13 Takeaways from HubSpot’s The Science of Timing Webinar #TimeSci

Posted By Jaime on Mar 29th, 2011

HubSpot hosted a great webinar today with social media expert Dan Zarella on The Science of Timing, a primer on best practices for timing your emails, social media updates, and blog posts.  Dan has been conducting timing-based research over the past two years and compiled his knowledge into a wealth of tips and takeaways for marketers with questions like “When’s the best time to send that email?” and much more.

Here are some of the most useful takeaways we heard:

Twitter & Facebook Timing Tips

Retweet activity is heaviest between 2 – 5 PM (EST). Tweet later in the day and later in the week for best results.Saturdays and Sundays are amongst the highest days for Twitter click-through rate (CTR).@DanZarella says: “Don’t be afraid to tweet too much!” If anything, tweet MORE!“Don’t crowd your content; give your links some breathing room. If you post a link on Twitter, let it marinate before tweeting again.Weekends are the best time for sharing things on Facebook.For marketing purposes, there is very little difference between a B2B consumer and a B2C consumer when it comes to timing of social media communications.

Email Timing Tips

Email open rates AND bounce rates tend to be higher on the weekends because people are able to give more attention to emails then.Best email practice:  send email blasts early in the morning to take advantage of contra-competitive timing. (Contra-competitive timing = when you go against the grain of crowd timing to have more of a chance to be heard and get your content noticed.)The newer a subscriber is to your to your email list, the more likely they are to open your emails and click on the links.

Blog Timing Tips

Blog post pageviews are highest on Mondays.Posting a blog on the weekend is your best bet for getting the most amount of comments.Blog posts published early, between 6 – 7 AM (EST), tend to get the most links because of the linkerati’s ravenous material-sourcing habits.Blog more frequently!  There is very little benefit to blogging infrequently.

Want to read more timing tips?  Follow the #TimeSci hashtag on Twitter to follow along with the conversation.

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“All These Keywords in my AdWords Campaign Can’t Be Hurting, Can They?” WRONG! They Can!

Posted By WebAdvantage.net on Mar 18th, 2011

When managing an AdWords campaign, one of the most common mistakes people make is piling on too many keywords.  Their assumption—that more keywords equals more chances for their ad to be shown and get clicked—seems like a logical one.  However, what they fail to realize is that having too many keywords is most likely dragging their Quality Score down.

These so-called “bad keywords” are easy to spot in your AdWords campaigns by checking the Status column:

The quality and relevance of your keywords and ads are the most important factors in your campaign’s ranking and performance.  An individual keyword’s Quality Score is determined by its click-through rate (CTR), relevance to its Ad Group, historical performance, and other relevancy factors.  Therefore, the higher the Quality Score of your keywords, the less you pay for each click on your ad.

In this light, you can think of your Google AdWords campaign as an equation with the Quality Score being the most important part:

Google’s Quality Score is intended to ensure search users that they will find the information they are looking for quickly and easily by showing only those ads which are most relevant to their search queries.

Here’s the official explanation on Quality Scores from Google:

The AdWords system calculates a Quality Score for each of your keywords. It looks at a variety of factors to measure how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user’s search query. A keyword’s Quality Score updates frequently and is closely related to its performance. In general, a high Quality Score means that your keyword will trigger ads in a higher position and at a lower cost-per-click (CPC).

A Quality Score is calculated every time your keyword matches a search query — that is, every time your keyword has the potential to trigger an ad. Quality Score is used in several different ways, including:

Google recommends that accounts are best organized in the following way:

One campaignSeveral tightly themed ad groups10-35 relevant keywords per ad group2-3 relevant ads per ad group

The best way to improve your keywords’ quality scores is by optimizing your account.  Here are some specific things that you can do:

Make sure that each keyword in each ad group closely relates to the ad(s) and the landing page.Don’t use broad or general keywords since they tend to generate many impressions but very few clicks.Strive to optimize keywords with a low CTR.Vary the match types.Use keywords made up of two or three words.Include relevant variations (plural, singular, synonyms, misspellings, etc.).Get rid of low search volume keywords unless they are: A new productA competitor’s termSeasonalEvent-based keywords

P.S.  If you need help optimizing your AdWords campaigns for higher Google Quality Scores, we offer a full suite of PPC Campaign Management services.  Give us a call at (410) 942-0488 or submit an RFP to learn how we can help.

