.
4. How do posts from the [brand’s] feed score in PostRank? Consistently low PostRank scores means low engagement and we may be blogging to nobody.
5. Do analytics reveal bastardizations of [brand] which are of concern? Are any of them gross misunderstandings that should be addressed? Consistent site traffic on nasty keywords formed by brand words can be indicative of SERPs confusion and lack of brand prowess.
6. What is the ratio of Twitter followers to followed? Following many more tweople than follow back come off as spammy and might mean that twitter/[brand] offers little value to users.
7. Does brand have any friends in Facebook and what account does the vanity URL point to? Facebook/[brand] should point to a Facebook page and not someone’s personal profile.
8. What do the SERPs look like for YouTube [brand] queries? Lack of prominence in YouTube for [brand] and common permutations can demonstrate weakness in the public’s eye.
9. How does using [brand] in PPC ads effect conversion? Low or negative impact on conversion can indicate no or poor brand equity.

Measuring a brand’s success past raw sales numbers was difficult in previous generations of search. However such determinations are now supported by analytics, engagement, ranking and PPC data. Use this simple checklist as a starting point for evaluating [brand’s] prowess.

Humans do what humans do

In high school I heard from a mutual acquaintance that “Joyce,” a young woman I admired from afar, mentioned me in a favorable light behind the scenes at drama club rehearsal. The “mention” tweaked my attention in ways best be described as instinctual and primal. This boy was amped.

My heart beat in time with teenage steps as I cruised her locker, read between the lines of every word in her yearbook profile and respectfully observed her movements the next day at rehearsal. Heightened feelings of affection overcame me as my imagination lit up. It was extremely powerful to hear that I was top-of-mind for such a cool girl. I wanted to know everything about her, simply because I knew she had a predilection to like me enough to tell her friends. Later after we became very close, I learned that her dialog with friends was meant for me to discover because she liked me and thought this would be a good way to catch my attention and interest. Shrewd girl.

Not much has changed. I get between 5-30 alerts from KnowEm, TrackUr and Google Alerts each day, where others somehow mention my name, that of our company or links to something we’ve written. My first reaction is nearly always the same, to follow the notification link real-time to the source in order to ascertain the tone and intent of what the writer just said about me. I wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity to engage where our brand is loved or defend turf when disparaged.

Such seems to be human nature, a hard-wired curiosity that as a social media marketer I’ve observed in many. Here’s how to leverage other bloggers curiosity to your brand’s advantage, by employing tactics which instinctively compel people to check out your feed’s content.

Size up your targets

First, automate category-research by setting up alerts for keywords important to your brand. An “alert” means email notification regarding any newly published instances of each keyword indexed in Google. Evaluate the authority of each publication that generates an alert.

For websites (including blogs) we look to mR (mozRank) and domain mT (mozTrust), which are third party measurements of strength from SEOMoz’s Linkscape. We deem domain trust (domain mT) greater than 3.0 and homepage mR greater than 3.5, as the minimum ”authority levels” to make the writer a worthy target. Tip: Crosscheck mR with Google Toolbar PageRank. Since Linkscape does not know about Google penalties, a Google PR of 0 combined with mR of anything greater than 0, means there is a reasonable chance Google has spanked the site and the blogger should be avoided.

Also look to RSS subscriber-count, Technorati rating, quality and quantity of inbound links in Yahoo SiteExplorer and PostRank. All of these measurements can be good indicators of the engagement the publication generates. Ask yourself: “If this blogger wrote about our brand, would it matter?”

Remember, these are bloggers posting content on the subject of categories surrounding your brand’s products. Your goal is to build a list if authority bloggers and their posts that feature content that your brand’s feed readers will find interesting. Start a spreadsheet to keep track. Weed out any publications which seemingly may offer direct competition to your brand’s products, including affiliate marketing like AdSense on the page. There’s nothing more frustrating than linking out to a blog post hawking your competitors’ brands. We’re looking for complimentary and non-competitive resources of note to offer your readers.

Cite targets as resources

In your day-to-day process of content creation, find ways to mention bloggers and link out to their posts. Remember how this works. Any blogger worthy of your attention is likely monitoring their reputation. They will find out that their name was mentioned or post linked to. Anecdotally I can tell you that a significant percentage of those you cite will visit your post to see what was said.

