Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

I got a note this morning from my friends over at Anvil Media, a Portland, OR search engine marketing (SEM) firm. Their online reputation was being bashed. I know them well, they’re above reproach in my book, so I wanted to look into it, and asked for an accounting of the situation.

A Marketing Coup Crumbles

Here’s how it rolled out:

1. A few months ago, Anvil and Attensa worked together to put information on Wikipedia about Attensa’s RSS feed server. Now, that’s a feat, because no “marketing” information is allowed on Wikipedia, it’s all about facts, according to Wikipedia’s “neutral point of view” policy.
2. They adhered to Wikipedia’s editorial guidelines, even to the degree that they neutered marketing language and listed Attensa’s competitors in fairness to the ‘encyclopedic’ nature of the site. Their content added enough value to the site to be published.
3. Leads started flowing into the Attensa site, and they were good ones. A marketer’s dream.
4. Their program was good enough to get coverage in Marketing Sherpa: “How to Use Wikipedia for Lead Gen…”
5. The shit hit the fan.
6. Someone pulled down the Attensa citations on Wikipedia, and everything else Anvil had ever written on Wikipedia - to boot. Emails were sent (some not-so-slightly threatening), memes ensued, and on and on…

I’m not one to fan a flame of reputation bashing (no matter the source), so suffice it to say, Anvil and Attensa and everyone I’ve been talking to about it have been (rightfully) alarmed by the response.

Wake Up Call for Transparency

So why am I taking the time to write about this? Because everyone in corporate America needs to know this story. I will go a little deeper here, to further illuminate the irresponsible nature of the secret sect that seems to control Wikipedia. In June I attended the Drug Information Association convention in Boston for the Academic Network. I blogged about it here, but it’s worth repeating…

One of the panelists lamented of their company’s inability to change a factual error on Wikipedia for a drug they manufactured - it was listed as being taken ‘orally’ when, in fact, it was not. They couldn’t do anything to correct it, though, for fear of being held liable for all of the constantly changing information about their drug on the site. So they opted, on the advice of their attorneys, to leave it.

That’s a pretty big deal. A drug company being unable to correct a HUGE inaccuracy about a drug, because of fear.

You see, since about August of last year, there’s been a tool that will show who’s editing what on Wikipedia, called Wikiscanner. When it came out, so did the horror stories (like these in Wired)… of companies editing (and deleting) entire paragraphs of information from Wikipedia. This is exactly what the Wikipedia Editorial guidelines are out to prevent, but now Big Brother can expose exactly who’s writing what…

And prevention is exactly what they’re getting - pharmaceutical companies are afraid to (or being banned from) righting obvious wrongs.

Meanwhile, guess what comes up as the #1 search result in most searches? Wikipedia. In fact, in the case of health and medical information, look who’s trusted most:

That scares me, just hearing one little story of an inaccuracy found, and the company being unable to change it.

People trust Wikipedia. Google trusts Wikipedia. But can we trust the people who edit Wikipedia? Not based on the backchannel I saw this morning.

Who are these people? A pretty clubby society of folks who’ve been able to figure out how to:

• Use the (fairly technical) programming language
• Participate and thrive in the backchannel conversations while doing so (see below)
• Control not only postings, but entire access to Wikipedia, and
• Block companies from editing entries

Who are these folks? To sum up with an insight as to their mindset (from Wired article Wikipedia FAQK), author Lore Sjoberg wrote:

“What should I know if I want to contribute to an argument nexus (or “article”) on Wikipedia?
It will help to familiarize yourself with some of the common terms used on Wikipedia:

• meat puppet: A person who disagrees with you.
• non-notable: A subject you’re not interested in.
• vandalism: An edit you didn’t make.
• neutral point of view: Your point of view.
• consensus: A mythical state of utopian human evolution. Many scholars of Wikipedian theology theorize that if consensus is ever reached, Wikipedia will spontaneously disappear.

Is it true that anyone can contribute?
Sure, Wikipedia is absolutely open to absolutely anyone contributing to absolutely anything! As long as you haven’t been banned, or the article you’re contributing to hasn’t been locked, or there isn’t a group of people waiting to delete anything you write, or you don’t make the same change more than three times in one day, or the subject of the article hasn’t decided to send scary lawyer letters to Wikipedia, or you haven’t pissed Jimbo Wales off real bad. It’s all about freedom.”

Freedom for those who know the secret handshake, that is. As for the rest of us, we’re probably just non-notable at best.