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10 Twitter Tips for Startups and Challenger Brands

Posted By WebAdvantage.net on Mar 11th, 2011

With over 190 million users tweeting 65 million times a day, Twitter presents emerging brands with a ton of great opportunities for word of mouth marketing, networking, and brand-building.

Here are 10 tips for startups and challenger brands who are just starting out on Twitter:

Claim @YourBrandName ASAP! First things first—make sure you claim your brand name as your Twitter handle, even if you don’t intend to start using Twitter immediately.  It seems simple enough to do, but many new or upcoming brands that put it off too long run the risk of being name-squatted.  Even big, leading brands have fallen prey to Twitter squatters.  Has your desired Twitter handle already been claimed? Spend some time thinking of a good alternative that fits as closely as possible.  Make sure it’s not a total departure from your actual brand name, to avoid confusion and loss of  brand identity.Take full advantage of Twitter’s design and profile settings. Even though Twitter’s built-in design and profile settings are pretty basic, a surprising number of companies don’t take the time to customize or even complete them.  Lesser-known brands who are trying to establish themselves on Twitter should make every effort to brand their profile design by customizing the background image and color settings.  Here are 50 great examples of corporate Twitter branding for ideas.  This is your chance to really get creative with how you want to be perceived.Don’t over-invest in Twitter tools. You don’t have to invest a lot of money in state-of-the-art Twitter tools in order to be successful.  There are tons of great, free or low-cost Twitter tools out there to accomplish practically any Twitter-related task.  Large, well-established brands typically have a different set of goals and challenges for using Twitter versus that of a lesser-known brand who is just starting out, and they often invest in robust social media monitoring and tracking tools, and expensive account management platforms without a real need for doing so.Make your brand stand out. Challenger brands must work hard to distinguish themselves from the pack, which is something that can be hard to do with only 140 characters at a time to work with.   Finding your brand’s unique voice on Twitter will most likely take time, creativity, and a bit of trial and error.  Produce your own original content that promotes your brand while still being engaging and relevant to your followers without being too “salespitchy.”Practice proper care and feeding.  Smaller brands typically have much less time and resources to devote to social media compared to large brands, but it’s important for them to develop good “care and feeding” habits in order to use Twitter effectively.  If your Twitter isn’t updated on at least a semi-regular basis, your followers will most likely begin to drop off.  There are no rules for how often a brand should tweet, but it’s a good idea to set daily or weekly tweet goals to keep the momentum going.  And don’t forget to @reply and follow people back on a regular basis, too.Learn from your competitors. Brands can learn a lot simply by looking at what their competitors are doing on Twitter and learning from their examples (and mistakes).  Study the ways that leading brands are using Twitter, from the conversations they’re having with their followers to the types of content they’re sharing. What successful things are they doing that you can emulate in your own tweets?  What can you do better?Make sure you’ve “got the goods” beyond Twitter, too. Twitter can be an amazing marketing tool for building your brand, but it’s important to remember that it’s just one layer of communication, and there are a lot of other brands out there vying for attention.  Make sure your website, blog, and any other online presence are as polished and pitch-perfect as they can be without misleading information or untrustworthy content.  And of course, your followers will appreciate openness and honesty in your tweets, too.Cultivate a loyal following. Market segmentation is a good starting point to determine where a challenger brand can have the most impact.  On Twitter, brands cultivate a relevant and loyal following by seeking out niche groups of  users (using tools like Twitter Lists and Twibes) and engaging with them in a meaningful way.   It’s easy to get distracted by statistics like follower counts, but don’t worry so much about the numbers; rather, it’s the quality of the people and connections that really count.Be the people’s champion. On Twitter, Brands have a unique opportunity to connect one-on-one with customers and learn what makes them tick.  Twitter is invaluable as a listening tool to understand their interests, motivations and pain points.  Use Twitter as your brand’s soapbox to rally support and excitement, address their issues and concerns, (and occasionally swoop in and save the day!).Spice things up. To keep followers interested and engaged, focus on sharing content that is tweet-worthy in some way: things that are cool, interesting, useful, news-worthy, etc.  Spice up your tweets with tweet-enhancing tools like Twtapps, Twitpic, hashtags and shortened links. Tweet content is your chance to really set yourself apart.

