Live blogging at Media Camp London – part 2

Session 4: Brand Engagement
– a discussion moderated by @audio

Brand Engagement is

…empowering the consumer – take the brand into their own hands – becoming brand ambassadors

Offline BE will morph into online BE

@audio – Brand owners are scared of BE

@alex4d – Offline brand activation could be converted into online happenings

Traditionally brand owners deliberately don’t want to know what people think of them

PRs have to remind clients that their role is to present the messages to the media – not to guarantee specific coverage

The most basic return on investment is to make the cost of PR less than the gain

Online BE – there are many more measures from web analytics

Almost too much web analytics info. Consultants can step in to interpret.

If you tag your images, images.google.com will bring you people.

If people find your site using ‘wrong’ keywords, not campaign keywords, you might want to change your campaign

@alex4d – Brands are offline in nature. Crowdsource online representations of the brand. What does ????? mean to you as online experience?

@alex4d – If you make the brand decision important, then people are more likely to evangelise on your behalf

Session 5: SEO 101 – everything you wanted to know about getting found in search that I can cram in this session
– Judith Lewis –

SEO = Search Engine Optimisation

Consider all the following factors, don’t pick some:

1. Keyword Research

– a. The terms real people use, not internal terminology

– b. Use the more frequently searched version of a phrase: these days ‘social networking’ is more often searched for than ‘social media’

– c. Provide specific keywords for specific pages (party camera, weddings camera, portraits camera) on a site (camera)

– d. Use wordtracker and yahoo and other keyword tools as well as google

– e. just because people are searching for a term that seems relevant to you, be careful, People searching for an LG chocolate phone will be irritated to find your page if you optimise a page to mention that search term… if you are in the business of selling chocolate

– f. Optimise based on longer phrases, more specific searches

– g. If you have 20 similar things, use keyword research to find what other words people use when looking for these things (i.e. what people use to choose a specific one of these similar things)

– h. Different keyword research tools have different constituencies – useful in countries with different search profiles

– i. Well-written copy means that you will use semantic variations of terms – better for searches (On a movie page you would also use film, flicks, cinema etc. to avoid repetition in well-written copy)

2. Page tags

– a. Your page title is the advert that appears as the label for your listing on a web page – limit yourself to 65 characters Put your company name at the end of page title so that you don’t get a load of tabs with the same beginning when browsing

– b. Your tag appears below your title in search results – limit to less than 150 characters

– c. Use meta robots tag “noindex” on spare copies of duplicated info.

– d. Make sure your CMS can display and control these tags

(we are running out of time, so…)

3. On page text: focus – don’t put all your site keywords on all pages. No magic % for keyword density

4. Sculpt your site – put keywords in .htm filenames – more info: search for ‘site sculpting’

5. Fill in ALL your image tags

@petewailes suggests an article on site sculpting: part 1 part 2

Find out more at http://www.decabbit.com and SEOchicks

Session 6: Online Reputation Management – who is talking about you, what are they saying and what can you do to fix it
– Judith Lewis – http://www.decabbit.com

We are all brands – prospective employees

When people search for you, what do they find? Be ready for some time in the future when people do research on you

(For larger brands) Why monitor? Competitors can undermine your image. You may find problems you weren’t aware of

(People with a grievance) Look at entry 4 when your search for “land rover discovery” – “The truth about…”

Check user-generated news sites – e.g. http://consumerist.com/

Check potential names for your brand – they may have a bad associations that will be revealed through search

You can’t rely on defamation law to remove bad press

Monitor your own brand using Bloglines, Google Alerts, Yahoo Alerts

Don’t forget misspellings of your brand

bloglines.com is more comprehensive than Google Alerts

bloglines monitors the social web. Yahoo can alert you to sites banned by Google (for spamming for example)

Even individuals need PR: Send press releases when things matter. Make sure the page you link them to has different copy

(For releases for professional journalists) Use a single, paid PR service. Journalists will pay attention to a single message from an authority

To see which sources journalists trust, hang around at www.gorkana.com for a while

Corporate blogging:

– a. Authentic voice from within company (not PR)

– b. Share a little personal info, people will engage.

– c. Respond to comments

– d. Consider (their) negative comments carefully

– e. Promote employee blogs even if they aren’t official

– f. CEOs should chip in only when they have something to say – give space to others to add their voice

If you create a Facebook app, be open about what your counter/game does. No spamming, keep it opt in.

“Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Bebo, Livejournal, Flickr” – do different things on different Social Media Platforms

for more on online reputation management – @decabbit