Count me as a meat puppet - on behalf of Anvil and Attensa, in this case…

As a marketer and ‘educator,’ (teaching people to fish, rather than fishing for them is my new bliss) I’ve been spending a good amount of time helping businesses understand the basics of search engine marketing and how to safely negotiate new media influencers (bloggers) and leverage the power of social networks.

All are brand building exercises.

The positive impact of a brand presence online in both search and in social spaces can be accurately measured in both leads and brand value for B2B and B2C brands when campaigns are constructed well.

And the best campaigns - just as in real life - are best constructed when considering people’s intentions, activities and behaviors online.

Building Brand at the Height of Engagement - Search:

Gavin O’Malley, in today’s Online Media Daily wrote of Google’s new report “The Brand Value of Search.” Granted, we must consider the source - Google makes a ton of money serving search advertisements - but there’s measurable value of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to a brand.

Google discovered (in surveying 2400 people, showing them generic ads followed with a brand recall questionnaire):

“As a branding vehicle, paid search strives for top-of-mind awareness for clients’ brand, and negatively impacts awareness for their competitive set, while impressions provide “free” brand lift, without the CPC investment.“

A well-written, compelling search advertisement can, in a mere 130 characters:

• Solve a searcher’s intrinsic desire to find relevant information
• Engage, educate and (even) entertain prospects and future buyers
• Generate brand awareness

…And (according to Paul Kedrosky, brilliant renaissance guy, in his 2007 presentation to Angel Oregon) at an average customer acquisition cost of about $8.20, search is the most cost-effective means to capture customers for some channels.

Building Brand at the Height of Meaning - Social Media

In a classic case of understanding the motivations of people as they engage online; an article in February’s Search Engine Watch dissed advertising as a marketing tactic to increase brand value where social networks are concerned.

“Remember that your brand influencers are online to connect with people who care about the things they care about. They are there to make meaning, not to be broadcast to. They are there to participate and create, not to be advertised to. The more your brand can assist people in connecting with others online to create or share something new, the more favorably you will be received in these new and influential social circles.”

Brands will add value to the consumers congregating in social network spaces by:

• Providing fun (via engaging content, video, games)
• Delivering useful tools (widgets, applets, etc.)
• Providing shortcuts to information (using widgets, extending users’ access to mobile devices, etc.)
• Conversing transparently (which means admitting errors, mistakes and omissions) with their engaged customers and prospects - and
• Listening to what people have to say

Socially connected consumers, interacting with a brand via tools, gadgets and content will easily extend brand awareness (therefore adding tremendous value to a brand) as they share information with others while connecting socially online.

Linking Search and Social Networks

In their book Groundswell, Forrester analysts Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff talk about how social networks naturally connect people with the groups they care about. When people flock together for common good, brand associations are especially strong.

(Think about this. If brand awareness is raised in the act of searching, imagine the strength of a brand impression when engaging in meaningful social activities!)

In the groundswell, every online transaction has the opportunity to be rated and reviewed. What is your consumer’s experience with your brand during the transaction process? Are you measuring it like they are?

In the groundswell, “tags,” which are keywords supplied by ordinary people, are reorganizing the way we find things.

1. People type keywords into search engines
2. Search engines deliver results in the form of advertisements and links to naturally relevant content (most often socially generated content will rise to the top of search results) and
3. Consumers “vote” on the relevancy of the results with each click

In any case, positive brand associations generated along the way; whether you pay per click or pay to play.

I’ve been witness to quite a mental mindstorm brewing in my brain over the past few days, and it’s likely to consume my blog efforts for some time to come… (fair warning, or fantastic relief to my four or five regular readers.)

I attended my first non-high tech conference in years (where I wasn’t a speaker), the Drug Information Association’s (DIA) annual convention. There to represent the Academic Network, I was fortunate to research the state of the pharmaceutical industry’s online strategies; especially as consumers are flocking online to research medical conditions and the medicines they’re being prescribed.

Back to the Basics

What I found was quite surprising - for someone who recently declared 2008 to finally be the year of the business blog… the state of technology (and technical infrastructure) in pharma was pretty surprising.

Partly because of regulations, and I’m not sure what other excuses there are… but frankly I was appalled at the lack of IT infrastructure to do even the basics - like supporting remote work teams. (At least, assuming the session speakers I heard were representative.)