There are many methods to incorporate references to blog posts in your content. Here are a few that have worked really well for us.

At the bottom of your content, cite “additional resources” and list several posts related to the your content.

Publish periodic link roundups from the automated category research. Daily, weekly or monthly… it’s all-good. Make sure to mention the blogger’s name. The reason periodic link roundups work so well is that the tactic systematically invites blogger after blogger to your content. A daily link roundup in your keyword space that mentions 5 posts X 20 days a month = pinging the reputation monitoring apparatus of your targets 1,200 times a year. It also serves your readers by providing them relevant resources congruent with your brand’s products. It’s a win, win & win situation.

Link out in your posts to other bloggers’ content to clarify concepts. Look for phrases that the average reader might not understand and use the phrases as anchor text for outbound links that explain things. These types of citations delight the bloggers mentioned and a good percentage of them will follow their Google alert to find out what you said. You get bonus points for anchor text that demonstrates an above average understanding of your target.

Don’t ever gush or be gratuitous. One of the first things we counsel community managers to avoid is being over-complimentary to where high praise begins to sound like bs. Let your tasteful use of the bloggers name and content speak for itself and don’t rant on and on about how cool he or she is. If anything, mute praise and let the reference to someone’s great content do the talking.

Never promote content or bloggers you have not checked out and personally vetted. Google and other search engines take note of where your outbound links point. It’s easy to move too fast and link out to “bad neighborhoods,” which search engines could punish you for. Make sure each mention of a blogger’s name and link to their content is a true recommendation from your brand to theirs.

Getting authority bloggers to check out your brand’s feed content can pay dividends. We live in an era where a plugged-in blogger can send so much traffic from social media sites that it can break your server. Every mention and outbound link serves as an invitation, appealing to the most primal of human instincts—our hardwired need to explore what others say about us.

It should also be mentioned that many SEO professionals believe that quantity and quality of outbound links is a significant ranking factor. In that light, reaching out to good quality publications by outbound links serves SEO needs as well as public relations.

Well-executed use of this tactic amounts to a win for all parties: your readers, the bloggers you ping and the brand you’re building. It’s easy to leverage this tactic by reaching out to authority bloggers with these classic methods adapted for our quickly evolving and hypersensitive reputation monitoring environment.

Today I’m going to explore the systematic use of paid channels like AdWords and Facebook ads as channels for intervening in quickly moving public relations incidents. Ads can play an important role as powerful tools for supporting the usual tactics of social media and reputation monitoring/management campaigns. I’ll cite real-world transient PPC mashup scenarios for your own brainstorming.

What is a transient public relations event?

Positive and negative short-lived incidents come at businesses in waves, and often require a marketer’s fast attention. Sometimes they’re planned and other times not. Examples include:

• The New York Times features your brand on the front page Sunday morning.
• Your construction project will block a major city street and the public needs information.
• A brand’s rockstar sports-icon spokesperson gets busted for driving under the influence.
• A Mayo clinic researcher announces a breakthrough in the effort to cure breast cancer.
• You just opened a new manufacturing facility, gainfully employing dozens of local citizens with good jobs.
• Your CEO was just invited to a business lunch at the White House.
• The local university’s women’s hockey team just won the NCAA national championship.
• Any event, either abrupt or planned, that falls under the seven classic nodes of public relations.

Just like classic works of literature, these examples of transient public relations events have beginnings, middles and ends. When these pre-scheduled or accidental ephemeral happenings rear their pretty (or ugly) little heads, we must deal with them, maximizing potential benefits and/or minimizing real damage.

When it comes to transient PPC, we start by boiling things down to straight business objectives by asking the following questions about the episode at hand:

• How does the event affect the public’s perception, aligned with or contrary to our brand’s business objectives?
• Is rapid communication required to serve our customers, dispel misunderstandings, celebrate a victory, diffuse anger, communicate crucial information, stake out positioning to preempt an expected response or reap the benefits of something wonderful? In other words does the transient event warrant a response, to our advantage or defense?
• Would instant keyword domination in search engine results (SERPs) by PPC, in Bing, Yahoo and Google, give an edge in propagating our brand’s message? Is PPC appropriate in this instance and can it be executed tastefully to the brand’s advantage?
• If so, what is the appropriate keyword grid? Should the PPC net be cast further than direct brand name searches?
• Where should the traffic go? There are those who believe that PPC traffic should always point to a brand’s website landing page. Sometimes, though, the best path to branding efforts is to vector traffic to public social media profiles, independent publishers, federal agencies, news stories, press releases or other reputable third-party sites that offer independent opinions or validation.
• Would a Facebook ad be tactically useful and fitting? With over 300 million users, certain constituencies are readily accessible to the savvy marketer’s guile via Facebook advertisements.

