real-time social media stats

Awesome! Via Socialtimes.com

seo your face

Am taking a class on SEO (search engine optimization). We've gone through the ins and outs of the biggest components of Google's search algorithm. Nobody knows exactly what goes into Google's "secret sauce", but there are some key rules, which I won't go through in detail (but which you can check out here).

In essence you need to figure out a few terms that you want your site to be associated with via search. The bigger your site, the more terms you can target. But you need to "tag" both content and HTML with those words, so that Google gets a good idea of what your site is about. (It obviously isn't this simple but am choosing this to segue to my main point!)

It makes sense to focus your website or blog content, just like you would do for any publication, film, radio or TV show. But going through the rules made me uncomfortable. SEO includes a good level of "stuffing" your content with your keywords. Which means that if you want your site to come out in a search for "travel deal", you would need to work that phrase into as much of your content as possible, without turning Google off by your persistence in wanting to be found for "travel deal" (that's "travel deal" by the way, not "travel dealS"; plurality apparently makes a difference!). That makes a lot of sense. It's a balancing act. Leave them wanting more? Nobody wants the cow when they can get the milk for free?

Coincidentally, my first SEO class was held just days after the 140 Conference, where @1000timesyes guy talked a lot about the detrimental effects of Google ranking and SEO on good writing - "Good writing dies at the hand of search engine optimization."

I know I need to focus my content somehow, but how about finding my own voice? How about writing about topics that make me feel something, instead of writing about "onsite computer repair", if that is my targeted key term? How about inspiration and chance and maybe even touching someone with something that doesn't make any sense except to you and that other person in the world?

Alas we need to play by the rules, Google's rules. Because search, is reality.

#140conf: it's about the people

140: the maximum number of characters in a tweet. 

The 140 Conference brings together industry professionals who have found great ways to share their passions using Twitter and social media.

Found out about the #140conf by accident through a tweet by Ashton Kutcher and quickly got a ticket with the help of event planner Jeff Pulver (@jeffpulver). What a great day.


A few themes from today


we can't only focus on numbers  

the disadvantages of a web that is so dependent on data

Chris Weingarten (@1000timesyes) claimed that the algorithm-based search engine results have ruined music writing - online publications are more concerned about keyword optimization than quality articles and artists are consumed with constantly producing new content over creating good music. All in the name of rising to the top of SERPs. The result is terrible writing and the loss of stumble culture. He was very explicit about his feelings; his closing sentiment: "Fuck the numbers, fuck math."

Even from the education industry, Chris Lehman (@chrislehmann) also asked that we rethink numbers. As an educator, a big frustration is that while technology is helping kids learn and experiment more than ever before, the only results that "matter" are tests. He challenged data this way asking why we trust a test given on one day, instead of testing learning everyday. He pushes this even further by claiming that technology must be "like oxygen - ubiquitous, necessary, invisible; when was the last time we took kids to a pencil lab?". The best soundbit: "What if we dare to think that school isn't about preparing for the real world, school is the real world!" He got a standing ovation.

And everyone from Gary Vaynerchuk to David Carr (@carr2n) warned that we not to be so preoccupied with the number of followers we have. Said Garyvee, "Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit!" (It seems the social media bunch is very self-expressed... surprise?) We need to realize that value of Twitter is in relationships.


power to the people  
social media & twitter as enablers

One of my favorite speakers of the day was Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu), Journalism professor at NYU. He gave an interesting snapshot on the evolution of news: self-informing small villages > larger communities with increased opacity > trade and private intelligence > birth of the public and birth of the modern press. His take is that Twitter extends the press (and essentially empowers) since it goes back to allowing us to self-inform. "We're now experiencing a revolution in the near-ness of things." Loved this (and probably paraphrased too much... would love to take a class of his).