Some examples of issues I heard:

• Many Medical Liaisons (remote representatives of pharma companies) have no access to a shared knowledge base with internal Medical Information team members. An example of a “case study knowledge repository” was shown, but there were no search capabilities, no collaboration capabilities, nothing beyond a database of PDFs or templates. It was as if I was looking at an online portal from 2000.
• Many software representatives (Oracle, Microsoft and others were at the show) had no real notion of allowing their vertical tools to accept web-based information via XML and RSS. When I tried to describe why one might want to poll online communities for potential Adverse Events (something pharma has to monitor and report to the FDA on a strictly regulated basis); I got blank stares.
  • Meanwhile, according to JupiterResearch, the top three reasons people congregate online are:
    • To see what other consumers say about a medication or treatment (36%)
    • To research other consumers’ knowledge and experiences (31%)
    • To learn skills or get education to manage a condition (27%)

Between Rocks and Hard Places…

The panel I was most looking forward to, (and delighted to find it at the show) was titled “Drug Information, Wikipedia and Google Scholar: Implications for Medical Information.” It was both frightening and enlightening at the same time. I Twittered my thoughts as the thing was unfolding… but to net it out:

Frightening: Hearing panelists scoff at the lack of viability of Wikipedia because it’s not scientifically reviewed, yet having them be unwilling (or unable) to correct inadequacies themselves. Even when it comes down to correcting a “simple” edit like changing an inaccurate method of drug delivery - from “oral” to some other method. If they change one heinous error, does that mean the rest of the article is correct by implication?

Enlightening: Because of the advent of WikiScanner in August, 2007, even anonymous entries can be tracked to an IP address and attributed to an organization. Examples were shown where organizations (Diebold and others) altered Wikipedia entries “anonymously” and were later outed for doing so in Wired. The last thing these public companies, tightly regulated by the FDA (ugh, those poor people and their systems… more on that later), want is to be publicly derided for anonymous changes.

Meanwhile, look where most consumers go to find information about medical conditions online:

So my new crusade is to do two things: help enlightened health care organizations safely enter the Health 2.0 space (while trying to stay patient - no pun intended), and to help those of us poor schlubs who are out there looking for information to find the most accurate, up-to-date information possible.

It’s a big job, but somebody has to do it. I welcome all the help I can get…

I’ve blogged before about tools to measure buzz / “memes” and reputations online. The first tool you should use is a smart RSS reader, like that from Attensa. But there are many other tools out there to measure buzz, and some very fun ones are beginning to be developed.

Over on the Search Insider blog, David Berkowitz profiles “Seven Buzz Monitoring Sites to Watch.”

A short list:

• Facebook Lexicon: Lexicon is Google Trends for Facebook
• Summize: a Twitter search engine I discovered recently. But David points out that using Summize Labs you can also use a “near:” modifier to narrow results to people writing from a certain zip code - in case you want to find like-minded folks nearby. Cool.
• Flaptor is another Twitter search engine, and has a trend tool called Twist that you can use to compare search terms. You should always run your Twitter searches through a couple of engines, as they’re not yet perfect. I’m looking forward to the day that Attensa takes care of all of these searches for me, persistently.
• Using Quantcast you can track the demographics of searchers for a particular keyword. David helps you figure out how easily, and I won’t steal his thunder… go have a look on his post.

There are tons of additional tips and explanations there anyway… It’s going in my del.icio.us file. For sure.

I had an interesting discussion yesterday with my friend Michael Sampson. He’s a blogger, content author and perpetual student of collaboration technologies and real-use cases for them.

Michael’s recently finished an ebook called The 7 Pillars Analysis of Microsoft SharePoint 2007 where he has ranked it as a collaboration platform on a seven-point scale. Without giving too much away, he said SharePoint failed his collaboration litmus test on six of the seven pillars.

Well, you can imagine the stir that’s beginning to cause…

His post about the eBook was picked up on CRN, and the comments there are pretty typical of the blogosphere fanning the flames of a discussion. One comment, from Andrew Brust, Chief of New Technology at twentysix New York, was especially passionate; and in response, Michael published an Open Letter of rebuttal.

In fact, on his “Effective Collaboration” blog, there’s quite a stream of conversations around the specific merits of his opinions, cause and effect, and even a little ethical drama playing out.

In our chat, I told him it might be interesting to further the conversation at the SharePoint conference coming up next week in Seattle. (That made him just a little nervous… I think.) I also wonder (on my own) what the Jive Software guys would think of the paper?

My bottom line? If you’re going to take a stand in the blogosphere, and (particularly when you) point out the emperor is only wearing socks, enjoy the reaction… ’cause you’re going to get it.

I believe Michael is perfectly capable of holding his own. And I’m anxious to watch the story unfold. Regardless, I hope it spurs sales. Likely it will. Any PR is good PR, after all…