Implementing a successful transient PPC campaign

Responsible run-and-gun PPC starts with an open mind and pre-planning. Scheduled events, like the corporate charity ball, product release or new vice presidential hire are theoretically easy. Break down traditional big brand barriers and encourage PR, marketing, advertising and event planning stakeholders to organize PPC support ahead of time.

PPC support of “events of the unplanned kind” can originate as part of the normal reputation-monitoring report and react grid. As a general rule, keywords that alert the online reputation management team about positive or negative situations are reasonable candidates for PPC targeting. It’s normal for brands to judge a suitable response to evolving situations.

Here are a few examples of transient events that could warrant a PR response. I’ll break each possible PPC campaign down by trigger event, keyword grid, goal, alternate goal, message, alternate message, destination URL geo-targeting and run length.

Example #1 – Trigger event (unplanned): Mid-authority blogger writes a complimentary article about a brand’s products and links to lead generation page.

• Keyword grid: Branded terms, category keywords.
• Goal: Send quiet traffic to reward blogs that support the brand. Garner good will in blog community. Delight bloggers who probably watch analytics and monitor their reputation.
• Alternate goal: Drive secondary traffic from blog post we’re supporting, back to our lead generation page.
• Message: “Introducing the [blogName] blog.”
• Alternate message: Use of the brand name.
• Geotargeting: National.
• Run length: One week, with a goal of diverting 30% of our normal direct brand searches to this blog.

Example #2 – Trigger event (planned): Brand’s parent company is hiring 45 new full time employees in a community of 65,000 and plans to build a new factory.

• Keyword grid: Branded terms, name of city, city services, HR recruitment searches for factory’s skill set.
• Goal: Brand quality of life and company commitment to community, visitors, locals and potential employees.
• Alternate goal: Raise awareness of brand/company to locals plugged in enough to seek out city services by internet search.
• Message: “[Brand], Proud to be a member of our community.”
• Alternate message: “We’re hiring.”
• Geotargeting: Statewide.
• Run length: One month – two weeks prior to factory opening and two weeks afterward.

Example #3 – Trigger event (unplanned): Brand product results in a child’s death and a product recall.

• Keyword grid: Branded terms, “child’s name,” [cause of death]
• Goal: Reassure the public, clarify what products are affected, and provide vital information for safety.
• Alternate goal: Links for SEO, with a plan for diffusing unflattering keywords from news and other high authority sites.
• Message: Disseminate straight-up information.
• Alternate message: “[Brand] cares and operates in the interest public’s safety first.”
• Geotargeting: Statewide.
• Run length: Indefinite as defined by daily SERPs testing, analytics, buzz, etc.

Example #4 – Trigger event (unplanned): The New York Times features your brand on its front page Sunday morning.

• Keyword grid: Branded terms, keywords customers use to vet the featured product (e.g “[product] review” and “[product] information.”
• Goal: Brand the product/company as worthy of such acclaim, to folks searching specifically for the brand.
• Alternate goal: Secondary traffic.
• Message: “Check out [brand] [product] in yesterday’s New York Times.”
• Alternate message: “[Brand] is notable, legitimate and mainstream.”
• Geotargeting: National.
• Run length: 1-3 weeks.

Paid search campaigns can be a valuable weapon for influencing perception with transient events, which traditionally are associated with public relations. Though not always appropriate, instant prominence via paid listings in SERPs can be a useful arrow in the marketing quiver. To be successful with such campaigns, it’s important to communicate clearly with other departments and pre-plan goals and tactics.

Traditionally due diligence surrounding the naming process involved trademark search, category and creative considerations. Now that’s no longer enough. Crucial naming decisions must also include rigorous SEO, social, reputation and paid search analysis. Here’s a checklist of factors to take into consideration to assure your product name is search-friendly from the outset.