This was my first time to hear Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) speak. His main spiel was about feeling and being "obnoxiously lucky", that we are experiencing this innovative and creative time. One of the guys in the Q&A said that he was from Brittany and asked why Gary has never featured any products from that region, why not cider? To which Gary replied, "Dude, f*ck me, get your own show!"


the power of one  
via this one-to-many medium

Of the panel on Emergency Communication in the Real-time Web, Luke Renner (@firesideint) was in Haiti during the recent earthquake and was still emotional about his experience. After the quake he tweeted that he was an American in Haiti and that he was available for calls. "The first call I got, was from Ann Curry." Ann (@anncurry) was also on the panel and was on the ground covering the quake.

Sweetest speaker was definitely Alon Nir (@TheKotel). He put up a Twitter account that invited people to send in their prayers, which he promised to take to the Kotel in Jerusalem (where people customarily insert slips of paper with their prayers into the wall cracks). After just two weeks he was overwhelmed by thousands of responses. Seriously, overwhelmed! But he turned to those same followers to find help to translate the tweets into a printable format, cut and roll the prayer strips, then actually put them into the wall. Check out his blog for the full story, a photo of his "prayer printer"!


HOW ABOUT BRANDS?  
that is my day job after all!

I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how we can or should be more engaging and innovative in the digital space to "really engage consumers". Today was an eye-opener.

Social media, Twitter included, is already complete without brands. The web was created for free-enterprise! The web's DNA and hardware go against "strategic communicaton" and branding. It was meant to be stealthy, to strike hard and fast anywhere and for whomever could figure it out. Yes we need to monetize, yes these are businesses. And there are definitely business opportunities. But this space is occupied by people, not consumers. And these people are making things happen on their own.

As marketers who have things to sell, we need to understand and *respect* how people are engaging on social media, how people are maximizing this technology for human enterprise! To come in and merely sell not only won't work but it would be disrespectful of the people who have made social media valuable through connections, interactions, innovation and experimentation - seen through the real life examples shared by speakers at the #140conf.

When we bring brands online, especially to the text-only medium that is Twitter, we need to be sure that they are ready (and excited!) to engage in real conversation. If possible, do something different, provide a service. We don't always approach social media from this point of view.

The speaker that I will close with is former ad man Hank Wasiak (@hankwasiak). He gave a lot of great insights but key is that the new P (in the formerly? 4P's) is PEOPLE - brands need to have People strategies to make an impact.

So, an awesome day. Feel bad that I won't be able to join tomorrow's session, but am excited that work calls. Hope to enact a few People strategies!

what is social media?

There are  so many articles about this online, but this video explanation from Common Craft is one of my favorites:

so many digital questions

I came to New York with so many questions.

Digital practice in Manila is both exciting and difficult - so many opportunities to do fresh things in such a young market, but no established expertise yet to learn from.

Which is one of the reasons I headed out. To find answers to a lot of questions. I was sure that "the secret" existed out there somewhere and where else to start to find that but in New York?

I am taking classes at NYU from teachers who have been digital media practitioners over several years and have seen the Internet boom, burst and boom again. They know their stuff. But one thing is sure - they are still making things up as they go along. The space changes, objectives change, the market changes, we have to adapt.

I wish I could have discovered a cheat sheet for surefire digital marketing. But even the experts say, you never know. The space changes, the audience is dynamic and really, you can never know what will work.

Sometimes it is great to learn that there are set rules. SEO-ers make their careers trying to game the system. Wouldn't it be great if we could do that for digital marketing?

But I guess that would take some of the fun out of things. To be honest, one of the things that drew me to digital marketing several years ago was that the field is still, especially in Manila, wide open.

be your digital best !

I am pressing replay on this blog.

I haven't been very serious but now that I have begun a "digital immersion", I am re-thinking a lot of how I do things... including the grand opinion piece that is (supposed to be) this blog.

I have a lot of opinions, in general I think I overthink! But that doesn't mean that I cannot categorize and catalog my digital thoughts into a coherent, focused hub on Philippine digital marketing.

The local digital practice is blooming. Filipinos have found their way online and are some of the most engaged in the world - blogs, social networks, social media. But, as is symptomatic of digital business, monetization is still a challenge. Everyone is scrambling to gain "expertise", partnerships are being formed, AORs are being selected. But who, really, has a handle on things?

