They have a Twitter account?

"Seriously?  They have a Twitter account?"

Jif Peanut Butter
69 followers.

Tide
Recent tweet: "spilled balsamic vinegar all down my top today at lunch.  Have you ever had an embarrassing stain?  If so what was it?"

McDonald's Monopoly Game

Belle Tire

Questions to ask ourselves about social media

Yesterday, I had a very nice conversation over lunch with an acquaintance of mine.  He gave me a much appreciated new way of looking at social media.

Why buy a new building?
Your company owns a building downtown.  Your profits easily pay for all the building's expenses.  It comfortably houses all of your employees.  Has room for meetings and events.  In short, it meets all of your company's current needs.

One of your employees points out that two competing firms bought new office space on S. Media Street.  After looking into it, you find almost all companies located downtown bought space on the same street.  You see your company being left behind and do the only logical thing, buy space on S. Media Street.

Your director of operations ask you what you're going to do with this new building.  You answer, "I don't know.  We'll figure something out."

"What are we going to put in this building?" he asks.

"Lets put some interesting things on the wall that people would like to look at."

"Like what?"

"I don't know.  Maybe information about our company.  Where we just ordered lunch from.  What time we're meeting for happy hour.  Twice a year we can put up a poster of the neighborhood event we host."

"How is that going to make us money?" asks your director of operations.

"Um..." you reply.

A few months later your company develops a new product.  More people are needed.  New equipment is needed.  You now have found a more practical use for this new building.  Your accountant informs you that you could have saved a few months of expenses if you had waited to buy the new building until you actually had a use for it.

Lesson
Ask yourself, "how is starting a Twitter account going to make your company money?"  Even if you don't pay an outside firm to run your Twitter account, you're taking work time away from another employee to post tweets.  Just because everyone is Twitter doesn't mean you should be.  Figure out why you should be on Twitter and how it will help your company.

Google Advanced Exam Question

How does changing the definition of a conversion affect conversion tracking?

Social Media's Role in IS479

A few thoughts on how social media's role can improve in our class.

• Make it easier to connect with others of similar interest
• Find more people in other countries, gain a worldly view of things
• Streamline the flow of information, saturation doesn't help get your message across
• Are there other services or technologies we are not using?

My Social Media Effectiveness

I'm connected.  I follow people on Twitter and Buzz.  I read blogs.  Share articles using Google Reader.  I post my own thoughts on this blog.  But how effective am I?

I've made some good networking connections with people using different forms of social media.  But can I make more?

I think the two things I need to improve upon are TIME and VOICE.

TIME
It's easy to get stuck absorbing content all day.  Trying to find something interesting to share or comment on.  I need to streamline this process.  Make it a more efficient process.  I'm looking for ways to find better information in a shorter amount of time.

VOICE
I do not have a social media voice yet.  I comment on many different things.  I speak more jokingly with my friends.  More professional with my contacts.  What should I comment on?  What area of expertise should I focus on to be more effective?

I'm still searching for this.  Though I am getting closer.  Data and how it is collected and interpreted is something that fascinates me.  Taking information and converting it into a simple and clear message can be very powerful.  I feel I should focus on this more in the future.  In time, I can find my voice.

Autism Society Week 7

United Way Week 7

USA 1994 Team

In honor of the big "match" tomorrow at 2:30pm, here's some vintage US soccer (nice jerseys).  If you want to add a bit of 2010-feel to the video, click on the soccer ball icon.  It will add a vuvuzela audio track making you feel as if you're sitting in the middle of Soccer City!

United Way Week 6

Autism Society Week 6

Five people to connect with in-person

A short list of people to connect with in the Ann Arbor area.

Derek Mehraban, CEO Ingenex Digital Marketing

Local CEO, entrepreneur, blogger, and digital media expert.  Runs LA2M and has a lot of great contacts throughout Michigan.

Thomas McLinden, President Money Source Financial Services, Inc.

Local entrepreneur and business owner.  Tom has been in the financial sector for over 30 years and has an extensive network in the Ann Arbor area.  Money Source has been locally owned in Ann Arbor for over fifteen years.

John Rubin, Founder of Above the Treeline

Above the Treeline is located in Ann Arbor.  Their mission is to provide tools to independent book stores.  They have developed Edelweiss, the industry's first electronic catalog system.

Al McWilliams, Quack! Media
Quack! Media has worked with everyone from Lexus to the Detroit Red Wings.  They focus on branding and marketing.

Marisa Smith, President Whole Brain Group
Marisa is heavily networked in the digital/marketing/social media scene in Ann Arbor.  Great ideas on web design and social media.

