 Werth Appears on ONN’s Ohio Means BusinessVice President Kim Ratcliff was recently interviewed by ONN’s Mike Kallmeyer on the topic of social media. She set the “View from the Top,” highlighting Werth’s counsel to clients to guide their social media marketing investment. See the clip here, by clicking on “Paul Werth” in the video viewer.
Total Internet Presence: MeasurabilityHow do you get noticed online? In three words, it’s about your Total Internet Presence, or TIP. This post kicks off a series on the seven elements of Total Internet Presence, a process we apply to make your digital brand more exciting, visible, transparent, accessible and competitive. Today’s post is about the element of measurability — the yardstick for your online presence. There are some very sophisticated tools for measuring your “worth” on the Web, and most often we refer these as Web analytics. What are Web analytics? The Web Analytics Association defines Web analytics as “the objective tracking, collection, measurement, reporting and analysis of quantitative Internet data to optimize websites and web marketing initiatives.” That sounds very academic, doesn’t it? Bottom line, Web analytics provide answers to a couple of fundamental questions:
Why measure? There’s an old saying, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Taking that a bit further, you can’t improve what you don’t measure. Some specific benefits of using Web analytics are:
What to measure? All of the data in the world are useless if you haven’t established some specific metrics (i.e., measurements of success). Do you know if you’re winning or losing? Some of the most common website metrics – and the data used to determine if they’re being met – are: Increase site traffic:
Improve site visibility:
Improve Site Engagement:
Increase Conversions:
How do you measure up? Drop me a note here if you want to look into assessing your company or organization’s measurability. We can discuss the analytics that will best meet your unique needs.
TV Meets the InternetOpening up closed channels gets the creative juices flowing. And Google TV will make it happen, according to The Official Google Blog: “Google TV is a new experience for television that combines the TV that you already know with the freedom and power of the Internet. With Google Chrome built in, you can access all of your favorite websites and easily move between television and the web. This opens up your TV from a few hundred channels to millions of channels of entertainment across TV and the web. Your television is also no longer confined to showing just video. With the entire Internet in your living room, your TV becomes more than a TV — it can be a photo slideshow viewer, a gaming console, a music player and much more.” You will no longer need to imagine a world where you turn on the TV and content is displayed based on your preferences. This is now a place where YouTube, network and cable TV converge, and your website can stream all of them with user-generated comments — in real time! This announcement got me excited about the possibilities for advertising and content. No doubt that Google will incorporate AdWords, but this will bring interesting ways to distribute brand content. Integrating the Web browser into TV will further user control on how to find, interact with and share content. As the Internet continues to open up traditionally closed media and channels become more integrated, marketers will need to enhance their strategic approach. Telling a brand’s story that engages an audience will continue to get more complex — because we are creating the medium and the message. What about your marketing approach today? Is your brand positioned to embrace the convergence of a digital world? What possibilities do you see in the new TV?
Getting Your Organization into Social MediaIn today’s media world, social media savvy is essential. Why does it matter for businesses small, medium and large? Consider these staggering statistics:
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News or noise? That’s the question facing journalists and those who need accurate reporting …which would be all of us … today. The greatest shifts in standard reporting practices since yellow journalism are accelerating, several recent surveys show.
A great surge among reporters using social media tools … blogs, videos, podcasts and Twitter … has taken place. The latest Survey of Media in the Wired World found that almost 70 percent of journalists use social media, up by 28 percentage points since 2008. Nearly 80 percent of journalists said bloggers are important opinion-shapers, and 91 percent thought social media actually enhanced journalism.
Is that just Putting on a Happy Face? Maybe. Other surveys show journalists are deeply concerned about their profession. The disappearance of gatekeepers (i.e., editors) who monitor objectivity and check facts is not such a good thing. Neither are layoffs, which are frequent among working journalists. Those who are left have much larger workloads, smaller traditional news spaces and many demands to produce content for multiple platforms. Of course, social media have opened up many new sources and given journalists a chance to actually have two-way discussions with their readers and viewers.
It’s no surprise that a recent survey showed most journalists find that public relations firms are more important than ever to their work. Public relations professionals, often former reporters themselves, can help working journalists find good ideas for stories, provide accurate relevant information, and locate experts and others who are good, solid sources. Working together, we can make sure legitimate reporting will be heard over all the noise online and in traditional media. And that’s good news.
What are your thoughts about this shift? Contact me by commenting here, or e-mail me at ktwinem@paulwerth.com.
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I don’t know about you, but I can’t watch CNN without reading the scroll at the bottom of the screen. I’ll listen to what’s being said, but for some reason, I can’t stop focusing on that scroll.
Why? First, people just love to read headlines. I admit, I’m not a huge fan of reading books, my attention span just won’t let me last that long. But put a magazine in front of me or e-mail me a quick news link, and most likely, I’m gonna read it. Second, people are naturally visual. They like to look at something and create their own story in their head. Everyone has a story, or at least likes to imagine one.
That’s why kinetic type is the new “it thing” in advertising. We use type to illustrate a script, create cool motion graphics and literally bring the words to life. The moving type creates energy and excitement, and with all that, who wouldn’t want to buy the product?