I am no expert. Given that the space changes every second I don't think anyone can really claim to be. But we can definitely learn from each effort and try to get a handle on upcoming trends. And this blog is one of the places where I plan to do that.

www.beyourdigitalbest.com will run the gamut of topics involved in building a digital media marketing practice. This will include Philippine digital marketing issues and challenges, digital strategy, local and (relevant) international trends, traditional agency life and sometimes my perspective as a consumer of both products and content.I might include a little bit of branding and general communication also.

And one day who knows! Let's see where this goes.

me to pete cashmore?

hello, new york

Am determined to punch something out, even if it turns out to be absolute dribble! Otherwise I might end up never writing.

On New York...
Parks in the middle of random busy blocks. Beer gardens hidden behind take-out counters. Renoir, Mondrian, Pollock within walking distance. Avenue Q a few minutes away. Unlimited Metrocards that will take you up, down, up, down, up, downtown. School campuses sprawled around the city. Popup musical acts on the street. I love this city. Can I stay here forever?

On Digital...
Interesting first day of class - trend overview, networking, introduction to digital strategy tools. Some takeaways - 

All media is social! So we need to enable. / But we also need to understand the technology. Build the technology. / Even in a market as mature as the US, people at every level are trying to get a grip on "digital" - so there are always opportunities for people who can be consultative and generalists. / There are no best practices... yet.

Things change so fast and everyone has to be smart about keeping up with the developments and filtering what is going on to see how it affects different clients, brands or projects... Maybe this is why I could relate with this Morris Lewis (Alpha-Pi) at the Met.

happy new year

Today is my birthday. I am twenty-seven! Got a birthday text a greeting me a happy new year. That thought seems so apropos (for a party but also a crime, just kidding Maureen) for this particular birthday.

Got on a plane yesterday and have a one-day layover in LA before heading to New York. I am spending a few months there, mostly to study digital media marketing at NYU. Am so excited. Being in New York at all will be awesome!

I am especially looking forward to class. Most of my career has been focused on the digital space, and I've gotten to practice a lot through the help of very supportive bosses and officmates, and some of our forward-thinking clients.

But we know that in a media climate characterized by pull instead of push, brands have to be extra strategic to create cut-through digital work. And I realized that I didn't know enough about the space to make the best strategies. There is infinite room for innovation and experimentation, but there are also a lot of best practices.

And my thinking is that I can't take us out-of-the-box, if we don't know what rules to play by.

So this summer (it is summer in Manila, but [cold] spring in the US), my plan is to learn the basics - how are things "supposed" to be done? Then we can see about breaking the rules... So expect a lot of reflection-type stuff from my New York digital media Spring / Summer :)

It's going to be a happy new year.

fail whale speaks

Twitter's "fail whale" image, shown when the site is down for maintenace, has gained a following of its own. But have we been duped? The truth, from McSweeney's.

FAIL WHALE SPEAKS.
BY MARCO KAYE


Call me Sam. Or Successful Sam, since your cutesy rhymes and alliteration seem to travel well on the Internet. If you really wanted to get my attention, you'd call me click click clicka click Saaaaammm click click. If you ever took more than 140 characters to understand the story of how I came to float in the air using only eight birds and a fishing net, you'd never label me by my shortsighted "meme" again.



CLICK; OR, THE CLICK

About six years ago, I was taking a quick oxygen break from a Colossal Squid hunt in the Southern Ocean. Imagine a tractor-trailer (me) and a Greyhound bus (squid) wrestling in a vat of pitch-black gelatin. My enemy has tentacle clubs lined with razor sharp suckers and I just have this big, dumb-looking mouth. These hunts require every ounce of my blubber. As a result, any break from the melee—the sun on my back, the wind fanning my block-like head—really gets my mind going. During one particular reprieve, I remember thinking how Antarctica looks like an apostrophe. That led me to the idea of the grammatical possessive, as in Sam's squid that he will soon kill is thousands of meters below. I wanted to tell every sea creature in all five oceans about my dinner. Then I thought about the Italian woodcarver (who calls me by another horrible name, Monstro) living inside me. He sends out messages, only at a limited scale. They are fashioned out of planks of wrecked ships and don't even make it to Chilean Patagonia. Apparently, he is looking for his son who is also made of wood. I find the whole situation really weird.