Five "people" you should follow on Twitter

Google Recruiting
Job openings at Google.  Gives info on jobs around the world and often replies to questions.

A2Chamber
The Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti Chambers recently merged.  Great way to follow local business happenings in the community.  Chamber members are heavily involved in networking.

LA2M
Tweets on local marketing events and all things LA2M.  Great for marketers in the Ann Arbor area.  I've had a lot of success meeting new contacts through LA2M and Twitter.

Marisa Smith
President of Whole Brain Group.  I first started following Marisa after she gave a talk on Social Media Integration.  Great tweets about local happenings.

Ann Arbor Skate Park
Organization focused on building a free, permanent concrete skatepark in Ann Arbor.  My skating days are long gone but as a kid, I dreamed about having access to a skate park.  This is my favorite Ann Arbor organization to support.  Tweets about local happenings, skate news, and ways to support the skate park fund.

Benchmarking Exam Question

The exam material doesn't seem to go into much detail regarding benchmarking.  When is it good to use benchmarking as opposed to changes in your own data?  I could see it being useful for a site that is less than a year old.  You don't have a lot of seasonal data to compare.  Is benchmarking still useful with a well established site?

Five blogs you should follow in Google Reader

These are the blogs that I get information, ideas, inspiration, and even a few laughs from.  Subscribe to this Google Reader bundle here.

Freakonomics
A blog started by the authors of the popular Freakonomics books.  Filled with interesting observations and a little nerdy humor.

The Big Picture
The blog's title descriptions says it all.  "Macro perspective on the capital markets, economy, technology, and digital media."  Lots of data and how things relate to the economy.

How to Change the World
Author, Guy Kawasaki's blog.  Guy has great thoughts on marketing, design, and selling.

Advertising Lab
Interesting examples of new ways to advertise.

Bits
All encompassing tech blog from the NYTimes.  A good way to stay current, and entertained, when you don't have a lot of time.

Five people you should follow on Buzz

Some of my favorite people to follow on Buzz:

Google Buzz Team  The team working on Buzz at Google.  Mountain View, CA
A great way to keep up on new Buzz features.  Find interesting people to follow by reading the comments.  Not frequently updated, but very useful.
Favorite recent post: Google I/O Talks

Kevin Gamble  Associate Director at National eXtension Initiative, NCSU.  Cary, NC
Shares great articles with insightful comments.  Soccer fan.
Favorite recent post: Local Maximum

Adewale Oshineye  London
Talented coder.  Tech guy.  Great shares including some pop culture.
Favorite recent post: Weirdest soccer match and game theory

Ilene Smith  Blogger, Podcaster, Twitter Addict.  Philadelphia, PA
Wonderful knowledge of blogging, Twitter, and social media.
Favorite recent post: Guest blogging explained

Sharon Hurley Hall  Location Independent Web Content Writer, Blogger, Ghostwriter
Great shared articles.  Always seems to find original things I have not yet seen.
Favorite recent post: Five beginner tips to make money in Adsense

Experimenting with broad match modifiers

I'm beginning to experiment with broad match modifiers in my Autism Society campaign.  I will be initially testing it on the Children adgroup.  From the search terms, I determined that people enter a lot of questions.  They tend to have these common words:

• Children, child
• Where
• Why
• Autism, autistic

Broad match modifiers may help target questions like "Where can I find programs for an autistic child?"

Mike Wynn @LA2M: Improve Your Prospecting

Mike Wynn Spoke at today's LA2M event on improving your prospecting.  A few points I took from the presentation:

• Prospecting is figuring out if you should talk about what you do with the person.
• Only fail if you don't prospect.
• Its a sorting exercise, don't be afraid of rejection.

One of the most important things to do with prospecting is not to stop.  Companies have a tendency to stop during their busy times.  Continuing to prospect can keep business steady.

Autism Society Week 5

United Way Week 5 Presentation

Impromptu Networking @ Sweetwaters

Last week I met two fellow LA2M attendees at Sweetwaters in downtown Ann Arbor.  Tom Crawford, Robert Caplis, and I all coincidentally found ourselves at the laptop bar after the June 9th event.

We had a nice talk about Bud Gibson's presentation, over-tweeting, Adwords, and integrating social media sites into your company's page.

We also talked using Twitter as an in-person icebreaker.  I explained how several times I met someone in person after following them on Twitter.  It gives you a few things to talk about right away.  "Saw your post on..." or "Read that you were at the Tigers game last weekend."