Now get out there and knock ‘em dead!

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Twitter, Facebook, Groupon, and Social Media – What Online Advertisers Need to Know

Posted By Jaime on Apr 12th, 2011

This article by Hollis Thomases originally appeared in ClickZ on April 5, 2011.

Did I get your attention? Of course I did…and that’s my point. Today, social media topics attract advertisers’ attention like bright shiny objects to a fault. By my own observations, because they do capture so much attention, almost any headline containing the words Twitter, Facebook, Groupon, or social media gets clicked, shared, forwarded, and tweeted five times more than other digital advertising or marketing-related headlines, oftentimes without the article even ever being read. In fact, I confess to writing this headline as an experiment, just to prove my point.

Is this all so bad? Isn’t social media a way for brands to connect individually with their consumers in ways they never have before? Heck, didn’t I write a book on the subject?!

Are You Focused On Your Goals?

My concern lies in the ability for advertisers to focus on the kinds of online tactics that will help them reach their goals. When advertisers (and key decision-makers, quite frankly) get too distracted from proven tactics or develop unrealistic or untenable perceptions, it does them no lasting good. For example, last week at the Search Engine Strategies New York Conference, I spoke about expanding beyond pay-per-click search advertising and into display advertising. The room was about half full. The timeslot before this session, I spoke on another panel about Twitter, and the room was almost completely full. Yet, while many companies have successfully leveraged search and display to generate direct and measurable revenue, those doing so through Twitter are fewer and farther between.

Furthermore, I found it interesting that of those audience members in my “Leap from Search to Display” session, by a show of hands, only about half had even ventured outside of Google AdWords and into the Google Display Network, let alone into other forms of online media buying. I had to ask myself how many of these people, however, were also busying themselves setting up and populating Facebook pages or Twitter accounts before they ever even leveraged their search advertising successes? And when I asked the audience how many knew of ways to serve online ads besides through the direct serving of traditional banners and buttons, scarcely a half-dozen hands went up (by my count, there are at least 13 other types of ads or ways for these ads to be served).

While I’ll be the last person to dispute that social media and its respective platforms have merit, I find myself constantly reminding marketers that social media is just another tool in the toolkit. You should take out this tool if it’s the best tool to help you build or fix something, but if a wrench can do a better/faster/less expensive job, why use a hammer? And if you’re going to venture into the sun-shiny terrain of social media marketing, don’t go in with blinders on.

Reality Check

I’m a two-sides-to-every-story kind of girl, so I don’t want to paint a completely bleak picture. I formulate my opinions and recommendations by doing a lot of reading, listening, and observation (my parents are happy I’m putting my anthropology-sociology-social psychology college degree to good use). For example:

I recently overheard an advertiser saying that Facebook Ads worked better than PPC for them to reach their more affluent audience. This made sense to me, and Merry Morud wrote a great article on this for ClickZ’s sister site, Search Engine Watch.A Harris Interactive-RightNow post-holiday 2010 report found social media could create brand advocates – two-thirds of the 85 percent of customers who posted a negative review of a shopping experience and were then contacted by the retailer wound up taking a positive action through social media that directly negated their original negative posting.B2B advertisers, according to new research from Forrester, might not believe in online display advertising’s effectiveness, but I say they might find great success in LinkedIn Ads. (Forrester’s research also points out that B2B advertisers cannot merely port over their true blue print media practices and expect them to work.)While manufacturing companies sometimes flounder to figure out how to leverage Facebook and Twitter, they forget that video demonstrations of their products are a YouTube must-do.Though many local businesses have found success with Groupon and their imitators, others claim to lose money (Rice University Graduate School of Management study) or customer loyalty (New York Times Blog). Know what to expect before you dive in.