You humans are strange creatures. You extol your every technological advancement, call your cell phones smart, and describe social media as a revolution. Meanwhile, whether you realize it or not, nature has already bested you. For fifty million years, whales have been using sonar to broadcast our status across hundreds of nautical miles. My social network numbers in the thousands. Once, I picked up a female in Madagascar. We rubbed up against each other and sloughed off large sheets of skin. That's no euphemism for sex. It's how we keep ourselves free of disgusting marine organisms.

Dear me, I've lost my thread again. Sorry, that's just how my brain works. It's the largest of any animal, ever, with a highly developed neo-cortex. Long story short, I invented Twitter.



CLICK, SLOW CLICK, CREAK

In 2006, I was summering in the San Francisco Bay, still thinking of that apostrophic break from the hunt. During my stay in the Bay Area, I had my inner Italian inject some orange-crowned warblers with spermaceti, the wax in my head cavity, imbuing them with whale strength and creating a mental bond between the birds and I. Then I digested the Italian, as he was no longer needed. My plan was falling into place.

A few days later, I noticed a group of young men eating burritos at a bayside park. They were whiter than a beluga, with heads just as bulbous. Tech nerds of the highest order. My suspicions were confirmed when they entered a building bearing the ill-designed logo of an Internet startup. Luckily, their loft space afforded the room I needed, and under the cover of a foggy night, the birds hoisted me in with a fisherman's net through a large window.

Fueled only by a few morsels of leftover calamari I rescued from the garbage, I had the birds draft a proposal for a service I selfishly called, "Whalr," using my ideas of global sonar. The sun was rising as the warblers carried me away. Judging by the illustration that made me famous, someone must have seen me as I left, although I rarely smile and have a white, freckled underbelly not represented in the picture.

It's ironic, and not in a hipsterish way, that I came to be associated with the service not working. Every day I Direct Message @Biz, @Ev, and @Jack, the "founders" of Twitter, asking them to give me credit or, at the very least, one of their Webby Awards, but I may as well be sending missives into the Pacific Trash Vortex. I've taken to swallowing glass bottles, hoping they contain alcohol. Sometimes I'll slap my tail flukes against the water really hard, just to see if I feel pain. Tourists on boats take pictures and applaud at my flagellations. I guess they love watching me suffer.

Maybe I am a failure.



ONE LAST CODA-CLICK

Thomas Jefferson once said, "He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me." And we applaud his humility and graciousness. Yet have we forgotten that this candle he's talking about was made from the stuff found in my great-great-grandfather's head? Us whales have given you humans a lot. By Poseidon's codpiece, I'm proud to see Twitter continue to proliferate. The illustration you've come to know me by is charming, and after all I am flying. My moniker, however, must go. It was already rough being called a sperm whale. But you've managed to find a word that's worse.

Whales have gotten this social media thing right for millennia. We've been using broadband clicks to communicate long before you humans fell in love with the practice. Help me rewrite the history books, as I don't have hands. Retweet my message, hashtag it, put it in a bottle and fling it out to sea. That's where you'll find me, trying to figure out Google Buzz.

Logorama

Logorama takes place in a city made up of brands and logos. Three storylines converge in a car chase-turned-hostage-situation-turned-natural disaster.

Most notable is the use of an estimated 2500 logos to make up the city scape and characters - including Michelin men cops, Pringle truck drivers and a Ronald McDonald hitman.

The story was not remarkable and it seems like a point that has been made before. Hell via capitalism when nature has her revenge? We get it.

What was more interesting to me was that a few minutes into the film, everything started to blend in and I stopped noticing the brands despite their blatant exposure. Maybe the idea was about the immunity we develop toward publicity images (ala Berger) the longer we are exposed to them. But then another IBM building, Levi's skyscraper or MGM lion (actual zoo lion) reminded me that I was in Los Angeles ala Logorama.

