'Net Features : organic search

8 Ways to Create & Portray Brand Authenticity

Administrator — Tue, 21 May 2013 13:20:00 GMT

:: Eric Taylor, Qwaya ::

A positive brand reputation is something that will serve your business well, especially in the realm of social media. Not every brand is going to become a household name with millions of followers, but well-respected companies stand a better chance of influencing who buys from them (and why) and to what frequency.

Developing a brand’s reputation isn’t something that’s going to happen overnight, but there are many different and useful tips to help you improve your own company’s reputation as an authentic, high-value brand.

8 Ways to Create and Portray Brand Authenticity

1: Figure out Your Purpose and Vision and Match Values

Before you begin your social marketing quest to brand your business, you have to start by taking self-inventory. What are your values, and how do they relate to what you want your brand to stand for? Since a brand should be a personal thing, it should be built on your values – on the values of your business. Your brand should be unwavering in this regard, and unafraid to hold that line.

2: Build a Network Using Organic Elements

Paid advertising is OK and, in most cases, actually necessary if you’re using Facebook, but organic reach has its place too. This is especially true when you’re dealing with brand authenticity. Allowing a network of social sites to develop and share organically—at least in part—really pushes a cleaner, more authentic image.

Editor’s Note: Check out “7 Ways to Build Authority on Google+” and “4 Creative Ways to Use Tumblr for Business” as both of these social networks can affect both a brand’s reputation and search standings.

3: Cater to the Right Market

Authenticity in branding is sometimes as easy as catering to the right audience. For instance, if you’re catering to a broader market than you should be in an attempt to develop mass followers, then your advertising and branding methods are going to stand out as a little all over the place, subsequently giving you a fake, inorganic appearance.

Editor’s Note: Today’s brand marketing isn’t about reaching the largest audience, it’s about personalizing the experience for one person to build loyalty, as a result of brand authenticity and personal relevance. Watch your inboxes and mailboxes for our July issue, which covers this hot topic in depth.

4: Learn From Your Competition

Learning about your competitors is always a fantastic way to glean important information about your branding efforts. The more you understand about how others are appearing authentic, the easier it’s going to be for you to tweak things and to come across in a positive fashion. Sign up for your competition’s newsletters, Like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter and Pinterest.

5: Ask For Feedback Regularly

If you want to know how the public views your brand, then make an effort to ask. It could be as simple as releasing a status update that asks the question, “What do you think about us?” Asking for feedback is par for the course, but make sure to follow up with each responder, so they know their feedback is heard and valued.

Editor’s Note: Discover the top digital survey solutions.

6: Honesty and Transparency as a Policy

One of the premier ways to ensure your brand is seen as authentic is to be very open about what’s going on behind the scenes and also with what’s coming down the pike. Make it a policy to be open and transparent, not only in your social media branding (e.g. posts, responses, who your brand follows, etc.) but in all of your online marketing. You will benefit greatly from this.

7: Don’t Lower Your Standards

There are many times when you will be tempted to roll around on the floor with the heathens on sites like Facebook, Twitter and Yelp, or even in your own comment sections. But if you care to notice, the biggest, most well-respected brands out there that engage with fans on social media only do so when they’re approached with positive intent. In other words, the flame-happy trolls don’t receive any feedback. And this is how it should be. Don’t lower your standards by playing around in the mud. Companies should attempt to take brand “distractors” offline by asking them to email someone within the business, so they can solve the issue at hand.

8: Incorporate an Actual Personality

No brand can remain all business, all the time and actually appear to be personable, transparent and authentic. What are you actually doing for the real people following your brand if you’re not allowing your brand to have its own personality? Your brand is a living, breathing thing that needs to have its own voice and personality. And while that voice should directly coincide with your values and your message, it’s still important to inject personality into it. This could include posting images of a company picnic or publishing notes on how a product launch really went down (e.g. long nights and lots of pizza).

Coming across as an authentic brand will open many doors that were seemingly unavailable. Believe it or not, brand authenticity and brand size have a direct correlation. In other words, those brands viewed as authentic are those brands that become household names and big players. Fortunately, social media and the Web, in general, can even the playing field. But before you go tinkering around with the recipe in order to boost your brand’s reach, look at it from an organic, authentic standpoint.

Author's bio:

Eric Taylor is a social media enthusiast, freelance writer and business developer for a Facebook ad campaign tool - Qwaya. The company also provides extensive information, tools and up-to-date news about social media marketing strategies latest trends, most specifically in Facebook.

Covario, Kenshoo to Offer Combined Search Solution

Linc Wonham — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 15:00:00 GMT

Web industry leaders Covario and Kenshoo have announced a strategic agreement that includes software licensing and technology integration to deliver innovative search and social marketing solutions for enterprise advertisers.

Covario, the nation’s largest independent provider of search engine marketing and SEO (search engine optimization) software solutions, will utilize Kenshoo’s digital marketing software to enable scalable online media buying and optimization on behalf of several global enterprise clients for both paid search and paid social advertising. Additionally, the companies will co-develop a fully integrated paid and organic search solution for global digital marketers, leveraging Covario’s SEO technologies such as Covario Organic Search Insight and Covario Organic Search Optimizer together with Kenshoo products Kenshoo Enterprise, Kenshoo Local and Kenshoo Social.