Its always nice to bump into some fellow marketing/tech people in Ann Arbor.  For such a small area, there are a lot of smart, successful people in the industries I'm looking into after graduation.

Translating Campaigns

After speaking with my contact at the United Way of Greater Toledo, I began the process of creating a Spanish language targeted campaign.  This was one of the topics that I studied on the Adwords Fundamental Exam.

I'm using this post in the Google Adwords Blog as a starting point.  I downloaded a few popular adgroups using the Adwords Editor.  I then uploaded and translated them using the Translator Toolkit from Google.

Most of my ad text is over the 35 character limit.  Instead of trying to create a "Spanish mirror" of entire adgroups, I may use this process to translate keywords and a few ads that will fit under the character limit after translation. Then for the ads, translate different text until a translation fits.

I saved a copy of my translated AEA file.  I did not upload it back to Adwords because I wasn't sure if it would replace my existing English campaign.

Hopefully I can find an efficient way to maintain a successful, up to date Spanish campaign.

Dr. Bud Gibson @LA2M: Google Adwords tricks to maximizing ROI

Start simple, measure, revise simple.

This was Dr. Bud Gibson's short, effective message on how to maximize your return on investment using Google Adwords.

He spoke at today's LA2M lunch starting with an overview of Google Adwords.  The point of Adwords is to connect something you or your company offers to what a person is searching for using Google.  Calculating how much it costs to acquire a customer is essential.  Comparing that with the revenue a new customer brings you will help determine your ROI.  But how do you maximize your ROI?

Attract visitors that want what you can give.  Dr. Gibson used the example of the United Way of Toledo.  Coincidentally I am currently working on this campaign for the Spring/Summer Google Practicum class.  Untied Way is advertising 2-1-1.  A helpline to connect people in need with services.  Using very targeted adgroups will help drive people with a higher likelihood of becoming a "customer" to the United Way's site.  If your product or service matches their search query, they are more likely to click on your ad and then, with the help of an well optimized landing page, convert into a customer.

Relating this to the United Way, keywords like "call center" or "call for help" are too broad.  The best performing adgroups use keywords like "low income housing assistance" and "section 8 housing lists."  This may lower the amount of traffic to your site but will increase the likely hood of conversions.  Ultimately maximizing your ROI.

Start simple.  Determine what products you offer.  Create small, targeted adgroups.

Measure.  Look at the numbers.  What are people searching for?  What ad text and keywords are people reacting to?

Revise simple.  Use the data to optimize adgroups or create new ones if your keywords are becoming too broad.

Focus on goals.  Always be aware of the organization's goals and try to connect them with the needs of people searching on Google.  Do this, and you can maximize your ROI.

Google I/O: Bringing Google to your site

Adwords Fundamental Exam Experience

Last night, after a long day of review, I passed the Google Adwords Fundamentals Exam.  I had a feeling my normal reading/skimming pace would not be appropriate.  So over the last two weeks I spent at least ten hours reading the study materials provided by the Google Learning Center.  Afterwards I watched all of the e-learnings that accompany the study material.

At the advice of my professor, I then created a new Adwords account to re-familiarize myself with the process.  Classmates and friends who previously took the exam told me the language and location targeting questions were the most difficult.  I looked over these sections once more, had a quick snack, turned off the Davis/Coltrane Pandora, took a deep breathe, and began the test.

I got the test app to start just fine.  I was off.  A little daunting to see see "1 of 120" in the upper corner.  After I hit about 40 I felt like I was in a groove and relaxed a bit.  I finished my first pass with about an 45 minutes left.  I then went back and checked over the questions that I had marked (this was a nice feature of the exam app).  After looking over the dozen or so questions I submitted my answers with about one minute left.

I was fairly happy with my score, though my reach goal was to match my professor.  Maybe on the Analytics portion.  A lot of the questions you had to choose the "best answer."  The trickiest portions were indeed on language and location.

I feel I previously learned about 80% of the material that I was tested on.  The last 20% were things that I learned while studying or was made clearer in the process.

To anyone planning on taking the exam I would focus on the following:

1. Have previous Adwords experience.
2. Read the study materials, really READ.
3. Watch the e-learnings, they helped summarize the concepts.
4. Re-read the non-conceptual sections (rules about targeting and access).
5. Take your time on the exam and use the "Mark" feature to recheck answers.

Good luck to anyone who takes the exam!  I'm planning on taking the Analytics section later this summer.  My goal is 20 hours of studying for that exam.  I'll let you know how it goes.

United Way Iteration 1

Autism Society Iteration 1