Or maybe H5 was just having fun. In which case it was a good 15 minutes for me, too.



Am also not sure how they got away with all of the copyright issues. I guess as long as they're giving it away for free as a creative project?

jeter for gilette

I will click any Derek Jeter web ad!

fish out of water

Do you imagine what your media consumption would be like if you weren't in advertising?

If I was not an ad (wo)man, hardly any billboards would catch my attention, except maybe the really massively gross DingDong Dantes-bronze-and-only-in-underwear ones. I would never read the paper. I would flip ads during every TV show commercial gap.

I wouldn't find myself thinking that this or that brand must not have had a budget for talent fees given the slew of unremarkable-looking people they cast in their television commercial. I wouldn't be imagining the near-scuffle between clients and creatives about an insistence on Koreanovela-looking elvish posers when I watch an ad for a certain dandruff shampoo. I wouldn't have wondered what kind of lame strategist told X newspaper to advertise that they have more pages by a million percent, even if those pages are made up mostly of ads. I wouldn't find myself wondering which DTI represenative this or that softdrink brand must have wooed in order to get a permit for their prize-by-the-minute text-in-raffle promo.

I wouldn't have taken note of all the additionally utilized ad spaces during my trip to Beijing (taxicab seats, bathroom mirrors, art spaces), or the building-to-building LED billboards in Times Square.

I would probably be one hundred percent banner blind. I definitely wouldn't smile when I come across one of my own banner ads, and I especially wouldn't click on any of them just in case the positive interaction from my single impression might raise the CTR.

I might still have found Ashton Kutcher hot (might?!) but not because he said in his SNL opening that he does "social media optimization".

I don't think I would start every work morning by checking RSS and Bit.ly. I don't think I would have started mobile browsing... I never would have started playing casual games like the very addictive Chocolatier series because a client almost got into on-demand prepaid gaming and I wanted to try to understand the market.

The first thing to come to mind upon seeing a great content idea like Expedition 206 or an AWESOME viral like The Man Your Man Could Smell Like wouldn't be how long the clients gave their agency to develop the campaign, how roomy their digital budget was or how clearly set their objectives and key communication were in their ad brief.

I wouldn't have Become a Fan of Penshoppe or Magic 89.9, just to see how they are maximizing their Facebook accounts. I wouldn't be following Scott Monty, Alex Bogusky or Chris Andersen in hopes of picking up some good social media, digital creative or tech intel.

In fact, I don't think I would have joined Facebook until maybe a few months ago. I definitely wouldn't be registering on any and every social network I come across just in case it takes off, and then at least people would know that I was there "from the start".


Marshall McLuhan said once that the only thing the fish doesn't notice is water, and for normal people that is media. Most people, most regular people, will follow Ellen because they like her or want to win a prize, not because they want to see how she engages her audience via microblog. Most people will click, view and pay attention to ads they like, not because they are ads that their competitor has just launched. Most people will catch sight of a billboard or a print ad only because it is interesting, shocking, revolting, appealing. And most people only notice a minute fraction of the 3000 ad images that are catapulted their way everyday on the train, reading the paper, checking their e-mail or watching their favorite TV show.

Ad men have given up a luxury. Of seeing a promotional material, and of not noticing. Of TV or radio as white noise. Of banner blindness. In as much as they say this about the average consumer nowadays, we really do need to be "always on". Because part of our jobs is to go beyond consumption, and be critical consumers. Because we need to keep up, because we need to be ahead.

content via manmercial

Have been trying to shift mindsets at work from "promo" to "content". I know that should be a cardinal rule but you'd be surprised how easy it is to forget content, brand utlitity or content strategy once a digital project gets bogged down by deadlines, timelines, "usability"...

Was reminded of that by the Manmercials by Old Spice.

Most have decent video view counts, but "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" is the most popular one!