SEO matters: What words do customers use?

Mining fairly absolute demographic research, regarding how customers ask for things via search, is a timeless foundation. For more than a decade advertisers have had excellent perspective regarding users’ search vocabulary. That said it’s astounding how many well-meaning folks waltz into our office with new product names without nary a regard for easily available data!

Say your product is a business or package about fixing automobiles. A quick look using any number of free keyword tools, reveals that “auto repair shop” is a much more popular concept amongst searchers than “car repair shop.” In fact, pretty much any comparison between “auto” and “car” including clarifiers like “manuals” and “estimates” skew decidedly towards the word “auto.” While it’s obviously important to also target potential customers who prefer the word “car,” it makes sense to name the product itself using the word “auto.”

Include category names & partials when possible

Since any product’s name itself is often cited as anchor text in reviews, rants and blog posts it is often beneficial to include a category in the actual product name. First instance, consider calling your new pole vault product a “Mambo Track & Field Stick” or “Mambo Track Stick” instead of just a “Mambo Stick.” This helps solidify the product’s place in-category as associated links roll in. Partials are beneficial too, as Google likes an assortment of relevant anchor text pointing at your site.

Identify social media profiles that are already taken

There can be significant SEO and social ramifications if a malevolent soul squats on your product’s name in social media properties. In fact one of the first places we look to solve reputation management issues are social media profiles in Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Knowing about profiles in more obscure sites that focus on a niche can be useful as well. It’s essential to evaluate the social profile landscape as one chooses a product name.

The word “Triton” has been used by many product names over the years. It will probably be used for others, where the category of products and services is unique under trademark law. We use a service called KnowEm to check user names to see if any have been taken for our proposed product name. Note that while many communities don’t have a “Triton” user, Twitter does. For us, that’s enough to invalidate a proposed product name.

Determine whether there’s existing reputation baggage

A new product should start off with a clean slate. A decision to create another “Triton” product in a new category (or any name similar to or including pieces of others) starts off with the baggage of all Tritons’ that have gone before. Even though the bad sentiment surrounds other products that only contain our new name, count on some users dismissing a product out-of-hand at first gape, without taking the time to differentiate.

Check searches for your product’s new name on “[name] sucks,” “[name] horrible” and other words people search with when they’re mad. Choose product names that leave baggage at the door.

How competitive are the organic SERPs?

Say someone’s considering naming a new restaurant “Blue Fondue” and everyone loves the name. Though there are no apparent eateries by that name on the first page of Google search results, there is some of out-of-category competition to complicate things.

In this case the web design company-competition is only slight, with some but not much authority, so good SEO will bear fruit and place our new restaurant on page. Don’t forget to check Bing and (yes, at least for now) Yahoo.

Try to avoid ambiguity, even if clever

Should a sleek new wine-category refrigeration device be a wine “cooler” or “refrigerator?” Well, the research is a bit fuzzy. There is a popular bottled drink category called “wine cooler,” the keyword also means refrigeration device and the research is therefore not conclusive.

In the old world we’d be tempted to call this thing a “wine cooler” for the double meaning cute factor. In the new world we might not want to take on “wine cooler” SEO, not because it could not be accomplished, but because the stress is optional.

Don’t neglect YouTube!

Depending on which stats you believe, YouTube is the second or third most used search engine in the world. To not check YouTube SERPs for competition is reckless. Here’s the “Triton” search. Let’s not call the thing a Triton, OK?

Can you secure the literal keyword domain?

Lots of evidence suggests that exact match keyword domains are the fast track to ranking even in competitive SERPs. As a standing rule, we don’t encourage clients to create new product names where unless the literal domain is available.

At very best, failure to consider search when naming products can make the marketing process unnecessarily difficult. Worst-case scenarios include difficulty ranking for the product’s name and other lost opportunities.

Obviously, using well-trodden names as a component of a new product’s moniker is a more risky proposition than making up new names. One solution that works well is to make up names like “The Mighty Rankinstanker” or “My Fuzzy Mistbinger.” :)

In addition to traditional category, creative and legal people, engage your search team early in the naming process of a new product to maximize chances for overall marketing and promotional success.