So you can see that social media definitely has its place in the overall marketing strategy. I just encourage advertisers not to fall prey to all the hype and dig a little deeper to understand the facts and what’s appropriate for their particular business, industry, and short- and long-term goals.

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Video: Wall goes off the floor to Griffin for the alley-oop

The NBA's Rookie/Sophomore Game is usually a mess of flubbed passes with a complete and utter lack of defense. It can get dull for viewers at times, but then every so often someone pulls off a play you've never seen in your life, like Jason Williams's elbow pass from 2000.

Tonight, John Wall(notes) and Blake Griffin(notes) connected for such a moment, one that's now the current frontrunner for the top highlight of the weekend: a bounce-pass alley-oop from Wall that Griffin finished with an emphatic reverse. Minds were blown and hearts were attacked.

It's really the perfect basketball play to unite fans of all types. Purists can appreciate the artful simplicity of a well-played bounce pass, and anyone under the age of 75 can appreciate all the other awesome parts. Everyone wins!

(Original video via @jose3030)

Related: John Wall, Blake Griffin

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At least Nebraska now has basketball bragging rights on Texas

For a school that derives as much of its identity from football as Nebraska, beating a rival in basketball can never fully avenge a humbling gridiron loss.

Nonetheless, Saturday's stunning 70-67 victory over No. 3 Texas will at least provide revenge-minded Huskers fans a day or two of satisfaction.

Four months after the worst Texas football team in more than a decade still managed to upset Nebraska in Lincoln in what could be final meeting between the two teams, the Huskers finally earned some bragging rights over the Longhorns. They squandered a late 11-point lead lead in less than a minute yet never let Texas to regain control, thwarting the Longhorns' bid to take over the top spot in the AP Top 25 and edging closer to the fringes of the NCAA tournament picture.

It wasn't just defeating a top-five opponent that made Saturday's victory Nebraska's most satisfying of the season. Huskers fans consider Texas perhaps their most hated rival because of the Longhorns' controversial Big 12 title game victory over Nebraska in 2009 and the perception that schools from the Lone Star state have received preferential treatment from the league. 

Before their football game against Texas last October, Huskers fans printed T-shirts that read "Beat Texas" or "It's BBQ time" in hopes that the Big Red could end an 11-year drought against the Longhorns. Some of those same T-shirts were on display Saturday afternoon as Nebraska students stormed the court in celebration of their second basketball victory over a highly ranked Texas team in three years.

The season-long ramifications of the victory for Nebraska could be significant if the Huskers finish strong.

In defeating a Texas team that had won its first 11 conference games by nine points or more, Nebraska notched its third straight victory to improve to 18-8 overall and 6-6 in Big 12 play. The Huskers accomplished little of note in non-league play, yet they're now in contention for an-large bid with home games against Kansas State and Missouri left in addition to winnable road matchups against Iowa State and Colorado. 

It looked as though the Huskers would easily turn back Texas before a frantic late rally nearly resulted in heartbreak for the home team.

Jordan Hamilton was fouled on a 3-pointer and sank all three free throws to make it an eight-point game with 1:41 to go. Two Nebraska missed free throws and a Hamilton 3-pointer trimmed the lead to five just eight seconds later. By the time Nebraska surrendered a putback of a missed free throw for a layup and then two free throws after throwing away the ensuing inbound pass, the score was tied at 65 with 1:05 still left to play.

Nebraska somehow managed to regain its composure, regaining the lead on a pair of free throws from Brandon Richardson and then getting a much-needed defensive stop. Hamilton missed a go-ahead 3-pointer and J'Covan Brown missed one that could have tied it at the buzzer, sealing Nebraska's first win over a top-three opponent since a victory over Missouri in the 1994 Big Eight tournament.

As good a win as that one was, this may have been even sweeter.

Related: Texas Longhorns

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Puck Headlines: Patrick Kane's 'hangover'; Jovanovski out for weeks

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