From the ad agency, Wieden+Kennedy: "We're not saying this body wash will make your man smell into a romantic millionaire jet fighter pilot, but we are insinuating it." Ahhh. Thanks for clearing that up. Props also on a highly product-focused ad that is equally entertaining. Both clear and clever!

The agency is receiving props for skipping a multi-million dollar spot during the Superbowl and going viral instead. With almost three million views in just over three weeks, they must have overshot KPI's by a million percent. Nice.

play therapy

Our entire family was stressed out a few weeks ago from work (and in my younger brother's case, school) so Mom decided to bring out our old Lego too help everybody relax. We sat on the floor and got to work.

It was the first time for my niece, Ellie, to Lego! She's four.

 We all got down on the floor to work. Ellie was amused.

My masterpiece... and Ellie in the background. 
I am especially proud of the truck I made from scratch!

It's nice to look away from the multiple screens once in awhile and go back to creating with our hands. 

beyourdigitalbest: new media isn't new

Repost from Dave Trott's Blog


NEW MEDIA ISN'T NEW

We read endless articles and interviews about how new media has changed the world overnight.

Everything is totally different all of a sudden.

Those who don’t accept it are dinosaurs.

And like the dinosaurs, they’ll disappear.

Personally, I think this is herd mentality.

Insecure people feel safer when they group together.

So these people are looking for a group to join.

It’s not as nasty as racism, sexism, ageism, nationalism, classism, or religious-fundamentalism.

But it is based on a similar need to be part of a larger group.

Not far short of playground behaviour.

On your own you’re vulnerable.

As part of a group you’re more secure.

You can’t get picked on as you could when you were an individual.

And you can safely insult anyone who isn’t in your group.

Sort of football supporter behaviour.

Our group’s great, and if you’re not in it you’re crap.

It’s like that with a lot of new-media name calling.

But, if you accept Rogers Technology Adaptation bell-curve, new-media evangelists are a small part of the real world.

Which may be why they feel the need to group together.

According to Rogers, Innovators make up 2.5% of the total.

Early Adopters make up 13.5%.

Then everyone else (the rest of us) make up 84%.

So how does the world of constantly evolving media look to the rest of us?

Are we counting down to the second the latest innovation is going to be released at a silicone valley press conference?

Strangely enough, no.

What we’re doing is getting on with our lives.

Media is just a way stuff gets delivered to us.

Mainly, we’re not even aware of media.

Certainly we don’t think about it.

I heard a man the other day saying he’d just had an unsettling experience in a motorway service station.

He’d pulled into the rest area to use the toilet.

He went into a cubicle and locked the door.

Then he took his trousers and underpants down.

Then he sat down.

After a while, he heard someone enter the cubicle next to him.

They locked the door and sat down.

Then they said, “How you doing mate, alright?”

He was a bit embarrassed, but he didn’t want to appear rude.

So he replied, “Er, yes thanks.”

He hoped that would be the end of it.

But the man next door said, “What’s new then, everything going okay?”

He didn’t quite know how to answer.

So he said, “Er, yes, everything’s fine thank you.”

Then the man said, “The wife, the kids, work, everything ticking over?”

By now he was getting irritated, he said curtly, “As I said, fine thank you.”

Then the man said, “So apart from all that, what are you up to you old bugger?”

He thought this was starting to get a bit personal.

So he said, louder, “Exactly the same thing as you are I imagine.”

Then the man said, “Hang on a bit Chris. I’ll have to put the mobile down for a sec, the bloke in the next cubicle keeps trying to talk to me.”

Some people adapt to changes in media faster than others.

Seth Godin, the new media guru, says we don’t know where any of this is going to end.

We can’t see the future until it gets here.

So anyone who predicts the death of anything is pretending to a knowledge they don’t have.

All we know is stuff changes.

Always has, always will.

And we’ll absorb it into our lives.

Always have, always will.

*This blog is the newest addition to my RSS, in the folder labeled “First”. If I can’t read any of the dozens of other feeds, this is one of those that I absolutely, have to, gotta read regularly.