The companies cited three factors driving their partnership: the double-digit growth of paid search spending by enterprise marketers globally, the rapidly growing budgets for Facebook advertising and other paid social media campaigns, and the proven benefits of holistic management of paid search and SEO.

In its quarterly Global Search Spend Analysis of major technology and consumer electronics companies issued in July 2011, Covario reaffirmed its projection for 15 to 20 percent annual growth in paid search spending in 2011. Meanwhile, analysts have reported that all roads lead to Facebook in social network advertising, with a forecast for 2012 that call for the mega social network to command $5.74 billion in ad revenues worldwide. Additionally, Forrester Research, in its 2011 Wave of U.S. Search Marketing Agencies, asserted its belief that integrating SEO and paid search efforts is easiest when done through a single partner.

Covario has begun the onboarding process with Kenshoo for a number of existing paid search clients. As for the integrated organic and paid search solution, a prototype will be unveiled in the months ahead.

Organic Search Insight

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 12 May 2009 13:15:00 GMT

Interactive marketing analytics provider Covario announced an upgrade to its Organic Search Insight solution to include Audit Score v2.0 – a measure of the alignment of an advertiser’s website with the methods used by search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN to display natural search results.

Audit Score v2.0 is based on proprietary data developed by Covario from audits conducted on over 500 different websites across its customer base. Covario belives Audit Score v2.0 is more accurate than Google Page Rank in predicting how effective an advertiser’s SEO investments are in driving measurable business improvements.

“Audit Score v2.0 is an important step for our customers as it elevates our ability to make specific recommendations, search engine by search engine, and drive key online marketing strategies that improve the ROI of SEO” says Dr. Matthias Blume, Chief Analytics Officer at Covario. “Each search engine treats websites very differently, and their treatment changes over time. Our analytics allow us to understand these differences and changes, and make recommendations that measure SEO effectiveness based on the uniqueness of each search engines’ algorithms.”

Audit Score v2.0 is available as part of the latest release of the Covario™ Marketing Action Platform, an enterprise software solution that helps large advertisers and their agencies increase the efficiency, lower operating costs and improve Return-On-Investment of paid search advertising and Search Engine Optimization programs.

Analytics: Omniture Unveils Organic Search Segmentation

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 05 May 2009 14:30:00 GMT

Omniture now enables its users to segment reports by organic keyword rankings.

Rank and keyword data will be passed to Omniture SiteCatalyst when consumers click on organic search results. This enables marketers to view organic keyword reports in addition to paid search and other online analytics reports. This is a powerful feature and noteworthy improvement for Omniture users that is sure to provide some valuable marketing insights.

Omniture also announced that its channel partner prorgram now includes more than 500 certified agency and distribution partners, including WPP, IBM, Sapient, Soft Bank Technologies and others. Omniture also counts 46 of the Advertising Age top 50 interactive agencies as channel partners, and 16 of the top 18 e-commerce platform providers also are certified as Omniture partners.

Website Magazine will be ranking the Top 50 Analytics vendors in its upcoming July issue. If you represent an analytics company (or know someone who does), contact a member of our editorial team.

via Web Analytics World

Conference for In-House Search Marketers

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:43:00 GMT

Those SEOs most recognizable in the industry are often independents. The majority of SEOs, however, work in-house for companies both large and small. That may be one of the reasons that SEOinhouse.com and Search Marketing Expo organizer Third Door Media announced In-House SEM Exchange, a search engine marketing conference dedicated to in-house SEOs.

The In-House SEM Exchange, sponsored by Microsoft Live Search, addresses the most pressing issues faced by attendees. These in-house SEM folks will actually define the topics discussed during the event through a pre-event survey. "In-house SEOs will benefit from the safe haven of this event so that we can share openly, get input from people who have been through their challenges and get several solutions from a room full of people who understand the unique challenges of in-house SEO," said Duane Forrester, Senior Program Manager, SEO - Microsoft/MSN.

The In-house SEM Exchange will happen on June 4th, 2009 following Search Marketing Expo - SMX Advanced in Seattle, Washington, June 2-3.

Paid Plus Organic Listings Equal 15% Clickthrough Rate

Pete Prestipino — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 14:43:00 GMT

The rate of ad clicks from sponsored and non-sponsored links was reported in a recent study (PDF) conducted by researchers from Penn State and the Queensland University of Technology. The study looked at the rate of ad click-through on meta-search engine Dogpile.com.

More than seven million interactions were studied from hundreds of thousands of users to analyze the click-through patterns on both sponsored and non-sponsored links. The study looked specifically at the rate of clicks where sponsored and non-sponsored ads are presented together to investigate what effect it had on consumer behavior.

The results? The clickthrough rate on an ad when it was supported by an organic listing was only 15 percent. The study also found that “35 percent of queries” did not result in any ad clicks at all.

Findings from the study, which was published in a recent issue of the International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising, question the validity of other reports stating that ad clickthrough rates are around the 30 percent mark. It also suggests that most consumers are distrustful of the ads. However, the findings provide a benefit to advertisers.