Here’s an example we just released:
Ohio Industries, Grow Your Future
The other benefit is that the message is being delivered in two, sometimes three ways at the same time. The graphics are spelling out the script word-for-word, and the words are animating to represent their meaning. Sometimes, a voice-over reads the entire script. Talk about hitting you over the head. The message is undoubtedly being delivered — loud and clear.
The kinetic approach is really taking off. You see it everywhere. There’s some good, some great and some…not so great. In cases of the “not so great,” the creators really lacked a creative direction. With technology at our fingertips, and stock imagery and footage so readily available, sometimes creativy is dictated by what’s available out there on the Web, and not by what should ultimately be custom-created specifically to deliver the appropriate message in a style that is consistent throughout the entire piece to hold it together.
Even though kinetic is a new approach to delivering brand messages, it still needs to be true to brand standards. Today advertisers are looking for cost-effective ways of delivering messages as quickly and precisely as possible. Kinetic is one answer to that question. Couple kinetic with viral video, and you’ve got yourself a campaign.
Werth has a talented team of creative professionals on staff, specializing in motion graphics, editing, shooting and delivering your advertising message on time and on budget. We understand how to deliver strategic branding and can help to determine whether kinetic is the best tool to help you get there. Give me a call at 614.224.8114 or e-mail me at kwaldron@paulwerth.com, and let’s talk about your next brand opportunity.
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Hello, my name is Kim, and I’m a word geek. Fair warning: I consider Scrabble to be a competitive sport. And I’m not a supporter of counting proper names as per the “new rules” of the game. Sounds like cheating to me.
In college, I willingly decided to write a thesis on Cajun French’s metamorphosis into English through gradual adoption of English words. What people do with language is fascinating to me. This natural curiosity is what led me to a career in communications, and eventually I came face to face with another kind of linguistics — the keywords leveraged in search and digital marketing.
A recent AdAge post about the future of social media got me thinking about the semantic Web — #10 on this list of 2012 trends. Instead of rankings based upon everyone’s search frequency, search results will be ranked based upon each individual’s affinity for search terms. This will be derived from social media conversations with keyword mentions.
This change is taking search to a new level. Filtering search results based upon previously expressed interests is nothing new in the retail world. Most retail clothing sites already give me handy “You may also like…” suggestions. Now, generic search will serve up the same filtering, across the Web.
What does the semantic Web mean for marketers?
Where do you see this trend going during the next three years? Are you already planning for the implications on your target audience promotions? Plan ahead now, while you have the luxury. Contact me by commenting here, or e-mail me at kratcliff@paulwerth.com.
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Today’s news media are a far cry from what my mother experienced in the Walter Cronkite-era of my youth. Social media invigorate our communications, broaden our networks and make content-sharing much more immediate.
How will our communications possibilities be transformed by the mainstreaming of social media this year? Here are my thoughts:
Simply reading a two-dimensional paper at the kitchen table in the morning like my mother used to do is no longer enough. We must be able to experience the news through our senses, in multiple dimensions – along with friends on the other side of the world.
The kitchen table “newspaper” experience just got personal, global and substantive. And, because new media are breaking down communications barriers, even my mother is tapping into the possibilities. She recently joined Facebook.
If you are marveling at the new media mix and relishing the possibilities, drop me a line at kratcliff@paulwerth.com, or comment here. I look forward to reading your thoughts – and starting the dialogue.
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What’s that sound? It’s the sands of time, the ticking clock and and my unfinished to-do list — all being eaten whole by Facebook, Twitter and my blog. Prioritizing social media time is a challenge in today’s communications world. How do people draw the line between true engagement and online time-wasting?
I was recently asked a question about this on a panel. The question was:
How do you find hours in the day to “do” social media for yourself and clients? Doesn’t it take up all of your time?
The answer? It can — if you let it. The best way to carve out the time is to set limits on how much time to devote to each social media footprint. The worst thing for me is to leave my time wide open. Like most of us, I can’t usually afford to let my time evaporate. I’ve got a family to get home to, client deadlines to meet and other normal life commitments.
I try to spend 30 minutes on each Twitter account per day — 15 each in the morning and the afternoon or evening. I keep myself focused on content within my industry areas of interest and don’t get sidetracked. With the blog, it’s a couple of hours a week. Just one post a week, usually. And then I’m reading others’ blogs through my reader, usually an hour a day.
Then there’s Facebook. How much sharing is enough, really? I try to limit myself to sharing just a few items per day of others’ content, with a couple of status updates and/or content of my own.
It does add up, all told. At least 10 hours a week is a standard commitment for just one social media account.
What are others’ experiences? Amber Naslund, director of community at Radian6, recently put up a good series of posts about time management in the midst of social media. Bottom line, it’s about knowing one’s goals and setting priorities aligned with them. She shares helpful information to guide social media priorities.
For me, it’s all about the balance. Easy to write about, not easy to strike! DM me on Twitter with questions, or leave a comment here on the blog if you have ideas that work for your own social media time management.
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We’re extremely proud of the media attention we have attracted in the lead-up to National Adoption Day 2009, Saturday, November 21.
We invite you to check out below some of our biggest media successes for the campaign to increase foster care adoptions. Check back as we’ll be adding video from more major interviews about the campaign here.
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Werth President and CEO Sandra Harbrecht leads an energetic team of executive-level communicators and rising stars with core strengths in integrated digital, public relations, advertising, public affairs and research solutions.
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